Meletius

Saint Meletius of Antioch was a fourth-century bishop of one of the great Eastern sees and a central figure in the later stages of the Arian controversy. He was born at Melitene in Lesser Armenia, of a family described by the ecclesiastical historians as well-born, and he was known for cultivated speech, personal austerity, and a pacific disposition that made him acceptable, at least at first, to more than one party in a divided church. Before he came to Antioch he was involved in the troubled church life of Armenia and Syria. He is associated with an episcopal appointment at Sebaste after the deposition of Eustathius, an appointment that did not take lasting hold; he withdrew, spent a period in retirement, and was also connected with Beroea (Aleppo) in Syria. Ancient writers emphasize that he had not been a partisan firebrand, which helps explain why, when the see of Antioch became vacant, both those of Arianizing tendency and those attached to the Nicene faith could imagine him as a bishop who might restore order.

In 360 or 361 the Arian bishop Eudoxius of Antioch was translated to Constantinople, and Meletius was elected to the Antiochene throne. The hopes of the court party were disappointed almost at once. In preaching on Proverbs 8:22, a text much used in the Trinitarian debates, Meletius interpreted the passage in a sense compatible with the Nicene homoousios and made clear his rejection of Arian subordinationism. Emperor Constantius II had him deposed and exiled, and the Arian Euzoius was put in his place. The Nicene laity and clergy of Antioch then fractured. Many remained loyal to Meletius as their rightful bishop. A stricter group, which had never accepted the circumstances of his election and which looked to the old Eustathian tradition in the city, gathered around Paulinus, who was consecrated bishop by Lucifer of Cagliari. From this division arose the long Meletian schism. Rome and Alexandria generally recognized Paulinus; a large part of the Eastern episcopate, including Basil of Caesarea, recognized Meletius. The schism was therefore not a quarrel over the substance of Nicene doctrine so much as over legitimacy, communion, and the memory of how the see had been filled.

Meletius’s subsequent career followed the oscillations of imperial policy. He was able to return under Julian, was banished again during the reign of Valens, and was restored after Valens died in 378, when Gratian’s measures permitted the recall of Nicene bishops. During these years he was regarded in much of the East as the legitimate patriarch of Antioch. He ordained the young John, later called Chrysostom, as lector, and Chrysostom’s later preaching kept Meletius’s memory in high honor at Antioch. Meletius cooperated with Basil in efforts to unite the Nicene bishops of the East and to obtain recognition from the West, though the Paulinus question remained a stubborn obstacle. In 381 he traveled to Constantinople for the council convened by Theodosius I, the gathering later received as the Second Ecumenical Council. The assembled bishops chose Meletius to preside. He died in Constantinople while the council was still sitting. Gregory of Nyssa preached a funeral oration over him; the body was then borne to Antioch and buried there amid public veneration.

The churches of East and West came in time to commemorate Meletius as a saint, commonly on 12 February, despite the fact that in his own lifetime the Roman church had not accepted him as bishop of Antioch. His death did not end the local schism: his adherents elected Flavian to succeed him, while Paulinus’s line continued for a time, and only in the early fifth century was the Antiochene succession fully reunited. Meletius left no large body of writings; his historical importance lies in his confession of Nicene faith at a moment when that confession was still costly in the East, in the pastoral loyalty he inspired—attested especially by Chrysostom—and in the painful illustration his career offers of how even agreement on Nicaea could be undone by rival ordinations and competing claims to a single ancient see.