Pope Melchiades

Pope Melchiades, also known as Miltiades and in Greek sources as Melchiades the African, was Bishop of Rome from 311 until his death in January 314. The Liber Pontificalis, a later but traditional source for early papal lives, describes him as African by origin (natione Afer); his date and place of birth are otherwise unknown, and nothing reliable survives about his family, education, or career before he occupied the Roman see. He succeeded Pope Eusebius, who had been caught in bitter disputes over the treatment of Christians who had lapsed during the Diocletianic persecution, had been exiled to Sicily, and had died in exile. Melchiades’s election followed a vacancy in the see of Rome and took place as the Church was emerging from the last great imperial persecution. Galerius’s edict of toleration in 311 had already eased the legal position of Christians in much of the empire, and the political ascent of Constantine in the West was about to change it still more decisively.

His brief pontificate coincided with Constantine’s victory over Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge in 312 and with the so-called Edict of Milan of 313, by which Constantine and Licinius extended freedom of worship to Christians. Later tradition associates Melchiades with Constantine’s grant of the Lateran property—the house of Fausta (Domus Faustae)—which became the papal residence and the site of the Basilica of St. John Lateran, the cathedral church of Rome. Contemporary documentation does not confirm every detail of that donation as belonging strictly to his years in office, but the Lateran complex did become the center of papal administration in the Constantinian period, and it was there that Melchiades held a synod. He is thus remembered as the first pope to preside over the Roman church in the new conditions of imperial favor rather than of persecution, even though his reign lasted only about two and a half years.

The principal recorded act of his pontificate was his handling of the Donatist schism in North Africa. After Caecilian was elected bishop of Carthage, a rigorist party refused to recognize him, alleging that one of his consecrators, Felix of Aptunga, had been a traditor who had handed over sacred books during the persecution. The African dissidents appealed to Constantine, who referred the dispute to the Bishop of Rome. In October 313 Melchiades presided over a synod at the Lateran, attended by a number of Italian bishops and three bishops from Gaul. The synod acquitted Caecilian, condemned Donatus of Casae Nigrae, and sought to restore communion. The decision did not end the schism: the Donatists appealed further, and Constantine later convened the Council of Arles in 314, after Melchiades’s death. The Lateran hearing nonetheless set an important precedent for imperial involvement in ecclesiastical disputes and for the Roman see’s role as a court of appeal in a major African controversy.

Melchiades died in January 314, most catalogues giving 10 January, and according to the Liber Pontificalis was buried in the cemetery of Callistus on the Via Appia. He was succeeded by Pope Sylvester I. Venerated as a saint from early times, he was commemorated in the Roman liturgy on 10 December, a date distinct from that of his death; that commemoration remained in the General Roman Calendar until the reform of 1969, and he continues to be listed in the Roman Martyrology on 10 December. No authentic writings of his survive, and no spouse, children, or membership in a later-style religious order is documented. His historical importance lies less in a long dossier of personal acts than in the fact that he occupied the Roman see at the turning point between persecution and the Constantinian church, and that he was the pope who first sat in judgment, at imperial request, on the Donatist controversy.