MELETIUS (MELITIUS) OF LYCOPOLIS. - Bishop of Lycopolis in the Thebaid (Egypt), d. ca. 325-26, author of the schism named Meletian after him, which probably began in 306 and was not entirely extinguished until around the beginning of the 6th century.
From the sources, which are not always in agreement, it appears that between 305 and Easter of 306, while the persecution of Diocletian was raging and several bishops and faithful were in prison and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, was in hiding, M., bishop of Lycopolis, arrogated to himself in fact, somewhat everywhere, including Alexandria itself, the right to act as superior of the Egyptian Church, visiting, ordaining clerics and excommunicating. Of rigorist sentiments, he seems to have regarded the flight of Peter and his vicars as treason and perhaps for this reason regarded Peter himself as having fallen from his office. He succeeded in persuading even some Alexandrian priests, wherefore certain bishops in prison protested against M.'s conduct (Fragment of their letter, ed. Kettler, op. cit., see bibliography, p. 159 ff.) and Peter in a letter put his faithful (ibid.) on guard against him.
After Easter of 306, with the persecution slackening, many faithful who had more or less compromised themselves (lapsi) wished to return to the Church, and Peter, in a pastoral letter (PG 18, 467-508), regulated their situation, establishing that only in the most excusable cases were the lapsi to be immediately admitted to canonical penance, while for the others the case would be examined only after a year of probation; at the same time he defended the legitimacy, in certain circumstances, of flight in time of persecution. M., opposed to this leniency, incited against Peter a good number of those who had publicly confessed the faith (Epiphanius, Haer., 68, 1-3: PG 42, 184-89), wherefore Peter had M. deposed by a synod of bishops (Athanasius, Apol. c. Ar., 59: ibid., 25, 356; Socrates, Hist. eccl., I, 6: ibid., 67, 52 ff.). M., by now openly schismatic (Athanasius, ibid. and Ep. ad episc. Aegypti et Lyb., 22: ibid., 25, 589), set about organizing the so-called "church of the martyrs," that is, of the confessors (Epiphanius, Haer., 68, 3: ibid., 42, 189). In 308-309, when the persecution flared up again, M. was deported ad metalla in Palestine. He returned in 311 with the halo of confessor, which increased the prestige of the sect. The bishop Peter, in order to counteract its progress, declared invalid the baptism of the Meletians, thus provoking the opposition of some members of his clergy, among whom was prominent the deacon Arius, the future heresiarch, who, already as a layman, had adhered to M. Peter excommunicated him (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., I, 15: PG 67, 905). Toward the end of 311 Peter himself died a martyr and was succeeded by Achillas and then (313) by Alexander. But M. continued in his schism and the schismatic hierarchy organized itself throughout Egypt (Athanasius, Apol. c. Ar., 71: ibid., 25, 373), and Hosius of Cordova, coming to Alexandria in 324 for the affair of Arius, had to deal also with the Meletians (Eusebius, Vita Const., II, 62-63: ibid., 20, 1036; III, 4: ibid., 1057). The same did in 325 the Council of Nicaea (see Socrates, Hist. eccl., I, 9: PG 67, 77-81): M. was recognized as bishop of Lycopolis, but without the right to make ordinations; the clerics ordained by him were to be reordained and thus would have been able to exercise among the Catholics the functions of their rank, taking their place, in the corresponding rank, after the members of the regular hierarchy, though with the hope of being also promoted in the case of a regular election. The Council, in its can. 6, explicitly confirmed to the bishop of Alexandria his traditional and ample metropolitan rights over all Egypt, Libya and the Pentapolis (Cyrenaica; Mansi, II, 669 ff.).
The Meletians appealed to Constantine (Eusebius, Vita Const., III, 23: PG 20, 1084), asking the help of Eusebius of Nicomedia (Epiphanius, Haer. 68, 5 ff.: PG 42, 192-93); but the exile of Eusebius forced the Meletians, more or less sincerely, to reconcile with Alexander (Athanasius, Apol. c. Ar., 71: PG 25, 376). However, M., before dying (ca. 325-26), succeeded in giving himself a successor, John Arkaph, whom he made bishop of Memphis (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., II, 21: PG 67, 985) and the sect, by now in close alliance with the Arians, waged a merciless struggle against the new bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius (328), a struggle on which recent papyri shed light (see Ghedini, op. cit. in bibliography) and Athanasius himself in his Apologia contra Arianos, wherefore the Meletians were forthwith numbered among the Arians (Sozomen, ibid.) whose fortunes they also shared. Traces of them are found in the 5th century (Theodoret, Hist. eccl., I, 8: PG 82, 932) and at the beginning of the 6th century, especially among the monks. Evident in the Meletian question are the similarities with the case of the Donatists and the Novatians.
Bibliography6 works
Cipriano Vagaggini