MENIATES, ELIA. – Greek bishop and controversialist, b. in 1669, d. in 1714. At the age of 10 he came from Cefalonia, his native land, to Venice, where he completed his studies and began teaching and preaching. In Constantinople he held political offices, as an attaché to the Venetian consul. In 1711 he was appointed bishop of Cernica and Calabria.
He wrote the book Πέτρα σκανδάλου (Leipzig 1718), in the first, historical, part of which he presented the version current among the Byzantines concerning the Photian schism, while in the second he discussed the five divergences debated at the Council of Florence. The book was translated into Latin, German (1787), Romanian (1844), and Russian (1847). He also published a collection of sermons: Διδαγάι (Venice 1720); in them M., contrary to the position already prevailing at that time in Constantinople, defended the Immaculate Conception.
• MENNI, BENEDETTO. – Restorer of the Hospitallers of S. Giovanni di Dio (v.) in Spain and founder of the Hospitallers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the B. V. Maria (v.), b. in Milan on 11 March 1841, d. at Dinan (France) on 24 April 1914.
He entered the novitiate on 1 May 1860 and made his solemn profession on 17 May 1864; he was ordained a priest on 14 October 1866. The prior general, Giuseppe Maria Alfieri, charged him with reviving the Spanish branch of the Order, suppressed by the subversive laws of 1835-36. Furnished with a special mandate from Pius IX, on 25 April 1867, without resources and unable to speak the language, he reached Barcelona, where in that same year, with the help of the bishop and pious benefactors, he was able to open a modest asylum for poor, rachitic, and scrofulous children. There he gathered several confrères from Italy, France, and Spain, with whom he initiated the Spanish revival of the Order. M. suffered greatly both at the hands of his own associates and from the revolutionaries of 1868, and especially from those of 1873, who came close to executing him by firing squad. He took temporary refuge in France, but the following year he returned to northern Spain, bloodied by civil war, as a delegate of the Red Cross. Once internal order had been restored, in 1876 M. founded at Ciempozuelos, near Madrid, the psychiatric hospital (asylum) that became the driving centre of the restored Spanish branch, which subsequently extended to Portugal (1893) and even to Mexico (1901). When the Spanish province was constituted (1884), M. was chosen as its first provincial. Realizing the need for a women’s congregation to care for the sick women admitted to the hospitals he was establishing, in 1880 M., with the collaboration of Maria delle Angustie Giménez and Giuseppina Recio, founded the Hospitallers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and of the B. V. Rome, he subsequently became apostolic visitor (1909) and prior general of the order (21 April 1911), a position from which he resigned for health reasons on 19 June 1912. His constant ideal was to love and serve God by alleviating the sufferings of his neighbor. A man of great strength of character and an indefatigable worker, he left a widespread reputation for holiness of life, so much so that the proceedings for his beatification had already been deposited with the S. Congregation of Rites.