ST MELITON, BISHOP OF SULCI - 1 APRIL

 

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SAINT MELITON, BISHOP OF SULCI

Saint Meliton (Melito), Bishop (April 1). Some hagiographers list two bishops of this name as of April 1: Meliton of Sardes in Asia and Meliton of Sulci in Sardinia. The former composed the Apology for the Christians, which he wrote with the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-180) in mind, and is the author of various other books that testify to his extraordinary ability and activity. They have been lost, except for a few fragments. Eusebius has preserved only their titles; among them we find a book on the Easter celebration, on the Church, on soul, body, and spirit, on the Incarnation, etc. Tertullian praises his pure and eloquent style and says that many attributed to him the gift of prophecy. Bellarmine and Halloix, the editor of his fragments, call him a saint. At the same time they make it very clear that the quality of the text: De transitu B. V. (of the passing of the Blessed Virgin) is well below his standard and definitely was not penned by him.

The other Saint Meliton is said to have been a pupil of Saint Boniface, the first Bishop of Cagliari. He sent him to the old Carthaginian colony of Sulci (long since in ruins, perhaps near Palma di Solo), where he "taught and worked miraculous things." He is said to have reached a great age and finally to have been beheaded for the faith he preached. If the legend according to which Saint Boniface suffered under Nero is well founded, he would have died around the time of Domitian. The Bollandists* do not state the date of his passing with certainty and rather give the first or second century as the approximate time of his death. 

Butler* omitted him altogether. New and well-founded doubts about this Saint Meliton have been raised. The work Sardinia Sacra by the Minorite Antonius Felix Matthäus (fols. 126-128) supposes that he was added to the relevant martyrologies at a later stage. The oldest of them that still exists seems to show clearly that the addition "in Sardinia" was made by a later hand. He therefore confirms Henschen's* suspicion that some ignorant person confused Sardis with Sardinia, thus giving rise to the erroneous opinion of a Sardinian Saint Melito (I.10 et 11).

(Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, Volume 4, Augsburg, 1875, pp. 412-13)

*A hagiography source used by the authors 

Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints - Sources and Abbreviations

Sources of these articles (in the original German): books.google.co.uk, de-academic.com, zeno.org, openlibrary.org