Melito of Sardis

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Saint Melito of Sardis (died c.180) was the bishop of Sardis, near Smyrna in Asia Minor, and a great authority: Jerome, speaking of the Old Testament canon established by Melito, quotes Tertullian to the effect that he was esteemed a prophet by many of the faithful. His feast is celebrated on April 1.

Although only fragments of his works survive, Melito was a prolific early Christian writer, judging from lists of them preserved by Eusebius and Jerome. He wrote a celebrated Apology for Christianity which he sent to Marcus Aurelius.

Melito lists the first Christian canon of the Old Testament. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that "Melito's Canon consists exclusively of the protocanonicals minus Esther". If the missing book is restored, this represents the same canon used by the Jews and most Protestants. Melito's canon excludes the deuterocanonical books which are used by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox.

Melito's Peri Pascha ("Homily on the Passover") is a text that was assembled from surviving fragments in the 1930s, and translated into English in the 1940s. The order in which the fragments have been assembled is a possible reconstruction. It is clear from Eusebius that Melito celebrates Passover on the fourteenth of Nisan, rather than the Sunday following (Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica 5.24), hence he was a Quartodeciman.

In this homily, Melito formulated the charge of deicide, namely that Jews were responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus. He proclaimed that "God has been murdered; the king of Israel has been slain by an Israelite hand." His preaching provoked massive atacks on Jews.^[1]

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia Melito believed in a Millennial reign of Christ on Earth. He wrote against idolatry or relying on teachings of fathers to condone it (Melito's Apology addressed to Marcus Aurelius Antoninus). He presented elaborated parallels between the Old Testament, the form or mold, and the New Testament, as the truth that broke the mold, in a series of Eklogai, six books of extracts from the Law and the Prophets presaging Christ and the Christian faith; a passage cited by Eusebius contains Melito's famous canon of the Old Testament.

Origen, in a brief note, relates that Melito ascribed corporeality to God, and believed that the likeness of God is preserved in the human body. The note is too brief to tell exactly what Melito might have meant by this.

A letter of Polycrates of Ephesus to Pope Victor about 194, mentioned by Eusebius, (H.E. 5.24) states that "Melito the eunuch" was interred at Sardis.

Melito's reputation as a writer remained strong into the Middle Ages: numerous works were pseudepigraphically ascribed to him.