The life of St Meletius of Antioch
The city he inherited was not an easy one: many there still felt real attachment to Eustathius, the bishop removed decades before him, and Meletius arrived already standing in the shadow of a division that had never fully healed. What he brought to the office was a plain life, honest morals, and a gentleness that won him wide personal affection, even as his firm stand for Nicene faith struck hard against the Arian party then powerful in the region.
That stand cost him three separate exiles under successive Arian emperors, spread across the 360s and 370s. His absence, rather than settling the old Antiochene quarrel, deepened it further: those unwilling to accept any bishop but one drawn from Eustathius's own circle had a rival, Paulinus, consecrated in his place, and the resulting Meletian Schism between the two factions outlived Meletius himself by decades.
He presided over the First Council of Constantinople in 381 but died soon after it opened. The emperor Theodosius, who had honored him greatly in life, had his body carried home to Antioch and buried there with a saint's full honors.
