Scholar and 2nd Century Saint leads off April

St. Melito of Sardis

St. Melito of Sardis

Feastday: April 1
Died: 180

Little is known about the life of St. Melito of Sardis, a II Century exegete and apologist who served as bishop of Sardis near Lydia, Asia Minor (near modern Izmir, ancient Smyrna). Thought to have been a hermit and a eunuch, he travelled in Palestine, but the reasons for his journey and the details of his itinerary are lost. Most of his work is also lost. What little survives exists in quotations in the works of others or in fragments. Eusebius preserves Melito's list of Old Testament scriptures, the first such list known to scholars, and fragments of his discourse recommending that Marcus Aurelius adopt Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire. Melito's best-known work is the Peri-Pascha, a Holy (Good) Friday sermon pieced together from manuscript fragments in the XX Century which shows parallels between Easter (the new passover) and the Passover haggadah. Melito's contemporaries praise his skill in exegesis and comment on his ability to demonstrate parallels between the Old and New Testaments. His contemporaries also called Melito a prophet or a beacon, but his rhetorical style caused later writers to question the soundness of his theology, some of which seems to akin to the philosophy of the Stoics. Melito's work, which fell out of favor in the IV Century, influenced the thinking of Irenæus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian.