Meletios the Younger

Meletios the Younger (c. 1035 – c. 1105), also called Meletios of Myoupolis, was a Byzantine Greek monk, pilgrim and priest. He is venerated as a saint in Eastern Orthodoxy and his feast is celebrated on 1 September.[1]

Meletios was born in the Cappadocian village of Moutalaske, which was also the birthplace of Sabbas the Sanctified. At fifteen or sixteen years of age, he ran away from home to Constantinople, the capital of Byzantine Empire, where he became a monk. He lived there for three years, before setting out on a pilgrimage.[2] He quickly halted his pilgrimage, however, to join the eukterion (oratory) of Saint George near Thebes. After ten years and aged about 28, he left Saint George on a series of pilgrimages that brought him to the Holy Land, Rome and possibly Santiago de Compostela. He stayed in the Holy Land for three years, visiting Jerusalem, Galilee and both sides of the river Jordan. He visited several monasteries, including that of Saint Sabbas, his compatriot.[1][2] Upon his return to Greece, he settled on Mount Myoupolis and Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople consecrated him a priest. By around 1081 he had acquired the nearby monastery of the Symboulon, which came to be known as Hosios Meletios after him.[1] There he introduced Palestinian monastic practices, including combining monks with anchorites in paralauria.[2] In his later years, he received an annual donation of 422 hyperpyra from the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos.[1] He died in his monastery around 1105[1] or 1110.[2]

Two biographies of Meletios were written after 1141 by Nicholas of Methone and Theodore Prodromos.[3] Although largely independent of one another, Theodore appears to have had access to Nicholas' account.[4] They occasionally contradict each other, but are nonetheless valuable historical sources because of their emphasis on Meletios' interactions with the Byzantine elite. Of the two, Theodore's is the more worldly and entertaining, giving more space to Meletios' pilgrimages.[1] He claims that Meletios left Thebes only after a noble Theban lady attempted to seduce him. He also records how a group of "Hagarenes" (Muslims) harassed the saint, who was rescued by from his predicament by a Christian Arab.[2] He is the only one to mention a pilgrimage to Compostela in Spain.[3] Nicholas focuses more attention on Meletios' care for his monastic community, whom he protects from fire and whose gardens he defends from rabbits.[1]

Hagiographies
  • Nicholas of Methone, "Vita sancti Meletii iunioris" [= BHG 1247], ed. Vasily Vasilievsky, Pravoslavnyi Palestinskii Sbornik VI (Saint Petersburg, 1866), pp. 1–39.
  • —, "Bios tou hosiou patros hēmōn Meletiou tou en tō horei tēs Myoupoleōs askēsantos", in Iōannēs Polemēs (ed.), Hoi bioi tou hagiou Meletiou tou Neou (Athens: Ekdoseis Kanakē, 2018), pp. 30–150.
  • Theodore Prodromos, "Vita sancti Meletii iunioris" [= BHG 1248], ed. Vasily Vasilievsky, Pravoslavnyi Palestinskii Sbornik VI (Saint Petersburg, 1866), pp. 40–69.
  • —, "Bios tou hosiou patros hēmōn Meletiou tou Neou", in Iōannēs Polemēs (ed.), Hoi bioi tou hagiou Meletiou tou Neou (Athens: Ekdoseis Kanakē, 2018), pp. 152–254.

References
  1. Kazhdan, Alexander (1991). "Meletios the Younger". In Kazhdan, Alexander (ed.). The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504652-8.
  2. Johannes Pahlitzsch (2019), "Byzantine Monasticism and the Holy Land: Palestine in Byzantine Hagiography of the 11th and 12th Centuries", in D. Bertaina et al. (eds.), Heirs of the Apostles: Studies on Arabic Christianity in Honor of Sidney H. Griffith (Leiden: Brill), pp. 231–255, at 243–245.
  3. Dorothy E. Abrahamse (1986), "Byzantine Views of the West in the Early Crusade Period: The Evidence of Hagiography", in Vladimir Peter Goss (ed.), The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange Between East and West During the Period of the Crusades (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications), pp. 189–200.
  4. Symeon A. Paschalidis (2011), "The Hagiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries", in Stephanos Efthymiadis (ed.) The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography, Volume I: Periods and Places (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 143–172.

Further reading
  • Armstrong, Pamela. The Lives of Meletios of Myoupolis. Master's thesis. Queen's University, Belfast, 1988.
  • Armstrong, Pamela. "Alexios Komnenos, Holy Men and Monasteries". In Margaret Mullett and D. Smythe (eds.), Alexios I Komnenos: Papers of the Second Belfast Byzantine International Colloquium, 14–16 April 1989. Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Enterprises, 1996. pp. 219–231.
  • Armstrong, Pamela; Kirby, Anthony. "Text and Stone: Evergetis, Christodoulos and Meletios". In Margaret Mullett and Anthony Kirby (eds.), The Theotokos Evergetis and Eleventh-Century Monasticism: Papers of the Third Belfast Byzantine International Colloquium, 1–4 May 1992. Belfast: Belfast Byzantine Enterprises, 1994. pp. 146–161.
  • Messis, Charis. "Deux versions de la même ‘verité’: Les deux vies d'hosios Mélétios au XIIe siècle". In Paolo Odorico et al. (eds.), Les vies des saints à Byzance: genre littéraire ou biographie historique? Actes du IIe Colloque International Philologique Hermēneia, Paris, 6–7–8 juin 2002. Paris: Centre d’études byzantines, néo-helléniques et sud-est européennes, 2004. pp. 303–345.
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