Commemoration Day: April 1 (14)
Biography
He lived in the 2nd century in Asia Minor. The mentions of St. Melito in the "Church History" of Eusebius of Caesarea and in other ancient Christian authors show that in the 3rd-4th centuries the works of St. Melito were considered exemplary in setting forth Orthodox Christology, and they were widely used to defend Orthodox teaching against heresies.
Many works came from the pen of St. Melito, of which only a few fragments have reached us. The exception is the work "On Pascha" (Greek τα περί του Πάσχα δύο), the full Greek text of which was discovered in 1940 by C. Bonner. It is an outstanding monument of Christian liturgical poetry. In richness of imagery, conciseness and poetic expression it has no equal among the surviving works of the Church Fathers of that era. It was probably read in church at Pascha immediately after the Old Testament readings from the book of Exodus (as the first words of the work indicate: "The Scripture about the exodus of the Hebrews has been read, and the words of the mystery have been explained"). Some scholars suggest that it was read not on Great Saturday but on Great Friday, for Great Friday — the day devoted to the remembrance of the sufferings and death on the Cross of Jesus Christ — had from deep antiquity been called by Christians the Pascha of the Crucifixion, as distinct from the Pascha of the Resurrection celebrated on the "day of the Sun". In the minds of the early Christians the image of the suffering and crucified Christ was inseparable from the image of the risen Christ, and Great Friday was the beginning of the Paschal celebration. A comparison of this work of St. Melito with the liturgical texts of Holy Week shows that the homilies of St. Melito may have been one of the sources of the antiphons of Great Friday composed later.