MELITO  ,

bishop of Sardis, a Christian writer of the and century, mentioned by Eusebius (Hist . Eccl. iv . 21) along with Hegesippus, Dionysius of Corinth, Apollinaris of Hierapolis, Irenaeus, and others, his contemporaries, as a champion of orthodoxy and upholder of apostolic tradition . Of his personal history nothing is known, and of his numerous works (which are enumerated—with quotations—by Eusebius) only a few fragments are extant . They included an Apologia addressed to Antoninus some time between A.D . 169 and 18o, two books relating to the paschal controversy, and a work entitled 'EKaoyaf (selections from the Old Testament), which contained the first Christian list of " the books of the Old Covenant." It excludes Esther, Nehemiah and the Apocrypha . The fragments have been edited with valuable notes by Routh (Reliquiae sacrae, vol. i., 1814) . These are sufficient to show that Melito was an important, figure in Asia Minor and took much part in the paschal, Marcionite and Montanist controversies . It seems more than doubtful whether the Apologia of Melito " the Philosopher," discovered in a Syriac translation by Henry Tattam (1789-1868), and subsequently edited by W . Cureton and by Pitra-Renan, ought to be attributed to this writer and not to another of the same name . The KXsir (clavis), edited by Pitra-Renan, is a much later Latin collection of mystical explanations of Scripture . See A .

Harnack, Texte und Untersuchungen,'i . 240–278 (Leipzig, 1882); Erwin Preuschen, s.v . " Melito " in Herzog-Hauck, Realencykloplidie, xii., 1903, giving full list of works and bibliography .