Thursday 11 December 2014

A clash between Bishops - the Truth and a Lie


St. Peter martyr, Bishop of Alexandria and Meletius Bishop of Lycopolis also in Egypt.  (early third century AD)

This great Bishop was hailed as an excellent doctor of the Christian religion, admirable both for his skill in the sciences and profound knowledge of Holy scripture.  He succeeded to the See of Alexandria in the year 300 and governed for twelve years.  The nine last he suffered the fury of the Diocletian persecutions.  Virtue is tried and made perfect by sufferings and the fervour of our saint's piety and the rigor of his penances increased with the calamity of the church.  He never ceased begging of God for himself and his flock the necessary grace and courage, and exhorting them daily to die to their passions, that they might be prepared to die for Christ.  His watchfulness and care extended to all churches in Egypt and Libya.  Notwithstanding his charity and zeal, several in whom the love of the world prevailed basely betrayed their faith to escape torments and death.




Among those who fell none was more considerable that Meletius Bishop of Lycopolis.  That bishop was charged with several crimes but his apostasy was the main article alleged against him.  St Peter called a council where Meletius was convicted of having sacrificed to idols and other crimes, and sentence of deposition was passed against him.

The apostate had not humility enough to submit, or to seek the remedy of his deep wounds by condign repentance, but put himself at the head of a discontented party which appeared ready to follow him to any lengths. To justify his disobedience, and to impose upon men by pretending a holy zeal for discipline, he published many calumnies against St Peter and his council; and had the assurance to tell the world that he had left the archbishops communion, because he was too indulgent to the lapsed in receiving them too soon and too easily to communion.  Thus he formed a pernicious schism, which took its name from him and subsisted a hundred and fifty years.

Arius, who was then among the clergy at Alexandria gave signs of his pride and turbulence by espousing Meletius’s cause as soon as the breach was open.  The holy Bishop St Peter, by his knowledge of mankind, was convinced that pride, the source of uneasiness and inconstancy, had taken deep root in the heart of this unhappy man;  and that so long as this evil was not radically cured the wound of his soul was only skinned over by a pretended conversion, and would break out again with greater violence than ever.  He therefore excommunicated him, and could never be prevailed with to revoke the sentence.


Every clergyman is bound to be thoroughly acquainted with the great obligations of his state and profession; for it is one of the general and most just rules of canon law, and even of the law of nature, that “No man is excused from a fault by the ignorance in things which, by his office he is bound to know”

Butlers lives of the Saints  published by Virtue 1949

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