Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Which Church Father Are You?

And now for something a bit different.
You are St. Melito of Sardis!

You have a great love of history and liturgy. You’re attached to the traditions of the ancients, yet you recognize that the old world — great as it was — is passing away. You are loyal to the customs of your family, though you do not hesitate to call family members to account for their sins.

Find out which Church Father you are at The Way of the Fathers!
Thus far, it seems that St. Melito of Sardis is a most popular answer for those I hang around with -- say over at Touchstone's Mere Comments and ALPB Forum Online. I suspect that prior to this, none of us had ever heard of him. Here is what I've discovered, courtesy the good folks at Catholic Online:
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.
I wonder how we should consider that his feast day is April 1?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this, Pr. Zip. Interesting stuff.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I'm one more STS'r with Melito of Sardis

--Tom Shelley