Origins and Monastic Beginnings
Meletios was born around 1035 in Moutalaske, a village in Cappadocia that was also the birthplace of Sabbas the Sanctified. According to the synaxarion tradition his parents, named John and Sophia, were pious people. Drawn to the monastic life from a young age, he left his homeland and traveled to Constantinople, where he was tonsured a monk.
Having set out on pilgrimage toward Rome and Jerusalem, he was, by tradition, led instead by a heavenly sign to the Monastery of Saint George near Thebes. There he settled in an oratory of Saint George and eventually served as abbot, attracting many believers and monks by his way of life. He remained in the region of Thebes for roughly a decade in this early period.
Pilgrimages
At about the age of twenty-eight, Meletios undertook a series of long pilgrimages. He journeyed to the Holy Land, where he is said to have spent some three years visiting Jerusalem, Galilee, and the region of the Jordan, including the monastery of Mar Saba, enduring hardship under the conditions of Muslim rule. He also traveled to Rome, where he venerated the tombs of the Holy Apostles, and according to one account possibly as far as Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
The Monastic Center on Mount Myoupolis
Returning to Greece, Meletios established himself on Mount Myoupolis, in the area of Mount Kithairon. By around 1081 he had acquired the nearby monastery of the Symboulon, which thereafter came to be known as Hosios Meletios after him. There he again drew many disciples and built up a large monastic center, described as comprising some twenty-four paralauria, or small dependent monasteries, with many hundreds of monks.
Meletios introduced Palestinian monastic practices into the community, combining cenobitic monks with anchorites organized in paralauria. Patriarch Nicholas III of Constantinople ordained him to the priesthood, and in his later years he received an annual donation of 422 hyperpyra from the Emperor Alexios I Komnenos in support of the monastery.
Asceticism and Spiritual Gifts
Meletios was known for severe asceticism. He wore a single garment of horsehair and ate no more than his body required, keeping vigil through the night with tears, taking little rest. By the accounts of his life he acquired the gifts of working miracles and of prophecy for the benefit of the brethren, and people came to seek him in ever-increasing numbers.
Repose and Veneration
Meletios reposed at his monastery around 1105, by tradition at the age of seventy; some sources place his death as late as about 1110. He is venerated as a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church, with his feast observed on September 1. His skull is preserved and venerated at his monastery. Two hagiographies of the saint were composed after 1141, by Nicholas of Methone and by Theodore Prodromos.
Relics & Shrines
The honorable skull of Saint Meletios is kept at his monastery on Mount Myoupolis (the monastery of Hosios Meletios), where it can be venerated.
