Isaac and Meletius of Cyprus
Our Fathers among the Saints Isaac and Meletius, Bishops of Cyprus
Bishop
Commemorated 21 September
Isaac (Isaacius) and Meletius were bishops of the Church of Cyprus, commemorated together on September 21. The synaxaria transmit their names, their office, and their island, and nothing more: neither their sees, nor their dates, nor any deed has come down. They are remembered among the hierarchs who shepherded Cyprus in the early centuries and reposed in peace.
The entire surviving record of these two saints is the one line of the synaxarion: "the memory of our holy fathers and bishops of Cyprus, Meletius and Isaacius." The Russian calendar carries the same pair as "the holy hierarchs Isaac and Meletius, bishops of Cyprus." Later Cypriot tradition counts them among the island's early wonderworking hierarchs, but no life, see, or century is transmitted, and this entry asserts none. That two bishops otherwise unknown kept their place in the universal synaxarion for a millennium is itself the fact worth recording: the calendar preserves the memory of shepherds whose works are known to God alone.
Feast and commemoration
September 21 (church date; Old Calendar civil October 4), at the leavetaking of the Elevation of the Cross. They have no proper service, and no proper hymns are transmitted.
Iconography
The stored image is the miniature of the Menologion of Basil II (Constantinople, 985): the two bishops of Cyprus stand side by side before the wall of a city, each vested in phelonion and omophorion with the Gospel-book on his arm — exactly the paired-hierarch type the tradition appoints for them.
Disputed questions
- Order and grouping of the names. The Greek synaxarion lists Meletius first, the Slavic and English calendars Isaac first; the OCA prints them as two separate entries, but the synaxarion line commemorates them as a pair, and they are treated here as one commemoration, following the synaxarion.
- Not to be confused with Meletius of Antioch (February 12), Meletius of Sardinia, or the later Isaacs of the Syrian and Dalmatian traditions (Isaac the Syrian, January 28; Isaacius of Dalmatus, May 30); nor is the bishop Isaac to be confused with the otherwise unknown martyr Isaac whom the Greek synaxarion commemorates with Martin the very next day (September 22).