The point on which they broke with the larger catholic church[c] was the same as that of the contemporary Donatists in the province of Africa: the ease with which lapsed Christians were received back into communion.
[9] His successor, Alexander I, who came to power in 313, sought to heal the schism in the Egyptian church in order to better combat Arianism, since he regarded the Melitians' Christology as sound.
The council agreed to grant Melitian priests "full clerical privileges" if they were willing to forswear schism and "acknowledge the authority" of the patriarch of Alexandria.
[14][15] Encouraged by Eusebius of Nicomedia, the Melitians went into schism and elected a rival patriarch named Theonas with the support of the Arians.
[8][17] Athanasius responded in his famous anti-Arian tracts Apologia contra Arianos and Historia Arianorum by accusing the Melitians of lying and conspiring with Arians to unseat him.
They are mentioned in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) and Shenoute (d. c. 465) and persisted into the eighth century (after the Arab conquest of Egypt) as a small monastic sect.
[3][7][8] Numerous papyri have been discovered bearing evidence of a Melitian monasticism flourishing in the Egyptian desert in the fourth century.
It is clear that Melitian monks lived in communities, but is not certain if these were tightly structured arrangements like the coenobia of the Pachomians or loose quasi-eremitic groupings like the monasteries of Nitria and Scetis.
[9] Timothy of Constantinople, in his On the Reception of Heretics written towards 600, says of the Melitians that "they engaged in no [theological] error, but must pronounce their schism anathema" to rejoin the church.