Metropolis of Chalcedon

In 2005, it was the senior of the four remaining active Greek Orthodox Church metropolises of the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Turkey and the only one surviving in Asia Minor (Anatolia).

[3] The city of Chalcedon enjoyed considerable prestige thanks to the Ecumenical Council that was convoked there at 451 AD, after the initiative of Byzantine Emperor Marcian and Empress Pulcheria.

[3] The decisions of the Council consolidated the Nicene Creed and renounced as heretical number of contemporary doctrines: Apollinarism, Monophysitism and Nestorianism.

[4] He also accused Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of sacrilege and iconoclasm, because he allowed the melting of religious gold and silver objects in order to sustain his war effort.

[5] Due to the long tradition of Saint Euphemia and its association with the area of Chalcedon, the local metropolitans claimed and occasionally succeeded in controlling a number of churches and shrines dedicated to her in the region of Constantinople.

However, it was reorganized in the 15th century, possibly after the Fall of Constantinople and the subsequent incorporation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate into the millet system of Ottoman society.

[6] The subsequent decline of the Greek element of Constantinople, especially from 1964 on, has left the metropolitan area of Chalcedon with a small community today.

Meliton was the right-hand man of Athenagoras, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and active in the Orthodox outreach to the Roman Catholic Church.

He was strongly expected to succeed Athenagoras in 1972, but the Turkish Government, in an effort to keep the Patriarchate under its control, had Meliton's name removed from the list of acceptable candidates.

There is no exact information about the extent of its ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but it probably coincided with the city of Chalcedon in addition to a number settlements on the Asian shore of the Bosporus.

[1] From the late 19th century it was further expanded and covered an extensive and narrow strip on the Black Sea coast, stretching from Rysion (modern Darıca) on the Propontis to Zonguldak.