in ecclesiastical history, the name of a considerable party who adhered to the cause of Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, in Upper Egypt, after he had been deposed, about the year 306, by Peter bishop of Alexandria, on the charge of having sacrificed to the gods, and been guilty of other heinous crimes; though Epiphanius represents as his only failing an excessive severity against the lapsed. This which was at first a personal difference between Meletius and Peter, became a religious controversy; and the Meletian party subsisted in the fifth century, but was condemned by the first council of Nice.