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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Melchite

Melchite \Mel"chite\, n. [Heb. melek king.] (Eccl. Hist.) One of a sect, chiefly in Syria and Egypt, which acknowledges the authority of the pope, but adheres to the liturgy and ceremonies of the Eastern Church.

Usage examples of "melchite".

Greeks I desire no communion, either in this world or in the next, and I abjure forever the Byzantine tyrant, his synod of Chalcedon, and his Melchite slaves.

Xenaias, who had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia, was suffocated in his exile by the Melchites of Paphlagonia.

In his turn, the tyrant was excommunicated by the zeal and revenge of the people: and none except his servile Melchites would salute him as a man, a Christian, or a bishop.

By this charter of security, the ecclesiastical and civil tyranny of the Melchites was destroyed: the anathemas of St.

Jacobites were curbed, and the Melchites who submitted to the Arabian yoke were indulged in the obscure but tranquil exercise of their worship.

During the first age of the conquest, they suspected the loyalty of the Catholics, whose name of Melchites betrayed their secret attachment to the Greek emperor, while the Nestorians and Jacobites, his inveterate enemies, approved themselves the sincere and voluntary friends of the Mahometan government.

Catholic Albanians, Orthodox Greeks and the various minorities such as Melchites, Copts, Jews and Nestorians for a north wind had been immoderate, so was the response: the north wind came, but although it carried the Dryad racing down to Cephalonia it also kept the transports pinned there, and quite soon it worked up such a heavy sea that it was impossible to stay on that exposed corner of the mole.

By this charter of security, the ecclesiastical and civil tyranny of the Melchites was destroyed: ^109 the anathemas of St.