Melchite Church
The Melchite Church - its full name is the Melchite Greek Catholic Church - is one of the Eastern Christian Churches which have their own liturgy but acknowledge the authority of the Pope and are therefore part of the Roman Catholic Church. (Such Churches are sometimes referred to as Eastern Catholic Churches or as Uniate Churches.) 'Melchite' - sometimes spelt 'Melkite' - is pronounced with the 'ch' as 'k' and the final 'e' silent IPA: /'mɛlkaɪt/. For an explanation of the name see below.
The Melchite Church came into existence in 1729 when a group with Catholic sympathies within the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch was recognised by the Pope as a distinct Church within the Roman Catholic Church. However, through the Greek Orthodox Church from which they separated, the Melchites can trace their history back to the first century of the Christian era when Christianity was brought to Antioch by Jesus' disciples. (According to Acts ch. 11, v. 26, it was in Antioch that Jesus' followers were first called Christians, and some say that Peter was Bishop of Antioch before travelling to Italy and becoming the first Bishop of Rome.) By the second century there was a large Christian community in Antioch and many Christian communities throughout Syria.
In the first half of the fifth century Christian theology was dominated by the controversy between those (known as Dyophysites) who held that Jesus, as the son of God, had two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, and those (known as Monophysites) who held that Jesus had only one nature, his human nature being in some way included within his divine nature. When in 451 the Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon endorsed Dyophysitism and condemned Monophysitism as a heresy, the Church in Syria accepted the Council's decree, though many Christians in the Middle East remained committed to Monophysitism. It was at this time that members of the Syrian Church began to be called Melchites The word derives from the Syrian malka, which means 'king' - compare Arabic malik, king - and means 'royalist' or 'imperialist': the Council of Chalcedon was convened at the command of the Byzantine emperor Marcian and it would seem that in accepting its decision in favour of Dyophysitism Syrian Christians were perceived as obedient subjects of the emperor.
With the Great Schism in the eleventh century and the division of Christendom into a western half under the authority of the Pope in Rome and an eastern half under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople, the Church in Syria fell within the jurisdiction of the latter and was part of what came to be known as the Greek Orthodox Church.. However, during the period of the Crusades (i.e., from the end of the eleventh century to the beginning of the thirteenth century) Syrian Christians were in contact with the Catholic Crusaders, and in the following centuries many Roman Catholic religious orders established missions in the Middle East, particularly in Damascus. In consequence there developed within the clergy and laity of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch a body of Christians with Catholic sympathies, and in 1724 the Patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias III, precipitated a crisis when he refused to approve the appointment of Cyril VI as Patriarch of Antioch. He considered Cyril too sympathetic to Catholicism and replaced him with his own appointee, Sylvester, whose arrogant conduct further antagonised Cyril's supporters. They appealed to Rome, and in 1729 Pope Benedict XIII accepted Cyril as the Catholic Patriarch of Antioch and recognisd his followers as a distinct Church within the Roman Catholic Church. The word 'Melchite' was applied to this new Church and was no longer used of the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, to which it was originally applied.
The numbers of Melchites in the Middle East increased significantly in the nineteenth century, and today there are about 1,600,000 Melchites worldwide, with communities of Melchite immigrants in North and South America as well as in Australia and New Zealand.
At the First Vatican Council in 1870 the eight Melchite representatives - the Patriarch and seven bishops - were conspicuous by their resistance to the proposed doctrine of papal infallibility: they argued that it would damage the authority of the Patriarchs in the Middle East and make relations with the Greek Orthodox Church more difficult. In the end, when the Council approved the doctrine, they reluctantly agreed to accept it, but only with certain reservations.
