The History of Melkites Historical Introduction Here are some extracts taken at length from a synthesis made by Mgr Joseph Nasrallah, the Exarch in Paris, of his "HISTOIRE de L'EGLISE MELCHITE des ORIGINES Ă NOS JOURS" (History of the Melkite Church from its Origins to the Present Day), published in Le Lien. Unlike the other oriental churches, Catholic or Orthodox, the Melkite Church is not a national church. In the canonical acceptation of the word it is a particular Church, spread throughout the Arab Middle East and throughout a diaspora of ever increasing extent. It is the legitimate heir of the three apostolic sees of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. Its origins are inextricably bound up with the preaching of the Gospel in the Greco-Roman world of the Eastern Mediterranean and with the extension of Christianity beyond the limits of the Empire. The setting up of the patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, the first two at the Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.) and the third at Chalcedon (451 A.D.), gave it its form and made of it a territorial and juridical entity. The Melkite Church owes its character as a particular church to two loyalties, one to the Empire of Byzantium and the other to the first seven ecumenical councils. However, it was only towards the end of the fifth century that it took the name of Melkite. This appellation, which was invented by its Monophysite detractors to stigmatize its fidelity to Marcian the Emperor (=malka in Syriac) and to the council which he had called at Chalcedon, is the distinguishing label marking its orthodoxy in relation to the cattolica. In our day, sociologically speaking the Melkite Church offers an astonishing ethnic homogeneity; its patriarch, its episcopate, its clergy both regular and secular, its faithful, are mostly Arabic speaking. With the Arabo-lslamic conquest of the seventh century, the world of the Melkite patriarchates passed under non-Christian domination; Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem were part of the Islamic world up to and including the Ottoman domination, which started in 1516. With rare exceptions during the Mameluke rule, the Christians did not undergo persecution so much as a regime of vexation and subjection; they were now dhimmis or protected people. They assumed with resignation and courage their new role as witnesses to Christ in the territory of Islam. As they were no longer able to play a political role, the Melkites, like the Jacobites and Nestorians, turned towards the liberal professions, especially medicine, and were the artisans of the translation into Arabic of the philosophical, medical and scientific heritage of ancient Greece. The Byzantine reconquest of Antioch lasted no more than a century, from 960 to 1085 A.D. It had as consequence the Byzantinization of the liturgy of the three patriarchates, and the adaptation of the liturgical usage and customs of the imperial city was more or less accomplished at Antioch by the end of the thirteenth Century.
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