Melkite

The term Melkite (/ˈmɛlkaɪt/), also written Melchite, refers to various Eastern Christian churches of the Byzantine Rite and their members originating in West Asia.

Melkite designations do not have implicit ethnic connotations, but they are used as denominational components of complex terms, mainly in scholarly ethnoreligious terminology.

[14] Accordingly, notably to Vatican historiographers and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, this first community is said to have been a mixed one made up of individuals who were Greek, Copts, Roman, Aramean (Syriac), Arabs and Jewish.

[15][16] Secular historians like Edward Gibbon and Ernest Renan held similar views regarding the emergence of the Melkite community.

[24][25][26] Internal divisions that emerged after the Council Chalcedon (451) in eastern patriarchates of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, gradually led to the creation of distinctive pro-Chalcedonian (Melkite) and non-Chalcedonian branches, that by the beginning of the 6th century evolved into separate hierarchical structures.

and hymns have survived partially to the present,[citation needed] notably in the distinct church services of the Melkite and Greek Orthodox communities of the Hatay Province of Southern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon.

At that time, the nature of the East–West Schism, normally dated to 1054, was undefined, and many of those who continued to worship and work within the Melkite Church became identified as a pro-Western party.

Considering this to be a Catholic takeover attempt, Jeremias III of Constantinople imposed a deacon, the Greek monk Sylvester to rule the patriarchate instead of Cyril.

The newly elected Pope Benedict XIII (1724–1730) also recognised the legitimacy of Cyril's claim and recognized him and his followers as being in communion with Rome.