Beirut. Most of them are merchants and shopkeepers; on the whole they are a prosperous community, except that everything in Syria now gives way to the competition of Western imports. In Egypt they are perhaps the most prosperous Christian community. There they hold important offices under the Government; many become extremely rich, even millionaires, in commerce. But the community suffers from the curse of all Christians in the Near East, constant emigration, chiefly to America and Australia. There are many Melkites in the States, South America, Australia, some in South Africa. When they have made their fortune, they generally come home again and build themselves a house in their native village. But they are nearly always spoiled by their voyage. It is among these returned travellers that one finds detestable imitation of the worst vulgarities of the West, horrid ready-made European clothes, houses furnished with pretentious vulgarity and cheap showy furniture; women in appalling French modes, men who talk to you in Yankee English with an impertinence they think a sign of fine breeding. The semi-Europeanized Levantine is a horrid creature.
In the Antiochene Patriarchate the proportion of Melkites to Orthodox is one to two; it is less in Palestine and Egypt. Charon calculates that there are about 150,000 Melkites altogether, of whom 7,000 are in the West.[1]
- Summary.
The Melkite Church, meaning thereby Byzantine Uniates of Arab tongue in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, dates from the Patriarch Cyril VI in the eighteenth century, who, after tentative reunions of his predecessors, finally came back to Catholic unity. Cyril VI and his Catholic successors represent the old line of Antioch, now reunited to Rome. The greatest Patriarch of this line was Maximos III, during the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries. He organized the Church, obtained its civil autonomy, and founded many institutions that still remain. At his time there was a Gallican movement among them, which has long since disappeared. Two Congregations of monks, those of St Saviour and Shuwair, eventually three, by the division of Shuwair into Baladites and Alepins, have played a great part in the story. The Melkites use the Byzantine rite, almost entirely in Arabic. They are certainly one of the most prosperous and advanced communities in the Near East.
- ↑ See his table, "Hist. Melk.," iii, 354-355.
