Volume 3: 1771 Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica!
Melchites
Melchites, in church-history, the name given to the Syriac, Egyptian, and other Christians of the Levant. The Melchites, excepting some few points of little or no importance, which relate only to ceremonies and ecclesiastical discipline, are in every respect professed Greeks; but they are governed by a particular patriarch, who resides at Damas, and assumes the title of patriarch of Antioch.