MELCHITES. The name of Melchites (Syriac, 'Malkaye ; Arabic, Malakiya, or in the vulgar pronunciation Milkiyd) means etymologically the royal party, and so is currently applied in the East to Syrian and Egyptian Christians of the Orthodox Greek Church, adherents of the creed supported by the authority of the king, that is, of the Byzantine emperor. The Melchites therefore are those who accept the decrees of Ephesus and Chalcedon as distinguished from the Nestorians and Jacobites, and the name reflects in an interesting manner the way in which the doctrinal controversies that agitated the Eastern empire associated themselves with national feelings of antagonism to the imperial rule.