2o8 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



Clement XI, and his example was followed by the Archbishop 

 of Tyre and Sidon, the Bishop of Beirut, and other prelates. 

 From that time on the Syrian Greek Catholics have had a 

 restored Catholic line of Patriarchs of Antioch. Strangely 

 enough, the word Melchite, which had been used to designate 

 those who adhered to the doctrines of the Church of Con- 

 stantinople when it was Catholic and in unity, and who even 

 followed it when it left the unity of the Church, came eventu- 

 ally to mean, after the union of Cyril V and his fellow-bishops, 

 almost exclusively those Syrians of the Greek Rite who were 

 Catholics and united with the Holy See. Their rite, of course, 

 is the same as that of the other Greek Catholics, but the lan- 

 guage used in the Mass and the administration of the sacra- 

 ments and in the church offices is the Arabic, with the excep- 

 tion of certain prayer-endings and versicles of the Mass, 

 which are still intoned in the original Greek. Still a Melchite 

 priest may celebrate entirely in Greek if he so desires, and 

 the Catholic Missal is printed in parallel columns in each 

 language as to the parts which are to be intoned or said aloud. 

 At first these Syrians were in small numbers and were not 

 distinguishable from the Arabic-speaking Maronites or from 

 the Syro-Arabian Orthodox Greeks, all of whom began to 

 come to this country about the same date. This Syrian im- 

 migration, as compared with that from other lands, has never 

 been very large. The Greek Catholics came at first from the 

 same localities as the Maronites — Beirut and Mount Lebanon ; 

 but now they come from Damascus and other parts of Syria as 

 well. In 1 891 Rev. Abraham Bechewate, a Basilian monk of 

 the Congregation of the Holy Saviour, from Saida in the Dio- 

 cese of Zahleh and Farzul, Mount Lebanon, was sent to this 

 country by the Patriarch of Antioch to take up missionary 

 work among his countrymen. So far he has been instrumental 

 in establishing missions and congregations in various cities and 

 in having other priests sent to assist him. His first efforts were 

 confined to New York City, and at present the Melchites in 

 New York City use the basement of St. Peter's Church on 

 Barclay Street, but they have bought ground in Brooklyn with 

 a view to erecting a Syrian Greek Catholic church there. After 

 Father Bechewate other priests were sent to take up the work 

 at various places throughout the United States. At the pres- 

 ent time (1909) there are altogether fourteen Melchite 



