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Updated: June 22, 2025
The women succeeded in getting away from the scene of action under the protection of the Masdakite, before the Arab cavalry rode across to separate the combatants; but in the Curia Bishop John explained to the Fathers that he would make every effort to prevent this inhuman and unchristian sacrifice of a young girl, even though she was a Melchite and under sentence of death.
And when he had ascertained with whom the child had come hither at so late an hour, he turned again to his colleague and added in a low voice: "The wife and daughter of Rufinus! Just so: I have long had my eye on these Greeks. In church once or twice every year! Melchites in disguise! Allied with this Melchite! And this is the school in which the Mukaukas' granddaughter is growing up!
Though not indeed by his act, still with his complicity he saw the Byzantine Empire bereft of the rich province which Caesar had entrusted to his rule, saw the Greeks and everything that bore the name of Melchite driven out of Egypt with ignominy though he would gladly have prevented it in many places slain like dogs by the furious populace who hailed the Moslems as their deliverers.
While among the Egyptians and all who confess the saving doctrine of Eutyches, among the Monophysites we are the chief, and we will remain so, and close our ears and hearts against all heretics and their superstitions. What! A grandson of Menas, the brother of two martyrs for our glorious faith, married to a Melchite! The mere idea is sacrilege, is blasphemy; I can give it no milder name!
His eloquent and stormy address was not without effect; still, the Christians, who ascribed every form of evil to the Melchite girl, would have been satisfied with her death and have been ready to forgive the son of the Mukaukas this crime supposing him to have committed it.
Orion's fate was not to be decided till the following day; but it would hardly be to his advantage in the eyes of his Jacobite judges, that his betrothed was this Syrian Melchite.
The words rushed up from the very bottom of her heart, and Orion, with a sigh of relief, followed the old man, glad and comforted. The study was lighted up, and there, without mentioning Katharina, he told Rufinus of the patriarch's scheme for dispersing the nuns of St. Cecilia. What could he care for these Melchite sisters?
So it was left to him to designate which convents should be suppressed, and he had, of course, begun by laying hands on the few remaining Melchite retreats, among them the Convent of St. Cecilia, next to the house of Rufinus.
Cecilia, the refuge of the last nuns of the orthodox creed left in Memphis; for, though all the other sisterhoods of her confession had long since been banished, these had been allowed to remain in their old home, not only because they were famous sick-nurses, a distinction common to all the Melchite orders, but even more because the decaying municipality could not afford to sacrifice the large tax they annually paid to it.
She must have revealed to that third person all that had previously passed between them and it was for this Melchite nun, his personal foe, that he was about to it was enough to drive him mad! But he could not withdraw; he had pledged himself to the brave old man to carry out this crazy enterprise.
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