XABOVITES
686
XABOHITES
tween the time of St. John Maro and that of Pope In-
nocent III: these patriarchs, never ha vine erred in
faith, or strayed into schism, are the only legitimate
heirs of the Patriarchate of Antioch, or at least they
have a claim to that title certainly not inferior to the
claim of any rival.— Such is the case frequently pre-
sented by Maronites, and in the last place by Mgr.
Debs, Archbishop of Beirut (Perpdtuelle orthodoxie
des Maronites).
B. Criticism of the ^raronite Position, (1) The Mon- astery of St. Maro before the Monothelite Controversy. — The existence since the sixth century of a convent of St. Bilaro, or of Beit-Marun, between Apamea and Emesa, on the right bank of the Orontes, is an estab- lished fact, and it may very well have been built on the rt where Maro the solitary dwelt, of whom Theo- et speaks. This convent suffered for its devotion to the true faith, as is strikingly evident from an ad- dress presented by its monks to the Metropolitan of Apamea in 517, and to Pope Hormisdas, complaining of the Monophysites, who had massacred 350 monks for siding with the Coimcil of Chalcedon. In 536 th& apocrisarius Paul appears at Constantinople subscrib- ing the Acts of the Fourth CEcumenical Council in the nAme of the monks of St. Maro. In 553, this same convent is represented at the Fifth CEcumenical Coun- cil by the priest John and the deacon Paul. The op- thociox emperors, particularly Justinian (Procopius, "De -^dific", V, ix) and Heraclius, gave liberal tokens of their regard for the monastery. The part played by the monks of St. Maro, isolated in the midst of an almost entirely Monophvsite population, should not be underrated. But it will be observed that in the texts cited there is mention of a single convent, and not by any means of a population such as could possi- bly have originated the Maronitc nation of later times.
(2) St. John Maro. — The true founder of the Maron- ite nation, the patriarch St. John Maro, would have lived towards the close of the seventh century, but, un- fortunately, his very existence is extremely doubtful. All the Syriac authors and the Byzantine priest Ti- motheus derive the name Maronite from that of the convent Beit-Marun. The words of Timotheus are: MopwyiTcu 5i KiK\rivrai dw6 rod fiovaarriplov airwv MapJy KoKovfUpov iv 2up/^ (in P. G. LXXXVl, 65 and note 53). Renaudot absoluteljr denies the existence of John Maro. But, supposing that he did exist, as may be inferred from the testimony of the tenth-cen- tury Melchite Patriarch Eutychius (the earliest text bearing on the point), his identity has bafRed all re- searches. His name is not to be found in any list of Melchite Patriarchs of Antioch, whether Greek or Syriac. As the patriarchs of the seventh and eighth centuries were orthodox, there was no reason why St. John Maro should have oeen placed at the head of an alleged orthodox branch of the Church of Antioch. The episcopal records of Antioch for the period in question may be summarized as follows: 685, election of Theophanes; 686, probable election of Alexander; 692, George assists at the Trullan Council; 702-42, vacancy of the See of Antioch on account of Mussul- man persecutions; 742, election of Stephen. But, according to Mgr Debs, the latest Maromte historian, St. John Maro would have occupied the patriarchal See of Antioch from 685 to 707.
The Maronites insist, affirming that St. John Maro must have been Patriarch of Antioch because his works present him under that title. The works of John Maro referred to are an exposition of the Liturgy of St. James and a treatise on the Faith. The former is
Eublbhed by Joseph Aloysius Assemani in his " Codex iturgicus" and certainly bears the name of John Maro, but the present writer has elsewhere shown that this alleged commentary of St. John Maro is no other than the famous commentary of Dionysius bar Salibi, a Monophysite author of the twelfth century, with muUlaUoDB, additions, and accommodations to suit
the changes by which the Maronites have endeavoured
to make the Syriac Liturgy resemble the Roman (Dio-
nysius Bar Salibi, expositioliturgis, ed. Labourt, pref.).
The treatise on the Faith is not likely to be any more
authentic than the liturgical work: it bears a remark-
able resemblance to a theological treatise of Leontius
of Byzantium, and should therefore^ very probably,
be referred to the second half of the sixth century and
the first half of the seventh — a period much eariier
than that which the Maronites assign to St. John Maro.
Besides^ it contains nothing about Monothelitism —
which, in fact, did not yet exist. John Maro, we must
therefore conclude, is a very problematic personality;
if he existed at allj it was as a simple monk, not by any
means as a Melchite Patriarch of Antioch.
(3) Uninterrupted Orthodoxy of the Maronites. — It IS to be remembered that, before the rise of Mono- thelitism, the monks of St. Maro, to whom the Maron- ites trace their origin, were faithful to the Council of Chalc^on as accepted by the Byzantine emperors; they were Melchites in the full sense of the term — i. e.. Imperialists, representing the Byzantine creed among populations which had abandoned it, and, we may add, representing the Byzantine language and Byzan- tine culture among peoples whose speech and naanners were those of Syria. There is no reason to think that, when the Bjzantine emperors, by way of one last effort at union with their Jacobite subjects; Syrian and Egyptian, endeavoured to secure the triumph of Monothelitism — a sort of compromise between Mono- physitism and Chalcedonian orthodoxy — the monks of St. Maro abandoned the Imperialist party and faith- fully adhered to orthodoxy. On the contrary, all the documents suggest that the monks of Beit-Marun em- braced Monothelitism, and still adhered to that heresy even after the Council of 681, when the emperors had abjured it. It is not very difficult to produce evidence of this in a text of Dionysius of TeU-Mahr^ (d. 845) preserved to us in the chronicle of Michael the Syrian, which shows Heraclius forcing most of the Syrian monks to accept his Ecthesis, and those of Beit- Marun are counted among the staunchest partisans of the emperor. One very instructive passage in this same chronicle, referring to the year 727, recounts at length a c[uarrel between the two branches of the Chaloedonians, the orthodox and the Monotbelites, where the former are called Maximists, after St. Maxi- mus the confessor, the uncompromising adversary of the Monothelites. while the latter are described as the "party of Beit-Marun" and "monks of Beit-Marun". We are here told how the monks of St. Maro have a bishop in their monastery, how they convert most of the Melchites of the country districts to Monothelitism and even successfully contend with the Maximists (L e., the Catholics) for the possession of a church at Aleppo. From that time on, oeing cut off from commimion with the Melchite (Catholic) Patriarch of Antioch, they do as the Jacobites did before them, and for the same reasons: they set up a separate Church, eschew- ing, however, with equal horror the Monophysites, who reject the Council of Chalcedon, and the Catholics who condemn the Monothelite Ecthesis of HeracUus and accept the Sixth CEcumenical Council. Why the monks of Beit-Marun, hitherto so faithful to the Byzantine emperors, should have deserted them when they returned to orthodoxy, we do not know; but it b certain that in this defection the Maronite Church and nation had its origin, and that the name Maronite thenceforward becomes a synonym for Monothelite, as well with Byzantine as with Nestorian or Monophysite writers. Says the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, referring to this period : " The Maronites remained as they are now. They ordain a patriarch and bishops from their convent. They are separated from Max- imus, in that they confess only one will in Christ, and say: * Who was crucified for us'. But they ac- cept the Synod of Chalcedon. St. Germanui of Con*
