MAXOVITBS
687
KABOHinS
stantinople, in his treatise De HsBresibiis et Synodis "
(about the ^ear 735), writes: There are some here-
tics who, rejecting the Fifth and Sixth Councils, never-
theless contend against the Jacobites. The latter treat
them as men without sense, because, while accepting
the Fourth Council, they try to reject the next two.
Such are the Maronites, whose monastery is situated
in the very mountains of Syria. " (The Fourth Coun-
cil was tliat of Chalcedon.) St. John Damascene, a
Doctor of the Church (d. 749), also considered the
Maronites heretics. He reproaches them,' among
other things, with continuing to add the words arav-
pioSeu dl ri/jMt (Who didst suffer for us on the Cross) to
the Trisagion, an addition susceptible of an orthodox
sense, but which had eventually been prohibited in
order to prevent misunderstanding [/tafxapl^oftMy
wfHxrOifUPOi rifi rpiffaytfp r^v ara^pio^iv ("We shall be
following Maro, if we join the Crucifixion to our Trisa-
gion "— " De Hymno Trisa^o' ', ch. v) . a. wtfil 6pM
^pov^/carot, ch. v.]. A httle later, Timotheus I,
Patriarch of the Nestorians, receives a letter from the
Maronites, proposing that he should admit them to his
communion. His reply is extant, though as yet im-
Eublished, in which he felicitates tnem on rejecting, as e himself does, the idea of more than one energy and one will in Christ (Monothelitism), but lays down cer- tain conditions which amount to an acceptance of his Nestorianism, though in a mitigated form. Analogous testimony may be found in the works of the Melchite controversialist Theodore Abukara (d. c. 820) and the Jacobite theologian Habib Abu-Ra!ta (about the same period), as also in the treatise "De Reoeptione Hareticorum attributed to the priest Timotheus (P. G., 86, 65). Thus, in the eighth century there exists a Maronite Church distinct from the Catholic Church and from the Monophysite Church; this Church ex- tends far into the plain of Syria and prevails especiaUy in the mountain regions about the monastery of Beit^ Marun. In the ninth century this Church was prob- ably confined to the mountain regions. The destruc- tion of the monastery of Beit-Marun did not put an end to it; it completed its oraanization by settmg v^ a patriarch, the first known Maronite patriarch dating from 1121, though there may have b^n others before him. The Maronite mountaineers preserved a rela- tive autonomy between the Byzantine emperors, on the one hand, who reconquered Antioch in the tenth century, and, on the other hand, the Mussulmans. The Crusaders entered into relations with them. In 1182, almost the entire nation— 40.000 of them — were converted. From the moment when their influence ceased to extend over the helleniied lowlands of Syria, the Maronites ceased to speak any langua^ but Syriac, and used no other in their liturgy. It is im- possible to assign a date to this disappearance of hel- lenism among them. At the end of the eighth oenturv the Maronite Theophilus of Edessa Imew enou^ Greek to translate and comment on the Homeric poems. It is very likely that Greek was the chief lan^age used in the monastery of Beit-Marun, at least until the ninth century; that monastery having been destroyed, there remained only country and mountain villages where nothing but Syriac had ever been used either coUoauially or in the liturgy.
It would be pleasant to be able at least to say that the orthodoxy of the Maronites has been constant since 1182, but, unfortunately, even this cannot be asserted. There have been at least partial defections amon^ them. No doubt the patriarch Jeremias al Amshlti visited Innocent III at Home in 1215, and he is known to have taken home with him some prmects of liturgi- cal reform. But in 1445, after the Cfoimcil of Flor- ence, the Maronites of Cyprus return to Catholicism (Hefele, " Histoire des conciles", tr. Delare, XI, 540). In 1461, Pius II, in his letter to Mahomet II, still ranks them among the heretics. Gryphone, an illustrious Flemish Franciscan of the end of the fifteenth
tury, converted a large number of them, receiving
several into the Order of St. Francis, and one of them.
Gabriel Glal (Barclalus. or Benclalus), whom he had
caused to be consecrated Bishop of Lefkosia in Cyprus,
was the first Maronite scholar to attempt to estaDlish
his nation's claim to imvarving orthodoxy: in a letter
written in 1495 he gives what purports to be a list of
eighteen Maronite patriarchs in succession, from the
beginning of their Unurch down to his own time, taken
from documents which he assumes to come down from
the year 1315. — It is obvious to remark how recent all
this is. — ^The Franciscan Suriano ("II trattato di
Terra Santa e dell' Oriente di fr. Fr. Suriano", ed.
Golubovitch), who was delegated to the Maronites by
Leo X, inl515, points out many traits of ignorance and
many abuses among them, and regards Maro as a
Monothelite. However, it may be asserted that the
Maronites never relapsed into Monothelitism after
Gryphone's mission. Since James of Hadat (1439-
58) all their patriarchs have been strictly ortho-
dox.
C. The Maronite Church since the Sixteenth Century, — ^The Lateran Council of 1516 was the beginning of a new era, which has also been the most brilliant, in Maronite history. The letters of the patriarch Simon Peter and of his bishops may be found in the eleventh , session of that council (19 Dec, 1516). From that time the Maronites were to be in permanent and un- interrupted contact with Rome. Moses of Akkar (152ft-67) received a letter from Pius IV. The patri- arch Michael sought the intervention of Gregory XIII and received the pallium from him. That great pontiff was the most distinguished benefactor of the lllEkronite Church: he estabfished at Rome a hospital for them, and then the Maronite College to which the bishops could send six of their subjects. Blany fa- mous savants have gone out of this college: George Amira, the grammarian, who died patriarch in 1633; Isaac of Scnadrd; Gabriel Siouni, professor at the Sapiensa, afterwards interpreter to Kins Louis XIII and collaborator in the Polyglot Bible (d. 1648); Abraham of Qakel (Ecchelensis), a very prolific writer,
Erofessor at Rome and afterwards at Paris, and ool- iborator in the Polyelot Bible; above all, the Assemani —Joseph Simeon, editor of the "Bibliotheca Orien- talis ", Stephanus Evodius, and Joseph Aloysius. An- o^er Maronite college was founded at Ravenna by Innocent X, but was amalgamated with that at Rome in 1665. After the French Revolution the Maronite College was attached to the Congregation of Propa- ganda.
In the patriarchate of Sei^^us Risius, the successor of MichaeL the Jesuit Jerome Dandini, by order of Clement VIII, directed a general council of the Maron- ites at Kannobin in 1616, which enacted twentv-one canons, correcting abuses and effecting reforms in litur- gical matters; the liturgical reforms of the council of 1596, however, were extremely moderate. Other patriarchs were: Joseph II Risius, who, in 1606, introduced the Gregorian Calendar; John XI (d. 1633), to whom Paul V sent the pallium in 1610; Gregory Amira (1633-44); Joseph III of Akur (1644r- 47); Jc^m XII of Soffra (d. 1656). The last two of these prelates converted a great man^r Jacobites. Stephen of Ehden (d. 1704) composed a history of his predcM^essors from 1095 to 1699. Peter James II was deposed in 1705, but Joseph Mubarak, who was elected in his place, was not recognized by Clement XI, and, through the intervention of Propaganda, which demanded the holding of another council, Peter James II was restored in 1713.
Under Joseph lY (173^-42) was held a second na- tional oouncU, which is of the highest importance. Pope Clement XII delegated Joseph Simeon Assemani, who was assisted by his nephew Stephanus Evodius, with an express mandate to cause the Council of Trent to be promulgated in the Lebanon. The Jesuit Fm^
