Maronites

Maronites , Lebanese Christian community, in communion with the pope. By emigration they have spread to Cyprus, Palestine, Egypt, South America, and the United States and now number about one million. Their liturgy (said mainly in liturgical Syriac) is of the Antiochene type, with innovations taken from the Latin rite. Their ecclesiastical head, under the pope, is called patriarch of Antioch; he lives in Lebanon. As in other Eastern rites, the parish priests are usually married. The Maronites have been a distinct community since the 7th cent., when they separated in the doctrinal dispute over Monotheletism ; they returned to communion with the pope in the 12th cent. In the 19th cent., massacres of Maronites by the Druze brought French intervention; this gave France its modern hold in Lebanon and Syria. Besides the Maronites there are two other groups in Syria in communion with the pope—the Melchites and the Syrian Catholics.

Bibliography: See D. Attwater, The Christian Churches of the East, Vol. I (1947).

Maronites. A Uniat community of Syrian origin, the greater part of whom live in Lebanon. They claim to trace their origin to St Maro, a friend of St Chrysostom (d. 407), but their existence as a separate community originated in the Monothelite controversy of the 7th and 8th cent., when they rejected the teaching of the Third Council of Constantinople that in the Person of Christ there are two wills, one human and the other Divine. Since 1182 they have been in formal communion with the RC Church.

Maronites An Eastern Christian Church founded in the fifth century by a monk called Maron, who created a monotheistic Christian church. It established communion with the Roman Catholic Church in the eighteenth century, but preserved most of its rights, including a Patriarch as its head, and its own liturgy. Upon the formation of Greater Lebanon in 1920, Maronites, who formed the largest single community of around 30 per cent of the population, were guaranteed the presidency and leadership over the army. After World War II, their relative influence declined as a result of the departure of the French, the rise of pan-Arabism, and demographic changes in favour of the non-Christian communities. This made their entrenched commercial and political leadership untenable, and ultimately led to civil war in 1958, and 1975–89.