Maronites

PRONUNCIATION: MA-ruh-nites
LOCATION: Lebanon
POPULATION: 1.5 million (2006 estimate)
LANGUAGE: Arabic; French; English
RELIGION: Maronite (Uniate Catholicism)
RELATED ARTICLES: Vol. 4: Lebanese

INTRODUCTION

Maronites take their name either from the 5th century ad saint, John Maroun, or the 8th century ad monk who took his name and became the first Patriarch of Antioch. Although their origins are obscure, the Maronites believe that their heritage goes back to the time of Jesus. Their ancestors lived when Jesus did in the land then known as Palestine, heard him preach, and were among the first Christians. Whatever their origins, they were one of the Christian sects in the Middle East to remain intact after the Islamic revolution of the 7th century ad. (For the first 100 years of Islamic rule, Arabs more often than not considered Islam an "Arab" religion and did not expect non-Arabs to convert.) The Maronites were the only Christian sect to use Arabic for their church records right from the start.

To distinguish themselves from "Arabs," Maronite versions of their history claim that they fled Muslim persecution during the Islamic revolution. Records show, however, that at first the Maronites welcomed the Muslims as saviors from the hated Byzantine rulers of that time, and the Muslims in fact treated the Maronites fairly well. The Maronites ingratiated themselves with these new overlords and set up tax-farming arrangements that provided the Maronites with a decent living. It was not until the European Crusaders sacked Alexandria and the Maronites supported them that the Muslims questioned Maronite loyalty and punished them along with other Christians. The Maronites eventually fled to the hills of Mount Lebanon to escape persecution by the Ottoman Turks in the 15th century. They stubbornly survived there for the centuries to follow.

Maronite support of the Crusaders established ties to the West that became a defining factor for the Maronite community. They entered into partial communion with the Roman Catholic Church in the 12th century ad and came into full communion in 1763. During the Ottoman rule of the mid-19th century, Lebanon had been divided into two states, one Christian and one Druze. The Druze religion dates back to the 11th century and is separate from Christianity or Islam. Its adherents were often persecuted as heretics by Muslims. The French supported the Maronites in their war with the British-supported Druze. After the Druze massacred a large number of Maronites in 1860, an international commission decided to reunite the country under a non-Lebanese governor. The French later allied themselves again with the Maronites during the French mandate years (1920-1943), cementing the Maronite identification with the West, particularly France. This Western identity has led to a sense of separateness from other Arabs on the part of the Maronites and resentment toward them on the part of their Arab-identified neighbors. In the last ten years, however, Maronites have become more comfortable with a Lebanese identity as nationalism has increased among Lebanon's population.

The Maronites have campaigned for an independent home-land since the 7th century ad, but they are no longer attempting to convert Lebanon into a Maronite state today. Based on the confessional system of government (where political authority is divided up according to population percentages of religious faiths), the Lebanese presidency is designated as a Maronite post because Maronites were in the majority at the time of the 1932 census. A civil war began in Lebanon in April 1975 due to increasing instability of a system of government that allowed Christians majority rule despite the fact that Muslims had become the majority of the population. This was especially true after the influx of Palestinian refugees from Palestine and Jordan in 1948, 1967, and 1970. The unwillingness of the French and the Maronites to consider the concerns of the majority in a period of strong Arab nationalism led to increasing conflict, which was promoted in part by outside players. Initially, the Muslims had the upper hand in the fighting, but Syria, with the support of Israel, the United States, and most Arab states, entered Lebanon with a "peacekeeping" force to maintain the status quo. With Syria's support, the Maronites were able to preserve their position in Lebanon until a new government was formed at Taif (in Saudi Arabia), which, under Syria's tutelage, formally ended the civil war. Maronite Christians still retain the presidency position in Lebanon's governing structure. However, the sect's political power has diminished considerably since the 1990s as the Druze and Shia Muslims has grown more united.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

Most ethnic groups living in the Levant region have intermingled with other groups. The territory known as Lebanon today has a diverse society, due in part to numerous foreign armies passing through over the centuries. Some Maronites claim descent from the European Crusaders, such as the major northern families of Franjiehs and Douaihis. The Franjiehs say their name means "Franks," and the Douaihis link their name to the French city of Douai, the home of some of the knights of the Crusades. It appears from what records exist that the Maronite sect began in northern Syria in the valley of the Orontes River, near the present-day city of Hama, in the 6th century ad. The Maronites moved south to the coast of northern Lebanon in the 8th century, then fled into the hills of Mount Lebanon to escape persecution by the Ottoman Turks in the mid- to late-15th century. Holing up in small, isolated communities, the Maronites became clannish and fiercely self-protective. After surviving in the high mountains of northern Lebanon for many centuries, the Maronites then spread south throughout the mountain range during the 18th and 19th centuries. The Maronite Church acquired a great deal of land and became the largest, most organized, wealthiest institution in the Mount Lebanon area. By the mid-19th century, the Maronite Church owned one-fourth to one-third of all the land in Mount Lebanon. During the 20th century, some Maronites began to move out of the mountains to the cities and coastal plains, especially to Beirut, but they continued to be clannish and isolated from their neighbors in their new locations.

During the Lebanese civil war, more than 600,000 Maronites were driven out of their homes and off their lands. Of the 850,000 inhabitants of the Maronite enclave in Lebanon sometimes called "Marounistan," 100,000 fled abroad, and 150,000 fled to other parts of Lebanon. As Muslims gain more political dominance in Lebanon, more Maronites are emigrating from their homeland to Europe and the United States.

LANGUAGE

Although Arabic is the official language of Lebanon, many Maronites also speak French. Economic and military ties have led most residents of Lebanon to learn French and English in addition to Arabic. Syriac is used for the church liturgy, but Maronites have used Arabic for church records since their beginnings.

FOLKLORE

The door of the Maronite church in Beit Meri is never locked because it is believed that the hand of any thief there would be miraculously paralyzed.

RELIGION

The Maronites are Uniate Catholics: they recognize the authority of the Roman Catholic Pope, but they have their own form of worship. Their priests can marry, and monks and nuns are housed in the same building. Even after becoming a Uniate church in ad 1180, the Maronites continued to use the Syriac language for their liturgy instead of Latin (as in the Roman church). Syriac is the Maronite liturgical language to this day. The Maronites did quietly drop their belief in monothelitism, branded heresy in ad 680 by the Roman church, after becoming a Uniate church in 1180. Monothelitism proposes that Christ has two natures that are so blended with each other that they produce one will. The orthodox view, called dyothelitism, holds that Christ has two natures and two wills, one human and one divine, which are inseparable, yet unconfused: Christ is at one with God in his divine nature and at one with humanity in his human nature. The Qadisha (Holy) valley is the Maronite spiritual center.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Maronites celebrate the usual Christian holidays, such as Christmas (December 25), Easter (moveable, in March or April), the Feast of the Ascension (40 days after Easter), and the Feast of the Assumption (August 15). On the Festival of the Cross (September 14), Maronites set fires on high places all over Mount Lebanon and light candles at home and in churches. A special Maronite holy day is St. Maroun's Day (February 9), the feast of the Maronite patron saint, St. John Maroun of the 5th century AD.

RITES OF PASSAGE

The Maronites mark major life events, such as birth, marriage, and death, within the traditions of Christianity.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

Centuries of life in isolated mountain communities, hiding out from persecution by various attackers, has led to the development of clan loyalties and fierce feuding among the Maronites.

LIVING CONDITIONS

Maronite villages have a style of architecture common around the Mediterranean area. Homes are small and simple, yet elegant, often with a balcony overlooking the mountains or the Mediterranean Sea. Since the 18th and 19th centuries, the Maronites have been fairly affluent. During the Lebanese civil war, many Maronites fled from the cities (especially Beirut) back to their ancestral homes in Mount Lebanon. As a result, business boomed there, housing construction soared, and the area became quite prosperous.

FAMILY LIFE

Although modernization has led to an increased emphasis on the nuclear family, the Maronites, like other Arabs in Lebanon, still have a strong sense of extended family. Men spend quite a bit of time at home with the women and children. There is some intermarriage between Maronites and members of other religious groups. Divorce is forbidden by Maronite law.

CLOTHING

Maronites wear Western-style clothing, as do the Druze, Shiites, Sunnis, Armenians, and Greek Orthodox in Lebanon. The more devout Maronites tend to wear conservative clothing. Apart from slight differences in headgear, even the religious leaders of all the communities in Lebanon tend to dress alike.

FOOD

Maronites eat typical Middle Eastern and Mediterranean food, with French and European elements blended in. For example, breakfast might consist of either Lebanese flatbread or French croissants with cheese and coffee or tea. Lunches and dinners usually consist of meat (mutton is a favorite) with onion, spices, and rice. Mutton is often ground and served as meatballs or in stews, or mixed with rice and vegetables and rolled in grape leaves. The Middle Eastern tradition of mezze (small portions of a wide variety of foods served all at once for diners to pick and choose from) is popular with Maronites, as is arak, the anise-flavored alcohol produced in the region.

EDUCATION

By the 17th century, European missionaries had established Catholic schools in Lebanon. The Maronites had an initial advantage with the missionary schools established for them, but eventually the schools began accepting Muslims as well. In 1788, a monastery was converted to a secondary school that taught secular subjects, and American Protestant missionaries set up schools for both boys and girls in Lebanon in the 1820s and 1830s. However, the Uniate Catholic Maronites were more inclined toward the schools set up soon after by French Catholic missionaries. Most Maronites today still receive their primary and secondary schooling in French-language schools, then generally go to the University of St. Joseph in Beirut, founded by French Jesuits in 1875 to compete with the Syrian Protestant College (now called the American University of Beirut) established in 1866.

The Lebanese government requires students to have a functional knowledge of Arabic in order to graduate from secondary school but only recently has this been enforced. Many older Maronites speak only French.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

The poet Maya Angelou published an essay on the Maronites in Lebanon in 1984. At the time, civil war had been raging in Lebanon for nine years and would continue for six more years. Angelou described the Maronites as a people with "a split personality." "They are Arabs who often look to the West for inspiration and assistance," Angelou wrote. "A minority that insists it must rule in order to survive and nationalists in a land that is so fracture it can hardly be called a nation."

Angelou's words continue to describe the cultural heritage of the Maronites today. Lebanon contains people of many different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Maronite leaders have joined with leaders of other factions within Lebanon to try and unify the country. Yet, the Maronites also wonder where they fit in the Lebanon of the early twenty-first century. They are an Arab people, but they have strong cultural ties to the West, and many have ancestral ties to the West as well. In 1585 a religious school for Maronite men was established in Rome. A short time later, European Catholic missionaries settled in Lebanon and began schools there. To this day, Maronites continue to send their children to French-language private schools in Lebanon [seeLebanese ]. As former president Camille Chamoun, a Maronite, told Angelou: "We are part of the Arab world, but we are also apart from the Arab world because so much of our identity comes from the West."

WORK

Many Maronites are wealthy, and Maronites have long held powerful positions in Lebanese government, business, and education. With the aid of the French, the Maronites developed Mount Lebanon's greatest money-making venture of the past-the silk industry. The mountainsides are dotted with old silk-reeling factories.

SPORTS

Maronites enjoy the same sports as other Lebanese. These activities include soccer, basketball, volleyball, horseback-riding, cross-country running, martial arts, skiing, rock-climbing, and caving. Maronites, like other Lebanese, also go swimming and fishing in the lakes, rivers, or visit beaches along the Mediterranean coast.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

Maronites, like other residents of Lebanon, watch television avidly. Many stations emphasize all Christian programming, though others offer a mix. Maronites also watch American, European, and Lebanese films in theaters, and enjoy the dramatic theatre tradition of their home country.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Traditional crafts among Lebanese Maronites include basketry, carpet-weaving, ceramics and pottery, copper and metalworking, embroidery, glass-blowing, and gold- and silver-smithing. Lebanon is also known for its finely crafted church bells. Wine-making can also be considered an art, dating back for thousands of years in Lebanon.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The Maronites suffered under Ottoman rule from the 16th century to the end of World War I. The arrival of European colonizers in the early 20th century worked to their advantage, especially because the Maronites shared the same Christian faith as the Europeans. The privileges that the Maronites acquired under European colonial rule are treated with disdain by other Lebanese who see their acquisition of wealth as a product of their favorable access to Lebanese politics. Although other communities (such as the Sunnis and Shiites) have also benefited from the traditional Lebanese system of government created by the French, there have been tensions as these groups seek more equitable representation in the Lebanese government. Within the Maronite community itself, centuries of clannish mountain life has led to perpetual feuding and in-fighting, continuing today among the different Maronite militias.

The long civil war damaged Lebanon's economic infrastructure. National output was cut in half, and the country has struggled to rebuild its economy through heavy borrowing from domestic banks and international sources. The economic difficulties have made the plight of the Maronite minority more precarious, especially since many Lebanese Muslims see the Maronites as hostile to their people. The end of the civil war and the end of Maronite political dominance has made many Maronites uncertain about their future place in Lebanon. As a result, many Maronites have begun to migrate out of Lebanon in recent years.

GENDER ISSUES

Maronite women experience the same kind of discrimination in public and private life that other Lebanese women face. In general, Lebanese laws and court systems do little to help women. Lebanese laws allow for each religion to have a separate court system to handle matters of marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Frequently, these religious customs, whether they are Christian or Muslim, fail to protect women from domestic violence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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—revised by H. Gupta-Carlson