Maronites

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MARONITES

The largest Christian community in Lebanon. They are members of the Maronite Catholic Church, a Uniate Church—affiliated with, but not under the control of, the Roman Catholic Church—that follows its own rites, customs, and liturgy. The church is led by a patriarch, currently Nasrallah Sfeir, who, because of the sectarian political arrangement of Lebanese society, is a politically significant person.

The church was founded in the fifth century at a monastery south of Antioch by followers of the hermit St. Maron. The Maronites emigrated to Mount Lebanon in the seventh century to escape the persecution of the Greek Orthodox Church of Byzantium. They made common cause with the European Crusaders and affiliated with the Roman church in 1182.

The first sectarian struggles between the Maronites and the Druze occurred in 1841. In the following year an era of instability commenced in Lebanon, due to, among other causes, the intervention of European powers into Ottoman politics. Since 1648 France had guaranteed the protection of Catholics in general and Maronites in particular, while Russia supported the Greek Orthodox, and Great Britain, the Druze. In May 1860 an incident between Christians and Druze degenerated into a civil war, which led to the intervention of the French army. A commission of the European Great Powers negotiated an arrangement called the Règlement Organique in 1861 in which the Mount Lebanon province, with a Maronite district and a Druze district, became autonomous within the Ottoman Empire.

Owing to its ties with France, the Maronites experienced significant social, as well as cultural and economic, development. Following World War I and the end of Ottoman rule, France received a League of Nations mandate over Greater Syria, which included Lebanon. At the urging of the Maronites, the French created a Greater Lebanon, taking predominantly Muslim territory from Syria and annexing it to the original autonomous province establishing the current borders. In 1926 the French promulgated a constitution establishing a strong presidential regime headed by a Christian, with a controlling role for the Maronites. The amended constitution of independent Lebanon in 1943 was based on a National Pact agreed to by the leaders of the Maronite and Sunni Muslim communities that reserved the presidency for a Maronite and the prime ministership for a Sunni, and confirmed the sectarian basis of Lebanese politics.

The Maronite political elite dominated Lebanon before the civil war of 1975–1990 and has continued to do so since (with Israeli and Syrian help)—a domination at least partly based on the fiction that the Maronites are the largest confessional community in the country. It is estimated that the population of Lebanon is at least 70 percent Muslim, with 45 percent of that being Shi?a.