Maronites

The Maronite Church is one of the largest Eastern rite churches and is especially prominent in modern Lebanon.[2] It is in canonical communion with the Roman Catholic Church and has no corresponding church outside that communion.[2] Its relationship with Rome coexists with its own language, rites, and canon law, rather than requiring the abandonment of its Eastern religious inheritance.[1]

Lebanon is the community’s principal historical and institutional center, but Maronite life also extends into southern Europe and North and South America.[2] Emigration since the late nineteenth century has been associated with economic instability and periods of violence, and emigrant communities have maintained their liturgy and their own clergy.[2] In Israel, Maronites are concentrated in the Galilee, particularly Jish, also known as Gush Halav, while Jerusalem has a patriarchal vicariate dating from 1895.[1][6]

Mount Lebanon occupies a central place in Maronite history as a refuge and a setting in which the community preserved its religion and customs.[2] Maronites subsequently became one of independent Lebanon’s major religious groups, with the presidency assigned to a Maronite Christian under the country’s power-sharing arrangements.[2][5] Their public life has not produced a single political position: contemporary Maronite parties have taken opposing positions toward Hezbollah, and Patriarch Bechara Rai has publicly criticized it.[7]

The church takes its name from Saint Marun, or Maron, a Syrian monk who died in 410.[8] His followers built a monastery in his honor that became the nucleus of the church.[8] Maron lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, and Maronite origins are also connected with Saint John Maron, patriarch of Antioch from 685 to 707.[2] The Syriac word “maron” or “marun” means “small lord.”[4]

Mount Lebanon became a refuge for Maronites from the sixth century onward.[9] Followers of Saint John Maron moved from the upper Orontes Valley to the Qadisha Valley in the northern Lebanon Mountains.[4] In the late seventh century, Maronites withdrew from coastal areas into the mountains of Lebanon and Syria.[4] The community developed a religious tradition distinct from Byzantium, including the use of Aramaic, and the Arab conquests of the seventh century disrupted its connections with the wider Christian world.[10]

Contacts with the Crusaders brought enduring relationships with Europeans and strengthened ties with Catholic Christianity.[4] Maronites joined the crusading effort and thereafter linked their fortunes to the Catholic Church.[10] Their relationship with France also developed during the Crusades: in 1250, King Louis IX referred to them as “part of the French nation” after they welcomed French crusaders.[9]

An initiative toward union with the Latin patriarch of Antioch took place in 1182, while the definitive consolidation of the relationship with Rome came in the sixteenth century, largely through the work of the Jesuit John Eliano.[2] Pope Gregory XIII founded the Maronite College in Rome in 1584.[2] The college became a training center for scholars and church leaders and remained under Jesuit administration into the twentieth century.[2]

Under Ottoman rule, Maronites preserved their religious practices and customs, aided by geographic isolation and French protection.[2] In the mountains of Lebanon and Syria, they remained relatively isolated and independent during the Ottoman period of 1516–1916.[4] Christian migration into southern Mount Lebanon created mixed districts in areas previously controlled by Druze communities.[11]

Muhammad Ali’s invasion of Lebanon and Syria in 1831 helped reshape the region’s communal politics.[11] Under Egyptian pressure, Emir Bashir led a Maronite force supporting Ibrahim Pasha against Ottoman provinces and Druze rebellions.[11] After Muhammad Ali’s forces withdrew, Druze-Maronite clashes led the Ottomans to introduce the Qaim Maqamiyah system.[11] A Christian Qaim Maqam governed the northern district and a Druze Qaim Maqam the southern district, with both answering to the governor of Sidon.[11]

In 1858, Maronite peasants revolted against large landowning families.[4] Conflict between Druze and Maronite communities subsequently involved landownership, political power, and safe passage.[4] Clashes in the 1840s and the violence of 1860 in mixed Christian-Druze areas brought European pressure for a new governing arrangement.[11] France sent a military expedition in 1860, and the aftermath of the massacre brought formal autonomy within the Ottoman Empire under a nonnative Christian ruler.[4][2]

The resulting Mutasarrifate was governed by a Catholic governor-general assisted by a twelve-member council representing different religious communities.[11] These developments established a form of communal representation before the creation of modern Lebanon.[11] The violence of the mid-nineteenth century also encouraged Maronite emigration to the Americas, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.[10]

During the First World War, Ottoman authorities feared that France and Britain might invade the eastern Mediterranean coast with the cooperation of local Christians.[9] Jamal Pasha abolished Mount Lebanon’s autonomous status, imposed martial law, and stationed thousands of Ottoman troops there.[9] Father Youssef al-Hayek, who had communicated with Paul Deschanel, then president of the French Chamber of Deputies, was arrested and hanged in March 1915.[9]

Jamal Pasha’s blockade cut Mount Lebanon off from the Bekaa Valley, Beirut, Palestine, and Syria, disrupting supply routes and worsening an existing shortage of food.[9] Ottoman troop deployment obstructed attempts to bring food into the region, while locusts damaged the remaining sericulture industry, normally a mainstay of the local economy.[9] Orders restricting grain sales and transport, including shipments to Mount Lebanon, compounded the crisis as Ottoman forces faced growing supply needs.[9]

The Maronite Church provided assistance to starving families across sectarian lines and aligned itself more firmly with France during the blockade.[9] The patriarch appointed Father Boulos Akl as a liaison with French intelligence, whose headquarters were on Arwad Island off the Syrian coast.[9] In an October 1916 report to French officials, Akl described the emergency in stark terms: “There are no doctors, no medicine, no food, and no people to bury the dead.”[9]

The patriarch also welcomed Armenian survivors of Ottoman atrocities and pledged to share the community’s remaining food, declaring, “the piece of bread that we have, we will share it with our Armenian brothers.”[9] By October 1918, when Entente forces occupied Beirut and Mount Lebanon, dozens of villages had been reduced to rubble and approximately 175,000 people had died—almost one third of the combined population of Beirut and Mount Lebanon, rather than a Maronite-only total.[9]

After the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, Maronites in Lebanon came under French protection in 1920.[2] French authorities created Greater Lebanon by annexing the coastal region and Beqa’a Valley, with their mainly Muslim populations, to Mount Lebanon, whose population was Maronite Christian.[12] Some Maronites identified themselves as ethnically distinct from their Arab neighbors and sought a Christian state under French protection; debates over Lebanese identity subsequently shaped the country’s politics.[13]

Lebanon became independent in 1943, with Maronites remaining one of its major religious communities.[2] The National Pact established the basis for assigning the presidency to a Maronite Christian, the prime ministership to a Sunni Muslim, and the parliamentary speakership to a Shia Muslim.[5] The pact is unwritten and is not a formally binding legal agreement.[5] Maronites accepted Lebanon’s place in the Arab world and its membership in the Arab League as part of the political accommodation surrounding independence.[10]

Maronites were among the principal communities involved in the Lebanese Civil War, which began in 1975 and included fighting among Maronite Christians, Muslims, and Palestinians.[14][15] Maronite forces sought Syrian assistance against Palestinian forces, while fighting between Maronites and the Syrian army in 1981 intensified cooperation between Israel and Lebanese Christians.[15] Bashir Gemayel, a commander of Christian forces, was elected president during Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon and was assassinated on September 14.[15]

In September 1982, Lebanese Maronite militias entered the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps while Israeli forces surrounded the camps, and a massacre followed.[15] The reported death toll ranges from 700 to 3,500.[15] The civil war ended in 1990, with an estimated 150,000 dead and 200,000 wounded over the course of the war.[15] The 1989 Taif Agreement reaffirmed equal Christian-Muslim representation in parliament, reduced the constitutional powers of the Maronite presidency, and increased those of the Sunni prime minister.[5]

The Maronite Church retains an ancient West Syrian liturgy, often delivered in Syriac, while Arabic is the vernacular language of modern Maronites.[2] Its liturgy is essentially Antiochene, and the church retains its own rites and canon law within communion with Rome.[1] Syriac is an ancient dialect of Aramaic.[14] Liturgical usage has also included Arabic, Aramaic, and Karshuni—Arabic written with old Syriac letters.[4]

The patriarch of Antioch and all the East is the church’s immediate spiritual head after the pope and resides at Bkerké near Beirut.[2] Bishops are generally nominated by a church synod, while the patriarch is elected in a secret ceremony by a synod of bishops and confirmed by the pope.[4] The church elects its own bishops while recognizing the pope as its ultimate authority.[14] Its close and cordial relationship with Rome did not prevent pressures to Latinize its rite; Maronites were freed from papal efforts in that direction only after the Second Vatican Council.[2]

The church’s institutions extend beyond Lebanon through dioceses in the Middle East and parishes or independent dioceses in countries of the Americas, Africa, and Europe.[4] Emigrant communities preserve their liturgy and maintain their own clergy, some of whom are married.[2] A historical account of church administration records Mar Nasrallah Butrus Sufayr, also rendered Sfeir, as patriarch in 1987.[4]

In Jerusalem, the Maronite Patriarchal Vicariate dates from 1895.[1] At the Church of Saint Maron on April 13, 2017, several dozen community members and guests, including two or three nuns, attended a foot-washing ceremony.[3] Assisted by a man and a child, the priest washed and kissed the feet of twelve community members, with prayers partly in Arabic and partly in Aramaic.[3]

Language preservation has become a visible part of community activity in the Galilee.[16] In Jish, Shadi Khalloul taught Aramaic to children to strengthen their connection with Maronite heritage and identity, while Aramaic prayers continued to be heard in the village’s older church.[16] Aramaic instruction was introduced for pupils from first through eighth grade.[17] Some Maronites in Israel have sought to revive Aramaic as a living language rather than restrict its use to worship.[3]

Jish’s large modern Maronite church was built in the 1990s and became the community’s principal place of worship.[18] It hosts most religious ceremonies as well as weddings and engagements.[18] Maronite settlement in the village dates to the early eighteenth century, when families arrived from Lebanon.[18] The church associated with former residents of Bir’am also remains active within the national-park area.[6]

Israel recognizes the Maronite community as one of its religious communities.[19] Recognized communities’ tribunals have jurisdiction over some personal-status matters, although the scope varies by community, and priests conduct marriages and notify the authorities for registration.[19] Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs and the Jerusalem municipality assisted in renovating and rehabilitating Christian institutions in and around the Old City, including the Maronite center.[19]

The Maronite presidency gives the community a distinctive place in Lebanon’s confessional political system.[5] The allocation of senior offices operates alongside parliamentary representation divided among religious communities.[13] An account of the 2009 electoral system listed 64 Christian parliamentary seats, of which 34 were assigned to Maronites.[20] Representatives were elected by district, with voters in each district choosing representatives for the communities allocated seats there.[20]

Maronite political life nevertheless encompasses competing alliances and conceptions of Lebanon’s direction.[7][13] The Lebanese Forces and Kataeb parties have opposed Hezbollah, while the Free Patriotic Movement and Marada have supported it.[7] Patriarch Bechara Rai has also publicly criticized Hezbollah.[7] These differences place Maronites on opposing sides of major contemporary political questions rather than within a single communal bloc.[7]

Historically, Maronites were predominantly rural, with a concentration in Mount Lebanon, while urban communities lived in East Beirut and its suburbs.[4] Their demographic weight has been described through estimates of different dates and scopes: a 1986 estimate gave 416,000 Maronites in Lebanon, or 16 percent of the population, while including an unknown number abroad.[4] A country profile updated in 2012 listed Lebanon’s population as 4.3 million and estimated 861,000 Maronites, or 21 percent.[21]

A demographic estimate included in the 2023 religious-freedom report put Christians at 30.5 percent of Lebanon’s population and Maronite Catholics at 52.5 percent of the Christian population, making Maronites the country’s largest Christian group.[5] Other published estimates have placed the Maronite share at approximately 29 percent in 1932 and 22 percent in 2008, while a 2021 estimate put it at 23 percent.[22][10] These figures describe estimates made for different periods rather than successive results from a modern census.[5]

Worldwide population estimates have also varied substantially.[14][16] A 2005 estimate placed the global community at about seven million, including approximately 800,000 in Lebanon, whereas a 2011 estimate gave a little over three million worldwide and more than one million in Lebanon.[14][16] A further estimate published in 2021 proposed about thirteen million worldwide, including seven million in Brazil.[10] The diaspora extends across southern Europe and the Americas, with migration linked to economic instability and episodes of violence in Lebanon.[2]

Israel’s Maronite communities are concentrated in the Galilee, especially Jish near the Lebanese border in the Upper Galilee.[1][23] Maronite Christians form a majority of Jish’s residents, and the village has a Maronite church.[23] A travel account described a population of about 3,000, divided into 55 percent Maronite Christians, 10 percent Greek Catholics, and the remainder Muslims.[18] A separate 2011 estimate put the Maronite share at about 65 percent.[16]

One estimate puts the community at about 6,700, mostly in the Galilee.[1] A 2011 report gave around 7,000.[16] Another description estimated about 8,000 in Israel and about forty Maronite families in Jerusalem.[3] A 2005 estimate for the wider area of Archbishop Paul Sayah’s ministry gave approximately 12,000, including 9,000 in Galilee and 1,000 in Jerusalem, while noting that families were dispersed across the region and that some had fled to Jordan during the Lebanese Civil War.[14]

The community in Israel also includes members of families associated with the South Lebanon Army who fled to Israel following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Lebanon in 2000.[22] Older Galilean communities have their own histories of movement and resettlement: displaced residents of Bir’am joined Jish in 1948, and about half of Jish’s Maronite residents were reported in 2011 to trace their heritage to Kafr Bir’am.[18][16]

Community activity in Jish connects religious practice with language education and expressions of historical identity.[16][17] Shadi Khalloul identifies local Maronites as Aramean and connects their origins with Aram.[17] His advocacy for Aramaic instruction presents language as a means of transmitting heritage to children.[16] Such self-identification exists alongside the Lebanese national character associated with the church and the differing ethnic and national identifications found among Maronites more broadly.[14][13]

Early Maronite history remains obscure until the Crusades, and accounts differ over the community’s origins and its earliest relationship with Rome.[2] The church maintains that it was always orthodox and in union with Rome, whereas some historians have proposed an early adherence to Monothelitism, the teaching that Christ possessed a divine but not a human will.[2] Maronite historiographer Istifan al-Duwayhi instead presented a history of Catholic orthodoxy extending from the Council of Chalcedon in 451.[9] Accounts also differ over whether communion established in 1182 was subsequently broken before being formally reestablished in the sixteenth century.[4]

Interpretation of the First World War famine distinguishes its catastrophic effects from the question of Ottoman intent.[9] Although Ottoman policies devastated Beirut and Mount Lebanon, whether they constituted an intended extermination of Maronites remains debated; no comparable coded Ottoman orders for their mass murder are identified in the account documenting the famine.[9] Demographic claims likewise require caution: Lebanon has conducted no official census since 1932, and published Maronite figures use different dates, geographical scopes, and methods.[5][4]

Bir’am’s displacement and subsequent land claims remain a significant dispute.[16] Residents were displaced during the War of Independence and were not allowed to return; a detailed account places the temporary evacuation order on the night of November 13–14, 1948.[10][16] It also records a 1951 High Court ruling that residents should be returned in coordination with the army and the demolition of most houses in 1953.[10] Descendants have continued seeking access to former village lands.[16]

Cross-border church activity has also generated political conflict.[24] On June 19, 2022, Lebanese authorities detained Archbishop Moussa al-Hajj as he traveled from Israel, seizing medicines, food, and $460,000 donated by Lebanese nationals living in Israel for distribution in Lebanon.[24] He was released after several hours, but the items were not returned, with authorities citing the 1955 anti-Israel boycott law.[24] The Maronite Patriarchal Council called the incident an “unfortunate and reprehensible attack,” while Hezbollah officials characterized the activity as normalization with Israel.[24]