MARONITES, a Christian people of the Ottoman Empire in communion with the Papal Church, but forming a distinct denomi nation. The original seat and present home of the nucleus of the Maronites is Mt. Lebanon. It seems most probable that the Lebanon offered refuge to Antiochene Monothelites flying from the ban of the Constantinopolitan Council of A.D. 68o; that these converted part of the old mountain folk, who already held some kind of Incarnationist creed ; and that their first patriarch and his successors, for about 500 years at any rate, were Monothelite, and perhaps also Monophysite. Nevertheless the question of union with Rome became a practical one in the 12th century; but the local particularism of the Lebanon was averse to union, which was not effected until the i8th century. Clement XII. sent to Syria Assemanus, a Maronite educated at the Roman college of Gregory XIII. ; and at last, at a council held at the monastery of Lowaizi on the 3oth of September 1736, the Maronite Church accepted from Rome a constitution which is still in force, and agreed to abandon some of its more incongruous usages such as mixed con vents of monks and nuns. It retained, however, its Syriac liturgy and a non-celibate priesthood. The former still persists unchanged, while the Bible is read and exhortations are given in Arabic; and priests may still be ordained after marriage. But marriage is not permitted subsequent to ordination, nor does it any longer usually precede it. The tendency to a celibate clergy increases, together with other romanizing usages, promoted by the papal legate in Beirut, the Catholic missioners, and the higher native clergy who are usually educated in Rome or at St. Sulpice. The legate exer
cises growing influence on patriarchal and other elections, and on Church government and discipline. The patriarch receives con firmation from Rome, and the political representation of the Maronites at Constantinople is in the hands of the vicar apostolic. Rome has incorporated most of the Maronite saints in her calen dar, while refusing (despite their apologists) to canonize either of the reputed eponymous founders of Maronism.
The Maronites are most numerous and unmixed in the north of Lebanon. Formerly they were wholly organized on a clan system under feudal chiefs, of whom those of the house of Khazin were the most powerful ; and these fought among themselves rather than with the Druses or other denominations down to the i8th century, when some Arabs began to stir up strife between Maronites and Druses (see DRusEs). The Maronite population has greatly in creased at the expense of the Druses, and is now obliged to emi grate in considerable numbers. Increase of wealth and the influ ence of returned emigrants tend to soften Maronite character, and the last remnants of the barbarous state of the community— even the obstinate blood-feud—are disappearing.
See F. J. Bliss in Pal. Expl. Fund Quarterly Statement (1892) ; and authorities for DRUSES and LEBANON.