MARONITES, the name of a community of Christiana belonging to the Western or Roman Church, and living on Mount Lebanon. They are neighbours of, and allied to, and in some places mixed with, the Druses, and, like them, independent in great measure of the Turkish power. The Maronites occupy the valleys and fastnesses of the prin cipal ridge of Lebanon east of Beyroot and Tripoli, and they extend inland as far as the Bekaa., or plain between the Libanus and Anti Libanus, where they are mixed with the Drusea, though they do not intermarry with them. The tract of country in which the great bulk of the Maronites reside is called Kesrouan. It extends along the ridgo of Libanus from the Nahr el Kelb, a stream which enters the sea 12 miles north of Beyroot, to the Nahr el Kebir, which enters the sea north of Tripoli, near the island of Rued, the ancient Aradus, on which side the Maronites border on the Nosairis, or Ansarieh, who extend to the northwards towards Latakieb, and the Ismaelians, who live farther inland near the banks of the Orontes. To the eastward the Maronites have for neighbours the Metnalis, a tribe of independent Moslems, of the sect of Ali, who live under their own emir, and occupy the belad or district of Baalbek and part of the Anti-Libanus ; and on the south they border on the territory of the Druses, with whom they form one political body. [Drum.] In their internal concerns the Maronites are governed by their own sheiks, of whom them is one in every village, from whose decision there is an appeal to the bishops, who have great authority, and in some cases to the emir of the Druses, and his divan, or council. The clergy are very numerous ; the secular parish clergy are in the Greek Church ; but the regular clergy, who are said to amount to 20,000, and are distributed among about 200 convents, follow the rules of St. Anthony, and are bound by vows of chastity and obedience. The Maronito monks are not idle ; they cultivate the land belonging to their convents, and live by its produce. Every convent is a farm. Tho convents are under the juris diction of bishops, of whom there is one in every large village. The bishops are under the obligation of celibacy. The bishops collectively elect the patriarch, who is confirmed by the pope, and who resides at the convent of Kanobin, in a valley of the Libanus, south-east of Tripoli, where there is a printing-preas, which furnishes the elementary books for the use of the Maronite schools. Not far from Kanobin is
the large village of Eden, ten miles above which, and high up the Libanus, is the famed clump of old cedars, called the "cedars of Solomon," of large dimensions, but now reduced to seven in number (Lamartine, ` Voyage en Orient ; ' Richardson), not including the younger and smaller ones, Dr. Richardson measured the trunk of one of the old trees, and found it 32 feet in circumference. The whole clump of old and young trees may be walked round in about half an hour. Old cedars are not found in any other part of Libanus.
The Maronites derive their name from a monk of the name of Maro, who, in the 5th century collected a number of followers, and founded several convents in these mountains. When the Monothelite heresy prevailed in the East in the 7th century, and was favoured by the court of Constantinople, many Christians who did not embrace its tenets took refuge in the fastnesses of Libanus, around the convents, and thus the name of Maronites was assumed by the population of the mountains. This is the account of the Maronites themselves; others pretend that the Maronites were Monothelites, who took refuge in the Libanus after the Emperor Anastasius IL had condemned and proscribed their sect, in the beginning of the 8th century. [Ruvvonteass.] Joseph Simonius Assemani, and his friend Ambaraoh, better known as Father Benedetti, have defended the Maronites from the charge of Monothelitism. Ambarach translated from the Arabic into Latin the work of Stephen, patriarch of Antioch, concerning the origin and the liturgy of the Maronites. In 1182 they were re-admitted to the communion of tho Roman Church ; and in 1736, at a great synod held at Marhanna, tho Maronite Church formally acknowledged the canons of the council of Trent, but they retained the mass in the Syriac language and the marriage of priests. Before that time they received the sacrament under both forma, as in the Greek Church. At mass the priest turns towards the congregation and reads the gospel of the day in Arabic, which is the vulgar tongue.