MARONITES (Syriac, Môrûnbyè ; Arabic, Mawàrinai), an ecclesiastical community, and therefore also, according to the usage of the Christian East, a distinct political or social body, found mainly in or near the Lebanon, acknowledging the headship of the pope and the Latin standard of orthodoxy, but still retaining some peculiar privileges, including the use of a Syriac service—which few even of the priests now understand—and permission for the inferior clergy to marry. Maronite writers, trained either at Rome (in the Maronite college, founded by Gregory XIII. in 1584) or under Roman influences, have not unnaturally striven to prove that their church was always in essential accord with the Church of Rome except in ritual, but there is clear evidence that this is incorrect. The earliest references to the Maronites (beginning in the 8th century) leave no doubt that they were Monothelites, and there is contemporary evidence (William of Tyre) that they only abjured their heresies in 1182, when with their patriarch and some bishops they joined the Latin Church. Even in later times it has cost Rome much pains and money to attach them closely to herself and produce real conformity to Latin or ultimately to Tridentine orthodoxy. The origin of the Maronites and their earlier history are obscure. The name is no doubt connected with the monastery of St Maron, near the source of the Orontes, one of the chief monasteries of Syria in the 6th century; the Maronites themselves (Assemani, Bib. Or., i. 496 sq.) have much to tell of their great patriarch John Maron, or rather John of Maron, who studied at the convent of St Maron, converted the Lebanon to orthodoxy, and died 707 a.d. Much of the history of this personage is certainly fabulous....

a sect of eastern Christians who follow the Syrian rite, and are subject to the pope; their principal habitation being on Mount Libanus, or between the Ansarians to the north and the Druses to the south. Mosheim informs us, that the Monothelites, condemned and exploded by the council of Constantinople, found a place of refuge among the Mardaites, signifying in Syriac _rebels_, a people who took possession of Lebanon, A. D. 676, which became the asylum of vagabonds, slaves, and all sorts of rabble; and about the conclusion of the seventh century they were called Maronites, after Maro, their first bishop; a name which they still retain. None, he says, of the ancient writers, give any certain account of the first person who instructed these mountaineers in the doctrine of the Monothelites; it is probable, however, from several circumstances, that it was John Maro, whose name they have adopted; and that this ecclesiastic received the name of Maro from his having lived in the character of a monk, in the famous convent of St. Maro, upon the borders of the Orontes, before his settlement among the Mardaites of Mount Libanus. One thing is certain, from the testimony of Tyrius, and other unexceptionable witnesses, as also from the most authentic records, namely, that the Maronites retained the opinions of the Monothelites until the twelfth century, when, abandoning and renouncing the doctrine of one will in Christ, they were reädmitted into the communion of the Roman church. The most learned of the modern Maronites have left no method unemployed to defend their church against this accusation; they have laboured to prove, by a variety of testimonies, that their ancestors always persevered in the Catholic faith, and in their attachment to the Roman pontiff, without ever adopting ...