Maronite Christianity

Maronites are a Syriac Christian ethnoreligious group native to the Eastern Mediterranean and Levant region of West Asia whose members traditionally belong to the Maronite Church. The largest concentration of Maronites reside in proximity to Mount Lebanon in modern Lebanon. The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the pope and the remainder of the Roman Catholic Church. Christianity in Lebanon has a long and continuous history. The spread of Christianity in Lebanon was very slow where paganism persisted, especially in the mountaintop strongholds of Mount Lebanon. During the 5th century AD, Saint Maron (a Syriac Christian) sent Abraham of Cyrrhus, often referred to as the Apostle of Lebanon, to convert the still significant pagan population of Lebanon to Christianity. The early Maronites were Hellenized Semites, natives of Byzantine Syria who spoke Greek and Syriac but identified with the Greek-speaking populace of Constantinople and Antioch. They were able to preserve their independent status after the Muslim conquest of the Levant, maintaining their Christian religion and their distinct Lebanese Aramaic language as late as the 19th century. Maronism survived the conquest by relocating to the flanks of Mount Lebanon and to Phoenician coastal cities which did not particularly interest the Arabs. In 694 AD, Byzantine Emperor Justinian II sent an army to attack the Maronites, destroying their monastery in the Orontes valley and killing 500 monks. The Maronites followed up by leading their army against the Byzantines at Amioun and defeated the Byzantine army in a crushing victory that cost Constantinople two of its best generals. Following Byzantine persecutions in the Orontes valley, many Aramean Maronite monks left their lands in the Orontes valley and joined the Phoenician Maronites in the mountains of Lebanon. Christians that chose to remain in lands controlled by the Arab invaders gradually became a minority, and many converted to Islam to escape taxation and to further their political and professional ambitions. The Maronites welcomed the conquering Christians of the First Crusade in 1096 AD. In the late 12th century the Maronites numbered 40,000 people. During their several centuries of separation from the rest of the Christian world, Maronites claim to have remained in full communion with the Catholic Church. During the papacy of Pope Gregory XIII (1572-1585), steps were taken to bring the Maronites even closer to Rome. The Maronite College in Rome was founded by Gregory XIII in 1584. Mass emigration to the Americas at the outset of the 20th century, a famine during World War I that killed an estimated one third to one half of the population, the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war, and the Lebanese Civil War between 1975 and 1990 greatly decreased the number of Maronites in the Levant. Relations between the Druze and Christians of Lebanon has remained amicable throughout history, with a few exceptions of some periods, including 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war.[63][64] In the 19th century during the 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war thousands of Maronites were massacred by the Lebanese Druze. According to some estimates, about 11,000 Lebanese Christians (including Maronites) were killed, and over 4,000 more died from hunger and disease that resulted from the war. After the 1860 massacres, many Maronites fled to Egypt. Many fled much further. The parents of American entertainer Danny Thomas were Maronite Catholic immigrants from Bsharri, Lebanon. Before he found success as an entertainer, Thomas vowed that if he became successful that he would open a shrine to St. Jude Thaddeus, the patron saint of lost causes. After becoming a star, he established St. Jude’s in Memphis, Tennessee in 1962.