Dear Memo Rodriguez,
In your post you say that Maronites "never broke communion with Rome officially". You must know that no all church historians do agreee with this theory. In this maronite parish web site(
http://www.mountlebanon.org/histmaron.html), we can read: "Though their traditions assert that the Maronites were always orthodox Christians in union with the Roman see, there is evidence that for centuries they were Monothelites, followers of the heretical doctrine of Sergius, patriarch of Constantinople, who affirmed that there was a divine but no human will in Christ. According to the medieval bishop William of Tyre, the Maronite patriarch sought union with the Latin patriarch of Antioch in 1182. A definitive consolidation of the union, however, did not come until the 16th century, brought about largely through the work of the Jesuit John Eliano. In 1584 Pope Gregory XIII founded the Maronite College in Rome, which flourished under Jesuit administration into the 20th century and became a training centre for scholars and leaders".
You can find more information at this on line Catholic Enciclopedia (
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09683c.htm).
A. The Maronite Position
Maro, a Syrian monk, who died in the fifth century and is noticed by Theodoret (Religionis Historia, xvi), had gathered together some disciples on the banks of the Orantes, between Emesa and Apamea. After his death the faithful built, at the place, where he had lived, a monastery which they named after him. When Syria was divided by heresies, the monks of Beit-Marun remained invariably faithful to the cause of orthodoxy, and rallied to it the neighbouring inhabitants. This was the cradle of the Maronite nation. The Jacobite chroniclers bear witness that these populations aided the Emperor Heraclius in the struggle against Monophysitism even by force (c. 630). Moreover, thirty years later when Mu�awyah, the future caliph, was governor of Damascus (658-58), they disputed with the Jacobites in his presence, and the Jacobites, being worsted, had to pay a large penalty. The Emperor Heraclius and his successors having meanwhile succumbed to the Monothelite heresy, which was afterwards condemned in the Council of 681, the Maronites, who until then had been partisans of the Byzantine emperor (Melchites), broke with him, so as not to be in communion with a heretic. From this event dates the national independence of the Maronites. Justinian II (Rhinotmetes) wished to reduce them to subjection: in 694 his forces attacked the monastery, destroyed it, and marched over the mountain towards Tripoli, to complete their conquest. But the Maronites, with the Catholic Patriarch of Antioch, St. John Maro, at their head, routed the Greeks near Amiun, and saved that autonomy which they were able to maintain through succeeding ages. They are to be identified with the Marda�tes of Syria, who, in the Lebanon, on the frontier of the Empire, successfully struggled with the Byzantines and the Arabs. There the Crusaders found them, and formed very close relations with them. William of Tyre relates that, in 1182, the Maronites to the number of 40,000, were converted from Monothelitism; but either this is an error of information, due to William's having copied, without critically examining, the Annals of Eutychius, an Egyptian Melchite who calumniated the Maronites, or else these 40,000 were only a very small part of the nation who had, through ignorance, allowed themselves to be led astray by the Monothelite propaganda of a bishop named Thomas of Kfar�tas. Besides, the Maronites can show an unbroken list of patriarchs between the time of St. John Maro and that of Pope Innocent III; these patriarchs, never having erred in faith, or strayed into schism, are the only legitimate heirs of the Patriarchate of Antioch, or at least they have a claim to that title certainly not inferior to the claim of any rival. -- Such is the case frequently presented by Maronites, and in the last place by Mgr. Debs, Archbishop of Beirut (Perp�tuelle orthodoxie des Maronites).
B. Criticism of the Maronite Position
(1) The Monastery of St. Maro before the Monothelite Controversy
The existence since the sixth century of a convent of St. Maro, or of Beit-Marun, between Apamea and Elmesa, on the right bank of the Orontes, is an established fact, and it may very well have been built on the spot where Maro the solitary dwelt, of whom Theodoret speaks. This convent suffered for its devotion to the true faith, as is strikingly evident from an address presented by its monks to the Metropolitan of Apamea in 517, and to Pope Hormisdas, complaining of the Monophysites, who had massacred 350 monks for siding with the Council of Chalcedon. In 536 the apocrisarius Paul appears at Constantinople subscribing the Acts of the Fourth �cumenical Council in the name of the monks of St. Maro. In 553, this same convent is represented at the Fifth �cumenical Council by the priest John and the deacon Paul. The orthodox emperors, particularly Justinian (Procopius, "De �dific.", V, ix) and Heraclius, gave liberal tokens of their regard for the monastery. The part played by the monks of St. Maro, isolated in the midst of an almost entirely Monophysite population, should not be underrated. But it will be observed that in the texts cited there is mention of a single convent, and not by any means of a population such as could possibly have originated the Maronite nation of later times.
(2) St. John Maro
The true founder of the Maronite nation, the patriarch St. John Maro, would have lived towards the close of the seventh century, but, unfortunately, his very existence is extremely doubtful. All the Syriac authors and the Byzantine priest Timotheus derive the name Maronite from that of the convent Beni-Marun. The words of Timotheus are: Maron�tai d� k�klentai �p� to� monaster�on a�t�n Mar� kalonm�nou �n Sur�a (in P.G. LXXXVI, 65 and note 53). Renaudot absolutely denies the existence of John Maro. But, supposing that he did exist, as may be inferred from the testimony of the tenth-century Melchite Patriarch Eutychius (the earliest text bearing on the point), his identity has baffled all researches. His name is not to be found in any list of Melchite Patriarchs of Antioch, whether Greek or Syriac. As the patriarchs of the seventh and eighth centuries were orthodox, there was no reason why St. John Maro should have been placed at the head of an alleged orthodox branch of the Church of Antioch. The episcopal records of Antioch for the period in question may be summarized as follows: 685, election of Theophanes; 686, probable election of Alexander; 692, George assists at the Trullan Council; 702-42, vacancy of the See of Antioch on account of Mussulman persecutions; 742, election of Stephen. But, according to Mgr Debs, the latest Maronite historian, St. John Maro would have occupied the patriarchal See of Antioch from 685 to 707.
The Maronites insist, affirming that St. John Maro must have been Patriarch of Antioch because his works present him under that title. The works of John Maro referred to are an exposition of the Liturgy of St. James and a treatise on the Faith. The former is published by Joseph Aloysius Assemani in his "Codex Liturgicus" and certainly bears the name of John Maro, but the present writer has elsewhere shown that this alleged commentary of St. John Maro is no other than the famous commentary of Dionysius bar-Salibi, a Monophysite author of the twelfth century, with mutilations, additions, and accommodations to suit the changes by which the Maronites have endeavoured to make the Syriac Liturgy resemble the Roman (Dionysius Bar Salibi, "expositio liturgi�", ed. Labourt, pref.). The treatise on the Faith is not likely to be any more authentic than the liturgical work: it bears a remarkable resemblance to a theological treatise of Leontius of Byzantium, and should therefore, very probably, be referred to the second half of the sixth century and the first half of the seventh -- a period much earlier than that which the Maronites assign to St. John Maro. Besides, it contains nothing about Monothelitism -- which, in fact, did not yet exist. John Maro, we must therefore conclude, is a very problematic personality; if he existed at all, it was as a simple monk, not by any means as a Melchite Patriarch of Antioch.
(3) Uninterrupted Orthodoxy of the Maronites
It is to be remembered that before the rise of Monothelitism, the monks of St. Maro, to whom the Maronites trace their origin, were faithful to the Council of Chalcedon as accepted by the Byzantine emperors; they were Melchites in the full sense of the term -- i.e., Imperialists, representing the Byzantine creed among populations which had abandoned it, and, we may add, representing the Byzantine language and Byzantine culture among peoples whose speech and manners were those of Syria. There is no reason to think that, when the Byzantine emperors, by way of one last effort at union with their Jacobite subjects, Syrian and Egyptian, endeavoured to secure the triumph of Monothelitism -- a sort of compromise between Monophysistism and Chalcedonian orthodoxy -- the monks of St. Maro abandoned the Imperialist party and faithfully adhered to orthodoxy. On the contrary, all the documents suggest that the monks of Beit-Marun embraced Monothelitism, and still adhered to that heresy even after the Council of 681, when the emperors had abjured it. It is not very difficult to produce evidence of this in a text of Dionysius of Tell-Mahr� (d. 845) preserved to us in the chronicle of Michael the Syrian, which shows Heraclius forcing most of the Syrian monks to accept his Ecthesis, and those of Beit-Marun are counted among the staunchest partisans of the emperor. One very instructive passage in this same chronicle, referring to the year 727, recounts at length a quarrel between the two branches of the Chalcedonians, the orthodox and the Monothelites, where the former are called Maximists, after St. Maximus the confessor, the uncompromising adversary of the Monothelites, while the latter are described as the "party of Beit-Marun" and "monks of Beit-Marun". We are here told how the monks of St. Maro have a bishop in their monastery, how they convert most of the Melchites of the country districts to Monothelitism and even successfully contend with the Maximists (i.e., the Catholics) for the possession of a church at Aleppo. From that time on, being cut off from communion with the Melchite (Catholic) Patriarch of Antioch, they do as the Jacobites did before them, and for the same reasons: they set up a separate Church, eschewing, however, with equal horror the Monophysites, who reject the Council of Chalcedon, and the Catholics who condemn the Monothelite Ecthesis of Heraclius and accept the Sixth �cumenical Council. Why the monks of Beit-Marun, hitherto so faithful to the Byzantine emperors, should have deserted them when they returned to orthodoxy, we do not know; but it is certain that in this defection the Maronite Church and nation had its origin, and that the name Maronite thenceforward becomes a synonym for Monothelite, as well with Byzantine as with Nestorian or Monophysite writers. Says the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, referring to this period: "The Maronites remained as they are now. They ordain a patriarch and bishops from their convent. They are separated from Maximus, in that they confess only one will in Christ, and say: 'Who was crucified for us'. But they accept the Synod of Chalcedon." St. Germanus of Constantinople, in his treatise "De H�resibus et Synodis" (about the year 735), writes: "There are some heretics who, rejecting the Fifth and Sixth Councils, nevertheless contend against the Jacobites. The latter treat them as men without sense, because, while accepting the Fourth Council, they try to reject the next two. Such are the Maronites, whose monastery is situated in the very mountains of Syria." (The Fourth Council was that of Chalcedon.) St. John Damascene, a Doctor of the Church (d. 749), also considered the Maronites heretics. He reproaches them, among other things, with continuing to add the words staurotheis d� em�s (Who didst suffer for us on the Cross) to the Trisagion, an addition susceptible of an orthodox sense, but which had eventually been prohibited in order to prevent misunderstanding [maron�somen prosth�menoi t� trisag�o t�n sta�rosin ("We shall be following Maro, if we join the Crucifixion to our Trisagion" -- "De Hymno Trisagio", ch. v). Cf. per� �rtho� phronematos, ch. v.]. A little later, Timotheus I, Patriarch of the Nestorians, receives a letter from the Maronites, proposing that he should admit them to his communion. His reply is extant, though as yet unpublished, in which he felicitates them on rejecting, as he himself does, the idea of more than one energy and one will in Christ (Monothelitism), but lays down certain conditions which amount to an acceptance of his Nestorianism, though in a mitigated form. Analogous testimony may be found in the works of the Melchite controversialist Theodore Abukara (d. c. 820) and the Jacobite theologian Habib Abu-Ra�ta (about the same period), as also in the treatise "De Receptione Hareticorum" attributed to the priest Timotheus (P.G., 86, 65). Thus, in the eighth century there exists a Maronite Church distinct from the Catholic Church and from the Monophysite Church; this Church extends far into the plain of Syria and prevails especially in the mountain regions about the monastery of Beit-Marun. In the ninth century this Church was probably confined to the mountain regions. The destruction of the monastery of Beit-Marun did not put an end to it; it completed its organization by setting up a patriarch, the first known Maronite patriarch dating from 1121, though there may have been others before him. The Maronite mountaineers preserved a relative autonomy between the Byzantine emperors, on the one hand, who reconquered Antioch in the tenth century, and, on the other hand, the Mussulmans. The Crusaders entered into relations with them. In 1182, almost the entire nation -- 40,000 of them -- were converted. From the moment when their influence ceased to extend over the hellenized lowlands of Syria, the Maronites ceased to speak any language but Syriac, and used no other in their liturgy. It is impossible to assign a date to this disappearance of hellenism among them. At the end of the eighth century the Maronite Theophilus of Edessa knew enough Greek to translate and comment on the Homeric poems. It is very likely that Greek was the chief language used in the monastery of Beit-Marun, at least until the ninth century; that monastery having been destroyed, there remained only country and mountain villages where nothing but Syriac had ever been used either colloquially or in the liturgy.
It would be pleasant to be able at least to say that the orthodoxy of the Maronites has been constant since 1182, but unfortunately, even this cannot be asserted. There have been at least partial defections among them. No doubt the patriarch Jeremias al Amsh�ti visited Innocent III at Rome in 1215, and he is known to have taken home with him some projects of liturgical reform. But in 1445, after the Council of Florence, the Maronites of Cyprus return to Catholicism (Hefele, "Histoire des counciles", tr. Delare, XI, 540). In 1451, Pius II, in his letter to Mahomet II, still ranks them among the heretics. Gryphone, an illustrious Flemish Franciscan of the end of the fifteenth century, converted a large number of them, receiving several into the Order of St. Francis, and one of them, Gabriel Gla� (Barcla�us, or Bencla�us), whom he had caused to be consecrated Bishop of Lefkosia in Cyprus, was the first Maronite scholar to attempt to establish his nation's claim to unvarying orthodoxy: in a letter written in 1495 he gives what purports to be a list of eighteen Maronite patriarchs in succession, from the beginning of their Church down to his own time, taken from documents which he assumes to come down from the year 1315. -- It is obvious to remark how recent all that is. -- The Franciscan Suriano ("Il trattato di Terra Santa e dell' Oriente di fr. Fr. Suriano", ed. Golubovitch), who was delegated to the Maronites by Leo X, in 1515, points out many traits of ignorance and many abuses among them, and regards Maro as a Monothelite. However, it may be asserted that the Maronites never relapsed into Monothelitism after Gryphone's mission. Since James of Hadat (1439-48) all their patriarchs have been strictly orthodox.
