2. Origin of the Name. Early Accounts

On the Orontes, between Hamath and Emesa, lay an old monastery dedicated to St. Maron. In the sixth century it was repaired by Justinian, according to Procopius (De odiflciis, v., ix.), and was the most prominent among the Syrian monasteries. The Maron after whom the monastery was named is generally considered identical with the hermit whose life Theodoret has described (Religiosa historia, xvi.), the monk and presbyter of whom Chrysostom speaks so highly (Epist. xxxvi.), who probably lived about 400. But the great age and the celebrity of the monastery make it more probable that it took its name from some saint much older, perhaps from Mari, missionary to Babylon, who was buried in the monastery Deir Mar Mari, near Seleucia, on the Tigris; or from Mari the Persian, mentioned by Ibas of Edessa (W. Wright, Hist. of Syriac Literature, London, 1894, pp. 48-49, 59). However this may be, it is from the monastery that the Maronites themselves derive their name; some scholars, however, derive it from Maronea, a village thirty Roman miles east of Antioch; and others from Johannes Maron (see below). The name does not occur until the eighth century, when it is used by John of Damascus to designate a heretical sect. Exactly in the same manner it occurs later in the writings of Christian authors in Egypt (who wrote in Arabic), such as Eutychius (Ibn Batrik, beginning of the tenth century), Benassalus (Ibn el-Assal, thirteenth century), and others (cf. E. Renaudot, Hist. patriarcharum Alexandrinorum, Paris, 1713, pp. 419 sqq.). Eutychius says: " At the time of the Emperor Mauricius there lived a monk Marun who taught that Christ had two natures, one will, and one activity (? operation). The most of his adherents, named Maronites after him, dwelt in Hamath, Kinnesrin and `Awasim. After his death, the citizens of Hamath built the cloister Deir Marun

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and openly professed his teaching." Benassalus distinguishes Maronites from Melchites (orthodox Greeks) and from Franks (Latins), and reports that the Maronites went over to the religion of the Franks. William of Tyre (q.v.) states that a peopie dwelling in the neighborhood of Byblos, who for 500 years had followed the teaching of the heresiarch Maron, had in 1182 come into relations with the Patriarch Aimerich of Antioch, forsworn their heresy, accepted the orthodox faith, and received bishops of the Roman Catholic Church. These writers show a bias against the Maronites, and William of Tyre is in this matter dependent upon Eutychius, and, further, he does not seem to intend to imply that all Maronites went over to the Roman Catholic Church. Yet, that Maronites were not regarded as orthodox appears from efforts continuing into the eighteenth century to make their teaching conform to the Roman system. The Maronites, in asserting their early and continuous orthodoxy, appeal to the fact that in the acts of the sixth synod (680), which condemned the Monothelites, the Maronites are not mentioned. But other testimony which they adduce for their orthodoxy is taken from later writers whose productions are more or less suspicious both because of their late date and because of an admixture of legend in their accounts of Johannes Maron, which are derived from an Arabic source not earlier than the fourteenth or fifteenth century.

The account given of Johannes Maron, whom the Maronites acknowledge as their first patriarch, is that he was born at Sirflm, near Antioch, was educated in Antioch and the monastery 3. The First of St. Maron. Later he studied in Patriarch, Constantinople, became monk in St. Johannes Maron, was ordained priest, and wrote Maron. against the heretics. He was intro duced to the papal legate in Antioch, and by him made bishop of Botrus in 676. He then converted all the Monophysites and Monothe lites in the Lebanon region to the Roman faith, or dained priests and consecrated bishops, and gave the Maronites their political and military constitution. When Theophanes, patriarch of Antioch, died, in the second year of the reign of Justinian II., Johannes happened, it is said, to be present in the city, and was unanimously elected patriarch. It is also reported that he journeyed to Rome, and was consecrated by Pope Honorius; that he built a new monastery near Botrus after the Greeks destroyed the old one, and that he died there in 707. But this story contains anachronistic elements, since Honorius lived nearly a century before that time. As no one but the biographer of Marc knows about a patriarch of Antioch of that name, the story of his patriarchate seems to be a fabrication. Renau dot even goes so far as to deny the very existence of Maron; but there is no reason to doubt that he really was elected bishop of Lebanon, and exer cised great influence there in steady opposition to the Greeks. The Maronites celebrate him on Mar. 2. A singular characteristic of this history of Jo hannes Maron is that it erroneously identifies the Mardaites and the Maronites and ascribes to the latter the doughty deeds narrated of the formei- a matter which has given rise to variant explanations of no historic value.

Early reports give no insight, into religious and ecclesiastical conditions prior to the seventh century. If in that century Maronites were Monothelites, they may have received the Monophysite doctrine spread by Jacobus BaradEous (see Jacobites) in Syria. And if, as is reported, the monks of the monastery of Maron were made mar 4. Relation tyrs because of their agreement with to Mono- the deliverances of the Council of thelitism Chalcedon, they could not have been and Mono- supported by their countrymen. The physitism. Maronites confess that heretical pas- sages have gotten into their literature, but they assert that these were smuggled in by Monophysites and Monothelites. In their zeal for Rome they have burned many books of this character, and they boast of the correctness of their later literature, especially that printed in Rome l Their historians declare that at the beginning of the twelfth century a certain Thomas, archbishop of Kafar Tab, near Aleppo, preached among the Maronites the doctrine of the Monothelites and in consequence had a controversy with the Greek patriarch of Antioch. This may have been the schism referred to by William of Tyre, ended by the agreement of Maronites and the Roman Church in 1182, and may have furnished the pretext for preaching the doctrine to the Maronites who lived in Cyprus, where the heresy lingered till the time of Pope Eugenius IV.