page_title: Maronites
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Maronites / History
caption_attribution_description: Our Lady of Lebanon Roman Catholic Cathedral, at 113 Remsen Street on the corner of Henry Street in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York City. was built in 1844-46 as the Congregational Church of the Pilgrims, and was designed by Richard Upjohn in the Romanesque Revival style. A rectory, designed by Leopold Eidlitz, was added in 1869. The Church of the Pilgrims merged with the Plymouth Church in 1934 to form Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims (now reverted to being simply Plymouth Church), and the building was taken over by the Lebanese Catholic (Maronite Rite) parish. The Church of the Pilgrims took with them the Tiffany windows and the doors of the church. The doors were replaced with bronze doors salvaged from the SS Normandie, which caught fire and sank at dock in the Hudson River in 1942 when it was being outfitted as a troop ship. (Sources: AIA Guide to NYC (5th ed.) and Inside the Apple (2009))
context_page_description: The Maronites are an ethnoreligious Christian group whose members adhere to the Syriac Maronite Church with the largest population around Mount Lebanon in Lebanon. The Maronite Church is an Eastern Catholic sui iuris particular church which is in full communion with the Pope and the Catholic Church, with the right of self-governance under the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, one of more than a dozen individual churches which are in full communion with the Holy See.
  The Maronites derive their name from the Syriac Christian saint Maron, some of whose followers migrated to the area of Mount Lebanon from their previous place of residence which was located around the area of Antioch, and established the nucleus of the Syriac Maronite Church. Saint Maron sent Saint Abraham, often referred to as the Apostle of Lebanon, to convert the non-Christian native population of Lebanon to Maronite Christianity. The name of the Adonis River was changed to Abraham's river by the inhabitants after Saint Abraham preached there.
context_section_description: The cultural and linguistic heritage of the Lebanese people is a blend of both indigenous Phoenician elements and the foreign cultures such as Arabs that have come to rule the land and its people over the course of thousands of years. In a 2013 interview, Pierre Zalloua, a Lebanese biologist who took part in the National Geographic Society's Genographic Project, pointed out that genetic variation preceded religious variation and divisions: "Lebanon already had well-differentiated communities with their own genetic peculiarities, but not significant differences, and religions came as layers of paint on top. There is no distinct pattern that shows that one community carries significantly more Phoenician than another."
  Although Christianity existed in Roman Phoenice since the time of the Apostles, Christians were a minority among the majority pagans by the time Emperor Theodosius I issued The Edict of Thessalonica in 380 AD. The coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon remained prosperous during Roman rule, but Phoenicia had ceased to be the maritime empire it once was centuries ago and the north of Berytus (Beirut) and the mountains of Lebanon concentrated a big part of the intellectual and religious activities. Very few Roman temples in Phoenicia were built in the coastal cities, hence the reason for the reign of paganism in the interior of the land.
  The Maronite movement reached Lebanon when in 402 AD Saint Maron's first disciple, Abraham of Cyrrhus, who was called the Apostle of Lebanon, realized that there were many non-Christians in Lebanon and so he set out to convert the Phoenician inhabitants of the coastal lines and mountains of Lebanon, introducing them to the way of Saint Maron. The Phoenician pagans became Maronite Christians.
  In 451 AD, the Maronites followed the Council of Chalcedon, rejecting monophysitisim and entering full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. In 517 AD, a conflict between the Maronites and the Monophysite Jacobite Christian Orthodox Syriacs caused the massacre of 350 Maronite monks.
  Escaping persecution following the Muslim conquest of the Levant in 637 AD, the Maronites living in the low lands and coastal cities confined themselves to the Mount Lebanon and to the cities of the Phoenician coast which did not interest the Arabs extending from Sidon in the South and up to Batroun and the south of Tripoli in the north. The Arab conquerors settled in various cities of the Phoenician coast to reduce Byzantine interference even though they were not interested in maritime trade. The mountains offered no attraction to them so the Maronites continued to find refuge from colonial empires in the Mountains of Lebanon, especially Qadisha Valley.
  The Maronites raided the newly Arab towns after the conquest of 637 AD and were later joined by the Mardaites in repelling the Arab army. The Mardaites were mountaineers from the Taurus that Emperor Constantine IV recruited to infiltrate Lebanon and join the Maronites to carry attacks against the Arab invaders. The resistance movement became known as Marada, meaning rebels.
  The Maronites managed then to become "civilly semiautonomous" where they settled and kept speaking Western Aramaic in daily life and Syriac language for their liturgy. The Christians that chose to remain in the newly Arab-controlled areas and inhabited by the Arab invaders gradually became a minority and many of those converted to Islam in order to escape taxation and to further their own political and professional advancement.
  In 685 AD, the Maronites appointed a Patriarch for themselves, St. John Maron, who became the first Patriarch on the Maronite Church. The appointing of a Patriarch made the Byzantine Emperor furious, which led to the persecution of the Maronites by the Byzantines.
  In 694 AD, 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 Byzantine at Amioun and defeated the Byzantine army in a crushing victory that cost Constantinople two of its 
caption: Our Lady of Lebanon Cathedral Brooklyn in New York City.
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