This study chronicles the evolution and history of the Maronite Church and Christians of Lebanon, from their controversial beginnings to the present. The book explicitly and significantly explains the survival of the Maronites caught in the hostile environment of the Middle East. Also it reconstructs the history of Lebanon and its Catholic Church within the context of the Lebanese state and indicates the importance of the Maronites to the region and well beyond.
World renowned historian and lecturer, Rabbi Berel Wein, paints a panoramic picture of our people in the modern era, from the Cossack pogroms to the rise of the Chassidic movement, from the Vilna Gaon to the rebirth of Torah in America.
The Maronite Church is one of twenty-two Eastern Catholic Churches in communion with the Pope of Rome. Her patriarch is in Lebanon. Forty-three bishops and approximately five million faithful make up her presence throughout the world. The story of Maron, a fifth-century hermit-priest, and the community gathered around him, later called the Maronites, tells another fascinating story of the monastic and missionary movements of the Church. Maron's story takes place in the context of Syrian monasticism, which was a combination of both solitary and communal life, and is a narrative of Christians of the Middle East as they navigated the rough seas of political divisions and ecclesiastical controversies from the fourth to the ninth centuries. Abbot Paul Naaman, a Maronite scholar and former Superior General of the Order of Lebanese Maronite Monks, wisely places the study of the origins of the Maronite Church squarely in the midst of the history of the Church. His book, The Maronites: The Origins of an Antiochene Church, published during the sixteenth centenary of Maron's death, offers plausible insights into her formation and early development, grounding the Maronite Church in her Catholic, Antiochian, Syriac, and monastic roots. Abbot Paul Naaman is a Maronite scholar and former Superior General of the Order of Lebanese Maronite Monks.
This volume, intended for general readers, covers the history and characteristics of the Maronite Church from its earliest times to the end of the nineteenth century.
A meticulous deconstruction of Maronite history writing and the ways in which Lebanese nationalist myths have been invented and perpetuated by historians As a frequently contested territory, Mount Lebanon has an equally contested history, one that is produced, shaped, and revised by as many players as those who molded the Lebanese state since its inception in 1920. The Lebanese Maronite Church has had more at stake in the process of history writing than any other group or institution. It is arguably one of the most influential institutions in Lebanese history and definitely the most influential institution in the country at the moment of the state’s birth. Writing the History of Mount Lebanon traces the genealogy of Maronite identity by examining the historical traditions that shaped its contemporary manifestation. It explores the presence of a tradition in Maronite Church historiography that was maintained by the historians of the Church, whose claims and hypotheses ultimately defined the communal identity of the Maronites in Mount Lebanon and deeply influenced subsequent Lebanese national identity. Rooted in a reexamination of the existing literature and bringing evidence to bear on this particular aspect of history-writing in Lebanon, it shows how early Maronite ecclesiastic historiography’s plea for inclusion as a part of Catholic orthodoxy was transformed and recast in subsequent centuries by lay and secular historians into a demand for exclusion and exclusivity, which in turn led to the rise of exclusivist political identities based on sectarian belonging in Mount Lebanon. Ultimately, Mouannes Hojairi shows how history-writing is one of the main instruments in generating and perpetuating nationalist ideologies and how historians are central agents of nationality.
National, linguistic, and religious identity of Lebanese Maronite Christians through their Arabic fictional texts during the period of the French Mandate in Lebanon.
Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon analyzes the relations between the Maronite notables and the Church in the context of socio-economic transformations in Mount Lebanon in the period 1736-1840. Special attention is given to the influence of external forces, such as the economic interference of the European nations, the Syrian and Ottoman administrative framework and the increasing involvement of the Vatican in the affairs of the Maronite community. The emphasis is laid on the role of religious foundations, or waqfs, in the process of social and economic integration, both within the Maronite community and in the wider frameworks in which it gradually became incorporated. These external and internal factors can explain the remarkable political emancipation of the Maronite Church, which assumed an important role in the history of Mount Lebanon in the 19th century.
