tasius II, in the early part of the 8th centurj', settled on the slo])es of the Lebanon, and gradually yielded their distinctive Monothelite views. According to Moshcim (Eccles. Hist, i, 457 ; iii, 127), many Monothelites, after the Council of Constantinople, found a refuge among the Mardaites, signifying in Syriac rebels, a people who took ■ possession of Lebanon A.D. 676, and made it the asy- * lum of vagabonds, slaves, and aU sorts of rabble ; and about the conclusion of the 7th century these Monoth- elites of Lebanon were called Maronites, after Maro, their first bishop. None, he says, of the ancient writ- ers give an}' certain account of the first person who converted these mountaineers to Monothelitism ; it is probable, however, from several circumstances, that it was John Maro, whose name they have adopted ; and that tliis ecclesiastic received the name of Maro from his having lived, in the character of a monk, in the fa- mous convent of St. Maro, upon the borders of the Oron- tcs, before his settlement among the Mardaites of Mount Libanus. Gieseler (Eccles. Hist, ii, 419), however, takes exception to this identification of the Maronites with the Mardaites, and, by authority derived from the writ- ings of Anquetil Duperron {Recherches sur les migi-ations des Mardes, in the Mem. de I'Acad. des Inscript. i, 1), holds that "the ^Mardaites orMards, a warlike nation of Armenia, were placed as a garrison on Mount Libanus by Constantine Pogonatus, A.D. 676 (Theophanes. p. 295), and were withdrawn as early as 685 by Justinian II (Theophanes, p. 302). Madden (Turkish Empire, ii, 154), upon the authority of the learned Benedictine St. Maur (Histoire Monastique de TOrient, p. 348), holds that the Maronites were founded by St. Maro, a patriarch of Syrian Christians in the 5th century, and that they existed imder that name in the 7th century, when the Saracens ravaged the country-, and were afterwards per- secuted as Mardaites (comp. here Churchill, Mount Leb- anon, iii, 58). There is certainly much in favor of this argument, not the least of which is the fact that, " at the commencement of the 7th centur\', the entire range of mountains from Antioch to Jerusalem was in the hands of the Syrian Christians, who formed a political power under chiefs or emirs, exercising a hereditary gov- ernment" (Churchill). But, however great may be the darkness surrounding their earliest history, one thing is certain, from the testimony of William of Tyre and oth- er unexceptionable witnesses, as also from the most au- thentic records, namely, that the Maronites retained the opinions of the Monothelites until the 12th century, when, abandoning and renouncing the doctrine of one win in Christ, they were readmitted into the commun- ion of the Koman Church. Jacques dc Vitry, bishop of Acre in the 12th century, thus speaks of the Maro- nites in his Histoi-ia Hierosohjmitana, drawn up at the re- quest of pope Honorius III : '' jMen armed with bows and arrows, and skilful in battle, inhabit the mountains in considerable numbers, in the province of Phoenicia, not far from the town of Biblos. They are called Maro- nites, from the name of a certain man, their master, Mar- on, a heretic, who affirmed that there was in Jesus but one will or operation. The Christians of the Lebanon, dupes of this diabolical error of jVIaron, remained sepa- rate from the Church nearly five hundred years. At last, their hearts being turned, they made profession of the Catholic faith in presence of the venerable father Amaury, patriarch of Antioch, and adopted the tradi- tions oi' the IJoman Church." The most learned of the modern Maronites have left no method unemployed to defend their Church against this accusation ; they have labored to prove, by a variety of testimonies, that their ancestors always persevered in the Catholic faith, and in their attachment to the Koman jiontiff. witliout ever adopting the-doctrine of the !Monophysites or Monothe- lites (compare Churchill, Mount Lebanon, iii, 51). But all their efforts are insufficient to prove the truth of these assertions, and the testimonies they allege appear absolutely fictitious and destitute of authority.
There can be no doubt that the INIaronites were
MARONITES
V67
MARONITES