THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
last at Groningen, 1862) and was translated into most European languages (Eng. transl. by G. Gilpin, London, 1579). After his death appeared his Traicte du sacrament de la saincte cene du Seigneur (Leyden, 1599), an intensely Calvinistic attack on the doctrine of the Mass. He also carried on a controversial correspondence on the same subject with the Louvain professor Michael Bajus, which he published under the title Opuscula qumdam Domini Sanct Aldegondii (Franeker, 1598); while in his Trouive vermaninge aen de christlike Gemeynten van Brabant, Vlanderen, enz. (Leyden, 1589) he urged his coreligionists to be patient under their afflictions. There is no complete edition of the works of Marnix, but select works were edited by E. Quinet, CEuvres de P de Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde (9 vols., Brussels, 1857-60), while his theological writings were collected by J. J. van Toorenenbergen, Philips van Marnix van St. Aldegonde godsdienstige en kerkelijke geschriften (3 parts, The Hague, 1871-91). (S. D. van Veen.)
Bibliography: The life of Marnix has been written by: J. Prins, Leyden, 1782; W. Broes, 3 vols., Amsterdam, 1838-40; E. Quinet, Paris, 1854; T. Juste, The Hague, 1858; A. Lacroix and F. van Meenen, Brussels, 1858; J. van der Have, Haarlem, 1874; P. P. M. Alberdingk Thijm, Leuven, 1876; and G. Tjalma, Amsterdam, 1896. Consult also: P. Fredericq, Marnix en zijne N ederlandsche geschriften, Ghent, 1881; Cambridge Modern History, iii. 201 sqq., New York, 1905; A. Elkan, Philipp Marnix von St. Aldegonde, Parti., Die Jugend Johanns und Philipps von Marnix, Leipsic, 1909.
MARONITES.
Character and Claims (§ 1).
Origin of the Name. Early Accounts (§ 2).
The First Patriarch, Johannes Maron (§ 3).
Relation to Monothelitism and Monophysitism (§ 4).
Relations with Rome (§ 5).
Modern Conditions (§ 6).
In the United States (§ 7).
The Maronites are a Syrian people, forming within the Christian Church a peculiar half-independent
community or sect. Its members live
i. Charac- scattered all over Syria; congregations
ter and are gathered in Aleppo, Damascus,
Claims. Nazareth, and the Island of Cyprus;
but the proper home of the community is the Lebanon region, from Tripoli in the north, to Tyre and the Lake of Gennesaret in the south. The districts of Kesrawan, n.e. of Beirut, and Bsherre (26 m. s.e. of Tripoli) are inhabited exclusively by Maronites; while in other places Maronites, Greeks, Jacobites, Druses, and others live as neighbors. The total number of the Maronite inhabitants of Lebanon is somewhat over 200,000, according to the newest reports. They pursue agriculture and cattle-breeding, and succeed well in the cultivation of the silk-worm. Their native tongue has for centuries been the Arabic, but they are of Syrian descent. The liturgy employed in their divine service is in Syriac, though only a few understand that language; the readings from the Gospels, however, are in Arabic. They like to consider themselves a distinct nation; and they have, indeed, always succeeded in maintaining a certain measure of political independence. They are governed by sheiks, elected from among
their own nobility; and to the Ottoman sultan, who appoints a Christian pasha over them, they pay a variable tribute. At the head of their church (the Ecclesia Maronitarum) stands a patriarch, who is elected by themselves and has the title of patriarch of Antioch and all the East. He is elected by a two-thirds' vote of the archbishops and bishops. He resides during summer in the monastery Kanobin, in the Lebanon, and during winter at Bkerki. He receives confirmation from the pope; for from the latter part of the twelfth century there has existed a relationship between the see of Rome and the Maronites. Although this relationship depends more upon an external basis and upon adjustments made from time to time, and though real unity in doctrine or worship has never existed, the claim of later Maronite authors is often to the effect that from apostolic times their church has maintained an undisturbed orthodoxy, essentially that of the Roman Catholic Church. Authors who have written in this strain are Abraham Ecchellensis (q.v.) and Faustus Nairon, in Dissertatio de origine, nomine ac religione Maronitarum (Rome, 1679). These writers follow somewhat closely a few Roman Catholic writers, though there have been manifest traces of monothelite tendencies.
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 cedificiis,v., ix.), and was the most prominent among the Syrian monasteries. The Maron after whom the monastery 2. Origin was named is generally considered of the Name, identical with the hermit whose life Early Theodoret has described (Religiosa Accounts, 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 Deii- 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