Maronite church, one of the largest Eastern rite churches, prominent especially in modern Lebanon. The church is in canonical communion with the Roman Catholic Church and is the only Eastern rite church that has no counterpart outside that union. The Maronites trace their origins to St. Maron, or Maro (Arabic: Mārūn), a Syrian hermit of the late 4th and early 5th centuries, and St. John Maron, or Joannes Maro (Arabic: Yūḥannā Mārūn), patriarch of Antioch in 685–707, under whose leadership the invading Byzantine armies of Justinian II were routed in 684, making the Maronites a fully independent people.
Some historians have suggested that the Maronites were once monothelites, followers of a heterodox doctrine that affirmed that there was a divine but no human will in Christ. Maronites, however, assert that they were always orthodox Christians in union with the Roman see, noting a lack of evidence that the Maronite church had ever affirmed this teaching. Whatever the case, the history of the Maronites remains obscure up until the period of the Crusades, and the isolated community had not been in contact with Rome before the Crusaders arrived. According to the medieval bishop William of Tyre, the Maronite patriarch sought union with the Latin patriarch of Antioch in 1182. A definitive consolidation of the union, however, did not come until the 16th century, brought about largely through the work of the Jesuit John Eliano. In 1584 Pope Gregory XIII founded the Maronite College in Rome, which flourished under Jesuit administration into the 20th century and became a training centre for scholars and leaders.
Hardy martial mountaineers, the Maronites valiantly preserved their liberty and folkways. The Muslim caliphate (632–1258) could not absorb them, and two caliphs of the Umayyad dynasty (661–750) paid them tribute. Under the rule of the Ottoman Turks, the Maronites maintained their religion and customs under the protection of France, largely because of their geographic isolation. In the 19th century, however, the Ottoman government incited a neighbouring mountain people of Lebanon, the Druzes, against the Maronites, a policy that culminated in the great Maronite massacre of 1860. As a result of this incident, the Maronites achieved formal autonomy within the Ottoman Empire under a nonnative Christian ruler. In 1920, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Maronites of Lebanon became self-ruling under French protection. Since the establishment of a fully independent Lebanon in 1943, they have constituted one of the major religious groups in the country. The government is run by a coalition of Christian, Muslim, and Druze parties, but the president is always Maronite (see Lebanese National Pact).
The immediate spiritual head of the Maronite church after the pope is the “patriarch of Antioch and all the East,” residing in Bikirkī, near Beirut. The church retains the ancient West Syrian liturgy, often delivered in Syriac even though the vernacular tongue of the modern Maronites is Arabic. Contact with Rome has been close and cordial, but it was not until after the Second Vatican Council that the Maronites were freed of papal efforts to Latinize their rite. French Jesuits conducted the University of St. Joseph, at Beirut.
Maronites are also found in southern Europe and North and South America, having emigrated under the pressure of economic instability and periods of violence since the late 19th century. The émigrés keep their own liturgy and have their own clergy, some of whom are married.