Why Maronites became Catholics at the 16th century?

[MorEphrem]

What kind of logic is this?

Also, tell that to St. Jacob of Serug, a most non-Chalcedonian saint they venerate…

THANK YOU! I have never gotten a decent response, from Maronite bishop or professor, regarding the fact as to why if we were truly Diophysite since 451 like the revisionist narrative says how come half of our liturgical texts are attributed to one ‘Mor Yaqoob dSarug,’ not to mention prayers that mention Mor Ephrem, Harp of the Holy Spirit, and Mor Yaqoob, Flute of the Holy Spirit, on par - not to mention the simple prefix of ‘Mor’.

And the entire inception of the Assyrian Church is because of the area’s geographic separation from Antioch. The Syriacs were simply on the Roman side and the Assyrians on the Persian side - it wouldn’t have made sense to have them under a joint hierarch because communication would have been difficult because of the prolonged Roman-Persian feuding. No need to try to unite the Assyrians to Antioch using ahistorical claims.

 

[malphono]

And the entire inception of the Assyrian Church is because of the area’s geographic separation from Antioch. The Syriacs were simply on the Roman side and the Assyrians on the Persian side - it wouldn’t have made sense to have them under a joint hierarch because communication would have been difficult because of the prolonged Roman-Persian feuding. No need to try to unite the Assyrians to Antioch using ahistorical claims.

And not to forget the patrimony of Edessa shared by both the Eastern & Western Syriac Churches.

 

[Wandile]

What kind of logic is this?

Also, tell that to St. Jacob of Serug, a most non-Chalcedonian saint they venerate…

Logic is this : Antioch was one church. Then Chalcedon happened and it was split into two parties. Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians. The maronites belonged to the former. Then after some other issue they broke away from the Chalcedonian Antiochan church and ordained their first patriarch of Antioch. Their heritage is Chalcedonian and the Chalcedonian Patriarchal line exists legitimately in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church after Patriarch Cyril VI Tannas and the majority of the Antiochans chose to become catholic. The Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias appointed Sylvester of Antioch (1696–1766) as a rival Greek patriarch (From which the modern Antiochan Orthodox Church descends) after Jeremias declared Cyril’s election to be invalid and excommunicated him.

The veneration of non-Chalcedonians is just that, veneration. Even the Latin church recognizes non-Chalcedonian saints as well as other saints from controversial groups so you really have no point

At the end of the day I don’t believe the maronites belong to any mother church. They seem to be (with all due respect) a religious order or monastic group of people initially that followed the way of St.Marun who had clergy among them and enabled them to elect their own bishops, then later their own Patriarch St. John Matron and practically become their own church. Btw I love the maronites .There is a parish my father attends regularly on Sundays after attending mass at our local church. I have friends who are maronites too.

 

[SyroMalankara]

I suppose it’s a matter of which era would you claim.

The Assyrian Church was under Antioch when Antioch was See to ALL THE EAST. This lasted until the 3rd Ecumenical Council, which was rejected by the majority of the Assyrian Church. The very few who remained with Antioch were appointed a Maphrian by the Syriac Patriarch, but the influence of the Syriac Maphrian varied and political issues prevented anything but intermittent communication.

The Assyrians who rejected the 3rd EC eventually came to see their Catholicos as Patriarch and were virtually independent of any outside authority.

 

[dzheremi]

THANK YOU! I have never gotten a decent response, from Maronite bishop or professor, regarding the fact as to why if we were truly Diophysite since 451 like the revisionist narrative says how come half of our liturgical texts are attributed to one ‘Mor Yaqoob dSarug,’ not to mention prayers that mention Mor Ephrem, Harp of the Holy Spirit, and Mor Yaqoob, Flute of the Holy Spirit, on par - not to mention the simple prefix of ‘Mor’.

And the entire inception of the Assyrian Church is because of the area’s geographic separation from Antioch. The Syriacs were simply on the Roman side and the Assyrians on the Persian side - it wouldn’t have made sense to have them under a joint hierarch because communication would have been difficult because of the prolonged Roman-Persian feuding. No need to try to unite the Assyrians to Antioch using ahistorical claims.

It should also be pointed out, in case anyone doesn’t know, that both “sides” had dioceses or at least parishes in the others’ territory. There’s even a section on Wikipedia dealing with the dioceses of the Syriac Orthodox Church within Persia and Central Asia, areas which are usually considered in at least Chalcedonian-authored histories to be ACoE territory. And we know that there must’ve been Assyrians organized in some manner as far west as Palestine because they are mentioned by name as a distinct group (well, as “Nestorians” in the translation I have) in some of the sayings of the Desert Fathers who lived in that region.

History is nowhere near as clear cut as our friend Wandile and apparently many Maronites would assume based on currently-recognized canonical boundaries or traditions.

 

[dzheremi]

Logic is this : Antioch was one church. Then Chalcedon happened and it was split into two parties. Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians. The maronites belonged to the former. Then after some other issue they broke away from the Chalcedonian Antiochan church and ordained their first patriarch of Antioch.

What other issue? Aren’t they still a Chalcedonian Antiochian church? Why, in a thread about Maronites, do you seem to be defaulting to the Byzantine supremacist whitewashing (er…Greek-washing?) version of history? Ooof…dealing with Chalcedonians tires me out sometimes…I don’t understand why you’re approaching this matter in this fashion.

Their heritage is Chalcedonian

Yeah, except for all the parts that aren’t, as per MorEphrem’s very informative post (I wasn’t about to guess at how much; I had read here before that their baptismal text is attributed to Mor Jacob, but 50%? Wow!). It’s not even like in the OO communion, where several of our churches venerate Mor Ishaq of Nineveh but that’s an exception to the rule of treating the ACoE as verboten…you can’t have a 50% exception and still claim with a straight face that the Maronites’ heritage is Chalcedonian (whatever that means…that’s a weird phrase; as a Coptic Orthodox person, the heritage of my church is in Alexandria, its hermeneutic and related traditions, etc. Saying that our heritage is “non-Chalcedonian” makes it sound like Alexandria exists due to enmity to Chalcedon, and I have no interest in validating that partisan viewpoint).

and the Chalcedonian Patriarchal line exists legitimately in the Melkite Greek Catholic Church after Patriarch Cyril VI Tannas and the majority of the Antiochans chose to become catholic. The Ecumenical Patriarch Jeremias appointed Sylvester of Antioch (1696–1766) as a rival Greek patriarch (From which the modern Antiochan Orthodox Church descends) after Jeremias declared Cyril’s election to be invalid and excommunicated him.

Yeah, and all of this was how many centuries after the Maronites ordained their first bishop (itself long after Chalcedon)? I don’t think you understand my objections. Your way of looking at history is entirely anachronistic and flagrantly polemical.

The veneration of non-Chalcedonians is just that, veneration. Even the Latin church recognizes non-Chalcedonian saints as well as other saints from controversial groups so you really have no point

Hahaha. Whatever you say. Does the Latin Church even have a Synaxarium that anyone’s read in the last 1,000 years or so? I don’t know what kind of point you think you’re making, but it’s not getting anywhere with me.

At the end of the day I don’t believe the maronites belong to any mother church. They seem to be (with all due respect) a religious order or monastic group of people initially that followed the way of St.Marun who had clergy among them and enabled them to elect their own bishops, then later their own Patriarch St. John Matron and practically become their own church. Btw I love the maronites .There is a parish my father attends regularly on Sundays after attending mass at our local church. I have friends who are maronites too.

That’s good. I don’t really see what this has to do with your claim that the Maronites would somehow be the children of the Melkite Church if any (granted, they were probably classed as “Malkoyo” way back in the day, if they really were dyophysite, but that didn’t mean what it means today; the Greeks and those of their party in Alexandria were known similarly, and you can even find some relatively recent references from within the COC that still use that same terminology; to the OO, you are all one church, and it was really only since the rapprochement of the Byzantines and the OO starting informally in the 1960s that our communion as a whole began to recognize the distinctions that seem so natural to the imperial Christians such as yourself. Meh).

 

[ronyodish]

What does the dotted line marked “Cappadocian influence” mean in that chart of churches, Rony? The placement of the Armenian Church seems a little weird there, as they originally worshiped in Syriac (even today, there are lots of words, particularly of religious import, in Armenian that come from Syriac), yet they are above (earlier?) the line marked “Cappadocian and Syrian influence”, which for some reason only flows to the Byzantines. Also to have them completely unconnected to the Persian Empire is wrong, too. It was because of reports from Orthodox (Armenian) Christians within Persia that the Armenian Church eventually came to reject Chalcedon as incompatible with the Orthodox faith, and there have been many, many Armenians in what is today Persia/Iran since even before the Christianization of their people. Before they were Christians, some of the Armenians even practiced Mithraism and Zoroastrianism in common with the Persians. And if the spacing is meant to emphasize relative time-depth, why on earth are the Maronites at equal level with the Ethiopian Orthodox? Mar Maroun himself died in 410 AD, and the first Maronite bishop was not even consecrated until the 7th century (Wikipedia says 676, but I haven’t found independent confirmation of that anywhere). Meanwhile, Christianity was established at the time of King Ezana of Axum circa 324 AD, and (just for the sake of comparison) by the latter half of the 7th century, when the Maronites were getting their first bishop, St. Yared, the author of the Ethiopian hymnody still used today in the Kidase of the EOTC, had been dead for over 100 years.

I know it’s just a quick overview, but things like this make it less useful than it could be.

dzheremi,

I’m afraid your questions would have to be answered by the the creator of that chart, Fr. Petras, if he were a member of this forum and reading this thread…

My only concern in providing that chart is that I agree with the way my Assyrian-Chaldean tradition was handled, in contrast to some other charts which posit the Antiochene perspective, that is, the perspective which says that the Church of the East branched out as a daughter Church from mother Antioch.

We simply do not subscribe to this Antiochene perspective.

God bless,

Rony

 

[pelinho]

Which argues made the Maronite Church submit to the Roman Pope at the 16th century (and became “Catholic”) ?
Are they truly religious ? Or Economical ? Strategic ? Defensive ?

They became like this because they couldn’t live alone. They wanted help from the Great Powers because they couldn’t live peacefully with Muslims and they needed protection.

 

[Vico]

What does the dotted line marked “Cappadocian influence” mean in that chart of churches, Rony? The placement of the Armenian Church seems a little weird there, as they originally worshiped in Syriac (even today, there are lots of words, particularly of religious import, in Armenian that come from Syriac), yet they are above (earlier?) the line marked “Cappadocian and Syrian influence”, which for some reason only flows to the Byzantines. Also to have them completely unconnected to the Persian Empire is wrong, too. It was because of reports from Orthodox (Armenian) Christians within Persia that the Armenian Church eventually came to reject Chalcedon as incompatible with the Orthodox faith, and there have been many, many Armenians in what is today Persia/Iran since even before the Christianization of their people. Before they were Christians, some of the Armenians even practiced Mithraism and Zoroastrianism in common with the Persians. And if the spacing is meant to emphasize relative time-depth, why on earth are the Maronites at equal level with the Ethiopian Orthodox? Mar Maroun himself died in 410 AD, and the first Maronite bishop was not even consecrated until the 7th century (Wikipedia says 676, but I haven’t found independent confirmation of that anywhere). Meanwhile, Christianity was established at the time of King Ezana of Axum circa 324 AD, and (just for the sake of comparison) by the latter half of the 7th century, when the Maronites were getting their first bishop, St. Yared, the author of the Ethiopian hymnody still used today in the Kidase of the EOTC, had been dead for over 100 years.

I know it’s just a quick overview, but things like this make it less useful than it could be.

The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity, edited by Ken Parry, p. 339 has:The non-Chalcedonian Churches divide into two distinct theological groupings. … However, in terms of liturgical traditions and their interrelationship, the alignments are rather different. The Syriac speaking churches – Syrian Orthodox, Church of the East, and the Chalcedonian Maronite Church – once shared a common theological literature and liturgical ordos or structures. … The Armenian Church was influenced first by Greek-speaking and Syriac-speaking missionaries, then by Byzantium, and also by Rome, and these influences are reflected in its liturgical traditions.

 

[dzheremi]

Thank you, but that does not answer my questions, Vico. However, at the time of writing them I did not know that the only reason that Rony had chosen that particular chart is that it agrees with the view that the ACoE and its daughter churches arose from within the Persian Empire, rather than being descended from Antioch (which I suppose answers the question about why “Persian empire” forms its own node in the chart), so it doesn’t much matter anyway. It’s good for what he is using it for, even if I think it is suspect overall.

 

[Vico]

Thank you, but that does not answer my questions, Vico. However, at the time of writing them I did not know that the only reason that Rony had chosen that particular chart is that it agrees with the view that the ACoE and its daughter churches arose from within the Persian Empire, rather than being descended from Antioch (which I suppose answers the question about why “Persian empire” forms its own node in the chart), so it doesn’t much matter anyway. It’s good for what he is using it for, even if I think it is suspect overall.

At one time it was thought that the Syriac liturgies came from a common Antiochian tradition forking east and west with the Maronite being of the western fork. More recent scholarship (1973) revised that view such that east Syrian was based in Edessa rather than Antioch and the the Maronite tradition is a blend from Antioch and Edessa. The Antioch liturgies being Greek and the liturgies of the outlying areas being Syriac. There is evidence of differences in the rites of initiation between the Greek and Syriac that support this.