Part I
Part II
Translated from: Dom C.L. Spiessens, o.s.b., "Les patriarches d'Antioche et leur succession apostolique," Orient Syrien 7.4 (1962), 389-345 (in this post, pp. 419-434).
3. The Maronite
Patriarchate
The Maronites take their name from
the monastic community that formed around the tomb of Saint Maron, a Syrian
hermit of the 4th century.
This monastery was located between Homs and Hama, on the right bank of the
Orontes.
Anastasius II, “Melkite” patriarch
of Antioch, was murdered during a Jewish revolt in 609. He was the last
Chalcedonian patriarch resident in the capital of Oriens before the Persian
then Arab invasions. Thus from 609 until 743 (Stephen III), no Melkite
patriarch would reside in Antioch. When Heraclius had the Monothelete Macedonian
appointed in 639,
he resided in Constantinople, like his five immediate successors.
But there is no doubt that a number
of Christians of the Patriarchate of Antioch remained faithful to Chalcedon. If
we are to believe the Maronite historians, the faithful gathered around the
monks of the Monastery of Mar Maron, were of this number. That a bishop was
resident in this monastery is not impossible; it’s even quite probable. But
that it was this bishop who, as patriarch of Antioch, continued the apostolic
succession in Antioch in all faithfulness to the faith of Chalcedon down to our
own day without interruption is something difficult to show on the historical
level.
Around 636 there took place in
Mabbug the famous discussion between the Emperor Heraclius, the Jacobite
Patriarch Athanasius Gammolo and eleven bishops of the Patriarchate of Antioch.
The discussions, which were intended to reach unity between the different
communities, did not have positive results. But among the participants of these
discussions there was a delegation of monks from Mar Maron who pronounced
against Monophysitism and in favor of the imperial theology at that time,
Monotheletism. They accepted the Ekthesis and adhered to the doctrine that it
expressed.
One hundred years later, when the
“Melkites” had regained their footing in Antioch, we find these same monks of
Mar Maron debating in Aleppo with followers of Saint Maximus the Confessor
(726), then persecuted in their monastery and in the city of Mabbug by the
“Melkite” Patriarch Theophylactus bar Qanbara (745-768?).
It would be truly astonishing if
they were persecuted by a Chalcedonian patriarch (since Byzantium had once more
become Chalcedonian) if they themselves had been partisans of this council.
Fifty years later, during the persecution of Christians under al-Ma’mun (814),
Maronites fled to Cyprus and Lebanon.
With regard to doctrine, everyone
apart from the Maronites is in agreement that the “Maronites”—monks of Dayr Mar
Maron—were originally Monotheletes. The faithful gathered around them
necessarily also were. The testimony of William of Tyre
cannot be rejected: in 1182, the Maronite Patriarch Peter renounced the
Monothelete heresy to which his church had consciously or unconsciously adhered
and united with the Church of Rome. The Maronites of Cyprus, however, did not
adhere to the Roman faith until three centuries later, in 1445.
With regard to the formation of the
Maronite Church as an independent church, it is more difficult to clear the
terrain. The Maronites claim that their first patriarch was Saint John Maron,
the former bishop of Batroun (Botrys) in Lebanon, who is said to have succeeded
the Chalcedonian patriarchs on the See of Peter in Antioch.
These claims are historically
untenable. J. B. Chabot, defending the theses of Renaudot, demonstrates this
very clearly by analyzing the facts available to us.
The figure of John Maron belongs to a legend created in the 15th
century on Cyprus. The works that have been attributed to him are forgeries or
works of plagiarism “produced in the 17th century by Abraham
Echellensis.”
The beginnings of the Maronite
Church as a church are most likely to be found in that group of Monothelete
Christians of Beit Maron who, during the persecutions of al-Ma’mun or his
successors, retreated to the mountains of Lebanon where, thanks to the former
Mardaite forces, they were able to obtain a certain measure of tranquility and
where they were able to organize themselves on the religious and political
levels, the latter in any case arising from their religious centralization.
It is surprising to see the
political influence that these patriarchs would have over their flock. They are
the veritable chiefs of their people. As soon as we see them act – in documents
from the era of the Crusades as well as subsequently—they act like the true
representatives of an entire Maronite “nation” and this will continue down to
the most recent events.
More surprising still, even the
bishops of the Maronite community act only as vicars of the patriarch. We
think it is possible to affirm that it was instructions from Rome, perhaps
unfamiliar with the particular character of the patriarchal jurisdiction of the
Maronites, which, in the 18th century, put an end to that vicarial
understanding of the Maronite episcopate. To a dubium
submitted to the Propaganda Fide in 1774, asking “If it is licit for the
Patriarch to require his brother Bishops to take from him certificates of their
faculties when they go to make visits to their dioceses, especially to say that
he sends them to visit such dioceses in his name and stead, as though they were
his procurators or mercenaries…” The Congregation responded on July 8, 1774:
“Bishops are not required to receive from the Patriarch certificates to visit
dioceses when this is done by them by ordinary law.”
To another dubium
dealing with the patriarch’s power to prevent bishops from exercising their
jurisdiction and also dealing with his faculties to judge alone, without a
synod, all questions, the Propaganda responds: “It is not licit for the
Patriarch to deprive Bishops of their dioceses nor to remove their jurisdiction
at all, without consulting the Synod of bishops.”
Starting at that moment, the
Maronite patriarch would be subject to the disciplinary laws in force in the
universal Church.
Whatever that patriarchal
jurisdiction might be, the “Maronite nation”, wherever it may be, only knows
one leader: the patriarch of the nation. It is indeed a nation, having become
more and more independent out of opposition to the Jacobite and Chalcedonian
Churches and the Muslim oppressor, acting as such and giving itself as such a
“Patriarchate of Antioch”. Of Antioch solely because that was the manner in
which the patriarch styled himself, without anyone seeing clearly—before the 15th
century—what this implied in terms of the succession of Peter in Antioch.
In 1121 we see a certain “Mar
Petrus, patriarch of the Maronites”.
In 1141, another who signs his name “I, Peter, patriarch of the Maronites, by
my name Jacob”.
It is only a century later that the patriarchs of the Maronites started to
style themselves “patriarchs of Antioch” under the influence, we believe, of
the Latin patriarchs. It is beginning in this period that the idea of the
Maronites having their own succession from Saint Peter took root.
The fact that all the known Maronite
patriarchs are also called Peter does not convince us of the contrary. When the
Church of Persia formed as an independent church, the Councils of
Seleucia-Ctesiphon (410 and 424) decided in a parallel manner that the
patriarch that they gave themselves “is for us Peter, leader of our
ecclesiastical assembly.”
There as well the bishops had a jurisdiction delegated by the metropolitans or
the patriarch: “The gift of the priesthood has been granted to all the
apostles, but sole principality—that is, spiritual fatherhood—has not been
given to all; for one sole true God, there is also only one sole faithful
steward, who is the chief, the director and the procurator of his brothers.”
This sentiment of total dependence
on the patriarch can be understood even better among the Maronites if we take
into account the monastic origins of that church.
Whatever the case may be, nothing
permits us to connect the Maronite patriarchs to the line of patriarchs of
Antioch properly speaking. It is among the Chalcedonians that this line would
continue. The Maronite patriarchs are leaders, “patriarchs” of a church that
had become independent as a result of its expulsion from its territory of
origin. Little by little, under the influence of the Latin patriarchs of the
Crusaders, there appeared the conviction that they were “patriarchs of
Antioch”. But absolutely nothing connects them to the true Chalcedonian
patriarchs of Antioch apart from the faith, recovered in its purity thanks to
the Crusaders, and the episcopal consecration which makes them brothers in the
same sacramental order.
Moreover, in 1636 Rome had to decide
on the question at the moment of the consecration of Patriarch George Umayrah:
“Whether he should be named ‘of Antioch’ as he was elected and others of his
predecessors were accustomed to being called, and it pleases the Fathers that
he be named ‘Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites’ because the Patriarch of
the Maronites is a national leader, like the two other Patriarchs of Antioch in
Asia of the nations of the Nestorians (!) and the Jacobites who, having fallen
into heresy, had separated themselves from the Holy Roman Church, while the
general one, as he claims to be, is the patriarch of the Greeks, who resides in
Damascus, where after the destruction of Antioch the patriarchal see of Antioch
is said to have moved.”
Despite the mistakes of every sort,
the text is clear and it completely reinforces our conclusions.
The current Maronite patriarch is
His Beatitude Mgr Paul-Peter Méouchi, appointed by Rome in 1955.
Since this Roman document prompts us
to it, let us turn now to the Greek patriarchate.
4. The Melkite
Catholic Patriarchate
Following chronological order, we
have arrived at the Byzantine-rite patriarchates, the Melkite patriarchates,
Orthodox and Catholic.
Since we are only attempting to
study the patriarchal elections insomuch as they risk falsifying the true
succession of Peter in Antioch, it is not necessary to review the election of
each of the Greek patriarchs, since there is nothing that would permit us to
doubt that the succession was regular up until the division in two that we shall
now discuss.
Neither is it necessary to insist at length on
all the attempts at union which, especially starting in the second half of the
16th century, had been made in Syria. It is through the activities
of the Latin missionaries (Capuchins, Jesuits, Franciscans, Carmelites) and
through those of Byzantine Rite priests, often former students of the Roman
colleges, that this activity would take place.
Cyril V had ascended, for the second
time, to the patriarchal throne of Antioch around 1682, this time legitimately.
But, from the beginning, the patriarch found himself in difficulties on account
of opposition from the hieromonk Procopius Dabbas who, assisted by the
relations he had with the Sublime Porte, and likewise encouraged by the
Franciscans of Damascus, had himself proclaimed patriarch under the name
Athanasius III. He was consecrated by three bishops and installed on July 5,
1685. The Franciscans of Damascus worked to have him recognized by Rome, which
was done by a decree from the Propaganda Fide on June 16, 1687. Despite the
illegitimacy of his accession to the patriarchal throne, Rome thus confirmed
Athanasius III. But, in 1694, Athanasius III submitted to Cyril V, pressed as
he was by financial debts that he could not escape on his own. Pope Innocent
XII did not want to hear of a resignation and incited Athanasius Dabbas to
continue his opposition to Cyril V, misled by God knows what reports. Moreover,
things would soon get even worse, as in 1716 Cyril V himself sent his
profession of Catholic faith to Rome, through Seraphim Tanas, a student of the
College of the Propaganda in Rome. It was quite an embarrassment in Rome to
have these two “patriarchs”, both Catholics.
After many hesitations, the
Propaganda tried, in 1718, to convince Athanasius III to renounce his “rights”,
but this time it was Athanasius who would hear none of it. Pushed to the limit,
the Congregation of the Propaganda wound up recognizing, by a decree of May 9,
1718, Cyril V as the sole legitimate patriarch of Antioch. This was, in effect,
the only possible legitimate solution. One wonders in vain why Rome acted so
differently in these two situations.
On January 16, 1720, Cyril V died
and, this time legitimately, Athanasius III Dabbas succeeded him, appointed by
the patriarch of Constantinople, Jeremias III, after an election by the Synodos
endimousa.
Athanasius III, who at first had
called himself Catholic, signed in 1722 the encyclical of the non-Catholic
eastern patriarchs against Catholic claims to purity of faith. Thus Athanasius
spent his entire life in total equivocation. He died on July 24, 1724 in
Aleppo, having made at the hands of the ablegate Gabriel Eva a Catholic profession
of faith and submission to the decisions of the Council of Florence: “He
answered me sincerely,” wrote Eva, “that this (the faith of the Holy Council of
Florence) had always been and shall be my faith… Hearing such a promise from
him, I gave him absolution for all the excommunications, censures and interdicts
into which he had fallen…”
At his death, the Catholics of the
Byzantine Rite decided that the moment had come to hit hard and provide the
Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch with a titulary proven in the Catholic faith. There
were already a good number of Catholics among the faithful of the patriarchate,
they even had Catholic priests and had had some Catholic bishops. But the
Catholic population was nevertheless the minority. To wait for the meeting of
the Holy Synod which, necessarily, had to meet under the presidency of the
metropolitan of Tyre, Ignatius Beiruti, seemed dangerous to them, since the
Catholicizing tendencies of that bishop were anything but promising. It was nevertheless
the only possible way to arrive at a canonical election within the patriarchate
itself. With the other possibility—referring the election to the Synodos
endemousa of Constantinople—one was sure of winding up with the nomination
of an Orthodox candidate.
The group of Damascene faithful of
the Byzantine Rite and Catholic faith (328 persons) proposed as candidate for
the patriarchate the priest Seraphim Tanas and addressed a petition to the
pasha of Damascus, asing him to obtain a firman from the sultan of
Constantinople.
Seraphim Tanas was the nephew of the
Melkite Catholic bishop Euthymius Sayfi and was very dedicated, just like his
uncle, to the cause of union with the Roman Church. He was thus elected
patriarch by that Catholic community of Damascus and enthroned under the name Cyril
VI on October 1, 1724.
We only wish to raise the precedent
of one similar election. On September 14, 1451 the bishop of Saydnaya, Mark,
was elected to the patriarchal see by the community of Damascus alone. He
became Patriarch Michael III. But his election was subsequently confirmed by
the Holy Synod of the bishops of Antioch, which saved the election’s
canonicity. The real canonical election took place here by the Holy Synod’s
confirmation of the choice of the people of Damascus.
It went
entirely differently in the election of Seraphim Tanas. There was no bishop
present at the election. There was not even a convocation of the Synod. The
ecclesiastical canons, however, were formal: “It is by all means proper
that a bishop should be appointed by all the bishops in the province; but
should this be difficult, either on account of urgent necessity or because of
distance, three at least should meet together, and the suffrages of the absent
[bishops] also being given and communicated in writing, then the ordination
should take place. But in every province the ratification of what is done
should be left to the Metropolitan (Canon 4 of Nicaea I). “A bishop shall
not be ordained without a synod and the presence of the metropolitan of the
province...” (Canon 19 of Antioch). “… a bishop must not be appointed otherwise than by a synod and
with the judgment of the bishops...” (Canon 23 of Antioch). The law
of the eastern churches was very clear on this point. The election of Cyril is
thus null and illegitimate.
But there was more. Seraphim Tanas
was only a simple priest at the moment of his election. He had to be
consecrated and this consecration would further aggravate his case. An appeal
was made to the bishops, who refused to consecrate him just as they had refused
to recognize him. Only one showed up in Damascus, the bishop of Saydnaya,
Neophytus Nasri. The Damascenes also had Basil Finan, a monk of Holy Savior who
was considered by the monks to be bishop of the monastery, come. Basil Finan
assisted Neophytus Nasri in consecrating the priest Euthymius Fadl as bishop of
Fourzol. Thus they had three bishops ready to confer episcopal consecration and
to enthrone Seraphim Tanas as “patriarch of the Greeks” under the name Cyril VI:
Neophytus Nasri, Basil Finan and Euthymius Fadl.
In fact, the episcopacy of Basil
Finan was anti-canonical. He had been consecrated as a bishop (February 2,
1724) under pressure exercised by the Emir Haydar on Metropolitan Neophytus of
Beirut (whom he had brought by force) and the latter was obliged to consecrate
Basil Finan without the consent of Patriarch Athanasius III and the Holy Synod.
As co-consecrators, they gave him the Maronite archbishop of Acre and the
Armenian archbishop of Aleppo, Abraham.
The
consecration of Euthymius Fadl (September 14, 1724) was equally anti-canonical
because it was done contrary to all the canons that have already been cited,
which require the presence of at least three bishops and the consent of the
patriarch (or metropolitan), as well as that of the bishops of the Synod. It
was also anti-canonical because it was done without the permission of the
bishop of the place where the consecration took place: “No bishop shall
presume to pass from one province to another, and ordain persons to the dignity
of the ministry in the Church, not even should he have others with him, unless
he should go at the written invitation of the metropolitan and bishops into
whose country he goes. But if he should, without invitation, proceed
irregularly to the ordination of any... the things done by him are null” (Canon
13 of Antioch). “If any one be made bishop without the consent of the
Metropolitan, the great Synod has declared that such a man ought not to be a
bishop” (Canon 6 of the First Council of Nicaea).
Is irregularity of the consecration,
together with the irregularity of the election, such that it renders one or the
other null and void? Or both? Broaching this question is the responsibility of
theologians and not of a historian. We shall leave to them the task of doing
it.
Had Rome judged that it would be
more prudent to obtain official recognition of Cyril VI from the Sublime Porte
before sending him its own confirmation? It remains the case that it requested
the berat of investiture in Constantinople without the new patriarch
being able to claim his titles or to enjoy the rights that they conferred upon
him. The Sublime Porte turned a deaf ear. Rome insisted and had important and
influential figures intervene. Constantinople continued to refuse. What is
more, it recalled the wali of Damascus who had obtained a firman
in favor of Cyril VI. Constantinople’s candidate had, in contrast, immediately
obtained the requested berat and-- O irony of fate!-- this gave him, among other rights, that of
cracking down and referring to the secular authorities all those who opposed
his free exercise of his rights and prerogatives. In these circumstances, Cyril
VI had no recourse but to leave Damascus. He did this in 1725 and took refuge
in Lebanon, where the very Catholic mountains always provided a sure shelter
for those Catholic leaders who were fleeing persecutions.
To what should this reticence on the
part of the Sublime Porte be attributed, when in other circumstances it had
shown itself to be prodigious with berats, sometimes granting them to
two or three different rival candidates? It is difficult to say. One could
suppose, however, that tsarist Russia, which had assumed the protectorate,
throughout the whole territory of the Ottoman Empire, of the Greek Orthodox and
which was all-powerful in Constantinople, could not willingly accept that a
Greek patriarchate united with Rome stand up against the Orthodox patriarchate
that practically depended on it and all the more so to see it oust and supplant
the latter.
The unfortunate Cyril VI does not
seem to have enjoyed much favor with the Holy See. If Rome requested his
confirmation from the Sublime Porte at the time of his election, it took more
than five years to grant its own. It was in fact only on April 25, 1730, at the
Melkite Catholic synod held at the Monastery of the Holy Savior, that Cyril VI
was proclaimed legitimate patriarch of Antioch by the mouth of the Capuchin
Dositheus of the Holy Trinity, mandated by Pope Benedict XIII. The very rev.
Father Dositheus read the decree from the Holy Congregation de Propaganda Fide
which said, “Nihil obstare validae et licitae consecrationi Cyrilli in
patriarchem antiochenem Graecorum.” “Nothing prevents the licit and valid
consecration of Cyril as patriarch of Antioch for the Greeks.”
This text leaves us a bit bleary. If
we consider that, in ecclesiastical terminology, taking possession of an episcopal
see is called “enthronement”, we cannot at all understand its use by Rome in
the above decree of the words “valid and licit consecration.” The formulation
gives the impression that Rome still doubts the validity of the previous
consecration given to Cyril in the circumstances that we have described and
authorizes a new consecration which, this time, would be valid. If our interpretation
is exact, we wonder when this new consecration had been given to Cyril VI. We
have not found any document that informs us on this point. It is probable that,
before being enthroned, Cyril VI received episcopal consecration “in the greatest
intimacy”.
One would have expected that, having
given her accord, Rome would have confirmed it by sending the pallium. It did
so, of course, but only after much delay. The unfortunate patriarch had to wait
fourteen long years before receiving this official confirmation of his
patriarchal dignity. It was, in fact, only on February 3, 1774 that the pallium
was sent to him, but beforehand the patriarch had to give his promise to eliminate
from his rite all the foreign infiltrations that had been adopted by different Greek
Melkite bishops and notably by Euthymius Sayfi.
Cyril VI Tanas begins the line of Melkite
Catholic patriarchs, which continues today in the person of His Beatitude Mgr
Maximus VI Sayegh.
5. The Orthodox
Melkite Patriarchate
We have already recounted above how,
at the death of Athanasius III Dabbas, they proceeded in Damascus to the
election of Cyril VI Tanas, first of the Melkite Catholic line of patriarchs.
But at the same time, the Holy Synod of Orthodox bishops (apart from Neophytus
Nasri), who were in Aleppo, where Athanasius III had convoked them before his
death, had written to the Ecumenical Patriarch, Jeremias III, to ask him to
nominate for Antioch Sylvester, a monk of Mount Athos.
This same Athanasius had, at the
same time, asked the bishops of Antioch to give him as successor this monk
Sylvester, who had been his protosyncellus. This proves once more the “Catholic”
sentiments of Athanasius III.
Patriarch Jeremias III and the bishops
of the Synodos endemousa had already named as Athanasius III’s successor
the metropolitan of Damascus, Joachim, but when in Constantinople they learned
of the desire of the late patriarch and of the Synod of bishops of Antioch, the
nomination of Joachim of Damascus was annulled and they asked that Sylvester be
sent from Mount Athos. He was consecrated as patriarch of Antioch on September
24, 1724.
They obtained for him the berat from the Sublime Porte, as well as the
order for the expulsion of Cyril VI.
This intervention by the Synodos
endemousa was in no way an innovation, as we have already pointed out. It
would take too long and be useless for the study that we have undertaken to
point out all the interventions by Constantinople in the affairs of Antioch
through the intermediary of the Synodos endemousa.
It is enough for us to say that,
canonically, there was nothing irregular about Sylvester’s election by this Synodos.
These interventions would continue in Antioch until after the election of
Hierotheus I (1850-1885). At that time they were put to an end, thanks
especially to the Russian influence on the Arab party of the patriarchate.
In our opinion, then, the Patriarch
Sylvester continued the true line of Chalcedonian patriarchs from before and
after the Severian schism, a line that was continued by both Greek and Syrian
elements, whether at Constantinople or in Antioch.
It is through him that Petrine succession
continues down to our own day in the person of His Beatitude Theodosius VI
Abourjeili. Even after Sylvester, the succession went through many vicissitudes.
We have studied the principle ones. The canonicity of the elections has always nevertheless
been preserved.
Conclusion
We have presented, as we proposed,
an account of the historical facts and the dogmatic or canonical reasons that
have caused there to be, even today, five patriarchs each claiming to be the
true holder of the patriarchal see of Antioch. For us, it is clear, as our
readers may have been convinced themselves, that only the Melkite Orthodox
patriarch can justify his claim to the succession of Saint Peter on this see.
One might perhaps accuse us of severity;
one might accuse us of using two weights and two measures; one might find that
we have been too intransigent towards the patriarchate of Severus of Antioch
and not sufficiently so when it comes to the patriarchate of Sylvester. Severus’
error in his definition of a single nature in Christ was merely, in the opinion
of all modern theologians, a purely verbal error, it being possible to consider
this definition to be more or less in line with that which was given by the
Council of Chalcedon, while the doctrine professed by the Greek Orthodox patriarchs
is, on certain points of dogma, in opposition to that of the Catholic Church.
If then, despite these oppositions, we consider His Beatitude Theodosius VI
Abourjeili as continuing the succession of Peter, we should all the more so consider
Severus of Antioch as successor of Peter, even after his schism.
Certainly, the argument would be of
value if one only had to consider doctrine in patriarchal succession. But we
have not forgotten that Severus of Antioch had been canonically deposed, a
deposition that put an end to his apostolic succession, while none of the Greek
Orthodox patriarchs of Antioch, whose successors are Sylvester and Theodosius
VI, were the object of an excommunication or a deposition.
Whatever the case may be, we have
done the work of a historian and not of a theologian. If we have given our
personal opinion, we believe that it is justified by History. The reader, and
particularly the theologian, will deduce from the facts that we have presented
the conclusions that they believe ensue from them.
C. L.
Spiessens, o.s.b.
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