ANTONIANI MARONITI ALEPPINI e BALADITI. — In 1694 three young Maronites from Aleppo, Gabriele Eva, Abdullah Qara'ali, and Giuseppe al-Bàtni, asked the patriarch for permission to found a religious Order. Lebanon, as always previously, was then scattered with monasteries a. acelali. Having obtained the monastery of S. Maura, the three young men restored it in order to live there. In 1695 the patriarch imposed on them the cowl and habit, and a year later the monastery of S. Eliseo was given to them. In the meantime they had compiled the rules and constitutions, drawing them from Eastern and Western books, as Qara'ali and G. Assemani state in the letter prefixed to the book of rules. On 10 October 1698 the first chapter was held, and Fr. Eva was elected superior general.
However, disagreement soon arose concerning the purpose of the Order, that is, whether it was intended for the active or the contemplative life. Eva, together with two monks, supported the former, while the others supported the latter. The chapter was therefore held ahead of time, and Qara'ali was elected superior general. Eva lived for several months with the dissenters at S. Maura and then departed for Rome in 1701, where, after some years, Clement XI entrusted him with the church of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, building beside it a house to serve as a hospice and college for the monks. They did not, however, take definitive possession of it until 1724, by order of the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide. On 18 June 1700 the patriarch ad-Duwaihi approved the rule, and the monks pronounced the three solemn vows, to which in 1705 they added that of humility, adopting its form from the Discalced Carmelites. In 1706 they changed the name of the Aleppine Order to that of the Lebanese Order, and the patriarch G. Auwad approved the rule with the additions that had meanwhile been made to it; but only on 31 March 1731 did Clement XII approve, by the brief Apostolatus, the same rules and constitutions, already considerably enlarged by G. Assemani, as appears from writings of his published by L. Blaibel; and in 1735 they were published in Rome, in Arabic and Latin. The same Clement XII, in 1732, approved, by the brief In supremo, the rules for the college of SS. Pietro e Marcellino, which in 1735 was transferred to piazza S. Pietro in Vincoli. (v. Benedict XIV, Iniumetum, of 7 October 1744, and Apostolatus, of 7 November 1745).
The missionary activity of the Order, from its beginnings, was sanctioned in the aforementioned briefs and in the letter that Msgr. Assemani, as the Pope’s delegate, addressed to the monks in 1736, and today it is fully operative. Serious conflicts soon began to spread between the Lebanese and the natives of Aleppo, conflicts that finally became evident in 1744 when the former appealed to the patriarch. The Lebanese, particularly irritated by those — and they were not few — who before entering the Order had not been Maronites, persisted in living separately even after the prohibition of Benedict XIV (Supremum, 17 May 1757), until Clement XIV (Ex iniuncto, 19 July 1770) confirmed the division into the Aleppine Antonian congregation and the Baladite Antonian congregation (indigenous). The Aleppines founded a mission in Damietta in 1745, where at first they assisted the faithful of all rites. Subsequently they undertook the care of the Maronites throughout Egypt, except Alexandria, and in Sudan.
According to the Statistics published in 1932 by the S. Congregation for the Oriental Churches, the Aleppine congregation has 132 monks, 10 monasteries, 14 residences or hospices (including a college in Rome and a parish in Montevideo), and one hermitage, while the Baladites, who spread only in Lebanon,
have 645 monks (including some hermits), 31 monasteries, 25 residences or hospices (one of them in Cyprus), and a college in Beirut. For these two Congregations, and for that of s. Isaia, new constitutions were promulgated in 1938, which are now under trial.