MARONITE ANTONIANS OF ALEPPO AND BALAD. - In 1694 three young Maronites of Aleppo, Gabriel Eva, Abdullah Qara'ali and Joseph al-Batni, asked the patriarch for permission to found a religious Order. Lebanon, as always before, was at that time scattered with a. acelali monasteries. Having obtained the monastery of St. Maura, the three young men restored it in order to live there. In 1695 the patriarch imposed on them the cowl and the habit, and a year later they were given the monastery of St. Eliseus. In the meantime they had compiled the rules and constitutions, drawing them from Eastern and Western books, as Qara'ali and G. Assemani say in the letter prefixed to the book of rules. On 10 Oct. 1698 the first chapter was held and Fr. Eva was elected general.
Soon, however, a disagreement manifested itself concerning the purpose of the Order, namely whether it was for the active life or for the contemplative one. Eva, with two monks, was for the former, the others for the latter. Therefore the chapter was held ahead of time, and Qara'ali was elected general. Eva lived some months with the dissidents at St. Maura and then departed in 1701 for Rome, where, after some years, Clement XI entrusted to him the church of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, building next to it a house as a hospice and as a college for the monks. These, however, only in 1724 took definitive possession of it by order of the S. Congregation of Propaganda Fide. On 18 June 1700 the patriarch ad-Duwaihi approved the rule, and the monks took the three solemn vows, to which in 1705 they added that of humility, taking its formula 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, with the brief Apostolatus, the same rules and constitutions, already considerably expanded by G. Assemani, as appears from writings of his published by L. Blaibel, and in 1735 they saw the light in Rome, in Arabic and in Latin. The same Clement XII in 1732 approved, with the brief In supremo, the rules for the college of Sts. Peter and Marcellinus, which in 1735 was transferred to the piazza S. Pietro in Vincoli. (see also the briefs of Benedict XIV, Iniumetum, of 7 Oct. 1744, and Apostolatus, of 7 Nov. 1745).
Missionary activity, at the dawn of the Order, was sanctioned in the aforementioned briefs and in the letter that Msgr. Assemani, as delegate of the Pope, addressed to the monks in 1736, and today it is in full operation. Very soon serious conflicts began to spread among the Lebanese and the natives of Aleppo, conflicts finally revealed in 1744 with the appeal of the former to the patriarch. The Lebanese, irritated especially by those - and they were not few - who before entering the Order were not 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 (indigenous) Antonian congregation. The Aleppines founded a mission in Damietta in 1745, where, at first, they assisted the faithful of all rites. Subsequently they took on the assistance of the Maronites of all Egypt, except Alexandria, and of Sudan.
According to the Statistica published in 1932 by the S. Oriental Congregation, the Aleppine congregation has 132 monks, 10 monasteries, 14 residences or hospices (including a college in Rome and a parish in Montevideo) and a hermitage, while the Baladites, who spread only in Lebanon, have 645 monks (among whom are some hermits), 31 monasteries, 25 residences or hospices (one of which is in Cyprus) and a college in Beirut. For these two Congregations, and for that of St. Isaiah, new constitutions were promulgated in 1938, which are now under trial.
Bibliography2 works
Pietro Sfair