ANTONIANI MARONITES of Saint Isaiah. — Gabriele di Blauzà (d. 1705), a monk of very austere life, was consecrated bishop of Aleppo in 1663 and elected patriarch in 1704. As was then customary, although bishop of Aleppo, he continued to reside in Lebanon. In 1673 he founded the (acephalous) monastery of Támis and lived there with some monks. At the beginning of the 18th century he laid the foundations of the monastery of Saint Isaiah and, after a few months, sent three monks there; in 1702 three more joined them. From then on the number of monks steadily increased. To adopt a rule, in 1703 they consulted the founding bishop, who sent them to Patriarch ad-Duwaihi. He ordered them to adopt the rules and constitutions of the Lebanese monks, which he had approved in 1700, and they accepted them “confident that they had been drawn from the rules of the great anchorite Saint Anthony” (Ba'abdátí, Táríh ar-rulhánújijah al-marúnjijah, 1707). In the same year, 1703, the patriarch approved them, as did his three successors before 1740, the year in which Clement XII, on 17 January, after making a few minor modifications, also approved them with the brief Misericordiarum Pater. Meanwhile, other monasteries were affiliated with Saint Isaiah, and the Congregation spread throughout Lebanon.
According to the statistics of the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Church in 1932, it numbered 130 monks and 25 monasteries; some were suppressed in 1938. In Rome they have a college, not yet opened.