Maronite Antonians of Saint Isaiah

MARONITE ANTONIANS OF SAINT ISAIAH. - Gabriel of Blauzà (d. 1705), a monk of a very austere life, was consecrated bishop of Aleppo in 1663 and elected patriarch in 1704. As was the custom then, although he was bishop of Aleppo, he continued to reside in Lebanon. In 1673 he founded the monastery (acephalous) of Tāmiš and lived there with some monks. At the beginning of the 1700s he had the foundations laid for the monastery of St. Isaiah and, after a few months, sent three monks there, to whom in 1702 another three were added. From then on the number of monks kept increasing. In order to give themselves a rule, in 1703 they consulted the founding bishop, who sent them to the patriarch ad-Duwaihi. The latter ordered that they adopt the rules and constitutions of the Lebanese monks, which he had approved in 1700, and they accepted them "certain that they had been gathered from the rules of the great anchorite St. Anthony" (Ba'abdāti, Tā'īh ar-rubhānijjah al-anjūnijjah, 107). In the same year, 1703, the patriarch approved them, as his three successors then did before 1740, the year in which Clement XII, on 17 January, after making a few changes in lexibus rebus, also approved them with the brief Misericordiarum Pater. Meanwhile, other monasteries were affiliated with St. Isaiah, and the Congregation spread throughout Lebanon.

According to the Statistica of the Sacred Congregation for the Eastern Church of 1932, it has 130 monks and 25 monasteries; some were suppressed in 1938. In Rome they have a college, not yet opened.

Pietro Sfair