BEIRUT. – The ancient Βερύτης ο Βεργίτης, Berito (v.). At present the capital of the Republic of Lebanon. The territory, which was formerly a French mandate together with Syria, attained its independence after the Second World War (1946). Situated on the slopes of Mount Lebanon, in the bay of St George, it is the first city of Syria. The modern city has grown up on the site of the Roman one; it consists of an old city at the centre and a more recent part, and preserves the remains of a Roman temple, churches built by the Crusaders, and mosques, which bear witness to its historical vicissitudes.
In the early Christian centuries it had a famous school of law, where St Gregory Thaumaturgus studied, and later the jurist Tribonian. Native of St Pamphilus, who later became bishop of Caesarea, B. was at least from the early 4th century the seat of a bishopric. In 448 a preparatory conference was held at B. for that of Tyre in the case of Bishop Ibas. Theodosius II (449) declared B., until that time a suffragan of Tyre, a metropolitan see, a decision not accepted by the Council of Chalcedon (451). In 555 B. was destroyed by an earthquake. The restored city was invaded by the Arabs in 635; the king of Jerusalem, Baldwin I, conquered it in 1110 with the help of 40 Genoese ships, and made it a Frankish lordship, until it fell into the hands of the Mamluks in 1291. According to the 1932 census, B. has a population of 160,947 inhabitants, of whom 92,722 are Christians.
B. is the seat of several bishoprics, thus distinguished:
I. B. OF THE ARMENIANS. – B. became an important Armenian centre only after the First World War because of emigration from Turkey. The city has been the seat of the Catholic patriarch of Cilicia since 23 June 1928, and is also his particular diocese. There are about 7,000 faithful, 16 priests, 5 churches, and 5 schools. Catholic Action works flourish.
II. B. OF THE MARONITES. – A Maronite bishop of B. is already recorded in 1577. There was probably one even earlier. From 1691 begins the uninterrupted series of bishops. There are about 15,000 faithful, 125 priests, 150 parishes, 12 convents, and 58 schools. There are thriving confraternities and Catholic Action works (v. Maronites). Shortly before the Second World War, the central Maronite seminary was founded at Ghazir, not far from B.
III. B. OF THE MELKITES. – A Melkite Catholic metropolitan was sent in 1701. There are 20,000 faithful, 12 priests, 37 parishes (5 of which are in the city itself), 12 religious houses (8 of them male), and 20 schools. Catholic Action works flourish.
IV. B. OF THE SYRIANS. – B. has only in recent times become the seat of a Jacobite bishop. The Syrian Catholics, converted from the Monophysitism of the Jacobites, installed a bishop there for the first time in 1817. The series was, however, sometimes interrupted. Since the First World War the residence of the Syrian-Catholic patriarch of Antioch has been at B. There are 2,600 faithful, 7 churches, 26 priests, and 13 schools. There are flourishing confraternities.
V. | UNIVERSITY OF ST JOSEPH OF B. – One of the principal cultural centres not only of Syria but of the entire Near East, founded and directed by the Jesuits. The initial nucleus was an interritual seminary proposed by Fr Ryllo after an agreement with the Armenian, Maronite, Greek, and Syrian patriarchs. The proposal was immediately approved by Gregory XVI, and, thanks to the diligence of Fr Riccadonna, the seminary found its first home at Ghazir in 1843.
At first it was a school of Arabic and Italian; then it acquired such a good reputation that it was decided to transfer it to Beirut, where, with the help of American Catholic funds, it laid the foundations of the present university building in 1875. Leo XIII granted the Oriental Seminary in 1881 the faculty of conferring academic degrees in philosophy and theology, elevating it to the status of a pontifical university. According to the latest statistics (1948), the seminary, which currently has 71 students, has given to the Church 4 patriarchs, 28 bishops, and 437 secular priests.
Alongside the seminary, faculties of medicine, law, Oriental literature, and engineering have been established, whose degrees are recognized by the French state, with a total (1948) of 1,853 students. Several professors of the university have distinguished themselves particularly in the history, linguistics, and archaeology of Syria. We recall the names of Fr Cheikhô, author of Arabic anthologies; Fr Belot, with his Arabic dictionary; Fr Bruns, with his Syriac dictionary; Fr Lammens, famous for his studies on the Arabs before Islam; Fr de Jerphanion (v.). An excellent printing house, with the fine Arabic type cast by Fr Antun, prints the numerous journals of the university, among which we note the Mélanges in French and al-Masriq in Arabic. Until the year 1947 it also published the Arabic daily al-Bashir.