Palestine]
whose orthodoxy during the Middle Ages is more than questionable, but who accepted a constitution from Rome in 1736. The Maronite Church has retained local usages, but Romanising influences are gaining ground, especially since the higher native clergy have begun to be educated in seminaries at Rome and Paris. There are Maronite colonies in Cyprus, Alexandria, and the United States.
The Syrian community is a reflux of the wave of Monophysite heresy that resulted in the foundation of a. heretical sect by Jacob Baradaeus in the sixth century. The Jacobite sect included 150 archbishoprics during the Middle Ages, but has now only a small following. About 1860 the Uniat seceders were able to gain possession of most of the Jacobite churches.
The Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, who now resides at Damascus, retains little of his old authority. Nearly all the 250,000 Christians under his jurisdiction are Syrian Arabs who know no Greek; but from 1724 to 1899 all the Patriarchs were Greeks, and, as a rule, unable even to speak Arabic. In 1899, when the see fell vacant, the Arabs proposed a candidate of their own, who was backed by the Russians and Rumanians; the Sultan yielded to pressure from the Russian Ambassador and appointed the Arab candidate. The Constantinopolitan Greeks, supported by the French Ambassador, refused to recognise the Arab candidate, who was, however, installed. Throughout his patriarchate (1899-1906), he was not recognised by Constantinople or Jerusalem; and the schism was continued under the next Patriarch.
The Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem has about 15,000 Christians under his jurisdiction.The Patriarchs have, since the sixteenth century, been Greeks who, until last century, lived in Constantinople. whereas the Orthodox Christians are, again, Syrian Arabs. The history of the Patriarchate during the last fifty years has been one continual struggle against Russian interference.
