It should not be forgotten that St Maroun lived before the great Christological battles which broke out. Disputes had begun, but not the great conflicts. As Anthony Gelston states: “The origins of East Syrian Christianity are lost in obscurity. The division of East Syrians from West Syrians was the result of the Christological controversies of the fifth century, and was precipitated in particular by the Council of Ephesus in AD 431. In the second half of the century the Monophysites came to prevail in Edessa, and the East Syrians who followed the teachings of Theodore of Mopsuestia withdrew into Persia. Nisibis became the main East Syrian theological centre. Political factors contributed largely to the subsequent isolation of the East Syrian Church from the rest of Christendom for a long period.”
The life of St Maroun was not, then, the life of a controversialist: it was the life of a missionary of Christianity in a very disciplined form. Whether he was indeed the first hermit to live an open-air existence, as opposed to in a town, or in a desert cell, is not to my mind as important as the example of holiness. He was not so extreme as some others, as he had a small hut to which he could retire in extreme weather. That his way of life impressed contemporaries is not in doubt, and his exposure to the elements will have assisted in that. But that ascetic life was a means to an end: it is the end which is significant.
We do not know when St Maroun was born, except that it was sometime in the 300s. He almost certainly died between 410 and 425, but we have no precise clue as to his age at death. One can hardly envisage him having been less than 40 years old, but he may have been 100 years old. We simply do not know.
But we can make an intelligent conjecture as to St Maroun’s age, based on the spread of Christianity and the ascetic life in Kurros, for Theodoret says that: Maroun “planted the paradise which now blooms in the land of Kurros”. Is he referring to Christianity or to those who lived the ascetic life of hermits, as the context seems to suggest?
First of all, let us take Christianity. Although we do not know exactly what Theodoret had in mind when he spoke of the land of Kurros, it is known that when the Emperor Julian passed through northern Syria in about 363, he found that the area was quite Christian, until he came to Batnae, which is beyond the Euphrates (i.e. in Eastern Syria). Julian was so pleased with the change from a Christian to a pagan milieu that, in letter 58, he wrote of his return to Batnae: “Its name is barbarous but the place is Hellenic … all the country round about the fumes of frankincense arose on all sides, and I saw everywhere victims ready for sacrifice”.
If St Maroun had played a role in the conversion of this part of Syria, and it had been effected by 363, then even if he had died in 410, which was 47 years later, he must have been nearing 100. It is hard to think of the evangelisation of an entire region being carried out by a man before he was at the age of 50, especially as he did not travel around himself. Rather, his influence was exerted by people coming to him and then themselves going out. What is significant is that this conjecture provides us with the youngest that St Maroun would have been, because the conversion of all that area of Syria cannot have been effected very quickly.
There is an alternative reading of Theodoret on St Maroun’s impact on Syria: Theodoret may be referring to the spread of solitaries following the example of St Maroun. If so, then although the lifestyle had reached Syria before the mid-fourth century, Liebeschuetz states that: “By the 380s monks were settled in large numbers in the desert just beyond the inhabited areas of Syria. In the next hundred years or so Syria was covered with monasteries.” Further, he states that these monks were generally people from the country and probably spoke Syriac and not Greek. On this last point, especially, he does not have a watertight case: there is little evidence and he is relying on some slender clues (e.g. that John Chrysostom knew an elderly monk who spoke Syriac).
But once again, we must come to a similar conclusion: to have completed, by the 380s, such a large and successful work, simply by teaching those who came to him on his hill, we would expect Saint Maroun to have been an aged man by that time, let alone 410. When one bears in mind that he may have died as late as 423, I find it hard to think that he was not 100 years of age or more by the time he died.
One other matter may support this: Sozomen the church historian states that, with the exception of the city of Antioch, the area of Coele Syria and Upper Syria, was slowly converted to Christianity. He describes the monks and hermits as “philosophers”, and says that many of them had remarkably long lives. It is these men whom he credits with leading most Syrians and many Persians and others to the faith. He also supports the basic thrust of this narrative, i.e. that it was St Maroun who commenced the current which eventually converted the region and even one day touched Mount Lebanon which had, until then, been largely pagan. Sozomen says that about the time of the death of Paulinus II, Bishop of Antioch in 388: “There were still many pagans in many cities, who contended zealously in behalf of their temples … the inhabitants of (Apamea) … often armed the men of Galilee and the peasants of Lebanon in defence of their temples …”
In other words, the traditional account of St Maroun and his place in history holds good. I think we have even managed to add some more details to it, and to show that it fits all the facts as we know them – I only wish we had more facts.
So, St Maroun appears in history as a hermit teaching in the mountains of what is now Syria until his death; a man with a reputation for holiness, and so was probably the first Christian teacher to be able to make a significant and enduring impact upon the people of the Syrian and Lebanese countryside and mountains. He did this because (1) from his friendship with St John Chrysostom, who wrote to him in Greek, we can infer that he possessed the richness of Greek Christianity, but naturally expressed it in the Aramaic language of these people; (2) his example was such that he inspired young people of the region to follow him into the religious life; and (3) his life, and the lives of his religious disciples, demonstrated to the lay people, the power of Christianity.
The critical fact about St Maroun is that he lived as a hermit, and he died, atop a hill in Syria, possibly at Kaluta, although Amar thinks that he lived in the Orontes valley. St Maroun was the first hermit known to spend his days in the open air. He chose a site which had been a place of pagan worship: it included a temple, although Theodoret’s text is suggestive that not only the temple but perhaps the entire hilltop, had been sacred. The polytheists are known to have had sacred groves, trees, fish ponds and stones. There was often, if not always, a temple nearby. St Maroun is said to have dedicated those precincts to God, which may mean that he performed an exorcism, turned the temple into a church, and blessed the rest of the area. For protection against rain and snow, St Maroun relied upon a tent made of animal hides. This way of life made a big impression on the people.
What did St Maroun occupy himself with? There seem to have been two sides to his life: a private life of prayer and spiritual exercise, and a public life with his many visitors, which included many diverse matters: conversation, advice, teaching, healing and exorcism. Our source, Theodoret, says that St Maroun tended to his spiritual life with “the customary labours” and other exercises which he himself conceived. Theodoret speaks of this as “gathering together the wealth of philosophia”. In the translation I rendered philosophia as “wisdom”, for our modern term “philosophy” is too narrow to encompass the arts and sciences of the soul which St Maroun pursued.
Theodoret’s account is short, but it highlights St Maroun’s magnetism in a few deft strokes. First, we have the references to the ascetic disciplines which he undertook. When Theodoret speaks of the “customary labours”, he appears to have in mind prayer, fasting, penance, and depriving the body of sleep. Theodoret paid particular attention to any measures which might check the passions and bring the faculties under the control of a Christian will (by “faculties” I mean senses, thoughts and emotions). However, Theodoret does not tell us very much about these inner disciplines, let alone which ones were added by St Maroun. But then, neither, indeed, do many writers describe such disciplines, as they require the assistance and supervision of a teacher, and to write of them could lead some people to attempt exercises which they should not. However, it is clear that St Maroun was a master of these disciplines, and also that he taught various pupils, such as Yakub, Limnaios and – perhaps – Domnina. Theodoret is emphatic on the point that St Maroun was a great teacher. As El Khouri notes, of the thirty ascetics in Theodoret’s book, only Maroun is named as having had many pupils.
There is one other matter to mention about Theodoret’s account of St Maroun, and that is the extent to which it is similar to the account of the life of St Anthony, founder of monasticism, which was written by St Athanasius (c.295-373). He wrote this life during his third exile (355-362) but after Antony’s death in 356. It was considered a classic and known throughout the Christian world quite quickly, so it is quite possible that Theodoret had read it. Athanasius writes:
14 Through him the Lord healed many of those present who suffered from bodily ailments; others he purged of demons, and to Antony he gave grace in speech. Thus he consoled many who mourned, and others hostile to each other he reconciled in friendship, urging everyone to prefer nothing in the world about the love of Christ. And when he spoke and urged them to keep in mind the future goods and the affection in which we are held by God …
… he persuaded many to take up the solitary life. And from then on, there were monasteries in the mountains and the desert was made a city by monks, who left their own people and registered themselves for the citizenship of the heavens.
15 … before long, through the attraction of his speech, a great many monasteries came into being, and like a father he guided them all.
Although the similarities to the life of St Maroun are quite evident, there are differences: notably, the story of his death, quite unlike Maroun’s, and it is said that St Anthony’s two companions buried his body in secret, and no one knows where it is. So, Theodoret does not blindly copy this earlier life, but even where he does, that may not necessarily mean that he was making up what he wrote about St Maroun: it seems to me that it may have been because he believed St Maroun to have been a founder of monasticism in Syria that he used themes from the life of the founder of monasticism in Egypt to express them. I think we can treat this as decent evidence that St Maroun was in fact the founder of Christianity in North West Syria.