Our Christian Heritage
Michel N. Laham, M.D.
Richard J. Karam, J.D.

The vast majority of Arabic speaking immigrants to the United States at the turn of the century were Syrians, most of them from that part of the Syrian coast which was later to become Lebanon. And the majority of these Syrian immigrants were Christian: Maronite Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, and Greek Catholic. Between 1895 and 1940, Syrian Christians built 115 churches in this country, and in doing so introduced their Eastern Christian faith to the new world. This article will delve into the religious history and heritage of the Syrian and Lebanese people as we explore the role of Syria and Phoenicia in the early development and spread of Christianity, a source of pride for all of us, regardless of our particular faith or sect. In an upcoming issue of The Official Bulletin we will study the religious history and heritage of the Islamic immigrants of Syrian and Lebanese origin, most of whom immigrated to this country after 1940.

We know that Jesus grew up in the town of Nazareth in lower Galilee, an area which borders on the south of Syria and Lebanon. Galilee, although having a significant Jewish population, was largely Gentile and impregnated with Canaanite culture and tradition. After meeting little success in the local synagogues, Jesus spent much of His public life traveling and preaching in Galilee and Phoenicia. He performed His first miracle at a wedding in Cana in south Lebanon. The following year, He undertook a journey to Tyre, during which He cured the daughter of a Canaanite (Phoenician) woman, as described in the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. The Sermon on the Mount took place along the shores of the Sea of Galilee and the slopes of the Golan Heights. Thus the people of Syria and Lebanon were the first gentiles to hear the word and preaching of Jesus and to convert to Christianity.

Shortly following the death of Jesus, there existed a substantial community of His followers in the city of Damascus. It was to round up these people and to return them, bound and shackled to Jerusalem, that Saul of Tarsus was dispatched to the Syrian capital. Chapter nine of the Acts of the Apostles tells us how, on the road to Damascus, Saul was knocked down by a blinding light, and a voice from heaven commanded him to go into the city. There, in a house on the Street called Straight, he met Ananias who restored his eyesight and baptized him. And thereafter, Saul of Tarsus became the apostle Paul, the greatest of all evangelists. One can still stroll down the Street called Straight toward the eastern gate of Damascus and find, nestled against the old city wall, the house of Saint Ananias which has been transformed into a shrine.

After the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in 70 AD, Antioch in Syria became the first capital of Christendom. It was there that the followers of Jesus of Nazareth took on the name of "Christians". It was there also that the cross was adopted as the symbol of Christianity. Saint Luke, the Evangelist, was from Antioch. So was Saint Ignatius, one of the first Fathers of the Church, who coined the term "the Catholic Church". And it was from Antioch that the Christian tidal wave burst forth, eventually engulfing the entire Roman empire.

Syria was declared an imperial province of which the emperor himself was the titular proconsul. Syrian influence within the empire reached a peak when Septimius Severus, a North African general of Carthaginian (Phoenician) extraction, became emperor (193-211 AD). His wife was a beautiful and gifted Syrian lady from Homs, named Julia Domna, who became a patroness of the arts and sciences in Rome. Her salon included among others the Greek physician Galen. At the death of Septimius Severus, her son Caracalla became emperor (212-217 AD): he is best remembered for the magnificent Baths of Caracalla in Rome.

When Caracalla was assassinated, Julia Domna committed suicide. The imperial mantle was passed on to her sister's grandsons, Elagabalus (218-222 AD) and Alexander Severus (222-235 AD). Alexander was the last and the best of this Syrian dynasty of Roman emperors. Under the influence of his mother, Julia Mammaea, who secretly converted to Christianity, he forbade the worship of his person, ended luxury at the imperial court, and halted the persecution of the Christians while he reigned. It was he who completed the construction of the temple complex at Baalbek.

After Alexander was killed in a mutiny in 235 AD, another Syrian called Philip the Arab became emperor (244-249 AD). He was nicknamed "the Arab" because he hailed from the city of Bosra in Syria, which was then the capital of the Roman province of "Arabia". It was Philip who, in 248 AD, presided over the celebration of the thousandth anniversary of the founding of Rome. Under his reign, Bosra became an important center, and a magnificent amphitheater was built there which remains intact to this day. According to the Church historian of the third century, Eusebius, the father of church history, Philip was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, but he kept his conversion secret.

In 303 AD, a new round of persecution began against the Christians under the Roman emperor Diocletian. This was the third and most sweeping of the cycles of persecution. By the time of Diocletian's reign, some 10% of the population of the empire was Christian, with the highest concentration in the East where the religion was born. In that year, the Syrian twin brothers, Cosmas and Damian, who practiced medicine and pharmacy together and who offered their services for free to the poor, were martyred in the city of Egea in Asia Minor. They have been revered ever since as the patron saints of Medicine and Pharmacy. The Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian completed under Pope Felix IV (526-530), was the first one to be erected on the Roman forum.

On May 11, 330, as the barbarian hordes threatened Rome from the north, the emperor Constantine declared Constantinople the new capital of the Roman empire and Christianity the official religion of the state. In 476, Rome fell to the Germanic invaders, but the empire inaugurated by Constantine was to endure for a thousand years more as the "Byzantine empire". Byzantine Syria was, on the whole, a Christian land, and the Church was its greatest institution. Antioch ranked with Constantinople and Alexandria as a patriarchal see.

The liturgy developed along two lines: Greek along the coast and Syriac in the interior. The great religious controversies and schisms centered on such topics as the nature of Christ and the question of his divinity. Arianism emphasized the humanity rather than the divinity of Jesus. Nestorianism held that Jesus was both human and divine, while the Monophysites rejected the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ and asserted his single divine nature. The Monophysite Church of Syria was organized by Jacob Baradeus, and his followers became known as Jacobites.

In the third Century, Monasticism with its ideals of celibacy, poverty and obedience, became a favored way of life for the religious. It seemed the ultimate response to Jesus' call, "go, sell all that you own, give the money to the poor, and follow Him". Monasteries sprang up all around the Syrian countryside. The caves in which the early Christians had sought refuge from their Roman persecutors became homes to a generation of ascetics and hermits. Some, such as the ones of Maaloula and Sayednaya, were transformed into places of worship and centers of pilgrimage. Maaloula remains one of the few towns in the Levant where Aramaic, the language of Christ, is still spoken. Sayednaya boasts an icon of the Virgin Mary that is said to have been painted by Saint Luke himself. An entire river valley in Lebanon, the Qadisha Valley (the Holy Valley), evinces the remains of these ancient monasteries carved from the sides of the mountains.

Perhaps the most famous of the Syrian hermits was Saint Simeon Stylite, an ascetic monk who spent 36 years perched on top of a column which, for the last 20 years of his life, was 45 feet high. Pilgrims came from as far as France and Italy to pray at the foot of his column and to be blessed by him. After his death in 459, a church was built around the column. This was the largest church in Christendom until it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1157. Its majestic ruins and what remains of Saint Simeon's column can still be seen today on a hilltop outside Aleppo.

Another ascetic monk who lived and died near Antioch was Saint Maron. His followers came to be known as Maronites. Early in the 6th century, the Maronites sought refuge in northern Lebanon after clashing with their more numerous Jacobite neighbors, eventually becoming the largest and most influential sect in Lebanon.

During the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries AD, maritime trade on the Mediterranean was almost entirely dominated by the Syrians. They were the great merchant mariners of the era, just as the Phoenicians had been a thousand years earlier. Prompted by their love of commerce and defying all dangers, Syriac speaking merchants settled in Naples, Venice, Rome, Marseilles, Lyons and Paris. It was in Syrian vessels that the purple dye from Tyre, the sword blades and embroidered textiles from Damascus, the pistachios from Aleppo, and the wine from Gaza were exported to Europe. Raw silk, imported from China, was woven and dyed in Lebanon, then exported throughout the Mediterranean. From Arabia and India, the Syrians imported frankincense and spices which they shipped to Venice and Genoa.

In Rome, their colony became numerous and influential. Of the thirteen Popes who ruled over the Church between 678 and 752 AD, five were Syrians. Among the Syrian Popes were John V (685-686), Sergius I (687-701), Sisinnius (708), Constantine I (708-715), and Gregory III (731-741). Two of them, Sergius and Gregory, were canonized after their death. It was Sergius I who entrusted the English monk Willibrord with the task of evangelizing Germany, a pagan county in the seventh Century. In 696, Willibrord was given the name of Clement and was consecrated Bishop of Utrecht by Saint Sergius.

In 634, when the Arab armies under Khalid Ibn-Walid defeated the Byzantines and conquered Syria, the overwhelming majority of Syrians were Christian. In 732, when the Omayyad empire with its capital at Damascus stretched from the Pyrenees in Northern Spain to the slopes of the Himalayas, the total number of Moslems in Syria did not exceed 200,000 out of an estimated population of 3,500,000. The theological conversion followed the military conquest by about two centuries.

The Omayyads set new standards of enlightenment and tolerance. The often repeated statement that the conquered peoples were converted to Islam by the sword has no basis in fact. It may be assumed that many conversions were of convenience rather than conviction since conversion meant exemption from the poll tax and effectively opened the door to social and political influence. Whatever the motivation of the original converts to Islam, their descendants embraced the new faith with undiminished zeal and fervor.

Damascus under the enlightened rule of the Omayyads was the glory of its age. Nestled in the heart of the oasis of the Ghouta, the great white city stood "like an island of pearls and opals gleaming out of a sea of emeralds". Dominating the landscape was the magnificent blue dome of the Omayyad mosque, one of the most sublime places of worship in the world. Erected on the site of the church of Saint John, the mosque houses the tomb of Saint John the Baptist, revered by Christians and Moslems alike. Its great eastern minaret is named the Minaret of Jesus: according to Moslem tradition, this is where Jesus Christ will return to earth to fight the Antichrist before the Last Judgment.

Contrary to popularly held notions, Islam accepts Jesus Christ as the Messiah promised by the prophets in the Old Testament. Moslems believe in the virgin birth of Christ and revere the Virgin Mary. But they reject the concept of the divinity of Jesus and that of the Holy Trinity, and they object to the use of icons. It was on these very points that one of Syria's greatest theologians and polemicists, Saint John of Damascus (675-749 AD) engaged the Moslem scholars in theological debate. Considered the last of the Fathers of the Church, Saint John stands out as an ornament of the Church under the Omayyad caliphate.