| Maronite history is coloured with the romance that attaches itself to a struggle of a determined people. Most nations in their history often have to make a choice between confrontation or cooperation and time has shown us that minorities usually pay for their continued existence through deformation of character or out right collaboration. The Maronites through perpetual resistance and the preservation of a precarious independence have escaped this fate. Not only have they survived, but they have survived uncowed. The remarkable nature of their history lies hand in hand with that of Lebanon, for centuries being their retreat and fortress. Lebanon and the Maronites are inseparably attached. The Maronites have survived the storms of invasion, occupation, repression and suppression for over 1600 years, preserving their religion, traditions and state. Through the ages they refused to bow to their occupiers, at the height of the Umayyad dynasty the Maronites even exacted tribute as a price for their good behaviour, in due course their Christian neighbours all succumbed to Islam but not Lebanon, holding a Maronite majority well into the 20th century, even their Syriac (Christian Aramaic) language was widely spoken well into the late 19th century and still survives today in their liturgy and in some of their villages. The mountain Maronites remain much as the earliest travellers found them, not having lost the virtues for which they have been admired. The ingenuity and perseverance with which they have tamed the hillsides is remarkable, striving for soil, capturing it from rocks laboriously, foot by foot. Their terraced vines, piled vertically one above the other, climb to the snows. Their minute orchards are often wedged in the faults and crannies of precipices. Such industry has its reward, the very rocks have grown fertile. Their long political struggle and the effort to squeeze a livelihood from the rocks and precipices have made them independent, courageous and provident. |
| The Maronites and Lebanon |
 |
| �We are the Saints and the demons of the Middle-East, we hold the olive-branch in one hand and the sword in the other. |