10 - Saint Charbel Makhlouf, or the Consecration of Maronite Identity

Summary

Saint Charbel Makhlouf (Sharbal Makhlūf), the subject of this chapter, was a nineteenth-century monk belonging to the Maronite community, the most significant Christian community in Lebanon in terms of numbers and political influence. This community, with its own rites and an autonomous hierarchy under the authority of a patriarch whose seat is in Bkirki (Lebanon), is nonetheless a full member of the Roman Catholic Church, whose authority it recognises.

Our study will not focus principally on the period of Charbel's life (1828–98), as there is in fact not much to say about the man himself during his lifetime. What is, in fact, more pertinent and more coherent with the theme of this collection is an analysis of the discourse triggered about him when he was at the height of his saintly fame, more than half a century after his death, in a period stretching from Vatican II and the first inter-community difficulties in constitutional Lebanon to his canonisation in 1977, when the country was exiting the first violent phase of the war. The ‘creation’ of this Christian hero thus coincided with similar phenomena in the emergence of charismatic figures in other communities and countries of the Islamic world during the same period. Saint Charbel is certainly original in an Arab-Muslim pantheon, especially on account of his Catholic character, rubberstamped by Rome. But his consecration lies within a context which was probably not specific to the Maronite community: the search for local authenticity (as opposed to Western influence) and the constitution of a ‘national’ community narrative, all this not without some element of paradox.

Charbel Makhlouf did not write anything and left practically no trace of his time on Earth, which made him quite a convenient saint for the hagiographers. Michel Hayek has stated in the introduction to a book that is dedicated to him and that manages to extend to 187 pages: ‘His greatest miracle was that his silence could give rise to so many words. […] As a consequence, to write his life-story is not possible, as there was no history where one could research and find sufficient elements to “make” a book’.