It is no cause for surprise that the monks of Saint
Anthony the Great should have named some of their
monasteries after their holy founder and patron. Saint
Anthony Qozhaya, Saint Anthony the Great of Houb,
Saint Anthony at Sodeco, do not these and many other
Saint Anthonys proclaim the Father of Monks, their
founder and patron? Antoun, Tanios, Mtanios, Tannous,
these are all Lebanese variations of the one name
Anthony.
The village of Houb, whose name in Syriac means Love,
stands on the heights of Tannourine in the prefecture
of Batroun, North Lebanon, fifty-five miles from the
capital Beirut and at nearly four thousand feet above
sea level. There on a picturesque hill, and surrounded
by cedar trees and mixed forest, is the monastery
of St. Anthony the Great. Perched on its summit as
on an eagle’s nest, with all around hilltops, cliffs
and bubbling springs, with basement and cellars and
a red-tiled roof adding a splash of color to the rich
and verdant surrounding nature, the monastery was
built by monks to a height of three stories.
The interior patio is formed of arches. The entry
is sober in style and imposes silence and respect.
The church wearing the sheen of time invokes prayer
and recollection. One part has been modernized, taking
into account winter temperatures of below zero°C.
The paving within the square that leads up to the
church’s entrance presents an attractive perspective,
while the view outside is of surrounding terraces
planted with vines and fruit trees or with plots of
vegetables.
During summer vocations I have been several times
to this out-of-the-way monastery to see my students.
Every time I was given the warmest of welcomes. At
Houb nature, the monastery, the environment and the
people are all one.
In the year 1700 Sheikh Suleiman el-Hashem invited
the monks of the Order of St. Anthony to cultivate
the region of Houb and to build a monastery there.
In 1714 the people of Tannourine suggested to the
Superior General that they should present him with
the land around St. Doumit, now Qata Houb, in return
for the congregation setting up schools to teach reading
and writing and the catechism. In 1719 a certain distinguished
personality of the region, Lady ‘Umm Fadl, and her
two sons Sheikh Missber and Qabalan el-Khazen gave
the congregation their shares of the land at Wata
Houb, but it was not until 1736 that the monks set
about building the monastery. In those days there
was quite a large and self-sufficient local population,
among which were to be found masons, blacksmiths,
carpenters and farmers.
In 1766 Emir Yusef Shehab finally handed over the
property of both St. Anthony and St. James (Yaacoub)
to the monks. In 1790 the order joined the two religious
houses of Our Lady and of Saint Anthony into the one
monastery named after St. Anthony the Great which
one sees standing now. Once the building was completed,
the monks put up a hermitage on the remains of the
church of St. George to the west of the monastery,
in which several generations of hermits have lived
lives of piety and holiness, among them Fathers Yuakim
ez-Zouqi (1848), Athanasius es-Saghbini (1881), and
Dagher et-Tannouri (1916).
In 1859 the Order decided to divide up some of the
lands and to attach the plots so formed to other monasteries
as well as to the new School of Our Lady of Deliverance
at Bassa.
The monks of Houb were very active, building houses
for their workmen and their associates, as well as
religious houses, schools and sanatoria, and even
offering the government a lot of 15,000 sq. meters
(roughly 20,000 sq. yards) for the construction of
a hospital.
The monks lived very much after the style of those
of the immense French monastery of Cluny in the Middle
Ages. Not only were they engaged in educational, religious
and cultural activities, but in their number there
were skilled technicians and craftsmen of every description,
tailors, hairdressers, bookbinders, cobblers, blacksmiths
and carpenters, not forgetting those occupied with
growing produce in the fields and raising livestock.
The monastery has never been self-centered and concerned
merely with its own business; it gave half of the
harvest to the more than eighty families associated
with its labors and set up a cooperative for mutual
aid whose activity extended over the whole region.
Its message was national, Christian, cultural and
humanist.
Joseph and William Matar
Translation from the French: Kenneth Mortimer
- Monastery Saint Antoine 1: >> View
Movie << (2012-04-01)
- Monastery Saint Antoine 2: >> View
Movie << (2012-04-01)
