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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 October 2009
THE GAINING OF INDEPENDENCE
During the sultanate of Mahmut II the Syrian Catholic church succeeded in winning over serveral more Jacobite bishops and clergy to the Roman communion. Then, during the patriarchate of Ignatius Butrus Jarweh, almost all the Jacobite communities of Damascus and south Lebanon joined the Syrian Catholics, among their number the bishops of Diyarbakir, Mosul, Homs and Damascus. In Mosul, Catholics and Jacobites shared the same churches but each with their own clergy.
In 1830, when the Catholic Armenians obtained recognition as a millet, the Syrians were included, and so the former civil ties to the Jacobite clergy were broken. Because of this new freedom, Patriarch Ignatius Butrus left the monastery of Sharfeh in Lebanon and moved to Aleppo where he was closer to his people and could show potential converts that they need no longer fear government sanctions or threats of reprisal from the Jacobite hierarchy.
By 1830 the Syrians were about twenty per cent of Aleppo's Catholic population and were the group upon whom foreign missionary influence worked most strongly. One missionary wrote in 1834 that the progress of Eastern Catholics was remarkable, but he was cautious:
It should not, however, be thought that [Latin] missionaries in Syria are useless. The weak dispositions which one observes to the obedience to the Holy See manifests clearly how easily some Syrians can detach themselves from the Catholic faith; and, if one did not place missionaries among them, there would be fears for their perseverance…
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