Gabriel ibn al-Qilai


Gabriel ibn al-Qilai, was a Lebanese Christian religious figure of the Maronite Church. Al-Qilai joined the Franciscan Order in 1470 and was consecrated bishop of the Maronites in Cyprus in 1507.

Biography

Information about Gabriel al-Qilai is mostly found in the work of the historian patriarch Estephan El Douaihy, which was most often relevant to al-Qilai. Patriarch Douaihy protested al-Qilai's conversion to Catholicism, due to his belief in Roman Orthodoxy for the Maronites.
Gabriel al-Qilai was the son of Butrus al-Qilā'i and was born in the village of Lehfed of the Byblos District. The word Qilāi refers to a house in a rocky area. According to a custom, he was entrusted to a priest named Ibrāhīm ibn Dray to learn from him the Syriac and the reading of the liturgical books. According to the Patriarch Douaihy he was afflicted in his youth of ophthalmia which was the cause of his breakup with his fiancee and his withdrawal from society.
Towards 1470, he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with another young man named John. In this city, he adhered the Custody of the Holy Land of the Franciscan order. The recruitment of two young Maronites in the order was assigned to the Flemish brother Gryphon of Courtrai, attached in 1450 to his death at the Franciscan mission of Mount Lebanon and loaded relations with the Maronites.
The two young Lebanese completed their last year of novitiate in the convent of Mount Zion. After their vows, they were sent to Venice to complete their training. Gabriel followed to Italy to study liberal arts and theology, a trip that lasted at least seven years. He himself said that he stayed in Rome for seven months and performed with his friend Jean theological training at Aracoeli convent. In the eulogy he made with his friend John in Italy when they were often subjected to people who accused the Maronite Church of heresy, a vigorous defense of their church. Both were ordained priests in Italy.
They headed back to the East around the years 1483/85. Then, until his episcopal consecration in 1507, the life of Ibn al-Qilai took place between Qannoubine, Beirut, and Jerusalem.
At that time, the Maronite Church was torn between his long-standing ties with the papacy and the strong presence in Lebanon of the Jacobite Church, of which it was culturally very close. Noah Lebanese Bqoufa. Also a muqaddam named Abdel Min'im Ayyub had joined the Jacobite cause.
Ibn al-Qilai was particularly devoted to the fight against the Jacobite influences to secure the Maronites to the Catholic Church.
On November 23, 1494, the Franciscan friar Francesco Suriano, then custos of the Holy Land, sent an unfriendly letter to Maronite Patriarch Simeon Hadath: he marveled that he was elected in 1492 but has not yet sent anyone to Rome to request the pallium ; "enemies" of the new primate, grouped in Cyprus where the Maronite Church was well established, accused him of breaking the union with the papacy; Suriano asked the Patriarch to justify and renew in writing, with the bishops, priests and lay leaders of the Maronite nation, their membership of the Catholic Church. Then Gabriel ibn al-Qilai was sent by Suriano to investigate charges and collect the new act of faith of the patriarch and his people.
Ibn al-Qilai devoted himself to this task in Lebanon until at least 1499. In 1507, the bishop of the Maronites of Cyprus Joseph Kasaphani died and he was elected to succeed him. He first lived in the Saints Nuhra and Anthony convent of Nicosia, the traditional seat of the Maronite bishops, and then transferred the seat to Saint-Georges Convent of Tala.
Relations between the Maronite and Latin hierarchies in Cyprus were appalling: in 1514, Ibn al-Qilai wrote to Pope Leo X to complain about the nuisance that the Latin bishops to property inflicted the great Maronite monastery of Saint John Khuzbandu. The pope replied in 1515, confirming the rights of the Maronites and sent two other letters on this subject, to the Latin archbishop and the Venetian governor of the island.
Bishop al-Qilai died in 1516 in Cyprus.

Work

Gabriel ibn al-Qilai authored many literary works, mixing prose and poetry, making him the first modern Maronite writer. The Maronite historians of the 17th and 18th centuries were largely inspired by him.
In addition, he translated into Arabic many texts in Latin or Italian from the Latin Church, popularizing the literature of the latter among Maronites.

Prose Treaties

  • Kitab 'an' ilm al-ilāhīyāt partial Arabic translation of the Compendium theologicae veritatis Dominican Hugh Ripelin of Strasburg ;
  • Kitab al-Idah'īmān, an introduction and four pounds ;
  • Kitab an-Namus collection of several treatises on the sacraments;
  • Kitāb year Iman al, Treaty Collection on the Nicene Creed and dogma of Chalcedon;
  • Zahrat an-Namus, instructions on the sacraments and daily prayer;
  • Kitāb mijmā'ī qawl min al-al-Ahyar qiddīsīn, life of the collection of devout sermons and theological treatises;
  • Kitāb 'iẓāh ;
  • Speech about holy sacrament, collection of four speeches on the subject;
  • Mass Treaty and its sections;
  • Explanation of sacred confession;
  • Apocalypse of St. John ;
  • Comment of the prologue of the Gospel according to St. John;
  • Art Writ of Ramon Llull ;
  • The Book of Five Elders of Ramon Llull ;
  • Philosophy, astrology and other subjects;
  • Treaty on the calendar attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea ;
  • Excommunication against the Melkites ;
  • I'tiqād Sa'b Marun, collection of treaties against Thomas Kfartab a monophysite in the 11th century;
  • Collection of papal bulls addressed to the Maronites.

Letters

  • Letter against the Jacobites ;
  • Letter to a Maronite priest ;
  • Letter to the inhabitants of Lehfed;
  • Letter to the Patriarch Simeon Hadath ;
  • Letter to Bishop David ;
  • Letter to George al-Rami ;
  • Letter to the people of St. Maron ;
  • Letter to the inhabitants of Mount Lebanon;
  • Spiritual Testament.

Poems

  • The life of Mary and Jesus ;
  • Mary Magdalene ;
  • Palm Sunday ;
  • Constantine and the Cross ;
  • St. Alexis ;
  • St. Lucius ;
  • Holy Euphrosyne ;
  • St. Simeon Stylite ;
  • The spheres ;
  • The science ;
  • Zodiac, the planets and the movable feasts ;
  • Medicine and the influence of the stars ;
  • About the four councils ;
  • Eulogy of John, drowned dead
  • Against those who sowed weeds among the Maronites ;
  • Mount Lebanon.

Poems of uncertain attribution

  • Poem about Abraham ;
  • Poem about St. Chayna ;
  • Poem about Beau ;
  • Poem about St. Anthony the Great ;
  • Poem about Holy Beard ;
  • Poem about science and the stars ;
  • Poem about the Virgin standing under the Cross ;
  • Poem about the Trinity.
  • Thirty other poems have been attributed to Ibn al-Qilai however they are arbitrary or improbable.

Editions

  • Several texts were edited by Father Ibrahim Harfouche in the journal Al-Manara: vol. 2, 1931, pp. 805–813, 901-907; flight. 3, 1932, pp. 99–106, 177-184, 260-263, p. 264-268, p. 268 ; flight. 7, 1936, pp. 653–663, 767-779. The same publisher in the magazine Al-Machriq, vol. 14, 1911, p. 433-437, poem about the fall of Tripoli and taken from the hands of the Crusaders.
  • Boutros Gemayel, Zajaliyyāt Gabriel Ibn al-Qilā'ī, Beirut, 1982.
  • Ray Jabre Mouawad, Letters to Mount Lebanon by Gabriel Ibn al-Qilā'ī, published and translated with a historical presentation of Mount Lebanon at the time, Paris, Geuthner 2001.