Embracing the Divine: Passion and Politics in Christian Middle East

1. Introduction

1 1 Introduction “[Jesus] placed his hands on my hands, his feet on my feet and his lips on my lips, and I gazed upon the whole universe.”1 Hindiyya al-‘Ujaimi, a Maronite2 nun from Aleppo, dictated this evocative and provocative vision of her latest encounter with Christ to her confessor, Bishop Jirmanus Saqr, in 1755 as part of her mystical narrative titled Sirr al-Ittihad, or Secret of the Union. In pronouncing these words she was nearing the climax of a spiritual journey that culminated in a physical union with the eternal body of Christ and a “boundless” expansion of her knowledge. Yet these words were not the description of a subjective and ineffable mystical experience. Rather, their public pronouncement was a challenge to the patriarchal hierarchies of the Levantine and Roman Catholic Churches. The frenzied events she unleashed—two inquisitions by the Holy See in 1753 and 1778, a concerted campaign on the part of some Latin missionaries to discredit her, and turmoil within the Maronite Church between supporters and detractors—are testimony to the radical nature and perceived magnitude of her transgressions across gender lines. Hindiyya’s religious charisma, visions, and popularity (notoriety) placed her at the center of a confluence of Latin missionary, Maronite, and Vatican histories. As such, her tale is more than a life story: it is a historical journey through the politics of gender and religion within the Maronite and Roman Catholic Churches during the eighteenth century. This book tells that story. The Moral of the Story In and of itself, Hindiyya’s tale is engrossing—a singular woman who against all odds transformed the Maronite Church and its relationship 2 | Embracing the Divine with Rome over the course of the eighteenth century. She was born in Aleppo in 1720 at a time of great commercial and religious effervescence. In the midst of the competing forces of mammon and church, Hindiyya began to have visions of Christ at a very young age. In those almost daily and incessant visions, the living Christ stoked the spiritual and bodily passion of Hindiyya by singling her out for the task of saving the lost souls of the world. She was to accomplish this by establishing a new religious order dedicated to the worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—the focal point of his divine love and mercy for humanity and the center of a wildly popular cult in Europe in the late seventeenth century. Beset by self-doubt and skepticism from a string of Jesuit confessors, Hindiyya nonetheless was animated by her love for Christ—and her own ambitions —to reject parental and paternalistic pleas, Vatican restrictions, and societal mores. She left Aleppo at the age of twenty-six and arrived in Mount Lebanon, where she endured four years of rejection and loneliness before she convinced a local Maronite bishop to support her cause. In 1750 Hindiyya finally succeeded in establishing her order, only to be met with stiff and sustained opposition from Latin missionaries who saw her unrestrained visions as a challenge to their control over the project of religious modernization in the Middle East. She also faced Vatican mistrust of feminine spirituality and independent local religious authority. On the other hand, Maronite ecclesiastical authorities saw in Hindiyya an “authentic” symbol and source for the creation of an expansive and energized local church. For the next twenty-five years her religious order and political fortunes rose and dipped between active opposition and benign neglect on the part of Rome and amid a Maronite Church and community split over the authenticity and propriety of her visions and project. Matters came to a tragic halt when two nuns in one of her convents died during exorcisms initiated after scandalous reports of satanic cults and consorting with the devil. The accumulated tragedies and outrage were too much of a burden for even the most ardent supporters of Hindiyya within the Maronite Church. Subsequently, in 1778 the second and final inquisition brought the demise of Hindiyya and her religious order (but not her impact by any means) when she was sentenced to spend the rest of her life imprisoned in a solitary cell in a convent. In Introduction | 3 1798 Hindiyya died in such a cell on top of a forbidding mountain, leaving a legacy that shaped the Maronite Church and its relations to Rome for many years to come. Compelling though it may be...