Antonine University

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The monastery in Lebanon has always been a school. In fact, Lebanon has for centuries owed to the Church in general and to monasteries in particular its cultural and educational development, its didactic art, as well as its spiritual, literary and artistic heritage. Its own identity, civilization and social fabric are greatly influenced by what the clergy offered. It was monasteries that hosted... the first schools, the first libraries, printing activities, publishing houses, works of art, and cultural, and artisitic exhibitions.
The Church was the major protagonist in the Nahda, the renaissance in Arab thought. The role of ecclesiastical institutions was decisive in the revival of the Arab language and literature after a long state of torpor known as Inhitat or decadence. It is obvious that education was orignally linked to apostolic life, it was especially an accomplishment of the Church. The school was geographically related to the church and the monastery, the manual was a religious textbook and school activity was at the secvice of liturgy. The teacher, in general a clergyman, was in charge of communicating to the students knowledge, piety, and high morals. Therefore, the educational venture has had an integrating aspect in the life of the pasrish.
It is worth mentioning that from the very beginning, the Church has been concerned about helping gifted children of poor families. While well-off families had to contribute to the tuition fees of their own children, those of the needy and orphans, the Church generously provided free education. The 1736 Synod of Mount Lebanon commanded not only free education, but also free clothing and food. The Church, at its own expense, sent the students who were distinguished by their virtue and intelligence to Rome to do higher studies in the Maronite College in Rome. It should also be noted that in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, the Church which is a mother, has always endeavoured to compensate for the absence of social welfare by creating schools, retirement homes, and hospitals, and others.
Since its foundation towards the end of the seventeenth century, The Maronite Antonine Order has always regarded teaching and educating the youth as a mission and a sphere of its parochial activity. A school was almost always geographically linked to each of the monasteries. The Antonine University would like to locate itself in the midst of this famous ecclesiastical tradition. Being an heir to such a glorious past, it aims to maintain a secular, salutary, and civilizing mission.
In the past, education had a global character. There was no differenciation among disciplines. The boundaries between school and university were not clear and the same applied to the differenciation among faculties and courses. The same instructor indistinctly used the same book for almost all courses to teach all the students in the same institution.
This is how the monasteries of Baabda, Mar-Chaya, Ghazir, Deir-el-Kalaa, and Kattine taught their students grammar and languages, as well as philosophy, theology, music, law, and jurisprudence. Higher learning in the East gradually became classified in independent diciplines. The same applies to the allocation of different courses to different faculties. Specialty was increasingly imperative at the level of the institute, the instructor, and the student.
The Lebanese state also gradually improved higher learning legislation. It was preoccuopied with maintaining loyalty to the spirit and text of the Lebanese Constitution and the Declaration of Human Rights which guarantees the freedom of education.
Throughout this process of differenciation, The Antonine Order committed itself to never confine its educational mission to one field. To that end, the order has continued for decades to prepare its own staff members in the most reputed universities in Europe and elsewhere to assume their academic and administrative responisibilities at its own university.
Meanwhile, the Antonine Order has witnessed several developments at the level of organized higher learning. Throughout those stages, we have been preoccupied with meeting the growing needs of the middle and the lower classes and with contributing to the development of Lebanese society.
In 1979 and in accordance with the agreements signed with Belgian universities, Lebanese students started their studies at the Antonine Institute and completed them in Belgium where they graduated with Belgian diplomas.
The majors ranged from applied sciences to medicine and dentistry. Engineering students did two years in Baabda, followed by three in Belgium, medical students did the first three years in Baabda and then went to Belgium for another four years, and dentistry students had to spend four years in Baabda before going to Belgium to do their fifth year and obtain the Belgian state diploma in surgery-dentistry.
From the beginning the Antonine students have demonstrated remarkable achievements at The University of Liege, The Free University of Brussels, The Catholic University of Louvain where they graduated with official diplomas. At present, those graduates have succesful careers in addition to having a legal status in their country. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the Antonine Order had a pastoral concern: in fact, due to the war, many young Lebanese people, especially Christians, left the country in search of university studies abroad.
The results and the validity of that education were uncertain and questionable. Host countries were not an adquate milieu for them and many were lost in an irremediable manner. This constituted a real hemmorage at the human and financial levels and the young had to face many economic, cultural, linguistic, ehtical and human problems. Many people opted for East European countries from which they came back with debatable academic standards and professional competence, and especially with an ideology that is hardly commendable for our society.