of the Maronite Patriarch, the only real guide of the Maronite nation. On some occasions Propaganda Fide had intervened earlier to order the canonical subdivision of patriarchy, but his decrees had remained a dead letter. The Synod of 1736 instituted canonically eight eparchies, over the patriarchal seat, defining its territorial jurisdictions: Aleppo, Beirut, Byblos coupled with Batroun (Botrys), Cyprus, Damascus, Baalbek (Heliopolis), Tripoli and Tyre-Sidon. Only in 1738 Assemani left Lebanon, where he had expressed strong resistance to certain decisions of the Synod; but due to other assignments received, he reached Rome only in 1741. Some years after the Synod, Joseph Dergham sent a petition to the Pope to support his views and to make void the decrees of the synod, however Pope Clement XII established a special commission of cardinals to investigate the acts of the Synod, this committee was confirmed by the next Pope Benedict XIV. Their acts were approved definitively, in their Latin translation, on 1 September 1741 with the papal bull Singularis Romanorum, while the Apostolic praedecessorum of 14 February 1742, confirmed the decisions of the Maronite Synod on the division of patriarchy in eparchies, their number and their spatial extent and discarded El Khazen's petition. Joseph Dergham El Khazen died on May 13, 1742. See also List of Maronite Patriarchs Maronite Church Additional References Patriarch Joseph V Dergham El-Khazen (Catholic-Hierarchy) Citations Sources Pierre Dib, v. Maronite (Eglise), https://archive.org/stream/dictionnairedet10pt1vaca#page/n47/mode/2up, Tome Dixième, première partie, Paris 1928, coll. 79-85. Giuseppe Simone Assemani, https://archive.org/stream/serieschronologi00asseuoft#page/40/mode/2up, Rome 1881, p. 40. Konrad Eubel, Hierarchia Catholica Medii Aevi, https://archive.org/stream/hierarchiacathol06eubeuoft#page/87/mode/1up, p. 87. https://books.google.it/books?id=iUVJAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=it#v=onepage&q&f=false, Romae MDCCCXX. External links http://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/belkhjd.html 18th-century people from the Ottoman Empire 1742 deaths Lebanese Eastern Catholic bishops Lebanese Maronites Maronite Patriarchs of Antioch Year of birth unknown 18th-century Eastern Catholic archbishops Eastern Catholic bishops in the Ottoman Empire