SOURCE: Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon by Richard Van Leewen, Chapter 4: Section II

4.2.1 The clergy and the Khazin sheiks in the 17th centuryAlthough information is scarce, some historians have described the relations between the Maronite clergy and laymen before the 18th century as a rather harmonious symbiosis. This, perhaps too idealized, picture suggests that the patriarch's authority was required to legitimize secular leadership, while the latter fulfilled the role of patrons of the church and the clergy, who provided the financial support of the church and, according to customary practice, participated in the election of patriarchs and the nomination of mutrans.