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During the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries two factions formed in the Church of Antioch, also known as the Melkite Church. One faction favored reconciliation and union with the [[Roman Catholic Church]] and another rejected it. The dispute led to parallel [[consecration of a bishop|consecrations]] of [[patriarch]]s for the Church of Antioch and unrest among the "Melkite" Orthodox community. Emir Fakhr-al-Din II, the ruler of the area under the [[Ottoman empire|Ottoman]] sultan, who harbored ambitions of independence from the Ottomans, convened in 1628 a [[synod]] of the twelve Melkite bishops of the church, excepting Cyril Dabbas, the pro-Latin claimant of the patriarchal throne.
The synod convened on [[June 1]], 1628 in the Church of the Blessed Virgin in the town of Ras-Baalbek, a few kilometers north of Baalbek, Lebanon, where Emir Fakhr-al-Din lived. The synod proclaimed [[Ignatius III Atiyah of Antioch|Ignatius III Atiyah]] as the only Patriarch. Of note was the motivation given to rejecting the appointment of Cyril Dabbas as patriarch was that he was not elected by the people of Damascus, a point that was made in the [[canon]]s subsequently issued by the synod. Cyril Dabbas, who had been brought to Ras-Baalbek in chains, was sent to exile near Hermel in today's Lebanon. There, he was executed by partisans of the Emir a short time later.
The synod also issued twenty canons of which those covering election and consecration of the Patriarch would later be important in confirming the regularity and legitimacy of the election of the pro-Catholic Cyril Tanas in the events of 1724 that led to the [[schism]] in the Melkite Church.
