Yohannan VIII Hormizd
According to his autobiography, Yohannan Hormizd was born in 1760 in Alqosh to an Assyrian family. His father, the deacon Hanna (Yohannan), was the brother of the Mosul patriarch Eliya XII Denha (1722–78).
Joseph Peter Hobaish
As Patriarch, Joseph Hobaish urged improving the formation of priests. The Maronite College in Rome no longer existed after 1808, but his attempts to reorganize it were unsuccessful. However popes Pius VIII and Gregory XVI were willing to accommodate students in the Maronite Pontifical Urban College. Hobaish thus reorganized the seminary 'Ain-Warka and opened two new seminaries, Mar 'Abda Harharaia in 1830 and Mar Sarsik et Bakhos in 1832. In 1840 he founded a religious congregation of missionaries. He introduced a modified liturgical ritual book which included many latinizations, and he took measures to limit the increasing Protestant missionary activity. Joseph Hobaish further definitively implemented two of the more controversial decrees of the Maronite Synod of 1736: the separation of monasteries where both men and women lived, and the definition of a fixed episcopal residence into each Maronite diocese.