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 ITALO-GREEKS

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ITALO-GREEKS

When, in 726, Leo the Isaurian, by a stroke ot his pen, withdrew Southern Italy from the patriarchal juris- diction of Rome and gave it to the Patriarch of Constantinople, the process of hellenization became more rapid; it received a further impulse when, on account of the Saracenic occupation of Sicil}', many Greeks and hellenized Sicilians repaired to Calabria and Apulia. Still it was not rapid enough to suit the Byzantine emperors, who feared lest those regions should again fall under the influence of the Western Empire, like the Duchy of Rome and the Exarchate of Ravenna. Finally, after the Saxon emperors had made a formidable attempt to drive the Greeks from the peninsula, Emperor Nicephorus Phocas and the Patriarch Polyeuctos made it ob- ligatory on the bishops, in 968, to adopt the Greek Rite. This order aroused lively opposition in some quarters, as at Bari, under Bishop Giovanni. Nor was it executed in other places immediately and uni- versally. Cassano and Taranto, for instance, are said to have always maintained the Latin Rite. At Trani, in 983, Bishop Rodostamo was allowed to re- tain the Latin Rite, as a reward for aiding in the surrender of the city to the Greeks. About the middle of the eleventh century, however. Bishop Gio- vanni II joined the schism of Michael Cferularius. In every diocese there were always some churches which never forsook the Latin Rite; on the other hand, long after the restoration of that rite, there remained Greek churches with native Greek clergy.

The restoration of the Latin Rite began with the Norman conquest in the eleventh century, especially in the first period of the conquest, when Norman eccle- siastics were appointed bishops. Another potent factor was the reform of Gregory VII, who in his efforts to repress marriage among the Latin clergy found no small obstacle in the example of the Greek priests. However, he and his successors recognized the Greek Rite and discipline wherever it was in legitimate possession. Moreover, the Latin bishops ordained the Greek as well as the Latin clergy. In the course of time the Norman princes gained the affection of their Greek subjects by respecting their rite, which had a strong support in the numerous Basilian monasteries (in the fifteenth century there were still seven of them in the Archdiocese of Ros- sano alone). The latinization of the dioce.ses was complete in the sixteenth century. Among those which held out longest for the Greek Rite were Acerenza (and perhaps Gravina), 1302; Gerace, 1467; Oppido, 1472 (when it was temporarily united to Gerace); Rossano, 1460; Gallipoli, 151.3; Bova (to the time of Gregory XIII), etc. But even after that time many Greek priests remained in some dioceses. In that of Otranto, in 1583, there were still two hun- dred Greek priests, nearly all native. At Reggio, Calabria, Count Ruggiero in 1092 had given the Greeks the church of S. Maria della Cattolica, whose clergy had a protopapa, exempt from the jurisdiction of the bi.shop; this was the case until 1611. In 1695 there were in the same dioceses fifty-nine Greek priests; after thirty years there was only one. Ros- sano still had a Greek clergy in the seventeenth cen- tury. The few native Greek priests were afterwards absorbed in the tide of immigration (see below). Of the Basilian monasteries the only one left is that of Grottaferrata, near Rome. In Sicily the latiniza- tion was, for two reasons, accomplished more easily and radically. First, during the rule of the Saracens most of the dioceses were left without bishops, so that the installation of Latin bishops encountered no difficulty; secondly, the Normans had come as lib- erators, and not as conquerors.

(2) Important Greek colonies, founded chiefly for commercial reasons, were located at Venice, Ancona (where they obtained from Clement VII and Paul III the church of S. Anna, which they lost in 1833, hav-

ing lieen declared schismatical in 1797). Bari, Lecce (where, even in the nineteenth century, in the church of S. Nicola, Divine worship was carried on in the Greek tongue, though in the Latin Rite), Naples (where they have the church of SS. Pietro e Paolo, erected in 1526 by Tommaso Paleologo Assagni), Leghorn (where they have the church of the An- nunziata, 1607).

In Rome, where Greek was the official language of the Church until the third century, there was always a large colony observing the Greek Rite. From the end of the sixth century until the ninth and tenth there were several Greek monasteries, among which were Cella Nova, near S. Saba; S. Erasmo; S. Silvestro in Capite; the monastery next to S. Maria Antiqua at the foot of the Palatine. Like other nations, the Greeks before the year 1000 hail their own schola at Rome. It was near the church of S. Maria in Cosmedin. Even in the pon- tifical liturgy — at least on some occasions — a few of the chanted passages were in Greek; the custom of singing the Epistle and Gospel in both Latin and Greek dates from that period (Gaisser, " Brani greci nella liturgia latina" in "Rassegna Gregoriana", 1902, nos. 7, 8, 9). At present (1909) there are in Rome two Greek Catholic churches : S. Atanasio, belonging to the Greek College, and S. Maria in Domnica al Celio, belonging to the Basilian monks of the Congregation of Choueir.

(3) Besides the first large emigration of Albanians, which took place between 1467 ami 1470, after the death of the celebrated Scanderbeg (when his daugh- ter, who had become the Princess of Bisignano, in- vited her countrymen to the Kingdom of Naples), there were two others, one under Sultan Selim II (1566-1574), directed to the ports along the Adriatic and to Leghorn; the other about 1740. In the course of time, owing to assimilation with the sur- rounding population, the number of these Italo- Greeks diminished, and not a few of their villages became entirely Latin. The following is a list of towns with an Albanian population. In Calabria and Basilicata: Castroregio, Farneto, S. Paolo, S. Costantino, Plataci, Civita Percile, Frassineto, S. Basilio, Fermo, Lungro, Acquaformosa (Cassano lonico), Marri, S. Benedetto d'Ullano, S.Sofia di Epiro (Diocese of S. Marco and Bisignano), Macchia, S. Demetrio Corone, S. Cosmo, S. Giorgio Albanese, Vaccariso Albanese (Diocese of Rossano) ; a total of 37,000 souls and about fifty priests. Five other dis- tricts in the same region are completely latinized. In Sicily, Italo-Greeks are found at Plana del Greci, Palazzo Adriano, Contessa Entellina (Diocese of Monreale), Mezzofuso, Palermo (Diocese of Palermo), and Messina, where in the church of S. Maria del Graffeo the Latin Rite is observed in the Greek tongue; a total of about 22,000 souls and forty priests. Other Italo-Greek colonies were at Villa- badessa (Diocese of Atri and Penne) ; Pianiano, near Acquapendente; and Cargese, in Corsica.

To educate the clergy of these Greeks Gregory XIII founded in 1577 at Rome the Greek College of S. Atanasio, which served also for the Greek Catholics of the East and for the Ruthenians, until a .special college was instituted for the latter purpose by Leo XIII. Among the alumni of S. Atanasio was the celebrated Leo .'Vllatius. Another Greek ecclesias- tical college was founded at Palermo in 1715 by P. Giorgio Guzzetta, founder of an oratory of St. Philip Neri among the Greek clergy. At Fermo the sem- inary of SS. Pietro e Paolo existed from 1663. erected by the Propaganda to supply priests for Alliania. It was suppressed in 1746. Finally Clement XII. in 1736, founded the Corsini College in the ancient .\bhey of S. Benedetto d'Ullano, whence it was transferre<l in 1794 to S. Demetrio Corone, in the ancient Basilian monastery of S. .Adriano. Since 1849, however, and