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72 bishops of Sicily and Lower Italy. His famous letter to John of Syracuse, in which he defends the Roman Church from the accusation of having imitated Constantinople, begins by saying that he has heard of these accusations from Sicilians, "either Greeks or Latins" (so both were in Sicily then). In the course of it he asks: "Have your Churches received a tradition from the Greeks? Why then do the subdeacons to this day wear linen tunics, except that they have received this custom from their mother the Roman Church?"

Then, after the second hellenization of Sicily and Calabria in the seventh century (when Constans II came to Syracuse in 662, p. 58), we find evidence of a considerable Greek element in Sicily. St Maximos the Confessor (, † 662) preached in Greek "in Africa and the islands near" (clearly including Sicily), and all the people and bishops came to hear him. While he was on the island he wrote a letter, in Greek, to the "holy fathers, hegumenoi, monks, and orthodox people of Sicily." Gregory, the Hymnograph in the seventh century, who wrote a Greek Kontakion in honour of St Marcian, was certainly a Sicilian, probably Bishop of Syracuse. St Gregory of Akragas (Girgenti, in Sicily), author of a Commentary on Ecclesiastes, was a bishop of the Byzantine rite. His date is difficult to determine exactly; he was probably of the seventh century. Our St Theodore of Canterbury (668-690),