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74 It is chiefly on the mainland that there was a considerable Latin body of Christians, Latin influence and Latin uses in Church, coming presumably from the North. The best proof of this is that, as we shall see, when the court of Constantinople tried to enforce its own rite throughout its possessions in Italy, there was much opposition, many bishops preferring to go on using the Latin rite to which they were accustomed.

Yet this Latin use, these Latin rites, were not necessarily Roman. One of the few fragments of liturgical use in Southern Italy that remain, the lectionaries of Naples at the time of St Gregory I (590-604), are Latin, but not Roman. They show rather the type of liturgy common in Gaul, Spain, and other parts of Italy before the spread of the Roman rite. There is Roman influence, as would be natural because of the nearness of Rome; but there are marked non-Roman features, signs of Eastern influence, such as we find in most of these local Churches since their more frequent relations with the East in the fourth century. For instance, Baptism is administered at the Epiphany, during a special midnight Mass. Baptism at the Epiphany is a markedly un-Roman custom, which St Leo I (440-461) had tried to put down in Sicily (p. 71). Perhaps another proof of Latin influence is in the Latin names