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84 connection with the Moslem conquest of Sicily. By that conquest the Empire lost the island; on the other hand, a great number of Sicilian Greeks, particularly monks, fled to the mainland opposite. This was a further Greek impulse to Calabria and Apulia. Under the Emperors, Leo VI (the Wise, 886-911) and Nikephoros Phokas (963-969), two Byzantine provinces were formed in Calabria, Rhegium and St Severina, and one, Hydruntum, in Apulia. In Apulia the Greek element was less strong; parts of the province, in the North, remained Latin throughout this period.

Luitprand of Cremona, Ambassador at Constantinople in 949 and 968, has this account of the policy of Nikephoros Phokas: "Nikephoros, being an impious man to all Churches, because of his hatred of us, commanded the Patriarch Polyeuktos, of Constantinople, to raise the Church of Hydruntum to the honour of an archbishopric, and not to allow that the divine mysteries throughout Apulia and Calabria be celebrated any longer in Latin, but in Greek. ... Therefore, Polyeuktos, Patriarch of Constantinople, sent to the Bishop of Hydruntum the privilege that, by his (Polyeuktos') authority, he should have leave to consecrate bishops in Acirentia, Turcicum, Gravina, Materia, Tricaricum, whose consecration belonged to the Apostolicus." With regard to this evidence we should note that, though the main fact he tells is undoubted — namely, the erection of Hydruntum to be the Metropolis of a new Byzantine province in Apulia — there may be reason to doubt the accuracy