Page:Uniate Eastern Churches.pdf/164

134 Neither was successful. Rodotà argues indignantly against the reasons they give.

Rodotà laments the diminution of the ancient order in Italy. He says that, whereas once there were about a thousand monasteries of this rule, in his time they are reduced to "the mean number of only forty-three." Since his time the process has gone on apace. At the present moment all that is left of the rule is one single monastery, Grottaferrata. If ever that disappears, or is turned into a Benedictine house, then all Italo-Greek monasticism will be a mere memory. Fortunately, though reduced to this one house, it still remains, heir to so many glorious memories (pp. 146-151).

There were once many convents of Basilian nuns in Calabria and Sicily. Rodotà gives a list of those that once existed in Calabria. Already in his time all were extinct. Some had disappeared, some had adopted the rule of a Latin order. When he wrote a few remained in Sicily. But here, too, they were disappearing. One of the greatest was the convent of St Saviour Philanthropos (Filatropo) at Messina, founded by Roger I of Sicily. "Down to our own time," says Rodotà, "they sang the divine praises in Greek." But then the usual difficulty arose. It was perhaps even more difficult to find ladies in Sicily who knew Greek than to find such men. So they were allowed to adopt the Roman rite and the Benedictine rule. Only the Blessing of Waters at the Epiphany, the lessons on Palm Sunday, and the Liturgy and Hesperinon on the feasts of St Basil and his sister St Makrine were still Byzantine, in Greek. At Palermo there was still a convent, St Saviour, founded by Robert Wiscard. Bessarion arranged their rule for them. All these have now disappeared. But there is a Byzantine convent of nuns belonging to the Albanian colonies (p. 166).