Page:Uniate Eastern Churches.pdf/210

180 Byzantine rite, with the inevitable notes of Catholic use. The peculiarities of the Italo-Greeks are, in outline, these. Rodotà calls them peculiarities of the Basilian monks in Italy. But that, I think, is only because at his time the Byzantine rite in Italy was maintained chiefly by the monks. The other churches seem to have had the same points. What they come to is that there are Roman infiltrations, some of great, some of hardly any, importance. The chief point of all was the use of azyme bread for the holy Eucharist; next to this, in importance, are feasts taken from the Roman Calendar and the use of Latin vestments.

We have noted that some at least of these Italo-Greek peculiarities go far back into the Middle Ages. After the Norman conquest it was almost inevitable that there should be Latin influence among the Greeks in Italy. There is, for instance, a curious combination of the Byzantine Proanaphora with a translation into Greek of the Roman Canon, called the Liturgy of St Peter, dating from the ninth or tenth century. It is commonly said that the chief Romanizing points, azyme bread and Roman vestments, were introduced by Cardinal Bessarion at Grottaferrata, and then spread among all the Italo-Greeks. This, however, is a mistake. Rodotà says roundly: "The Basilians of our time celebrate the holy