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.[1]
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),[2] 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
- ↑ See p. 85.
- ↑ Published by Dom G. Morin, "La Liturgie de Naples au temps de S. Grégoire" (Revue Bénédictine, viii, 1891, pp. 481-493; 529-537), reprinted at the end of his "Liber Comicus" (Anecdota Maredsolana, I), 1893, pp. 426-435. They are two Calendars or quasi-Capitularia, one in the "Euang. S. Cuthberti " (Cotton MS., Nero, D. iv) and one in the "Cod. Reg., I, B. viii." Morin shows that both are Neapolitan in the beginning of the seventh century. They were brought to England by Adrian, Abbot of a monastery near Naples, then a companion of St Theodore of Canterbury, in 668. They contain the feast of St January with a vigil and the dedication of the basilica of St Stephen (the cathedral church of Naples).
having read all these arguments, I agree, on the whole, with Rodotà. It seems certain that Christianity in Lower Italy and Sicily was at first Greek. Then, gradually, a considerable Latin element was introduced, Latin language, Latin rites, and Roman influence. The bishops were ordained in Rome; the Pope occasionally demanded conformity to Roman use in certain particulars. But the Greek language and rites never disappeared, and already in the sixth century there was a great revival of them. From the eighth to the eleventh century they dominated these parts; then they went back and almost disappeared under the Normans and their successors. Certainly the idea of R. Cotroneo, G. Minasi and other Calabrian writers (see, for instance, "Roma e l'Oriente," vii, 275), that there was no Byzantine rite in Italy till the Emperors imposed it in the eighth century, is a mistake.
