Patriarchate of Constantinople, was an injury to the Holy See, and one more case of lawless interference by the civil Government in ecclesiastical affairs. But it did not necessarily involve schism. The Holy See could tolerate that certain dioceses in Italy should become part of the Byzantine Patriarchate. Probably, for the sake of peace, it would have done so; but just at the time when this question was being most discussed, there came the great schism, first under Photius (867), then under Cerularius (1054), which put an end to negotiations. Then the Normans conquered the South of Italy and Sicily. Under their rule the Byzantine element gradually receded till it almost disappeared.
Anastasius Bibliothecarius tells of the confiscation of property and the beginning of the attempt to snatch the Southern dioceses from the Roman Patriarchate. He says that when the Iconoclast quarrel began: "Then they who are now called Emperors of the Greeks ... since they could not otherwise injure the Roman Pontiffs, seized their ancient inherited territories, violated the rights of the Apostolic See, and took away nearly all the rights of the Pope in the dioceses of which they [the Emperors] could dispose, giving these to their own friends and followers. So they usurped the right which the Apostolic See had in these places, because they were situated near it, and they wickedly handed them over to the diocese of Constantinople."[1]
The Emperors carried out the same policy in Illyricum, which till then had been part of the Roman Patriarchate. All through this story Illyricum and the old Magna Græcia in the South of Italy go together. The same policy of the Emperors wanted to detach both from Rome, to join both to Constantinople. In the South of Italy and Sicily their policy could be carried out the more easily because of the considerable revival of Greek language in those parts since the sixth century (p. 57). Their excuse was that the people were Greeks, attached to the Empire; whereas Rome itself was falling under the power of Barbarians, Lombards, and Franks.[2] Therefore it was right that the Church in Sicily and Greater Greece should depend rather on the imperial and Greek See of Constantinople.
Sicily was more Greek than the mainland. Here the Greek element had always been the stronger.[3] So the
