attempt after he promulgated his first Iconoclast edict (c. 732), and Basil I's attempt further to carry out the same plan in Calabria and Apulia, after he had reconquered these from the Saracens (875); whereas, meanwhile, the Saracens had seized all Sicily (827-965). Through this a great number of Sicilian Greeks, especially monks, came to the mainland and so fortified the Greek element there. Then we have a further Hellenization under Nikephoros Phokas (963-969).
The Popes Adrian I (772-795)[1] and Nicholas I (858-867)[2] protested against this spoliation of their province. But their protests are rather against the robbery of the patrimony of the Holy See in Sicily and Calabria. They do not seem to have done much to prevent the change of jurisdiction. Only from this time they begin to establish Latin provinces, as an answer to those set up by Constantinople. John XIII (965-972) made archbishoprics at Naples, Amalfi, Capua, Benevento, Salerno, with suffragans.[3] From now the Latin bishops are no longer immediate suffragans of the Pope; they, too, have their own provinces. These Latin provinces were chiefly for the Lombards; but there are curious cases of cross jurisdiction between them and the Byzantine bishops, and cases of an understanding between the two hierarchies.[4]
This usurpation of Constantinople did not of itself lead to a schism. Schism is breach of communion. As long as there is no such breach there is no schism; though there may be acts which would naturally lead to one. The usurpation of Constantinople, though obviously a gross injury to the Holy See, did not itself affect any essential point of faith or morals. One cannot say that there is any essential reason why bishops in any part of the Church should obey one Patriarch rather than another. These are matters of ecclesiastical discipline which may, and often do, change. So the Popes seem to have been willing, in order to avoid greater evils, to tolerate the new arrangements made by the Emperors, in what was politically imperial territory.
Just about the time of this Byzantine aggression in Italy
- ↑ Jaffé, "Regesta Pont. Rom." (2nd edition, Leipzig, 1885-1888), tom. i, no. 2448.
- ↑ P.L., cxix, 779, B.
- ↑ Gay, "L'Italie méridionale et l'Empire byzantin," pp. 353-354.
- ↑ Gay, op. cit., pp. 188-190. He suggests, for instance, that the Bishops of Cusentia and Bisinianum were elected by the local Lombard (Latin) clergy, went to Rhegium to be ordained (according to the Byzantine rite) by the Greek Metropolitan, but used the Roman rite themselves when they came back home.
