maintained that they were Catholics in union with Rome, though not of the Roman rite. In the case of many of these we have perhaps an example of the ease with which union with Rome can be brought about, so long as there is no interference with local rites. Even if they had been schismatics before, the acceptance of the position of Uniates would not make much visible change to these simple people. The Albanians had no great theologians among them. Probably they understood very little of the change of principle involved by their reunion. It would indeed have been hardly possible to remain in schism at that time in Italy. Meanwhile they went to the new churches they built in Calabria and Sicily, and followed in them the services to which they were accustomed.[1] The Holy See applied to them its invariable policy of not interfering with their rite, only taking care that their clergy should be brought up in the Catholic Church, and taking certain precautions to put down customs that were really superstitious or immoral.
So the Albanians brought new life to the expiring Byzantine rite in Italy. Yet from the beginning there were difficulties about their position. For one thing they had no bishops. Till the eighteenth century they had no bishop at all. They were, according to the normal Catholic rule, subject to the diocesan Ordinaries of the places where they settled. These Ordinaries were all Latins. There was the greatest possible difficulty about the ordaining of their clergy. Occasionally a wandering bishop of the Byzantine rite is sent down to Calabria to ordain. Sometimes the Albanians begin to dispute their ecclesiastical position, and to claim that they are exempt from the jurisdiction of the Latin Ordinaries. Some bishop of the rite, who happened to be in the South of Italy or Sicily, would begin to use jurisdiction over them, to the great annoyance of the Latin Ordinary. There was a famous case of this in the diocese of Messina. In 1556 a Levantine bishop, Pamphylios,
- ↑ That is, supposing they had been Orthodox before they came to Italy. There is, however, good reason to suppose that, at any rate, many Albanians were Uniates already in their own country (p. 116). Another factor to realize is that at that time, in face of the overwhelming disaster of the Turkish invasion, there was less opposition between Catholics and Orthodox than at any other since the great schism. Indeed, fear and hatred of the common enemy drew all Eastern Christians together for a time and made them well-disposed towards the West, from which they hoped so eagerly for help. I know several curious examples of this, even Patriarchs agreeing that their subjects should unite with Rome.
