arrived at Messina, and began to behave as the Ordinary of the Albanians and other Byzantine Christians in the diocese. He ordained, visited their churches, made rules for them, reformed their rite, and so on. Gian Andrea Mercurio, Archbishop of Messina, sent an angry protest against him to Rome, and he was put down.[1] The same kind of thing happened at Benevento and in various places in Calabria. Because of these disorders the Holy See laid down definite rules about the position of the Albanians and other Italo-Greeks.[2]
Then, although at first the Albanians were warmly welcomed by the Government of Naples, as Christian heroes who had suffered much from the Turk, it seems that in time they were no longer popular among their Italian neighbours. There was always a certain suspicion of their strange rites. Frequently they are accused of various bad habits, some of which are nothing really but the lawful custom of their rite, while others are certainly things that ought to be put down, if the accusations were true. Thus they were accused of not observing the fasts and feasts of the Roman rite, of giving holy Communion to children just baptized, and so on. But they are also accused of despising the authority of the Holy See, of scorning the censures of the Latin bishops, of sharing the errors of the schismatics with regard to purgatory and azyme bread, of digging up dead bodies and burning them.[3] In the reign of Pope Paul III (1534-1549) the Albanians from Korone, now in Sicily, sent their bishop Benedict (p. 118) to Rome to protest against these accusations. The Pope received him most graciously, and in answer to his petition wrote a Brief to the Sicilian bishops, in which he praises the Coronei for their valour and fidelity to the Catholic faith, severely forbids any bishop to interfere with their rite or annoy them because they are not Latins, renews former Papal laws to that effect, and threatens grave censures against anyone who does so. There are many constitutions of Popes to the same effect. The attitude of the Holy See was always, first that the Albanians are to be subject to the ordinary jurisdiction of the Latin bishops; but, on the other hand, that nothing is to be done to alienate them from their own rite. So, after a long quarrel between the Albanians of the province of Benevento and their neighbours, Pius IV (1559-1565) published a Constitution
