for Sacraments without scruple.[1] So at last Clement XII (1730-1740) decides to provide a bishop of the Byzantine rite for the Italo-Greeks. He was not to be a diocesan bishop with jurisdiction. This would have offended against the principle, once considered most important, that there should not be two ordinaries in one place.[2] So the difficulty was solved by appointing an "ordaining bishop"[3] of the Byzantine rite. This bishop was to consider himself the vicar of the Ordinaries of those dioceses in which there were Albanians. He was to have no ordinary jurisdiction, only the right of visiting their churches and looking after them as delegate of the Ordinaries. In the diocese of Bisignano there was a disused Benedictine monastery, S Benedetto d'Ullano (p. 161). In the same place was a large Albanian colony. They had already three churches of their rite. Clement XII turned the monastery into a seminary for the Byzantine clergy, and determined that its rector should be the ordaining Byzantine bishop. The Bull of this foundation is dated 1735.[4] The ordaining bishop was to be a bishop in partibus, as it was then still called, with a title conveying no jurisdiction. And the first of these was Felix Samuel Rodotà, the uncle of Pietro Pompilio Rodotà, who wrote the history of his rite in Italy. Clement XII's successor, Benedict XIV (1740-1758) issued many laws for the Italo-Greeks. He arranged all kinds of matters concerning their marriages with Latins, their Sacraments, and so on.[5] There are two other Byzantine lines of bishops on the same terms, one at Rome, and one in Sicily; so that now there are three.[6]
An important factor in the preservation of the Byzantine rite among the Sicilian Albanians was the Congregation of the Oratory of the Greek rite (Congr. Orat. rit. græci). This was
- ↑ Rodotà mentions places where, still in his time, this happened; for instance, San Benedetto d'Ullano ("del Rito greco," iii, 71)
- ↑ The fourth Lateran Council (1215) had set up this idea as a principle, "We forbid altogether that one and the same city or diocese should have several Pontiffs, like one body with several heads, which would be a monster" (Mansi, xxii, 998). For a long time this was considered essential. Benedict XIV (1740-1758) explains and defends it ("de Synodo diœcesano," lib. ii, cap. 12; ed. Rom., 1767, pp. 46-50). It is now quite obsolete. Throughout the East, in Austria-Hungary, etc., wherever there are communities of various Uniate rites, there are several Catholic bishops, each for his own rite. Lwow has three; there are four Catholic Patriarchs of Antioch, three Bishops of Beinit, and so on.
- ↑ For further details and the present arrangement see pp. 177-178.
- ↑ There was already a Byzantine bishop at Rome, since 1595; see p. 177.
- ↑ See pp. 33-37.
- ↑ Pp. 177-178.
