founded by Fr. George Guzzetta. He was a Latin priest of the Oratory at Palermo, distinguished for learning and piety. He conceived the idea of forming a Congregation of priests, under the patronage of St Philip Neri and following his constitution,[1] but for the Byzantine (that is, Albanian) clergy in Sicily. He persuaded a number of these to join him. This Oratory was approved in 1725. It had no organic connection with the other Oratories. It possessed one house at Piana dei Greci (p. 165). By the end of the eighteenth century Guzzetta's Congregation was already decadent. It could not find subjects among the Albanian clergy because it maintained the Roman principle of celibacy. In 1801 Pius VII allowed the Congregation to receive Roman priests, on condition that they should use the Byzantine rite only as long as they remained in it — an early and at that time rare exception to the rule against change of rite.[2] During the nineteenth century this Oratory of the Byzantine rite died out. During its century and a half of existence it had done much to raise the tone of the Albanian clergy and people in Sicily. Guzzetta also founded a Congregation of religious women called the Institution of the Holy Family, to educate Albanian girls in what he called "Schools of Mary."[3] One convent and school remain, at Piana dei Greci, in Sicily (p. 165).
Besides the Albanians there are, or were, other groups of Byzantine Uniates in Italy dating from the same time. It was not only Albanians who fled the Turk in the fifteenth century. So there were colonies of Greeks at Venice, Ancona, Leghorn, Bibbona, Trieste, in Corsica, and Malta. We shall come back to some of these (pp. 135-145; 169-175).
- 6. Byzantine Monasticism in Italy.
The monks of the Byzantine rite have had so great an influence on the development of the Italo-Greeks that we must say something about them before we come to the present state of things.
It is difficult to say when first the rule of St Basil was introduced into Italy. Nor does it follow that everyone who
- ↑ The Constitution the Oratorian Congregations was drawn up from St Philip's ideas by Cæsar Baronius, approved by Paul V on February 24, 1612.
- ↑ Pii VII, Const. 59 ("Bull. Rom. Cont.," Rome, 1846, tom. xi, p. 165).
- ↑ For the life of Guzzetta see Giov. d'Angelo, "Vita del servo di Dio P. Giorgio Guzzetta," Palermo, 1798, where curious information about the Albanians of Sicily in the early eighteenth century will be found (Rodotà, "del Rito greco," iii, 119).
