Chapter was held in the monastery of St Philaret, in the diocese of Mileto in the same year (1579). It elected Nicholas Antony Ruffo, Archimandrite of St Nicholas at Butramo, in Sicily, as first general. The reformed rule was published in 1678.[1] The general of the Basilians had and has the same privileges at Papal functions as the generals of other orders. Though this congregation is now reduced to one monastery, it is still bound by the rule of 1678.
Meanwhile, during all this period, the rule of St Basil lost many subjects. Just as the other Italo-Greeks, harried by their neighbours, asked and obtained permission to turn Latin, so numbers of Basilian monasteries, weary of the difficulty of keeping up this foreign rule with its Greek office and services in a Latin land, tired, too, of the greater strictness of their rule,[2] got leave to drop the whole thing, to become Latins and follow the rule of St Benedict. Thus Abbot Ferdinand Ughelli, writing about 1640, says of the great monastery "del Patire" at Rossano (p. 127): "This church a few years ago became Latin. Formerly it used the Greek language and rite."[3] Others, while keeping their rule and rite, nevertheless modified it in various ways by adopting Latin customs.[4] Very many Basilian monasteries disappeared altogether, for lack of subjects. In the eighteenth century the rule of St Basil again nearly disappeared in Italy. This time it was two of their own generals who tried to turn the Congregation into a Latin order. They are Peter Menniti in 1709 and Joseph del Pozzo in 1746. Both presented petitions to the Pope that the Italo-Greek rite might be finally abolished.
- ↑ "Constitutiones monachorum ordinis S Basilii congregationis Italiæ," Rome, 1678.
- ↑ The comparative severity of the Roman and Byzantine rites is a curious point. In one point at least, the celibacy of secular clergy, the Byzantine rite is notably more lax. In almost all others it is more severe. The laity have many more, and more severe, fast-days. For monks it is much severer. Byzantine monks have perpetual abstinence from flesh-meat, all their lives, a huge amount of fasting and enormously long office. Another rule from which many Basilian monks often wished to escape is the obligation of wearing the beard and long hair. This, it seems, exposed them to derision (though, as far as the beard is concerned, there have always been plenty of Capuchins in Italy).
- ↑ "Italia sacra," ix, col. 286.
- ↑ For instance, by shaving the beard, wearing the close-fitting Italian cassock instead of the ample ῥάσον, eating flesh-meat, shortening the Canonical Hours and adapting them, more or less, to the Roman order, and so on. Grottaferrata, I regret to say, was a bad offender in such ways as this (see p. 150).
