as an Orthodox one. Since then the Uniates (now all Albanians) have tried in vain to reclaim it.[1] The Byzantine Uniate communities at Leghorn and in Corsica still exist, and will be discussed below (pp. 169-175).
- Summary.
There have been Greeks in the South of Italy and in Sicily since the days, long before Christianity, when colonists from Hellas made these parts Greater Greece. There has been Christianity of a Greek type, using Greek as its liturgical language, ever since the Gospel was first preached in Calabria, Apulia, and Sicily. During the first six centuries there was a gradual but incomplete process of latinization of the Southern Italians and Sicilians, both in ordinary life and in religious matters. In the seventh century, fresh influence from Constantinople fortified the Greek element. In the eighth, the Lombards came, bringing with them the Latin language and Latin rites, but as a foreign element, in their case. Meanwhile the Roman citizens looked to Constantinople as their capital, and remained for the chief part Greek. Yet the Church of Southern Italy and Sicily all the time was closely dependent on Rome. The Pope ordained all its bishops; it had no other Metropolitan than him. In the eighth century, as part of the Iconoclast persecution, the Emperors at Constantinople made a determined attempt to hellenize all that was left of their empire in Italy and Sicily. They affected to withdraw the bishops from dependence on the Pope, to join them to the Patriarchate of Constantinople, to make them use only the Byzantine rite. This process was going on when the Great Schism broke out. But then, in the eleventh century, the Norman conquerors again turned the tide towards Rome. From their time the Byzantine rite declined steadily till the fifteenth century. It had almost expired, when it received new life from the Albanian refugees. Now it is represented here by the descendants of these; though there remain curious traces of the older Greek element. During all this period, from the fourth century at latest, Byzantine monasticism has been a great factor in the preservation of the rite in Italy.
- ↑ Rodotà, iii, 97-99; Kyriakos, Ἐκκλ. Ἱοτορία, Γ', 118; V. Vannutelli, O.P., "Le Colonie Italo-greche" (Rome, 1890), 37-38.
