During the time of the Jesuit Superiors the students were ordained at the Lateran — that is, according to the Roman rite,[1] again a bad case of promiscuity of rite. This has now been abolished by the institution of a Byzantine ordaining bishop for them (see p. 177).
With the removal of the Jesuits by Leo XIII in 1897 a better tradition has been established. According to the Pope's express order everything in the college is now done according to the Byzantine rite. It is true that the Benedictine Superiors are also Latin; but the Pope gave them the special faculty of using the Byzantine rite during their domicile there.[2] Now all services, offices, prayers at the Greek College are exclusively Greek and Byzantine.[3] They are carried out with great care and exactness; the Benedictines of the college make a great point of exact knowledge of the rite, and the students are taught it carefully. In the great churches of Rome these students have plenty of opportunity of seeing the Roman rite; their lectures at the Propaganda College are in Latin; they talk Latin (with an Italian pronunciation) at least as well as any other Roman students; but they themselves are purely Byzantine. No one can now accuse them of being hybrids of a mixed rite.
The old costume of the Greek College was a purple cassock with a red belt and purple Soprana. This costume, borrowed from them, is still worn by the students of the Greek-Albanian College at Palermo (p. 164). But at Rome they have changed it. It is now a very pretty grey-blue with red belt, perhaps the prettiest costume in Rome. Under the Jesuits they wore Italian birettas and such things in the house, and the usual Italian hat out of doors. The Benedictines have given them a proper black Rason and the Kalymaukion of their rite. Under the Rason they still wear their blue cassocks.
- 3. The Albanian Colonies in Calabria and Sicily.
All that is now left of the Byzantine rite in Southern Italy is represented by a few villages of Albanians. We have seen that the immigration of Albanians in the fifteenth century meant a great revival of this rite (p. 120). But since then the
- ↑ College diary, op. cit., p. 35.
- ↑ De Meester, 37.
- ↑ In 1908 the Rector, Dom Athanasius Gaisser, obtained from the Holy Office in 1908 leave to transfer the Roman abstinence on Saturday to Wednesday; so that the students should not incur the old Byzantine reproach of fasting on Saturday (De Meester, op. cit., 34).
