At Palazzo Adriano Albanian is still spoken; but it is dying out. The younger generation know only Italian. Of about 5,000 people nearly 4,000 are Byzantine. They have three churches and six priests of their rite. The dioceses to which these places belong interlace curiously. Piana is in Monreale, S Cristina in Palermo, all the others in Monreale. Palazzo Adriano was in Girgenti till 1846; then, by a new arrangement of boundaries, it passed to Monreale. These six places are the only Albanian settlements in Sicily.
At Messina, once so great a centre of the Byzantine rite, there are now hardly more than memories. The great monastery of St Saviour has gone (p. 125); the cathedral keeps only its title "Santa Maria del Grafeo" (p. 110) as evidence that once it was Greek. But there is one Byzantine Uniate priest here with a small chapel. As far as I know, he ministers to the few Uniates who may happen to stay in the city. In Malta, at Valletta, there is one Uniate Byzantine priest, with a small church. Both Messina and Valletta have large and prosperous Orthodox churches for the Greeks there; so have Naples (p. 144) and many cities in Italy. At Malta notably the two priests, Uniate and Orthodox, seem to be on the best possible terms; which is pleasant to note. In spite of the schism, they seem to realize that they have much in common. The Uniate looks upon his Orthodox rival as a good man, unimpeachable in rite, though unhappily materialiter in schism; the Orthodox thinks the Uniate a Greek and a colleague, though he does bend his neck to the horns of Roman pride. They visit each other and talk pleasantly. Each, of course, tries to capture the flock of the other; but I think each has the good sense to see that this is inevitable under the circumstances, and so bears no malice.
Altogether there are 50,000 to 60,000 Albanians in the south, about 37,000 in Calabria, and 20,000 in Sicily.[1]
- ↑ This is Charon's estimate ("Le XVᵉ Centenaire," p. 262). I find no attempt at a total estimate in Rodotà. Moroni ("Diz. di Erudizione," xxxii, 149) says that about 100,000 came in the sixteenth century, that emigration and latinization has (1845) reduced that number to half. S. Vailhé ("Dict. de Théologie cath." iii, 1368) estimates the number as about 50,000; Netzhammer ("Unter den Albanesen Kalabriens," loc. cit. p. 100) says there are 35,000 in Calabria. "Roma e l'Oriente," vii, 278, says 80,000 altogether. O. Werner ("Orbis terrarum catholicus," Freiburg, 1890, p. 36), 41,556 (in 1858), C. Streit ("Atlas hierarchicus," Paderborn, 1913, p. 122), 49,000.
