It was then accepted that there could not be two bishops in one place, according to the axiom of the Fourth Lateran Council.[1] In short, the only possibility recognized was the geographical diocese; where one bishop ruled in a town there could be no other ordinary episcopal jurisdiction but his. So, at first, as we have seen (p. 122), the Holy See provided for the Albanians by requiring each Latin bishop, in whose diocese they settled, to have a special Vicar General of the Byzantine rite for them. That is still the law; and so far it works well. Mgr. Peter Camodeca de' Nobili Coronei is Vicar General of the Bishop of Cassano al' Ionio for the Albanians (p. 161).
Yet it was impossible that their condition should be satisfactory as long as they had no one in episcopal orders of their rite. They needed someone to ordain their clergy, to bless their chrism, and (since in this point they are latinized) to confirm them. For over two centuries the Italo-Greeks had to get on without such a bishop. During that time all kinds of curious compromises were made. Sometimes a wandering Uniate bishop from the Levant was called in to ordain (sometimes, by mistake, he was not even a Uniate); generally the Latin ordinaries, in spite of the Canons, themselves ordained and confirmed their Byzantine subjects, according to the Roman rite. This is directly opposed to one of the principles of the Holy See — namely, that every man should receive sacraments in his own rite. But there was already a precedent at Rome itself. Here, too, the same difficulty had occurred. Who was to ordain the students of the Greek College? Already, in 1595, Clement VIII (1592-1605) had provided for this by appointing a Byzantine bishop in partibus infidelium to ordain the students, and (so he intended) all Italo-Greeks. This bishop was to have no jurisdiction. But the line does not seem to have lasted. There is considerable obscurity about these Byzantine bishops in Rome, till they were revived in 1629. In 1624 Urban VIII (1623-1644) drew up a new Constitution for the Greek College, in which, among other things, he ordered that there should always be a Byzantine ordaining bishop in it.[2] In 1629 Gabriel, titular Metropolitan of Mitylene, was appointed to this place. From his time the line continues regularly. The bishop lives at the Greek College, has nothing to do with its management, but ordains
