which they resent greatly, to say that they are not pure Byzantine. I do not think that any church now uses azyme bread or Roman vestments. The Kalymaukion has come back to the Greek College at Rome, and, at least for State occasions, among the Albanian clergy. Their dress out of doors is still rather Roman or Italian; but they wear beards. Where there are no Ikonostasia they declare that they are going to have them, as soon as they can afford it.[1] In short, the movement has set so firmly in the other direction that there is very little that is peculiarly Italo-Greek and not pure Byzantine among them now.[2]
- Summary.
In this chapter we have considered what remains of the Byzantine rite in Italy. Except for the colony in Corsica it is represented now only by the Albanian refugees of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (though there were Greeks among them too). The most important Byzantine institution in the country is the venerable monastery of Grottaferrata, founded by St Neilos the Younger at the beginning of the eleventh century. Grottaferrata has always kept its rule and its rite, though both at one time suffered from Roman infiltrations. Now it is again purest of the pure Byzantine. The other great centre is the Greek College at Rome, founded by Gregory XIII in the sixteenth century. Then there are the Albanian villages in Calabria and Sicily, containing altogether about 50,000 Italo-Greeks. At Cargese in Corsica is a colony of Greeks, numbering about 600; these have a further colony in Algeria. At Leghorn is a parish containing about eighty Italo-Greeks, with a Melkite priest. None of these people have diocesan bishops of their own. They are subject to the
- ↑ So they say at Piana de' Greci. An example of their feelings may be seen in "Roma e l'Oriente" vii (1914), 224-231, where the clergy of Piana are accused of doing certain unbyzantine things in Holy Week; and their angry denial, pp. 353-364. See also iii (1911-1912), 344, "Risveglio fra il clero greco (di Sicilia)."
- ↑ The Italo-Greeks have their own church music, derived ultimately from Constantinople. It is enharmonic, obeys the rules of the Byzantine modes, and forms a very interesting parallel to the development in the Levant. There is a dissertation on it, with examples and parallel Eastern forms, by Dom Hugh Gaisser, O.S.B., "I canti ecclesiastici italo-greci" (estratto dalla Rassegna gregoriana, sett.-ott., 1905), Rome, Desclée, Lefebvre, 1905. They also sing curious Albanian popular hymns, of which a specimen may be seen in "Roma e l'Oriente," iii (1911-1912), 271.
