“ But later, Cardinal Santoro says of them: "The rule of St Basil lies in darkness and dirt ... the monasteries, filled with a mass of men, are looked upon as a joke. In them is no pious habit of life, no order, no discipline. The monks wander everywhere without a rector, and ruin the dignity of the ordinaries ... though they say their office in Greek they can neither read nor write Greek properly, and they spoil the rites. ”

“ They could have crushed the whole Byzantine rite in Italy, over and over again, with the greatest possible ease, making all Italy Latin. That is what most Protestants think Popes always want to do. The truth is the exact contrary. In this case, too, Rome was faithful to its traditional policy. The Popes have never made the slightest attempt to Romanize people of other rites. [214] They show always the most complete indifference to the rite a man uses. Indeed, if anything, it would seem as if Popes rather disliked a man turning Latin. ”

“ Sometimes they kept their language, but adopted the Roman rite; sometimes, on the other hand, they lost their language, learnt to speak only Italian, but still preserved the Byzantine rite in Greek. It is not wonderful that among a minority, surrounded by suspicious Italian neighbours, many should eventually have become italianized. The wonderful thing is rather that, in spite of all, so many still keep their own language and rite. ”

“ In all this we have a good example of the Byzantine attitude of that time. There is, first, frank acknowledgement that originally the sees of Southern Italy and Sicily were under the Pope (whether as Patriarch or as Metropolitan) ; but, because he is no longer in the Roman Empire (of the East, the Empire whose capital was Constantinople) , therefore he has lost all his rights. He is in the hands of Lombards, Goths, or Normans, whom the Byzantines pleasantly dismiss as Barbarians. We see also the typically Byzantine idea that politics must settle the whole question of ecclesiastical order. ”

“ The Romans, Lombards, Saracens, Normans, in turn brought their various civilizations to this part of the world. It is the meeting of so varied elements in the same place which makes the history of Lower Italy and Sicily more involved, and at the same time more romantic, than that of any country we know. But always beneath the invasions of such different races we must conceive the old Greek or hellenized population and the Greek language as (practically) the lowest stratum.
First came the Romans. Rome spread her power over the whole peninsula by the third century B.C. ”

“ Since the seventh century the former wave of latinization in Calabria was met by this new spread of hellenization, coming in the first place from Sicily. Except for the Lombards, Calabria appears to have been systematically re-hellenized. Then in the ninth century, when the Moslems conquered Sicily, another wave of Greeks poured over Southern Italy; enormous numbers of them, notably crowds of monks, came from Sicily to Calabria, and so made that land again a "Greater Greece," again a centre of Greek ideas and language, Greek piety, Byzantine rite, Greek monasticism. ”

“ This is disappointing to the modern student of liturgy. If early bishops had written down exact accounts of their services, it would have been a great benefit to us. But it is, in itself, natural. To them these were matters of very little importance. Liturgiology as a science was not yet born. They knew that it matters very much whether a man is a Catholic or not, very little in what language he says his prayers.
The difficulty, then, is this: we know that in Sicily and Southern Italy at the beginning Greek was the ecclesiastical language. ”

“ Yet there is, I think, reasonable probability that at any rate many of them were already Catholics before they fled from the Turks. The most serene Republic had held large parts of their country for some time before the Turks conquered it; we know that she was not tolerant of schism. It is then quite likely that many, if not all, these Albanians had already returned to union with the Holy See before they came to Italy. There are, indeed, Albanians who protest that their nation was always Catholic, that their forbears had never lost communion with Rome. ”

“ Then the Venetian Government began to connive at the breaking of its own law. It ignored the rule that the bishop should make a Catholic profession of faith. He began openly to pray in his church for the Patriarch of Constantinople; when he was not already a bishop he went to Constantinople to be ordained. The Greek community had become schismatical. More and more Greeks arrived in Venice; they became a most prosperous and wealthy community. They established a great school, the Phlangineion, destined to be one of the chief Greek schools abroad, when there were none under the Turk. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The policy of the Emperors, then, was to set up Metropolitans with provinces all over Lower Italy, to see that these were ordained at Constantinople, that they were Greeks, either Greeks from the East or Greeks of Italy or Sicily, to insist that they use the Byzantine rite, and so to detach all this part of the Church from its ancient immediate dependence on Rome. As soon as the Great Schism began the Byzantine Government and Patriarch naturally tried to drag these Greek bishops in Italy with them into schism. ”

“ Bishops from Sicily receive sees in Greece and the Greek islands, and Greeks send bishops to Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia. It does not seem to have made any difference whether a man was a Greek from Syracuse or a Greek from Athens or Constantinople. Moreover, the reasons which caused the use of Latin in church at Rome did not obtain in the South. There was no need to adopt another language than Greek for use in church here, because Greek was still the vulgar tongue. ”

“ These Greek cities round the Mediterranean were not politically united to the Motherland. Each was an independent state; but they were always conscious of their union with all other Greeks in race, language, and religion. All looked upon themselves as one people. The Greek states in Sicily and Lower Italy took their part in the quarrels of the Greeks at home in Hellas. The famous story of the siege of Syracuse marks the end of the power of Athens. Syracuse had taken the Spartan side in the Peloponnesian war. ”

“ In 1674 the Bishop of Volterra, profiting by the accidental presence of the Byzantine Uniate Bishop of Samos in Tuscany, sent him to Bibbona as delegate and visitor of the Greek community there. The Greeks then had five priests. The bishop was cordially received by the people. On May 3, 1674, he called them together in their church and spoke to them at length on the Catholic faith and the necessity of union with the Holy See. The five priests made a public profession of faith in the form of Florence, and all the people declared their hatred of schism. ”

“ It is not surprising that the Byzantine rite in Italy should gradually die out. For one thing there were no bishops of this rite. Those who followed it were subject to Latin Ordinaries. It was not till the need became pressing, through the coming of the Albanians, that the Holy See established ordaining bishops for the Italo-Greeks. Even then, as we shall see, these had no jurisdiction (p. 123) . Before that, sometimes a wandering Greek bishop from the Levant was invited to ordain, sometimes such travelling prelates usurped jurisdiction over those of their rite in Italy ”

“ But we must note something about the people. To be one state does not at all mean that all the people in these parts became one race. It was still many centuries before that final amalgamation took place.
The government of Roger II and of his successors gives a unique example of mediæval toleration. The Norman conquerors of Sicily, beginning with Roger I, found themselves reigning over people of two races, two languages, and two religions. There were Greek Christians and Moslem Saracens. To these we may add the Latin Lombards of the mainland. Meanwhile the kings were Norman Latins. ”

“ It is better for a monk obey even a latinized rule than none at all. Cardinal Sirlet persuaded the Pope to take this step. In 1579 Gregory issued his Constitution for the Order of St Basil in Italy, Sicily, Spain. Other Uniate Byzantine monks, for instance, those of Ruthenia, Hungary, Transylvania, though they had the same rule, were not to belong to this Congregation. The Pope abolished the abuse of the Commendatory Archimandrites, who were not monks at all. The monks are to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Ordinaries. ”

“ Frequently they are accused of various bad habits, some of which are nothing really but the lawful custom of their rite, while others are certainly things that ought to be put down, if the accusations were true. Thus they were accused of not observing the fasts and feasts of the Roman rite, of giving holy Communion to children just baptized, and so on. But they are also accused of despising the authority of the Holy See, of scorning the censures of the Latin bishops, of sharing the errors of the schismatics with regard to purgatory and azyme bread, of digging up dead bodies and burning them. ”

“ Altogether the Byzantines had less success in Apulia than in Sicily and Calabria. Many of the inland cities of both Apulia and Calabria remained Latin, in some cases because they were held by the Lombards. Cusentia, Bisinianum, Cassanum, Anglona seem never to have used the Byzantine rite, nor to have acknowledged Constantinople as their Patriarchate. It was chiefly in the sea-board towns that the bishops became Byzantine. Rossanum had a Greek chapter and bishop, also Tricaricum. ”

“ It was perhaps even more difficult to find ladies in Sicily who knew Greek than to find such men. So they were allowed to adopt the Roman rite and the Benedictine rule. Only the Blessing of Waters at the Epiphany, the lessons on Palm Sunday, and the Liturgy and Hesperinon on the feasts of St Basil and his sister St Makrine were still Byzantine, in Greek. [352] At Palermo there was still a convent, St Saviour, founded by Robert Wiscard. Bessarion arranged their rule for them. ”

“ Here, too, the Greek cities soon governed themselves, giving only a nominal obedience to the Catapan and paying tribute, not very regularly, to Constantinople.
The chief Greek city in Italy was Naples. Under Constans II (641-668) Naples became a Duchy of the Empire (661) . From that time it ruled itself. Its governor was the Duke of Naples, "Magister militum." [28] He had a council of "Nobiliores." So it became an aristocratic republic, not unlike Venice. At first the dukes were nominated by the Exarch; then a hereditary line began. ”

“ Certainly, when the synod of 869 deposed Photius, the other Eastern Patriarchs and bishops then declared that they had had no idea of going into schism against the Pope. If they at the time had not also condemned Photius, it was only because they considered that the Pope's sentence alone was enough. [157]
It is even more difficult to define a moment at which the Church in the East became schismatical in the second schism, that of Michael Cerularius in the eleventh century. No Pope has ever excommunicated the Eastern or the Byzantine Church as such. ”

“ The Byzantine monks naturally followed the rule of St Basil. In Italy, especially, they are always called Basilians. The first official use of the expression "Ordo S Basilii" occurs in 1382. [326] It is not really a correct form. In the Byzantine Church there are no distinctions of religious orders. A monk is a monk, just as a deacon is a deacon. No further qualification is needed or is used in the East. [327] But it was natural that a special name should be given to the Byzantine monks in Italy. Here people were accustomed to distinguish various religious orders. ”

“ The Empire included men of every kind of race; as a rule, Rome left them to continue their own civilizations with the use of their own languages. Undoubtedly now the Latin element enters Southern Italy, but only so far as that Roman governors were appointed and Latin was the language of the Government. ”

“ Meanwhile the Patriarchs of Constantinople went on counting the Sees of Sicily and Italy as part of their Patriarchate, keeping up a futile theoretic claim to them for centuries after they had lost all authority there. [196] But, when a diocese received a Latin bishop, it did not follow that all the clergy of the diocese were Latins. Under the Latin bishops there remained Byzantine churches, Byzantine priests, monasteries, and institutions of various kinds, all through the Middle Ages. At first, large numbers of the people continued to worship God according to the Byzantine rite. ”