THE ITALO-GREEKS IN THE PAST
105
At Altamura, since Frederick II (1215-1250), the Byzantine rite had remained (p. 99). In the sixteenth century the (Latin) Archpriest of Altamura was scandalized because the Byzantine clergy were married. He wanted to prevent them from administering Sacraments, especially Penance, to Latins. Cardinal William Sirlet (p. 113, n. 2), then prefect of the Congregation for Eastern rites, to whom the Archpriest applied, told him to leave things as they were.
In 1602 Clement VIII (1592-1605) substituted Latins for Byzantine clerks in one of the three Byzantine churches at Altamura.[1] Since then the Byzantine rite has disappeared here too.
It was in the two extreme ends of Italy, the toe and the heel — that is, the peninsula in the South of Calabria jutting out towards Sicily, and on the other side the bottom of Apulia, the "Terra d'Otranto" — that the older Byzantine rite survived longest. This is natural. These two are the remotest parts of Italy. Strangest of all is the fact that in both there are villages where the peasants still speak Greek. The Byzantine rite has now disappeared from both provinces; but this Greek dialect still living in them is a wonderful relic of the old days when they were Greater Greece.[2]
In Southern Calabria the chief town is Reggio. We have seen that at the Third Lateran Council (1179), though the Archbishop of Reggio was of the Roman rite, he still had two Greek suffragans (p. 99). At that time there were eleven Byzantine parish churches in the city. The most famous of these, indeed the chief church of this rite in all Italy, was S Maria della Cattolica.[3] This was long considered the Mother-Church, the "Matrice" of all Byzantines in
3 (
Greek characters), name for the chief church of a place in the Byzan-
tine rite The earliest use of it for a building I know when
the second synod in Trullo (692) orders that baptism is not to be
administered in private oratories of houses, but in the "Catholic"
(i.e., parish) churches (Can. 59; Mansi, xi, 969, C). Ducange thinks
that public churches were called "catholic" (in the normal sense of
"universal") because both men and women went to them; whereas
chapels of monasteries or convents were for one sex only. For the
same reason the large public church of a monastery was so called
because women, as well as men, were admitted to it. The name is
still commonly used in the rite. Thus the central Orthodox part of
the Anastasis at Jerusalem is (Greek characters), and in Italy and Sicily
"La Cattolica," as a name for certain large churches, survives in
memory of the old Byzantine rite. Morisani goes into the whole
question, and quotes many examples of the use of the word; "de
Protopapis," cap. xiv, pp. 265-276.