Protopapæ; and eleven monasteries in the diocese. At Catanzaro are twenty-nine Greek priests, three Protopapæ, two monasteries. At Nicastro two Protopapæ, five monasteries. At Squillace sixteen priests, four Protopapæ, five monasteries. At Cotrone are priests of the Byzantine rite. Nothing is said of the rite in the dioceses of St Severina, Belcastro, Cosenza, Cassano, Bisignano. But the notices of these are short. At Rossano are the two monasteries, S Maria del Patire (p. 127) and St Adrian. The Byzantine rite in the fourteenth century seems to have maintained itself most of all at Reggio. It had not yet in any way given place to that of Rome here. Outside the province of Reggio, where the Byzantine rite still remains in Calabria, it has already become an exception, rather than the rule. Thus, among the numerous clergy of the diocese of Cassano there is but one Greek priest. The other list, for the land of Otranto in 1373, notes eight Protopapæ and one Byzantine monastery in the diocese of Otranto. In that of Nardo "Greek and Latin" clergy are named. There are ten Protopapæ and eleven monasteries. For the other dioceses of the land of Otranto the indications are vague.
During the Middle Ages Sicily, Calabria, and Apulia were channels of Greek learning for the West. Thus, Roger Bacon (1214-1294), in his Compendium studii philosophici, writes concerning the interpretation of the Greek Bible: “There are many in England and France who are sufficiently instructed; nor would it be a great thing, for the sake of so useful a work, to go to Italy, where the clergy and people in many places are purely Greek. Bishops and Archbishops, and rich people and elders, could send there for books, and for one or more men who know Greek, as Lord Robert, the holy Bishop of Lincoln,[1] was accustomed to do. Of these some are still alive in England at this time."[2]
After the fourteenth century the decadence of the Byzantine rite in Italy went on apace; so that only few remnants of it were left when, in the fifteenth, the Albanian colonists brought it back. We shall return to these Albanians later (pp. 115-124). Meanwhile, it will be convenient first to trace the gradual disappearance of the older Greek element, which had existed
- ↑ Robert Grosseteste (1235-1253).
- ↑ "Fr. Rogeri Bacon Opus Tertium," etc., ed. J. S. Brewer ("Rerum Britan. medii æui Scriptores," London, 1859), p. 434; cf. Ibid., p. 33 (in the "Opus Tertium"), "Italy was Greater Greece and still traces remain; for in Calabria and Apulia and Sicily and elsewhere there are many Greek churches and people belonging to them."
