OUR ITALIAN GREEK CATHOLICS 107 



sponded eagerly to the call of the Master and became Chris- 

 tian. It was even easier than in Latin Italy because they 

 spoke the language of the New Testament and of the earliest 

 disciples, and could be reached by any appeal to Greek thought 

 and Greek ideas. St. Paul himself on his voyage to Rome 

 was at Syracuse in Sicily, at Reggio in Calabria, and at 

 Puzzoli near Naples.^ 



Being Greek in language and in blood, it was but natural 

 that the Greeks of Southern Italy should take their rites and 

 ceremonies from the Eastern Church in the language of the 

 New Testament and the earliest Fathers and Councils. When 

 Constantinople became the seat of government of the Roman 

 Empire after the recognition of Christianity under Constantine, 

 the Greek Rites of Southern Italy naturally aligned themselves 

 according to the rites of the Greek Church (St. Sophia) of 

 Constantinople. That noble rite was the final embodiment and 

 ultimate form of the rites of the Oriental Church using the 

 Greek language, as modelled by Saints Chrysostom, Basil and 

 Gregory, and its use was made well-nigh universal in the 

 whole Greek-speaking world, by the pre-eminence of Con- 

 stantinople, the New Rome, the capital city first of the whole 

 Roman Empire after Constantine, and then of the Eastern 

 Roman Empire. The Greek Rite in the East became like the 

 Roman Rite in the West ; it dominated and overcame the vari- 

 ant rites around it. Thus, from the early ages of Christianity 

 down to the time of the schism of the East and the West, the 

 Italian-Greeks of the south of Italy looked towards Con- 

 stantinople and its Oriental Rite. 



Greek was their language and their form of Christian wor- 

 ship, while the Latin Rites and the Latin language were in a 

 measure strange to them. Nothing concerning the faith was 

 involved in this — they were Catholics and continued in the 

 unity of the faith with the Roman Church — but it involved the 

 external manifestation of that faith. They were, as I have 

 said, and I use the expression advisedly to-day, all Catholics; 

 for that word connotes at once universality and unity, and 

 one cannot conceive logically of a Catholic separated from 

 the centre of unity. At the same time, however, they were 

 Greek Catholics and not Roman Catholics, inasmuch as they 

 used the Greek and not the Roman Hturgy and worship. So 



i Acts, xxviii, 12, 13. 



