no ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



the Roman Rite took a larger hold on them as they became 

 Latinized in tongue. Lack of close ties with Constantinople, 

 and the practical cessation of intercourse with it and the East 

 after the domination of the Turk was also gradually turning 

 them into Roman Catholics. The Greek Rite became more 

 and more confined to monasteries, religious houses and coun- 

 try towns. Whilst the Greek Rite, descended from people of 

 the original Greek stock of Italy, would never perhaps have 

 died out altogether in Southern Italy and Sicily, yet it was 

 destined to be reinforced in a singular way by the churches 

 of Greece and Constantinople, through a people who claim to 

 be older than the days of Homer and the twilight of the Greek 

 gods. 



In Albania, the ancient Epirus of the Greeks, there lived a 

 race of mountaineers, some of whose descendants still dwell in 

 the land of their fathers. They spoke a language which is 

 said by philologists to be older than the Greek — in fact, the 

 ancient Epirate tongue — and they claimed to be the original 

 inhabitants of the Greek peninsula, driven gradually inland by 

 the colonizing force of Greek civilization. Certain it is they 

 were in the mountains of Albania, had their own language' 

 and customs long before the Greek came there. Early in the 

 days of Christianity these hardy mountain folk were converted 

 to Christianity and followed the Oriental rite. But they did 

 not use the Greek language, as the Greeks in Italy did, as their 

 vernacular. The liturgy was never translated into their 

 tongue, as it was for the Slavic races by Sts. Cyril and Me- 

 thodius. They always used the Greek language in the Mass 

 and church rites, in the same manner as the Germanic peoples 

 received the Latin, and as the Latin is used among the English- 

 speaking people to-day in the church — i.e., as a dead language. 

 It was during the early days of the Greek or Eastern Empire 

 of Constantinople that the name of Epirus was dropped and 

 the name Albania used. Although Greek in rite, the Albanians 

 were only nominally Greek in subjection to the Empire. Dur- 

 ing the decline of the Empire, they rose to distinction and at 



1 The language itself is very strange. "Questa lingua albanese, che deve essere 



Skyiperia is the Albanian name for una della piii antiche d'Europa, forse 



Albania; the Albanian language is anche della piu antiche del mondo. 



Skyiptar. It does not seem to resemble Questa sembra essere I'antica lingua 



any other European language. "Po pelasga, da cui hanno preso tanto i 



Skyiptari tak i hoi, isht si szogka jasht greci che i latini." Vannutelli, Le 



folees." But Albanians in a strange Colonie Italo-Greche, p. 58. 

 land are like birds out of their nest. 



