2IO ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



Schism of Constantinople. Although they held to their faith 

 and rite, yet the fact that they were not thereafter closely allied 

 with their fellow-Greeks of Constantinople caused the follow- 

 ers of their rite to diminish. After the schism an idea grew 

 up among the Italians of the Roman Rite that the Greek 

 language and ritual were in some indefinable way identified 

 with the schism. This was intensified upon the failure of the 

 Greeks after the Council of Florence (1428) to adhere to the 

 union. Therefore, as the Greek language died out among the 

 southern Italians, they gradually gave up their Greek Rite and 

 adopted the Roman Rite instead. While the Greek Rite thus 

 became gradually confined to monasteries, religious houses 

 and country towns, and would perhaps never have died out on 

 Italian soil, yet it was reinforced in a singular manner by im- 

 migration from the Balkan peninsula in the period between 

 1450 and 1500. The Albanians, who were converted to Chris- 

 tianity and followed the Greek Rite, using the Greek language 

 in their liturgy, were persecuted by the Turks, and, by reason 

 of the many Turkish victories over the Albanians under their 

 chieftain, George Castriota, also known by his Turkish name 

 of Scanderbeg (Alexander Bey), were forced to leave their 

 native land in large numbers. Scanderbeg applied to Pope 

 Eugene IV for permission for his people to settle in Italy, so 

 as to escape the Moslem persecutions. From time to time 

 they settled in Calabria and Sicily, and received among other 

 privileges that of retaining their Greek Rite wherever their 

 colonies were established. Since that time they, like the Greek 

 inhabitants of Southern Italy, have become entirely Italianized, 

 but, together with them, have retained their Greek Rite quite 

 distinct from their Latin neighbors down to the present day. 

 All the Italians who follow the Greek Rite in Southern Italy 

 are known as Albanese (Albanians), although only the older 

 generations of that race retain their knowledge of the Albanian 

 tongue. The Mass and all the offices of the Church are of 

 course said in Greek according to the Rite of Constantinople, 

 although a few Latinizing practices have crept in. The smaller 

 churches do not have the iconostasis, priests do not confer con- 

 firmation, but it is given by the bishop, and they follow the 

 Gregorian calendar instead of the Julian calendar followed by 

 all the other Greeks. 



When the immigration to America from the south of Italy 



