The Albanians of the East in the West

The Albanians of the East in the West:

A look at the Greek Rite Albanians in Italy and the Orthodox Albanians in North America

By the Rev. Dn. Andrew J. Rubis, Albanian Orthodox Diocese of America

Presented to the Saint John Chrysostom Society – Youngstown-Warren Chapter

On September 4th, 2012 @ St. Mary’s Byzantine Catholic Church, Boardman, OH

Good evening Father George, other Reverend Fathers, Vito, members, and guests.

Thank you for inviting me here to pray and speak with you. During my long association with Vito Carchedi which started on the forum of the Byzantine Catholic Church’s website, we found many common threads: that we both had an intimate connection with St. John Chrysostom, that we both claimed roots in a place called Philadelphia – mine a few hundred miles away and his a few thousand miles away; and both had a special connection with Massachusetts. We found other shared connections between Youngstown, OH and Jamestown, NY. Of your previous speakers, Fr. Thomas Hopko was my confessor, dogmatics professor, and Dean while at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Prof. Peter Gilbert and I met first in Albania where he was teaching at the Resurrection of Christ Seminary.

This theme of interconnectedness is undeniable in our lives if we only look for it, just as the image and likeness of God is visible in each and every person, no matter how hard he or she tries to deny it, abuse it, or mutilate it. The uniqueness of mankind as the bearer of this image and likeness is reinforced when we observe the animal kingdom. For many years, evolutionists, secularists, and many respected anthropologists and others in the field of animal behavior have argued that man was separated from higher-order primates only by the ability to reason. But chimpanzees are now using computers to make reasoned choices and selections. Others argued that the ability to fabricate tools separated us from the other animals. However, a hungry crow, when presented with a worm at the bottom of a tall narrow laboratory beaker and provided with a bendable wire was smart enough, using his beak and feet, to bend the wire into a hook and retrieve the worm. Finally, the facility for language, it was argued, distinguished man. But the development of sonar has allowed us to confirm that the whales definitely have a language. However, the single unique attribute that truly separates humans from all others is worship. Only man sets aside time, place, and offerings dedicated to an unseen creator. While this has been obvious to the Church, it is not obvious to all. Truly, as the scripture says, “the fool says in his heart that there is no God.” And so we are here together this evening, bearing his image and likeness, worshipping, and sharing with one another His love for us. Christ is truly in our midst!

Our first subject, the Greek Rite Albanians, come to Southern Italy and Sicily just as the indigenous Greek Rite in in that same region had begun to decline precipitously. As we know, the pre-Christian Magna Graeca colonization of these areas left Greek as the language of home, commerce, and church from Benevento and Naples on south. The Saracens had seized much of this area late in the 10th century. The famous monastery of Grottaferrata south of Rome was founded in 1004 by St. Nilus and his monks who were fleeing this same invasion further south. But these Saracens were soon expelled by the Latin Rite Normans. And so, Latin and Greek Rites came face to face and into conflict.

At a diocesan level, the Greek Rite did not simply melt away with the arrival of the Latin Rite Normans. Reggio Calabria was officially exempt from papal jurisdiction from 1092 until 1611. Up through 1695 there were still 59 Greek Rite priests in the diocese but only one by 1725. Until 1302, the Diocese of Gravina and Acerenza near Brindisi was all Greek Rite. Gerace and Oppido in Southern Calabria used the Rite until 1467 and 1472 respectively. Gallipoli used it until 1513. Bova in southern Calabria used it through approx. 1577. The Diocese of Rossano still had seven Greek Rite monasteries throughout the 1400s. Her Cathedral in Rossano used it through 1571 while it continued in use elsewhere in that Diocese up until 1621.

On a more detailed level, we find more than 200 Greek Rite priests in the Archdiocese of Otranto in 1583. By 1607 when ABp de Morra visited the same area he found 13 communities using the Greek Rite served by 99 clerics.

By the early 1400s, just prior to the arrival of the Albanians, the ethnically Greek remnant of Magna Graeca was still significant. The census of 1412 in the Diocese of Nardo in Salento of Puglia (the heel of the Italian boot), looked at the 22 centers of population in the Diocese. The two cities, Nardo and Casarano,had both Greek Rite and Latin Rite parishes but were too large to count. I estimate them to have been in the neighborhood of 8,000 inhabitants each. Of the remaining 20 smaller towns, 11 were Greek Rite with a total of 11,000 inhabitants and 9 were Latin Rite with a total of 8,500 inhabitants. In other words, a little over half of the people and the villages were Greek Rite.

In another stunning example, in the Greek Rite city of Galatina in the Diocese of Castro, the Count of Soleto, Raimondello del Balzo Orsini, a Roman who had married the Countess of Lecce, built the Latin Rite Basilica of St. Caterina of Alexandria in 1390. But by 1435, some 45 years later, in an attempt to fit in with the local milieu, he had the walls painted with Byzantine-style frescos.

Now to understand the Albanians’ tenacious identity as Greek Rite is to understand the religious nature of their war with the Ottoman Turks that caused them to come to Italy in the first place. The Ottomans were willing to co-opt anyone willing to accept Islam. They took hostage and raised in their harems and Janissary the sons of noblemen in order to secure their loyalty. George Castrioti was one of these who was raised up by the Turks and fought with great distinction on the side of the Ottomans until 1443. They gave him the title of “Skanderbey” which means “Lord Alexander.” But in the midst of a battle, he turned against the Ottomans and raised the same red flag with a black double-headed eagle that you see today as the national flag of Albania. A long story shortened, he led a successful 25 year war against the Ottoman Turks that is still studied at the US Military Academy at West Point for its brilliance and audacity. The Holy See awarded him the titles of “Captain General of the Curia,” “Captain General of the Holy See,” and “Athlete of Christ.”His sword and helmet have been on display in Vienna for hundreds of years. Western recognition of the enormous significance of Castrioti’s contributions to the defense of Christianity is most evident by the squares and statues honoring him in Paris, Rome, Lecce, Geneva, and Brussells, not to mention those too numerous to count in his homeland and amongst the Greek Rite Albanians. Even Rochester Hills, MI has a statue to George Castrioti.

So into this Italian milieu of Greek and Latin Rites came the Albanians in 1448. They arrived as an army sent by Castrioti to assist the King of Naples, Alfonso, in his suppression of a revolt. In return, they received financial support for their life and death struggle with the Ottoman Turks. Additionally, they were granted the rights to 12 Greek Rite villages in Calabria. A second revolt, this one in Sicily, was again suppressed and the Albanians populated 4 Greek Rite villages in Sicily.

A third army, led by George Castrioti himself, arrived in 1459 to assist King Ferdinand of Naples against the Angevin pretenders to the throne of Naples. He again secured more assistance for his struggle as well as the rights to 15 Greek rite villages to the east of Taranto, and the town of Troia outside of Foggia. On the Adriatic coastline: the castle of Trani, Monte San Angelo, and San Giovanni Rotondo were all given to him..

The significance of this Castrioti-led resistance to the Ottoman tsunami in the Balkans cannot be undersestimated. When Castrioti died in 1468, his allied princes could not keep their struggle together, falling away in submission to the Turks one by one. By 1479, the organized resistance in Albania was over and the Turks, setting out from the Albanian coast less than a year later in 1480, landed at Otranto in Salento. Of 20,000 inhabitants, 12,000 died in the siege and 800 of the leading men were beheaded when they refused to accept Islam. If one goes to Otranto, he will find their skulls preserved still in glass cases in a side chapel of the cathedral. On the 500th anniversary, Pope John Paul II came in 1980 to commemorate their sacrifice and pray for the Christians still suffering persecution to the east in Communist Albania.

The shock wave of the invasion and massacre was felt throughout Western Europe. A series of battles were waged across Salento as the Turks tried to break out from their beachhead at Otranto toward Lecce, the larger and wealthier inland city. They even launched further amphibious assaults across Puglia at Brindisi, Taranto, and Vieste. Unfortunately for them, the men that they met on these battlefields were often the same ones that they had fought earlier in the Balkans. Or to put it another way, the Greek Rite Albanians who had already been forced to abandon their homelands were not amused to see the Turks again in their new lands. By May the next year, with a combined Aragonese and Hungarian force bearing down on them at Otranto, the Ottomans were gone from Italy.

As the Ottoman regime tightened its grip on Christian practices in the Balkans, Albanian warriors continued to settle in Italy with their families and their clergy. This enabled them to continue Greek Rite practices, often working in conjunction with the pre-existing Greek Rite clergy whom they encountered. The bulk of the Albanian-speaking immigrants, and certainly their clergy, were also capable in Greek. Interestingly, theywere coming from the jurisdictions of the Patriarchate of Ohrid. It was not until a few hundred years later that all Orthodox Christians in the Balkans were organized under the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

Professor Giuseppe Lisi published a fabulous study in 1988 titled “La Fine del Rito Greca in Terra d’Otranto.” Available in Italian only, it is packed with primary source evidence of the organized campaign to snuff out the Greek Rite in southern Italy.

In the absence of a local Greek Rite bishop, the Albanians received bishops from the Patriarchate of Ohrid. The first was Bishop Giacomo until 1543. The second, Bishop Pafnuzio was nominated by the Patriarch as Metropolitan for Italy and ordained several Albanian clerics. Jiulius III, who was in the Papal throne from 1550-1555, accepted the nomination and gave him the title Metropolitan of Agrigento with full authority to exercise his ministry. In 1557 Pafnuzio even established a Vicar General for the “diocese” from amongst the Albanian Archpriests, Petro Pigonati.

In 1561, Pafnuzio ordained at least two Albanian men in Mesagne and Tuturano in the Province of Brindisi before falling asleep in the Lord in 1566.

In 1566, a letter from Pope Pius in response to concerns from the local Latin Rite bishops expressed sympathy for the pastoral needs of the Greek Rite communities and the necessity of maintaining the Greek Rite in those communities that were truly of Eastern origin. At the same time,he wanted to stamp about abuses within the Greek Rite and rejected the authority of the Eastern Patriarchs to care for them in the Italian lands

The restrictions varied. In 1570 the Greek Rite clergy in the city of Galatina, settled by the soldiers of Castrioti, had to petition their Archbishop de Capua for the right to appoint a new Chanter upon the death of their old one.

In 1575 theABp of Brindisi, Mons. Bernardino de Figueroa, recognized Bp. Timothy of Grevena, as an auxillary to the Patriarch of Ohrid, when he came to ordain a Greek Rite priest for the church of St. Nicholas in downtown Brindisi. The ABp answered thenegative reaction from the local Latin Rite clergy by explaining that the Patriarchate of Ohrid was indeed a sister Church.

The ABp of Taranto, Mons. Lelio Brancaccio, was much less accommodating. He was certainly against the ordination of Greek Rite priests in Italy by “schismatics” (the Orthodox) and was against any propogation of the Greek Rite in general, even under Rome. He visited his Albanian communities in 1577-1578 and wrote an extensive study of which two versions exist in the archives in Naples. The Codex Brancaccio, Version A, shows 46 communities still using the Greek Rite. Version B shows only 25 communities using the Greek Rite, a much less embarrassing number. The Archbishop probably wanted to take control of the local situation and avoid a repeat of what had recently occurred in Brindisi. He forbade the communion of infants and forbade any 2nd marriages even in cases of adultery. He also instituted the practice of cross-celebration in which Greek and Latin Rite priests were ordered to celebrate in each other’s communities. The first Latin Rite celebration in a Greek Rite parish was carried out under the threat of excommunication in 1577 in the Greek Rite Albanian village of Carosino in which exactly two Latin Rite families were living.

Archbishop Corderos of Otranto had an opinion similar to the one of Archbishop Brancaccio. Writing in 1580 to Cardinal Santoro who was president of the Congregation for the Greeks in Rome, he considered all Greek Rite clergy to beliving in a continual “state of sin.”

The hybrid of “bi-ritual” priests began after this time, especially in Puglia. Later, no bi-ritual priest would be available for many of the Greek Rite communities and they would be forced to accept Latin Rite clerics.A letter from Cardinal Santoro to the Bishop of Nardo in 1585 spells out the attitude and goal:

“Where it is not possible that the Greek clergy be found normally, it is possible to supplement with Latin clergy at least while it proves more opportune that the Greek people will accept them and remain content. And when these same Greek people would want to pass over to the Latin Rite, it certainly will be a benefit.”

Later, whenever the reconstruction of a church building occurred, as in San Pietro in Galatina and Santa Venere in San Marzano, the new Rite, new design,and even the new name invariably wereof Latin style.

Thus the Greek Rite died out for the most part in Puglia:

Gallipoli in 1513

Maglie in 1577

San Marzano in 1600

Galatone in 1625

Calimera in 1663

But the view from Rome was generally closer to that of Pope Pius. Perhaps because in with the waves of refugees from the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the end of the Albanian resistance in 1479 were numerous theologians and monastics of the highest caliber. Their influence in the West cannot be truly ascertained, but it no doubt helped to foster a better understanding of the Eastern Churches and their practices. The fact that all Popes from 1527 through the year 1700 wore beards could be interpreted as an anecdotal sign of this influence.

It seems that there was truly a sea change in attitudes toward the Greek Rite and that it started in Rome. Concretely, in 1577 Pope Gregory XIII founded the “Greek College of St. Athanasios” which operates to this day with the purpose of training Greek Rite clergy.

And in Lecce, Archbishop Annibale Saraceno wrote to Cardinal Sirletto in Rome in 1583 asking for intercession to protect the Greek Rite community of San Nicola in Lecce from a takeover by the Jesuits. He was evidently successful as I, myself, worshipped and learned to chant at that parish for two years from 1988 to 1990.

In 1595 Clement VIII appointed an ordaining bishop for the Greek Rite, Germanos Kouskonaris, a refugee from Famagusta, Cyprus. In the next hundred years, the Greek Rite communities in the plains of Puglia grew weaker but those in the mountains of Calabria and Sicily grew stronger as Albanian refugees continued to arrive though the mid-18th century. Furthermore, in 1700 Clement XI ascended the throne. His surname was Albani and his ancestry was from the small Latin Rite community of northern Albania. By 1734 his successors had established Greek Rite Colleges and Seminaries in Calabria and Palermo, Sicily, the two strongest and least Latinized centers of the Albanian immigration. In 1742 Benedict XIV published Etsi Pastoralliswhich specified the obligation of the Church to respect and pastor the Greek Rite communities. By 1784 an Ordinarinate had been established in Sicily for the Greek Rite communities.

By 1919 the Greek Rite Albanians in Calabria and continental Italy had been organized into the Diocese of Lungro. By 1937 the Greek Rite Albanians in Sicily had been organized into the Diocese of Piana dei Greci (and after the war of 1940 with Greece) Piana degli Albanese.