Albania (Alb. Shqipëria or Shqipnia)

ALBANIA (Alb. Shqipëria or Shqipnia). - 2. Christianity in Albania. - 3. Cultural history. - 4. The Greek-Albanian rite.

1. GEOGRAPHY

It comprises the eastern Adriatic coast from the mouth of the Bojana to the Corfu channel and the hinterland as far as the Albanian Alps and the lakes of Ohrid and Prespa. Its area (28,700 sq. km.) roughly equals that of Piedmont. It is a mountainous country, rugged and malarial on the flat and marshy coasts; for this reason it is sparsely inhabited (38 inhabitants per sq. km.) (1.1 million souls), and with heavy emigration: more than 1.5 million Albanians live outside the borders of the State (Serbia, Greece, transoceanic countries). The Albanians, who descend from the Illyrians, have well preserved their traditional characteristics, especially in the north (Ghegs), where Muslim infiltrations have been fewer (the Tosks, in the south, are considered less pure). The population is divided into tribes and clans, proud and turbulent, often at war (brigandage, vendetta). Linguistically compact, the Albanians are 69% Muslim, 20.7% Orthodox (in the south) and 10.3% Catholic (in the north).

Stock-raising (sheep, goats) is the prevailing occupation (cheeses, hides, eggs exported); agriculture (12% of the total surface) rests on tree crops (olive, vine) rather than on cereal growing. Mineral resources are not lacking (iron, copper, chromium), but only petroleum (100,000 tons annually) has industrial importance. The capital Tirana, and Shkodra (30,000 inhabitants each) are the most notable inhabited centres. There are no railways; ordinary roads are also deficient.

Having remained for centuries under Turkish rule, A. was erected into an independent principality in 1912; a republic in 1925, a kingdom in 1928, linked to Italy by personal union after April 1939. Since Jan. 1946 it has again been a republic under Soviet influence.

Giuseppe Caraci

2. CHRISTIANITY IN ALBANIA

Ancient Epirus and the southern part of Illyria, which form present-day A., had a religion of their own with a local mythology, of which one can discern the continuation or transformation or contamination in the cult of the Greek divinities that we see widely attested in the "Greek" coinage of the country: Apollo, Diana, Aesculapius. Imported divinities are: Hercules, whose club is seen depicted, Jupiter, who perhaps came there with the Macedonian domination, if indeed he was not indigenous (Dodonian Jupiter), Demeter.

The date of the penetration of Christianity is not attested with certainty. It is not improbable, however, that it was had begun in the apostolic age, at least for Epirus through Greece (Patras) and for Durazzo (v.), either from Macedonia or by way of the Adriatic.

At the Council of Nicaea (325) we already find some bishops of Dardania and Macedonia Salutaris, which correspond to present-day eastern ethnic A. A little later, at Serdica (343-44), we find 5 or 6 of them from the provinces of Dardania, Epirus Nova, Epirus Vetus and perhaps of Praevalitana. The same four civil provinces correspond to the ecclesiastical ones that were subject to the four metropolises of Scupi (mod. Alb. Shkupi, Slav. Skopje, It. Scopia), Dyrrachium (Durazzo, Alb. Durrës), Nicopolis (mod. Preveza) and Scodra (mod. Scutari, Alb. Shkodra), and they lasted until the great barbarian invasion that finally threw the country into utter confusion in the 7th century. But already at the end of the 4th century, besides the organization into provinces, another more extensive one was taking shape by means of certain higher hierarchical bodies around which the ecclesiastical provinces were becoming polarized.

While in the south the "apostolic vicariate" was in fact granted by the Popes to the metropolitans of Thessalonica (mod. Salonicco) and then to those of Prima Justiniana (which succeeded Scupi), in the north there was a certain pre-eminence of the metropolitan of Salona (mod. Spalato), which was not without being felt in Praevalitana. In this province, moreover, the Roman Church possessed a landed patrimony with a cleric as administrator, who often acted now as the Pope's delegate, now as his inspector in his name. It is largely to the influence of such bodies that we owe the fact that, even in periods of swarms and crese and despite attempts at Constantinopolitan interference, there remained substantially faithful to Rome not only the latinizing Praevalitana, never touched by either schism or crese, but also the two culturally precized provinces of Epirus. Only at the time of the Acacian schism (end of the 5th century - beginning of the 6th), supported especially by the emperor Anastasius, a native of Durazzo (491-518), was there, after a good resistance, a weakening in Dardania and Epirus Nova. But already at the beginning of 519 the pontifical legates, sent to the Dardanian emperor Justin to settle the dispute, received on their passage through Epirus the obedience of all the bishops with the zealous support of the metropolitan of Scodra.

The Slavic invasion (7th century) seemed to submerge everything. The south-western zone (Durazzo and Nicopolis), having remained immune to it, had on the other hand to suffer not a little from the iconoclastic persecution (731-826). Moreover, by autocratic decision of the emperor Leo the Isaurian (731), the provinces of Illyricum were detached from the Patriarchate of the West and assigned to Constantinople. This, if not for Praevalitana, certainly had its effect for Epirus, despite the protests of Rome. Meanwhile on the eastern borders of the country the Bulgars had appeared who, having been baptized (ca. 864) and long wavering between Rome and Constantinople, ended by following the Byzantine rite in the Slavic language under the guidance of disciples of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, and by founding an archbishopric, later an autocephalous patriarchate, in Prespa and then in Acrida (mod. Ocrida, Alb. Ohri), to which they annexed the greater part of the ancient suffragan territories of Durazzo and Nicopolis. The reconquest of the emperor Basil Bulgaroctonus brought central and southern A. back under Byzantine dominion (1019), but not all of it under the dependence of the patriarchate of Constantinople, because he deemed it opportune to keep alive, indeed in full autocephaly with the title of archbishopric, the nucleus of Acrida with its numerous suffragans. Meanwhile in the north a barbarian state strongly pervaded by Latinity was consolidating and refining itself: Dioclea, comprising more or less the ancient Praevalitana. While the ancient episcopal sees were rising again there, new ones were being created in the major Latin cities (Scutari, Dulcigno, Drivasto, Suecia) and in other minor ones (such as Pulati and Sarda) of Albanian language. Placed at first under the metropolis of the most Latin Ragusa, and, at a certain moment, of Spalato which succeeded Salona, they later had, after a long conflict, their own metropolis in Antivari (v.), where in 1199 an important provincial council was convened, which reformed numerous abuses.

The 13th century brought a decisive Eastern ascendancy. After an ephemeral Venetian dominion over the coasts (1204-12), a consequence of the Latin conquest of Constantinople, and marked by the erection of a Latin archbishopric at Durazzo, dependent on the Latin patriarchate of Constantinople, all Epirus formed an independent despotate under the dynasty of the Angeli-Comneni (1212-59), which, for political reasons, it wavered in religious matters between East and West and ended by adhering to the former. The clergy, moreover, being of exclusively Greek culture, while cultivating strong autocephalous tendencies, likewise preferred Constantinople (or Nicaea) to Rome. It was then divided into the three circumscriptions of the archbishopric of Achrida and the metropolises of Naupactus (Lepanto, which had succeeded Nicopolis) and Durazzo. In the north, the ancient kingdom of Dioelia had been transformed into the kingdom of Serbia and had ended by fully accepting the Byzantine tendency of a scion of the ruling house of Nemanja, St. Sava, who was its first archbishop with a kind of ecclesiastical province. Nevertheless, then and afterward, the Latin hierarchy faithful to its rite and to dependence on Rome continued to exist in the Scutari region, which the policy of the Nemanjić rarely found it useful to disturb. Only here and there did Serbian ethnic infiltrations, especially in the north (Zeta) and in the east (Peč, also known as Peja and Ipek, and Prizren), follow the Byzantine tendency. In the meantime the ancient monastic Orders flourished (especially the Benedictines) and convents of mendicants arose (Franciscans and Dominicans) which began to exercise strong influences on the religious life of the country.

This situation persisted still in the 14th century, when the Angeli-Comneni were succeeded in various regions and at various dates by the Angevins, the Byzantine Empire and that of the Nemanjić, and then by the local dynasties in the center and the south, and there was formed, in the north, the local principality of the Balsa with Scutari as its center. At the end of the century, in the face of the Turkish threat, the bulwark of the Venetian defenses was erected along the coast from Antivari to Durazzo, which, despite the religious tolerance of the Most Serene Republic, certainly marked a strengthening of Latinism. Durazzo itself had from then on a Latin archbishopric.

The central decades of the 15th century are occupied by the anti-Turkish struggle, led, among the Albanians, by Scanderbeg (v.), who was certainly a Christian, but it is not known of which rite. In any case, with Rome, which validly supported him, he was in close relations not only political but also religious, and it is probable that the other dynasts held the same attitude. The Turkish ascendancy (from 1479), in a first phase, brought from the religious point of view an infiltration of Turkish Muslim colonies into the cities abandoned by the Venetians and by the local population, and of small Turkish military feudatories, but together the much more perilous phenomenon of the flight of the Latin prelates and of the religious Orders, except the Franciscans. Strong nuclei of population also emigrated to Italy, compact however almost only in the Kingdom of Naples, where they formed the "Italo-Albanian colonies," which long preserved, and in part preserve to this day, their Byzantine rite, while increasingly emphasizing their fidelity to the Roman see. There also disappeared then the leaders of the nation, the old dynasties, some fled to Italy, some passed over to Islam and were submerged, without leaving considerable trace of themselves, in the Muslim world. From then on the impossibility of regular relations with Rome left the churches of the north at the mercy of themselves and those of the south exposed to the influence of the patriarchate of Constantinople which, then, as the recognized organ of the Christian civil community of the Turkish empire, was the only shield against the abuses of the rulers. Nevertheless for another century and more the population remained for the most part Christian, and continued to agitate to recover its independence by resorting to the help of Venice, of the Empire, of Spain, but especially of the Pope, the southern populations and the southern clergy themselves being in agreement on this.

We could say the same of the 17th century, had not the loss of the last coastal defenses on the part of Venice, the strengthening of Turkish infiltrations and the progressive relapse into savagery of the clergy facilitated a beginning of transition to Islam. At the same time, however, we note a praiseworthy beginning of recovery on the part of the Catholic hierarchy and clergy; of this the principal phenomena are found in the re-establishment of the resident hierarchy, the replenishment of the secular clergy which was the most tangible effect of the foundation of the S. Congregazione di Propaganda Fide with its Greek college (1577), the Urban and Illyrian college of Loreto (1627) and the Illyrian college of Fermo (1631), and the beginning of the Italian Franciscan missions (1634).

The summit of the new ascent was reached in the time of Pope Clement XI, Albani, who, recognizing himself to be of Albanian descent, took great interest, especially through the great reforming archbishop of Antivari Vincenzo Zmajevich, in the political and religious rebirth of his country of origin. There was then the "first Albanian national council" (1703), which decisively marked the line of conduct of the clergy in dogmatic, moral, canonical and pastoral questions. Meanwhile also in the "Orthodox" sector there had been new developments. Various appeals of "Orthodox" prelates of A. to the political protection of the Pope had also led to a religious rapprochement, so that there came about first a kind of union, then, this not having succeeded well, the creation of archbishoprics for the Latins in Ochrida and Scopia. A mission of the Eastern rite worked for a long time in the Himara (1628-...?).

In the 18th century the work of recovery continues. The armed autonomy of the mountain tribes, by now assured, and the flourishing of large and rich Christian merchant communities in the cities seemed bound to guarantee its result. Instead, while the causes that would later lead to the stagnation of the defections were consolidating and developing, these continued, indeed intensified throughout that century as a delayed effect of old and new causes. The clergy was nevertheless too scarce to be able to counter the religious indifference brought by too many civil contacts with the Muslim environment, so that even trivial motives sufficed to decide individuals, families, villages to defect. The Turkish empire increasingly widely opened the way to spectacular civil and military careers for Albanians provided they were Muslims. To the sporadic fanaticism of the Turkish governors was added the apostate fanaticism of certain strong local families that had become hereditary feudatories. It is not, however, to be believed that this was immediately a pure and simple passage to Islam; often it was the assumption of a Turkish personal name to be used in relations with the dominant environment; often of a family perhaps only one member was circumcised in order to obtain rights and exemptions. In vast north-eastern and central zones there was the phenomenon of crypto-Christianity, which lasted then until our own days; even of those who embraced Islam, many preferred its more heterodox and less distant from Christianity sects, such as that of the Bektashi.

The 19th century is marked by the slowing of persecution, owing especially to the official protection of Catholicism in A[lbania] that Austria assumed as heir of Venice and exercised also by granting subsidies to the clergy and to Catholic works, and to the better culture of the clergy and the laity. Already from the 17th century there had been various attempts to erect seminaries on the spot; but only in 1856 was the foundation reached in Scutari of a national pontifical college entrusted to the Jesuits, which from then on supplied all the secular clergy and the episcopal sees themselves. At the same time the Franciscans began to open elementary schools, and in 1877 the Jesuits opened in Scutari the first secondary school; in 1870 they had also opened a printing press. At the end of the century, while the Franciscans were reinvigorating the parishes entrusted to them with excellent elements, including native ones, the Jesuits began the "flying mission" for popular missions, especially in the mountains, which succeeded in spreading instruction and the fervor of religious life everywhere. The "Orthodox" part did not proceed at the same pace; by then having remained fully in the power of the patriarchate of Constantinople, which moreover cared nothing for it, it saw the disappearance of that learned clergy which in the 18th century had made the school and the printing press of Moscopoli flourish. Having at first leaned on the fraternal help of a reborn Greece, it finally had to detach itself from it with regret as a result of the chauvinism that wanted to Hellenize everything. Thus the South, while progressing civilly and culturally, remained religiously uncultivated.

In the 20th century national independence (1912) had as its effect the almost absolute cessation of apostasies; however, during the regime of King Zog the law on religious "communities" dealt a serious blow to the ancient ecclesiastical immunities, and Catholics remained excluded from the allocations of the cult fund and therefore forced always to count on the subsidy that Italy continued to grant, as Austria had before. Moreover, the suppression of private schools (1933) deprived the Catholic community of flourishing institutes and provoked a dangerous propaganda of atheistic communism, which the government could then not restrain even with a limited restitution of the suppressed institutes. During the regime of the "union" with Italy, the Catholic part, without enjoying a condition of privilege, had equality of rights with the other communities. In the face of a felt "Orthodox" movement of return "to the religion of Scanderbeg", the problem of union was studied, but the erection of small missions scattered here and there seemed to disappoint the expectation of the "Orthodox" who saw in it rather a crumbling than the salvation of their own bloc that they had hoped for.

At present, for the Catholic part there is in A[lbania] an apostolic delegate (since 1921, but never accredited to the local government), an archdiocese at Scutari with the suffragans Alessio, Pulati and Sappa, an archdiocese without suffragans at Durazzo, and an abbey nullius with a titular invested with episcopal rank and immediately dependent on the Holy See at S. Alessandro dei Mirditi (Orosh). The ancient archdiocese of Antivari, which remained first with Montenegro, then with Yugoslavia, although composed of almost exclusively Albanian parishes, lost its suffragans, which passed to Scutari restored to its ancient rank (1867). Scopia, which likewise remained with Yugoslavia with its parishes largely Albanian, is now reduced to episcopal rank. The "Orthodox" community, after a long struggle for its own autocephaly, which dates back to 1912 and was accompanied by patriarchal excommunications, finally had it recognized by patriarchal tomos of 1937; it has Albanian also as its liturgical language and counts, besides the metropolis of Durazzo-Tirana, the eparchies of Corizza (Korça), Berati and Argiocastro. Catholic A[lbania] is divided into two parts by an ideal line passing south of Tirana; in the north it is under the jurisdiction of the S. Congregation of Propaganda, while in the south it forms an eparchy within the competence of the S. Oriental Congregation. The Muslim community, at least since the abolition of the caliphate, forms an autonomous national group, with a head-mufti and various muftis in the provincial capitals, a general medrese (seminary) in Tirana and various students also in the Islamic Universities of El-Azar in Cairo and of Lahore in India.

The period of Albanian state autonomy deprived the Catholic community of the position in some way of privilege that it enjoyed lastly under Turkish rule, in a regime of concession and under Austrian protection, and took away from the ecclesiastical hierarchy various canonical privileges (ecclesiastical forum, freedom of teaching, etc.); nevertheless, for the merits acquired in the long struggle for national liberation and for its greater cultural elevation, the Catholic part was able to enjoy an absolutely exceptional prestige in the face of the other numerically predominant religions. On the other hand, the progressive diffusion of culture had made a large part of the ancient prejudices regarding Catholicism and the Papacy disappear among the Catholic population and especially in the ruling classes, so that it was legitimate to hope for a notable progress of the Catholic cause in the near future. Instead, the regime established at the beginning of 1945 under the name of the Albanian Republic, with an ever more Marxist-Bolshevik and tyrannical orientation, led to a veritable persecution against the religious idea, from which every religious community materially suffered, and in particular the Catholic one, because of the very high percentage of victims especially among the clergy and because of the complete destruction of all its organizations, including the seminaries.

3. CULTURAL HISTORY

The Albanian nation, linguistically and culturally heir of the Thraco-Illyrian stock, gave no evident signs of an autonomous cultural life of its own until the 16th century, contenting itself with fitting into the culture of the empires that dominated the region. But from then on the necessity of keeping religious culture alive in a people isolated from the rest of European culture by the fact of the Turkish conquest drove the Latin Catholic clergy to the publication of translations of liturgical texts and of catechisms in the Albanian language (G. Buzuku, Missal, 1555; Pietro Budi, b. in 1566, d. in 1623, various works; que-

(from Enc. Ital.)

The latter also had a certain literary bent, which manifested itself in numerous short sacred lyrics of some merit). Franc. Bardhi (Blanchus) also published a first Dictionarium latino-epiroticum (1635). Finally, in 1685, there appeared a great apologetic work, not devoid of eloquence and composed in good literary form, the Cuneus of Pietro Bogdani. At the same time, the "Italo-Albanians" also carried on their own parallel religious-literary activity in Italy. The Orthodox clergy, by contrast, absorbed as they were in the great halo of Byzantine culture, apart from a few small works of a lexicographical nature and a translation of the Gospel by Gregorio Argirocastrita (1824), did not feel the tendency that had characterized the evangelizing work of the ancient Eastern Church — that of giving popular form and language to the liturgy and to preaching; indeed, later, when they made a first attempt at it in the early years of the 20th century, they had to suffer the severest measures on the part of the Patriarchate of Constantinople. So it can be said that Albanian literature was born in the shadow of the Catholic Church. The scarcity and the limited moral and cultural value of certain small works by popular Muslim erotic poets carry no weight, all the more so since they were not published. The 19th century saw on the one hand the emergence of a decided literary tendency in the Catholic clergy, through the new ecclesiastical institutes that arose in the country, and on the other hand an evolution, also cultural, of national feeling, especially from 1878 onward. There then rose to fame a poet of Turkish culture, but a good connoisseur of the national spirit and language, Naim Frashëri (1846-1900), who remained the national poet until the Franciscan G. Fishta (v.) eclipsed every other. Other names, however, are not to be neglected, such as the priest Andrea Mjedja (1866-1937), the most exquisite representative of classical lyric poetry, and Faik Konitsa (1875-1943), a highly cultivated prose writer. At present it can be said that Albanian literature, while still lacking works of high artistic value, has brought its language to the point of being able to express itself in every literary genre and in every philosophical and scientific form. The Catholic clergy has continued its great tradition in this. And it has continued it also in the collecting of national treasures, such as the folklore, so rich and characteristic, the phraseology, and above all the popular poetry, which is most valuable especially for its epic grandeur and for the richness of feeling and of the sense of nature; a sector of the highest importance for the national culture, and cultivated almost exclusively by the Catholic clergy, is also that of the highly original legal customs (Kanûn) which, although they were preserved for centuries only orally, manifest a vigorous national legal sense in their organic coherence and logic; distinguished in this field was especially Fr. Stefano Gjeçov O. M. (1874-1929); along with him the Italian Msgr. Ernesto Cozzi (d. 1925), and then numerous living scholars. The original philosophical and scientific output, on the other hand, has remained scanty, limited so far to periodical publications, among which Hylli i Dritës of the Franciscans, Leha of the Jesuits, and Albania of F. Konitsa stood out.

Giuseppe Valentini

4. THE GREEK-ALBANIAN RITE

So called because in A. the dissidents used the Greek books until the granting of autocephaly (12 Apr. 1937). From that time the Albanian liturgical language was increasingly introduced; but even before that, it was in use among the Albanians of Romania and of America. The following books are known:

1) Service of Holy Week (1908); 2) Book of the Sacred Services: it is a small Aghiamatarion, with only the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (1909); 3) Book of the Great Feasts (1911); 4) Little Triodion (1913); 5) Little Pentecostarion (1914); 6) Book of Prayers: hymns taken from the Octoechos and from the Paraclis (1914). These books were translated from the Greek through the work of Fan Noli and published in Boston. In addition: 7) Book of the Sacred Servants (reprint, Coritza 1930); 8) Evangelary (Tirana 1930); 9) Apostolos, epistolary (Tirana 1931).

Alfonso Raes