BASILIAN MONKS OF ITALY (ITALO-GREEKS). - "Basilian Order" is a designation of Western origin, which arose in Italy in the Middle Ages to indicate and distinguish the Italo-Greek monks who particularly followed the ascetic precepts of St. Basil the Great.
The present Congregation of the Basilian Monks of Italy, or of St. Mary of Grottaferrata, is the heir and continuator of Italo-Greek monasticism which, imported into Italy in the 6th century under Justinian, developed with the progressive Byzantinization of the Italian provinces of the Byzantine Empire, favored by the influx of refugee monks from Syria and Egypt beginning in the 7th century because of the Arab invasion. This influx increased owing to the iconoclast persecution of the 8th century, because in the Byzantine provinces of southern Italy the iconoclast laws never went into effect.
The Arab occupation of Sicily in the 9th century brought about the concentration of Italo-Greek monasticism in Calabria, Apulia and Lucania, but a return to Sicily later came about in the Norman age, when the monasteries that gave such luster to the Byzantine Church of Italy were reestablished.
Marvelous was the holiness that flourished in Italo-Greek monasticism already in the period preceding the Normans. The most representative figures are: St. Elias Speleota, St. Christopher of Collesano and St. Sabas the Younger, St. Leoluca, St. Nicodemus of Mammola, St. Vitalis of Castronuovo, St. John Teriste. But the great star who in his long life drew into his orbit a numerous host of monks and transformed them into saints and sages was St. Nilus of Rossano (910-1004), founder of the monastery of Grottaferrata (v.).
It can be asserted in all truth that with St. Nilus and his disciples, Blessed Paul, St. Proclus and St. Bartholomew of Rossano, Italo-Greek monasticism, when the eremitical system still generally prevailed, had a true and perfect cenobitic organization, which moreover had already been in some way realized in the monastic center of Mercurion, the Athos of Byzantine Calabria, where St. Nilus too was formed under the guidance of St. Fantinus. The great reorganizers of Italo-Greek monasticism of the Norman era, such as St. Bartholomew of Simeri (v.) and St. Luke of Messina, applied the teachings of the great Nilus, always alive in the monastery of Grottaferrata, which prospered under the shadow of the Apostolic See and was, as it were, the rallying center of the Italo-Greek monks.
The golden period of Italo-Greek monasticism coincides with that of the Norman domination (1059-1198). The Norman princes, in fact, were patrons of cenobitism. Thus arose the monasteries of the Patir, near Rossano, and of the Most Holy Savior in Messina.
From that time a part of the monasteries was organized into two extensive monastic groups; one, headed by the archimandrite of the Most Holy Savior of Messina, comprised a great part of the monasteries of Sicily and some of Calabria, 49 in all; the second, of Sts. Elias and Anastasius of Carbone, which embraced 36 monasteries of Lucania and Calabria.
Italo-Greek monasticism continued to prosper under the Swabian domination (1198-1266); but during the subsequent domination of the Angevins (1266-82) the period of adversity and decadence began, provoked both by the vexations of the new masters and by the progressive decrease of the Greek element, which was becoming assimilated to the Italian environment.
The resulting reduction in the number of monks, the forgetting of Eastern monastic traditions and of the Greek language, determined the passage of some monasteries to Latin religious Orders and the abandonment of others. The painful decline of religious discipline could not be eliminated or halted by the apostolic visitations that followed one another, beginning with the first prescribed by Pope Honorius III in 1221. Not even the famous Cardinal Bessarion succeeded in this, though he strove to reform the Order. Many monasteries were granted in commendam and finally it was thought to suppress the Basilian Order in Italy radically. If this danger was averted, it is due to Gregory XIII, assisted by the two illustrious cardinals Guglielmo Sirleto and Giulio Santoro.
On the day of Pentecost of 1579 the true birth of the Order took place with the convocation of the general chapter of the Greek monks of Italy at St. Philaretus of Seminara, near Mileto in Calabria, followed, on 1 November of the same year, by the bull Benedictus Dominus of Gregory XIII, which constituted the Congregation of the Basilian Monks of Italy and that of Spain, conferring on it an organization similar to that of the Benedictine Congregation of the Cassinese. An attempt was also made to diminish the abuses of commendams by separating the table of the commendatory from the monastic table, as was practiced with the Benedictines. The Order thus reformed began to live again. The renewed Basilian Congregation was Italo-Spanish, since the Spanish branch of the Basilians of the Latin rite also became part of it; this branch, established in Spain around 1556, although depending on the same general, had a local development and influence. This branch was suppressed by the minister Espartero (1855).
The reestablished Basilian monasticism of Italy lacked, however, in reality the essential note of Byzantine monasticism.
Except for the convent of Mezzoiuso (Palermo), founded in 1609 by the Albanian Andrea Reres, in which the monks who populated it were Italo-Albanians born and raised in the Byzantine rite, in the other monasteries, including that of Grottaferrata, the Byzantine rite, while preserving some archaic Italo-Greek characteristics, had been gravely altered. Many monasteries adopted the Roman rite entirely; the monks could easily change rite. Indeed in 1709, the abbot general Pietro Menniti asked Clement XI for the complete Latinization of the Order; a supplication that was refused, as was the other, renewed to Pope Benedict XIV in 1746 by the general Diego Del Pozzo.
In 1784 the minister of the king of Naples, B. Tanucci, suppressed numerous monasteries situated in the continental part of the kingdom. Those of Sicily and of Grottaferrata remained. Finally the law of 1866 dissolved the Order entirely, and it would have disappeared had not the monks of the monastery of Grottaferrata, which was preserved as a national monument, obtained permission to remain as custodians. The rite, however, that was observed in the Abbey was a mixture of the Byzantine and Roman rites.
To lay the foundations for a revival of Byzantine monasticism in Italy, a reform was necessary. And this was finally decided by the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide for the affairs of the Oriental rite, in the plenary session of 12 July 1880, and, despite the grave difficulties it encountered, was confirmed by decree of 12 April 1882. A great part in the preparation and implementation of the reform was played by the erudite abbot of Grottaferrata, G. Cozza-Luzi (v.), later vice-librarian of the Holy Roman Church. His successor, the abbot Arsenio Pellegrini, brought the reform to completion in his long governance (1883-1917), and thus the present Congregation of the Basilian Monks of Italy of St. Mary of Grottaferrata was organized, which had its first constitutions in 1900.
With the work of reform almost finished, a first step toward expansion followed: in 1920 the historic monastery of Mezzoiuso was reopened, where the Congregation has its probandate. Another foundation was begun in 1932 at St. Basil, in Calabria, in the Italo-Albanian diocese of Lungro; and in 1935 the college of St. Basil in Rome was reopened, after more than a century, for the philosophical-theological formation of the young monks. Finally in 1938, to respond to the wishes of the Holy See, the monks went to Albania, where they established the missions of Fieri and Argiocastro, from which they have been expelled. In 1948 they opened a house at Piana degli Albanesi (Palermo).
Pius XI, with the bull Pervetustum Cryptaferratae coenobium of Sept. 26, 1937, gave the Abbey its definitive juridical arrangement by elevating it to Exarchic Monastery, that is, Abbatia nullius, immediately subject to the Holy See.
Bibliography5 works
Stefano Altimari