ITALO-ALBANIANS. - This is the name given to those Italian citizens who live in the municipalities (more than a hundred) whose Albanian origin can be documented, founded in Italy (Abruzzi and Molise, Campania, Apulia, Lucania, Calabria, Sicily, Veneto, Istria, Dalmatia) from the strong nuclei of Albanians who emigrated from the 15th to the 17th century, before and after the death (17 Jan. 1468) of the national hero, George Castriota Skanderbeg, and the consequent fall of Albania under the Ottoman yoke.
Without counting the families that in groups or in isolation passed into Italy at all times, the mass migrations were several and were directed into the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. Three military columns under the leadership of Demetrio Reres and his two sons Giorgio and Basilio came in 1448 to help Alfonso I of Aragon quell the rebellion of Calabria, of which Demetrio was then appointed governor; his two sons were sent to Sicily as a garrison against the threats of the French and against pirates.
A letter of 1452 from King Alfonso to the prince of Taranto, his great feudatory, in which he enjoined him to receive the Albanians well if they sought hospitality in his lands, suggests an emigration around that time, or at least is evidence of that King's benevolent disposition toward the Albanians. In 1461, guided by Skanderbeg, urged by Pius II in defense of Ferdinand I against John of Anjou and the rebel barons, military detachments came which then, for the most part, together with another 5 thousand combatants and the many families that after the fall of Constantinople (1453) were flowing into Italy, founded several villages and repopulated others in Apulia, of which Skanderbeg was appointed lieutenant general with the concession in perpetuity for himself and his descendants of certain fiefs of the Kingdom. But the most numerous and most dramatic emigrations occurred after the hero's death (1468, 1478, 1482, 1491 and others), from which came the greatest number of Italo-Albanian colonies. The first certainly refers to what Pope Paul II (1464-71) wrote to Philip duke of Burgundy about the horrors and massacres that were being perpetrated against the Albanian cities «quae ante hac pro nobis Turcorum substituerunt impetus» and against those populations who in the most tearful desperation were pouring in disorder onto the Italian shores. Many colonies arose from the arrival of the Coronei (1534) with a great fleet of Charles V, to whom the cities of the Morea (Corone, Modone, Nauplia and others also remembered in traditional Italo-Albanian folk songs) had asked for protection, which, for about three centuries of Venetian rule, was predominantly inhabited by Albanians who had settled there between the 13th and 15th centuries in such numbers as to change «greatly the ethnographic appearance of the country» (Hertzberg).
Charles V renewed for the exiles the privileges already enjoyed in their homeland for loyalty to the Empire. Groups of Coronei also settled in the principal cities of the Kingdom (Naples, Palermo, Messina, Reggio) and in the largest centers of the Adriatic coast (Bari, Brindisi, Lecce, Otranto, Taranto and Barletta, Trani, Bisceglie, Molfetta and others) where parishes arose around which gathered Albanian families who at various epochs crossed the sea. During the reign of Charles III of Bourbon, in 1744 a final considerable emigration settled at Villabadessa (Pescara), a fief of the Sovereign's personal property which he generously assigned to the Albanian exiles. Between 1727 and 1733 Borgo Erizzo arose near Zara in Dalmatia, the only Gheg colony, that is, originating from northern Albania.
Because of the ancient relations of friendship of the Albanian princes with the kings of Naples, because of the military collaboration between the two countries, although manifestations of hostility were not lacking on the part of the coastal populations terrorized by the advances and the ferocious reprisals of the Turks, the Albanian exiles, protected by the pontiffs as victims and almost martyrs of the faith and favored by the sovereigns, came as to a second homeland to colonize and reclaim large zones depopulated because of earthquakes, plagues and continuous wars. Because of these indisputable demographic and economic advantages, even the barons and bishops were generous with concessions to the new colonists, who always enjoyed the rights of citizenship and practiced religious worship in the Greek rite undisturbed in their churches and with their own clergy, without any suspicion ever being raised about their Catholicism.
This is confirmed by the constant Catholic tradition of the I.-A. who, as one reads in the Constitutions of the Synod held at Monreale (Palermo) in 1652 by card. Fr. Montalto Peretto, «erroribus orientalium schismaticorum nullo modo consentiunt». The surnames dominant in these colonies correspond in good part to the historical surnames of southern Albania and to names of villages and districts still existing in those regions, many of whose toponyms have been applied by the exiles to places and districts of the Italo-Albanian territories. The dialect and the few historical and geographical allusions of the traditional Italo-Albanian songs confirm the provenance from southern Albania and from the Morea, as does the Greek rite professed, at least originally, in all the colonies.
For various political, economic and social causes, during the viceroyalty, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the colonies passed through, as indeed did almost the whole Kingdom, a period of crisis that led to a gradual decline of most of them. The bull of Clement VIII of 1595 in which the I.-A., who had traditions, culture and Catholic sentiments, and were very anxious to be distinguished from them, were confused with the Italo-Greeks (v.) in the restrictive provisions concerning the Greek rite, brought about the ethnic and religious collapse of many colonies, which lost all their characteristics and some even the memory of their origin.
This bull, justified for the Italo-Greeks, who at that time, both faithful and clergy, came from centers separated from Rome, was not so for the I.-A., who, far from any communication with those centers, had a clergy that completed its studies and its philosophical and theological formation, as it still does today, in the Latin diocesan seminaries, in the Pontifical Greek College and in the pontifical universities of Rome. These restrictive provisions were the pretext for an ill-advised or scandalous struggle against the Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic rite.
But Providence raised up men of holy life, most zealous for the Eastern rites, for the return of Albania to Catholicism and for its liberation from Islamic slavery: the priest Stefano Rodotà of S. Benedetto Ulano (Cosenza) obtained in 1732 from Pope Clement XII the erection of the Greek-Albanian College for Calabria and the institution of the bishopric in 1735; Fr. Giorgio Guzzetta (v.) was able to open in 1734 the Greek-Albanian Seminary in Palermo for Sicily, and was able to set in motion the procedure for the bishopric, which was obtained, after his death, in 1784.
Two facts contributed to disappointing the hopes that the Albanians placed in these institutions: the lack of ordinary jurisdiction of the two bishops and, more importantly, the publication of the bull Etsi pastoralis of Benedict XIV in 1742, to the grave displeasure of the I.-A., because in it the Greek rite was called tolerated, because their Catholic faith was called into doubt, because by pontifical authority all the abuses committed against them were sanctioned (Nota di Segreteria, 1917). Hence new conflicts between the Latins and the Albanians, who «concentrating all their energies on the defense of their own rite, lost themselves in internal quarrels and no longer thought of the missions of Albania (Nota cit.)», which with such zeal of priests and Basilian monks of Megoïso (Palermo) and of Grottaferrata and of distinguished prelates they had maintained for about two centuries (17th and 18th), keeping alight an albeit weak torch of Catholicism in the poor churches of Chimara (southern Albania).
Nevertheless, in two centuries of life the two Institutes (although the one in Calabria, later transferred [1794] to S. Adriano near S. Demetrio Corone, was transformed into a lay boarding school) caused the Greek rite to flourish again and, through linguistic, literary, historical and liturgical studies, raised up again the conditions of the colonies that had escaped the storm; these, having reinvigorated their tradition, gave a valid contribution to the Italian and Albanian risorgimento, and began a lively literary movement with the collection of folk songs, from which drew inspiration the typically Italo-Albanian literature which, with Girolamo De Rada (1814-93) of Macchia (Cosenza) and then down to our own days with Giuseppe Schirò (1865-1927) of Piana degli Albanesi (Palermo), through a long series of scholars and writers, priests and laymen, represents a substantial part of Albanian culture and literature.
In recent decades, with the awakening of the missionary spirit and through the efforts of the popes for the separated East, the I.-A. have been ready to answer the call of the common Father by establishing (1931) in Palermo, under the guidance of Cardinal Luigi Lavitrano, the Italian Catholic Association for the Christian East (ACIOC), which with weeks of prayer and study in the principal Italian cities has aroused zeal for the apostolate for Union in the light of the pontifical documents. The popes, especially from Leo XIII to the present, have for this apostolate favored the preservation and the flourishing again of the Greek rite in Italy. Benedict XV instituted in 1919 the Greek eparchy or diocese of Lungro for Calabria and the Pontifical
Albanian Seminary in the monastery of Grottaferrata; Pius XI in 1937 declared it exarchic and instituted the eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi for Sicily.
For the Italo-Albanian rite, v. below. - See plate XXXIV.
