ITALO-ALBANIANS. — This term designates those Italian citizens who live in the communes (over a hundred) whose Albanian origin can be documented, established 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 centuries, before and after the death (17 Jan. 1468) of the national hero, Giorgio Castriota Skanderbeg, and the consequent fall of Albania under Ottoman yoke.
Without counting the families who, in groups or individually, at all times crossed into Italy, there were several mass migrations directed towards 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 suppress the rebellion in Calabria, after which Demetrio was named its governor; his two sons were sent to Sicily as a garrison against French threats and pirates.
A letter from King Alfonso in 1452 to the Prince of Taranto, his great feudal lord, instructing him to welcome Albanians well if they sought hospitality in his lands, suggests an emigration around that time, or at least testifies to the benevolent disposition of that King towards the Albanians. In 1461, at the urging of Pius II, Skanderbeg sent military units to defend Ferdinand I against John of Anjou and the rebel barons; these units, along with another 5,000 combatants and many families who had fled to Italy after the fall of Constantinople (1453), settled in several places and repopulated others in Apulia, of which Skanderbeg was named lieutenant general with the perpetual grant for himself and his descendants of some fiefs in the Kingdom. But the most numerous and dramatic migrations occurred after the hero’s death (1468, 1478, 1482, 1491, and others), from which the majority of Italo-Albanian colonies originated. The first of these is likely what Pope Paul II (1464–71) referred to in a letter to Philip, Duke of Burgundy, describing the horrors and massacres perpetrated against Albanian cities—“which, even if we cannot construct a war enterprise”—and against those populations who, in the most tearful desperation, disorganizedly crowded onto Italian shores.
Many colonies arose from the arrival of the Coronese (1534) with the imposing fleet of Charles V, to whom the cities of the Morea (Corone, Modone, Nauplia, and others also recalled in Italo-Albanian folk songs) had sought protection; this region, under Venetian rule for about three centuries, was predominantly inhabited by Albanians who had settled there between the 13th and 14th centuries in such numbers as to “greatly alter the ethnographic aspect of the country” (Hertzberg).
Charles V renewed the privileges already enjoyed by the exiles in their homeland for their loyalty to the Empire. Nuclei of Coronese settled in the principal cities of the Kingdom (Naples, Palermo, Messina, Reggio) and in the largest Adriatic coastal centers (Bari, Brindisi, Lecce, Otranto, Taranto, Barletta, Trani, Bisceglie, Molfetta, and others), where parishes arose around which Albanian families gathered who had crossed the sea at various times. During the reign of Charles III of Bourbon, in 1744, a final significant migration settled in Villabate (Pescara), a fief personally owned by the Sovereign, who generously assigned it to the Albanian exiles. Between 1727 and 1733, Borgo Erizzo near Zara in Dalmatia was founded, the only Gheg colony, i.e., originating from northern Albania.
Due to ancient relations of friendship between Albanian princes and the kings of Naples, and the military collaboration between the two countries—despite occasional hostility from coastal populations terrorized by Turkish advances and brutal reprisals—the Albanian exiles, protected by the popes as victims and almost martyrs of the faith and favored by the sovereigns, came as if to a second homeland to colonize and reclaim vast depopulated areas caused by earthquakes, plagues, and continuous wars. For these undeniable demographic and economic advantages, even the barons and bishops were generous in granting concessions to the new settlers, who always enjoyed citizenship rights and practiced their religious worship in the Greek rite undisturbed in their own churches with their own clergy, without ever raising suspicions about their Catholicism.
This is confirmed by the constant Catholic tradition of the Italo-Albanians, who, as stated in the Constitutions of the Synod held in Monreale (Palermo) in 1652 by Cardinal Fr. Montalto Peretto, “in no way consent to the errors of Eastern schismatics.” The dominant surnames in these colonies largely correspond to historical surnames from southern Albania and to names of towns and districts still in use in those regions, many of which toponyms were applied by the exiles to places and districts in the Italo-Albanian territories. The dialect and the few historical and geographical allusions in Italo-Albanian folk songs confirm their origin from southern Albania and the Morea, as does the Greek rite professed, at least originally, in all the colonies.
For various political, economic, and social reasons during the viceroyalty (16th and 17th centuries), the colonies, like almost the entire Kingdom, went through a period of crisis that led to the gradual decline of most of them. The bull of Clement VIII in 1595, in which the Italo-Albanians—who had Catholic traditions, culture, and sentiments and were keen to distinguish themselves—were conflated with the Italo-Greeks (q.v.) in restrictive provisions regarding the Greek rite, dealt an ethnic and religious blow to many colonies, causing them to lose all their distinctive features, and some even their memory of their origin.
This bull, justified for the Italo-Greeks who at that time, both laity and clergy, came from centers separated from Rome, was not justified for the Italo-Albanians, who had no communication with those centers and had clergy who, as still practiced today, completed their philosophical and theological studies in Latin diocesan seminaries, the Pontifical Greek College, and Roman pontifical universities. These restrictive provisions served as a pretext for an unconsidered and scandalous struggle against the Italo-Albanian Greek Catholic rite.
But Providence raised men of holy life, zealous for Eastern rites, for the return of Albania to Catholicism, and for its liberation from Islamic slavery: Fr. Stefano Rodotà of S. Benedetto Ullano (Cosenza) obtained from Pope Clement XII in 1732 the establishment of the Greek-Albanian College for Calabria and the institution of the bishopric in 1735; Fr. Giorgio Guzzetta (q.v.) was able to open in 1734 the Greek-Albanian Seminary in Palermo for Sicily and to initiate the process for the bishopric, which was obtained after his death in 1784.
Two events dashed the hopes that the Italo-Albanians placed in these institutions: first, the failure of the two bishops to exercise ordinary jurisdiction, and second, the publication in 1742 of Benedict XIV’s bull *Etsi pastoralis*, which greatly displeased the Italo-Albanians because it described the Greek Rite as *tolerated*, cast doubt on their Catholic faith, and, through papal authority, sanctioned every kind of abuse against them (*Segreteria Memorandum*, 1917). New conflicts thus arose between the Latins and the Italo-Albanians, who “concentrated all their energies on defending their own rite, became embroiled in internal disputes, and no longer gave thought to the missions in Albania” (*ibid.*). For nearly two centuries (17th–18th), however, priests and Basilian monks from Mezzojuso (Palermo), Grottaferrata, and other distinguished prelates had kept the Catholic faith alive in the humble churches of the Chimera (southern Albania), despite its feeble embers.
Nevertheless, over two centuries of existence the two Institutes—though the one in Calabria, transferred in 1794 to Sant’Adriano near San Demetrio Corone, was transformed into a lay boarding school—revived the Greek Rite and, through linguistic, literary, historical, and liturgical studies, improved the conditions of the colonies that had survived the storm. Strengthened in their tradition, these colonies made a valuable contribution to the Italian and Albanian renaissances and launched a lively literary movement by collecting folk songs. From this sprang the distinctive Italo-Albanian literature, which, beginning with Girolamo De Rada (1814–93) of Macchia (Cosenza) and continuing to our own day with Giuseppe Schirò (1865–1927) of Piana degli Albanesi (Palermo), and through a long line of scholars and writers, both clerical and lay, represents a significant part of Albanian culture and literature.
In recent decades, with the revival of missionary zeal and the popes’ concern for the separated East, the Italo-Albanians have been ready to respond to the call of the common Father. In 1931, under the leadership of Cardinal Luigi Lavitrano, they established in Palermo the Associazione cattolica italiana per l’Oriente cristiano (ACIOC), which, through prayer and study weeks held in Italy’s principal cities, has rekindled zeal for the apostolate of unity in the light of papal documents. The popes, especially from Leo XIII to the present, have fostered the preservation and reform of the Greek Rite in Italy. Benedict XV in 1919 erected the eparchy or Greek diocese of Lungro for Calabria, and the Pontifical College of the Albanian Seminary in the monastery of Grottaferrata; Pius XI in 1937 declared it an exarchate and established the eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi for Sicily.
For the Italo-Albanian Rite, see below. - See pl. XXXIV.