ITALO-BYZANTINE, RITE. - It can be divided into two branches, the Italo-Greek and the Italo-Albanian. By the first designation is meant that rite introduced or renewed in Sicily and southern Italy with the arrival in the 7th century of many exiles from the Near East, who had fled before the Arabs, or rather with the establishment in these regions of the rule of the Byzantine Empire. It had its finest flowering from the 9th to the 12th century; it suffices to name among so many liturgical poets St. Joseph the Hymnographer. The presence of the liturgy of St. James, of St. Mark and of St. Peter, as well as that of a Typicon of its own, proves that the rite of
The liturgy of Constantinople practiced there was not exclusive. In the struggle against Latinization from the 13th to the 16th century, it was to suffer very serious damage. Moreover, the arrival of numerous Albanians gave the liturgy in use in the parishes a more Constantinopolitan character, while the ancient Italo-Greek rite was preserved in the Basilian monasteries, of which, in the 19th century, only one remained, that of Grottaferrata; there the rite was restored to its primitive genuineness, thanks to the energetic and generous interventions of the pontiffs (cf. A. Rocchi, La badia di Grottaferrata, Rome 1904, p. 74), and thus came to know new splendor.
The particularities of this rite, not yet sufficiently studied, are fixed in numerous codices preserved in the libraries of Grottaferrata, the Vatican, and Messina; then, for the period of decadence, in the books printed in Rome or at Grottaferrata: the three Liturgies (1601), the Liturgicon (similar to the plenary Missal of the Latins; 1683), the Horologion (1677 and 1772), the Psalter (1685), the small Euchologion (1831), and after the renewal, the Horologion (1950). Its completeness denotes a type distinctly more ancient than the present-day Byzantine one.
The Italo-Albanian rite became the rite of the regions of Calabria and Sicily when the refugees from Albania mingled with the scanty faithful there still practicing the Byzantine rite, that is, after the 15th century. The liturgical language did not change, because in Albania itself only Greek was in use; probably there were new melodies in the liturgical chant which are still preserved (cf. F. Falsone, I canti ecclesiastici greco-siculi, Padua 1936, lithograph). Gregory XIII (1573), Clement VIII (1595), and Benedict XIV (1742) issued various instructions to regulate the rite. The three Liturgies had been printed in Rome in 1526 and in 1598 a kind of Breviary called the Anthologion, compiled by Antonio Arcudio.
When a commission was established by the Holy See for the edition of the Eastern liturgical books, the Triodion saw the light in 1724, with the deliberate false indication of Bologna; the Anthologion of A. Arcudio was reprinted in 9 vols. in 1738, and in 1754 the Euchologion appeared; on this occasion Benedict XIV issued the bull Ex quo primum (1 April 1756), in which he gives the history of this edition and explained at length certain ritual observances proper to the Easterners. Then, from 1873 to 1902, all the liturgical books of the Byzantine rite were printed, with the exception of the Typicon, in 16 vols.; the edition of the Horologion was resumed in 1937, and an Archieratikon and a Hagiasmatarion are in preparation. From all these books it is evident that the Italo-Albanian rite does not differ at all, as regards the texts and rubrics, from that used in Constantinople or in Greece.
Bibliography8 works
The following articles are also cited on account of their rich bibliography: C. Giannelli, Un documento sconosciuto della polemica tra Greci e Latini intorno alla formula battesimale, in Or. Chr. periodica, 10 (1944), pp. 150-67; G. Garitte, Deux manuscrits italo-grecs, in Miscellanea G. Mercati, III, Vatican City 1946, pp. 16-40; A. Strittmatter, Liturgical Latinism, in a Twelfth century greek Euchology, ibid., pp. 41-64; S. Salaville, Studia Orientalia liturgico-theologica, Rome 1940, pp. 138-42 (on the Anthologion of Arcudio); P. De Meester, Catechismo liturgico del rito bizantino, Pompei 1929; C. Korolevsky, L'édition romaine des Métiers grecques, in Bollettino della badia di Grottaferrata, 3 (1949), pp. 30-40, 153-62, 225-47; 4 (1950), pp. 15-16.
Alfonso Raes