ITALO-BYZANTINE RITE. — It may be divided into two branches: the Italo-Greek and the Italo-Albanian. The first designation refers to the rite introduced or renewed in Sicily and southern Italy with the arrival in the 7th century of many exiles from the Near East, fleeing before the Arabs or rather with the establishment in these regions of the dominion of the Byzantine Empire. It enjoyed its finest flowering from the 9th to the 12th centuries; suffice it to mention among so many illustrious poets St. Joseph the Hymnographer. The presence of the liturgies of St. James, St. Mark, and St. Peter, as well as of a proper *Typicon*, proves that the rite practiced there was not exclusively that of Constantinople. In the struggle against Latinization from the 13th to the 16th centuries, it suffered very serious damage. Moreover, the arrival of numerous Albanians gave the liturgy in use in the parishes a more Constantinopolitan imprint, while the ancient Italo-Greek rite was preserved in the Basilian monasteries, of which only one remained in the 19th century, that of Grottaferrata; there the rite was restored to its original genuineness thanks to energetic and generous interventions by the popes (cf. A. Rocchi, *La badia di Grottaferrata*, Rome 1904, p. 74), and thus enjoyed new splendor.
The particular features of this rite, still not sufficiently studied, are fixed in numerous manuscripts preserved in the libraries of Grottaferrata, the Vatican, and Messina; then, for the period of decline, in books printed in Rome or at Grottaferrata: the *Tre Liturgie* (1601), the *Liturgicon* (similar to the plenary missal of the Latins; 1683), the *Orlogion* (1677 and 1772), the *Psalter* (1685), the small *Euchologion* (1831), and after the renewal, the *Orlogion* (1950). The office reveals a type decidedly more ancient than that of the Byzantine rite today.
The Italo-Albanian rite became the rite of the regions of Calabria and Sicily when refugees from Albania mingled with the few faithful still practicing the Byzantine rite there, that is, after the 15th century. The liturgical language did not change, because in Albania itself only Greek was in use; probably there were many new developments in the liturgical chant that 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 *Tre Liturgie* had been printed in Rome in 1526, and in 1598 a kind of breviary called the *Anthologion*, compiled by Antonio Arcadio, was published.
When the Holy See established a commission for the edition of Eastern liturgical books, the *Triodion* appeared in 1724, with the deliberately false indication of Bologna; the *Anthologion* of A. Arcadio was reprinted in 9 volumes in 1738, and the *Euchologion* was published in 1754; on this occasion Benedict XIV issued the bull *Ex quo primum* (1 April 1756), in which he made a number of observations on the ritual peculiar to the Easterners. Then, from 1873 to 1902, all the liturgical books of the Byzantine rite were printed, except for the *Typicon*, in 16 volumes; the edition of the *Orlogion* was resumed in 1937, and an *Archieratikon* and an *Aghiatsmatarion* are in preparation. From all these books it is clear that the Italo-Albanian rite does not differ in any way, as regards texts and rubrics, from that used in Constantinople or in Greece.
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 *Oriens Christianus Periodicus*, 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 liturgica-theologica*, Rome 1940, pp. 138-42 (on the *Anthologion* of Arcadio); P. De Meester, *Catechismus liturgico del rito bizantino*, Pompei 1929; C. Korolevsky, *L'edition romaine des Ménées grecques*, in *Bollettino della badia di Grottaferrata*, 3 (1949), pp. 30-40, 153-62, 225-47; 4 (1950), pp. 15-16.