The Greek Church and the Papacy in Italy in the Middle Ages and Modern Times

Abstract

Historically, the Greek Church or, more broadly, the Byzantine church tradition for Italy is not just something alien, but, on the contrary, an integral part of its spiritual culture. The term «Greater Greece», as Southern Italy was called back in antiquity, explains the attraction of the region to the Greek-speaking cultural and spiritual world, especially since entire regions of the peninsula were part of the Byzantine Empire for significant periods of time, and, if in a number of cases, as in In Puglia or Lucania, ecclesiastical authority remained with the pope, then, for example, in Calabria and Sicily, from the time of the iconoclast emperors, it belonged to the Patriarchs of Constantinople. Northeastern Italy, for its part, politically and culturally gravitated towards Byzantium for its own reasons — since the invasion of the Lombards (VI century), the population of the former Roman province of Venice sought intercession from the emperors of the Eastern Roman Empire. In this communication, we are primarily interested in the nature of the relationship of the Latin Church, or better to say the papacy, as a political and administrative institution, with the Greek Church in Italy. Based on the analysis of sources and research on this topic, a conclusion is made about the dual nature of the Eastern Christian tradition in the Apennines. If in Southern Italy the Greek and Albanian communities were from the first millennium under the jurisdiction of Rome and, thus, remaining under it after the division of the Churches, were for the most part assimilated and cut off from their Byzantine roots, then the nature of the emigration of the Greeks to the north of the peninsula was different. The Orthodox within the Venetian Republic managed to preserve their own identity, as well as to do a lot in the field of apologetics and other branches of theology and science. The climate of religious tolerance and the powerful educational and scientific base of Venice and Padua made it possible to educate generations of educated people who would later become the cultural elite of free Greece.