SOUTH ITALY, MEZZOGIORNO *The Forcibly latinization/Catholicization of Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata and Campania.

“The Pope sent inquisitors to southern Italy to investigate the Greeks, and if they had found any who did not adhere to the Latin doctrine, they would have had to burn him at the stake...” (Anonymous Calabrese of the 12th century, code Vatic.gr.316) ********** The territory of Sicily and Southern Italy was at least partially under Greek administrative control until the 11th century, when the feudal lord Melos, of Varis (Bari), asked for the help of the Normans as mercenaries, to help him become independent from Constantinople. The 200 Norman mercenaries (500 from another source), who founded the Norman state and began the violent Latinization of the MagnoGreeks, did not leave any DNA footprint in the territory. It was simply impossible because these Norman conquerors were so few. The same goes for all the various conquerors in Magna Graecia. They were only military (Normans, Germans, France, Spanish...). They were not a population. They were not settlers. The Concordat of 1059. The beginning of the end for Magno Greeks. At the end of August 1059, the Bavarian Gerardo de Chelone (Pope Nicholas II ) convended “council” in Melfi di Potenza. He was accompanied by the infamous Cardinal Hildebrando di Soana (the future Gregory VII) and an impressive entourage of cardinals, bishops, and abbots. The reason for all this pomp? The stipulation of a Concordat with the Norman barons engaged in the conquest of southern Italy. By displaying the Constitutum Constantini, a false document according to which the Emperor Constantine I, had abdicated in favor of the Pope, making southern Italy (Magna Crecia) Patrimonium sancti Petri, the first nucleus of the Papal State. Nicholas II granted Robert Guiscard possession of all of Magna Graecia, continental Greece and Sicily, naming him Apostolic Legate, his personal alter ego. For his part, Roberto swore by God and the Gospel that he will be the Pope's ally against any adversary; he promised not to advance in war without the Pope's authorization; he promised to hand over the conquered population of southern Italy, keeping it in obedience to the Holy Roman Church. The bishops from Sicily, Apulia, Basilicata and Calabria had remained in the Orthodox faith in the period after the Schism (1054) because they were Greeks and participated in the Synods called by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Pope with the help of the Franko-German conquerors who ruled these areas, put unbearable pressure on the Orthodox inhabitants and forced them to follow the Latin ritual and Latin language. The oppression and persecutions forced many Orthodox to flee to Byzantium, such as Saint Nikephoros, who was a Philocaly teacher of Saint Gregory Palamas and Saint Bartholomew from Symeri, reformer of the Monastery of Saint Basil in Arsana of Chilandarius on Mount Athos. They politically subjugated Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Calabria and Sicily and in 1071 installed Franco-German bishops in Sicily.