The Latin and Greek Churches in former Byzantine Lands 183
their own rite but that Latin priests could nonetheless administer the sacra-
ment of confirmation to Greeks wishing to cross over to the Latin rite. These
rulings, clearly promulgated with the aim of preventing Latins from crossing
over to the Greek rite while encouraging the opposite process, failed in the
long run. In 1418 Pope Martin V observed that the Latins of Cyprus were follow-
ing the Greek rite, had abandoned Latin customs and were making no distinc-
tion between Latin and Greek churches. In the same year the Venetian Senate
observed apropos of Crete that the Latin clergy had abandoned the villages
and fortified settlements of Crete, on account of receiving neither incomes nor
donations, as a result of which Roman Catholics were availing themselves of
the services of Greek priests for the rites of baptism and for funerals. A simi-
lar situation prevailed in the Peloponnese. On 1 October 1322 Pope John xxii
wrote to the titular Latin patriarch of Constantinople and to the archbishop
of Patras, stating how it had come to his notice that Latins and their families
there had been partaking of Greek ecclesiastical sacraments and attending
Greek Church services, as well as making offerings to these churches.74
Nor was the attraction of the Greek Church to Latins confined to the lay
population. In southern Italy, under Latin rule since the late 11th century, Latin
clerics sometimes bypassed the rules of celibacy of their own church by mar-
rying after receiving lower orders, transferring to the Greek rite and continuing
in the married state after Greek bishops had consecrated them into the higher
clerical orders. Statutes passed at the synod held in 1284 at Melfi decreed
that such clerks refusing to renounce their marriage would thenceforth not
be admitted into higher clerical orders unless they could furnish irrefutable
proofs that both their parents were Greek. The ineffectiveness of these stat-
utes is illustrated by the fact that as late as 1570 the archbishop of Otranto was
complaining about how Latins hardly able to read Greek had been married
in accordance with the Greek rite and were living together with their wives
and children. Felix Faber, the Dominican friar visiting Cyprus in 1480 and once
again in 1483, observed a similar phenomenon there, observing with indigna-
tion that “Many Latin priests go over to the Greek rite, and presume to take
wives, but they wish at the same time to enjoy the privileges of Latin priests,
in which they have no part”.75 Apparently the attraction of the Greek Church
for Latins in Greece and even further afield was greater than the attraction the
Latin Church exerted on the Greeks.
74 Schabel, Synodicum, pp. 154–55 no. 6 and 268–71; Claudine Delacroix-Besnier, Les
Dominicains et la Chrétienté grecque au xive et xve siècles (Rome, 1997), pp. 74–75; Acta
Ioannis xxii, no. 63.
75 Herde, “The Papacy and the Greek Church,” pp. 238–39; Cobham, Excerpta Cypria, p. 41.