Chapter 7 Greek Communities in Post-Byzantine Italy
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At the beginning of the so-called “Norman” conquest, the “Greek” communities of southern Italy, inherited from ancient migration movements and from the long-lasting Byzantine domination could be easily identified in the documentation through three main distinctive features: the use of Greek, of the Byzantine law, and of the Byzantine liturgical and ecclesiological tradition. They cultivated also minor expressions of a provincial Byzantine culture and recognize themselves as a part of the Byzantine world, even when removed from the Byzantine Empire, but under the Hauteville’s protection. The evolution of these Greek communities from the 11th to the 15th century addresses many issues linked to the pluralistic reality of the Medieval Mediterranean: acculturation, collective identity, imperial nature of Medieval kingship. As such, the Greek communities of post-Byzantine Italy are definitively a part of the Byzantine history, as well as of the history of the “Mezzogiorno”.