Da san Nilo all’affermazione del monachesimo latino in Calabria

The story of Calabria, between the ninth and eleventh centuries, was marked by the coexistence of different political and religious souls. Along the Valley of the Crati (up to Cosenza) the Lombard presence came while, further south, the Byzantine people acted with the formation of the Thema of Calabria. In addition, the migration waves of the eighth century led to the ‘bizantinizzazione’ of church and monastic structures. But, since the second half of the ninth century, the influence of Montecassino archcenoby began to put some full stops, in the slow process of recovery of the South to the Roman obedience and to the liturgical latinity. This gave birth to the integration processes of the two religious components; but with the spread of the Congregation Cavense (1025), the Italo-Greek monastic component, especially that along the border and in the area of Calabria and Lucania of Mercurion, ended with being more and more incorporated into the Latin monastic reorganization. This complex situation, since the second half of the eleventh century with the arrival of the Normans, underwent a profound transformation by recording the natural rotation of new bishops of the Latin Rite with those of Greek rite and the founding of new Benedictine abbeys for the feudal and spiritual control of the territory (1062-1091).