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Concept
Arbëreshë people
Summary
The Arbëreshë (aɾbəˈɾɛʃ; Arbëreshët e Italisë; Albanesi d'Italia), also known as Albanians of Italy or Italo-Albanians, are an Albanian ethnolinguistic group in Southern Italy, mostly concentrated in scattered villages in the region of Calabria and, to a lesser extent, in the regions of Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania, Molise and Sicily. They are the descendants of Albanian refugees who fled Albania, and later some from Morea between the 14th and the 18th centuries following the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.
During the Middle Ages, the Arbëreshë settled in the Kingdom of Naples in several waves of migration, following the establishment of the Kingdom of Albania, the death of the Albanian national hero Gjergj Kastrioti Skënderbeu and the gradual conquest of the Byzantine Empire by the Ottomans.
Their culture is determined by the main features that are found in language, Byzantine Rite Catholic religion, traditional costume, customs, art and gastronomy, still zealously preserved, with the awareness of belonging to a specific sociolinguistic group. Over the centuries, the Arbëreshë have managed to maintain and develop their identities, thanks to their cultural value exercised mainly by the two religious communities of the Byzantine Rite based in Calabria, the Corsini College in 1732, then Sant'Adriano Italo-Albanian College of San Benedetto Ullano in 1794, and the Italo-Albanian Seminary of Palermo in 1735, which was then transferred to Piana degli Albanesi in 1945.
Nowadays, most of the fifty Arbëreshë communities are adherents to the Italo-Albanian Church, an Eastern Catholic Church. They belong to two eparchies, the Lungro, for the Arbëreshë of Continental Italy, the Piana degli Albanesi, for the Arbëreshë of Sicily, and the Monastery of Grottaferrata, whose Basilian monks come largely from the Albanian settlements of Italy. The church is the most important organization for maintaining the characteristic religious, ethnic, linguistic and traditional identity of the Arbëreshë community.
Official source
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