page_title: Griko people
section_title: Later migrations
hierarchical_section_title: Griko people / History / Later migrations
caption_attribution_description: English: Bust of Antonio de Ferraris (c.1444 - 1517), bare-headed, bearded, wearing coat with falling collar, buttoned down the front, inscription, “ANTONIVS GALATEVS” Beaded border. 1 print&#160;: engraving Français&#160;: Médaillon représentant fr:Antonio de Ferrariis, dit le Galateo, médecin et humaniste italien connu aussi sous son nom latin d'Antonius Galateus
context_page_description: The Griko people, also known as Grecanici in Calabria, are an ethnic Greek community of Southern Italy. They are found principally in regions of Calabria and Apulia. The Griko are believed to be remnants of the once large Ancient and Medieval Greek communities of southern Italy, although there is dispute among scholars as to whether the Griko community is directly descended from Ancient Greeks or from more recent medieval migrations during the Byzantine domination. Greek people have been living in Southern Italy for millennia, initially arriving in Southern Italy in numerous waves of migrations, from the ancient Greek colonisation of Southern Italy and Sicily in the 8th century BC through to the Byzantine Greek migrations of the 15th century caused by the Ottoman conquest. In the Middle Ages, Greek regional communities were reduced to isolated enclaves. Although most Greek inhabitants of Southern Italy have become entirely Italianized over the centuries, the Griko community has been able to preserve their original Greek identity, heritage, language and distinct culture, although exposure to mass media has progressively eroded their culture and language.
context_section_description: During the Early Middle Ages, following the disastrous Gothic War, new waves of Greeks came to Magna Graecia from Greece and Asia Minor, as Southern Italy remained loosely governed by the Byzantine Empire. The iconoclast emperor Leo III appropriated lands in southern Italy that had been granted to the Papacy, and the Eastern Emperor loosely governed the area until the advent of the Lombards; then, in the form of the Catapanate of Italy, they were superseded by the Normans. Moreover, the Byzantines would have found in Southern Italy people of common cultural roots, the Greek-speaking eredi ellenofoni of Magna Graecia. The Greek language never died out entirely in southern Italy, although the area in which it was spoken was significantly reduced by the progression of Latin. Records of Magna Graecia being predominantly Greek-speaking, date as late as the eleventh century  (the end of Byzantine domination in Southern Italy).
  
  Around the end of the Middle Ages, large parts of Calabria, Lucania, Apulia, and Sicily continued to speak Greek as their mother tongue. During the 13th century a French chronicler passing through the whole of Calabria stated that “the peasants of Calabria spoke nothing but Greek”. In 1368 the Italian scholar Petrarch recommended a stay in Calabria to a student who needed to improve his knowledge of Greek. The Griko people were the dominant population element of some regions of Calabria and the Salento until the 16th century. 
   During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries a slow process of Catholicization and Latinization of the Greek populations of southern Italy and Sicily would reduce the Greek language and culture further. Antonio de Ferraris, a Greek born in Galatone in 1444, observed how the inhabitants of Kallipoli (Gallipoli in Apulia) as still conversing in their original Greek mother tongue, he indicated that the Greek classical tradition had remained alive in this region of Italy and that the population is probably of Lacedaemonian (Spartan) stock. The Greek of Southern Italy, although greatly reduced, remained active in isolated enclaves in Calabria and Puglia. Even after the Middle Ages there were sporadic migrations from mainland Greece. Thus, considerable numbers of refugees entered the region in the 16th and 17th centuries. This happened in reaction to the conquest of the Peloponnese by the Ottomans.
  During the 20th century the use of the Griko language was considered, even by many of the Griko themselves, as a symbol of backwardness and an obstacle to their progress, parents would discourage their children from speaking the dialect and students who were caught talking Griko in class were chastised. For many years the Griko of Calabria and Apulia have been forgotten. Even in Greece, Greeks were unaware of their existence.
caption: Antonio de Ferrariis (c. 1444–1517) a Greek native to Apulia.
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