Timeline of Eastern Orthodoxy in Greece (1821–1924)

This is a timeline of the presence of Eastern Orthodoxy in Greece from 1821 to 1924. The history of Greece traditionally encompasses the study of the Greek people, the areas they ruled historically, as well as the territory now composing the modern state of Greece.

Greek War of Independence (1821–1829)

One of the pious views of modern Greece concerns the role of the Orthodox Church in the establishment of the modern Greek nation-state. According to this view, the Church, in the role of a latter-day Noah's Ark, saved the Greek nation in the centuries of the Turkish and Western "deluge" following the fall of the eastern Roman empire in 1453. The Orthodox Church, by protecting the true faith against both Muslim and Latin temporal princes in the centuries of foreign rule, preserved Greek identity and kept the Greek nation from being assimilated by the nations of its foreign rulers. According to the same view, the Orthodox Church welcomed the Greek War of Independence in 1821 and blessed the arms of the Greek insurgents. Indeed, many Orthodox prelates assumed a leading role in insurgent Greece and played an important part not only in ecclesiastical but also in political and military matters. Following Independence, a Latin prince and his Western advisers severed the links that had united the Church of Greece with the Ecumenical Patriarchate and placed the Church under the authority of his temporal power.

Bp. Germanos of Old Patras blessing the Greek banner at Agia Lavra, 25 March 1821. Theodoros Vryzakis (oil painting, 1851).
  • 1821 Greek War of Independence begins as Metr. Germanos of Patras declares Greek independence on Day of Annunciation (25 March), also Kyrio-Pascha, at the Monastery of Agia Lavra, Peloponnese; martyrdom of Patr. Gregory V of Constantinople, Abp. Kyprianos of Cyprus, and Abp. Gerasimos (Pardalis) of Crete in retaliation; former Ecumenical Patriarch Cyril VI of Constantinople (1813–18) is hanged at the gate of Adrianople's cathedral; Metropolitans Gregorios of Derkon, Dorotheos of Adrianople, Ioannikios of Tyrnavos, and Joseph of Thessaloniki are decapitated on the Sultan's orders in Constantinople; Metropolitans Chrysanthos of Paphos, Meletios of Kition and Lavrentios of Kyrenia are executed in Nicosia, Cyprus; Turkish Cypriot mobs hang most of the Greek Cypriots in Larnaca and other towns, among them an archbishop, five bishops, thirty six ecclesiastics; storming of Tripolitza, marking an early victory in the Greek War of Independence; liberation fighters started calling themselves "Hellenes" (for continuity with their ancient Hellenic heritage), rather than using the generic "Romioi" (Ρωμιοί, which referred to both their Roman citizenship and religious affiliation to Orthodox Christendom); death of Nikephoros of Chios.
Flag of Greece (1822–1978). In January 1822, the First National Assembly at Epidaurus adopted this design to replace the multitude of local revolutionary flags then in use.
  • 1825 Archimandrite Gregorios Dikaios ("Papaflessas") is killed during the Battle of Maniaki on 20 June, fighting against the forces of Ibrahim Pasha at Maniaki, Messenia.
  • 1826 The Exodus of Messolonghi (Greek: Έξοδος του Μεσολογγίου) occurred from 10–11 April 1826 (Lazarus Saturday - Palm Sunday), under the leadership of Notis Botsaris, Kitsos Tzavelas and Dimitrios Makris, against the Ottoman forces of Reşid Mehmed Pasha and the Egyptian forces led by Ibrāhīm Pasha, resulting in several thousand Greek deaths and thousands of women and children being enslaved, ultimately increasing the Philhellenist movement in Europe and having a significant influence on the eventual decision of Britain, France and Russia to intervene militarily in the Battle of Navarino (1827) and secure Greece's independence.
  • 1827 Russia, Britain and France in London recognize autonomy of Greece, and agree to force truce on Ottoman Sultan; Ioannis Kapodistrias is elected provisional president of Greece (Governor of Greece).
  • 1828 In May Patriarch Agathangelos I dispatched a mission of four very senior prelates from the patriarchal synod to Greece bringing letters addressed to 'the clergy and notables of the Peloponnese and the Aegean Islands', whereby they were asked to resubmit to the Sublime Porte; Greek church opened in London (2nd time).
  • 1829 Treaty of Adrianople ends Greek War of Independence, culminating in the creation of the modern Greek state, after over 600 years of foreign occupation (around 250 years of Frankish occupation and 375 years of Ottoman Turkish occupation).

First Hellenic Republic (1829–1832)

Kingdom of Greece (1833–1924)

Portrait of Theoklitos Farmakidis, Greek Orthodox priest who was a liberal theologian and spokesman for the ideas of A. Korais and the Greek Enlightenment.
The monk Christophoros Panayiotopoulos (Papoulakos), c. 1770–1861, popular missionary and defender of Orthodoxy.
  • 1838 Council of Constantinople held, attended by Patriarchs Gregory VI of Constantinople and Athanasius V of Jerusalem, whose main theme was the Unia, and the extermination of Latin dogmas and usages; death of New Martyr George of Ioannina.
  • 1839 Theophilos Kairis of Andros condemned and imprisoned for teaching a form of Deism.
  • 1842 Construction of the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens is begun on Christmas Day, 1842 with the laying of the cornerstone by King Otto and Queen Amalia, dedicated 20 years later on 21 May 1862 in honor of the Annunciation of the Virgin.
  • 1844 Theological School of Halki founded; Manthos and Georgios Rizaris, benefactors and members of the Filiki Eteria organization, funded the building of the Rizareios Ecclesiastical School in Athens, which continues to function as a religious and educational institution today, based in Halandri, Athens; Prime Minister Ioannis Kolettis first coined the expression the "Great Idea" (Megali Idea), envisaging the restoration of the Christian Orthodox Byzantine Empire with its capital once again established at Constantinople, becoming the core of Greek foreign policy until the early 20th century; King Otho I, a Roman Catholic in an Eastern Orthodox country, was forced to grant the Constitution of 1844 (after the rebellion of 3 September 1843), specifying that his eventual successor be Orthodox.
  • 1845 Death of priest and scholar Neophytos Doukas, author of a large number of books and translations of ancient Greek works, and one of the most important personalities of the Greek Enlightenment during the Ottoman occupation of Greece.
  • 1847 At nearly eighty years of age, the monk Christophoros Panayiotopoulos (Papoulakos) c. 1770–1861, undertook a popular preaching mission in the villages of Achaea to revitalize the spiritual conditions of the people which were slowly becoming westernized with an Enlightenment ideology, affecting the sociological make up of the newborn Greek state within a decade; ultimately Papoulakos helped bring the Greek people back to their roots in Orthodoxy and the Christian ideal, for which he suffered much persecution from both the Church and State and died in exile, and is today renowned as a great ascetic and hero of modern Greece.
  • 1848 Encyclical of the Eastern Patriarchs sent by the primates and synods of the four ancient patriarchates of the Orthodox Church, condemning the Filioque as heresy, declaring the Roman Catholic Church to be heretical, schismatic, and in apostasy, repudiating Ultramontanism (papal supremacy) and referring to the Photian Council of 879-880 as the "Eighth Ecumenical Council."

Autocephalous Era (from 1850)

The expansion of Greece from 1832 to 1947, showing territories awarded to Greece in 1919 but lost in 1923.
Konstantinos Oikonomos (1780-1857), Greek presbyter, oikonomos, scholar and traditionalist.
  • 1852 By Law 201 (Grk.: ΣΑ') of 1852, the Greek government, ignoring reference to the Patriarchal Tome of 1850, revised certain articles of the Pharmakidis-Maurer Church constitution (of 1833), however without changing the Church's subjection to the state; liberal Greek theologian Theoklitos Pharmakidis, a proponent of the ideas of Adamantios Korais and the Greek Enlightenment, published The Synodal Tomos or Concerning Truth, a strong attack on the conditions found in the Tomos of Autocephaly of 1850, arguing that there was nothing uncanonical about the establishment set up in 1833, and stating that: "the Eastern Church is everywhere joined to the state, never being separated from it, never divided from the sovereigns since Byzantine times, and always subordinate to them."
  • 1853 At the start of the Crimean War (1853-1856), fought ostensibly over which church would be recognized as the "sovereign authority" of the Christian faith in the Holy Land and Russia's claim of protection over the Greek Christians in the Turkish Empire, the French Roman Catholic Abp. of Paris Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour stated that this was a holy war against the Orthodox.
  • 1854-1859 Piraeus was occupied by the Anglo-French fleet to ensure Greek neutrality during the Crimean War (1853–56) and to forestall Greek expansionist intentions.
  • 1855 The Holy Cross School of Jerusalem (Theological School of the Patriarchal Throne of Jerusalem) is founded under Patriarch Cyril II of Jerusalem, located at the Monastery of the Holy Cross, functioning for about fifty years with some interruptions (1855-1909).
  • 1856 Death of Neophytos Vamvas, Greek cleric and educator who had translated the Bible into Modern Greek.
  • 1857 Death of Konstantinos Oikonomos, by common consensus the most important 19th-century Greek churchman and theologian, being the only person to criticize the Bavarian regime on an intellectual level, and an implacable opponent of Pharmakidis' theological ideals, symbolizing Greece's ecclesiastical consciousness at that time; in March 1857, when Konstantinos III was still enthroned as the Greek Metropolitan of Trebizond, 150 Crypto-Christian village leaders of Kromni, Santa, Koasi and other regions went to the Panagia Theoskepastos Monastery in Trebizond, and inside the church took an oath to reveal their Christianity and remain faithful in the face of exile or death, thus openly declaring their Orthodox Christian faith.
  • 1857–66 J.P. Migne produces the Patrologia Graeca in 162 volumes, including both the Eastern Fathers and those Western authors who wrote before Ecclesiastical Latin became predominant in the Western Church in the 3rd century.
  • 1860 The Ottoman Government tries to intervene in Athonite affairs with a constitution drawn up by Hushni Pasha, the Governor of Thessaloniki.
  • 1863 George I enthroned as King of Greece, whose long reign (1863–1913) was the formative period for the development of Greece as a modern European state.
  • 1864 Holy Trinity Church (New Orleans, LA) becomes the first Orthodox parish to be established on American soil, by Greeks; the Ionian Islands (Eptanisa) are united with Greece, and were transferred in 1866 to the jurisdiction of the Greek Church from Constantinople.
Apostolos Makrakis (1831–1905). Greek lay theologian, preacher, ethicist, philosopher and writer, and a leader of the awakening movement in post-revolutionary Greece.
  • 1865-94 Renowned Russian Byzantologist Archimandrite Antonin (Kapustin) heads the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in the Holy Land, under whose tenure the Mission significantly expanded its presence in Palestine, acquiring multiple properties in an effort to preserve Orthodox Christian holy places and care for the needs of the many pilgrims flocking to the region.
  • 1866 Beginning of the Great Cretan Revolution (1866–1869), officially proclaimed on 21 August 1866; the holocaust of Arkadi Monastery in Crete; charismatic Greek Orthodox lay theologian, preacher, ethicist and writer Apostolos Makrakis came to Athens, where for six months he delivered twenty speeches in Concord Square on the subject of 'The Work of the Fathers of 1821 and How it Can Best and Quickest Be Brought to a Conclusion' , which were published in the newspaper Justice, and republished in book form in 1886.
  • 1871 Body of Patr. Gregory V returned to Athens and entombed in cathedral.
  • 1872 Council of Constantinople (Pan-Orthodox Synod) is convened and presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Anthimus VI, and attended by Patriarchs Sophronius IV of Alexandria and Procopius II of Jerusalem and several bishops, condemning phyletism (ethnocentric belief that Orthodox Christians in a given place and time should be divided into separate exarchates, based on ethnicity), and condemning the Bulgarian Exarchate; the decisions of this council are later accepted by the other local Orthodox Churches.
  • 1873 Philotheos Bryennios discovers the Didache in manuscript with copies of several early Church documents.
  • 1874 Death of Venerable Joseph Gerontogiannis, ascetic of Crete.
  • 1875 Giovanni Marango (Grk: Ιωάννης Μαραγκός) is installed as a Roman Catholic Archbishop in Athens, being the first Roman hierarch in Athens since 1458, when Niccolò Protimo of Euboea (the last Latin titular Archbishop of Athens) departed; a Patriarchal and Synodal Decision was sent to all Bishops everywhere, whereby the manner of reception of Latin converts was left to the judgement of the local Bishops.
  • 1877 Death of Arsenios of Paros.
  • 1878 Council of Athens, convened and presided over by Metr. Procopius I of Athens, condemned the Makrakists, obtaining closure of Apostolos Makrakis' "School of the Logos" on the pretext that it taught doctrines opposed to the tenets of the Church, and addressed an encyclical to the whole body of Christians in Greece that was read in the churches, charging Makrakis with attempting to introduce innovations; Cyprus is ceded to Britain by Ottoman Empire at the Congress of Berlin.
Nicholaos Gysis, "The Secret school", Oil painting, 1885/86.
  • 1882 Thessaly and part of Epirus added to the Church of Greece, after the Ottomans cede Thessali and Arta regions to Greece (1881).
  • 1885 Prominent Greek painter Nicholaos Gysis paints the famous "Secret school" ("κρυφό σχολειό"), referring to the underground schools provided by the Greek Orthodox Church in monasteries and churches during the time of Ottoman rule in Greece (15th–19th centuries) for keeping alive Orthodox Christian doctrines and Greek language and literacy.
  • 1888 Typikon of the Great Church of Christ is published with revised church services, prepared by Protopsaltis George Violakis, issued with the approval and blessing of the Ecumenical Patriarch, while the Sabaite (monastic) Typikon continued to be used in the Church of Russia; Council of Constantinople, convened and presided over by Patriarch Dionysius V, and attended by several bishops, permits the reception of Western converts to Orthodoxy by the rite of Chrismation as an act of economia (dispensation) in extreme circumstances; death of Venerable Saint Panagis of Lixouri (Cephalonia).
  • 1889 German Protestant historian Ferdinand Gregorovius writes "History of Athens in the Middle Ages. From Justinian to the Turkish Conquest." (Stuttgart, 1889).
  • 1891 Death of Greek historian and Byzantinist Constantine Paparrigopoulos, considered the founder of modern Greek historiography, who analysed Greek history from the ancient era to the present age as a continuous history in his multi-volume History of the Hellenic Nation (6 vols, 1860-1877), also known for his original research in Byzantine history.
  • 1894 On 8 March, Nektarios of Pentapolis was appointed Dean of the Rizarios Ecclesiastical School, remaining as Dean until 1908, becoming a spiritual guide to many; Apostolos Makrakis made his tenth and last Gospel tour, visiting Thebes, St. Theodore, Levadeia, Atalante, Chalkis, Kyme, Aliverion, Kariston, Gaurion on the islands of Andros, Syros, and his birthplace Siphnos.
  • 1895 Council of Constantinople, convened and presided over by Patriarch Anthimus VII, and attended by 13 bishops, condemns all the Franco-Latin heresies, including the new false dogma of the so-called Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary by St. Anne, and the blasphemous teaching that the pope is supposedly infallible and undeposable.
  • 1897 Greco-Turkish War (1897).
  • 1899 Council of Constantinople, convened and presided over by Ecumenical Patriarch Constantine V, and attended by several bishops, deposes the newly elected Patriarch Meletius II (Doumani) of Antioch, on the grounds of phyletism, due to the fact that the latter had been elected by an anti-Greek, pro-Arab party within the Antiochene Patriarchate, a similar party to that which caused the Melkite schism of 1724 and subsequent union with the Latins.
Map of the Greek Orthodox Metropolises in Asia Minor (Anatolia) c. 1880.
  • 19th century Statistical figures for the population of Anatolia (Asia Minor) in the 19th century show that Christians constituted a minority of considerable importance: of the 12,254,459 total inhabitants, 9,676,714 (78.96%) were Muslim, and 2,350,272 (19.2%) were Christian, of which the Greek Orthodox element amounted to 1,016,722 or 8.3%.
  • 1901 Evangelika riots in Athens Greece in November, over translations of the New Testament into Demotic (Modern) Greek, resulting in the fall of both the government and Metropolitan of Athens, and withdrawal of publications from circulation.
  • 1902 Theocletus I (Minopoulos) becomes Metropolitan of Athens (1902-1917); Church of Greece takes responsibility for Greek Orthodox parishes in Australasia from the Church of Jerusalem.
  • 1904 Ecumenical Patriarchate publishes the Patriarchal Text, based on about twenty Byzantine manuscripts, the standard text of the Greek-speaking Orthodox churches today.
Monastery of Agios Nectarios, built c. 1904–1910 by the Bishop of Pentapoleos Nektarios; still under construction today, it is one of the largest churches in Greece.
  • 1904–1910 Nektarios of Pentapolis began building the Convent of the Holy Trinity on the island of Aegina, while yet Dean of the Rizarios Hieratical School (until 1908).
  • 1905 Death of Apostolos Makrakis; death of Elder Pachomios of Chios, founder of the Skete of the Holy Fathers in Chios (Cloister of Aghion Pateron), as well as the spiritual guide of St. Nektarios of Pentapolis (†1920) and St. Anthimos (Vagianos) of Chios (†1960), and an opponent of syncretistic ecumenism.
Ethnomartyr Metr. Photios Kalpidis of Korytsa and Premeti (1902–1906).
Hieromartyr Aimilianos Lazaridis, Metropolitan of Grevena (†1911).
  • 1911 Assassination of Aimilianos Lazaridis (el), Metropolitan of Grevena.
  • 1912 Kyriopascha occurs; Balkan Wars (1912-1913); Council of Constantinople, convened and presided over by Patriarch Joachim III, and attended by several bishops, condemns the Onomatodoxi (name-worshippers), who believed that the name of God is God Himself; ratification of the new General Regulations governing Mount Athos, which was drawn up by Patriarch Joachim III and the Athonite monks; in November, the Holy Mountain was liberated by the Greek fleet.
  • 1913 The Athonite monks pass a resolution declaring the administrative autonomy of the Monastic State, within the Greek State; after Cretan deputies unilaterally declared union with Greece in 1908, Crete is finally ceded to Greece by the Treaty of London (1913), which ended the First Balkan War; Epirus, Macedonia and the eastern Aegean Islands are liberated as per the Treaty of Bucharest (1913), coming under the administration of the Greek Church, but remaining under the nominal authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople.
  • 1914–18 World War I.
  • 1914 According to the Corfu Protocol of 17 May 1914, Northern Epirus is granted autonomy within Albania; Byzantine & Christian Museum is founded in Athens, becoming one of the most important museums in the world in Byzantine Art.
Metropolitan Theocletus I (Minopoulos) (1902-1917, 1920-1922).
  • 1914-23 Greek genocide eliminates the Greek Orthodox population of Anatolia, with approximately 750,000 Greeks of Asia Minor massacred and another 750,000 exiled.
  • 1916 In a long letter to the President of the Council dated 10/23 November 1916, liberal politician Andreas Michalakopoulos (one of Eleftherios Venizelos' most important colleagues), expounded the necessity of a profound reform of the Greek Church, the objective of which was its complete Westernization; during the National Schism that had divided Greece, Archbishop Theokletos I of Athens (1848–1931) anathematized and excommunicated Eleftherios Venizelos in one of the most memorable events of Greek history, on 12 December 1916.
  • 1917 Metr. Theocletus I is deposed, as the hierarchy of the Greek Church changed in accordance with political control of the country; in the Pafra region of Western Pontus, a large force of the Turkish army sent by Refet Bele Pasha and commanded by Mehmet Ali besieged the monastery of the Theotokos from 17–21 April 1917, killing approximately 650 women and children, and 60 armed Pontian insurgents.
  • 1918 Meletius III (Metaxakis) becomes Metropolitan of Athens (1918-1920); Allied Occupation of Constantinople (1918-1923); the "St. Sophia Redemption Committee" is formed in Britain after the Armistice, whose members included two future Foreign Secretaries and many prominent public figures, seeking to restore Hagia Sophia into an Orthodox Church (1918–1922); Roman Catholic opposition to the St Sophia Redemption Committee included Msgr. Manuel Bidwell (Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Westminster) who was on the initial committee, Roman Catholic British MP Sir Stuart Coats also on the committee, Cardinal Pietro Gasparri the Papal Secretary of State, and the Vatican who wished to block St. Sophia becoming a Greek Orthodox Church (according to the Grand Vizier of Constantinople who had an offer of Papal support).
Saint Nektarios of Aegina, Metropolitan of Pentapolis and Wonderworker of Aegina (†1920).


See also

History

Church Fathers


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