Receiving Byzantium in Early Modern Greece (1820s – 1840s)

HÉRITAGES DE BYZANCE EN EUROPE DU SUD-EST

À L’ÉPOQUE MODERNE ET CONTEMPORAINE

ÉCOLE FRANÇAISE D’ATHÈNES

MONDES MÉDITERRANÉENS ET BALKANIQUES 4

Directeur des publications : Dominique Mulliez, puis Alexandre FarnouxResponsable des publications : Catherine Aubert, puis Géraldine Hue

ISBN 978-2-86958-253-8

Reproduction et traduction, même partielles, interdites sans l’autorisation de l’éditeur pour tous pays, y compris les États-Unis.

Dépositaire : De Boccard Édition-Diffusion – 11, rue de Médicis – 75006 Paris – www.deboccard.com

© École française d’Athènes, 2013 – 6, rue Didotou – 10680 Athènes – www.efa.gr

Ouvrage publié avec le soutien de l’Agence universitaire de la Francophonie

et du Laboratoire Orient et Méditerranée, unité mixte de recherche du CNRS.

Coordination éditoriale : Sophie DuthionConception artistique : EFA, Guillaume FuchsRéalisation : Fabien TessierPhotogravure, impression et reliure : n.v. Peeters s.a.

Conception couverture : EFA, Guillaume Fuchs

HÉRITAGES DE BYZANCE EN EUROPE DU SUD-EST

À L’ÉPOQUE MODERNE ET CONTEMPORAINE

Ouvrage édité par Olivier DELOUIS, Anne COUDERC et Petre GURAN

Athènes 2013

Sommaire

Olivier Delouis, Anne Couderc et Petre Guran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11-14Introduction

Hélène Ahrweiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15-21Conférence inaugurale – La présence de Byzance

Jack Fairey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23-44

Failed Nations and Usable Pasts: Byzantium as Transcendence in the Political Writings of Iakovos Pitzipios Bey

Dan Ioan Mureșan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45-61

Revisiter la Grande Église : Gédéon, Iorga et Runciman sur le rôle du patriarcat œcuménique à l’époque ottomane

Petre Guran . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63-78God Explains to Patriarch Athanasios the Fall of Constantinople: I. S. Peresvetov and the Impasse of Political Theology

Vera Tchentsova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79-97

Héritage de Constantinople ou héritage de Trébizonde ? Quelques cas de translation d’objets sacrés à Moscou au xviie s.

Smilja Marjanović-Dušanić . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99-116Se souvenir de Byzance Les reliques au service de la mémoire en Serbie (xve-xixe s.)

Andrei Pippidi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117-129

Byzance des Phanariotes

Andrei Timotin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131-139Prophéties byzantines et modernité roumaine (xviie-xixe s.)

Radu G. Păun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141-160

Byzance d’empereur et Byzance d’Église Sur le couronnement des princes « phanariotes » à Constantinople

Ioannis Kyriakantonakis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161-178

Between Dispute and Erudition Conflicting Readings of Byzantine History in Early Modern Greek Historical Literature

Judith Soria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179-194Les peintres du xviiie s. et la peinture paléologue :David Selenica et Denys de Fourna

Effie F. Athanassopoulos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195-218Byzantine Monuments and Architectural “Cleansing” in Nineteenth-Century Athens

Marios Hatzopoulos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219-229Receiving Byzantium in Early Modern Greece (1820s-1840s)

Despina Christodoulou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231-247Making Byzantium a Greek Presence: Paparrigopoulos and Koumanoudes Review the Latest History Books

Ioannis Koubourlis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249-261

Augustin Thierry et l’« hellénisation » de l’Empire byzantin jusqu’à 1853 :les dettes des historiographes de la Grèce médiévale et moderne à l’école libérale française

Nicolae-Şerban Tanaşoca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263-283Byzance dans la conscience historique des Roumains

Gabriel Leanca . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285-300« Byzance » et la modernité roumaine : de la négation à la patrimonialisation sous l’influence française

Nadia Danova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301-318L’image de Byzance dans l’historiographie et dans les lettres bulgares du xviiie au xxe s.

Dessislava Lilova . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319-327L’héritage partagé ? Byzance, Fallmerayer et la formation de l’historiographie bulgare au xixe s.

Dimitrios Stamatopoulos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329-348

From the Vyzantism of K. Leont’ev to the Vyzantinism of I. I. Sokolov:The Byzantine Orthodox East as a Motif of Russian Orientalism

George P. Majeska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349-358

Byzantine Culture in Russia: Doesn’t It Lose Something in Translation?

Dimitrios Antoniou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359-370

Le choix d’une résurrection partielle : l’introduction du droit civil byzantin dans le nouvel État hellénique au xixe s.

Adriana Şotropa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 371-382

L’héritage byzantin dans la pensée artistique et l’art roumains au tournant du xxe s.

Anne Couderc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383-402

Byzance à la Conférence de la Paix (1919)Vénizélos, les revendications de la Grèce et l’idée d’Empire

Tonia Kioussopoulou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403-411La délégation grecque au IIe Congrès international des études byzantines (Belgrade, 1927)

Maria Kambouri-Vamvoukou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413-430L’héritage byzantin dans l’architecture de l’entre-deux-guerres en Grèce

Olivier Delouis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 431-480Théodore Stoudite, figure de l’Union des Églises ? Autour de la renaissance d’un monachisme stoudite en Galicie (Ukraine) au xxe s.

Isabelle Dépret . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481-493L’Église orthodoxe de Grèce et la condamnation de l’iconoclasme en 1987-1988 : fidélité à la tradition byzantine, relectures, mobilisation

Katerina Seraïdari . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495-506

Byzance dans le discours d’une minorité religieuse : les catholiques de Tinos et Syros

Liste des contributeurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 507-510

Résumés . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511-522

11

Introduction

Olivier Delouis, Anne Couderc et Petre Guran

Ce livre envisage la présence continuée de Byzance en Europe du Sud-Est à l’époque moderne

et contemporaine. Le sujet, apparemment paradoxal – du moins si l’on considère la chute de

Constantinople en 1453 comme un terme indépassable –, peut se justifier sans peine. L’Empire

byzantin avait duré plus de mille ans : sa disparition, au bénéfice de l’Empire ottoman, n’effaça

pas son souvenir pas plus qu’elle ne disqualifia son héritage auprès des peuples jadis sujets ou

voisins du basileus byzantin. L’Europe, d’autre part, est le meilleur terrain d’une telle enquête :

la conquête des Turcs y fut tardive – à partir du xive s. – et moins massive démographiquement

qu’en Anatolie, où ceux-ci s’installèrent dès le xie s. Pour autant, ces conditions a priori favorables

ne doivent pas conduire à rechercher des vestiges comme fossilisés : entre deux approches

possibles qui privilégieraient d’une part les structures d’organisation et de l’autre les pratiques

sociales, c’est bien le passé en marche, celui qui s’altère, se transforme, se réinvente, qui forme

le principal objet de notre investigation. En somme, tout autant les distorsions que les fidélités

à la mémoire de Byzance.

« L’héritage de Byzance », a-t-on écrit avec une pointe d’humour, « est un sujet d’intérêt continuel

qui a intrigué à la fois les chercheurs, les politiciens et les nationalistes 1 ». Mais ce volume se destine

plus largement à ceux qu’intéresse l’histoire de l’Europe orientale, et même l’histoire de l’Europe

tout entière. Si Byzance ne saurait rendre compte des évolutions géopolitiques de la région de

1453 à nos jours, elle en demeure comme une couche géologique dont les affleurements réguliers

ne doivent pas surprendre. Ainsi, il y a près de vingt ans, les changements de régimes causés par

la chute du communisme firent resurgir une division autre que politique entre l’Europe d’Orient

et d’Occident. Byzance, qu’il ne faut cesser d’interroger, peut offrir des réponses à ces altérités

européennes, en étant elle-même un héritage constitutif de l’Europe 2. Car Byzance, selon le mot

de Gilbert Dagron, est « une autre manière d’être et d’avoir été européen 3 ».

1. Vryonis Speros Jr., « Preface », dans Clucas Lowell (éd.), The Byzantine Legacy in Eastern Europe, Boulder-New York,

1988, p. v.

2. Lemerle Paul, « Présence de Byzance », Journal des Savants, 1990, p. 247-268, ici p. 268.

3. Dagron Gilbert, « Oublier Byzance. Éclipses et retours de Byzance dans la conscience européenne »,

82 (2007), p. 135-158, ici p. 158.


12

La recherche sur l’héritage byzantin a été durablement marquée par l’ouvrage de l’historien

roumain Nicolae Iorga, Byzance après Byzance, dont le titre a connu une popularité remarquable

au-delà même du monde académique. C’est dans les institutions – le patriarcat œcuménique et

les Principautés roumaines en l’occurrence – que Iorga décelait la continuité de l’Empire

disparu. Selon lui, Byzance – non seulement les dehors mais aussi l’essence – fut incarnée

par les élites roumaines jusqu’au début du xixe s. C’est alors que « l’immuable pérennité byzantine »,

bouleversée par l’arrivée des idées des Lumières, chavira face aux nationalismes. La guerre

d’indépendance grecque, commencée en 1821 et appuyée par les philhellènes d’Occident, aurait

mit un terme à cette Byzance « sans État » qui avait survécu « presque quatre siècles après avoir

vécu mille ans 4 ». Le xviiie s. fut donc désigné comme le point de basculement à partir duquel

l’idée impériale et multi-ethnique de Byzance se serait effacée au profit du concept de nation.

La démonstration, depuis, a été contestée. S’il fut affecté par l’opposition entre conservatisme

et libéralisme puis par le surgissement des frontières nationales, l’horizon politique de Byzance

se maintint bel et bien après 1821. D’autres héritiers, jeunes et moins jeunes, vinrent régulièrement

l’investir : les nations – russe, grecque, serbe, bulgare, roumaine – examinèrent chacune, aux xixe

et xxe s., leur dette envers Byzance et dégagèrent les éléments susceptibles de servir leurs intérêts

immédiats. Ainsi, jusqu’au début du xxe s., les discours accompagnant les crises successives de la

région – des guerres balkaniques aux échanges de populations de 1923 – ont puisé régulièrement

dans l’histoire byzantine leurs précédents et justifications. De sorte qu’à l’issue des traités de paix

où les frontières d’Europe centrale furent redéfinies, l’organisation d’un premier Congrès des

études byzantines à Bucarest en 1924 parut significative. « Plus que jamais, les États du Sud-Est

de l’Europe se sentent les héritiers de toutes les traditions de Byzance », relevèrent les observa-

teurs 5. Ce congrès fut compris comme une tentative de dépolitiser Byzance, de l’internationaliser,

de transformer un objet appréhendé comme concept politique au service de nations ambitieuses

en objet culturel, étudié par une communauté scientifique. Terme provisoire sans doute : il

faudra probablement, le moment venu, étudier les résurgences plus récentes qui ont sous-tendu

les conflits dans les Balkans à la fin du xxe s.

Par ailleurs, la civilisation byzantine a également survécu dans des institutions non pas

politiques mais informelles et quotidiennes. Dans la lignée des folkloristes du xixe s., Phaidon

Koukoulès ou Speros Vryonis ont suivi cette voie d’étude, laquelle est peut-être la plus difficile 6,

4. Iorga Nicolae, Byzance après Byzance. Continuation de l’ Histoire de la vie byzantine, Bucarest, 1935, p. 6, 12-13.

L’ouvrage a connu de nombreuses rééditions et traductions.

5. Grégoire Henri, Graindor Paul, Byzantion 1 (1924), p. v.

6. Koukoulès Phaidôn, , Athènes, 1948-1955, 6 tomes ; Vryonis Speros, « The

Byzantine Legacy and Ottoman Forms », Dumbarton Oaks Papers 23 (1969-1970), p. 251-308 ; id., « The Byzantine

Legacy in Folk Life and Tradition in the Balkans », dans Clucas Lowell (n. 1), p. 107-145 ; id., « The Byzantine

Legacy in the Formal Culture of the Balkan Peoples », dans Yiannias John J. (éd.), The Byzantine Tradition after

the Fall of Constantinople, Charlottesville-Londres, 1991, p. 17-44.

Introduction

13

qui exige de rapprocher l’histoire et l’anthropologie sociale et de maîtriser toutes ou la plupart

des langues de la région, turc y compris. Ces disciplines dialoguent encore trop peu : sans remédier

à ce constat, le présent livre n’aborde ainsi la culture populaire que de façon secondaire, se consacrant

davantage à la culture savante.

La religion joue enfin un rôle majeur dans l’héritage de Byzance puisqu’elle conserve par

nature les traditions du passé. On se gardera pourtant de réduire le patrimoine de Byzance à

l’orthodoxie. Les Églises, le fait est connu, se nationalisèrent au xixe s. en s’émancipant du

patriarcat de Constantinople, tandis qu’au même moment les nations se sacralisaient pour mieux

réinventer leur passé. La religion joua effectivement un rôle important dans ces ethnogenèses

européennes, mais elle s’incarna dans chacune des nouvelles nations, revêtue d’habits neufs. Les

histoires religieuses locales ne s’effacent donc pas derrière l’unité de l’orthodoxie ; elles révèlent

au contraire des tensions dans l’appréhension de l’héritage de Byzance.

La question globale d’une unité régionale fondée sur des liens politiques, culturels et religieux

façonnés par Byzance, a préoccupé les historiens après Iorga, ainsi que l’attestent certains titres tels :

l’Héritage byzantin de l’Europe orientale 7, le Commonwealth orthodoxe 8, l’Hésychasme politique 9,

la Slavia orthodoxa 10, le Crypto-empire chrétien 11, ou sous la plume de Dionysios Zakythinos, cette

ingénieuse formule de civilisations byzantines nationales 12. Mais les diverses réponses à la question

de l’héritage de Byzance ont rarement été confrontées, et tel est le propos du présent recueil dont

le parti pris est précisément celui de la juxtaposition et de la comparaison. À notre connaissance,

seuls deux ouvrages collectifs ont procédé ainsi par le passé, issus de colloques tenus avant 1989

et concernant essentiellement la Russie et la Grèce 13. En ajoutant, au gré des articles, l’Empire

ottoman, la Bulgarie, la Roumanie, la Serbie, l’Ukraine, nous ne couvrons certes pas, malgré

nos tentatives, tout l’espace géographique voulu, mais l’élargissement nous semble significatif.

Les études qui suivent ont été mêlées de façon souple, en respectant toutefois une forme de

classement, de façon à rendre possibles les rapprochements : du plus général au particulier, puis

par thèmes et à l’intérieur de ces thèmes par pays, et pour finir de manière chronologique.

7. Obolensky Dimitri, The Byzantine Inheritance of Eastern Europe, Londres, 1982 ; voir aussi n. 8.

8. Par exemple : Kitromilides Paschalis M., « Imagined Communities and the Origins of the National Question

in the Balkans », European History Quarterly 19 (1989), p. 149-194 ; l’expression fait elle-même référence à

l’ouvrage de Obolensky Dimitri, The Byzantine Commonwealth. Eastern Europe, 500-1453, New York, 1974.

9. Prochorov Gelian M., « L’hésychasme et la pensée sociale en Europe orientale au xive s. », Contacts 31 N. S.

(1979), p. 25-63.

10. Dujčev Ivan, Slavia Orthodoxa : Collected Studies in the History of the Slavic Middle Ages, Londres, 1970.

11. Par exemple : Năstase Dumitru, « L’idée impériale dans les Pays roumains et le “Crypto-Empire chrétien” sous

la domination ottomane. État et importance du problème », 4 (1981), p. 201-250.

12. Zakythinos Dionysios, « Étatisme byzantin et expérience hellénistique », dans Mélanges Henri Grégoire, II,

Annuaire de l’Institut de Philologie et d’Histoire Orientales et Slaves 10 (1950), p. 667-680, repris dans id., Byzance :

État-Société-Économie, Londres, 1973, texte II, p. 23.

13. Clucas Lowell (n. 1) ; Yiannias John J. (n. 6).


14

Indiquons enfin ce que ce livre n’est pas. Il ne substitue pas à l’usage métonymique des

Balkans une métaphore nouvelle, celle de Byzance, au pouvoir explicatif généralisé. Pas de

« byzantinisme » en lieu et place d’un « balkanisme » évocateur de l’héritage ottoman, ni plus

largement d’un « orientalisme 14 ». Il n’enquête pas davantage sur les néobyzantinismes savants,

nés en Europe occidentale à la fin du xixe s., sauf quand ils eurent une application locale, comme

en retour 15. Nous espérons ainsi, en nous dégageant des présupposés venus d’Occident et en

privilégiant un espace géographique cohérent, celui de l’ancien empire byzantin en Europe et

de ses voisins, échapper au reproche d’écrire une histoire de Byzance après Byzance hors d’elle,

sans elle, voire contre elle 16.

Sont ici regroupés les actes du colloque « La présence de Byzance dans l’Europe du Sud-Est

aux époques moderne et contemporaine » tenu à Athènes du 22 au 24 septembre 2008. Celui-ci

a été organisé par l’École française d’Athènes, le Musée chrétien et byzantin d’Athènes, l’Institut

français d’Athènes et il a reçu le soutien de l’Agence universitaire de la Francophonie. L’Ambas-

sadeur de France à Athènes, S. E. Christophe Farnaud, a bien voulu marquer un intérêt particulier

pour cet événement en le plaçant au rang des manifestations de la Présidence française de l’Union

européenne du second semestre 2008. Monsieur Paschalis Kitromilidès a présidé à l’ouverture

du colloque et Madame Hélène Ahrweiler a prononcé une conférence inaugurale. Au Musée

chrétien et byzantin d’Athènes, les orateurs ont été accueillis par son directeur, le regretté Dimitris

Konstantios, et par Anastasia Lazaridou. Vingt-quatre des articles de ce volume sont issus des

communications qui y furent présentées. Trois articles sont venus compléter le panorama de

l’ouvrage (par Jack Fairey, Petre Guran et Georges P. Majeska), qui sont issus d’un colloque

organisé deux ans plus tôt à l’université de Princeton par Petre Guran sur le thème « When

Culture Dreams Empire: “Byzantium” as Usable Past », avec l’appui du Davis Center for Historical

Studies, du Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, du Program in European

Cultural Studies et du Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies de cette même université.

14. Bakić-Hayen Milica, « What’s so Byzantine about the Balkans ? », dans Bjelić Dušan I. et Savić Obrad, Balkan

as Metaphor. Between Globalization and Fragmentation, Cambridge Mass., 2002, p. 61-78. Sur l’idée des Balkans,

voir Todorova Maria, « The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans », dans Brown Carl L., Imperial Legacy : The Ottoman

Imprint in the Balkans and the Middle East, New York, 1996, p. 45-77, et ead., Imagining the Balkans, Oxford,

1997 et 2009, traduit en français sous le titre Imaginaire des Balkans, Paris, 2011.

15. Plusieurs contributions sur ce thème dans les ouvrages suivants : Konstantinou Évangélos (éd.), Byzantinische

Stoffe und Motive in der europäischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, Philhellenische Studien Bd. 6, Francfort,

1998 ; Cormack Robin, Jeffreys Elisabeth M. (éds), Through the Looking Glass. Byzantium through British Eyes,

Aldershot, 2000 ; Auzépy Marie-France (éd.), Byzance en Europe, Paris, 2003 ; Bullen J. B., Byzantium Rediscovered,

Londres, 2003. Voir aussi . 20-24 1985, Athènes, 1987 ; Byzance et l’Europe. Colloque à la Maison de l’Europe, Paris, 22 avril 1994, Paris, 2001 ; Spieser

Jean-Michel (éd.), Présence de Byzance, Gollion, 2007.

16. Aymard Maurice, « Byzance après Byzance. Byzance hors de Byzance », dans Byzance et l’Europe (n. 15), p. 87-94,

ici p. 93 ; Barbu Daniel, Bizanţ contra Bizanţ. Explorări în cultura politică românească, Bucarest, 2001.

219

Receiving Byzantium

in Early Modern Greece (1820s-1840s)

Marios Hatzopoulos

If I tell you that the city toward which my journey tends is discontinuous

in space and time, now scattered, now more condensed, you must not

believe the search for it can stop. Perhaps while we speak, it is rising,

scattered, within the confines of your empire; you can hunt for it,

but only in the way I have said.

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities, concluding chapter

Until the 1860s, most of Greece’s intellectual elites maintained that modern Greeks were eman-

cipated after two millennia of foreign rule lasting from Roman to Ottoman times. This view

treated the Byzantine past as a protracted part of Greece’s subjection to the Romans, that is to

say a past marked by foreign rule imposed on an erstwhile free nation. In the eyes of Greek

intelligentsia, Byzantium was not a component of Greek national history and identity. It stood,

instead, for foreign oppression, moral degeneration, obscurantism and monkishness. All that

changed when Romanticism broke onto the Greek historiographical scene with the work of

Constantinos Paparrigopoulos. Building on the 1850s work of the folklorist Spyridon Zambelios,

Paparrigopoulos developed a new historical theory in his multivolume History of the Greek Nation

(1860-1874). This theory allowed him to interpret the achievements of Byzantine Christianity

as developments of Hellenic pagan virtue, thereby portraying the eastern Roman empire as a

product of the timeless genius of the Greek people. In this way, Byzantium was introduced into

the string of Greek national achievements. Paparrigopoulos formulated an uninterrupted account

of national identity by supplying a hitherto missing cultural link between ancient and modern

Greece. Roughly sketched, this is the prevalent view of the introduction of the Byzantine past

into the account of Greek national identity: a view holding that before the second half of

the 19th century, Byzantium was nothing but a form of symbolic discourse, of little effectiveness

Marios Hatzopoulos

220

in Greek social communication. It was only with the work of Zambelios and Paparigopoulos that

Byzantium found its way into the frame of reference of collective identity in Greece. 1

In this article I argue that this view fails to capture the complexity of the historical record.

What I propose is that, from the 1820s to the 1840s, a visible part of Greek intelligentsia viewed

the Byzantine past in an equivocal manner. For Byzantium was conceived in early modern Greece

in two forms: history and memory. What was wholly despised within the cultural and intellectual

climate of the Greek kingdom before the rise of Romantic historiography was Byzantine history,

not Byzantine myths and memories.

Myths and memories are linked to, among other things, territory. According to Anthony

Smith, a particular geographical territory or space becomes associated with a specific community

over the longue durée through the processes of myth-making and shared remembering. Shared

remembering is mainly the product of continual reciting, mostly through legend and myth, those

collective experiences of the past that are of crucial importance for the community’s historical

course and present status. Myth, for Smith, does not have the meaning of simple fiction: it is

rather a cultural pattern with certain social significance. Myth is a symbol-built narrative held by a

community about itself with a view to serving present needs and future goals. Myth is defined,

therefore, as “a widely believed tale that legitimates present needs and concerns by reference to

a heroic collective past that inspires emulation”. 2 Whereas communal myths are tales, collective

memories have mainly to do with records. Smith defines the sort of memories under considera-

tion as “record[s] of one’s own or another’s personal or shared experiences recorded in a

traditional cultural form to enable wide communication”. 3 This approach accepts that it is often

difficult to draw a clear line between myth and memory, thus Smith in his recent work uses

also the term “myth-memories”. Myth-memories are not history in the sense of a disinterested

academic enquiry into the past. They are narratives with plenty of loose ends, usually capable of

variant readings, and referring to multiple, often alternative, and even opposing, communal pasts.

What makes myth-memories sociologically important is their susceptibility to reinterpretation

and their moral purpose: thanks to the former, they are capable of fitting into and working in

different temporal contexts; and thanks to the latter they become – or at least aspire to be –

guides for future collective action. 4

1. Dimaras Constantinos Th., , Athens, 19942; id., , Athens, 1986; Politis Alexis, “From Christian Roman Emperors to the

Glorious Greek Ancestors”, in Ricks David, Magdalino Paul (eds.), Byzantium and the Modern Greek Identity,

Aldershot, 1998, p. 1-14; Kitromilides Paschalis M., “On the Intellectual Content of Greek Nationalism.

Paparrigopoulos, Byzantium and the Great Idea”, ibid., p. 25-33.

2. Smith Anthony D., Chosen Peoples, Oxford, 2003, p. 49.

3. Ibid., p. 170.

4. Smith Anthony D., “The Resurgence of Nationalism? Myth and Memory in the Renewal of Nations”, British

Journal of Sociology 47 (1996), p. 575-598.

Receiving Byzantium in Early Modern Greece (1820s-1840s)

221

My own analysis here is focused on the social and political implications of myth-memories

from the Byzantine past in early modern Greece 5, while drawing on the theoretical context

sketched above. The point of departure is a paradox that the prevalent view on the introduction

of the Byzantine past into the Greek national identity account has not dealt with: at a time when

the Greek intelligentsia dismissed Byzantium on grounds of obscurantism and/or foreign rule,

thereby sanctioning classical antiquity as the Greek nation’s one and only past, notions like the

“reconquest of Constantinople” and the “reconsecration of St Sophia” nonetheless abounded in

the public discourse of Greece. Those notions were as prevalent in popular discourse as in the

halls of intellectual and political power. Indeed, a sizeable number of Greek intellectuals and

politicians, who were libelling Byzantium on historical grounds, were quite ready to envisage

St Sophia as a Greek cathedral and Constantinople as the future Greek capital at a time before

the stars of Zambelios and Paparrigopoulos had risen up in the Greek skies.

OBSESSIONS OF MEMORY

The enlightened Greek intelligentsia rejected Byzantium, in line with the thesis of Montesquieu,

Voltaire and Gibbon on the decline and fall of the ancient world. Even if harsh, this rejection

was qualified. Despite his bitter anti-Byzantinism, Korais, for example, would sometimes call

“princes of our own kin” ( ) those he normally referred to as “the Graeco-

Roman emperors”. 6 His peers, however, took the case to the next level. For the writer of the

anonymous 1806 polemic with the title Hellenic Nomarchy, it was clear that Byzantium was a

protracted extension of Greece’s Roman subjection, a foreign yoke stretching from the smoking

ruins of Corinth in 146 bc to the battered walls of Constantinople in 1453. 7 Roughly at the same

time the intellectual and teacher Veniamin Lesvios wondered emphatically in a treatise on ethics

if “the last kings of Constantinople” should be counted among humans or animals. 8 When the

5. On the social and political function of the Byzantine myth-memories before and during the age of nationalism, see

Hatzopoulos Marios, “From Resurrection to Insurrection. ‘Sacred’ Myths, Motifs and Symbols in the Greek War of

Independence”, in Beaton Roderick, Ricks David (eds.), The Making of Modern Greece. Nationalism, Romanticism

and the Uses of the Past (1797-1896), London, 2009, p. 81-93; see also id., “Oracular Prophecy and the Politics of

Toppling Ottoman Rule in South-East Europe”, The Historical Review / La Revue Historique 8 (2011), p. 95-116.

6. Koubourlis Ioannis, “”,

13-14 (2005), p. 137-191, here p. 158-159.

7. Anonymous the Greek, , ed. Valetas Giorgos, Athens 19824, p. 122-124.

8. Lesvios Veniamin, , ed. Argyropoulou Roxani, Athens, 1994, p. 230; see also p. 255. With this

pungent remark, Veniamin Lesvios (1759/1762-1824) commented on the inclination of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to

speak of Byzantium as “ ”.

Marios Hatzopoulos

222

war of independence ended, the thesis under consideration became something of a hallmark for

Greek historical scholarship. For the educator Constantinos Koumas, it was clear that the Greek

nation had undergone twenty centuries of foreign subjection. For all those centuries, Koumas

wrote in his monumental History of Human Deeds, the world spoke only of Greek misfortunes,

not of Greek achievements. 9 This was how the national past was approached by mainstream

Greek intellectuals. The teacher Dionysios Pyrros the Thessalian was one of them.

Former archimandrite at the Greek Orthodox church in Livorno and graduate of the Univer-

sity of Padua, Dionysios Pyrros arrived in Athens before the war of independence, in 1813, to

teach children at the local school. Kindled with the spirit of Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment, he

organized a formal ceremony in wich he changed the Christian names of his pupils to ancient

Greeks ones, to the plaudits of the Athenian elders. 10 When the war ended Pyrros found it

necessary to enlighten the youngsters in the new state. He revised an earlier work, a geographical

and historical textbook with the title Methodical Geography, with a view to introducing it into

the national curriculum. 11 In the relevant chapter, the author expressed contempt for the Roman

abuses of Greece: “They” he wrote, meaning the Romans, “razed whole towns and villages […]

abolished the laws of our ancestors and set up their own ones”. By saying this, Pyrros was here

also alluding to the Byzantine emperors, whom he called “the Roman kings”. 12 Remarkably,

however, when Pyrros came to the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, his feelings suddenly

shifted from contempt to compassion. “That was a terrible drama, for manslaughter was great”,

he wrote characteristically, “and the ensuing enslavement was greater than ever. The Ottomans

took Constantinople by sword in the reign of Sultan Mehmet II, on a Tuesday, May 27th [sic],

in the year 1453, after 55 days of siege”. 13 What draws attention here is the author’s care to

specify the week, day, date (albeit a wrongly) and year, something that, despite his enthusiasm

for Greek antiquity, he did not bother to do in the case, say, of the ruthless destruction of Corinth

by the Romans (146 bc). A careful reader cannot resist wondering why the loss of the Roman

capital should be “a terrible drama” for those who had been already experiencing enslavement at

Roman hands. Yet later on Pyrros repeats once more that the fall of Constantinople “caused the

greatest devastation that ever happened to the Greeks”, 14 all the while noting, elsewhere, that

9. Koumas Constantinos M., , Athens, 1998, p. 518. One of the most

distinguished Greek teachers before independence, Constantinos Koumas (1777-1836) published this multi-

volume work in 1832 ( XII, Vienna, 1832).

10. Politis Alexis (n. 1), p. 4 and 11-12; Clogg Richard, “Sense of the Past in Pre-independence Greece”, in id.,

Anatolica. Studies in the Greek East in the 18th and 19th Centuries, London, 1996, p. 7-30, here p. 18.

11. Pyrros Dionysios the Thessalian,

…, Nauplion, 18342. Dionysios Pyrros (1774-1853)

first published this book in 1818.

12. Ibid., p. 166-167.

13. Ibid., p. 167.

14. Ibid., p. 244.


223

“when the Turks took the kingdom of Constantinople, Greeks were rendered utterly homeless

( )”. 15 In spite of his feelings for Byzantium, Pyrros seems to have

reserved a separate treatment for Constantinople’s fall to Ottoman hands considering the event

a key moment in the history of Greeks. Had this not been the time, as he oddly put it, when

the greatest devastation befell Greek community and “homelessness” commenced?

Dionysios Pyrros was not alone in considering the fall of Constantinople a turning point

in the historical experiences of the Greek national community. 16 Curiously, a sizeable part of the

otherwise anti-Byzantine Greek intelligentsia deemed the event worthy of commemoration and

mourning. 17 Take for example the judge Georgios Tertsetis, 18 an admirer of the French enlighten-

ment, who would miss no chance to express his aversion to the era “when the kings turned out

theologians and the monks turned out emperors”. 19 Nevertheless, Tertsetis grieved for the fall of

the Byzantine empire regarding it a disaster of nation-wide proportions – and importance:

“We saw an angel from Heaven marking the foundations of the celebrated city in the eyes of

the first Christian emperor, and again we saw the marbles of St Sophia bathing in blood, and

we heard the ceaseless wailing of the Greek maidens [therein]; we saw the babies suckling blood

and milk from their mothers’ breasts on St Sophia’s stairs.” 20

Theodoros Manousis, Professor of History in the University of Athens, affords another example

in the same vein. 21 Manousis was touched by the fall of an empire he otherwise deemed corrupt

and despotic. He would go emotional whenever he lectured on Constantinople’s fall, making

15. Ibid., p. 199.

16. Cf. Smith Anthony D. (n. 4), p. 588.

17. Politis was the first to spot this peculiar intellectual trend, tracing it back to the years before the outbreak of the

war of independence. See Politis Alexis, “La conquista di Constantinopoli: Un caso particolare della ricezione

di Bisanzio nell’ ideologia neogreca”, in Bruni Francesco (ed.), Niccolò Tommaseo. Popolo e Nazioni Italiani, Corsi,

Greci, Illirici. Atti del convegno internazionale di studi nel bicentenario della nascita di Niccolò Tommaseo, Venezia,

23-25 Gennaio 2003, Roma-Padova, 2004, p. 415-433.

18. Born on the Ionian island of Zante and educated in Padua, Georgios Tertsetis (1800-1874) was one of the two judges

who eventually overturned the death penalty, imposed on Theodoros Kolokotronis by the Regency in 1834 on

the charge of treason. He was dismissed from service thereafter and took to writing.

19. Tertsetis Georgios, , II, Athens, 1954, p. 358; cf. ibid., p. 49.

20. Ibid., p. 353. The quotations under consideration come from the third issue of “Rigas” (1845), a weekly

publication of historical, political and patriotic content, that Tertsetis had been publishing in 1843-1845.

The image of babies suckling their dead mothers calls to mind the relevant detail in Eugène Delacroix’s painting

The Massacre of Chios (1824).

21. Born in the Macedonian town of Siatista, Theodoros Manousis (1795-1858) was a life-long proponent of the

Enlightenment. In 1848, Greece’s ultra-conservatives accused him of spreading religious indifference through his

academic teaching. The case devolved into a public row named after him, Manouseia. On these, see Matalas Paraskevas,

“ ” , Heraklion, 2002, p. 80-82.

Marios Hatzopoulos

224

his classroom to burst into tears. 22 Another case is the Professor of Law at the University of

Athens, Nikolaos Saripolos, a convinced liberal who castigated theocracy and regarded

Byzantium with a critical eye. 23 In public Saripolos shared the fourteen-centuries-Roman-

subjection thesis of his contemporaries. 24 In private, however, he employed a different view.

In a body of poems that came out only after his death, Constantinople is portrayed as holy

city, a space invested with sacred qualities conferred by God’s grace and men’s martyrdom:

“New Jerusalem, baptized in the blood / of your countless martyrs and holy virgins”. 25 Saripoulos,

as a poet, mourns the loss of the city, not with distant sympathy, but with an all-embracing

affection:

“Come, oh my lyre, and bring comfort / to the grief of my soul / come and pitch these elegiac

verses / giving some relief to the pain of my wound / […] Why [are] the tearful eyes / constantly

focused on this source of pain and misery? Why [do they] see nothing but this? / Like a light-thirsty

flower / constantly turned to the Sun / so the eyes of a Greek are cast / on the crumbling towers

of this widow, the city of the seven hills.” 26

22. Karmanolakis Vangelis, Stathis Panayiotis, “ ”, in

Kioussopoulou Tonia (ed.), 1453:

, Heraklio, 2005, p. 227-257, here p. 231-232. The authors cite an unnamed source.

23. The writings of Nikolaos Saripolos contain numerous dismissive references to the Byzantine past. For example

his inagural lecture on Constitutional Law at the University of Athens (14th October 1846): “Constantine [the

Great] turned Christians from being persecuted to being the persecutors. Fourteen centuries would come to pass

since then, full of tears [and] human blood […]”; Saripolos Nikolaos I., ,

Athens, 1890, p. 311-312.

24. In his own words: “From the battle of Chaeronea on, humbled and enslaved Greece [as it were] fell from

Macedonian into Roman hands, and then into the hands of the Venetians and Crusaders, continuously breaking

to timars through the Middle Ages, and finally into the hands of the most savage conquerors of all, the Turks”,

ibid., p. 326.

25. Ibid., p. 93; opening verses from the poem written in Paris and dated 18 March 1843

(ibid., p. 93-95). The poems of the Cypriot-born Saripolos (1817-1887) were published posthumously (1890) by

his daughter Maria at his behest. Poetry was a life-long passion for Saripolos, who sought therein an antidote

to life’s sorrows (ibid., p. ). Though most of his verses were produced at a young age, they do not neces-

sarily reflect an early stage of thought. Saripolos had imbibed liberal ideas early in life, thanks partly to his

studentship in the University of Paris and partly to the enlighted teaching he received, first in his hometown

Larnaca, Cyprus, and then in Trieste where his family fled after the outbreak of war in 1821. On this see

Kitromilides Paschalis M., “ ”, in

, Athens, 1993, p. 263-270.

26. Saripolos Nikolaos I. (n. 23), p. 14. Constantinople, like Rome, was built on seven hills, thus called .

The poem , dated 3/15 April 1839 (ibid., p. 14-18), was written in Larnaca during

what appears to have been a gap year in Saripolos’ studies. In 1839 he had just abandoned medicine for a degree

in law.


225

The “source of pain” here is not Istanbul – the real and tangible capital of the Ottoman

empire – but Constantinople, a myth-memory born out of a collective traumatic experience of

the past. It was a myth-memory ostracised from Greece’s official ideology, which, as traumatised

memories do, carried an introvert emotional freight: in contrast to the extrovert account of Greek

achievements that the state put forth, it substituted the anguish of defeat for the self-assertiveness

of glory and the pain of loss for the boast of fame. It was this feeling, the pain of loss, what would

soon turn, right in the next stanza, the young poet’s depression into aggression:

“Wretched Constantinople, seat of emperors, / who is the ape now leaping inside the palace /

of twelve Constantines? / Who is this impudent, lazy, long-beard dervish / foaming at the place

where Palaeologos shed his blood? / They made the City of Byzas home to slaughter and wailing /

and from the dome of St Sophia / they toppled the ray-blazing Cross.” 27

At odds with the prevalent view of Greek history as well as with their own feelings towards

Byzantine history, influential intellectuals in the Greek kingdom like Saripolos, Tertsetis and

Pyrros (to whom we could suitably add the Soutsos brothers) 28 treated the loss of Constantinople

to the Ottomans as one of the most catastrophic events in the history of the Greek nation.

Treated this way, Constantinople was raised to higher status: that of the arena of what was a most

defining moment in Greek historical experience. By this token, however, the city was acquiring

the qualities of a national homeland, both sacred and ancestral, for the Greeks.

GUIDES FOR THE FUTURE

Apart from being called “New Rome”, “Queen of Cities”, or simply “the City”, Byzantine

Constantinople had also been called “New Jerusalem”. It was, above all, a sacred city. 29 Though

a plethora of sanctuaries, churches and monasteries were built to hallow its space since foundation,

27. Ibid., p. 15; original emphasis.

28. Alexandros Soutsos (1803-1863) and Panagiotis Soutsos (1806-1868), scions of a big and influential Phanariot

family and well-known public figures in the kingdom, were no less ambivalent on Byzantium than the part of

Greek intelligentsia in consideration. For Alexandros Soutsos, see for example the poem

, especially p. 21-24; see also his comments in p. 28-39; Soutsos Alexandros, , Athens, 1845. In similar vein, see Soutsos Panagiotis, Odes d’un jeune Grec, Paris, 1828,

especially p. 112 and 138. See also n. 34, below.

29. Characteristically, Saripolos identifies Constantinople with Jerusalem: “Amid the peoples of the earth the sacred

city sits alone! / Amid the nations of the world it sits in solitude”, opening verses from the poem

dated 10 October 1841 and written in Lormes, France; Saripolos Nikolaos I. (n. 23), p. 69.

Marios Hatzopoulos

226

the sacred qualities of Constantinople were intensified after the 5th century because of the

massive transfer and reposition of Christendom’s most precious relics in its churches. By the

early Byzantine centuries, it had already become the epicentre of legend. After the 15th century,

the City could not only boast of laments and dirges commemorating its fall to the Ottomans but

also of a prophetic tradition of lore and script promising the heavenly-ordained restoration of

its “previous owners” as heads of the empire and the city. Even if of earlier date, the prophetic myth

seems to have taken a final shape after 1453. According to this, the defeated and subjugated

Christians would recapture Constantinople, reconsecrate St Sophia, and restore the fallen empire,

when God sent a redeemer to crush the conquerors. 30 Thanks to the processes of collective myth-

making and shared remembering, Istanbul, a physical and social arena where the socio-economic

arrangements followed the prescriptions of Islamic religion, could be transformed into Constan-

tinople, an imaginary city where cross-cultural conduct followed the prescriptions of memory

and myth. Imaginary though it was, Constantinople occupied real geographical space. In the

eyes of Orthodox Christians (the vast majority of the Greek population) the geographical space

of Istanbul did remain sacred, regardless of its current use or character, because it had formerly

staged the deeds of their ancestors and the miracles of the Lord. Reverence had long led those

who now inhabited the Greek kingdom to treat a stretch of sacred land far beyond the state

border as indispensable communal possession.

Attachments to sacred spaces regarded as indispensable communal possessions are not only engen-

dered by holy cities but also by particular localities within. Since the 15th century, when it was turned

into a mosque, St Sophia, 31 the former cathedral of Constantinople, had been the stage for

mythic apparitions signalling the approaching end of the Muslim rule in the imagination of the

subjugated Christians. 32 Inevitably, when the Greek war of independence broke out, St Sophia

found a place in the imagination of the insurgent Greeks. For Greece’s national poet Dionysios

Solomos, Constantinople and St Sophia were inseparable entities, as shown by the 113th stan-

za of his Hymn to Liberty. 33 In early 1827, with Ibrahim Paşa campaigning in the Morea, and the

Greek cause in dire straits, the dream of regaining Constantinople’s holiest church was floated in

order to strengthen Greek morale. 34 Later, when things had improved and Kapodistrias was

30. See on this, Hatzopoulos Marios, Ancient Prophecies, Modern Predictions. Myths and Symbols of Greek Nationalism,

Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2005, p. 14-21.

31. The exact meaning of the name of this church stands is the “Church of the Holy Wisdom” ( in Greek;

Ayasofia in Turkish). Historically, however, the church came to be known as St Sophia.

32. For more on this, see Hatzopoulos Marios (n. 30), p. 52-57.

33. Solomos Dionysios, , Athens, 1957, p. 224. Originally written in 1823, the poem by the Corfiot-born and Italian-educated Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857) became

Greece’s national anthem in 1864.

34. Koumas Constantinos M. (n. 9), p. 669.


227

aboard ship on his way to Greece, the most enthusiastic among his staff could not help fantasiz-

ing about the war ending with “the banner of Constantine flown atop the dome of St Sophia”. 35

In the same year, the same dream was evoked in the poetry of the young Panagiotis Soutsos 36

in a piece praising the bravery of Hydriots: “Our cannon will blow away / your crescent / Oh,

St Sophia / desecrated temple of ours!” The sanctity imputed to the “desecrated temple”

derived from the myth-memory of St Sophia being a most sanctified space conferred by God

exclusively on Christians. Another part of this sacred quality, however, derived equally from shared

memories of patriarchs, prophets, kings and heroes living and toiling therein. As the intellectual

Constantinos Oikonomos reminded the insurgent nation in October 1821, the premises of

St Sophia had formerly been the place “where the glory of the Lord was rejoiced, where pious

kings were anointed, where the teaching of Gregories and Chrysostoms echoed”. 37 The former

cathedral of Constantinople recalled not only times of disaster and conquest but also by-gone

eras of religious splendour coupled with royal associations.

The mixture of religious splendour with royal associations was best epitomized by the figure

of the last Byzantine emperor, Constantinos XI Palaeologos. It is again remarkable that the last

emperor of the eastern Roman empire had essentially been left untouched by the caustic anti-

Byzantinism of Greek intellectuals. Right before the outbreak of the independence war, Greek

nationalists did extoll the courage and heroism of Palaeologos before the attacking Ottomans. 38

Save for his mythic qualities that resonated with the populace, 39 Constantinos Palaeologos was

capable of meeting current ideological and political needs: he constituted a past model of heroic

35. Dragoumis Nikolaos, , I, ed. Aggelou Alkis, Athens, 1973, p. 88.

36. Soutsos Panagiotis (n. 28), p. 112; cf. also p. 138.

37. Oikonomos Constantinos [ ], , I, ed. Sperantzas Theodoros, Athens, 1971, p. 259. Excerpt

taken from the written speech under the title Persuasive [speech]: To the Greeks (1 October 1821). The speech was

written in Russia where Constantinos Oikonomos (1780-1857) had fled after the outbreak of the war. Formerly a

Koraïs’ disciple, Oikonomos became increasingly disengaged from the ideas of enlightenment, yet this process

had probably not started earlier than 1823 (cf. Dimaras Constantinos Th., , Athens,

19936, p. 377). After his arrival in independent Greece in October 1834, Oikonomos became a sort of spiritual

leader to circles around the Russian party. Here the reference goes for the 4th/5th-century Greek fathers and

archbishops of Constantinople Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom.

38. Politis Alexis (n. 17).

39. Constantinos XI Palaeologos was immortalized by Greek popular legend and lore recorded in the late 19th century:

the legend of “The king turned into marble”. According to this, the last Byzantine emperor never died because

an angel of the Lord turned him into marble. Ever since, he lies in an underground cavern of Constantinople

waiting for the angel to return and rouse him from sleep; on this day he will summon his sword and slaughter

the conquerors. The legend was recorded by Nikolaos Politis; see id.,

, I, Athens, 1904, p. 22; for commentary, see ibid., II, p. 658-674. The legend

was circulating among rural communities in 19th-century Greece but it seems to have originated much earlier.

On the subject, see Hatzopoulos Marios (n. 30), p. 57-64.

Marios Hatzopoulos

228

resistance against the same enemy whom the nation aspired to fight in the present. 40 Yet more

importantly perhaps for nationalist thinking, the way in which Palaeologos died chimed with a

morality of martyrdom and sacrifice. The eyewitness and chronicler of Constantinople’s fall

Georgios Sphrantzis was adamant, as were all Greek primary accounts, that the last Byzantine

emperor chose to die fighting before the city walls, rather than surrender the city to the enemy. 41

The resolve of Palaelogos for self-sacrifice was susceptible to reinterpretation in line with early

19th-century political needs. In the age of nationalism the martyr-king could be seen as a patriot-

hero giving his life in defence of his own kin and homeland. It was in this spirit that, in 1816, the

student Nikolaos Skoufos prayed to the soul of Palaeologos to guard the Greek nation. A year

later, in 1817, the poet Ioannis Zambelios came to link king’s sacrifice to the prospect of national

regeneration in a tragedy entitled Constantine Palaeologos. 42 By that time, the intellectual

Constantinos Oikonomos, whom we came across earlier, finished his own tragedy on the same

subject. Though the work did not survive, there exists some evidence as to how the author would

have treated the last Byzantine emperor. In a public speech written in 1821 to exhort the Greeks

to rise up, Oikonomos referred to the “holy blood of this last Christian king”, 43 before casting

Palaeologos among the “later”, as opposed to the ancient or “earlier”, ancestors of insurgent

Greeks. 44 Ultimately the sentiments of reverence Greeks entertained for the Byzantine myth-

memories were producing a collective sense of genealogical belonging.

Acting within the politicised context of the Greek kingdom, the sacred myth-memories of the

Byzantine past made Greek citizens to view Constantinople / Istanbul as sacred but also ancestral

national homeland. Dionysios Pyrros’ earlier assertion about the Greeks losing their home upon

losing Constantinople, does make sense in this context. 45 The same applies to Nikolaos Saripolos

whose poetic work reveal the conviction that the Greek nation had every historical right to take

back and reconsecrate Ayasofia mosque. 46 In the same spirit, Ioannis Kolletis, one of Greece’s

most potent politicians, was quoted to have said, as early as 1833, that the proper capital of Greece

could be only the City. 47

40. As the author of underlined: “Remember that resistance is the beginning of all victories”;

see Anonymous the Greek (n. 7), p. 216. Even Koraïs himself praised the heroic qualities of Palaeologos in 1828;

see Politis Alexis (n. 17), p. 431-432.

41. Tomadakis Nikolaos B., “ ”,

53 (1953), p. 730-735, here p. 732-733.

42. Needless to say, Skoufos and Zambelios were on the whole critical of Byzantium; see Politis Alexis (n. 17), p. 421-423.

43. Oikonomos Constantinos (n. 37), p. 328, n. 1.

44. Ibid., p. 292; see also p. 289, n. 1. Besides Palaeologos, the “later” Greek ancestors included, according to Oikonomos,

another 15th-century emblem of anti-Ottoman resistance, the Albanian hero Skanderberg (Gjergi Kastrioti) to

whom 19th-century Greek intelligentsia attributed a Greek origin and a Greek name (Georgios Kastriotis).

45. Pyrros Dionysios the Thessalian (n. 11), p. 199.

46. Saripolos Nikolaos I. (n. 23); see for example p. 69, 87 and 93-95.

47. Psyllas Georgios, , Athens, 1974, p. 212.


229

Faith in the imminent acquisition of Constantinople / Istanbul exercised a hold on hearts

and minds in the tiny kingdom of Greece. The national capital issue can sufficiently illustrate

the case. In December 1834 the Bavarian Regency transferred the Greek capital from Nauplion,

in Peloponnese, to Athens. Many Greeks, nevertheless, held fast to the idea that only the City

could serve this lofty purpose. One would expect those who subscribed to this folly to have come

from the ordinary folk, yet it seems that the upper strata were not excluded from the trend.

Wealthy Greek diaspora members, or even members of the Court, were reluctant to buy and

build property in Athens, being confident that the capital of Greece would soon be transferred

to over to Bosphorus. 48 King Otto himself seemed to have shared the fantasy: as early as 1834, he

was quoted as saying that he dreamt of seeing his throne there, “where the last Greek emperor

fell”. 49 Later Otto decided not to accept an offer of land by the Sultan for the erection of a Greek

embassy in Istanbul, lest he thereby acknowledge the Ottoman sovereign rights over the city.

Then in 1839, upon learning the news of Mahmoud II’s death, Otto reportedly wondered

whether he would have been given the imperial throne, if he had visited the Ottoman capital in

person. 50 It was just a year before, in 1838, when Lord Byron’s doctor and war veteran, Petros

Stephanitzis, had publicly identified the Bavarian-born Otto with the long-prophesied Christian

conqueror of Istanbul. 51 Evidently, during 1830s and 1840s Constantinople / Istanbul was viewed

as a Greek homeland, invested with providential meanings.

In the light of the above, it is clear that before the rise of Romantic historiography in Greece,

the feelings of a sizeable part of the Greek intellectual and political elites towards Byzantium were

not really dismissive. They were ambivalent. Shared myth-memories from the Byzantine past,

although excluded from official ideology, constituted a legacy that few nationalists of the time could

afford to dismiss. Even fewer could pretend the legacy was less than a cultural force engendering

powerful attachments in wide and variable layers of Greeks driving them to view Constantinople /

Istanbul as a Greek homeland, both sacred and ancestral. Viewed through this lens its fall was

taken as yet another Greek tragedy; St Sophia was deemed a sacred space that could only be

Greek; Constantinos Palaeologos was viewed as national hero; and the City itself as inalienable

national possession. Romantic historiography would come later, in the second half of the 19th

century, to draw on those premises.

48. Skopetea Elli, 1830-1880), Athens, 1988, p. 284-285; also p. 274-277.

49. Dimaras Constantinos Th. (n. 1), p. 338.

50. Skopetea Elli (n. 48), p. 274 and n. 3 on the same page.

51. Stephanitzis Petros, , Athens, 1838, p. 171, n. 1. It is not uncharacteristic that

Nikolaos Saripolos, in the poem of 1843 with the title , repeatedly addresses Otto with the Greek

participle seeing in him the lawful heir of Palaeologos. See Saripolos Nikolaos I. (n. 23), p. 100.

Documents

Receiving Byzantium in Early Modern Greece (1820s – 1840s)