6
From resurrection to insurrection: ‘sacred’
myths, motifs, and symbols in the Greek War of
Independence
Marios Hatzopoulos
On a cold winter day in late February 1821, at a time when all eyes were on the
Sultan’s struggle to crush his defiant vassal Ali Pasha, a high-ranking officer of the
Russian army with an eminent Phanariot background crossed the waters of the
river Pruth from Bessarabia into Ottoman territory at the head of a few thousand
men, a few cavalry, and four cannons. His name was Alexandros Ypsilantis. In
order to join his motley troops, hundreds of Greek students had burned their
books in Bucharest and other Balkan cities. A month later, far to the South, in the
Peloponnese, Christian peasants burned the properties of their Muslim neighbours.
Before long, Ottoman troops had suppressed the insurrection in the North, but that
in the South evolved into a fully-fledged war. The outbreak of the war was finally
the time for the Philiki Etaireia [Friendly Society] to see its labours bear fruit. This
‘Friendly Society’ was a secret patriotic organization, one of a multitude of secret
political organizations that had flooded Europe in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. It had been founded in Odessa by members of an aspirant
Greek-speaking Diaspora, merchants who had become attracted to Jacobin-style
politics advancing radical and liberal agendas. It was more or less the same sort
of people who had become involved in sustaining an extended network of Greek
schools that disseminated political classicism and revolutionary nationalism within
the traditional Orthodox world under Ottoman rule.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries these ideas had triggered a
certain conception in the imagination of the Westernizing Greek-speaking élites:
that of the ‘Greek people’ as a distinctive community with a common culture.
Imaginary though it was, this conception had real political consequences. Laying
a claim of ancestry to what was at the time Europe’s dearest ideal, the classical
Greek past, national identity led the Greeks to break away from the pan-Balkan
Orthodox world. Soon, ideas on collective autonomy came to fit in with the
novel beliefs on identity. An upsurge in schooling, extension of Greek literacy, an
From The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, & the Uses of the Past (1797–
1896) ed. Roderick Beaton and David Ricks. Copyright © 2009 by Roderick Beaton
and David Ricks. Published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Wey Court East, Union Road,
Farnham, Surrey GU9 7PT, UK.
81
82 marios hatzopoulos
increase of interest in matters purely secular, and, finally, a pervasive economic
crisis in Ottoman trade after 1815, which hurt the petit-bourgeois commercial
intermediaries and merchants who championed nationalistic ideas, resulted in
an armed insurrection against Ottoman rule in early 1821. In these terms, it has
been widely accepted that the advance of nationalist ideas and the outbreak of the
Greek War of Independence marked a complete break with the pre-existing social
reality, the world of tradition.
In this chapter I shall attempt to qualify this view by putting forth a threefold
argument (see, further, Hatzopoulos 2005). I shall argue first that, for all its inherent
modernity, the cause of the Greek nationalists drew upon a legacy of traditional
ideas and predispositions; secondly, that an idea deep rooted in Orthodox belief,
that of resurrection, allowed nationalists to make the most of that legacy; and thirdly,
that this development came to be one of considerable importance for the collective
identity of the traditional strata of Greek society themselves. The theoretical
underpinning of my argument is Anthony Smith’s view of nationalism as a secular
ideology and movement drawing, nonetheless, on the ‘sacred’ motifs, symbols,
and rituals of the culturally designated population. Nationalists, Smith suggests
(2000; cf. 2003, 19–43), only rarely attempt to destroy entirely an older, religious
identity, since they realize that, if their message is to be communicated widely and
effectively, it needs to be couched in the language and imagery of those they wish
to mobilize and liberate. Therefore, nationalists tend rather to appropriate elements
of the old cults for their own secular and political ends. In any event, the idea of an
armed insurrection against Ottoman rule epitomized the ideological and political
developments of the age of the Enlightenment within the Orthodox community.
There is little doubt that the Philiki Etaireia was the principal organizational
structure through which the call to arms was disseminated. Yet we tend to forget
that the nationalist call for insurrection was an agenda conceived by intellectuals,
financed and propagated by merchants, but left to be executed by peasants.
The ethics of deliverance
In the last years before the outbreak of war the Philiki Etaireia had boosted its
membership to such a degree that, according to a reliable witness, ‘it came
to indoctrinate even the swineherds’ (Frantzis 1839, 79–80). The process of
indoctrination had the purpose of enthusing members with the new ideas and
values of nationalism. Research has highlighted the fact, for instance, that the
word ‘homeland’ (πατρίς) was deliberately used with its modern politicized
meaning, even more so as the recruit became a formal member, at the expense of
the traditional regional sense of the word that signified one’s birthplace or native
village (Frangos 1973, 96–8).
In a conscious effort to promote its own revolutionary agenda, the Philiki Etaireia
did challenge traditional allegiances, but also took advantage of older ideas and
predispositions. It is well known that its founders, Nikolaos Skoufas, Athanasios
Tsakaloff, and Emmanuel Xanthos, created the impression that their struggle had
from resurrection to insurrection
83
the unconditional backing of Russia in order to instil among Society members the
psychological reassurance of having a strong foreign ally. In doing this, however,
the Society was also striking deeper chords. A brief note in Xanthos’s memoirs
gives us a hint: the chief members of the Philiki Etaireia aimed at capitalizing on
the ‘age-old superstition of the enslaved Greeks that co-religionist Russia would
liberate them from Turkish tyranny’ (Xanthos 1845, 12; emphasis mine).
What Xanthos referred to as ‘superstition’ was actually an age-old tradition of
prophecy and myth which included, but was not necessarily limited to, the prospect
of military intervention by an external power on behalf of the subject Christians of
the East. The tradition was largely based on a literature of extra-canonical prophetic
and apocalyptic writings that had aimed, since Byzantine times, to provide hope
to the Orthodox community during critical periods of threat, anxiety, and change.
Writings of this sort mirrored the fears and agonies of their time, all the while serving
an important communal function: in case of defeat and devastation, they could be
called upon to offer ‘divine’ affirmation that the state of affairs which humiliated
the community would not last. The main underlying myth was that tribulation
would cease and glory would be restored to the community of the faithful through
divine intervention predicated on the agency of a messianic deliverer at a more or
less foreseeable, and sometimes specifically calculable, point in the future. It is for
this reason that we may call these prophetic writings ‘messianic’ and the beliefs
they substantiated ‘messianism’.
Greek sources refer to these texts as ‘oracles’ (χρησμοί), to their compilations
as ‘books of oracles’ (χρησμολόγια) and to the whole literary genre as ‘oracular
literature’ (χρησμολογία). The term chresmos (oracle) had been used in medieval
Greek, with the pagan undertones it inevitably bore, to signify any sort of obscure
prognostication, by contrast with the term propheteia (prophecy), which bore
more orthodox theological connotations (Kyriakou 1995, 13–14). Oracular
literature was a special literature. Though employing apocalyptic themes, it was
regularly disowned by various exegetes of apocalyptic prophecy for lacking a ‘pure
eschatological’ perspective (Argyriou 1982, 93–113; cf. Argyriou 1988). Despite
its millenarian flavour, it lacked the capacity to produce the waves of violent
action known from the study of millenarian movements. Those responsible for its
dissemination were not peasant leaders who wanted to flee the present world but
for the most part literate, articulate, and politically aware people who wanted to see
their community restored to its former glory.
Oracular texts were capable of evolving their meanings according to the course of
events through convenient interpretations and interpolations. The groundwork of
this literature was a work traceable to the frustrations and anxieties of late antiquity,
the Tiburtine Sibyl; yet as Muslim expansion started menacing Byzantium towards
the end of the seventh century, a new composition, the Revelation of Methodios
(also known as Pseudo-Methodios), came to establish the definite outlines of the
genre by casting Muslims in the role of the oppressor and a mysterious messianic
figure, an earthly ruler, in the role of deliverer of the Christians (Abrahamse 1985,
84 marios hatzopoulos
1–9; Alexander 1985, 151–84). The late Byzantine collection of the Oracles of
Leo the Wise expanded and elaborated on the same themes at a time when the
Byzantine state had irreversibly embarked on the course of disintegration (Mango
1984), while the fall of Constantinople in 1453 inspired updates of old prophetic
material as well as the creation of brand new oracles. In this context, the late
fifteenth-century Interpretation of Gennadios came to dominate the oracular genre,
promising the restitution of Constantinople to its ‘original owners’ through the
messianic agency of a blond deliverer who would come in time to be identified,
among other candidates, with the Russians (Turner 1968; Sklavenitis 1978).
Finally, in the eighteenth century, as Ottoman power declined, there appeared the
Vision of Agathangelos, a prophetic text offering a calculable date for the termination
of Ottoman rule (A. Politis 1969).
Prophetic language, however, goes beyond written texts. Alongside its written
form, the oracular tradition employed various alternative forms of reproduction
that encouraged its use by different social groups. For one thing, the systematic use
of visual material in manuscript or published oracles permitted broader access to
their otherwise arcane prophetic meanings. For another, the regular use of rhyme
encouraged oral reproduction of the prophecy. It should be noted, moreover,
that celestial phenomena such as comets, solar or lunar eclipses, strange cloud
formations and the like acquired a symbolic status in the eyes of the faithful,
regardless of social or educational background. It comes as no surprise, therefore,
that the oracular tradition and its underlying messianic myths became socially
shared cultural features within the Orthodox community.
Messianic myths served the socio-psychological needs of the subjugated
Christians harbouring hope in hard times but did little to topple the enemy they
were designed to combat. Messianism spanned the period of Ottoman rule, but the
best it could have hoped to instigate was a quasi-crusading initiative from abroad,
possibly combined with a more or less localized uprising from within. That was
because messianism adhered to a conception of ‘history’ entirely controlled and
prearranged by Providence, according to which past, present, and future were the
unfolding of a great divine plan. The promise of deliverance from Muslim rule was
articulated within these confines: deliverance would be an act of compensation
for sufferings endured. Were it ever to come, it could come only through God’s
instruments, not through the community’s own efforts and resources. What
messianism longed for was outside intervention, both divine and human. What
this set of beliefs promised to the subjugated community was not what we would
call liberation, but rather redemption, from Ottoman rule.
Messianism was also obsessed with the idea of collective regeneration. It held
that Ottoman rule would meet a divinely ordained, but intra-historical, end,
and that the fallen Eastern Roman Empire would be restored or, more precisely,
‘resurrected’. For messianists the idea that a dead entity could be revived by the
will of God defined a mode of thought and a corresponding use of language. The
reaction of the monk and poet Kaisarios Dapontes, after the Russo-Ottoman War
from resurrection to insurrection
85
of 1768–1774 fell short of messianic expectations, is quite characteristic.1 ‘The
empire of the Romans will never be resurrected’, he had painfully to admit,
since it has turned out that the time for resurrection appointed by the oracles was not
the true one and [thus] the empire was not resurrected. The time appointed by the
oracles for resurrection was 320 years after the Conquest (Sathas 1872, 119).
Dapontes’s contemporary, the chronicler Athanasios Komninos-Ypsilantis, used
similar terms:
If, therefore, in the time appointed by the prophecies […] the Romans have not been
liberated, then it will be very difficult for the resurrection of the Roman empire to take
place (Komninos-Ypsilantis 1870, 534).
Resurrection, in messianic thinking, was not a rhetorical device but rather a
necessary and fundamental element.2 The prospect of the restoration of the
Byzantine Empire and the reconquest of Constantinople strongly echoed the
overtones of communal regeneration, as the hope of resurrection or deliverance
applied not only to the empire and its capital but, in effect, to the community of
the subject Orthodox as a whole. In the words of the metropolitan of Gaza Paisios
Ligaridis (1610–1678), the first to make a comprehensive compilation out of the
mass of Greek oracular literature after the fall of Constantinople: ‘it is a great
comfort to us thrice-miserable Romans to hear that there shall come a resurrection,
a deliverance of our Genos’ (cited in Kariotoglou 1982, 104). What is interesting
here is that the traditional approach viewing the fall of the empire as a divine
judgement upon Christian sins was reversed in equally traditional terms. Instead
of the rise and fall, messianism spoke of the fall and rise of the Eastern Roman
Empire. Crucially, this reversal was not illegitimate from a theological point of
view: the Bible talked extensively about the pedagogy of a chosen people and
its exile and return and, at the same time, taught that Passion is to be followed
by Resurrection.
The ethos of liberation
At first glance, messianism should not have been something with which a
dedicated nationalist could easily come to terms. Nationalists preached a message
of practical salvation according to which the community ought to assume its
1
Dapontes was a keen reader of oracular literature (Sathas 1872, μεʹ-μςʹ). His reference to the
daughter and successor of Peter the Great as ‘Elizabeth, the great Queen of the fair-haired ones’, reflects
oracular symbolism (Hasluck 1929, 472 n.4).
2
It seems possible that the celebration of Orthodox Easter had come to acquire messianic
undertones over the period of Ottoman rule. N.G. Politis (1904, 687) considered likely the existence
of a post-Byzantine belief holding that every Easter the angels secretly celebrate Christ’s resurrection
within the cathedral-turned-mosque of Agia Sophia. Interestingly, the Sfakiot chieftain Daskalogiannis
chose Easter day to mount his first attack on the Muslims of Crete, thus initiating the Christian uprising
of 1770 on the island (Psilakis 1909, 283).
86 marios hatzopoulos
destiny through rationally planned and executed acts in the interest of collective
self-determination.
Deliverance for them had no other meaning than liberation. On this level
messianism was undoubtedly problematic and had to be confronted. It belonged
to the dark universe of ‘headless ideas’ which the educator–intellectuals of the
Neo-Hellenic enlightenment had set out to eradicate (Kitromilides 1996, 239);
it was a token of cowardice, according to the Hellenic Nomarchy, the anonymous
nationalist polemic of 1806 (Anonymous Hellene 1982, 203). Yet from the late
1800s to the early 1820s, when nationalist activism took the shape of participatory
organizational structures with increasing membership demands, the need to
communicate the agenda of armed revolt in a swift and effective manner became
a priority (Panagiotopoulos 2003). The more inclusive these structures, the more
pressing became the need for ideological elements capable of activating and
mobilizing the masses. I should like to suggest that messianic prophecy was very
important in this respect, in so far as it encapsulated shared beliefs in the reversal of
the collective status of Christians, acting as ‘validating charter’ for actions that would
otherwise have appeared unacceptably revolutionary. As a result, messianism came
to be seen not as a mere ideological current but, more specifically, as a reservoir of
myths and symbols capable of galvanizing anti-Ottoman sentiments which, after
reinterpretation in nationalistic terms and conjunction with modern ideals, could
be made capable of mobilizing the masses towards a common political goal: armed
revolt against Ottoman rule.
It was in this spirit that nationalists turned to messianic myths. Unsurprisingly,
the propaganda of the Philiki Etaireia did include elements of oracular literature,
as its former member Nikolaos Kasomoulis recorded in his memoirs (1939, 425).
Another document signed by the Society’s leader, Alexandros Ypsilantis, proves
that its leading members had no qualms about blending together old values and
new aspirations, oracular literature and insurrection, Orthodoxy and Hellas, even
more so when it came to arguing that the outbreak of war was at hand and there
could be no turning back:
If we are true sons of venerable Greece, as we boast that we are […] what are we
waiting for? What excuse, however reasonable, could make us postpone this golden
time which, as it appears, Providence has brilliantly ordained so that all the predictions,
all the oracles about the liberation of the Genos, about the resurgence of Orthodoxy,
may come true? (Xanthos 1845, 238).3
Existing evidence substantiates the claim that, at least to a certain extent, the
Philiki Etaireia made progress within the deeply traditional communities of Greek
lands thanks to the popularity of messianic beliefs. Fotakos (1971, 35), a dedicated
member of the Society and later aide to Kolokotronis, writing in his memoirs about
3
The undated document has the title Report on the foundation of an artistic [φιλόμουσος] and
charitable Greek commercial society (Xanthos 1845, 220–35), while the excerpt under consideration
belongs to an appendix with the title Secret paragraphs about the main aim of the artistic and charitable
Greek commercial society (Xanthos 1845, 236–9).
from resurrection to insurrection
87
the pre-independence Orthodox communities, admitted that messianic myths did
advance the popular resonance of revolutionary nationalism.4 Moreover, the first
historical account of the Philiki Etaireia, the essay by Ioannis Philemon, maintained
that oracular literature was a long-term factor that, having already moulded a
firm popular belief in the eventual reversal of the status of collective subjection,
decisively conditioned the popular reception of the call to arms (Philemon 1834,
217–18; cf. 67–8).
Yet what allowed nationalists to make the most of the messianic repertoire of
myths and symbols was its regenerative discourse. Nationalists were quick to
appropriate and reinterpret the old messianic discourse of resurrection in secular
terms, in terms of the homeland and its people. When the war broke out in the
Danubian lands, Ypsilantis addressed the former members of the Society, and now
comrades-in-arms, with the proclamation of 24 February 1821:
Brothers of the Friendly Society! At last has arrived that splendid moment so much
desired! […] You, beloved associates, have shown what pure and fervent patriotism can
do. From you, Greece expects even greater things now, in the hour of her resurrection!
(Walsh 1829, 434).5
On the outbreak of the war in Greece, Petros Mavromichalis (Petrobey), having
declared the region of Mani and the whole of the southern Peloponnese in revolt,
issued an appeal to the European courts. Resurrection, in this case, applied to
the people:
With one word we have decided to set ourselves free or perish. We therefore invoke
the aid of all the civilized nations of Europe, that we may the more promptly attain
to the goal of a just and sacred enterprise, reconquer our rights and resurrect our
unfortunate people (Trikoupis 1853, 369).6
Roughly at the same time, some distance to the North, in the village of Milies on
Mount Pelion, the nationalist leaders of the region raised glasses in a characteristic
toast: ‘Christ is risen, long live the resurrection of the homeland, long live liberty’
(Kamilaris 1897, 29–30). Quite characteristically, an Austrian intelligence report
dated 12 March 1821 recognized the representation of the Resurrection among the
decorative motifs on the Greek revolutionary flags flown at Jassy (Laios 1958, 51).
Robert Walsh, chaplain to the British embassy in Istanbul at the time, did not fail
to observe that the theme of resurrection was taken as ‘typifying the rising hopes of
the country’ (Walsh 1836, 179).
4
Also known as Fotios or Fotakos Chryssanthopoulos, on whom see, further, chapter 8 by Yanna
Delivoria in the present volume.
5
Walsh cites the Greek text (1829, 434) and the English translation (Walsh 1829, 435), which I
follow here with some revision. The Greek text is also to be found in Daskalakis (1966, 119).
6
Mavromichalis’s proclamation was translated into English by Gordon (cited in Dakin 1973,
59), whom I follow for the most part. Gordon’s translation is not always very accurate. For instance,
Gordon’s text reads ‘and regenerate our unfortunate people’ while the original uses the precise term
αναστήσωμεν (‘resurrect’) instead of αναγεννήσωμεν (‘regenerate’).
88 marios hatzopoulos
Resurrection and collective identity
The reinterpretation of the concept of resurrection in secular terms, in terms of
the Greek homeland and its people, provided Greek nationalism with a powerful
symbolic discourse that survived long into the post-independence era.7 But as far
as the pre-independence period is concerned, a development at the popular level
merits further attention. The appropriation and reinterpretation of resurrection by
Greek patriots couched the ideals and values of Greek nationalism in the vocabulary
and imagery of faith. In this way, the priesthood and peasantry who clung to the
prospect of revolt found a platform of understanding and, ultimately, a cognitive
map of familiarization with what was a modern and secular cause. It is instructive
to recall in this context the chant, ‘Christ has risen to elevate the cross and trample
on the crescent in our beloved Greece’, with which in 1823 Lord Byron and his
company were received in a monastery in Ithaca (Trelawny 1941, 138).
The familiarization of the Orthodox strata with nationalistic ideals through the
vocabulary and imagery of faith had, in turn, an effect on their sense of collective
identity. The reinterpreted discourse of resurrection provided the traditional
sections of society with a comforting matrix for coming to terms not only with
the idea of insurrection but also with one of its prerequisites that underpinned the
agenda of the revolutionaries: the myth of Hellenic descent. Even if the programme
of the nationalists had essentially been formalized along secular and neoclassical
lines, those provincial primates, military chieftains, village clergymen, monks,
and peasants who had a vague idea about – or even reasons to detest – the line of
revolutionary Hellenism found a frame of reference that did not compel them to
relinquish their religious identity in favour of a secular one. For these people, instead,
the reinterpreted discourse of resurrection furnished an ideological basis which
facilitated an acculturation between the myth of Hellenic descent that nationalists
upheld and the sense of belonging to a religious collectivity. From this point of
view, in the nascent Greek nation state the pre-modern imagined community based
on common faith had never been closer to the emerging community of common
ancestry, in the terms used by Kitromilides (1990). Within the popular mind, the
belief in a God-revived moral community of the faithful could now be transmuted,
after conceptual adjustment to conform with the teaching of intellectuals, into the
conviction that a moral community of Hellenic ancestry was to be regenerated by
the grace of God.
This view is a recurrent theme in the writings of General Makriyannis (on
whom see chapter 8 by Yanna Delivoria in the present volume). An interesting
elaboration is to be found at the end of the second book of Makriyannis’s memoirs
where the author recounts an imaginary fable. Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I
meet in Hades. After the two monarchs regret their lives and realize how ephemeral
is earthly power, Alexander says:
7
See Pamboukis 1843, 22; Saripolos 1890, 96; Koumanoudis 1990, 99; Valaoritis 1907, 188, 190;
Christovasilis 1881; Kyriakidis 1892, 6; Palamas n.d., 435.
from resurrection to insurrection
89
Come, Napoleon, let us go and see the ancient Greeks in the [underworld] place
where they dwell and find old Master Socrates and Plato and Themistocles and the
gallant Leonidas, and tell them the thrilling news that their descendants, who had
been lost and wiped out from the list of mankind, have been raised from the dead.
Those good and righteous men, the beacons of truth, the noble protectors of freedom,
enrich mankind with patriotism, with pure courage, with virtue, not with treachery
and deceit: and though they are poor in the vain riches of a day, they are very rich in
the world’s history: for that their deeds are a tourney of virtue. For this reason it was
the will of the just God to resurrect their descendants, whose homeland had been lost
for so many centuries. And it was that they might remember their faith that the true
God resurrected them: unshod, unclothed, unfed, with their muskets bound up with
string, they had their goods seized by the Turks every season: most of them fought
with sticks and stones and without the wherewithal: the Turks were in force and fully
trained; the poor Greeks, few and untrained, have beaten the Grand Signior [sic]
(Makriyannis 1966, 147).
The scene concludes with some words from the lips of Makriyannis, words wavering
between reflection and prayer:
Thou, O Lord, shalt raise the dead Greeks, the descendants of those famous men, who
gave mankind the fair raiment of virtue. And by Thy power and Thy righteousness
Thou shalt bring the dead back to life, and it is Thy just will that the name of Hellas
shall be spoken once more, that she shall shine forth, and the worship of Christ too,
and that the honest and the good, those who are the defenders of justice, shall live on
(Makriyannis 1966, 148).8
Illiterate as he was in his early life, Makriyannis wrote his memoirs as soon as he
had acquired some writing skills, driven by the desire to produce an account of his
life. Yet these lines, possibly written during 1832–3 (cf. Makriyannis n.d., xx–xxi),
were not the personal thoughts of a semi-literate war veteran. Take, for example,
the monk Kyrillos Lavriotis, a man whom Makriyannis never met or knew, so far
as is known. Kyrillos was not a man of arms but a man of prayer who became
involved in what Argyriou (1982) has termed the Greek exegetic movement.
Carrying on an old tradition in the age of transition, he set out to study the Book
of Revelation from 1792 to the 1820s, with a view to extrapolating clues relevant
to his turbulent epoch. His thoughts, recorded during the War of Independence,
suggest an approach to current events pretty similar to that of Makriyannis:
A few thousand Orthodox Christians, descendants of the Hellenes, unarmed,
unwashed, in utmost poverty, weakened by hunger, overwhelmed by slavery,
untrained in warfare, unclothed, unshod, utterly illiterate, completely vulgar, with no
8
The English translation of the memoirs of General Makriyannis (1966) by H.A. Lidderdale,
which I follow here for the most part, though generally accurate, fails to grasp the specificity of meaning
of the original text (Makriyannis n.d.). For instance, the Greek verb ‘ανασταίνω, -ομαι’ [resurrect /
rise / raise somebody from the dead] has been freely rendered as ‘set / stand on one’s feet’. Lidderdale’s
translation reads, respectively: ‘tell them the thrilling news that their descendants […] stand on their
feet once more’ (Makriyannis 1966, 147), and ‘Thou, oh Lord, shalt set upon their feet these long dead
Greeks’ (Makriyannis 1966, 148).
90 marios hatzopoulos
support and help to rely on, rose from their long dead corpse and, with God’s help,
shall finally be resurrected, and, after they crush their enemies by land and sea, shall
place their noble feet upon the neck of their vanquished tyrants (cited in Argyriou
1999, 176–7).9
For all their differences in life and occupation, the monk Kyrillos and the military
leader Makriyannis had more in common than a first glance would suggest.10
Research has shown that Kyrillos, no less than Makriyannis, deemed freedom an
achievement based on God’s help and man’s own effort and heroism (Argyriou
1999, 176). On the other hand, it has also shown that Makriyannis, perhaps no less
than Kyrillos, was a keen reader of oracular and apocalyptic literature (Metallinos
1985; Sphyroeras 1984). Both men viewed insurrection against Ottoman rule
as reflecting the will of God. Both imagined their community as a collectivity
of common faith, descent, and morality. Both expected God’s will to be fulfilled
through and within this community, which was in effect the Greek nation. Their
thought was no longer part of the traditional ethics of deliverance; it was part of the
ethos of liberation.
These two cases provide this chapter with its conclusion. When the messianic
discourse of ‘resurrection’, exposed as it was to the forces of modernity in the
early nineteenth century, was reinterpreted in nationalist terms and combined
with patriotic values, it essentially gave way to a new approach, one that would
oscillate between the old and the new ideas as much as did those who adhered to
it. According to this approach, resurrection meant liberation and liberation would
come about through insurrection. Insurrection was approved by God but realized
by man. Liberation, therefore, was presumed through the agency of the nation
which, in turn, was elevated to a messianic pedestal and charged with a providential
mission. It was in these terms that the Greek nation had, first, to liberate itself.
In view of such lofty standards, however, the achievement of independence was
anything but a conclusion to the annals of the Greek nation’s vicissitudes. In fact,
it was just the beginning.
9
The labour of Kyrillos Lavriotis, the voluminous ‘Commentary on Revelation’, is unpublished.
Asterios Argyriou has thoroughly studied the manuscript, now kept in the library of the School of
Theology at the University of Athens. The manuscript is the eleventh draft of the ‘Commentary’ and
the only one to have survived. The draft was mainly written from 11 June 1817 to 30 May 1821, but
the text may have been re-edited between 1825 and 1826 (Argyriou 1999, 174).
10
Historians have portrayed Kyrillos Lavriotis as a counter-revolutionary (cf. Bees 1937, 244
λδʹ–244 λεʹ; Kitromilides 1996, 429) but this view flies in the face of Argyriou’s research (1999, 174–
8). In fact, Kyrillos combined a millenarian version of messianism with modern notions of freedom,
subscribing fully to the right of man to take up arms against oppression. He was thus happy to see the
subjugated Christians take their destiny into their own hands. In this sense it is important that Kyrillos
characterized his Orthodox brethren as ‘descendants of the Hellenes’.
from resurrection to insurrection
91
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