.jpg)
On this day, September 25, 1833, under the Bavarian Regency, a royal decree signed by the young Otto ordered the closure of all Orthodox monasteries with fewer than six monks, imposed the compulsory removal of the monastic habit upon nuns under the age of forty, required the removal of all novices from the monasteries, established specific measures governing the movement of monks, prohibited the customary donations made for the benefit of the Church, and placed under sequestration the monasteries’ landed property, sacred vessels used in worship, icons, vestments, liturgical books, furnishings, and anything else useful for sale as “spoils” that was found in the monasteries that were to be sealed. Whatever was deemed “useless,” on the other hand, was thrown into the fire — “with the monks mourning all around”! (The monasteries of the Roman Catholics, of course, remained untouched, as did their property.)
With this decree, the Bavarian assault against Orthodoxy and our Byzantine spiritual tradition was enormous, coming immediately after the “coup-like” proclamation of the autocephaly of the Church of Greece.
Of the 545 monasteries for men and 18 for women that existed in the “truncated” post-Revolutionary state, only 148 were preserved, while all the nuns were forcibly concentrated into the three convents that survived. Those Orthodox monasteries that remained open lost all administrative autonomy and were forced to pay burdensome taxes.
The age-old ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople had to be severed, and the Greek Church was to be placed under state authority.
What the Turkish conquerors had not dared to do in 400 years was done by the Bavarian “enlighteners,” with the assistance of Catholic missionaries and the “religious abuses” of the religiously alienated Greek followers of Korais, who assumed the administration of the newly established state.
Within only a few days, disgraceful scenes of shame, looting, and vandalism unfolded in monasteries such as Greece had never witnessed, “not even during the invasions of the various conquerors who had at different times occupied Greek territories.”(1) A few years later, the poet Panagiotis Soutsos wrote pointedly:
“In the silver chalice of Communion, the thieving steward grows drunk with great impudence!”
This, however, is how General Makriyannis viewed the situation amid a widespread climate of popular indignation and humiliation over this “devious Bavarian policy”:
“They dissolved the monasteries; they came to an agreement with the Bavarians and sold the chalices and all the sacred things at the bazaar, and the livestock for nothing. Such men took them... They utterly destroyed the monasteries, and the poor monks, who had been annihilated in the struggle, were dying of hunger in the streets, while these monasteries had been strongholds of our Revolution. (...) The enlightened men of Europe brought the knife to cut down the wild Greeks (...) In the time of the Turks, they did not disturb even a stone of the old chapels; but these swindlers joined their interests with those filthy Phanariots and others like them, who were a disgrace in Europe, and they ruined our monasteries and our churches — defiling them within, and turning others into stables.”
For this reason, it is by no means accidental that, from 1833 (the uprising on Tinos) until 1852 (the Papoulakos uprising in the southern Peloponnese), a total of 21 popular uprisings took place, centered, among other things, on the defense of Orthodoxy, ecclesiastical tradition, and the faith of the Greeks, which was being so brutally provoked by “the Lutheran-Calvinists who governed us,” both Greeks and foreigners. The Bavarians (and the embassies of England and France, which were essentially governing the country) “felt threatened by the activities of the monks; they regarded them as links in conspiracies, supporters of Russia, demagogues, and agitators.”(2)
Despite the intense popular reactions, however, the “top-down” Westernization of the statelet “which was born with a European forceps”(3) had already begun from the very first day of its existence. The foundations of “we belong to the West” had been laid by a Protestant, the Bavarian Georg Ludwig von Maurer, and by a follower of Adamantios Korais, Theoklitos Farmakidis.
Notes:
(1) Christos Yannaras.
(2, 3) Kostis Papagiorgis.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
With this decree, the Bavarian assault against Orthodoxy and our Byzantine spiritual tradition was enormous, coming immediately after the “coup-like” proclamation of the autocephaly of the Church of Greece.
Of the 545 monasteries for men and 18 for women that existed in the “truncated” post-Revolutionary state, only 148 were preserved, while all the nuns were forcibly concentrated into the three convents that survived. Those Orthodox monasteries that remained open lost all administrative autonomy and were forced to pay burdensome taxes.
The age-old ties with the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople had to be severed, and the Greek Church was to be placed under state authority.
What the Turkish conquerors had not dared to do in 400 years was done by the Bavarian “enlighteners,” with the assistance of Catholic missionaries and the “religious abuses” of the religiously alienated Greek followers of Korais, who assumed the administration of the newly established state.
Within only a few days, disgraceful scenes of shame, looting, and vandalism unfolded in monasteries such as Greece had never witnessed, “not even during the invasions of the various conquerors who had at different times occupied Greek territories.”(1) A few years later, the poet Panagiotis Soutsos wrote pointedly:
“In the silver chalice of Communion, the thieving steward grows drunk with great impudence!”
This, however, is how General Makriyannis viewed the situation amid a widespread climate of popular indignation and humiliation over this “devious Bavarian policy”:
“They dissolved the monasteries; they came to an agreement with the Bavarians and sold the chalices and all the sacred things at the bazaar, and the livestock for nothing. Such men took them... They utterly destroyed the monasteries, and the poor monks, who had been annihilated in the struggle, were dying of hunger in the streets, while these monasteries had been strongholds of our Revolution. (...) The enlightened men of Europe brought the knife to cut down the wild Greeks (...) In the time of the Turks, they did not disturb even a stone of the old chapels; but these swindlers joined their interests with those filthy Phanariots and others like them, who were a disgrace in Europe, and they ruined our monasteries and our churches — defiling them within, and turning others into stables.”
For this reason, it is by no means accidental that, from 1833 (the uprising on Tinos) until 1852 (the Papoulakos uprising in the southern Peloponnese), a total of 21 popular uprisings took place, centered, among other things, on the defense of Orthodoxy, ecclesiastical tradition, and the faith of the Greeks, which was being so brutally provoked by “the Lutheran-Calvinists who governed us,” both Greeks and foreigners. The Bavarians (and the embassies of England and France, which were essentially governing the country) “felt threatened by the activities of the monks; they regarded them as links in conspiracies, supporters of Russia, demagogues, and agitators.”(2)
Despite the intense popular reactions, however, the “top-down” Westernization of the statelet “which was born with a European forceps”(3) had already begun from the very first day of its existence. The foundations of “we belong to the West” had been laid by a Protestant, the Bavarian Georg Ludwig von Maurer, and by a follower of Adamantios Korais, Theoklitos Farmakidis.
Notes:
(1) Christos Yannaras.
(2, 3) Kostis Papagiorgis.
Source: Translated by John Sanidopoulos.
