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Elements for a connected history of Eastern Orthodoxy, 14th-19th c.

On the formation of an ideological faction in the Greek Orthodox Church in the second half of the eighteenth century: the Kollyvades

Sur la formation d’une faction idéologique dans l’Église orthodoxe grecque dans la seconde moitié du xviiie siècle : les Kollyvades
Socrates D. Petmezas

Résumés

Les Kollyvades, une faction idéologique distincte au sein de l’Église grecque-orthodoxe, ne représentent pas une simple réaction conservatrice aux défis de la modernité, mais un effort alternatif de réforme, ferment d’un mouvement puissant de re‑traditionalisation. Ils ont tenté sans succès de s’élever d’une position dominée (en tant que moines et érudits) dans le domaine religieux grec-orthodoxe à une position dominante en tant que détenteurs et gardiens de la Tradition. Leur tentative de renverser leur position dominée dans le domaine religieux grec-orthodoxe et leur effort de dominer le sous-domaine monastique a échoué, mais l’échec les a forcés à produire un discours religieux innovant et à s’adresser à un public plus large, s’échappant involontairement de l’arène réduite d’Athos. L’affrontement avec les républicains radicaux des Lumières balkaniques leur a offert la possibilité de s’ériger en apologistes les plus intransigeants de l’Église officielle et de sa politique loyaliste. Ainsi, ils ont réussi ultimement à se tailler une position dominante en tant que dépositaires de la Tradition. Ironiquement, ils sont devenus eux‑mêmes des sources de légitimation ecclésiastique pour la faction cléricale qui cherche à renverser la soumission de l’Église à l’État-nation centralisé moderne.

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1My friends and colleagues Tassos Anastassiadis, Nikolaos Chrissidis and Tony Molho read the manuscript and helped me ameliorate it with their comments and criticism. It is only too late that I have been able to have partial access to the important book by Ioannis Zelepos (Zelepos 2012)

  • 1 The Abbott of the Holy Monastery of St. Gregory on Mount Athos, the Archimandrite Georgios, descri (...)

2The purpose of this paper is to study the formation of a distinct ideological faction in the Greek-Orthodox Church in the second half of the eighteenth century: the Kollyvades. Some members of this group, the most prominent, played a significant role in the complex cultural wars that shook the Greek-Orthodox Church and Community in the era of Enlightenment and their spiritual influence persisted (and even expanded) after the Greek War of Independence. To this day they have been vindicated, by friends and foes, as guardians of Greek-Orthodox tradition and architects of the re‑emergence of the Hesychastic or Philocalic spirituality in the Greek Orthodox world1. They have inspired competing spiritual and para-church currents in the Hellenic Greek-Orthodox theological and ecclesiastical fields.

  • 2 For the purpose of this paper, I use the expression Romeïc to refer to the Greek-Orthodox Christia (...)

3The present work does not (and this author himself cannot) have the ambition to fully cover the theological or ecclesiological aspects of the history of Kollyvades. It will only address the matter because it helps explaining the complex and unintended process through which this small group of well-educated scholarly zealots in the Athonite monastic community tried to shake the established structures of power in the monastic and the larger Greek-Orthodox religious field (ca. 1754-1783). Of course, they failed, but they survived as a group and were finally transformed into a small, but internally coherent, ideological faction (it is probably better to call them an “interpretative community”). Having lost the fight for predominance in the monastic arena, they were forced to renovate by turning their attention to the larger non-monastic World. They influenced the encompassing theological and ecclesiastical field by systematically, since circa 1783, re‑publishing long-forgotten texts (and thus re‑enacting their message) of monastic mysticism – of the so‑called Hesychastic and Neptic tradition – in a long series of publications. Later, they took upon themselves the cultural war against the Radical Republicans of the Balkan/Hellenic Enlightenment, who called for a social and national revolution against the Ottoman autocracy in the Greek-Orthodox realm (ca. 1798-1807). Thus, they made themselves indispensable to the top echelons of the Romeïc Community (the prelates of the Patriarchate and the Phanariot quasi-aristocracy)2. In consequence, they have earned an unprecedented ecclesiastical legitimacy and deeply influenced a large spectrum of conservative prelates, theologians and self‑styled religious reformists. The major figures of Kollyvades were canonised and their ideas have gradually become part of the standard Greek-Orthodox theological and monastic literature.

  • 3 Tzogas 1969, p. 67.
  • 4 Podskalsky 2005, p. 412.
  • 5 Cf. the Introduction in Papoulidis 1974, pp. 8‑11, where the author, presenting the life and œuvre(...)

4There are contrasting evaluations of the Kollyvades movement and this contrast begs for an explanation. Charilaos Tzogas3, the only theologian who, more than forty years ago, wrote a specialised monograph, which is still the only full academic reference on the subject, treats them as a typical monastic and xenophobic reaction to the powerful ideas of Enlightenment and modernity. On the other hand, father Gerhard Podskalsky4, who writes off the eighteenth century as an era of few and theologically uninspiring works, considers that: “the return to the patristic tradition, inaugurated by [the Kollyvades] Makarios Notaras (1731‑1805) and Nicodemus Agioritis (1749‑1809), opens the way for a dynamic new beginning [of Greek-Orthodox Theological Literature]”. Furthermore, the fact that they have been notoriously indifferent to Hellenic patriotism, and that they strongly and openly condemned the ideas of the nationalist republican revolutionaries which inspired the Greek War of Independence, had forced their present day supporters and apologists to build a national aura for them5.

  • 6 Cf. Tzogas 1969, p. 67.

5Another point of perplexity for modern historians and apologists alike is the acute importance given by the Kollyvades and their contemporary opponents to insignificant aspects of the ritual (typikon)6. On the contrary, what has always attracted the attention of historians and the larger educated secularised public, i.e. the verbally violent polemic literature of the Kollyvades against the revolutionary patriotic texts and actions of the radical republicans of Greek and Balkan Enlightenment, was what least interested them.

6What drives this tightly-knit group of scholarly monks to raise a half-century long struggle over issues that the present-day academic community – both historians and theologians – considers impertinent? Is it a manifestation of the ontological weakness of the post-Byzantine world to disengage itself from pedantic Byzantinism? Those who can not satisfy themselves with such answers, especially historians, have to search for a more convincing general interpretation that would explain simultaneously the internal coherence of the theoretical views and perceptions of Kollyvades, the trajectory of their religious activism, and finally the mobilising appeal they have exerted to specific groups of supporters and allies. In other words, historians must establish a homogenising and systemically coherent interpretation of the parallel stories in which Kollyvades are usually engaged from the middle of the eighteenth century to the eve of the Greek War of liberation. This ambitious program demands, of course, that they be firmly placed in their political, social and religious contexts. Consequently, this paper proposes a tentative interpretation that historicises the issue.

  • 7 As far as I know, the Monastic Decision of the so‑called “Lavreotic excommunication” has not been (...)

7The first appearance of the Kollyvades as a group, in ca. 1754, is usually related to the intra-monastic conflict that erupted in the skete of Ste Anne dependent of the Lavra Monastery, around the question of the theological legitimacy of the memorial services of the dead on Sundays. This trivial matter (both in theological and in practical terms) had sharply and painfully divided the monastic community in Mount Athos and led to the formal condemnation (excommunication) of the Kollyvades by the congregation of the Holy Lavra Monastery. Cyril V, twice a Patriarch (1749‑1751 and 1753‑1757), and sojourning in Ste Anne after his second removal from the patriarchal office, was instrumental in their condemnation7. In the next twenty years, they were fervently persecuted and most of them were finally silenced and/or expelled from Mount Athos.

  • 8 Kitromilidis 1996, pp. 53‑70.
  • 9 Makridis 1996/97. For an earlier interpretation, see Angelou 1963 and Kitromilidis 1996, p. 56.
  • 10 In the eighteenth century, a small group of Prelates (the gerontes), sitting on Metropolitan seats (...)

8The eruption of the Kollyvadic controversy has been hastily related to the enmity of their unquestioned leading paragon, the hierodeacon Neophytos Kavsokalivitis (1713‑1784), a celebrated grammarian, against Eugenios Voulgaris, the most respected figure (along with Nicephoros Theotokis) of the so called first generation of intellectuals of the Greek or Balkan Enlightenment8. In 1753, Eugenios, a famous scholar and teacher, was called, to be the Principal of the renovated Athonite School in Vatopedi Monastery, replacing Neophytos and introducing a modern enlightened curriculum9. In a few months, ambitious and motivated young students were enrolled and the School is rightly considered an important effort to renovate Greek-Orthodox culture and education. The choice of Voulgaris was also a decision taken (or better imposed) by Patriarch Cyril V, enjoying the strong support of a group of prelates and “middle class” secular officials (mostly merchants and guild officers), who helped him to challenge the domination of the Phanariot quasi-aristocracy and the gerontes, i.e. the Prelates of the Permanent Synod10. Cyril V and his supporters initiated the famous Anabaptist controversy, which divided the Greek-Orthodox Church and radicalised the popular masses. As a reaction against the penetration of the Eastern Churches by the Catholics, Anabaptists did not recognise the baptism performed by Catholic or Armenian priests as canonical and imposed that all Catholics, Protestants or Armenians who joined the Greek-Orthodox community were baptised again.

  • 11 Podskalsky 2005, pp. 430‑431.
  • 12 Gedeon 1883, classifies Anabaptism (and the beliefs of the Kollyvades) among the heterodox teachin (...)
  • 13 On the phenomenon of gerontismos in the eighteenth century and the powerful influence of the Phana (...)

9All those involved in the Controversy regarding Memorial Services, like the Kollyvades (Kavsokalivitis and Athanasius from Paros or Christopher from Arta), their persecutors (Cyril V and Gennadius, Bishop of Aleppo), and even Voulgaris11, were openly or tacitly in favour of Anabaptist ideas and actions. This was not a coincidental or opportunistic position, but clearly coloured all their theological ideas, ecclesiastical policy and careers. They repeatedly opposed each other bitterly, but they shared a fundamental view on Anabaptism, which, from a dogmatic point of view, was a controversial and radical deviation from traditional beliefs and conventional practices12. In spite of the supposed teachers’ dispute in the Athonite School, Voulgaris, Theotokis, Athanasius and Kavsokalivitis never stopped corresponding, discussing and showing respect for each other. Consequently, all of them were part of the same group of prelates, theologians, teachers and monks who opposed vehemently, consistently and irreconcilably the Catholic Uniate intrusion in the Eastern Churches. With radical determination they turned against the timorous, hesitant and finally compromising policy of the majority of the prelates of the permanent Synod and their Phanariot protectors, that is the socially self-conscious and politically dominant Greek-Orthodox elite13. These mid-eighteenth-century controversies reveal the nexus of complicity and competition that bound together people in opposing factions. These historical agents are located along a complex matrix of overlapping bipolar disputes: as for instance those between bishops and monks concerning the symbolic and material autonomy of the latter group from the episcopal Church hierarchy; or, to give another example, the competition between Phanariote lords and prelates for the effective control of the Greek-Orthodox communities; or, lastly, the conflict between the ecclesiastical fiscal administration and the guild officials regarding the audit and control of ecclesiastical debt and other financial, i.e. political, matters of the Romeïc community.

  • 14 It has been convincingly argued that Athanasius from Paros was not hostile to teaching modern curr (...)
  • 15 Komninos-Ypsilantis 1870, pp. 365‑370. See, also, Papadopoulos 1952, pp. 203‑216, and Scouvaras 19 (...)

10In other words, the Kollyvades should not be unreservedly identified with the conservative, endemic obscurantism of Athonite monasticism, a cliché often used by many of their present-day critics. On the contrary, the leading figures of the Kollyvades were teachers and scholars14, who went into action precisely when Cyril V rose to the patriarchal throne for a second time, possibly hoping that he would tolerate or even embrace their ideas, which, as I will show, were as radical on ritual (typikon) as the Anabaptist position was on theology. Monks, who were silently but routinely antagonising the centralising clerical hierarchy and their Phanariot sponsors and protectors, were catapulted onto the front stage: In Constantinople in 1753, Auxentius the monk, acting on his own initiative or under the instigation of Cyril V, was able to mobilise broad masses of fervent supporters who exerted such direct and violent influence on the prelates, the Phanariots and ultimately the Sublime Porte, that Patriarch Paisius II was forced to resign, paving the way for the return of Cyril V15. Cyril V’s successor and stiff opponent, Callinicus III from Zagora, was again ousted from the Patriarchal throne, a few months after his ascension to the patriarchal office in 1757, under the pressure of the opposition, which had been led by craftsmen and monks, the social elements that supported Cyril V. This was a time of ecclesiastic militancy and monastic theology.

  • 16 Apostolopoulos 1996, pp. 39‑41.

11The choice of Eugenios Voulgaris as the Principal of a new and radically modernist school, and of Mount Athos as its locus, were also a symbolically dense and politically radical choice of Cyril’s faction, openly challenging the position of the Patriarchal Academy of Constantinople, which was until then the main institution of higher education in the Ottoman Romaïc community, under the control of the gerontes and the Phanariots16. This radical turn in the educational field would have undoubtedly been read as a positive signal by the intransigent radicalised anti-latin scholarly monks in Athos. In other words, the eruption and the radicalisation of the controversy on memorial services can only be understood in the context of growing expectations of well-educated and self-confident scholarly monks with theological ambitions.

12Why would they focus on the trivial question of the rightful day of commemorating the dead? This choice puzzles present-day historians (whether versed in theology or not). Following Pierre Bourdieu, we should not forget that controversies over the ritual (typikon) and not over doctrine, are instrumental for those who challenge the status‑quo in the religious field (or the monastic sub‑field). In this way, they may rapidly accumulate religious/symbolic capital – or charisma in Weberian terms – as quasi-prophets (i.e. those who deviate from routine and bureaucratic normality in order to renovate/redress the religious message and ecclesiastical practice) and thus attempt to rearrange the balance of power and the distribution of religious resources. Picking a dogmatically harmless subject of ecclesiastic ritual (typikon) as his major cleavage line the quasi-prophet obliges all parties involved (with whom he shares common values, mental predispositions, “universal” beliefs and cultural qualifications –in one word the habitus) to recognise his authority on the specific issue and, consequently, to accept the redistribution of symbolic and religious positions and resources in his advantage.

  • 17 This is at least the story of Voulgaris himself, cf. Makridis 1996/7, pp. 88‑90.
  • 18 Kollyvades were dispersed in Hydra, Patmos, Ikaria, Sciathos, Chios and elsewhere. Nephon founded (...)

13The first attempt of the Kollyvades, under the acknowledged leadership of Neophytos Kavsokalivitis, to make their authority recognised failed both in theoretical and in practical terms. They were never able to mobilise a sufficiently large number of followers and could not secure support from high prelates and prominent figures. When Cyril V was dethroned for a second time, in 1757, and was finally exiled in Athos, in the skete of Ste Anne of Lavra, he did not side with the Kollyvades as they probably expected. Cyril turned decisively against them, as he did turn (for completely different reasons) against Voulgaris who was soon to be ousted from his position as Principal of the Athonite School17. Cyril V and his entourage in Athos, prelates like Gennadius of Aleppo and Matthew of Alexandria, were not prepared to acknowledge the independent authority of scholarly monks and did certainly not accept to share with them their theological and religious hegemony (by right of their episcopal grace) as prelates. The notables of the Lavra Monastery, to which the skete of Ste Anne belonged, condemned and excommunicated the Kollyvades who were soon persecuted and forced to disperse in the Archipelago. This dispersion proved to be essential for their survival and the dissemination of their spiritual influence away from their Athonite ecological niche. Zealots like Nephon from Chios founded small monasteries that were to become in the next century nodes of the small but growing monastic and educational network of the Kollyvades in the Archipelago18.

14The dispersion in the Archipelago was not purely coincidental. On the contrary, there is a clear correlation between the movement of the Anabaptists and Kollyvades and the larger area of the Archipelago, including Chios, and Smyrna. A large number of Kollyvades and Anabaptists either originated or studied in the area. Most of the Patriarchs that, in any way, favoured or benignly tolerated the Kollyvades (Gabriel IV, Procopius, Neophytos VII and Gregory V) originated from, or served as Metropolitans of, Smyrna. The Schools of Smyrna and Chios were frequently directed by Kollyvades (Neophytos Kavsokalivitis and Athanasius from Paros) and served as areas of refuge for many of them.

  • 19 Makridis 1996/7, p. 139.
  • 20 Neophytos Kavsokalivitis, persecuted, left Mount Athos and taught in various schools in Chios (175 (...)

15Smyrna, Chios and the Archipelago constituted a space of financial, merchant and maritime growth, an interface for the communication of the two peninsulas (Anatolia and the Balkans) and the larger Eastern Mediterranean world in the second half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. People, products and capital circulated and interacted either in maritime transit for European destinations or mostly to serve the expanding needs of the Ottoman imperial economy. Apostolopoulos already advanced the hypothesis that the Anabaptist controversy and the feuds around the School of Athos were closely related to the social and political clash between the Phanariot aristocracy and the upcoming merchant class; a class which was certainly reinvigorated by this process of economic expansion19. A large number of followers or disciples of Anabaptists were scions of rich Chiot families like the Argentis and the Skanavis. This was also an area that constantly faced the immediate effects of active and aggressive papal proselytism. The Kollyvades were almost exclusively circulating in this area (only a few of them were self-exiled in the Danubian Principalities)20. Athanasius from Paros is the only one who spent many years as teacher in Salonica, which is, incidentally, the major city close to Athos.

  • 21 Kosmas of Aetolia was never a part of the Movement, even though his brother the Archimadrite Chrys (...)
  • 22 It is noteworthy that present day apologists and idolisers of the Kollyvades tend to a‑historicall (...)

16Kollyvades were absent from the larger area of Continental Southern Balkans and the Anatolian hinterland. Schools, Monasteries and the cultural arena in general of the larger area of Epirus, Macedonia and Thessaly were almost foreign to them. This is a relatively different socio-economic space, controlled by merchants and exporting craftsmen who took part in the expanding network of overland trade and exports to Central Europe. Even more important, the Catholic Propaganda Fide never intruded and never posed a direct threat in the area. To the contrary, Islamisation was the major religious threat, as the Albanian case testifies, and this is why itinerant preachers like Kosmas of Aetolia21 – who is presently associated with the Kollyvades22, but was never effectively one of them – were particularly active here.

17This bipolar contrast of two distinct regional socio-economic areas of the Ottoman imperial economy, each experiencing a different configuration of inter-confessional and religious competition, is too neat to be entirely convincing. Nonetheless, my tentative hypothesis is that the network of monks and scholars was superimposed upon relatively homologous financial, mercantile and educational networks. Further study of the networks, activities and trajectories of merchants and capitalists, prelates and monks, schoolmasters and students, catholic missionaries, dervish and orthodox preachers is necessary in order to have a modre definitive answer.

18The long mid-eighteenth-century era of peace in the empire ended with the catastrophic war of 1768‑74, which greatly upset the summit of the Romeïc community: the Phanariot Aristocracy and the top religious hierarchy. The turbulent war coincided with the second re‑emergence of the Controversy regarding the memorial services of the dead in Mount Athos, which led to the definitive patriarchal and synodal condemnation of the Kollyvades leaders in 1776, and to the renewed and brutal persecution and final eviction of the majority of their followers from Athos, where some of them had been previously able to return. Only a handful of their younger and less exposed members, like Nicodemus Kallivroutsis (Agioritis) from Naxos, were able to stay in the Holy Mountain.

  • 23 The first reign of Samuel (1763‑67) is the culmination of an effort of expansion and concentration (...)
  • 24 The study of the unpublished correspondence of Athanasius from Paros, that has been recently studi (...)
  • 25 Tzogas 1969, pp. 153‑156, who dates the monastic synod in April 1774. All the relevant documentati (...)

19The long line of anti-anabaptist Patriarchs, from Seraphim II to Samuel I Hantzeris (1757‑1769)23, ended with Theodosius II, whose rise to the patriarchal throne coincided with the nomination of Athanasius from Paros as Principal of the School of Athos. It is probable that Kollyvades felt more secure and more confident, and that they had decided to openly challenge their opponents. It is difficult to understand the strategy and the motives behind their actions24. Had they really hoped that they could win the Patriarch’s support and that of the prelates of the Holy Synod in their internal monastic strife? Reading the texts one gets the impression that they were optimistic about securing their complete vindication in spite of the fact that the ageing former patriarchs and their persecutors, Cyril V and Matthew of Alexandria, were designated as patriarchal representatives (exarchs) on the matter. In that authority, they were instrumental in summoning the monastic synod in Kutlumus Monastery in early 1774 and securing the strongest condemnation of the Kollyvades25.

  • 26 Parios 1988, p. 32.
  • 27 Arabatzis 2006b, p. 33 (note 18). It is probably a first variation of the Confession of Faith titl (...)
  • 28 Parios 1988, pp. 32‑34, and Tzogas 1969, pp. 145‑152.
  • 29 Meyer 1894, pp. 229‑231.
  • 30 In a monastic community Typikaris was the monk responsible for the maintenance of the ritual (typi (...)
  • 31 Meyer 1894, pp. 231‑234, and Parios 1988, p. 35.
  • 32 Meyer 1894, pp. 234‑236 (the partiarchal and synodal decision is attributed by mistake to Theodosi (...)
  • 33 Arabatzis 2006b, p. 34.
  • 34 The list of prelates in Gedeon 1915, no 87, p. 143.

20Earlier, in 1771 or in the first months of 1772 (and in any case before Athanasius from Paros – who was present in the meeting – departed from Athos in the summer of 177226), a group of leading Kollyvades had written a Confession of Faith27 and a Memorandum destined for the Holy Synod and the Patriarch. Nephon from Chios was charged by his fellows with the task of presenting it to Theodosius II asking that the Lavreotic Excommunication be lifted, thus vindicating their theological stand28. The synodal reply disappointed them, in spite of the fact that effectively the Lavreotic Excommunication was lifted. The synodal decision stroke a middle line reaffirming the right of each side to maintain its position, provided that the theological conflict immediately ceased29. The following year the Kollyvades, chose as their envoy to Constantinople the hieromonach Jacob from Peloponnese, former Typikaris30 of Ste Anne, and attempted again to no avail to elicit a favourable synodal decision. The new synodal decision reiterated the previous one31. The rise to the throne of Samuel I Hantzeris, an opponent of the Anabaptists but an enlightened and forceful Patriarch, seemed to offer a new opportunity. He issued a third synodal and patriarchal decision32 that adopted a new approach to the problem: each skete was ordered to follow the regulations (typikon) of the Monastery to which it belonged. According to Athanasius from Paros (in a text written more than thirty years after the related event) this decision was equivalent to a vindication of the Kollyvades’ view, but Denis, Bishop of Adromerion, who was charged with the mission to present the synodal decision to Mount Athos, openly sided with their opponents maliciously securing the condemnation of the Kollyvades33. Athanasius is obviously referring to the Monastic Synod of Kutlumus Monastery, in which the Kollyvades declined to participate, although they had been invited. I think that the presence of eleven prelates (among whom two former Patriarchs) and more than 200 monks in this Synod would make it very difficult for a sole prelate to impose his will34. It is clear that the Monastic Synod of Kutlumus expressed the collective decision of the participating prelates. Considering that the Kollyvades had not ceased their factional activity and had not obeyed the express orders of the three previous Patriarchal and Synodal Decisions, the Monastic Synod asked that the Holy Synod of Constantinople and the Patriarch impose upon them the punishment threatened in the three subsequent Synodal Decisions: the Patriarchal condemnation and excommunication of the Kollyvades.

  • 35 One may surmise that this extremist Confession was actually written or inspired directly from Neop (...)
  • 36 Arabatzis 2006b, pp. 34‑35 (especially note 23).
  • 37 Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 472‑473.

21The Kollyvades had lost the initiative in the conflict. It seems that they tried to stage an opposing Monastic Synod held in the skete of Parthenius, in which they wrote a Confession of Faith and a Memorandum, and sent them to the Patriarch. We now know that there were two different Confessions of Faith written and attributed to the Kollyvades, that were circulating simultaneously, but it is not clear which one was sent to the Patriarch and the Holy Synod. The one described in the “anti-Kollyvadic” manuscripts studied by Tzogas was most probably already written in 1771 by Paisius the Calligrapher, a loyal and zealot follower of Neophytos Kavsokalivitis35. In this Confession their opponents were described as “unbelievers” and “idolaters”, while the Synod was called “heretical”. Denis, Bishop of Adromerion, has ascribed by mistake (?) this Confession to Athanasius from Paros36. In the same vein, Callinicus III, also exiled in Athos, in a letter sent to Athanasius, accused him of characterising the Synod as “herecising” and its prelates as “heretics”37.

  • 38 Manafis 2000, pp. 218‑224.
  • 39 Contrary to what Charilaos Tzogas (Tzogas 1969, p. 153) has written, the Bishop Makarios Notaras h (...)
  • 40 The expression “kat’ oikonomian” refers to flexibility shown by religious authorities of the Greek (...)
  • 41 Meyer 1894, pp. 236‑241. Four of the Kollyvades were excommunicted amongst them Athanasius from Pa (...)

22The adversaries of the Kollyvades, intentionally or not, attributed the radical Confession and extremist practices of Paisius and Constantius (possibly inspired by Neophytos Kavsokalivitis) to all the Kollyvades. It is almost certain that there was a latent split in the group already before 1771, because we know that in the early 1760s, Athanasius doubted the orthodoxy of the extremist theological opinions of Neophytos Kavsokalivitis, who strongly influenced Paisius38. The unacknowledged split sent confusing signals and possibly led to contradictory statements and actions, which were exacerbated by the silence of Neophytos and the absence of Athanasius39. When their adversaries started to openly condone the use of brutal violence against them (leading to the assassination of Paisius and his elder Theophanes) most of the Kollyvades fled and were once again dispersed in the Archipelago. A small group survived on Athos but ceased to function as a strong monastic movement. Thus, their last effort to impose their strict zealot program had failed, because they were unwilling to accept the kat’oikonomian40 compromise offered to them by the Patriarch and the Synod, making thus their patriarchal and synodal excommunication in 1776 inevitable41. Constituted as a zealot group, Kollyvades had espoused a policy of akribeia (the strict implementation of the Law), and were thus, in principle and in practice, alien to any kind of compromise, which would undermine their group identity and raison d’être.

  • 42 Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 480‑486.
  • 43 Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 480‑481. Callinicus III will also fill four long pages with arguments in de (...)

23Callinicus III had already prepared the ground with his letters and interventions to prelates and to the Athonite monastic Community42. Reading these letters one can grasp his fundamental accusation against the Kollyvades: these insolent theologising monks did not “bow their neck” and did not accept “according to their position” as obeying monks that they could not act as “apostles, prophets or preachers of the law”. They, furthermore, contested the decisions of the Church (i.e. the Synod of the Prelates) and dared call the Synod “herecising” and the prelates “heretics”, self-proclaiming their own congress as Synod of the Church43. In other words, blaming them that they appropriated the role of prelates of the synod, he accused them of the crime of lese-majesty. Callinicus’ polemic used the old anti-anabaptist rhetorical stereotypes: he accused them of “innovation” and of “Calvinist” ideas. The accusation of “Calvinism” was typically used against the intransigent anti-latin zealots, and in the case of Kollyvades it was interspersed with accusations of “freemasonry” and of “contempt” for tradition.

  • 44 Tzogas 1969, p. 165.

24The synodal excommunication of 1776 pacified the Athonite monastic community, and discouraged some of the best Kollyvades, like Christopher from Arta, who retracted and was pardoned44, but the controversy persisted. Of course the assassination of Paisius the Calligrapher and the continued silence of Neophytos Kavsokalivitis, isolated as he was in Wallachia, had probably delivered a death blow to the more radical faction, but it also assured that confusion and internal discords ended inside the remaining smaller group. The Kollyvades stopped being an organised monastic movement and were transformed into a loose network of occasional collaborators. Some of them had proven themselves as major ecclesiastic scholars. Exiled and excommunicated, they were forced to abandon any ambition of influence on the monastic sub-field, where they had previously tried to establish their authority. They turned from a monastic zealot movement – or, rather, faction – to a small intellectual/ideological group that, since 1784, wrote and published an impressive number of books. Their scholarly project legitimised them as preachers of the Law and theologians, precisely what Callinicus III had explicitly denied that they were. The turning point was the emergence of Makarios Notaras, scion of a powerful Moreotan Notable Family and ex‑bishop in his home province of Corinth, as their acknowledged holy leader and respected paragon. At the same time the exemplary monastic life and scholarly activities of Nicodemus in Athos partially blanched them of the accusation of misbelief (kakodoxia). They were gradually reinstated in the ecclesiastic hierarchy as theologians and preachers of the Law.

  • 45 Arabatzis 2006a, p. 387.
  • 46 This estrangement has led scholars like Paschalidis 2004, pp. 39‑42, to write that Neophytos Kavso (...)
  • 47 Manafis 2000, pp. 209‑215.
  • 48 Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 387‑397. Athanasius of Paros has written a letter that is almost a small essa (...)
  • 49 Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 388‑390. Athanasius writing to his friend and colleague Panagiotes Palamas re (...)
  • 50 It is probably thanks to the intervention of the Chiot Archon Demetrios Scanavis that Makarios was (...)
  • 51 Papoulidis 1974, p. 50.

25The years of excommunication (1776‑1784) constituted a febrile period of transition. In these years the Kollyvades were suddenly and publicly focusing on the issue of Frequent Communion, their second cause célèbre. Two books on this subject were anonymously published, the first one in 1777 and the second in 1783. There was a confusion at the time as to who were the author(s) of each book, a reminder of the confusion around the Confessions of Faith. We know now that the first one was written by Neophytos Kavsokalivitis and the second one was co‑authored by Makarios Notaras and Nicodemus from Naxos45. Why were two books, bearing very little difference, anonymously published, almost simultaneously, by members of the same ideological movement? No kind of internal dialogue (either polemical or apologetic) seems to have been engaged between the two books. I believe, the simple reply is that Neophytos (and what remained of his loyal followers) had been silently isolated from the bulk of the remaining Kollyvades46. He had become a lonely figure, publishing without previously communicating with the rest. It is clear that long ago Athanasius, formerly his closest associate and follower, had explicitly taken a distance on matters of Theology from his unorthodox views47. Athanasius was ready to fervently and with much detail defend the ideas expressed in the book of Makarios and Nicodemus48, but he did so reluctantly and only in general terms for the book of Neophytos49. I think that Athanasius from Paros, and the majority of the remaining Kollyvades, had silently substituted Makarios the younger, socially prominent and ecclesiastically superior prelate for Neophytos, the older, exiled, isolated and quarrelsome hierodiacon. Makarios was to become the uncontested leading figure of the Kollyvades. He was by status and career foreign to the small secluded monastic environment they were habitually (and by their habitus) used to act. He spent only a small period of time in Athos (although long enough to identify himself with the Kollyvades and run the risk of excommunication50) and his personal qualifications went beyond the usual image of monastic zeal. He had chosen to retreat in cosmopolitan and urban Chios, a rich mercantile, industrial and educational centre, and the epicentre of anti-latin religious movement. From Chios, he supported his brethren both materially and spiritually51, and he succeed, later in 1788, to impose Athanasius from Paros as Principal of the famous School of Chios.

  • 52 Agioritis 1996, pp. 109‑149 on the memorial services of the dead and the special character of Domi (...)
  • 53 Tzogas 1969, p. 168. Also cf. Gedeon 1888, vol. 1, p. 272, where the biography of Makarios Notaras (...)
  • 54 Tzogas 1969, pp. 128‑130. It is well known that Nicodemus made abundant and free use of Latin eccl (...)

26But why did the Kollyvades make such a concerted and timely turn to the question of Frequent or Permanent Communion? Nicodemus in his Confession of Faith, written in 1807 and published ten years after his death, passes quickly over the subject and concentrates himself on the question of the memorial services of the dead52. And yet Makarios and Nicodemus’s book, published anonymously in 1783, was theologically much more ambitious and its publication was promptly condemned by Patriarch Procopius53. I do not think that this publication was simply due to the spiritual influence or emulation of the Latin monks, as Tzogas seems to believe54. On the contrary, it is clear that the exiled and excommunicated Kollyvades had chosen a new field of symbolic rupture and competition with the official Church hierarchy.

  • 55 Cyril from Fourna of Agrafa, was a teacher and a scholar that had long discussed on all matters of (...)

27Two different references reveal the dynamic importance of this new symbolic challenge. Sergios Macraios, a renowned scholar and an old student of Voulgaris in the School of Athos, who was close to and personally intimate with the Athonite Controversies had written a letter to Cyril from Fourna55, an Athonite scholar. In this long epistolic treatise he strongly criticised the anonymous author of the book on Frequent Communion because he:

  • 56 Tzogas 1969, pp. 127‑128. In the original: “φαίνεται αγνοών τί εστιν ιεροσύνη και σχήμα μετανοίας,(...)

seems to ignore what is the quality of the priest and what is the quality of the monk, and he ignores the distinction of orders imposed by God. ... He is part of the faction of those who reject priesthood ... because, emulating the daily servicing priests, he reaches the conclusion that every Christian has the right to daily and permanent Communion56.

28Consequently, Sergios Makraios stands against the arbitrary appropriation by monks (and potentially laymen alike) of priestly grace, in other words against the removal of the primordial distinction between the secular and clerical orders.

  • 57 In the context of base anti-kollyvadic propaganda, the Kollyvades were accused of holding in secre (...)

29The second episode concerns Neophytos Kavsokalivitis himself, who was accused of convincing a naive Moldavian priest to hand him the holy bread stamp so as to be able to partake the very Body of Christ57. This is most evidently a false accusation but it exemplifies the symbolic issue at stake: a simple non-ordained monk, contrived to freely manipulate the magical power of grace, an exclusive prerogative of the higher order of priests and prelates.

  • 58 Tzogas 1969, p. 131, and Papoulidis 1967, p. 50.
  • 59 Gedeon 1916, 43.
  • 60 Gedeon 1888, vol. 1, pp. 273‑274.

30It is certain that Frequent Communion was a standard topic in the older Kollyvadic repertoire and this is why Neophytos of the older generation and Makarios and Nicodemus of the younger shared it and used it. What is novel is the fact that the Kollyvades chose to (anonymously) raise it publicly as a point of contention in the troubled era that followed their excommunication (1776‑1785). They were also accused of questioning the “legal and ecclesiastic nature of excommunication”58. Once again, they implicitly demanded that all distinction between the priestly and monastic orders be eliminated, and that monks be free to manipulate holy grace. Nonetheless, if my interpretation is correct, this radical proposal does not seem to have attracted the attention of a large number of Athonite monks, let alone mobilised them in their favour. But it was hotly discussed in the Phanariot society59 and certainly drew the attention of the prelates and the Holy Synod. As a consequence, in 1785, the anonymous book of Makarios and Nicodemus was publicly condemned. This condemnation was silently lifted later by Neophytos VII (a patriarch favouring the Kollyvades), most probably after his dethronement, in a private letter he send to Makarios60.

  • 61 Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 390‑391. In the original conflict in the skete of Ste Anne, the accusation in (...)
  • 62 Agioritis 1996, pp. 149‑158. It is a praise to craftsmen and manually working people, i.e. guildsm (...)
  • 63 Apostolopoulos 1996, pp. 37‑38, and Konortas 1998, p. 146.
  • 64 Iliou 1986 and Kitromilides 1982.
  • 65 Moskof 1979, pp. 68‑69. It is to be noted that, according to Manuel Gedeon even upper class women (...)

31It was consequently after the ill‑fated effort of the Kollyvades to secure the support of the Holy Synod and the Patriarch in early 1770s that ended with their excommunication in 1776, that they chose to radicalise their critique of the exclusive domination of the prelates (and of course of the silent dominating influence of the Phanariot aristocracy) in the religious field. Nicodemus in his Confession of Faith of 1807, takes great pain to reply to all accusations raised against him. If these accusations were true, then Nicodemus and his ideological comrades would have fashioned a radical critique of the order of prelates. Amongst these accusations stands out the one related to Athanasius from Paros, who was supposed to have orally castigated the prelates of simony61. Furthermore, it is important to underline the lengthy praise by Nicodemus of manual labour for both priests and monks62, as well as his insistence on the need of active participation by laymen in catechism and the liturgy. It is clear that the Kollyvades were addressing the dominated (but not the lowest) social strata in large urban centres: merchants and craftsmen of the guilds. As is well known, Cyril V had also used the guilds and merchants to counter the power of the Holy Synod and the Phanariots and thus secure the control over the patriarchal finances63. Furthermore, in the celebrated discord over the schools that shook Smyrna in 1819, the guilds had actively sided with the Metropolitan of Smyrna (and Patriarch Gregory V, who favoured and protected the Kollyvades) and the Evangelist School against the modernist Philological School and the enlightened opposition of rich merchants64. Kostis Moskof was right to point that the popular low middle urban strata (traders and craftsmen) recognised in the Kollyvades a religious and ideological current that expressed their cultural ethos, their hesitant radicalism and their growing social aspirations65.

  • 66 See below.

32If there was actually a true menace of radical politicisation of the Kollyvadic critique it never actually materialised, because in the next few years the three most prominent members of the group Athanasius, Makarios and Nicodemus reoriented their interests and invested all their efforts in a truly gigantic project of publication that finally legitimised them as impeccably orthodox theologians. Of course, they would never be fully or un-ambivalently trusted, as numerous actions and discords demonstrate, like the one related to the publication of Pedalion in 1800 which makes clear that they were still far from being unequivocally accepted by the Church hierarchy66. They had nonetheless been ready to engage themselves as protagonists in the cohesive cultural reaction of the Church to the revolutionary pamphlets of the republican radicals who called for the immediate overthrow of Ottoman (and any other) despotism. They thus identified themselves as the most intransigent opponents of patriotic and liberal enlightenment.

  • 67 Meyer 1894, pp. 241‑242. The fact that his brother Christophore was the teacher of Athanasius in t (...)

33A mutation is observed in the theoretical practice and the politics of the Kollyvades after circa 1784. Their books were published in European cities (Venice and Leipzig) and it is clear that the nature of the public they were addressing has changed. Each author seemed to follow his own personal path to individual ecclesiastic reintegration, without compromising what they perceived as strict orthodoxy. Athanasius from Paros had secured in 1784 the lifting of his excommunication thanks to the support of friendly prelates like Cyprian of Alexandria (his former colleague and teacher in the School of Athos) and the Patriarch Gabriel IV, to whom he consecrated his first book of Anti-latin literature: Anti-papas or the biography of Mark of Ephesus (Eugenikos) canonised as late as 1734 in the context of cut‑throat inter-confessional strife in the Levant. Gabriel IV became the first of a series of Patriarchs that would protect and favour Athanasius and the other Kollyvades67.

34Initially the Kollyvades fought for reform and renovation (in their own words for a “return to the ancient tradition”, i.e. a re‑volution) of the ritual (typikon) of the Church; in other words they tried to establish themselves at the centre of the Greek-Orthodox religious field. In the new context, they tried to legitimise themselves as guardians of the dogmatic frontiers, recreating and reproducing symbolic fences and differences between Christian Confessions or between Christian submissiveness (as a road to salvation) and secular godless Enlightenment, the new absolute threat.

  • 68 On the neomartyrs cf. Tzedopoulos 2002 and 2010, Zachariadou 1990‑1991, and Iliou 1995.

35But they were also almost explicitly, and from an early moment, guardians of the frontier with Islam, as chroniclers and comforters (aleiptes) of Neo-martyrs, of those who for any reason found themselves before the dilemma of conversion to Islam or suffering the ultimate punishment (death) for their “crimes”. The record of such martyrs was almost never immaculate, since they had come to grapple with temptation all too many times. Their salvation was not a matter of brotherly love or of good acts, but of their unshakable orthodox faith. Their martyrdom actively re‑fabricated the symbolic fence between adversary religious communities, and symbolically reproduced the confessional body. For the Kollyvadic literature, the Neo-martyrs are athletes and soldiers of Christ, not of the fatherland. The nationalisation of the Neo-martyrs (and the nationalistic re‑appropriation of the Kollyvades) was part of the ex post facto apologetic argumentation that anachronistically re‑interpreted historical realities in order to exculpate the Church of its hesitant role during the Greek War of Independence68.

  • 69 Arabatzis 2006b, p. 36.

36Parallel to their anonymously published book on Frequent Communion, Makarios and Nicodemus (who had been spared from excommunication) published, in 1782, two books of ascetic and mystic literature Philokalia and Evergetinos. These books imposed their authors as legitimate (in their eyes the sole legitimate) masters of monastic and patristic Tradition. This systematic publication project was probably inspired by earlier occasional attempts by Kollyvades to constitute manuscript collections of patristic and other texts serving their purpose69. Makarios and Nicodemus later published the oeuvre of Symeon the New Theologian, in 1790, and prepared for publication the oeuvre of Gregory Palamas in 1798. This last publication never materialised because – exquisite irony – it shared the fate of the manuscripts of Rigas Velestinlis, victim of the ill‑founded zeal of Austrian police. Athanasius from Paros had also begun his own more modest publication program in 1784.

  • 70 Moschos 2009.

37Publishing books of monastic and mystic literature was not an obvious choice, as Dimitis Moschos has reminded us, using the example of Paisius Velichkovsky who explicitly did not encourage the diffusion of the Hesychastic and Neptic literature outside of the monastic realm70. Contrary to the well-established authority of Velichkovsky in the monastic field, the Kollyvades were excluded from this coveted domain and thus forced to turn towards the real world. They imposed themselves as acknowledged exponents of the “authentic monastic tradition” in front of the larger literate audience once they abandoned the monastic realm and addressed the imagined community of readers of Greek, in continuous expansion through the intensified use of printed books.

38I think that this constituted their supreme strategic achievement. They had been accused of “innovation”, “reform” and the abandonment of tradition because of their obstinate opposition to the memorial services of the dead on Sundays (a usual practice in mid-eighteenth-century Athos). Their avowed and radical anti-catholicism was always suspect of Calvinism and even freemasonry, just like the ideas of the larger Anabaptist group that had not been shy of proposing radical deviations from the accepted status quo. The fact that the present day stereotypical characteristic attached to the Kollyvades is that of the “defenders of immutable tradition” is both eloquent testimony of their own success and proof of their opponents’ ineptitude. The latter were well established in the Church hierarchy and probably lacked the motivation for serious ideological engagement.

  • 71 Parios 1996, pp. 85‑96. Also, cf. Parios 1988, pp. 71‑87, and Arabatzis 2004‑2005, pp. 144‑156.
  • 72 Hobsbawm, Ranger 1993.

39Athanasius from Paros wrote one of his numerous unpublished works, probably to answer such accusations of innovation. In this, he defined tradition distinguishing it from “uses and customs”71. Tradition was seen as the sum of practices and habits stemming from such sources as the Works and the Acts of Apostles, depicted in the patristic texts. Tradition is thus partly “unwritten”, transmitted through the patristic literature, whose bearers and keepers the Kollyvades considered themselves to be, and intended to make others believe it too. Paraphrasing the work of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, one can posit that Athanasius was not simply concerned with the Invention of Tradition, but the invention of the concept of Tradition72.

  • 73 Geertz 1964, pp. 213‑218.

40Kollyvades did not represent a simple conservative reaction to the challenge of modernity as embodied by the Greek and Balkan Enlightenment. They were the yeast of a potent movement of re‑traditionalisation, as defined by Clifford Geertz73. The “return to Tradition” entails the reshuffling of hierarchies and the re‑interpretation of dogmatic foundations, regulations and rituals in order to both oppose and appropriate intruding modernity. Kollyvades were consequently themselves a modernist movement, and an effort to upgrade their own position as self-acclaimed bearers and keepers of tradition in the structure of distribution of symbolic capital in the ecclesiastical field. Kollyvades unsuccessfully sought to rise from a dominated position (as monks and scholars) in the Greek-Orthodox religious field to a dominant position as bearers and keepers of Tradition.

  • 74 Apostolopoulos 1989, pp. 43‑61 and Kitromilidis, pp. 439‑443.

41The clash with the radical republicans offered them the possibility to upgrade themselves as the most intransigent apologists of the official Church and its loyalist policy. It was an accident more than a premeditated move. Dimitris Apostolopoulos has shown that the turn of the century was a time when high prelates, Phanariot Aristocrats and the most prominent scholars of the Romeïc community, imbued by the lofty ideas and generous values of the earlier more conservative and timid versions of Greek Enlightenment, were reluctant to radically castigate and ostracise the younger and radical wing of this cultural movement74. Athanasius and his companions did not hesitate to fill the gap and reap the advantages of becoming the bona-fide defenders of the Church. Guarding the symbolic frontiers and fighting the external threat can be the royal road to domination inside the field. Religious activists of this kind – wandering monks and preachers, rigorist teachers and pastors – were able to infiltrate deeply into the body of believers and mobilise them through example, sermons and education in the vernacular. This had a twofold consequence: it secured the preservation and reproduction of the Greek-Orthodox congregation by opposing the aggressive proselytization of competing creeds and confessions (from Islam and Catholicism to benevolent agnosticism or radical anti-clericalism). Simultaneously, it legitimised the religious activists as staunch defenders and embodiments of the true faith and helped them mobilise support for the reconfiguration of the distribution of power in the ecclesiastical hierarchy in their favour.

  • 75 Manuel Gedeon correctly underlines that this proves that the Synod was still suspicious of Nicodem (...)
  • 76 Tzogas 1969, p. 172.

42Nonetheless, the ruling elite of the Romeïc community (prelates and Phanariots) had never fully acknowledged them as their official spokesmen, and even less as part of the ecclesiastical dominant group. The first edition of Pedalion (the Radder), a collection of holy canons of the Church, collected by Nicodemus and Agapius, was to be printed in Leipzig in 1800. A former opponent of the Kollyvades, Theodoretus from Jannina, was charged with this task, but he took the initiative of interfering with the publication, censoring those parts that were suspect of Kollyvadic inspiration. The Holy Synod condemned this act but did nothing to correct it, or to publish the book again in its original form (the book would be printed only forty years later). Theodoretus was thinly blamed and, in 1802, he was appointed abbot of the renovated Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos, a stronghold in the next round of anti-Kollyvadic harassment in Athos in the following years (1807‑1808)75. Nicodemus was vindicated ex post facto, in 1802, by a letter of the dethroned Neophytos VII that declared all his censored views to be dogmatically sound76.

  • 77 Gedeon 1887, p. 42.
  • 78 Gedeon 1887, pp. 41‑42.

43Maybe this affair is more complex than it is usually depicted: as an allegedly arbitrary and isolated action of a monk, who was formerly hostile to Kollyvades and who (for unspecified reasons) happened to be entrusted with the mission to publish this book in Leipzig. Initially this book was a purely Kollyvadic affair. The Patriarch Neophytos VII (1798‑1801) was rather favouring the Kollyvades, who like Athanasius had proven to be the most intransigent defenders of the Church. The Collection of Nicodemus, before receiving the imprimatur was assessed by two scholars, who were none other than Athanasius and Makarios77! It is clear that they secured the energetic support of the Patriarch, in circa 1800, for their active role in fighting the radical republicans. The task of publishing the holy canons in vernacular, helping common people to access this basic collection of legal sources in the pre-industrial and pre-modern Ottoman Empire, was an integral component of Kollyvadic tactics: engaging the laymen in catechisation and liturgy. But this view did not appeal to prelates like Gerasimus of Derkoi, a former Patriarch (1794‑1797) and a teacher in the Patriarchal Academy, and Meletios of Larissa who were openly opposing this initiative on theoretical grounds78.They probably mounted a full reaction against the Kollyvades, censoring and undermining their publication.

  • 79 Agioritis 1996, pp. 172‑178.
  • 80 Gedeon 1889, vol. 2, pp. 122‑125, August 1807, Patriarchal Decision of Gregory V on the memorial s (...)
  • 81 He served as Πνευματικός του Όρους at Mt Athos.
  • 82 Gedeon 1915, p. 150 and Petit 1899, p. 331.
  • 83 These are the Declaration of Athanasius (written sometime after 1805) and the Confession of Faith (...)
  • 84 Gedeon 1889, vol. 2, pp. 152‑155, August 1819 Synodal Letter to the Abbots and monks of Mount Atho (...)

44In spite of the benevolent attitude and even the protection of some of the Patriarchs, even such a prominent figure, like Nicodemus, was targeted by his opponents, through slander, theft of correspondence and the use of false documents. The Monastic Synod of July 1807 may have fully defended Nicodemus79, nonetheless, Gregory V, obviously succumbing to the pressure of prelates and Phanariots, condemned the views of the Kollyvades in August 180780. Following this first Patriarchal decision of 1807, the newly elected patriarch Callinicus IV, in 1808 exculpated from all charges two respected athonite figures Hierotheus81 and Parthenius, suspected of favouring Kollyvades82. This final and belated revival of the dispute, obliged the ageing Athanasius and Nicodemus to write their final surviving Confessions of Faith83. Even after the death of all our protagonists, a new Decision of the synod against the Kollyvades was edited in August 181984. On Mount Athos the old dispute was not forgotten but the most prominent of the Kollyvades were not interested to rekindle it, having probably lost interest in dominating the narrow monastic arena now that the larger Greek-orthodox world lay open to them.

45Posthumously, after the Greek War of Independence, the few prominent Kollyvades were adopted by the radical and reactionary Philorthodox faction led by Constantine Oikonomou and were elevated to the rank of exemplary figures of the Greek-Orthodox Tradition. Their surviving companions and successors were for a few decades (at least until the 1852 Papoulakos revolt and the deposition of King Otto in 1862) capable of mobilising popular support against the perceived threat of modernisation implemented by the newly founded Greek Nation-State. Nonetheless, they did not represent a real political threat to the expanding state authority. In spite of the persistent suspicion of the official Church of the Kingdom of Greece, the Kollyvades were gradually incorporated into the dominant national and ecclesiastical narrative.

46Consequently, and quite paradoxically, though their original attempt to reverse their dominated position in the Greek-Orthodox religious field and their effort to dominate the monastic sub-field failed miserably, forcing them to escape the narrow Athonite arena, their “failure” helped them succeed: in addressing by other means a larger audience, they managed to carve out for themselves a dominant position as bearers and keepers of the Tradition. They ironically became themselves sources of ecclesiastical legitimation for the clerical faction that sought after 1833 to topple the submission of the Church to the modern centralised Nation-State.

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Bibliographie

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Notes

1 The Abbott of the Holy Monastery of St. Gregory on Mount Athos, the Archimandrite Georgios, describes them as: “The so‑called Kollyvades Fathers, more correctly and in the orthodox manner called Fathers of the Philokalia of the eighteenth century, renewed the hesychastic tradition in the monasteries, sketes and kellia, during the eighteenth century”. See also the remarks of the Serbian Amfilohije Radovic (Radovic 1984).

2 For the purpose of this paper, I use the expression Romeïc to refer to the Greek-Orthodox Christians in the heartland of the Empire, who were under the direct spiritual jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople and the tutelage of the Greek-Orthodox political-ecclesiastic elite (Phanariots, prelates, influential kocabaşi and merchants). I implicitly acknowledge that they have shared a common proto-national consciousness and cultural identity.

3 Tzogas 1969, p. 67.

4 Podskalsky 2005, p. 412.

5 Cf. the Introduction in Papoulidis 1974, pp. 8‑11, where the author, presenting the life and œuvre of Bishop Makarios Notaras, underlined the national and revolutionary character of the politics of the Church and of Patriarch Gregory V. It is noteworthy, that William J. Chriss who sees the Kollyvades movement as a form of anti-enlightenment, nonetheless classifies it as a nationalist (hence “modern”) reaction of the Orthodox Church to Catholic pressure.

6 Cf. Tzogas 1969, p. 67.

7 As far as I know, the Monastic Decision of the so‑called “Lavreotic excommunication” has not been published. All monks were ordered to sever any society and relation with the Kollyvades. The latter were not allowed to mount on monastic sailing vessels or mill their grain in the mills of the Monasteries.

8 Kitromilidis 1996, pp. 53‑70.

9 Makridis 1996/97. For an earlier interpretation, see Angelou 1963 and Kitromilidis 1996, p. 56.

10 In the eighteenth century, a small group of Prelates (the gerontes), sitting on Metropolitan seats neighbouring Istanbul, were officially acknowledged as permanent members of the permanent small (endimousa) Synod and even gained the privilege to hold the patriarchal seal. Closely associated to Phanariot and Veziral (ümera) Households they actually controlled the Patriarchate and led a timorous and conservative policy. Cyril V has led a strong anti-gerontic and anti-Phanariot movement that has been able to topple them for a brief period in the 1750s. Cf. Apostolopoulos 1996.

11 Podskalsky 2005, pp. 430‑431.

12 Gedeon 1883, classifies Anabaptism (and the beliefs of the Kollyvades) among the heterodox teachings (heterodidaskalies).

13 On the phenomenon of gerontismos in the eighteenth century and the powerful influence of the Phanariots on the Patriarchate, cf. Konortas 1998, pp. 127‑148. Also see Apostolopoulos 1996.

14 It has been convincingly argued that Athanasius from Paros was not hostile to teaching modern curricula per se. His main objection was that the introduction of the Frankish costumes, customs and morals, along with modern curricula, might lead to the proselytism of young Greek-Orthodox to competing Christian dogmas, cf. Makridis 1995.

15 Komninos-Ypsilantis 1870, pp. 365‑370. See, also, Papadopoulos 1952, pp. 203‑216, and Scouvaras 1967, pp. 53‑93.

16 Apostolopoulos 1996, pp. 39‑41.

17 This is at least the story of Voulgaris himself, cf. Makridis 1996/7, pp. 88‑90.

18 Kollyvades were dispersed in Hydra, Patmos, Ikaria, Sciathos, Chios and elsewhere. Nephon founded the influential and celebrated Monastery of Annunciation in Sciathos, which later was partially funded from the Bishop Makarios Notaras. Athanasius from Paros was employed as a teacher in Chios, where his friend and protector Makarios lived, cf. Tzogas 1969, pp. 133‑138. Neophytos Kavsokalivitis had also taught in the same school (1759‑63).

19 Makridis 1996/7, p. 139.

20 Neophytos Kavsokalivitis, persecuted, left Mount Athos and taught in various schools in Chios (1759‑63), Adrianople (1763-67) and the Principalities; in Brasov (1770‑76) and Bucharest (1768‑70 and 1776‑1784). He almost spent his entire life excluded from later interaction with his former companions and was silently side-stepped as paragon of the Movement. In the early 1770s he is described as having adopted a hostile stance against Athonite monks, Manafis 2000, p. 224.

21 Kosmas of Aetolia was never a part of the Movement, even though his brother the Archimadrite Chrysanthos, a teacher in Naxos, probably influenced his young student Nicodemus Kallivroutsis, the later Nicodemus Agioritis.

22 It is noteworthy that present day apologists and idolisers of the Kollyvades tend to a‑historically mix praise of Kosmas with praise for the “Saint Kollyvades”.

23 The first reign of Samuel (1763‑67) is the culmination of an effort of expansion and concentration of patriarchal power and of institutionalisation of its governing bodies. This era coincides with the incorporation of the Archbishoprics-Patriarchates of Peć and Ohrid in the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, and the official and formal recognition of the role of the Holy Synod by the Ottomans, cf. Konortas 1998, pp. 139‑141 & 217‑220.

24 The study of the unpublished correspondence of Athanasius from Paros, that has been recently studied and partially published by Manafis 2000, and Arabatzis 2006a; 2006b, changed our understanding of the events. Arabatzis has given the correct timetable for the precious documents published in Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 461‑466. For a complete bibliography of the works of Athanasius from Paros, see Arabatzis 1998.

25 Tzogas 1969, pp. 153‑156, who dates the monastic synod in April 1774. All the relevant documentation stems from his study of manuscripts written by the monastic faction opposing the Kollyvades.

26 Parios 1988, p. 32.

27 Arabatzis 2006b, p. 33 (note 18). It is probably a first variation of the Confession of Faith titled Έκθεσις, ήγουν ομολογία της αληθούς και ορθοδόξου πίστεως, γενομένη υπό των αδίκως διαβληθέντων ως καινοτόμων, προς θεοφιλή πληροφορίαν των σκανδαλιζομένων αδελφών, and published in Ouspenskij 1880, pp. 485‑495, and more recently by Theodoretus the monk as an annex in Parios 1988, pp. 115‑124. Athanasius from Paros, himself the writer of the Confession, dates it at April 3, 1774, cf. Arabatzis 1998, p. 17. Tzogas thinks that the meeting of the Kollyvades that antagonised the Monastic Synod of Kutlumus Monastery, was summoned in the Skete of Parthenius, where a Confession of Faith was adopted in early 1774, when Athanasius from Paros had already left Athos and was employed as a teacher in Salonica.

28 Parios 1988, pp. 32‑34, and Tzogas 1969, pp. 145‑152.

29 Meyer 1894, pp. 229‑231.

30 In a monastic community Typikaris was the monk responsible for the maintenance of the ritual (typikon).

31 Meyer 1894, pp. 231‑234, and Parios 1988, p. 35.

32 Meyer 1894, pp. 234‑236 (the partiarchal and synodal decision is attributed by mistake to Theodosios II).

33 Arabatzis 2006b, p. 34.

34 The list of prelates in Gedeon 1915, no 87, p. 143.

35 One may surmise that this extremist Confession was actually written or inspired directly from Neophytos.

36 Arabatzis 2006b, pp. 34‑35 (especially note 23).

37 Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 472‑473.

38 Manafis 2000, pp. 218‑224.

39 Contrary to what Charilaos Tzogas (Tzogas 1969, p. 153) has written, the Bishop Makarios Notaras had not arrived yet to Mount Athos at the time of the Monastic Synod in Kutlumus Monastery, and did not took any part in the activities of Kollyvades before 1776, cf. Arabatzis 2006a, p. 399. Nicolas Skrettas pinpoints to the clear differences of view between Neophytos Kavsokalivitis and Nicodemus Kallivroutsis/Makarios Notaras on the issue of Frequent Communion (Skrettas 2001, pp. 604‑605).

40 The expression “kat’ oikonomian” refers to flexibility shown by religious authorities of the Greek-Orthodox Church in the application of ecclesiastical and penitential rules, which are applied on an ad hoc basis.

41 Meyer 1894, pp. 236‑241. Four of the Kollyvades were excommunicted amongst them Athanasius from Paros, Christopher of Prodromos Monastery from Arta, Agapios from Cyprus and Jacob from Peloponnesus.

42 Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 480‑486.

43 Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 480‑481. Callinicus III will also fill four long pages with arguments in defence of the right to commemorate the dead on Sundays. This letter was not forgotten. Thirty years later, Nicodemus will reply, point after point, to each argument of Callinicus, cf. Agioritis 1996, pp. 137‑142.

44 Tzogas 1969, p. 165.

45 Arabatzis 2006a, p. 387.

46 This estrangement has led scholars like Paschalidis 2004, pp. 39‑42, to write that Neophytos Kavsokalivitis has never been a part of the Kollyvades.

47 Manafis 2000, pp. 209‑215.

48 Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 387‑397. Athanasius of Paros has written a letter that is almost a small essay in size and ambition, in reply to a previous comparable letter written by Sergios Macraios to Cyril from Fourna.

49 Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 388‑390. Athanasius writing to his friend and colleague Panagiotes Palamas replied only to a part of an earlier sharp criticism by Kosmas Balanos. His main interest is to defend the position that it is legitimate for scholars to publish their books anonymously.

50 It is probably thanks to the intervention of the Chiot Archon Demetrios Scanavis that Makarios was spared, cf. Arabatzis 2006a, p. 405. Skanavis was a rich merchant, acting in the service of Asma Sultan, sister of Abdulhamid I.

51 Papoulidis 1974, p. 50.

52 Agioritis 1996, pp. 109‑149 on the memorial services of the dead and the special character of Dominical Feast Days, and pp. 166‑172, on Frequent Communion.

53 Tzogas 1969, p. 168. Also cf. Gedeon 1888, vol. 1, p. 272, where the biography of Makarios Notaras, written by Athanasius of Paros, is used as primary source.

54 Tzogas 1969, pp. 128‑130. It is well known that Nicodemus made abundant and free use of Latin ecclesiastical and monastic literature, cf. Papoulidis 1970 and 1971.

55 Cyril from Fourna of Agrafa, was a teacher and a scholar that had long discussed on all matters of theology with Athanasius of Paros, but took a decisive stand against the Kollyvades and collaborated with Callinicus III in preparing the case against them, cf. his correspondence with Athanasius (Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 474‑475) and Callinicus III (Sotiropoulos 1981, pp. 476‑477). Athanasius had long tried to associate Cyril to their cause but it seems that he was ignorant of the relationship of Cyril with Callinicus III, cf. Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 404‑405. In May 1776, Cyril, Gennadius of Halep and the monk Bessarion from Rapsani, jointly secured the interception of a letter from Athanasius to Makarios that was later used against the Kollyvades in the Patriarchal Synod cf. Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 401‑404. On Bessarion from Rapsani see Valais 1995.

56 Tzogas 1969, pp. 127‑128. In the original: “φαίνεται αγνοών τί εστιν ιεροσύνη και σχήμα μετανοίας, και τάξιν αγνοών την υπό Θεού τεθείσαν. ... Ανήκει εις τον όμιλον των ου δεχομένων την ιεροσύνην, ... αφού κατά μίμησιν των καθ’ εκάστην λειτουργούντων ιερέων αυτός συνάγει το δίκαιον εκάστου χριστιανού προς την καθ’ εκάστην και συνεχή μετάληψιν”.

57 In the context of base anti-kollyvadic propaganda, the Kollyvades were accused of holding in secret holy bread in their bosom in order to consume it regularly instead of receiving frequent communion, cf. Agioritis 1996, pp. 172‑173.

58 Tzogas 1969, p. 131, and Papoulidis 1967, p. 50.

59 Gedeon 1916, 43.

60 Gedeon 1888, vol. 1, pp. 273‑274.

61 Arabatzis 2006a, pp. 390‑391. In the original conflict in the skete of Ste Anne, the accusation included an implicit condemnation of the mercantile ethos of its monks who celebrated memorial services on Sundays in order to respond to the growing demand of laymen for such religious services. The money collected this way was intended for the renovation of the skete’s church, but there was a strong (unpardonable for the Kollyvades) economic motive behind the actions of the monks of Ste Anne, cf. Parios 1988, pp. 26‑28.

62 Agioritis 1996, pp. 149‑158. It is a praise to craftsmen and manually working people, i.e. guildsmen.

63 Apostolopoulos 1996, pp. 37‑38, and Konortas 1998, p. 146.

64 Iliou 1986 and Kitromilides 1982.

65 Moskof 1979, pp. 68‑69. It is to be noted that, according to Manuel Gedeon even upper class women in Phanarion were fervently taking part for and against the two monastic factions on the question of the memorial services of the dead (Gedeon 1883, p. 596).

66 See below.

67 Meyer 1894, pp. 241‑242. The fact that his brother Christophore was the teacher of Athanasius in the Evangelist school in Smyrna had maybe influenced the decision of Partiarch Gabriel IV.

68 On the neomartyrs cf. Tzedopoulos 2002 and 2010, Zachariadou 1990‑1991, and Iliou 1995.

69 Arabatzis 2006b, p. 36.

70 Moschos 2009.

71 Parios 1996, pp. 85‑96. Also, cf. Parios 1988, pp. 71‑87, and Arabatzis 2004‑2005, pp. 144‑156.

72 Hobsbawm, Ranger 1993.

73 Geertz 1964, pp. 213‑218.

74 Apostolopoulos 1989, pp. 43‑61 and Kitromilidis, pp. 439‑443.

75 Manuel Gedeon correctly underlines that this proves that the Synod was still suspicious of Nicodemus and that the original Kollyvadic views were not accepted by it (Gedeon 1915, p. 111).

76 Tzogas 1969, p. 172.

77 Gedeon 1887, p. 42.

78 Gedeon 1887, pp. 41‑42.

79 Agioritis 1996, pp. 172‑178.

80 Gedeon 1889, vol. 2, pp. 122‑125, August 1807, Patriarchal Decision of Gregory V on the memorial services of the dead and frequent communion.

81 He served as Πνευματικός του Όρους at Mt Athos.

82 Gedeon 1915, p. 150 and Petit 1899, p. 331.

83 These are the Declaration of Athanasius (written sometime after 1805) and the Confession of Faith of Nicodemus written after July 1807.

84 Gedeon 1889, vol. 2, pp. 152‑155, August 1819 Synodal Letter to the Abbots and monks of Mount Athos.

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Référence électronique

Socrates D. Petmezas, « On the formation of an ideological faction in the Greek Orthodox Church in the second half of the eighteenth century: the Kollyvades† »Bulletin de correspondance hellénique moderne et contemporain [En ligne], 2 | 2020, mis en ligne le 23 décembre 2020, consulté le 21 janvier 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/bchmc/416 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/bchmc.416

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Socrates D. Petmezas

Deparment of History & Archaeology – University of Crete / IMS‑FoRTH

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