"Nothing has the right to be placed above historical reassessment and revision, if the priorities of national survival, compatible with the times, may require it. National identity cannot be fossilized. It is a re-composition under constant review and re-evaluation, in order to emerge as functional and re-creative".
Panagiotis Gennimatas (1949-2022)
Three Hierarchs
The Three Hierarchs & the ideological direction of the time
The multi-page research of Eleni Kalesis1 highlighted a series of important problems that the Ministry of Education (and Religious Affairs) of our country has been trying (?) to solve for the last forty years, with the ultimate goal of strengthening secularism in subjects such as Religious Studies and History, so that Greece harmonizes with the corresponding European standards. In order to assess the level of Education of a people, one must look for its standards.
And in order to achieve such a thing, he must focus his interest on the middle of the 19th century, a period in which three fathers of the Church who lived during the first post-Christian centuries, the so-called Three Hierarchs, began to be promoted as patrons of Greek Education.
Under what circumstances did this happen? Who and why gave such an ideological direction, always in relation to the social and political events of the time?
These questions are answered, through her work, on the following pages by Anna Mandylaras, assistant professor of Modern Greek History at the University of Ioannina, one of the leading contemporary academics in the field of the study of the 19th century in the Greek and Greek-speaking areas.
Nevertheless, the relevant research requires even greater depth. Thus, making a new journey through time is deemed equally imperative. A journey that, this time, will have to do with the investigation and analysis of the philosophical positions of the three aforementioned scholars. What is the relationship between John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great with the concept of Greekness? Is their pedagogical vision consistent with modern educational methods and concepts? Are their opinions being detected, which would bring the average Greek of the 21st century to an embarrassing... embarrassment?
Ο Markos Dendrinos, professor of Informatics and History & Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Attica, Anna Griva, Dr. of the Department of Italian Language and Literature at EKPA, and Antonis Lazarou, historical researcher, clarify the landscape, offering a crystal clear picture for the discerning reader.
Back to the present
And finally, a third and necessary station, with our return to the present. How exactly does the modern Greek state deal with the celebrations for the Three Hierarchs? What is the semiotics of values towards these three persons nowadays and what are the legislative changes that the Greek governments are making in recent years? In this case, the key contribution of the teacher was deemed necessary Dr. Eleni Kalesis, through the analytical data and sources she presents in her own text.
The five above-mentioned works are clothed in the form of an epimeter by the popular writer Petros Tatsopoulos, an ardent friend of the Lux Orbis Series, who at every opportunity, without fear or passion, publicly states his positions on the need for a new Enlightenment in our country, standing bravely against the monster of ignorance and obscurantism.
The confrontation with the Church
It is a fact that the chapter "Three Hierarchs" has been an intense point of social confrontation in recent decades. To those who deal with the field of the eternal conflict between Hellenism and Christianity, the formation of the new Greek identity or issues concerning the relations between the State and the Church in our country, the annual online posts are probably familiar (especially as we approach the end of January ) with quotations of specific sayings of the three Fathers of the Church, which seem to point their arrows against Hellenism. Usually, those who form a different point of view talk about a piecemeal use of these passages, in order to achieve a desired result.
A group of six specialized scientists and scholars analyze the historical data in depth, finally delivering to the reading public an editorial result through which useful and tangible conclusions emerge about the origins and sources of inspiration of modern Greek Education.
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