From the foreword of the author Petros Pizania, from the book "The forbidden books of 1821"

The first Greek political radical enlighteners appeared before the French Revolution in the early 1780s. I believe that among the forerunners of these Greek revolutionary intellectuals we must include Josephus Mosiodakas, thanks to his On the Education of Children published in Vienna in 1779, and especially thanks to the Apology of 1780.

In the same category we must include the Anonymous of 1789, and of course him Riga Feraio to School of Delicate Lovers. Those who publicly, with some publication, declared their turn to subversive choices were certainly few, but it allows us to assume that there were more who remained silent or simply did not know them - this is always the rule.

Rigas Velestinlis was a pioneer of political revolutionary action in all the Balkans. He will initially be surrounded and his example will be followed by other intellectuals, until the participation of many of them in the Friendly Society in which they represented shortly before the Revolution of 1821 17% of all known members.

The revolutions after the Bastille

The French Revolution as an example will urge many intellectuals throughout Europe to political revolutionary action, among them Rigas and his comrades.

The pre-eminent characteristic of every revolutionary in all historical periods is political action and the ideological and theoretical foundations of values ​​and goals as expressed in texts. The same was true for the Greek enlightened revolutionaries. Rigas Velestinlis, he was the first to introduce the Greek revolutionary Enlightenment into the field of political action, and this makes him the head of the pioneers in all the Balkans.

His entire work was not created to contribute to fundamental knowledge, but was speech with the sole purpose of supporting and promoting political action for freedom. Riga's text on the New Political Administration published in this volume links him to Z. Z. Rousseau and the French Revolution.

Specifically, it is an adaptation of the Constitution drawn up by the French Conventional National Assembly in June 1793 under the rule of the Jacobins.

This Constitution, although it was not implemented in France, inspired many revolutionaries and for many years mainly because it legalized the state that had been gradually implemented since August 1792 and after the execution of the French king.

It is about the People's Republic (République) what the constitutionalists rather awkwardly call a de-reigned democracy. The enlightened radicalism of this Constitution is explicitly expressed in the first article already from the opening sentence: The purpose of society is common happiness.

Riga's initiatives

The enormous power that the French Revolution radiated propelled the formation of an informal International of ideologues, organizations and followers throughout the European continent and partly the American one. One of the first to realize this and voluntarily joined ideologically was Rigas Feraios.

Rigas, anti-obscurantist, anti-Ottoman, freedom fighter already before 1789, understood the great importance of organized political action and ideological incitement. And for this, apparently, he formed his own revolutionary organization and began his political enlightenment activity. The New Political Administration which he managed to publish in 1797 was, therefore, a political and ideological manifesto, a plan for the political future of the Balkan peoples.

Rigas was planning something between a commonwealth and a small multinational republic on the borders of the Balkans that would include all the respective populations. He introduced, as the observant reader can perceive, Popular sovereignty (articles 25th and 26th) which even then Rigas calls "empire" meaning, as it follows from the context, popular political self-government.

The second strand of Riga's strategy, pervasive in his work, was purely political. It was about the alliance with the powerful state that would support a similar strategy for the Balkans. It was reasonable at that time to include in his political thinking the search for an alliance with a strong European state, either looking towards the permanent enemy of the Ottoman Empire, Russia, or towards the emerging liberators of the European peoples, the French revolutionaries, who, after all, had advanced until the I arrived in 1797.

The Enlightenment of the Greeks

The strategy of liberating all the Balkan peoples from Ottoman rule, as conceived and sought to be implemented by Rigas, was quickly overtaken by historical developments. At a time when French troops were even starting battles with the slogan "Long live the nation", the multi-ethnic state of Riga was quickly overrun.

The first was Adamantios Korais who nationalized the plan for freedom. Only the Greeks have the historical, economic and cultural conditions to win their freedom, he argued in 1803. But for this they must not only identify, but even more organically join Napoleon's troops. Korais had rejected the multinational character of Riga's Balkan republic but retained the issue of international alliances.

The Greeks could only ally with a great power to support their liberation – if it did not liberate them itself. And revolutionary France was for Korais, not just a opportune choice but the only existing strategic choice for the Greeks.

However, the key to the formulation of the political strategy for the freedom of the Greeks that was also adopted during the Revolution of 1821 was captured by the Anonymous editor of the Hellenic Prefecture.

With his book he urged the Greeks to rely on their own strength, and from this point of view he named, judged and counted the social forces that could raise the Revolution of 1821. At the opposite ends of the freedom of the Greeks he placed the orthodox clergy of the Patriarchate such as and the Phanariotes whom he considered "collaborators of tyranny" for his own benefit.

In particular, he defined the officials of the clergy as "ignorant [...] and corrupt priesthood". Thus, the Anonymous with the Greek Prefecture formed in the context of the Greek Enlightenment the most organized foundation of both the political strategy for freedom and the social criticism towards the various power groups as well as the population of the humble New Greeks.

The unknown (until now) Livello

The texts written or translated by Greek intellectuals in the Revolution after the Prefecture focused on ideological and social criticism and the cultivation of thought, all with the perspective of the good of freedom.

An important example is Livello against the High Priests which was published in manuscript in 1810 by an anonymous author and has since been published in its entirety for the first time in the book "The Prohibited Books of 1821" (published by Iwrite - Lux Orbis Series). This text, although a manuscript, must have been widely circulated, and for us today it is valuable for many reasons. The first is that it was compiled in the core of the Enlightenment spirit, Greek and European.

He quotes: "Two great and terrible evils have always provoked the misery of the human race, the Amathea and the Superstition. And the source of these two evils is social and the author names it: The harshest scourge of the Genus {of the Greeks} are the High Priests". The anonymous author of Livello is shown by his text to be an immovable rationalist.

He describes in a structured and with exceptional knowledge the hoarding practices of the Orthodox clerical officials at the expense of the Greek population during the Ottoman rule. These practices were precisely based on ignorance and superstition and of course fear both of the things after death as they believed, as well as fear of earthly things. Fear of the earthly for the simple reason that the orthodox clerical aristocracy was organically embedded in and represented the Ottoman state. He therefore exercised a double power as we have said, both in the name of the conquerors and in the name of faith. And he used these as means of power for his own benefit as well as to impose servitude which he projected as a punishment coming from God.

These issues which I very briefly mention here have been resolved by scientific research. But the anonymous author at the time when he compiled Livello possessed an extremely thorough knowledge of the mechanisms of action, flattery and exploitation practiced by the majority of the officials of the orthodox clergy in their flock, from the rank of archimandrite to that of the metropolitan, following the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarchate.

However, we know that out of these few hundred officials of the orthodox clergy, a few, about thirty, but important ones who were already organized in Philiki Etaireia will stand out. I am referring to the fighters in the Revolution of 1821 such as the Bishop of Old Patras Germanos, the Bishop of Salona Isaias, the Bishop of Bresthenis Theodoritos, etc.

It means anti-clericalists against the then church, i.e. against the Orthodox Patriarchate. In fact, Palaion Germanos of Patras, the most lucid and politically significant hierarch, formulated shortly before his death in May 1826, after the Revolution, the same criticism as the editor of Livellos and also with the Anonymous of the Hellenic Prefecture regarding the spiritual and educational status of the Orthodox priesthood during the Ottoman period.

The pre-Libello era

Before and after Livello, many independent editions of texts were published as well as many articles in the journals of the Greek Enlightenment. Indicative of a text somewhat ignored by historiography. It was released in 1817 and was a simple, original and militant manifesto that analyzed the revolutionary ideology of the time, entitled Essay on Patriotism.

It is a book of sixty-four pages, where patriotism is analyzed as the revolutionary ideology of the time from the perspective of the Greeks. A year later, one of the fundamental philosophical works of the European Enlightenment was published for the first time in Greek, namely Rousseau's book On the Beginnings and the Foundations of Inequality among Humans, translated by Filikos Spyridon N. Valetta under a pseudonym.

And in 1819 another very important original Greek pamphlet entitled Reflections of Crito. This is the third text of this volume. The Reflections refer to the issues of education and, more broadly, of education, issues which were constantly and with intensity at the heart of the activity of the Greek enlightened intellectuals.

"The loss of true learning, i.e. of thinking and ethics, brings destruction, both to individuals and to nations. […] the lack of patriotism, the zeal, that is, of the common interest, which, noble child of freedom, leaves when days of servitude have tarnished the country, and leaves the hearts only to the passion of personal interest, passion and characteristic of savages".

The author of this text, an anti-clerical, radical modernist, is in conflict with the Orthodox metropolis of Adrianople because he wasted huge sums on publicity and political consolidation projects but almost nothing on educational projects. And he proposes an innovative, then, method of teaching the common letters, a method which indeed could and dreamed of being applied en masse:

"...However, the biggest and most active thing, [...] wanted to be the introduction of the co-teaching method in our common so-called schools, where the children of all the people, and therefore the whole nation, can learn to write, to read, in six months, to count properly..."

The birth of a new world

The Greek intellectuals of the Enlightenment, revolutionary and politically conservative, created our own Enlightenment, the Greek Enlightenment. They were one of the crucial social groups for the development of New Hellenism.

They were shaping the new world in the field of knowledge and ideas, they were gradually but catalytically changing the educational, ideological, ultimately symbolic load of the small new Greek worlds. During the 18th century they created within the empire a relatively independent field of secular knowledge and historical self-reference, a form which was a precursor to the freedom of the Greeks. This social group of educated scientists, teachers, doctors, grammarians was gradually formed from the middle of the 17th century and especially throughout the 18th.

The reason why it was able to have an impact was that its members themselves determined the content of their books, teaching and in general their action, despite their dependence on merchant funding. In a few words, the Greek modern intellectuals maintained strong autonomy in defining their goals - for this reason we define them here as intellectuals and not as scholars in general. Such intellectuals may not have been many compared to European societies, they may still have the disadvantage of starting from low conditions to create everything by relying on supporters and their own strength.

Also, Greek modern intellectuals addressed societies with closed intellectual resources, much more intensely and stiflingly theocratic than European ones.

However, the intellectual and ideological divisions they caused in parts of the Balkan, especially Greek urban societies were historically irreversible divisions. Schools, books, teaching, conflicts of ideas, issues of the Greek language, social criticism formed a space for freedom of thought and its public political expression. The formation of New Hellenism and the Greek Revolution of 1821 cannot be understood without them.

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