America, Russia and the Birth of Modern Greece

The Historical Review/La Revue Historique, 2020

Orthodox Christianity in 21st Century Greece, 2016

The Historical Review/La Revue Historique, 2020

This article seeks to examine the construction of the notion of Europe not from a West–East perspective but from a more complex geographical and conceptual vantage point, including the north and the south in relation to the West and East and, more specifically, from the point of view of the Ggreek orthodox and Russian worlds in the postnapoleonic era. Following the political, religious and intellectual activity of two expatriates and close friends, Alexander Sturdza and Konstantinos Oikonomos, it explores how the idea of Europe was visited and how these two intellectuals and politicians negotiated and renegotiated to what extent their respective communities (Russian and Greek) were part of Europe, with religion as the central axis and the notions of the Orthodox world and Orthodox East in the arsenal of both. The first decades of the nineteenth century brought Russia and the Greeks to the forefront of the European scene. First, Russia, in the wake of its military campaigns against N...

Public Orthodoxy, 2022

In light of the Russian War in Ukraine, and the relation of the Orthodox Church to Russian nationalism, this essay looks at the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-1921 and considers whether the Hellenism of then is comparable to the Russian World of today (as some critics of The Declaration on the Russian World Teaching alleged). Concurrently, it asks, what is the relation of Hellenism to Orthodoxy? If Hellenism takes the form of revanchist attempts to restore the Byzantine Empire, then it can easily commit the same sins as imperial Russia. But if Hellenism is understood instead as the Greek concept of philoxenia, then it is not only compatible with Orthodoxy but integral to it.

Erytheia: Revista de estudios bizantinos y neogriegos, 2006

This paper analysis the growth of interest to the Byzantine heritage of the Crimean Peninsula after its annexation by Russia in 1783. The cases of “cave towns,” Prince Vladimir’s baptism, and alleged Rus’ raid on the Crimea in the eleventh century allows to trace how late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries intellectual travellers and historians used to discuss narrative sources’ accounts and material monuments related to the Byzantine past of the Crimea. Conceptualizing the Crimean Peninsula as a part of Byzantine heritage, they tried to make its history a component part of complicated narratives, which covered the entire history and civilization of Russia. Some of the ideas produced in the period in question, such as those related to the origin of “cave monasteries” by runaway Byzantine monks, to eleventh-century Rus’ attack on Kafa, or to the Crimea’s especial role for Russian religion and culture appeared to be extraordinary strong and survived in scholarly and public discourses to these days.

Final international workshop for research group B-5-3 of Exc 264 Topoi, Berlin. Program now online at: http://www.topoi.org/event/36201/

n 1998, Theodoros Pangalos, Greece's Foreign Minister attended an EU Conference of otherwise little note in Brussels. He was half asleep during the sessions until the then President of the Dutch Parliament rose to speak about the common European heritage. The Dutchman proclaimed that a common cultural history united Europe: beginning with feudalism, followed by the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Counter-reformation, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. This history differentiated Europeans from non-Europeans, a category which the unctuous Dutchman obviously deemed unworthy of membership. Pangalos suddenly came awake and leaped to his feet to state, in his normal colorful fashion, that the Dutchman had just insulted Greece. Greece had indeed lived through feudalism. It had come to Greece in the form of the Fourth Crusade, the sacking of Constantinople, and the dismembering of the country that virtually depopulated Greece. Pangalos apparently went on to eviscerate the Dutchman. He described the Renaissance as created by Greek scholars who fled the Turkish conquest. As for the Reformation and Counter Reformation; those were internal civil wars of the Papacy. No one seems to have memorialized Pangalos' comments on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution as his Greek diplomats cringed and mostly tried to quiet him down. Pangalos' ranting was more or less on point and, in fact, historically quite accurate. But the EU officials present, locked into the notion that Western civilization (quite narrowly defined) provided the gold standard for the world to try to emulate while the history and culture of others rated only academic interest made fun of