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Greek-Serbian Relations
in the Age of Nation-Building
NATIONAL HELLENIC RESEARCH FOUNDATION
INSTITUTE OF HISTORICAL RESEARCH
SECTION OF NEOHELLENIC RESEARCH
Edited by
Paschalis M. Kitromilides and Sophia Matthaiou
ATHENS 2016
G-S R
A N-B
© Institute of Historical Research
National Hellenic Research Foundation
Vas. Constantinou 48, Athens 116 35
Greece
tel.: (+30) 210 7273619
fax: (+30) 210 7246212
e-mail: iie@eie.gr
ISBN 978-960-9538-50-3
Table of Contents
P. M. K, Preface 9
P. M. K, e Historical Substance of Greek-
Serbian Relations 11
Ι. D R
D T. B, e Serbian-Greek Alliances 1861-1918 21
L P. R, Serbian-Greek Relations and the Question
of the National Liberation Movement
(British Views from Belgrade) 65
II. C P
Č A, e Fourteenth Duke 95
M S, Parliamentary Government in Serbia
and Greece during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century:
Constitutional eory and Practice 103
M H, Prophetic Structures of the Ottoman-
ruled Orthodox Community in Comparative Perspective:
Some Preliminary Observations 121
III. S A C R
I K, Les Serbes et les Monténégrins chez
Constantinos Paparrigopoulos 151
D S. K, e Greek Queen. A Case Study of an Inn 163
S M, e Greco-Serbian Identity of the
Koumanoudis Family 179
S L R, ‘‘Serbian Athens’’ and
‘‘Serbian Sparta’’ at the Level of Political Discourse:
Hellenic Names and Serbian Towns 195
T C
V P, Orthodox Christianity and National
Rivalries. Relations between Serbia and the Ecumenical
Patriarchate in the Vilayets of Kosovo and Monastir
1878-1903 211
L S, e Holy Virgin the Unwithering Rose and
the Sacrice of Abraham in Greek and Serbian Painting
(Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries) 233
I 245
PREFACE
I hope I will be allowed, in opening this collection, to begin on a slightly
personal note. When I took over the duties of the director of the Institute
for Neohellenic Research of Greece’s National Research Foundation in
the year 2000, I had in mind some objectives that could make up the
components of a strategy for the Institute’s work in the following years.
One of those objectives was to develop on a more systematic basis the
Institute’s ties with its corresponding organizations in Greece’s Balkan
neighbours and thus enhance the scholarly dialogue between the
academic communities of Southeastern Europe. is I thought was
imperative at a time of signicant changes and reorientations in the
Northern Balkan countries a decade aer the collapse of communist
dictatorships. Greece, a member of the European Union since 1981,
could contribute in substantive ways to our neighbours’ eort to open
up to the world, modernize and charter their own European trajectories.
Until the changes of the years 1989-1990 in Eastern and Southeastern
Europe, Greece’s academic and research ties and exchanges with our
Balkan neighbours were mostly transacted by academic institutions in
essaloniki, primarily by the Institute for Balkan Studies.
I thought that in view of the prospects of a broader dialogue opened
by democratization and liberalization in our neighbours, the country’s
National Research Foundation should assume a role in this activity.
is was the logic behind the inauguration in the very rst year of my
directorship of the Greek-Balkan symposia hosted by the Institute for
Neohellenic Research and addressed primarily not to well established
authorities who had dominated intra-Balkan academic activities in the
past, but to a younger generation of researchers.
e rst symposium was convoked in 2000 and focused on
Greek-Romanian relations. e second symposium met in 2008 and
examined Greek-Bulgarian literary and intellectual ties. Following
these two initial meetings I felt it was absolutely essential to have a
meeting with Serbia, whose dense network of diplomatic, political
P
and cultural ties with Greece formed in itself a very important chapter
in the history of Southeastern Europe. e meeting materialized in a
rather short period of time, but it would not have been possible without
the enthusiastic response to my initial idea, support and advice of
Professor Dusan J. Bataković, former Ambassador of the Republic of
Serbia in Athens and now head of the Institute for Balkan Studies of
the Serbian Academy of Sciences. His support and advice have been
invaluable for the successful completion of this project. e meeting
took place in September 2010 in Athens and the present collection
brings together a selection of the revised papers.
I am sure that there is still scope for further meetings of this nature
to carry on and expand the tradition of Greek-Balkan symposia at
the National Hellenic Research Foundation. e further exploration
of Greek-Serbian relations on various levels of analysis and by an
expanding community of specialists from both countries is not only
necessary and desirable but possesses a considerable potential to
contribute to a serious enrichment of the respective historiographical
traditions through comparative analysis.
In organizing and publishing the rst two Greek-Balkan symposia
I was fortunate to have the help of Anna Tabaki, Professor at the
University of Athens and a former member of the Institute for
Neohellenic Research with great experience in Greek-Balkan scholarly
exchanges. For the Greek-Serbian symposium I relied on the fruitful
collaboration of Sophia Mathaiou, a member of the Institute of
Historical Research/NHRF with a special interest in Greek-Serbian
intellectual ties. Constantina Simonetatou and Dimitra Regli have
expertly produced in-house the proofs of the book.
I cannot but express my wish and hope that the diculties Greece
is going through at the moment will not cause the dialogue on our
shared history in Southeastern Europe to be abandoned. I hope that
the academic and research communities will nd the moral strength
and the ingenuity to keep this dialogue open and lively against all odds.
January 2016
Paschalis M. Kitromilides
M H
Prophetic Structures of the Ottoman-ruled Orthodox
Community in Comparative Perspective:
Some Preliminary Observations
In the path-breaking work of Traian Stoianovich, three essays are
devoted to the study of millenarianism in the Ottoman-ruled Balkans:
an article on the millenarian beliefs of the South Slavs in 1969,
1
one
subchapter on the relation of millenarianism to the revolutionary
ideals of the Enlightenment in 1994,
2
and nally, in 1995, a chapter on
millenarian movements in the Balkans and Asia Minor between the
sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries.
3
Having partially dealt with
Jewish millenarianism in what is perhaps his most celebrated essay,
4
Stoianovich went on to examine the millenarian beliefs of the Ottoman-
ruled Slavic-speaking Orthodox all the while drawing comparisons with
similar ideas wielding inuence over the Greek and Turkish-speaking
peoples at the time. What brings the three essays together is the argument
that millenarianism (or millenarism, millennialism or chiliasm, as this
social phenomenon is also known) was important in facilitating the
advance of revolutionary agendas among the Balkan peoples during
1 Traian Stoianovich, “Les structures millenaristes sud-slaves aux XVIIe et
XVIIIe Siècles”, Actes du Premier Congrès International des Études Balkaniques
et Sud-est Européenes, vol. III, Soa, 1969, pp. 809-819 (reprint in: Between East
and West: e Balkan and the Mediterranean Worlds, vol. IV: Material Culture and
Mentalités: Land, Sea, Destiny, New Rochelle-New York: A. D. Caratzas, 1995, pp.
1-13).
2 Traian Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds: the First and Last Europe, New York:
Sharpe, 1994, pp. 168-176.
3 Traian Stoianovich, “Prospective: ird and Fourth Levels of History”, Be-
tween East and West: e Balkan and the Mediterranean Worlds, vol. IV: Material
Culture and Mentalités: Land, Sea, Destiny, New Rochelle-New York: A. D. Carat-
zas, 1995, pp. 93-113.
4 Traian Stoianovich, “e Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant”, Between
East and West: e Balkan and the Mediterranean Worlds, vol. II: Economies and
Societies, New Rochelle-New York: A. D. Caratzas, 1995, pp. 1-77.
M H
the long period of Ottoman rule, and even in the late eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, the age of Enlightenment and nationalism.
is argument came to intersect with my own research, thereby
providing a point of departure for the present inquiry. I have argued
elsewhere that Greek nationalism made progress within the Ottoman-
ruled Christian communities thanks to the popularity of the Byzan-
tine and Post-Byzantine prophetic tradition.5 In this chapter I make
a tentative attempt to set South Slavic and Greek prophetic expecta-
tions in a comparative perspective using as a point of departure Stoi-
anovich’s thesis on millenarism in the Ottoman-ruled Balkans. I seek
to reinforce some of his arguments and to qualify some others. I share
his general point that modernity did not reduce all pre-modern lega-
cies to political irrelevance. Yet I argue that these legacies would have
been incapable of increasing the resonance of revolutionary ideology
among the mass, as Stoianovich suggests, had they not been reinter-
preted so as to conform with modern needs and purposes. I also ar-
gue that “messianism” is a more accurate term than “millenarism” for
the set of collective beliefs under scrutiny and, moreover, I propose a
common source for the South Slavic and Greek prophetic structures.
“Prophetic structures” is a term inspired by, and moulded on, Stoi-
anovich’s structures millenaristes. Stoianovich has dened “structure”
in this context as “long-lasting tradition”.
6
e denition is quite close
to what ethnosymbolism,
7
the approach that underpins theoretically
my arguments, would call a “myth” or “mythic structure”: a widely be-
lieved tale about the past reecting current needs and legitimating fu-
ture purposes.
8
As far as the empirical level of this inquiry is concerned,
I focus more on the Serbian part of the cultural spectrum which could
largely be described as “South Slavic”, and, when it comes to comparing
cases, I discuss the Greek case more extensively than the South Slavic /
5 Marios Hatzopoulos, Ancient Prophecies, Modern Predictions: Myths and
Symbols of Greek Nationalism, Ph.D. esis, University of London, 2005.
6 Stoianovich, “Prospective”, p. 93.
7 Anthony D. Smith, Ethnosymbolism and Nationalism: A Cultural Approach,
London: Rontledge, 2009.
8Anthony D. Smith, e Antiquity or Nations, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004,
p. 34.
P S O C
Serbian one. Admittedly, I have more to say about the former due to my
research.
Stoianovich, on his part, lays more emphasis on the Serbian
case.
Despite my forays into Serbian his
tory, I have not been able to es-
tablish another (English-speaking) approach on early modern Serbian
millenarism than his own.
e Serbian and Greek revolutions, for all their dierencies in ori-
gin, scope, and development were the rst to erupt in the Ottoman-
ruled Balkans. ere is still much work to be done if we are to have a
better understanding of any possible linkage between revolutionary
Enlightenment and the movements in the Balkans that Stoianovich
calls “millenarian” and which, in my view, should be called “messian-
ic”. Research into these movements is a risky venture. Protagonists
have oen le behind nothing but a faint trace, allowing just a glimpse
of the way they thought and acted. Sometimes, however, the surviving
evidence is relatively less scattered and relatively less insucient. It is
for this reason that I decided to focus mainly on two among the cases
Stoianovich brings to light: on the Serbian side the case of Stephan
the Little and on the Greek side the case of Dionysios Philosophos or
Skylosophos. I will put forth his arguments rst and try to comple-
ment his thesis with further analysis in case some facets are not as
elaborated as they ought to be. Finally I make some critical remarks,
followed by my suggestions.
Great Expectations
Right from the outset, Stoianovich makes clear that millenarian beliefs
were shared cultural patterns in the early modern Balkans and Asia Mi-
nor, developing a characterictic “couleur locale” for each people. His dis-
cussion starts from the ruling Ottomans. Even when their military might
and power had not plummeted, the Ottomans mysteriously feared that
their rule was coming to end. e decade of the 1590s, which coincided
with the year 1000 of the Hejira, played a major role in this sentiment, as
members of the Muslim elites were see
ing the world replete with avarice
and impiety and reckoned that the time of Judgment was nigh. Rebel-
lion against central authority had by then spread across the European
and Asian regions of the Ottoman Empire, while imperial resources of
M H
money and manpower were stretched to the limit. Anatolia was con-
vulsed by the so-called Celali rebellions, a series of armed uprisings
against central authority by various local contenders, the most promi-
nent among whom was one Karayazici Abdülhalim. In early 1598, Ka-
rayazici (meaning the “Black Scrivener”) proclaimed to his followers
that the Prophet Muhammad had appeared to him in a dream and
granted him the right to judge and rule on earth. Gathering the dis-
aected from many walks of life, Karayazici formed a motley, if ini-
tially eective, army. Encouraged by military success, he established a
structure of government appointing dedicated followers to high posts.
en Karayazici took a big step forward laying a direct claim to central
power. His assertion was motivated by chiliasm. Convinced, as he was,
for his divine mission to reign over the House of Osman, he appointed
one of his men to the oce of Grand Vizier. Not before long the law-
ful occupier of the Ottoman throne, an enraged Mehmed III, decided
to bring the game to an end: he had him ruthlessly chased up to the
mountains above the Black Sea, where poor Karayazici nally met his
fate under unknown circumstances.9
Roughly at the same time, matters were equally intricate for the sub-
jugated Christian communities in the European part of the crisis-ridden
empire. In the 1590s dissatised Christians rose in rebellion in dierent
places and in various ways. Uprisings broke out in the principalities of
Transylvania, Wallachia and Moldavia,
10
as well as in the rural districts
around Belgrade. In the latter, it has to be noted, the revolt’s leader was
literally intangible as local Christians longed for the messianic return
of their St Sava, who was prophesied to appear and deliver them from
Muslim rule. To this extraordinary claim the Porte reacted in an ex-
9 Stoianovich, “Prospective”, pp. 94-96. Cf. Caroline Finkel, Osman’s Dream:
the Story of the Ottoman Empire 1300-1923, New York: Basic Books, 2005, pp. 180-
182.
10 For the 1590s uprisings in the Danubian principalities see Radu G. Păun,
“Enemies within: Networks of Inuence and the Military Revolts against the Ot-
toman Power (Moldavia and Wallachia, Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries)”, Gábor
Kármán & Lovro Kunčević (eds), e European Tributary States of the Ottoman
Empire in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2013, pp.
209-249.
P S O C
ceptional manner: it rst proclaimed jihad and then ordered St Sava’s
bones to be removed to Belgrade from the monastery where they were
kept. ere, the bones were burned in public, making plain to everyone
that St Sava would never return to bring deliverance to the Christians.
11
It is in this light that Stoianovich goes on to suggest that the chiliasm of
one human group could go against the chiliasm of another.
12
St Sava –the princely founder of a Serbian archbishopric in the
thirteenth century– was not the only one who was expected to return
and deliver the Orthodox Slavs from Muslim rule. South Slavic
traditions spoke also about the return of another messianic gure
known as Prince, or Kraljević, Marko. According to history, Marko was
a fourteenth century Christian King who ended up a Sultan’s vassal.
According to legend, however, he is an immortal prince with a divinely-
ordained mission: sleeping deep inside a cave near his fortress at Prilep,
or alternatively on a secret isle, he waits for the time to strike (kucne
cas).
13
at is to say, he will rise to lead the Serbs and other Christians
against the Turks, driving them across the blue sea whence they had
11 Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds, pp. 168-169; cf. Stevan Pavlowitch, Serbia: e
History behind the Name, London: Hurst, 2002, p.18.
12 Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenaristes”, p. 811.
13 Save for his messianic dimension Marko is also known (and rather more
widely perhaps nowdays) as a folk hero of the South Slavic balladry. Marko’s chiv-
alric achievements, comparable to those of the Byzantine Digenes Akritas, the
Spanish El Cid, or the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, are standard theme in Serbian and
Bulgarian folk literatures. For the heroic gure of Prince Marko in the Bulgarian
folk literature see the proceedings of the conference organized by ACRINET re-
search team: Fouli Papageorgiou (ed.), Κραλί Μάρκο ο ήρωας υπερασπιστής των
συνόρων [Krali Marko the Hero Defender of the Borders], Athens: ACRINET,
2004. e work of Tatyana Popović, on the other hand, lays emphasis on the Ser-
bian folk literature: Prince Marko: e Hero of South Slavic Epics, New York: Syra-
cuse University Press, 1988. In this work Popović focuses almost exclusively on the
knightly encounters of Marko leaving little space for his messianic dimension – no
more than a brief note in the conclusions: “While the people maintained a wishful
prophecy about Prince Marko’s immortality, that he is asleep and will awake when
his people need him, this myth has remained strong for more than six hundred
years”. See ibid. p. 181. Apparently, Prince Marko has attracted more attention as
hero than messiah.
M H
once come.
14
e name “Marko” in Serbian means literally “black man”
and derives from the terms “Mrak(o)”, “Mrk(oje)”, or “Mrk(onja)”, all
of which have to do with darkness. A mid-seventeenth century Serbian
prophecy, known as the Prophecy of Stanj, written around the time of
the social stir created by the self-styled Jewish messiah Sabbatai Sevi,
15
speaks about the advent of a Christian messianic gure in the guise of a
black or dark-faced man, crni čovjek, who will be accompanied by a man
or creature named Crnokapa (one wearing a black cap) and another one
named Crnogaća (one wearing a black kilt), or alternatively, he himself
will wear a black cap and a black kilt. e man, continues the prophecy,
will “liberate many Serbians” and make “the Turks [to] disappear from
the face of the earth”.
16
e idea enjoyed a wide vogue persisting for
the next two centuries in the South Slavic Orthodox communities.
Some men dared to take up the role of the predestined liberator for
themselves. e best known case in this vein is perhaps that of Stephen
the Little (Scepan Mali).
Stephen rose up from obscurity around 1766, in the area of Cat-
taro (Kotor), in Montenegro, then a dominion of Venice, and soon
succeeded in gathering around him many Montenegrin warriors.
14 Stoianovich, “From Re-Volution to Revolution”, p. 169. Popular faith in the
messianic qualities of Marko was very strong during the 1912 Balkan War. Serbian
infantry overpowered superior Ottoman troops and captured the historic fortress
of Marko in Prilep in the belief that the hero had risen up and guided personally
the attack; see the rst-hand account of the episode in Popović, Prince Marko, pp.
xvi-xvii. e populavity of Marko among Serbian populace attracted the attention
of the then young Stephanos Koumanoudis, later Professor at the University of
Athens, who noted in his personal diary (December 8 1840) that the picture of
Marko hangs on the wall of every Serbian barbershop; see Sophia Matthaiou (ed.)
“Ηερολόγιον 1837-1845” [Diary 1837-1845], S. Matthaiou & P. Karellos (eds),
Στεφάνου Κουμανούδη ανέκδοτα κείμενα 1837-1845 [Stephanos Koumanoudis’
Unpublished Writings 1837-1845], Athens: INR/NHRF, 2010, p. 106.
15 It is perhaps noteworthy that Sabbatai Sevi having lived most of his life in
other parts of the Ottoman empire was eventually exiled in the area of present-day
Montenegro where he nally died in ca 1676. On the man’s life and action see the
renowned study of Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: e Mystical Messiah, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976.
16 Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds, p. 169; Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenar-
istes”, p. 812.
P S O C
Stephen, it seems, was very eective against local factions and vendet-
tas. His was a message of harmony and moderation: he staged a series
of communal assemblies where he launched a process of reconcilia-
tion of the conicting Montenegrin clans. His inner aim was to chan-
nel their energies against the rule of the Ottomans. Having appropri-
ated the sacred name of medieval Serbian kings –for “Stephen” was
not his real name– the man went further assuming royal manners. Ru-
mours quickly spread that he was actually Peter III, the dead husband
of Catherine the Great, even though he insisted on describing himself
as “Stephen, little with the little, good with the good, wicked with the
wicked”. Interestingly, Stephen would always appear in public with a
black cap on his head.17
Ever present at a latent level, the sort of expectations we are
considering, and which Stoianovich calls “millenarian”, did not cease
to persist at the time when the Enlightenment and nationalism were
leaving their imprints on South-East Europe. Stoianovich does suggest
that “on the eve of the Serbian social and national revolution […] a
premonitory religious movement of revival and transformation” was
widely prevailing.18 e old myth of the sleeping King who would
appear at the foretold time to deliver his people from oppression was
fused with the Enlightenment-inspired idea of liberation. It was in
this context that the popular mind came to endow the leaders of both
Serbian uprisings (1804-1813 and 1815) with prophetic and messianic
qualities. Given the pre-existing traditions about the “black man”, the
messianic qualities of Karageorge Petrović were evident, if anywhere,
in his very name (Crn Djordje meaning black George). As for Miloš
Obrenović there are reliable accounts from the 1820’s describing him
as God’s emissary destined to liberate the Serbs like Moses did the
Israelites. Even if mythic in character, these collective predispositions
had real political consequences. When Miloš, for example, threatened
to quit oce in 1830 in order to counteract allegations of government
misconduct, a desperate congress called him to review his decision
17 Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenaristes”, pp. 816-817.
18 Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds, p. 169.
M H
on grounds of his heavenly election.19 Stoianovich has no doubts that
in the Serbian case revolution owed much to millenarism: “If Serbia
had not been looking forward to a messianic liberation”, he argues
provocatively, “Enlightenment and Revolution may have had no
immediate ideological or social consequences”.20
Politics of the Impossible
What is millenarism and how does it relate to what Stoianovich calls
“messianic liberation”? In dierent parts of his work Stoianovich gives
altevnative, if not unrelated, denitions of millenarism: the rst is
that of “the belief in the coming of a messiah or liberating ancestor or
god”;21 and the second is that of a movement aiming at
abolishing a social order of presumed wickedness, wretchedness,
oppression, and asymmetry, in order to restore an imaginary archaic
order (but as a perfected imaginaire, lying of necessity outside the
realm of history) of goodness, well-being, etho-religious autonomy,
and social justice […].22
Yet in general Stoianovich treats millenarism less as an ideology
and more as a movement. In his reading, it is mainly a movement of
cultural refusal, envisaging the utter transformation of the existing
social reality instead of, say, its betterment and progress.23 Stoianovich’s
analysis rests on this premise. However, the spirit of revolutionism
alone in the sense of “a profound and total rejection of the present,
evil world, and a passionate longing for another and better one”, as
Eric Hobsbawm has eloquently put it, cannot really account for what
rendered a premodern ideology and movement such as millenarism
adaptable to modern politics.24
19 Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenaristes”, p. 818.
20 Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds, p. 170.
21 Ibid., p. 168.
22 Stoianovich, “Prospective”, p. 93.
23 Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenaristes”, p. 810.
24
Eric Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement
in the19th and 20th Centuries, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959, p. 57.
Hobsbawm treated millenarism as an archaic form of social protest and unrest and
Aside from Stoianovich, Elie Kedourie has also argued for the
relationship between medieval “millenialism” (Kedourie’s preferred
term) and modern revolutionary ideals. Stemming from a thorough
mapping of the millenial belief system, his insights further rene
the picture.25 Millennialism, for Kedourie, mainly rests on the belief
that the godly shall occupy the kingdom of the world. Apart from
this, millennial thought and action entails two more things: a hope
and a technique for its fulllment. e hope is that men can put
an end to all oppression and injustice in this world and institute “a
totally new order where love reigns and all men are brothers, where
all distinctions and divisions, all selshness and self-regard are
abolished”. is new order, however, cannot take place in the world
as we know it. Millennialists, therefore, believe in the advent of a new
world, a totally transformed social reality, and in order to bring this
about they employ extremely violent “techniques of political activism”
aiming at destroying the existing social and political institutions, that
is all traditional and customary arrangements within a given society.
However massive an enterprise this might become, the creation
of tomorrow’s world, suggests Kedourie, is nothing more than one
man’s vision. Time and again an ambitious, if inarticulate, peasant
criticised the tendency of literature to interpret medi
eval revolutionary movements
in modern terms. Anthony Smith has also been critical on roughly the same point
in one of his early works. See idem, Nationalism in the Twentieth Century, Canberra:
Australian National University Press, 1979, pp. 14-42. On the other hand, it would
do justice to stress that millenarism is a multi-faceted belief: neither has it always
been fanatical and violent, nor have its adherents always been makers of revolution.
Good cases in point are Seventh-Day Adventism and Pentecostalism. See Stephen
Hunt “Introduction”, idem (ed.), Christian Millenarianism: from the Early Church
to Waco, London: Hurst, 2001, pp. 1-11; cf. pp. 131-148, 166-186.
25 e rst to tread down the path was Norman Cohn in his pioneering study
e Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists
of the Middle Ages, revised and expanded edition, Oxford-New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1970, pp. 252-280; Elie Kedourie studied the nationalist politiciza-
tion of medieval millenarianism rst in Europe and then in other parts of the
world. See the introduction of his edited volume Nationalism in Asia and Africa,
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970. See especially pp. 95-103. For the excerpts
cited in what follows, see pp. 96-99.
P S O C
leader of obscure background manages to harness to his own interests
“a multitude whom the distress of war, famine or rapid economic
change [have] uprooted or made restless”. In this light, a common
pattern emerges in the way millenarian movements erupt on the
historical scene. Initially the leader gathers a group of followers out
of a populace living in economic discomfort. Soon the situation boils
down to a movement of abrasive violence that succeeds in establishing
a form of local rule which, in turn, falls apart as soon as those who
possess the central power strike back.26 is picture is more or less
what Stoianovich sketches in the case of Stephen the Little.
Art of the Possible
Stephen’s story, however, read from another source, the classic study of
Franco Venturi on Europe between 1768 and 1776, appears to have been
26 Having said that it has to be underlined that millenarism, both as ideol-
ogy and movement, includes cases as diverse as the Anabaptists of Münster in
16th century Germany and the Taiping Rebellion in 19th century China. For the
former, see Cohn, e Pursuit of the Millennium, pp. 252-280; and for the latter
case see omas Reilly, e Taiping Heavenly Kingdom: Rebellion and the Blas-
phemy of Empire, Seattle & London: University of Washington Press, 2004. Mille-
narism has attracted the attention of various scholars from various elds. Besides
the classic study of Norman Cohn mentioned above a couple of works, at the very
least, are worth mentioning from older bibliography: Christopher Hill’s Antichrist
in Seventeenth-Century England, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, and
Marjorie Reeves’ e inuence of Prophecy in the Latter Middle Ages: a Study in
Joachimism, Oxford: Claredon Press, 1969. Yonina Talmon, has summarized the
recurrent features of millenarian movements in an early and pioneering article:
“Pursuit of the Millennium: the Relation between Religious and Social Change”,
European Journal of Sociology 3 (1962), pp. 125-148. ere also exist works where
a considerable part of analysis, though not the entire study, is devoted to the sub-
ject. Apart from the aforementioned work of Kedourie, Eric Hobsbawm’s Primi-
tive Rebels, does t the category. e Fin de Siècle mood of the late 1990’s helped
another wave of research to nd a way to the publisher. Most notable theramong
are Bernard Mc Ginn’s, Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle
Ages, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998; Eugene Weber’s Apocalypses:
Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs through the Ages, London: Pimlico, 2000;
and Stephen Hunt’s (ed.), Christian Millenarianism.
M H
P S O C
quite dierent.
27
In any event, Stephen seems to have been a genius in
devising roles, and corresponding titles, to his own benet. When he
signed foreign correspondence, for instance, he would sign as “the lit-
tlest Stephen in the world, until the Lord lets him grow”.
28
Stephen in-
deed grew taller in the summer of 1768, when roughly ten thousand of
his followers fought against a y thousand-strong Ottoman army and
won the battle. In the aermath the Ottomans withdrew their forces,
and aer them the Venetians followed, leaving Stephen to rule Mon-
tenegro alone. en on the eve of the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-1774,
the Russian Empress Catherine II sent a military mission to Montene-
gro, wishing to make it part of her designs against the Porte. Along with
Catherine’s pardon for having been an impostor –rumours of Stephen
being allegedly the dead Tsar Peter III in disguise had long reached
Saint Petersburg– Stephen also received Russian arms and money. Bet-
ter equipped than before, Stephen started to build an infrastructure and
institutions in his little state; he even organized a census. Until 1773
when the Ottomans (or the Venetians) hired one of his servants to kill
him, Stephen ruled Montenegro wisely, claiming succession from the
last Serbian despots. In the words of the Serbian historian M. B. Petro-
vich he turned out to be “one of the best rulers of Montenegro up to
that time”.
29
Stephen, it seems, was anything but an inarticulate peasant
leader wanting to ee a corrupt world and bring about his own one.
e earlier case of Dionysios Philosophos or Skylosophos, to
whom Stoianovich refers extensively in his discussion of millenar-
ism among the Greek-speaking Christians,30 aords another example
in the same vein. Dionysios actually organized two uprisings against
the Ottomans, one in 1600 and the other in 1611. Based solely on the
chronicle with the title of Revolt of Dionysios, Commonly Known as
Skylosophos and Expulsion of the Christians from the Citadel [of Ioan-
27 Franco Venturi, e End of the Old Regime in Europe, 1768-1776: e First
Crisis, R. Burr Litcheld (transl.), New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1989,
pp. 10-15.
28 Stephen’s letter to the Venetian regional administrator dated 5 October 1767,
cited by Venturi; ibid., p. 11.
29 Ibid., p. 14.
30 Stoianovich, “Prospective”, pp. 105-107.
M H
nina], which was translated by François Pouqueville, Stoianovich ap-
pears to have ignored the revolt of 1600, while he viewed the uprising
of 1611 as a proper millenarian movement sharing the basic features
of the kind: a village prophet at the head of an impoverished and dis-
tressed multitude unleashes a wave of frenzied violence against the
established order. e full picture, however, as it emerges from the
pertinent historical evidence is quite dierent again.
Dionysios, to begin with, was anything but a village prophet. He
was a respected prelate of the Ecumenical Patriarchate who had stud-
ied in Italy and maintained correspondence with the luminaries of
his time. Aer the failure of the 1600 uprising, he was condemned
but never excommunicated by the Synod of the Ecumenical Patriar-
chate, enabling him to preserve his contacts in Italy, where he nally
took refuge. He converted to Catholicism in an apparent attempt to
get backing for his insurrectionary plans and eventually he reached
the Pope and the Spanish court. By 1609 he returned to Greece and
started to prepare a new uprising from his hideout, a friendly monas-
tery in Epirus. According to Venetian intelligence, dated 18th October
1611, what he had in mind was to ignite a peasant revolt and capture
a stronghold until the Viceroy of Naples could send reinforcements.
e same source recounts that Dionysios admitted his Spanish con-
nections during the interrogation and conceded that his aim was to
liberate the people from the torments of Ottoman rule.31 Even move
than Steven perhaps, Dionysios, who came to be dubbed with the
derogatory epithet Skylosophos (meaning the dog philosopher) aer
the failure of his second uprising, had little in common with those
typically at the head of millenarian movements: he was not a seer who
aspired to rule his heaven-on-earth kingdom. He was a literate and ar-
ticulate leader who, had resorted as it appears, to an old prophetic tra-
dition harbouring solace and hope for his community. All he wanted
was to see his community restored to its former glory.
31 K. D. Mertzios, “Η επανάστασι ιονυσίου του Φιλοσόφου” [e Uprising
of Dionysios the Philosopher], Ηπειρωτικά Χρονικά 13 (1938), pp. 86-88.
P S O C
Greek Myths
In the Greek language there exists a medieval tradition of prophecy and
myth which did refer, but was not necessarily limited, to the prospect of
restoring the subjugated Christians of the East to their former glory. e
tradition was largely based on a literature of extra-canonical and pseude-
pigraph prophetic writings, which, since Byzantine times, provided hope
to the Orthodox Christians during critical times of threat, anxiety and
change. e underlying myth was that glory would be restored to the
community of the faithful through the messianic intervention of a world-
ly king-deliverer at a more or less foreseeable, and oen calculable, point
of human time. It is for this reason these prophetic writings have been
called “messianic” and the mythic beliefs they sustained “messianism”.
32
In general, Byzantine messianic thought was obsessed with the idea of
regaining Constantinople aer a period of loss. It was through this idea
that the late and, of course, the Post-Byzantine messianists conceptual-
ised what they literally called “the resurrection of the Byzantine Empire”.
It appears that Dionysios was one of them.
33
Messianists had a literature
of their own. What they mostly read and disseminated, along with vari-
ous apocalyptic writings, were certain prophetic texts bearing a distinc-
tive name in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Greek literature. In Medieval
Greek those prophecies were dubbed oracles ([οἱ] χρησμοί), their com-
pilations as oracular books ([τά] χρησμολόγια) and the literary genre as
32 Marios Hatzopoulos, “Oracular Prophecy and the Politics of Toppling Otto-
man Rule in South-East Europe”, e Historical Review/La Revue Historique VIII
(2011), pp. 95-116. Asterios Argyriou was the rst to coin the term for the beliefs
under consideration in his pioneering study Les exégèses grecques de l’apocalypse
à l’époque turque (1453-1821). Esquisse d’une histoire des courants idéologiques au
sein du peuple grec asservi, essaloniki, 1982; see especially pp. 93-113. Another
ground-breaking study, the work of Alexandros Kariotoglou, Ισλάμ και χριστιανι-
κή χρησμολογία. Από τον μύθο στην πραγματικότητα [Islam and Christian Orac-
ular Literature: from Myth to Reality], Athens: Armos, 2000, opts for the term
“oracular”[literature, tradition, beliefs].
33 e argument has been put forth by Alexandros Kariotoglou, ibid, pp. 65-67,
276-277, n. 21. Antonis Liakos shares the view in a recent study. See, Αποκάλυ-
ψη, ουτοπία και ιστορία. Οι μεταμορφώσεις της ιστορικής συνείδησης [Apocalypse,
Utopia and History: the Transformations of Historical Consciousness], Athens:
Polis, 2011, p. 87.
M H
a whole oracular literature ([ἡ] χρησμολογία). e ancient Greek noun
χρησμός-οι was used instead of the alternative term προφητεία [proph-
ecy], which carried theological undertones, to set apart this kind of prog-
nostication from canonical prophecy.
34
Stoianovich is aware of Greek oracular literature. He refers to three
major works, the Oracles of Leo the Wise, the Interpretation of Patriarch
Gennadios and the Vision of Agathangelos, but fails to grasp the way in
which they connected and supplemented each other as parts of a single
current of thought within the Greek-speaking part, at the very least, of the
Ottoman-ruled Orthodox community. What are these prophetic works
about? e late Byzantine Oracles of Leo the Wise proclaims the advent of
a king-deliverer, a man of high moral and mental qualities who lays asleep
in a secret cavern in western Constantinople and rises up to take care of
Christendom: “Awake, Oh sleeper and arise from the grave, and Christ will
give you light, for He summons you to tend His chosen people”.
35
Elabo-
rating on this theme the early Post-Byzantine Interpretation of Patriarch
Gennadios speaks about another messianic agent, besides the aforemen-
tioned king-deliverer, a people-deliverer of “fair-hair” who “together with
the previous owners [of Constantinople] will defeat Ismael completely,
and will take the Seven Hills [i.e. Constantinople] with their privileges”.
Along the same lines, the mid eighteenth century Vision of Agathangelos
sets an overtly calculable date for the time of deliverance, that is “roughly
four hundred years aer the fall of Constantinople”. Quite importantly,
that was the time when Enlightenment and nationalism were bringing
modernity deep into the Ottoman-ruled ecumene of eastern Christians.
36
34
Katerina Kyriakou, Οι ιστορημένοι χρησμοί του Λέοντος ΣΤ´ του Σοφού.
Χειρόγραφη παραδοση και εκδόσεις κατά τους 15ο-19ο αιώνες [e Illustrated
Oracles of Leo VI the Wise: Manuscript Tradition and Printed Editions from the
15th - 19th Century], Athens: Syllogos pros diadosin ofelimon biblion, 1995, pp.
13-14.
35 Excerpt taken from the Anonymous Paraphrase of the Oracles of King Leo,
a prophetic tract found conjoint with the Leonine oracles since their rst pub-
lication by Petrus Lambecius in 1655. Cyril Mango considers the Paraphrase as
integral part of the Leonine oracular collection. See idem, “e Legend of Leo
the Wise”, Cyril Mango, Byzantium and its Image, London: Variorum, 1984, p. 61.
36
For the Oracles of Leo the Wise see ibid, pp. 59-93. For the Interpretation of Pa-
triarch Gennadios see C. J. G. Turner, “An Oracular Interpretation Attributed to Gen-
P S O C
Millenarism or Messianism?
e discussion so far has raised a few questions what I would like to
address commencing from what is, in my eyes, the most obvious: is mil-
lenarism or messianism the most appropriate term to describe and ana-
lyse the historical cases under consideration? I would opt for the term
messianism. ere are some reasons for this, the rst being of normative
character. According to the classic denition of Hans Kohn, messianism
is the religious belief, usually held by oppressed human groups (ethnic,
religious, social), in the coming of a redeemer who will end the present
order of things and institute a new one either universally or for a sin-
gle group. Kohn warns that even if it has been closely connected with
millenarianism or eschatology in general, messianism is not to be con-
founded with these ideas. In the Jewish culture, for instance, where mes-
sianism has received its greatest and most characteristic expression, the
Messiah doctrine is not connected with the End of Time. On the other
hand, one could hardly suggest that speculation about nal things nec-
essarily involves messianic beliefs. Messianism reects, rst and fore-
most, the hopeful belief in the coming of a redeemer: the Hebrew word
māshīah [messiah] literally means the anointed one. Messianic hope is
primarily focused on the advent of a particular or personied “anointed
one” expected to bring about salvation. Messianism, suggests Kohn, is
never mere speculation about things to come, for a messianic future is
to take place right here on this earth. It is merely a past phase of human
history which is expected to be revived in such an ultimate manner and
form that is never again to be disturbed.
37
erefore, Stoianovich’s iden-
tication of “the belief in the coming of a messiah or liberating ancestor
or god” with millenarism is inaccurate.
38
nadius Scholarius”, Ελληνικά 21 (1968), pp. 40-47; Triantafyllos E. Sklavenitis, “Χρη-
σολογικό εικονογραφηένο ονόφυλλο των αρχών του 18ου αιώνα” [An Early 18th
Century Oracular Illustrated Broadsheet], Μνήμων 7 (1978), pp. 46-59. For the Vision
of Agathangelos see Alexis Politis, “Η προσγραφόενη στον Ρήγα πρώτη έκδοση του
Αγαθαγγέλου. Το όνο γνωστό αντίτυπο” [e First Edition of Agathangelos which
is Ascribed to Rigas. e Only Known Copy], Ο Ερανιστής 42 (1969), pp. 173-192.
37 Hans Kohn, “Messianism”, E. Seligman (ed.) Encyclopaedia of the Social Sci-
ences, vol. 10, New York: Macmillan, 1933, pp. 356-364.
38 Stoianovich, Balkan Worlds, p. 170.
M H
e Serbian historian, however, has provided a second denition of
millenarism in the sense of a movement intending to abolish an exist-
ing order of presumed wickedness and institute something of a “per-
fected imaginaire, lying of necessity outside the realm of history”.39
My objection this time is not normative but descriptive. A closer look
at the cases of Stephen the Little and Dionysios Philosophos or Sky-
losophos reveals that though both men set out to abolish the existing
political and social order (Stephen actually succeeded in this, however
short-lived his rule might have proved in the end), they had no inten-
tion of creating anything outside the realm of history. On the contra-
ry, their hopes and aspirations lingered within history: Stephen allot-
ted to himself the role of a Serbian despot while Dionysios promised
his followers the revival of the glory of Byzantium. e alleged anti-
traditionalism of Stephen and Dionysios was sternly compromised: it
mainly referred to the overthrow of the ruling Ottoman political order
and the resurrection of certain historical phases, indeed golden ages,
of their communal past(s). Stephen and Dionysios, aer all, were not
ignorant and inarticulate self-styled prophets.40 eir actions appear
to have been sanctioned and legitimized through old prophetic struc-
tures rooted deep in the subjugated Orthodox community.
Of Once and Future Kings
Were the South Slavic / Serbian and the Greek prophetic structures con-
nected to each other and if so, how? In order to answer the question ade-
quately one must consider rst the view of Paul J. Alexander, namely that
39 Cf. Stoianovich, “Prospective”, p. 93. It has also to be noted that, occasionally,
Stoianovich underpins his argument on millenarism with economic factors. He
concedes, for example, that the goal of the Celali rebellions of the 1590s and 1600s
was “the transformation of the Ottoman system of redistribution” (ibid., p. 98), or
that the main aim of Dionysios’ movement were “two tax innovations of recent
date” (ibid., p. 106). Having said that, however, Stoianovich treats these cases as
anything but mere tax revolts.
40 Cf. “e people who were the bearers of the millennial ideology were oen
ignorant and inarticulate […]”, Talmon, “Pursuit of the Millenium”, p. 127. In gen-
eral, Stoianovich follows this line when the discussion comes to actors.
P S O C
e Byzantine empire, during the more than one thousand years
of its existence, was not only the storehouse of classical Greek
literature; it was also ‘the great clearing house of East and West,’ in
folk literature as well as in other branches.41
To the extent Alexander is right, South Slavic / Serbian and Greek
prophetic structures were connected by way of a common source: the
Byzantine oracular tradition and literature. Stoianovich, on his part,
would not have eagerly agreed with this view. What he suggests is that
the South Slavic / Serbian prophetic myths originated from the pagan
past of the Danube Slavs, from the shamanistic and magical rites of re-
newal and rebirth observed unaltered for centuries according to which
the traditional roles are upturned, the social rules are relaxed, the
sacred is turned into profane, the old king steps down, the new
lord ascends, the aged surrender to the youthful, just like [social]
coercion surrenders to liberty.42
In the same vein, Stoianovich concedes that the South Slavic prophetic
traditions encapsulate mainly archaic and primitive elements, in contrast
to their Jewish or Greek counterparts which retain “a more profound
literary character”.
43
e archaic elements are especially evident in the
personal attributes of the South Slavic sleeping king: he is king, voyager,
healer; he rides a (limping) horse or walks; he has dark or black skin
and wears black clothes, a black cap and moccasins.
44
Nevertheless,
the black skin and attire, or even reputation, of the South Slavic
sleeping king seem rather embellishments, indeed epiphenomena, of
what Stoianovich would call couleur locale, in view of the basic idea
around which the myth itself revolves: that of the advent of a messianic
Christian king who would crash the Muslim military might and restore
41
Paul J. Alexander, “Byzantium and the Migration of Literary Works and Motifs:
t
he Legend of the Last Roman Emperor”, Medievalia et Humanistica 2 (1971), p.
47. Alexander is a renowned student of the Byzantine apocalypticism.
42 Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenaristes”, p. 809.
43 Ibid., p. 815. Quite characteristically, while examining the “millenialism
among the Greeks”, Stoianovich notes that “e chief vectors of such prophecies
were not simple peasants but priests, bishops, and merchants”. See “Prospective”,
pp. 101, 104.
44 Stoianovich, “Les Structures Millenaristes”, p. 815.
M H
lost space and sovereignty to Christian hands. is, however, is the key
myth of the Byzantine oracular literature and tradition.
e myth about the coming of a God-sent king-deliverer who would
topple the rule of Muslims before the Last Days was spelled out by the
Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodios, an apocalyptic composition written in
the last quarter of the seventh century AD in Arab-conquered Mesopo-
tamia. e king was supposed to be the last emperor to reign over the
Roman empire before the End of Time. His mission was to annihilate
the enemies of the Romans and abdicate his oce to God thereby set-
ting the stage for the end of the world. e Last Emperor, was originally
a symbolic gure of the Late Antiquity spawned from the cross-breed-
ing of Graeco-Roman prophetism and Jewish tradition;
45
yet with Pseu-
do-Methodios it came to acquire a meaning consonant with the fears
and hopes of the seventh century AD: the Last Emperor was allotted
the role of the annihilator of the then rapidly expanding Arab Muslims.
Quite soon the Syriac original text was translated into Greek and certain
terms of the translation inaugurated the belief that this messianic, and
yet perfectly human, ruler would never die or would return from death:
ere then will suddenly arise against them [Ismaelites] with great
fury an emperor of the Greeks or Romans. He will awaken from his
sleep like a man who had drunk wine, whom men considered like
one dead and utterly useless.46
Abbreviated and interpolated versions of Pseudo-Methodios circu-
lating under various titles between the eighth and tenth centuries (Vi-
sions of Daniel, Life of St Andrew the Fool etc.)
47
allowed ample room
for reinterpretation. Whereas Pseudo-Methodios, for instance, spoke
about an “emperor of the Greeks or Romans” in the sense of a proper
45 Paul J. Alexander, “e Medieval Legend of the Last Roman Emperor and
its Messianic Origin”, Journal of the Warbourg and Courtauld Institutes 41 (1978),
pp. 1-15.
46 Paul J. Alexander, e Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, edited with an intro-
duction by Dorothy de F. Abrahamse, Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University
of California Press, 1985, p. 153.
47 Dorothy de F. Abrahamse, “Introduction”, Alexander, e Byzantine Apoca-
lyptic Tradition, pp. 4-7. See also Andras Kra, “e Last Roman Emperor Topos in
the Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition”, Byzantion 82 (2012), pp. 213-257.
P S O C
Byzantine Basileus,
48
later versions spoke vaguely about an emperor
“from poverty”, that is to say, of humble birth.
49
In the same vein, the
Methodian ruler had a clear eschatological character but a new pro-
phetic work, the aforementioned Oracles of Leo the Wise came to strip
the symbol of its eschatological connotation probably by the beginning
of the twelh century.
50
Naturally, the temptation to apply all this myth-
ic variety in political terms was irresistible to the medieval mind.
As the Methodian legacy enjoyed “an explosive spread” through-
out Eastern and Western Europe,51 a series of candidates from real life
succeeded in gathering around them intense prophetic expectation. In
the West, where the Methodian myth was fused with the teaching of
Joachim of Fiore (ca 1130-1202), this gure was mainly understood in
the sense of the chastiser and renewer of the Church inspiring many
from the aspirant humble up to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
(1500-1558). At the same time, the myth played a fundamental role in
the creation of important strains of popular legend such as the sagas
about the buried, but not dead, emperor on Mount Kyäuser, which
subsequently came to spread in various guises all over Europe.52 In
the East, where the symbol, due to the steady Muslim advance, had
retained much of the original “crusading” qualities, the myth contin-
ued to arouse Christian imagination up to the moment the Ottomans
were impregnating the Constantinopolitan walls.53 During the period
48 Alexander, e Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition, p. 56. Cf., p. 152, note 2.
49 “In the last days the Lord God will set up an emperor from poverty”. See Life
of St Andrew the Fool, cited in ibid. p. 155, note 13.
50 Mango, “e Legend of Leo the Wise”, pp. 62-65, 72.
51 Petre Guran, “Genesis and Function of the ‘Last Emperor’ Myth in Byzantine
Eschatology”, Bizantinistica. Rivista di Studi Bizantini e Slavi VIII (2006), p. 302.
Guran coins the term “political eschatology” in this study drawing an analogy to
“political theology”.
52 Marjorie Reeves, e Inuence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study
in Joachimism, Oxford: Clarendon, 1969, pp. 359-374; Cohn, e Pursuit of the
Millennium, pp. 89-107. On Joachim of Fiore, a recent study by Matthias Riedl is of
indispensable value: “Joachim of Fiore as Political inker”, J. E. Wannenmacher
(ed.), Joachim of Fiore and the Inuence of Inspiration: Essays in Memory of Mavjo-
rie E. Reeves (1905-2003), London: Ashgate, 2013, pp. 53-73.
53
According to the testimony of Doukas, in the morning hours of the 29th
May 1453, the besieged Christians in their desperation expected that “[…] an angel
M H
of Ottoman rule the Methodian myth yielded fresh prophetic mate-
rial, such as the aforementioned Interpretation of Patriarch Gennadios
in the late eenth century or the Vision of Agathangelos in the eight-
eenth century. is was the time when popularized versions emerged
in Greek legend and lore bestowing the role of the sleeping restorer to
the last Byzantine emperor Constantine XI – an emperor who, inci-
dentally, had been equally proud to bear his mother’s Serbian family
name of Dragaš and his father’s name of Palaeologos.54 By the same
bearing a sword would come down and hand over the sword to an unknown man,
a very plain and poor man [...]” who would then storm at the conquerors. For this
reason a Christian mob had ocked into the cathedral of St Sophia considering
that, during this miraculous act, they would be best protected therein. See V. Gre-
cu (ed.), Doukas. Istoria Turco-Byzantina (1341-1462), Bucharest: Romanian Aca-
demy of Sciences, 1958, pp. 363-365. Donald Nicol suggests that this popular belief
had stemmed from the Visions of Daniel. See idem, e Immortal Emperor: e Life
and Legend of Constantine Palaiologos, Last Emperor of the Romans, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 100-101. Cf. Daniel’s text: “en […] a voice
from the sky will shout: […] go to the right side of the City of Seven Hills and there
you will nd a man standing on two columns […] Get him and crown him King.
[en] Four life-bringing angels get him to St Sophia and crown him King, they
put on his right hand a sword, saying: “Be brave and defeat your enemies”; text
cited in Stéphane Yerasimos, “De l’Arbre à la Pomme: La Genealogie d’un ème
Apocalyptique”, Benjamin Lellouch & Stéphane Yerasimos (eds), Les Traditions
Apocalyptiques au Tourant de la Chute de Constantinople, Paris-Montreal: L’ Har-
mattan, 1999, p. 161. Nicol, however, seems to ignore that, textually, the Visions
of Daniel is a version of Pseudo-Methodios. See Abrahamse, “Introduction”, p. 7.
54
According to the Greek oral legend called Ο Μαρμαρωμένος Βασιλιάς [e
King turned-into-marble], Constantinos XI Palaeologos, while defending Constan-
tinople, was turned into marble and taken to an underground cave by an Angel. Ever
since he waits for the angel to return and rouse him from sleep in order to regain
the City and kill the Turks as far as their mythical birthplace dubbed Κόκκινη Μηλιά
[Red Apple Tree]
. S
ee Nikolaos G. Politis, Μελέται περί του βίου και της γλώσσης του
ελληνικού λαού. Παραδόσεις [Studies on the Life and Language of the Greek People:
Traditions], vol. I, Athens: Sakellariou, 1904, p. 22. e founder of folklore studies in
Greece, Nikolaos G. Politis, found the legend circulating in Greek rural communities
at the end of the 19th century. ere is consensus among experts that the legend is
not a modern construct. See on this for example Nikos A. Bees, “Περί του ιστορη-
ένου χρησολογίου τη κρατική βιβλιοθήκη του Βερολίνου και του θρύλου του
‘Μαραρωένου Βασιλιά’ ”[On the Illustrated Book of Oracles of the State Library of
Berlin and the Legend of the King Turned-into-marble], Byzantinisch-Neugriechische
Jahrbücher 13 (1937), pp. 203-244λ΄; Speros Vryonis Jr., e Decline of Medieval
P S O C
period, if not earlier, the myth would have penetrated into the South
Slavic lands and fused with indigenous traditions. is transfer and
coalescence is evident in the case of Stephen the Little. According to
the nineteenth century Greek historiographer Constantinos Sathas,
Stephen had promised to lead his followers before the walls of Con-
stantinople within a year, whereas his followers identied him with
“the God-sent king of Greeks prophesied by the mysterious oracles of
Agathangelos”.55 To recapitulate my argument at this point, therefore,
the South Slavic / Serbian prophetic structures might be less archaic
than Stoianovich suggests owing their shape, if not their very exist-
ence, to the “great clearing house” of the Byzantine oracular tradition.
Next comes what is perhaps the most interesting among Stoian-
ovich’s arguments, that on the role played by prophetic beliefs in the
age of Enlightenment and revolution. Contrary to the view that the
“enlightened” ideas reduced prophetic beliefs to political impotence,56
Stoianovich insists that the latter did retain their popularity and po-
litical signicance into early modernity, and thereby facilitated the
Hellenism in Asia Minor and the Process of Islamization from the Eleventh through the
Fieenth Century, Berkeley - Los Angeles - London: University of California Press,
1971, pp. 436-438; Richard Clogg, “e Byzantine Legacy in the Modern Greek
World: e Megali Idea”, Study IV, Richard Clogg, Anatolica: Studies in the Greek
East in the 18th and 19th Centuries, London: Variorum, 1996, p. 257; Aphrodite
Papayianni, “He Polis healo: e Fall of Constantinople in 1453 in Post-Byzantine
Popular Literature”, Al-Masāq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 22/1 (2010),
pp. 41-41. Papayianni interestingly suggests that as far as the post-Byzantine popular
literature is concerned, Constantinos Palaeologos seems to be the main focal point
for the hopes of Greeks for revenge, ibid., p. 40. On the historical background of the
Byzantine belief about sleeping redeemers Papayianni notes an incident in 813 when
a group of Byzantine soldiers had reportedly run to the tomb of emperor Constantine
V (r. 741-775) to beg him to wake up and repel the Bulgarians, ibid., pp. 42-43.
55 Constantinos Sathas, Τουρκοκρατούμενη Ελλάς. Ιστορικόν δοκίμιον περί
των προς αποτίναξιν του Οθωμανικού ζυγού επαναστάσεων του Ελληνικού Έθνους
(1453-1821) [Turkish-ruled Greece. Historical Treatise on the Uprisings of the
Greek Nation in order to Overthrow the Ottoman Yoke (1453-1821)], Athens: A.
Koromilas, 1869, p. 456.
56 Paschalis M. Kitromilides, Νεοελληνικός Διαφωτισμός. Πολιτικές και κοι-
νωνικές ιδέες [Neo-Hellenic Enlightenment: Political and Social Ideas], Athens:
MIET, 1996, pp. 169-191.
M H
advance of Enlightenment-inspired revolutionary agendas among the
masses. is is a ground-breaking approach. One problem, however,
is that Stoianovich limits his argument on the Serbian case. Another
problem is that he does not explain how the whole process was carried
out. I shall add some missing links on the basis of my research on Greek
revolutionary nationalism which has arrived at similar conclusions.
57
e revolutionary organization that spearheaded the preparation
and the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence (1821-1829), the
so-called Philiki Etaireia [Friendly Society], appropriated for its own
political ends the old belief that God was about to end the Ottoman
political order through the messianic agency of an earthly ruler and/or
people. Emmanuel Xanthos, one of the Society’s founding members,
noted in his memoirs that the society’s chiefs aimed at capitalising on
the “[…] age-old superstition of the enslaved Greeks that coreligion-
ist Russia would liberate them from the Turkish tyranny” – a clear
allusion to the oracular “fair-haired” people or king-deliverer who in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were identied with the Rus-
sian army and the Tsar respectively.58 Photios Chrysanthopoulos, an
hetaerist who came later to be known by his nom de guerre Photakos,
admitted in his memoirs that oracular prophecy “had smoothed the
progress of the Philiki Etaireia for it found the peoples’ spirits willing
and ready for freedom”.59 In the rst historical account of the Philiki
Etaireia to be published aer the war, Ioannis Philimon conceded that
oracular literature had functioned as a popular counterpart to the for-
mal means of nationalistic indoctrination in the pre-war years:
While the intelligent part of the [Greek] nation was engaged [in
printing and reading patriotic material], the mass was usefully
57 See Marios Hatzopoulos, “From Resurrection to Insurrection: ‘Sacred’
Myths, Motifs, and Symbols in the Greek War of Independence”, Roderick Beaton
& David Ricks (eds), e Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism and
the Uses of the Past (1797-1896), London: Ashgate, 2009, pp. 81-93.
58 Emmanouel Xanthos, Απομνημονεύματα περί της Φιλικής Εταιρείας [Mem-
oirs on Philiki Etaireia], Athens: A. Garpolas, 1845, p.12, emphasis mine.
59 Photakos [Photios Chrysanthopoulos], Απομνημονεύματα περί της ελληνι-
κής επαναστάσεως [Memoirs on the Greek Revolution], vol. I, Stavros Andropou-
los (ed.), Athens: Greca, 1971, p. 35.
P S O C
directed by the Vi
sion of Agathangelos too, entertaining a blind faith
in the future change of their fate.60
To cut a long story short, the Greek case reinforces Stoianovich’s
thesis that the advent of modern political ideologies did not condemn
age-old structures and legacies to political irrelevance. is is where
my ndings converge with Stoianovich’s thesis.
Where my view diverges from that of Stoianovich is when he takes
for granted the usefulness of prophetic structures to the modern revolu-
tionary cause. My research shows that this was conditional. A factor that
Stoianovich did not take into account is that messianic prophecy and na-
tionalism adhered to totally dierent notions of collective salvation. For
messianic prophecy, salvation was the culmination of a great divine plan
achieved through God’s instrument. For nationalism, on the other hand,
salvation was the practical realisation of communal self-determination
achieved though rationally planned and executed acts. What was the fac-
tor that made messianic prophecy usable for nationalist purposes?
e answer to the question is twofold. First comes the capability for
reinterpretation of prophecies. e content of the prophetic word has al-
ways been liable to interpretation as new developments confer new mean-
ings on the myths and symbols encapsulated therein. In the case of Byz-
antine and Post-Byzantine messianic prophecy, for instance, the newer
symbol of “the fair-haired people” could conveniently replace the older
symbol of “the king” in the role of redeemer; or the date of the expected
deliverance could be calculated so as to mean various dates in various cen-
turies. e structures of Byzantine and post-Byzantine messianic proph-
ecy were specically made to be reinterpreted. Its hazy literature could
be copied and re-edited with little eort so as to respond to the changing
values and ideals of dierent eras. Rhigas Velestinlis, or Pheraios, may
have had such considerations in mind when he undertook, reportedly, the
publication of the rst-ever printed edition of the Vision of Agathangelos,
in view of the 1790s Napoloenic wars.
61
60 Ioannis Philimon, Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Φιλικής Εταιρείας [Historical
Treatise on the Philiki Etaireia], Nafplion: Kondaxis & Loulakis, 1834, p. 217; cf.
also pp. 218, 67-68.
61 Constantinos . Dimaras, “Οι χρησοί στη νέα α ιστορία” [e Oracles
in our Modern History], Εκλογή 3/2 (1947), pp. 196-203; cf. Politis, “Η προσγρα-
φόενη στον Ρήγα”, pp. 173-192.
M H
Secondly and however odd this may be, certain old functions of
oracular literature did remain of use within the modern
world. One
such was to assure the faithful that victory could only be theirs since
the revolt itself, and even more importantly, the time of its outbreak,
had truly been sanctioned by God. In this way, the summoning of in-
dividuals or groups of people to arms became a smoother enterprise.
As a mid-nineteenth century unpublished source put the case about
the 1821 uprising in the western part of Greece:
Ever since people […] came to learn that God’s erce wrath was
appeased, and they were to be lied out of bondage, and [thus]
started breaking the chains, many were proclaimed protomartyrs
and champions of this great venture”.62
e “people”, of course, did not come to learn all this alone. Com-
municating the prophetic word of insurrection was the task of etaerists:
Brothers, all these you see and you have never hoped for, they are
anything but crazy and stupid things. What you see going on, know
in truth that it has been written in our [prophetic] books.63
Another traditional trait that was of use in the modern political
context was the potency of the prophetic word to endow with divine
election and chosenness the leaders of a given movement. Stoianovich,
as we saw before, observed this happening in the cases of both leaders
of the Serbian risings, Karageorge Petrović and Miloš Obrenović. As
for the Greek case, it appears that, during the war, Neofytos Vamvas,
a disciple of Korais and later a teacher at the University of Athens, was
interpreting the Oracles of Leo the Wise in favour of the leader of the
62 Cited in Spyros Asdrachas, “Η ‘Αιτωλία και Ακαρνανία του Μεσαίωνο’ του
Χριστοφόρου Κοντού (1833-1869)” [‘Medieval Aetolia and Acarnania’ by Chris-
tophoros Kontos (1833-1869)], Πατριδογραφήματα, Athens: Etaireia leadikon
meleton, 2003, pp. 381-382, note 21.
63 Excerpt from the revolutionary speech of the Plapoutas brothers to the
insurgent Peloponnesian villagers on the 21 March 1821, cited by Ambrosios
Phrantzis, Επιτομή της ιστορίας της αναγεννηθείσας Ελλάδος αρχομένη από του
έτους 1715 και λήγουσα το 1835 [Summary of the History of Regenerated Greece
Commencing from the Year 1715 and Ending in 1835], vol. II, Athens: K. Kas-
torhis, 1839, pp. 151-152.
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Philiki Etaireia Alexandros Ypsilantis, thereby “proving” that the latter
had been chosen by God to lead the uprising against the Ottomans.
64
In the post war period, oracular literature appeared in Greece in
successive publications enjoying great popularity – mainly repro-
ductions of earlier manuscript material interpolated so as to t the
new political realities of the autonomous state. e rst such publica-
tion came out in 1838. It was a book of oracles edited by one of Lord
Byron’s old friends, the doctor Petros Stephanitzis from the Ionian
island of Leas. e book was dedicated “to the future occupier of
the throne of Constantinople, by the grace of God, faithful King and
Emperor”.65 Further on in the book, the editor made plain what one
could suspect from the start, that the elect was no other than Greece’s
rst king, the Bavarian-born Otto. It was he and his dynasty those who
were destined to topple the Ottomans and reclaim the throne of By-
zantium. Quite meaningfully, the book contained just one illustration:
the lithograph of the sleeping king crowned by an angel.66
During his thirty-year reign King Otto acted many times as if
God was about to end the known international political order. In the
1830s, for instance, he refused an ocial land oer by Mahmoud II
for the erection of a Greek embassy in Constantinople lest he should
acknowledge the Sultan’s sovereign rights over the city. en in
1839, upon learning the news of Mahmoud II’s death, Otto report-
edly assumed that he would have been given the imperial throne, had
64 Georgios Gazis, Λεξικόν της Επαναστάσεως και άλλα έργα [Dictionary of
the Revolution and Other Works], Nikolaos Patselis & Leon Branousis (eds), Ioan-
nina: Etaireia Epeirotikon Meleton, 1971, pp. 23-24. Gazis’ testimony on Vamva’s
oracular endeavors does not stand alone. On the outbreak of the war Vamvas
assured the insurgent Hydriots that “the liberation of Genos has been prophesied
by many holy men and is divinely decreed that it will take place in our days”. See
Antonios Lignos (ed.) Αρχείον της κοινότητος Υδρας, 1778-1832 [Archive of the
Community of Hydra, 1778-1832], vol. VII (1821), Piraeus: Zanneion, 1926, p. 18.
65 Petros D. Stephanitzis (ed.), Συλλογή διαφόρων προρρήσεων [Collection
of Various Predictions], Athens: A. Angelidis, 1838, unnumbered page aer the
book’s cover.
66 Ibid., unnumbered page next to p. 142; see also note 1, p. 142, where it is
stated that the lithograph was made according to a manuscript illustration.
M H
he vis
ited the Ottoman capital in person.67 If Otto was daydreaming,
he was not alone in the business. Within the small but restless King-
dom of Greece a large portion of the population from all walks of life
viewed the capital of the Ottoman empire as “promised land” feeling
a sense of providential guidance towards its acquisition. ere is good
evidence that wealthy members of the Greek diaspora, members of the
Court or simply those who could aord the venture appeared reluc-
tant to buy and build property in Athens in the rst decades of Greek
independence, being condent that the Greek capital would soon be
transferred to Constantinople. It was probably in the same spirit that
Ioannis Kolettis, one of Greece’s prominent party leaders, was quoted
to have remarked, as early as 1833, that the proper capital of the Greek
kingdom could only be Constantinople.68 Follies such as these seem
67
Ellie Skopetea, Το “Πρότυπο βασίλειο” και η Μεγάλη Ιδέα. Όψεις του εθνικού
προβλήματος στην Ελλάδα (1830-1880) [e “Model Kingdom” and the Great
Idea: Aspects of the National Problem in Greece (1830-1880)], Athens: Polytypo,
1988, p. 274; see also note 3.
68 For further discussion and references see Marios Hatzopoulos, “Receiving
e poor or sleeping emperor (lithograph)
Source: Petros Stephanitzis, Συλλογή Διαφόρων Προρρήσεων [Collection of
various predictions], Athens: Angelidis, 1838, unnumbered page.
P S O C
less absurd in the light of a certain hypothesis: that Otto’s royal ambi-
tions, no less than the national aspirations of his subjects in the young
Kingdom of Greece, were nourished on messianic prophecy.
In conclusion, three main points stand out of this tentative attempt
to put South Slavic / Serbian and Greek prophetic structures in a com-
parative perspective. First, “messianism” could be a more accurate term
than “millenarism” for the description and analysis of the myths under
consideration: what the latter reected, rst and foremost, was the belief
in the coming of a redeemer, in the sense of a personied vessel of di-
vine election, expected to end the current socio-political order of things
and revive certain golden ages of the communal past in an ultimate man-
ner and form. Second, Greek and South Slavic prophetic structures may
have sprung from the same source, the Byzantine oracular tradition, in-
sofar as they both revolve, rst and foremost, around the key myth of
this tradition. e expectation of a messianic Christian king who would
wrest power and space from Muslim hands and restore it to Christians
reached deep into the Slavic world, where it became fused with indige-
nous myths and traditions. e third and nal point is that, contrary to
what is generally believed, the age of Enlightenment and Revolution saw
the prophetic structures under consideration becoming useful adjuncts
for popular mobilisation towards Enlightenment-inspired revolutionary
agendas. Because of their wide susceptibility for reinterpretation, these
mythic structures were capable of investing national(ist) leaders with the
sense of election and thereby retained a residual political signicance in
the modern world.
Byzantium in Early Modern Greece (1820s-1840s)”, Olivier Delouis & Petre Gu-
ran (eds), Héritages de Byzance dans l’Europe du Sud-Est aux époques moderne et
contemporaine (serie: Mondes méditerranéens et balkanique), Athens: École Fran-
çaise d’Athènes, 2013, pp. 217-227, especially p. 227.
Social and Cultural Relations
