“Hellenism and Romiosini. The unbroken continuity of the classical tradition in the Byzantium and later to the new Hellenism”

N.G.O. "Romiosini"
1st International Congress on "Romiosini through the centuries".
Amphitheatre of the War Museum of Athens
Saturday 30th & Sunday 31st of May 2009

Introducer: Mr. Constantinos G. - A. Niarchos
Professor in Ancient Hellenic Philosophy of the University of Athens

Subject: "Hellenism and Romiosini. The unbroken continuity of the classical tradition in the Byzantium and later to the New Hellenism"

The scientific problem, on the continuity or non-continuity of the spiritual creativity of the ancient Greeks in the Byzantium, and later on to the continuation towards the newer Hellenism, is really existing among the researches. Lately, some years ago, the famous French Byzantinologist Paul Lemerle, in his work "Le premier Humanisme Byzantin", the first byzantinian civilization, Paris 1971, he put directly the question: who were the citizens of the Byzantine Empire? Were the real descendants of the ancient Greeks or it was about of a summing of people, who in some way were connected with the Greeks, or they were thieves and takers of the ancient Hellenic classical philosophical and cultural creation?

It is really obvious the fact that, being placed the above question, it was presented a huge interest on the part of researches and university professors internationally. The already expressed and continually telling views are contradictory. On this problem intervened the well-known professor of the Universities of Athens and Berkeley, in California of the United States of America, Mr. Spyros Bryonis, who under his well known scientific knowledge looked out the scientific truth on this matter. One of those denying the continuity of the classical antiquity in the Byzantium, professor R. Jenkins at the King's College of London, in the work "Byzantium a Byzantinism (1963) the supported the racist uncontinuity of the ancient Greeks among the people of Byzantium. Obviously Mr. R. Jenkins adopts unthinkably the known points of view of Fallmerayer, on overall intermarriage among the masses of the Empire, and particularly by the incursions of the Slavs and Albanians, and as an argument, among others, brought the multiplicity of foreign language forms and kinds being embodied in the then spoken language by the Byzantine people. The views of Jenkins brought out the reaction of G. Arnakis, who in the study under the title "Byzantium and Greece" proved the unsupporting reason of Jenkins, who, let us say it by the way, he probably ignored the powering of Fallmerayer's views by air national histographer Constantinos Paparigopoulos.

The Jenkins's successor at the King's College of London C. Mango agreed after the reasoning of his predecessor, in his work "Byzantinism and Romantic Hellenism (1965), where he focuses the researching interest of him on the ideologies of Byzantine and Post byzantine Greeks, and, as he characteristically stresses, "to the fantom of the race continuity". Mango overstresses the Christian faith of Byzantinians, that he takes it as the main obstacle of their society to the classical antiquity.

To the criticisms and doubts on the continuity of the classical Greece in the Byzantium of C. Mango has answered the professor Ap. Vacalopoulos, who at the same time overthrew all his argumentations as well as these ones of Jenkins.

Fallmerayer's theories have resulted to be absolutely wrong, as they all have had an arbitrary result of the international pressures and distortions of the science of theology. The inexplicable insistency of Jenkins and Margo on the non-continuity of Hellenism, has also been the result of erroneous interpretations and partial actions, getting at unscientifically targets. Contrary to the already known and internationally acceptable scientificallity of him, Mango remained silent to the dynamic argument as regarding the language as of the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, as well as the extraordinary argumentation of the professor at the University of Oxford Gebrase Mathews, who in his erudite work in Byzantine Aesthetics has proven obviously the influence of the Hellenic philosophy on the aesthetics of the byzantine art, and particularly on the Neoplatonism.

According to the research of Professor Vacalopoulos,

a) It is not even placed a matter of continuity of Hellenism since the ancient times until our days.

b) Margo totally ignores or on purpose he falsifies those data that compose the Hellenic conscience, since the Homer and later, as in the language, the religion, the art and politics, but mainly in the philosophy. I personally deeply appreciate the scientific contribution of Mango internationally but a I am asking how does he overlooks the unbroken continuity of the philosophical word of Heraclitus in his theory on the Speech of the according to Saint John's Gospel, of the philosopher Fathers of the Church, of the Byzantine philosophers and thinkers of the New Hellenism.

Mango's successor at the King's College, professor D. Nicol rejected the argumentation of Professors Jenkins and Mango and insisted that during all life of the Empire the population of the main Greece, as well as lots of other byzantine citizens possessed Hellenic conscience. In no one case do we have a collective, linguistic or conceiting slavization in the Byzantium. Professor D. Nicol, in his excellent work, The Last Centuries of Byzantium 1261 - 1453 (London 1792) demonstrated the linguistic and cultural continuity of the ancient Hellenic spirit in the Byzantium, as well as during the Post-Byzantine period.

It has been a catapult against those who doubt the continuity of the classical culture of the Greeks in the Byzantium, was the Professor at the University of London, in the Birbeck College, Robert Browning, a member in the British Royal Academy and lecturer Dr. in the University of Athens. As characteristically says the distinguished professor "The agony of the Byzantinist scientists, as for instance Jenkins, Mango, and others, to stabilize and strengthen the independence of the scientific specialty against the classical philologists an historians, with a result to differentiate completely the Byzantium and the New Hellenism out of the antiquity".

The community of the classical civilization supports even W. Jaeger in his excellent work, "Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (1961), where he overdefences the new form of the Byzantine civilization and interprets positively the influence of the Christian faith on the structures of the Byzantine society.

R. Browning, especially placed the continuity of Hellenism in the area of education as well as of the totality of Byzantines.

In fact, as clearly stress the Cappadocian Fathers, Athanassios the Great, John Chrisostomos, Dionisios of the Supreme Court of Justice, Maximos the self-confessed, John Damaskinos, Fotios The Great, John the Blessing, Michael Psellos, John the Halian, Theodore the Monastery dependent, Nikiphoros Grigoras, George Plithon - Gemistos and others, the continuation of the philosophic reasoning, the philology, the tragedy and the art have been unceasing, as that in addition to all these, lots of elements have been fertilizing positively and contributing to forming of the magnificent Byzantine civilization and since then of the new Hellenism, as well as of the entire Western Civilization until nowadays.

The research of the civilization by Byzantines, as comes out from studies of Faidon Coucoules, Spiridon Vrionis, Robert Browning and others, discovers out the substantial relation with the creators of classical culture of the 5th and 4th century b.D. If the Byzantines had discovered by themselves the classical antiquity, as happened during the Renaissance in the 14th and 15th centuries in the western Europe, then in fact it is to be placed a serious item, an asking on uncontinuity. But the fact that the Byzantines assimilated naturally the structuring elements of the classical antiquity and mostly, the have given to them a new form and shape and a new breathing, fully demonstrates the dynamism of the continuity.

The Byzantine thinkers, on a multi parted way, multiply and multimannered have been philosophizing even the most enlighted of them, prelates, monks and laics, have been proved excellent scholars pf Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonics, as the Great Fathers, Psellos, Halos and George Plithon-Gemistor. And especially Efstathios of Salonica made him known as an insuperable annotator of the Homerian Epics.

As for us the above given, and in brief exposed research internationally makes known the Scientifics interest on the greatest importance problem of continuity or not of Hellenism, as a spiritual and cultural creation, through the centuries. And a top argument, in favor of the continuity reasoning is that of philosophy, given the fact that the philosophical argumentation assures, in favor of every other scientific contribution, of the continuation of the being true such truth.

The through of on purpose gradation of the spiritual creation of Byzantium is due mostly that one on the part of some researches of the modern period to characterized it as being of middle-aged, that is darkening, and this is obvious in order to place it on the same label as it was the Middle age in the West, where there was for centuries a permanent stagnation, as regarding the progress of the sciences, firstly and mainly because of the overstressed influence on them of the Roman-Catholic Church, with the well known extremities and peripecies as of the philosophy as of the scientists. The extreme dependence of scientists on the Roman-Catholic theologists really made difficult the free development of the sciences. Such a thing did not ever happening in Byzantium.

So, excepting some disgraceful cases, as a rule the Orthodox Eastern Catholic Church of Christ cooperated in the free development of the Word and speech, and some Orthodox Bishops came to be pioneers in the philosophy as well as the scientific research. And this due to the fact that in Byzantium the philosophy has never been considered to be an "ancilla theologiae", as that took place in most cases in the Western Europe, until the luminous minds as of Descartes, intervened in order to break the chains of the Roman-Catholic Church to liberate the Word.

A very strong argument in favour of the continuity of the ancient Hellenic philosophy in Byzantium is the reference of Hegel in the history of the dialectic that has been founded by Plato and Aristotle and then perfected by the Byzantine thinkers. The relation of philosophy with the Christian faith, according to Hegel it discovered the meaning of the absolute being, of the Trinitarianity of God.

And surely the literature, aesthetics, artistic creation and the philosophy of the classical antiquity have suffered some changes by the Byzantine thinkers, but not, by no means any transformations. The nucleus of these creations has been the duly meaning and the moving strength of the creativity of the Byzantine civilization. In fact our Byzantine ancestors, acting under the beneficial burden of the great inheritress coming from Hellenic antiquity could be able to edificate and construct a high speech, and to penetrate into the depth of difficult meanings, and what is more, to compose the messages of the ancient Hellenic philosophy by the messages and thoughts of the Christian faith, and finally to create the new human being, who is this way called to face the problems his own time.

Such a way reformed and shaped byzantine humanism has constituted the foundation of the later followed European humanism, that really was an extraordinary turn in the world-wide history.

So, it is self-evident what really is the Hellenic classical tradition, as it is clear that the most extraordinary spiritual creation has been without any interruption followed in Byzantium and then is being continued towards the New Hellenism, and to the entire Ecumene. The wide-spread arguments of those who are opposing to such a view cannot undergo a serious and scientific critics. Hellenism, as a spiritual, artistic, philosophic and dynamic strength of the Race, has always been, it is and should always be the life giving breath of Greeks, under the ancient-Hellenic and Christian substance of its own personality, and even more during our days of crisis of consciences as it is expressed as a serious crisis in values. And in fact, Romiosini, as an ecumenicality expresses the harmonic composition of the ancient-Hellenic classical creation jointly with the Orthodox Christian Faith, as the unique embankment against the universalisation, that one that destroys every element of the human being, as it is a moral support of any person.

His Beatitude,

All the above mentioned, as all those who really are the pioneers of the spirit, hierophants of the knowledgement and mystagogists of the science, stars multi-lighted of the thinkable firmament of the word, invincible defenders of dialectic, wise thinkers of the true substance of all beings, inspectors of the untruth and the empty fraud and despisers, all them express the component of the creative turning of the conscience that leads to the light of the truth, for which the really refined to the truth, as the healthy persons can live from the being of existence to the more being of co existence and to the being that is after the historical being.

Note: The footnotes as well as the references of this introduction shall be published soon.