“Roman – Grecian and Greek nation”

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: Mrs. Mary Mantouvalou, Adjunct Professor at the Philosophy School of Athens.

Subject: "Roman - Grecian and Greek (Hellenic) nation"

It is really attempted by some researchers the practice of a propaganda, through the use of national naming of part of the Greeks, in order to doubt their national identity. They say nothing, as well, that behind of the stored and at the same time intertiming with regard to national naming, as Roman, Grecian, Greek, Hellenic, undermine, by a variety of foreign, westerners, Balkans, Russians (as Moscow, Third Rome), Germans (change of the title: Imperator Romanorum) etc, territorial claims and inheritance rights mainly on the lands of Byzantine Empire, but on the Turkish - occupied and later freed Greece.

The Romanesquian land has always been the Golden Fleece for lots of pretenders and so have such a way been chosen names of Greeks and so those ones were choosing their diplomatic intrigues. This can easily be seen by their repeated efforts to dough ting the continuity of Hellenism and also to take out and in a total way the national romanesquian conscience that is of the Empire of New Rome, that so wrongly they named later as the Byzantium Fall.

Greeks did not need to form their national identity, as they had never doubted on the intertime conscience of them, that surely was Hellenic, Romanesque, Greek. And many evenly Greek writers in the 18th century paid by no means any attention about the use of national names. Orthodoxy and language, in a parallel way to the teaching of the Hellenic literature since Homer up to the Martyr songs, pointed out, sp smoothly the Hellenic - Romanesque and Grecian identity, with not any particular problems.

The problems on the subject of national names of Greeks came out from the selections of foreign "visitors" to Hellenism as well as their followers in Europe. So, in an analogous way depending on the external flow as "philhellenic" or "philhegrecian", and never "philheroman", that is "philhebyzantine", then followed also external adaptations, as the internal conscious ones were permanent and stables in a clear knowledge of the place and the national origins. The fact that the Romans of the Roman Empire of the East have to apologize for their names, demonstrates the existence of so many usurpers, mainly of the West, who after the independence the claimed the Hellenic throne, as being successors and heirs of the Byzantine Empire.

It constitutes incorrectness the view that the conservatives use the term Roman, Romiosini, meanwhile the progressivists and "propagandists" the term Greek or Grecian. With an extreme easiness, for instance writes Saint Athanasios from Paros: "we are Greeks in fact" and evenly in a clearly dogmatic text. In the same work he uses the term Greeks and with the same facility in another work of him he calls as Romans and the land of Romans: It is an immense number of references to Romanesques and Romiosini, in a parallel way in a forceless use the terms Greece and Greeks, during the entire period of Turkish-occupation as well as during in the contemporary Greece.

Mr. Koumas, in his work, writes about books: "in the Romans interpreted voice", "under various ones (being published) in the Romanesque as well as in Greek" and he dedicates it to the Zosimades" as they were GREECE benefiting".

The Cypriot chancellor in Trieste Christophoros Conialis (1806) shall write Precepts for the race of Greeks of Trieste. In manuscripts of the Holy Trinity in Halke we read: "Counting being soul saving having passed in the Ethiopian inlands to the Roman's land, and then passed in an Ethiopians dialect into the Hellenic language, by the monk John Damaskinos".

Certainly the term Hellas begun being to use, after the fall of Constantinople by the Franks, without that has to mean idolatry, since Theodore Laskaris the 2nd names the eastern provinces of his nation Greece or Hellas, and, the term Roman keeps on having a wider containment, and being much more connected to the politics than the cultural idea. During the Turkish-occupation names and passed as well as institutions mainly from Byzantium and they the are being founded after the dominion of Franks (1204 - 1261) as, also the institution of catholic Roman judges, when the Law is a matter of the Church.

It is natural the continuation from Byzantium to the Turkish power in the names too. So, for instance, Eugene the Aetolian (1597 - 1682) effortlessly talks on Greece, calling it famous and to his contemporaries as country fellows Greeks. Surely, in the framework of diplomacy, the scientific truth of national names went backwards in order to serve foreign plans about provenance, like the one of Fallmeraier's.

The Greek - Romans, any way they the kept on having their self - knowledgement, being indifferent to the arbitrary half-Hellenic, and half-Roman theories, and instead of them mentioned even the famous Parian marble, that was found in Paros island in 1627, in which a mention is taking place as: Greeks that earlier were called Greeks.

During all the period of Turkish - occupation we meet writers, who in order to interpreting the name Roman go back to the Byzantine history, as P. Cocridas who writes: "by means of transferring of the empire throne of Romans in Constantinople, Romans were renamed and all Romans, in general, were appointed Christians. Whoever Greeks in such a national naming were included, even as Romans lost political kingship, but as Christians they kept their national wholeness.

So, the Hellenic Race, through the Christian Faith had been fully saved. His political situation has been changed".

Manolis Triantafyllides writes that the Hellenizing of the Roman state "follows jointly even the Hellenic naming Roman - Romanesque. So, the old Latin word, that from a national one had taken a political meaning, retook in Greek an ethnographic meaning that meant the Greek.

Lambros Catsonis says for his army (proclamation of 1792): sufficient number of Roman soldiers, who represent the Hellenic tribe, as well as Thanassis Diakos, when is being asked: Would you be converted into a Turkish, oh you priest? And so, everything should be forgiven, and he answers him: I Greek have been born and a Greek should I die".

Certainly, the name Roman - Romanesque, as a national name, was frequently taken under disdain, mainly according to Corais, C. Amantos, George Sotiriades, who wrote a negative critics on the Hellenism History by Arg. Eftaliotis (newspaper Acropolis, 5/8/1901), as well as to Spir. Zambelios and G.N. Hatzidakis. The last one had written: "all of us considering that to the name Roman, Romanesque today is believed that all politic and social irregularity and impropriety offend us, and we do not now make all Greeks perfects, and so on, and then goes on saying: I do not examine by now the explanation of humiliating of the one time glorious and by all respected our name" and attacks strongly to all those who had advised on names like Hellenic, Roman, Romanesque.

To the mourning and trying on Constantinople of Mathew Myreon did answer the three names:

Oh alas, alas, to the Romans race
Oh it has ended up the race of Greeks.
To us, to all Greeks should really come the hour.

Unjustifiably, I think so, Constantinos Amantos, as well as George Hatzidakis, insists as "In newer years was said, but badly the official replacement of the name Greeks and Greece for Roman and Romanesque. The name Roman was not given, as Greeks have ethnologically changed and became Romans".

On the contrary, the Hellenic-lover poet Costis Palamas is found, as he assures us, inside Hellenism, he is its own heart and even writes in the article Roman and Romanesque (Complete works 6, page 273) overstressing that Roman and Romanesque just us Hellin and Hellenism are national names being valued since the period of the Turkish occupation. The contemporary Greeks are in fact descendants of the Ancient Greeks and Byzantins.

It is quiet right as the professor Panagiotis Christou observes, for the one-sided reactions in front of national names, as in them we can see the conscious or in conscious influence of the theory on the change in the national character of the inhabitants in Greece, a theory that projected by Austrians, Germans and Slavs historians having political objectives and beliefs.

The elaboration of "philhellenic" movements in Europe bring out its real intentions, in order to put an end, that is to the memory of the Eastern Roman Empire, jointly with the overstressing towards the classical Greece. And really so characteristic is whatever the priest Antonios Alevizopoulos writes: "The rebirth of classical studies as well as the movement of humanism was widespread to the entire Germany... at the same time was developed a kind of religious motion, that took gradually the attention of the Germanic intellectualism towards the ancient Greece... such movement drove to the co-relation of Christianism with the classical humanism", and choices that it is discovering of the intentions not only of Germans, but of the whole Europe in front of the Byzantine Empire.

And he writes: "the admiration for the ancient Greece (of the Germans) was connected to the sorrow for all the difficulties of the new Greeks".

Byzantium, so, as being the connecting Hellenic link of the national identity of Greeks, has been ostentatiously ignored.

Are totally antiscientific the related publications of the University Professor Nikolaos Tomadakis, who, in a complete historical and philological knowledgement, writes for the Professor in Dogmatics as well as in the Pastoral sector at the University of Salonica, John Romanidis, the following: "a priest - monk introduced lately the unexisting term Romiosini, as the term Romiosini has been adopted by some culture - liking and clownish theologists".

But what did he write Romanidis? Let us see it: "the New Greeks have permitted to the Franks to redact the history of Hellenism in order to understand His spirit, as himself means it and is also to the benefit of the same. The Greek as becomes a New Greek, as prefers him the Franks, he is not then a Greek and, as his Frank teacher, neither understands nor speaks Greek anymore. The heart and the spirit of Hellenism is the one and unique and unified Paternal theology and spirituality, that is identified to that one of the Sacred Scriptures", and it adds "they are clearly identified to Roman and Greek".

I shall close such a brief tour with Palama's two - verses from Motherlands, that puts as a moto in his article Greek and Romiosini:

Being hidden in the much afflicted Romiosini
As to reopen the Queen Greece.

And Seferis has permanently on the lips the sorrow of Hellenism. I read from "Neofytos the Confined talks".

For us it was another matter the war for the faith of Christ and for the soul of man being seated on the kneels of the Unbeaten General, who had in the eyes tessellated the sorrow of Hellenism, of that open sea the longing when he found the weighing of Kindness.

Conclusions

It consists a deliberated falsification of the historic truth, whatever is written by the self-appointed casuists of the "Enlightenment", philosophers, politic scientists and others, as for instance Paschalis Citromilidis who assures us that: "A clear Hellenic national conscience, had substituted the common Orthodox Christian conscience that Romans in the East had inherited from Byzantium. The assignment of the political community under the intellect of the political humanism was appeared contrary to the hierarchic protectionism of the Christian monarchy. A contemporary mundane education, being based in the revival of the classical humanism, was presented as a substitute to the traditional religion with regard to the definition of the social morality as well as a semantic framework of self knowledge" and the same one goes on:

"The new democratic nationalism, being born out of the cosmopolitanism, that so much appreciated Corais, has so be done the spiritual mould about the evaluation of the past, the critics on the present and the vision for the future of the Hellenic nation. Corais had helped in order to have a permanent political expression to the searches of a century of social change and cultural renewal. In fact, it could be assumed as being the spiritual founder of the new nation.

His political theory could not simply represent the excess of the traditional ideology, but it could not connected the Hellenic conscience towards the most propulsion orientations of the European social thinking, that had emerged out of the dialectic of the Enlightment", and here ends up the quotation.

However, all the distortionists of the truth, Greeks only to the name, researchers and followers of the so called "Enlightment" know very well that there was not no one doubt on our national conscience, since as I have already said, it is used our national naming as well as its three versions: Greek, Roman, Romanesque. So, it they insist much more in all the Turkish occupation - even up to nowadays - as during the Byzantine Empire to preferring the name Roman, and it is happened in order to stress the opposition of the Orthodoxy of the Greek in front of the idolatry of the Greek during the classical period, and not of the Greek of their time, to whom there was an absolute identification and clear orientation, that was the rebirth of the Romanesque royalty, as well as the battling counter position against the plans of the West, that under the pretext of the resurrection of the ancient Greece wanted by all means to defame the Hellenic Roman Empire, that so perfidiously had baptized as Byzantine, in order to totally cut the Greeks out of their Orthodox roots and so to remain the only and unique heir under a lawless usurpation and a parallel banishment of Russia, that under the vision of Moscow, as third Rome, was working to the re-establishment of the Byzantine Empire, to their own profit, obviously. Such a think was known by Greeks and as after the failure of the Orlofian test (1774) they were writing without, certainly, loose their faith to the future, that:

"If so as any time,
being appointed by the prophecies, and after those so many and during all those victories by the time of Moscowans against the Otomans, we were not be freed we the Greeks as it is so difficult in order to finally come in the near future the resurrection of the Roman Kingship".

Some years earlier, in 1749, the editor Athanasios Skiathas, dedicates the translation of Rollin's Ancient History of the glorious Race of Romans "as it tells the glorious and bright achievements of your brilliant youngsters, of the so well known race of Greeks".

So and even much more earlier, in 1590, in a letter of the Cypriot Monk Leontios Efstratiou to the Hellenist Martin Croussios, and indirectly refers in a notation to him, that during the period of the Patriarchate of Constantinople in the years 1580 - 1590, and writes about: The Hellenic of the newer History, as well as in unfortunate Greece destinies, the tyranic and unrespectfull centers of Byzantium, the church of Greeks, Greek youngsters, without a fear if someone does not understand towards who he writes and inform us on the banishment of the Orthodox conscience, as we have already said previously.