On April 7, 1842, the ambassador of the free Greek state in Constantinople, Alexandros Mavrokordatos, informed the government of the arrival at the port of the city of the steamer Evantia, which had set off from Santorini. Theophilos Kairis, an exiled scholar and priest, boards a ship. Three years earlier he had been preceded by his trial in Athens, the decision to place him in a monastery at Skiathos (for one year), and immediately afterwards his two-year isolation in Fira. Theosovei, the worldview model that he introduced into his teaching, aroused the wrath of the Patriarchate and the Hellenic Church, which in 1841 sent a text to all parishes to remove him from the priesthood…

From this moment, the book “Theophilos Kairis, the embodiment of theosophical teaching and ethics” comes into force, which in a few days will be released by iWrite with a foreword and introduction by Ilias Tempelis and Olga Christodoulidou. “Basically, this is the first release of the Cairo project. It was printed in 1851 in a few dozen copies in London, and those sent to Greece were censored and confiscated at customs,” says publisher Minas Papageorgiou. “In addition, it reveals his worldview, his idiosyncratic religion, which was considered a threat to the ‘official’ church.”

The release of the book, which will be presented at the Military Museum on January 25, is timed to coincide with the 170th anniversary of the death of Theophilos Kairis. To say the least, this is the time-honored rehabilitation of a man who, despite hardships and torture, survived to the end, defending his ideas. “K” preliminarily publishes some characteristic excerpts from its introduction and the original text.

Ship of Wrath

“The arrival of Cairo at the port of Constantinople causes Mavrocordat to be clearly embarrassed. He decides to tell the philosopher not to dare to set foot on dry land and “stay on the ship he is on”. This embarrassment of Mavrocordatos is further intensified from the moment news of the surveillance of the annoying passenger of the Evantia begins to spread rapidly throughout the city. Eight days after his first report, the Greek diplomat informed his superiors that in the meantime, former students and admirers of Cairo began to flock to the deck of the ship, wishing to talk with the philosopher. The same document expresses the deepest concern of the Patriarchate with the development of the case, and the patriarch himself, as it is characteristically emphasized, plans to turn even to the High Gates (!) with the ultimate goal of expelling Cairo from Istanbul. The departure of the latter from the city on April 15, bound for London this time, completed yet another significant phase of suffering and persecution that the “forbidden” philosopher faced in the last decades of his life.

This is the time-honored justification of a man who, despite the hardships and tortures he faced, endured to the end.

strong imprint

“Eleven years later, in January 1853, Theophilos Kairis left the world. It was a symbolic form of the first half of the 19th century, which left a strong imprint on the modern history of our country. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he literally lived it all. Participated in the pre-revolutionary struggle for the education of Greek children, taught in various schools and previously studied in the West. Notably, he provided the Quince School with tools for astronomy, physics, chemistry, and geography that were groundbreaking for the time. In the same city, in fact, he founded a printing house in 1818. Throughout his life, he was in contact with brilliant personalities of the era of the Greek Enlightenment, the most significant of which were Adamantios Koray, Veniamin Lesbius, Neophytos Vambas and Antimos Gazis. He took part in the revolution of 1821, or rather in the campaign to Olympus, from where he “inherited” three wounds.

piety

“YOU ASK. What is God?

YOU RESPOND. God exists and they talk about him, this eternal and the only absolutely necessary, and infinite and blessed Being, this infinite and all-perfect Reason, one from non-existence into the universe of derivatives, and continuous, and supporting, and about these provisions. (The language of the text is ancient and sacred.)