Theoklitos Farmakidis

Theoklitos Farmakidis, portrait by Dionysios Tsokos , 1858

Theoklitos Farmakidis ( Greek Θεόκλητος Φαρμακίδης , also Theoklitos Pharmakidis , bourgeois: Theocharis Farmakidis ; born January 15, 1784 in Nimbegler (Nikea, Thessaly ); † April 26, 1860 in Athens ) was a Greek theologian and author and a Greek freedom fighter .

Life

Theoklitos Farmakidis went to school in his home village and in Larisa . In 1802 he was ordained a deacon of the Greek Orthodox Church and was given the name Theoklitos. He studied theology at the Greek Orthodox Phanar College in Istanbul (1804-1806), at the Academy in Jassy , the capital of the Principality of Moldova (1806-1811) and in Bucharest , where he was ordained a priest in 1811 . Then he was pastor of the Greek community of Agios Georgios in Vienna until 1818 . Here he learned Latin, French and German and together with Anthimos Gazis (1758–1828) he published the journal Logios Hermes , a mouthpiece for the positions of Adamantios Korais . He became a member of the Filiki Eteria . The Philhellene Lord Guilford took over the costs for his further studies at the University of Göttingen .

At the beginning of the Greek Revolution in May 1821, he arrived in Greece, stayed briefly in Spetses and in the rebel camp near Vervena, and in Kalamata published the Greek trumpet , the first Greek periodical to be published on Greek soil. As an administrative expert and politician, he participated in the building of the new state. He was a member of the first National Assembly in Epidaurus. In 1823 he was appointed professor of dogmatics at the Ionian Academy in Corfu. In 1825 he returned to the Peloponnese and in Nafplio was editor of the Allgemeine Zeitung von Greece , later the Greek government gazette.

He fought the Prime Minister Ioannis Kapodistrias , whom he regarded as the trustee of Russian policy. The censors saw an article defaming the governor personally, and for this reason Farmakidis was placed under house arrest for one year. Then he went to Hydra . After the murder of Kapodistrias in 1832, Farmakidis was appointed head of a school on Aegina .

For Georg Ludwig von Maurer , who was a member of the Regency Council when the young King Otto I was a minor , Farmakidis was an important advisor in church matters. At the instigation of Farmakidis, a synod set up by royal decree in 1833 declared the Orthodox Church of Greece, which had been under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , to be autocephalous . His concern was not to make the free Greek state dependent on a patriarch who was a prisoner of the Turkish sultan . As the militant secretary of the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece, he pushed for independence from the Ecumenical Patriarchate in violent disputes with the "Russian Party", which advocated the unity of the Church, from 1833 onwards. His view that the Bible should be written in simple Greek in order to reach a broader population also brought him into opposition to the same conservative circles.

The politically liberal minded Farmakidis, who was strongly influenced by Western European ideas, was a staunch supporter of Adamantios Korais on the Greek language question , who propagated the Katharevousa as a middle way between the vernacular and standard language.

In 1837, Farmakidis became a full professor of theology at the newly founded University of Athens .

literature

• Georgios Fatouros:  PHARMAKIDES, Theocletus. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 7, Bautz, Herzberg 1994, ISBN 3-88309-048-4 , Sp. 439-441.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Theologische Realenzyklopädie (edited by Gerhard Müller), p. 218