Byzantine Culture

History · Guide

Byzantine Legacy in Modern Greece

Explore the Byzantine legacy in modern Greece, from the War of Independence in 1821 to the present day. Learn how language, religion, and political identity have been shaped by the medieval empire.

The Byzantine legacy in modern Greece is the most direct of any successor culture. When the Greek War of Independence began in 1821, the insurgents claimed to be restoring the Byzantine Empire, and the new state adopted the symbols of Byzantium as the symbols of the new Greece. The Byzantine inheritance has remained a central element of Greek national identity, shaping the language, the religion, the political culture, and the artistic and architectural heritage of the modern Greek state. To study the Byzantine legacy in modern Greece is to study one of the most powerful and most enduring expressions of the Byzantine inheritance in the modern world.

This exploration of the Byzantine legacy in modern Greece traces the inheritance from the Ottoman period to the War of Independence, from the establishment of the modern Greek state to the present day. It examines the linguistic, religious, political, and cultural dimensions of the inheritance, and it considers the role of the Byzantine legacy in contemporary Greek identity.

The Greek Inheritance Through the Ottoman Period

The Greek Millet

The Greek-speaking Christians of the Ottoman Empire were organized as a separate community, the Rum millet, under the leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The millet system, established in the fifteenth century, gave the Greek community a substantial degree of autonomy, and the patriarch was responsible for the civil as well as the religious affairs of his community. The millet was a Greek institution in the broadest sense, since it included all the Greek-speaking Orthodox Christians of the empire, regardless of their ethnic or regional background.

The millet system preserved the Greek Orthodox tradition through almost four centuries of Ottoman rule, and it gave the Greek community a sense of continuity with the Byzantine past. The patriarch and the higher clergy were Greek-speaking, the liturgy was celebrated in Greek, and the education of the Greek community was in Greek. The Greek merchant class of Constantinople, the Phanariots, played a particularly important role in the cultural and political life of the Greek community, and the Phanariots were the source of many of the leaders of the Greek national movement.

The Greek community of the Ottoman period produced a remarkable flowering of culture. The schools of Constantinople, of the Aegean islands, and of the Morea taught the Greek classical tradition alongside the Greek Orthodox tradition, and they produced a generation of Greek scholars, including figures like Adamantios Korais, who was one of the leading scholars of the Greek Enlightenment. The Greek printing press, established in Venice in the late seventeenth century, produced a large body of Greek literature, both classical and modern, and the Greek newspapers and journals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were among the first in the Orthodox world.

The Greek National Awakening

The Greek national awakening of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was deeply influenced by the Byzantine legacy. The scholars of the Greek Enlightenment, including Korais, Rigas Feraios, and others, drew on the Byzantine past as a source of national identity, and they developed a vision of the Greek nation that included both the classical and the Byzantine inheritances. The new Greek state, they argued, was not a new creation but a continuation of the Greek nation, with a history going back to Homer and continuing through Byzantium to the present.

The Greek national awakening was also influenced by the French Revolution, the Romantic movement, and the European national movements of the early nineteenth century. Yet the Byzantine inheritance was a central element of the Greek national identity, and the Greek insurgents of 1821 explicitly identified themselves as the heirs of the Byzantine emperors. The famous flag of the Greek War of Independence, designed by Rigas Feraios, was a phoenix rising from the ashes, a symbol of the resurrection of the Greek nation after the Ottoman conquest.

The War of Independence

The Revolution of 1821

The Greek War of Independence began in March 1821, with a series of uprisings in the Peloponnese, central Greece, and the islands. The insurgents were led by a mixed group of Greek notables, including military leaders, bishops, and Phanariot scholars, and they proclaimed their aim as the liberation of the Greek nation from the Ottoman yoke. The most famous leader of the early phase of the war was Alexander Ypsilantis, a Phanariot prince who led a revolt in the Danubian principalities in February 1821, although his revolt was quickly crushed by the Ottomans.

The Greek insurgents were inspired by the example of the French Revolution, the American Revolution, and the European national movements, but they were also inspired by the Byzantine past. The Greek insurgents explicitly identified themselves as the heirs of the Byzantine emperors, and they used the Byzantine symbols, including the double-headed eagle, as the symbols of the revolution. The first Greek national assembly, which met at Epidaurus in early 1822, drew up a constitution for the new Greek state, and the constitution included references to the Byzantine inheritance.

The Greek War of Independence lasted for almost a decade, with the intervention of the great powers of Europe eventually deciding the outcome. The famous Battle of Navarino in 1827, in which a combined British, French, and Russian fleet destroyed the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet, was a turning point in the war, and the London Protocol of 1830 recognized the independence of the Greek state. The new state was initially a small territory in the southern Peloponnese, central Greece, and the islands, but it expanded over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to include the whole of the modern Greek state.

The Kingdom of Greece

Otto and the Glücksburg Dynasty

The first king of the new Greek state, Otto, was a Bavarian prince who was chosen by the great powers to be the first monarch of independent Greece. Otto ruled from 1832 to 1862, and he presided over the consolidation of the new state, the establishment of a modern bureaucracy, and the development of a modern education system. The capital of the new kingdom was Athens, which had been a small village at the time of the war, and the city was transformed into a modern European capital with the construction of new buildings, including the royal palace, the university, and the national library.

The Otto period was marked by tension between the king’s German advisers and the Greek population, and the king was eventually overthrown in 1862. The second king of Greece, George I, was a Danish prince of the Glücksburg dynasty, who ruled from 1863 to 1913. The Glücksburg dynasty presided over the territorial expansion of the Greek state, with the addition of Thessaly in 1881, Macedonia and Crete in 1913, and the islands of the Aegean in the early twentieth century. The dynasty was eventually overthrown in a military coup in 1924, and the Greek republic was proclaimed.

The Megali Idea

The “Great Idea” (Megali Idea) was the political vision of a greater Greece that would include all the Greek-speaking territories of the former Byzantine Empire, including Constantinople, the Aegean coast of Asia Minor, and Cyprus. The Megali Idea was a powerful element of Greek nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it was supported by a wide range of Greek politicians, scholars, and churchmen. The Megali Idea reached its peak with the Greek occupation of Smyrna and the surrounding region in 1919–1922, a period that ended in disaster with the Greek defeat in the Greco-Turkish War and the burning of Smyrna in 1922.

The catastrophe of 1922 was a major turning point in Greek history. The defeat destroyed the Megali Idea, and it led to the expulsion of the Greek population of Asia Minor, with more than a million Greek refugees coming to Greece in the population exchange of 1923. The catastrophe also led to a major revision of the Greek national identity, with the new emphasis on Greece as a smaller, more homogeneous state, rather than as the heir of the great multinational empires of Byzantium and the classical world.

The Greek Language

Katharevousa and Demotic

The Greek language was one of the most important elements of the Byzantine legacy in modern Greece. The language of the Byzantine Empire, often called Medieval Greek or Byzantine Greek, was a direct continuation of the classical Greek tradition, and it was the language of the Orthodox church, of the Byzantine administration, and of the Greek literary tradition. The language of modern Greece, often called Modern Greek or Romaic, was the descendant of the Byzantine Greek, with influences from the languages of the Ottoman period, including Turkish, Albanian, and Slavic.

The language question was one of the most contentious issues of modern Greek intellectual life. The supporters of katharevousa, the “purified” form of the language, argued that the Greek language should be based on the classical and Byzantine traditions, with archaic forms and classical vocabulary. The supporters of demotic, the popular form of the language, argued that the language should be based on the actual spoken language of the Greek people. The dispute, which lasted for more than a century, was eventually resolved in favor of demotic, which became the official language of the Greek state in 1976.

The Byzantine heritage is still visible in the modern Greek language, especially in the vocabulary and the syntax. The Greek Orthodox Church still uses Byzantine Greek in its liturgy, although the everyday liturgical language of the church is closer to demotic. The Greek legal system still uses some Byzantine terminology, and the Greek language of scholarship, education, and public life is full of words and phrases inherited from the Byzantine and classical traditions.

The Greek Orthodox Church

The Autocephalous Church of Greece

The Greek Orthodox Church is one of the most important institutions of modern Greece, and it is a direct descendant of the Byzantine church. The church of Greece was declared autocephalous in 1833, in the early years of the new kingdom, and the new church was organized as a national church under the Archbishop of Athens. The Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, the head of the Greek Orthodox world under the Ottoman system, lost much of his authority in the new Greek state, although he remained the symbolic head of the Orthodox world.

The Greek Orthodox Church is a central element of the Greek national identity. The Greek state is officially secular, but the church is one of the most respected institutions in the country, and the relationship between church and state has been a major issue in Greek political life. The church is supported by a tax levied on the Greek people, and the church is involved in many aspects of Greek social life, including education, charity, and the celebration of the national feasts.

The Greek Orthodox Church preserves the Byzantine liturgical tradition, and the liturgy celebrated in the Greek churches is essentially the same as the liturgy celebrated in the Byzantine period. The chant tradition, the iconographic tradition, the calendar of feasts and fasts, and the canonical structure of the church are all direct continuations of the Byzantine inheritance. The church is, in this sense, one of the most important institutions through which the Byzantine legacy has been preserved in modern Greece.

The Byzantine Heritage in Modern Greek Culture

Architecture and Art

The Byzantine heritage is visible in every aspect of modern Greek culture, especially in architecture and art. The medieval churches of Thessaloniki, the monasteries of Meteora, the castles of Mystras, and the great monasteries of the Holy Mountain are all direct continuations of the Byzantine tradition, and they are major tourist attractions in modern Greece. The Greek state maintains the Byzantine heritage as a central element of its cultural patrimony, and the restoration and conservation of Byzantine monuments is a major element of Greek cultural policy.

The Greek tradition of icon painting, which is one of the most distinctive elements of the Greek artistic heritage, is a direct continuation of the Byzantine tradition. The Cretan school of icon painting, which flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under Venetian rule, produced some of the most important post-Byzantine icons, and the Heptanesian school, which developed in the Ionian Islands, produced a synthesis of Byzantine and Italian traditions. The Greek icon painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including figures like Nikolaos Doxaras and Nikolaos Kantounis, helped to revive the Byzantine tradition, and the modern Greek icon painters continue the tradition to this day.

The Greek tradition of folk art is also deeply influenced by the Byzantine heritage. The traditional embroidery of the Greek villages, the silverwork of the Ionian Islands, and the woodcarving of the monasteries of the mainland all show the influence of the Byzantine tradition, and they have been major elements of the Greek cultural heritage.

Scholarship and Education

The study of the Byzantine heritage has been a major element of Greek scholarship since the foundation of the modern Greek state. The University of Athens, founded in 1837, was a major center of Byzantine studies, and the Greek scholars of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including figures like Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, Spyridon Lampros, and Konstantinos Amantos, made major contributions to the field. The Association for Byzantine Studies, founded in Greece in the twentieth century, has been one of the most important organizations in the field.

The Greek school system includes the Byzantine heritage as a major element of the curriculum, and Greek students study the Byzantine period in some detail as part of their general education. The Greek national holidays include several that are linked to the Byzantine heritage, including the celebration of the Battle of Navarino, the celebration of the Greek War of Independence, and the celebration of the Union of Crete with Greece. The Byzantine heritage is, in this sense, a central element of the Greek national identity, and it remains an important element of Greek education and scholarship.

The Byzantine Legacy in Contemporary Greek Politics

Greece and the European Union

The Byzantine legacy has remained an important element of Greek politics, especially in the context of Greece’s relationship with the European Union and the broader West. The Greek government has often invoked the Byzantine heritage as a justification for its policies, especially in the areas of foreign policy, education, and cultural policy. The dispute over the use of the name “Macedonia” by the Republic of North Macedonia, for example, was closely linked to the Greek claim on the Byzantine heritage of the Macedonian region.

The Greek government has also been a major supporter of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, and it has often raised the question of the rights of the patriarchate in its relations with Turkey. The reopening of the Greek Orthodox seminary of Halki, closed by the Turkish government in 1971, has been a major Greek demand, and the dispute has been a persistent element of Greek-Turkish relations.

The Byzantine legacy has also been a major element of Greek cultural diplomacy. The Greek government has supported the study of the Greek language and the Greek culture in universities around the world, and it has worked to promote the Greek cultural heritage as a central element of European civilization. The Greek candidacy for the European Capital of Culture, the Greek participation in the European Heritage Label, and the Greek support for the restoration of Byzantine monuments in the wider Orthodox world are all examples of the Byzantine legacy in contemporary Greek politics.

The Byzantine Legacy in the Greek Self-Understanding

The Continuity of Greek History

The Byzantine legacy is, for many Greeks, the central element of the Greek self-understanding. The Greek national narrative presents Greek history as a continuous story, from the classical period through the Byzantine period to the modern period, and the Byzantine period is presented as a high point of Greek civilization. The famous speech of Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos, the Greek historian of the nineteenth century, “Panhellenion,” argued that the Greek nation had been continuous from the classical period to the present, and that the Byzantine period was a central element of the Greek national identity.

This continuity is, of course, debated by historians, and there are elements of the Greek national narrative that are open to challenge. Yet the Byzantine legacy remains a powerful element of Greek identity, and it is invoked in a wide range of contexts, from politics to art to scholarship. The Greek state has built its cultural policy around the Byzantine heritage, and the Greek public has been receptive to the idea that the Byzantine period is a central element of the Greek national story.

The Byzantine legacy in modern Greece is thus a complex and multifaceted phenomenon. It is at once a historical inheritance, a cultural patrimony, a political vision, and a national identity. It has shaped the language, the religion, the culture, and the politics of the modern Greek state, and it remains one of the most powerful and most enduring expressions of the Byzantine inheritance in the modern world.

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