Cappadocia was, from ancient times, the place of the scouts of Hellenism and region that produced the Church Fathers, the historical site, which reconciled Ancient Greece with Christianity. Basil the Great declared in his patristic writings that it is not possible to understand the deep meaning and the values of Christianity, if we do not study ancient Greek philosophy, if we do not listen to Plato and Aristotle.
The wider area of sacred Cappadocia, colonised initially by the Mycenaeans and later by the Hellenism of Ionia and Caria, emerged as the area of historical Hellenism that gave birth to the greatest Fathers of Christendom, including John Chrysostom, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, Saint Savvas and other Saints and Martyrs, but also impressive figures of Hellenism of the 20th century, including Aristotle Onassis, Prodromos Bodossakis from Nigdi and others.
It is one of the most historically important regions where Hellenism flourished and promoted its culture and faith as a shield, as a patronage to protect its Greek identity, in the depths of Anatolia, Asia Minor. This area, where entire villages and towns remained with a pure Greek population, and others, where Greeks and Turks lived peacefully through time, were forced until September 1924 to uproot and return to the ancestral homes of their great-grandparents, scattered in Greece, disembarking in the great ports of Patras, Piraeus and Thessaloniki.
The historical journey of the development, contribution and creation of the Greeks of Cappadocia was studied and historically composed by historian Aikaterini Nikolaidou-Danassi, with great care, in three volumes dedicated to Caesarea and the Hellenism of Cappadocia. The Cappadocian Greeks were, along with the Greeks of Ionia and the Greeks of Pontus and South Russia, but also those of the wider Balkan area, the most crucial parts of the so-called Historical Hellenism, in terms of culture, social and economic development. With historical Hellenism we define the organised Greeks who lived as communities, in villages, cities and settlements, promoting their national, racial (homofylia) and religious (homodoxy) identity. Caesarea, Konya, Nissa and Nigde and other cities of Cappadocia, and over five hundred towns, villages and settlements, for hundreds of years maintained their ethno-religious consciousness and identity without compromise.
Of course, they also hurt. Thousands of inter-ethnic marriages (intermarriages) with Muslims and Muslim women caused myriad problems between their families, and eventually all those who entered into mixed marriages were denied the right to be exchanged in 1923. The Greek language as a medium of use and learning receded in areas where monasteries did not operate. Racism and intolerance caused serious division, causing small and large exodus flows from several villages, either to the large cities of Cappadocia or to Ionia and Pontus. However, they made an intense effort, operating in Orthodox monasteries, schools for the Greek language and culture, and ecclesiastical schools from which hundreds of seminarians graduated and many of them later became Metropolitans and Patriarchs.
Regarding the journey of uprooting thousands of Cappadocians and settling them in Greece, author Aikaterini Nikolaidou narrates: “… I ached for their lost dreams and hopes that were dashed. But all this educational venture in Caesarea was not lost, it was fruitfully transplanted to Greece and helped in the smoother integration of refugees into the national body and in the social and economic progress of Greece. The expansion of Greek territory and the large influx of refugees had created a great demand for teaching staff. With the Exchange, hundreds of teachers and many kindergarten teachers who were trained in Caesarea, fled to Greece as refugees and staffed Greek schools…”
Regarding those Cappadocians who lost the Greek language, Nicolaidou observes: “The Greeks spoke Turkish and, justifying their Turkish-speaking, attributed it to the fact that many years ago the Turks cut off their parents’ tongues, with the result that the children, having no sound of the Greek language, learned Turkish. However, they knew the particular writing of Turkish with the characters of the Greek alphabet.”
Professor Pantelis Kontogiannis provides us with a satisfactory explanation for the Turkish-speaking nature of Christians, writing the following: “Among the Greeks of Asia Minor, those who came to the dense Turkish population lost their mother tongue and became Turkish-speaking. But through the schools they partially or completely regained Greek.”
Centers of Hellenism and the preservation of the Greek language and identity were in Cappadocia, the monasteries. The Monastery of Timios Prodromos was the pinnacle of learning and teaching, but also a religious mosque not only for Christians but also for the Ottomans, as Nikolaidou tells us: “…The Monastery has always been a sacred place and place of pilgrimage for all religious communities. for Christians, Muslims and Armenians. Every Thursday the Muslims who spent the night in the monastery came and on Friday morning they departed, after the priest read them the customary prayer. On the Sabbath, Christians came and stayed overnight. Patients often reported that they experienced the “stepping” of the saint, that is, the divine intervention for healing. In return, gifts were presented to the monastery, usually roosters or animals. At the beginning of the 19th century, the monastery was identified by the ecumenical Patriarch Cyril VI (1813-1818) with the ancient Flavian Monastery, where Saint Savvas from Moutalaski practiced and thus the area was identified with ancient Flavian. The reorganiser of the monastery was the abbot Paisios Kepoglou from 1805-1832, from Farasa who introduced the communal system and since then order was imposed and spiritual and economic progress was made. Under his supervision, a high level of spiritual exercise was established, the number of monks who lived and at the same time studied at the School of the Monastery increased. Of the monks, 16 were later elevated to bishops and metropolitans.”
It is important to understand that the geopolitical borders of Greece, as they were formed in 1949 with the annexation of the Dodecanese, do not exhaust the borders of historical Hellenism and then the borders of global Hellenic Diaspora, as a result of constant migrations and settlements.
*Professor Anastasios M. Tamis taught at Universities in Australia and abroad, was the creator and founding director of the Dardalis Archives of the Hellenic Diaspora and is currently the President of the Australian Institute of Macedonian Studies (AIMS).
