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Rigas Feraios (Greek: Ρήγας Φεραίος, or Rhegas Pheraeos, pronounced [ˈriɣas fɛˈrɛɔs]) or Velestinlis (Βελεστινλής, or Velestinles, pronounced [vɛlɛstinˈlis])) ; 1757 – 24 June 1798) was a Greek writer, political thinker and revolutionary, active in the Modern Greek Enlightenment, remembered as a Greek national hero, a victim of the Balkan uprising against the Ottoman Empire and a pioneer of the Greek War of Independence.
Early life
Antonios Rigas Velestinlis (Αντώνιος Ρήγας Βελεστινλής)[1] was born in 1757 into a wealthy family in the village of Velestino in the Sanjak of Tirhala, Ottoman Empire (modern Thessaly, Greece). He later was at some point nicknamed Pheraeos or Feraios, by future scholars, after the nearby ancient Greek city of Pherae, but he does not seem ever to have used this name himself; he is also sometimes known as Konstantinos or Constantine Rhigas (Κωνσταντίνος Ρήγας).[citation needed] He is often described as being of Aromanian ancestry,[2][3][4][5] with his native village of Velestino being Aromanian.[6][7][8] Rigas' family had its roots in Perivoli, another Aromanian village,[9] but it usually overwintered in Velestino.[10] Some scholars question whether there is good evidence for this.[11]
According to his partner Christoforos Perraivos, Rigas was educated at the school of Ampelakia, Larissa. Later he became a teacher in the village of Kissos, and he fought the local Ottoman presence. At the age of twenty he killed an important Ottoman figure, and fled to the uplands of Mount Olympus, where he enlisted in a band of soldiers led by Spiros Zeras.
Rigas, by Peter von Hess.
He later went to the monastic community of Mount Athos, where he was received by Cosmas, hegumen of the Vatopedi monastery; from there to Constantinople (Istanbul), where he became a secretary to the Phanariote Alexander Ypsilantis (1725-1805).
Arriving in Bucharest, the capital of Ottoman Wallachia, Rigas returned to school, learned several languages and eventually became a clerk for the Wallachian Prince Nicholas Mavrogenes. When the Russo-Turkish War (1787-1792) broke out, he was charged with the inspection of the troops in the city of Craiova.
Here he entered into friendly relations with an Ottoman officer named Osman Pazvantoğlu, afterwards the rebellious Pasha of Vidin, whose life he saved from the vengeance of Mavrogenes. [12] He learned about the French Revolution, and came to believe something similar could occur in the Balkans, resulting in self-determination for the Christian subjects of the Ottomans; he developed support for an uprising by meeting Greek bishops and guerrilla leaders.
After the death of his patron Rigas returned to Bucharest to serve for some time as dragoman at the French consulate. At this time he wrote his famous Greek version of La Marseillaise, the anthem of French revolutionaries, a version familiar through Lord Byron's paraphrase as "sons of the Greeks, arise".[12]
In Vienna
Portrait of Alexander the Great, published by Rigas in his Pamphlet
Around 1793, Rigas went to Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and home to a large Greek community, as part of an effort to ask the French general Napoleon Bonaparte for assistance and support. While in the city, he edited a Greek-language newspaper, Efimeris (i.e. Daily), and published a proposed political map of Great Greece which included Constantinople and many other places, including a large number of places where Greeks were minority.
He printed pamphlets based on the principles of the French Revolution, including Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and New Political Constitution of the Inhabitants of Rumeli, Asia Minor, the Islands of the Aegean, and the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia — these he intended to distribute in an effort to stimulate a Pan-Balkan uprising against the Ottomans.[12]
He also published Greek translations of three stories by Retif de la Bretonne, and many other foreign works, and he collected his poems in a manuscript (posthumously printed in Iaşi, 1814).
Death
The Nebojša Tower, where Rigas was executed.
Memorial plaque in front of Nebojša Tower in Belgrade, where Rigas Feraios was strangled.
Flag proposed by Rigas for his envisioned pan-Balkan Federation.
He was handed over with his accomplices to the Ottoman governor of Belgrade, where he was imprisoned and tortured. From Belgrade, he was to be sent to Constantinople to be sentenced by Sultan Selim III. While in transit, he and his five collaborators were strangled to prevent their being rescued by Rigas's friend Osman Pazvantoğlu. Their bodies were thrown into the Danube River.
His last words are reported as being: "I have sown a rich seed; the hour is coming when my country will reap its glorious fruits".
Ideas and legacy
Rigas, using demotikì (Demotic Greek) rather than puristic (Katharevousa) Greek, aroused the patriotic fervor of his Greek contemporaries. His republicanism was given an aura of heroism by his martyrdom, and set liberation of Greece in a context of political reform. As social contradictions in Ottoman Empire grew sharper in the tumultuous Napoleonic era the most important theoretical monument of Greek republicanism, the anonymous Hellenic Nomarchy, was written, its author dedicating the work to Rigas Ferraios, who had been sacrificed for the salvation of Hellas.[13]
His grievances against the Ottoman occupation of Greece regarded its cruelty, the drafting of children between the ages of five and fifteen into military service (Devshirmeh or Paedomazoma), the administrative chaos and systematic oppression (including prohibitions on teaching Greek history or language, or even riding on horseback), the confiscation of churches and their conversion to mosques.
Rigas wrote enthusiastic poems and books about Greek history and many became popular. One of the most famous (which he often sang in public) was the Thourios or battle-hymn (1797), in which he wrote, "It's finer to live one hour as a free man than forty years as a slave and prisoner" («Ως πότε παλικάρια να ζούμε στα στενά…. Καλύτερα μίας ώρας ελεύθερη ζωή παρά σαράντα χρόνια σκλαβιά και φυλακή»).
In "Thourios" he urged the Greeks (Romioi) and other Orthodox Christian peoples living at the time in the area of Greece (Arvanites, Bulgarians, etc.[14][15]) and generally in the Balkans, to leave the Ottoman-occupied towns for the mountains, where they could find freedom, organize and fight against the Ottoman tyranny. His call included also the Muslims of the empire, who disagreed and reacted against the Sultan's governance.
It is noteworthy that the word "Greek" or "Hellene" is not mentioned in "Thourios"; instead, Greek-speaking populations in the area of Greece are still referred to as "Romioi" (i.e. Romans, citizens of the Christian or Eastern Roman Empire), which is the name that they proudly used for themselves at that time.[16]
Statues of Rigas Feraios stand at the entrance to the University of Athens and in Belgrade at the beginning of the street that bears his name (Ulica Rige od Fere).
Rigas Feraios was also the name taken by the youth wing of the Communist Party of Greece (Interior), and a branch of this youth wing was Rigas Feraios - Second Panhellenic. But there is nothing in Rigas's own writings that supports Communism, as his political vision was influenced by the French Constitution (i.e. democratic liberalism) [17][18][19]
Feraios' portrait was printed on the obverse of the Greek 200-drachmas banknote of 1996-2001.[20] A 50-drachmas commemorative coin was issued in 1998 for the 200th anniversary of his death.[21] His image is stamped on the 0.10 Euro Greek coin.
In popular culture
Nikos Xydakis and Manolis Rasoulis wrote a song called Etsi pou les, Riga Feraio (That's how it is, Rigas Feraios, Greek: Έτσι που λες, Ρήγα Φεραίο), which was sung by Rasoulis himself. Also, composer Christos Leontis wrote music based upon the lyrics of "Thourio" and Cretan Nikos Xylouris performed the song in the 1970s.
Works
- Anthology of Physics (Vienna, 1790)
- School for Delicate Lovers (Vienna, 1790; repr. 1971)
- Pamphlet, New Map of Wallachia and General Map of Moldavia (Vienna, 1797)
- Charta (Map) of Greece (Vienna, 1797)
- New
Political Constitution of the Inhabitants of Roumeli, Asia Minor, the
Islands of the Aegean and the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Vienna, 1797, included:
- Thourios or Patriotic hymn (poem)
- Man's Rights (35 articles)
- Revolutionary Declaration for Laws and Fatherland
- Constitution of Hellenic Republic (124 articles)
- New Anacharsis, Vienna, 1797
Rigas by Peter von Hess
Commemorative plaque for Rigas in Wien
Statue of Rigas Feraios, Belgrade
Statue of Rigas outside the University of Athens (by Ioannis Kossos)
Icon from the Charta of Rigas (Map of Greece)
"Thourios" manuscript
Rigas and Adamantios Korais helping Greece to stand up. Work by Theophilos Hatzimihail
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Notes
- Bank of Greece Archived March 28, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. Drachma Banknotes & Coins: 50 drachmas Archived January 1, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. – Retrieved on 27 March 2009.
References
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Rhigas, Constantine". Encyclopædia Britannica. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.; In turn, it cites as references:
- Gianni A. Papadrianou, Ο Ρήγας Βελεστινλής και οι Βαλκανικοί λαοί ("Rigas Velestinlis and the Balkan peoples").
- Woodhouse, C. M. (1995). Rhigas Velestinlis: The Proto-martyr of the Greek Revolution. Denise Harvey. ISBN 960-7120-09-4. ISBN 960-7120-08-6
External links
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Greek Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- Scanned original draft of the New Political Constitution from the collection of the Hellenic Parliament\
- Collection of papers dedicated to Rigas Charta, e-Perimetron, Vol. 3, No.3, 2008
- Nebojša Tower will become a historical monument
- Chalcography of Alexander the Great by Rigas Feraios,Vienna 1797
- History of Modern Greek Literature by C. T. Dimaras
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