The Balkans A History Of

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culture had retired into the monasteries--inaccessible fastnesses where the monks lived much the same life as
the clansmen of Suli or Agrapha. Megasp�laion, the great cave quarried in the wall of a precipitous
Peloponnesian ravine; Met�ora, suspended on half a dozen isolated pinnacles of rock in Thessaly, where the
only access was by pulley or rope-ladder; 'Ayon Oros', the confederation of monasteries great and small upon
the mountain-promontory of Athos--these succeeded in preserving a shadow of the old tradition, at the cost of
isolation from all humane influences that might have kept their spiritual inheritance alive. Their spirit was
mediaeval, ecclesiastical, and as barren as their sheltering rocks; and the new intellectual disciples of Europe
turned to the monasteries in vain. The biggest ruin on Athos is a boys' school planned in the eighteenth
century to meet the educational needs of all the Orthodox in the Ottoman Empire, and wrecked on the reefs of
monastic obscurantism. But its founder, the Corfiot scholar Evy�nios Voulg�ris, did not hesitate to break with
the past. He put his own educational ideas into practice at Yannina and Constantinople, and contributed to the
great achievement of his contemporary, the Khiot Adhamandios Kor�is, who settled in Paris and there
evolved a literary adaptation of the Romaic patois to supersede the lifeless travesty of Attic style traditionally
affected by ecclesiastical penmen. But the renaissance was not confined to Greeks abroad. The school on
Athos failed, but others established themselves before the close of the eighteenth century in the people's
midst, even in the smaller towns and the remoter villages. The still flourishing secondary school of
Dhimitz�na, in the heart of Peloponnesos, began its existence in this period, and the national revival found
expression in a new name. Its prophets repudiated the 'Romaic' name, with its associations of ignorance and
oppression, and taught their pupils to think of themselves as 'Hellenes' and to claim in their own right the
intellectual and political liberty of the Ancient Greeks.
This spiritual 'Hellenism', however, was only one manifestation of returning vitality, and was ultimately due
to the concrete economic development with which it went hand in hand. The Greeks, who had found culture in
western Europe, had come there for trade, and their commercial no less than their intellectual activity reacted
in a penetrating way upon their countrymen at home. A mountain village like Ambelakia in Thessaly found a
regular market for its dyed goods in Germany, and the commercial treaty of 1783 between Turkey and Russia
encouraged communities which could make nothing of the land to turn their attention to the sea. Galaxhidi, a
village on the northern shore of the Korinthian Gulf, whose only asset was its natural harbour, and Hydhra,
The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria--Serbia--Greece--Rumania--Turkey 69
Spetza, and Psar�, three barren little islands in the Aegean, had begun to lay the foundations of a merchant
marine, when Napoleon's boycott and the British blockade, which left no neutral flag but the Ottoman in the
Mediterranean, presented the Greek shipmen that sailed under it with an opportunity they exploited to the full.
The whitewashed houses of solid stone, rising tier above tier up the naked limestone mountainside, still testify
to the prosperity which chance thus suddenly brought to the Hydhriots and their fellow islanders, and did not
withdraw again till it had enabled them to play a decisive part in their nation's history.
Their ships were small, but they were home-built, skilfully navigated, and profitably employed in the carrying
trade of the Mediterranean ports. Their economic life was based on co-operation, for the sailors, as well as the
captain and owner of the ship, who were generally the same person, took shares in the outlay and profit of
each voyage; but their political organization was oligarchical--an executive council elected by and from the
owners of the shipping. Feud and intrigue were rife between family and family, class and class, and between [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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