Throughout
the Ottoman rule of Greece, the Orthodox Church was the ark of salvation for
the Greek Nation, giving its powers and whole pastoral life to the liberation
war. The Church realised that through the preservation of the faith, the
identity, culture, history, language and traditions of the Greek nation could
be maintained. The Church, through the difficulties of daily life, under a
foreign rule, was able to maintain the Greek language, history and the hope of
freedom, pointing out patience as a virtue. From this reality we currently have
the formation of the Modern Greek Orthodox identity which is evident in Greece,
Cyprus and the diaspora.
It
is a fact that, without the Church’s initiative, in educating the faithful,
there would be no hope and no one would be able to leave behind the darkness of
ignorance, brought about by the Ottoman Empire. The relation between Church and
education was a crucial one, not only for the faithful but also for the future
of the Church, since it produced future priests and hierarchs, in order to
continue its work, i.e. the salvation of the faithful. The sources used for the
education of the future generations were the ecclesiastical books, Holy Scripture,
whilst the traditions and beliefs of the Church were also examined.Through
the education and the enlightenment of the Greek population, the Greeks were
able to fight off and eventually be victorious against the mighty Ottoman
Empire. This independence struggle was based on religion, nationalism,
Orthodoxy and Hellenism, as proclaimed by the heroes of the independence war,
during the First National Assembly of Epidaurus, ‘the war was ethnic, the war
was holy, a war whose only cause was the recovery of our personal freedom…and
honour’.
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