Philosopher, Scholar, Mathematician, Physicist, Priest, Teacher of the Greek Nation (1660 – 1736)
The Enlightenment began in Greece almost 3 centuries after sprouting in Western Europe. It was the result of Greek merchants, philologists and priests, who had been educated in the big European capitals and who had been influenced by the Muses. These men comprised the Teachers of the Greek nation, and were responsible for the awakening of the Greeks after 400 years of Ottoman rule. Methodios Anthrakites was the very first Teacher of the Greek Nation, who struggled for the revival of Greek thought and the re-introduction of philosophy and mathematics in Greece. He was met with vehement opposition from the Church, despite being an eminent theologist and priest himself.
He was educated in the Gioumeios School in Ioannina, where he studied grammar, physics and metaphysics. He then travelled to Venice, where he studied mathematics, geometry, trigonometry, geography, physics, astronomy and engineering. After 10 years of stay in Venice, Anthrakites, now a homo universalis returned to his subjugated country in an effort to start a second Renaissance by disseminating the knowledge he had acquired all these years and to revive the Greek nation. He assumed the direction of the School of Castoria, taught in the School of Siatista, the Gioumeios School and the School of Hegoumenos Epiphanos.
Anthrakites’ contribution to the Greek Enlightenment is enormous and unique. According to Constantine Coumas, “he was the first to bring the geometric sciences from Italy, capable of lighting the light of Logos and stimulating the innate philomathy of man”. He was the first Greek to introduce mathematics in the Greek schools during the Ottoman rule. In addition to having translated numerous works of European mathematicians to Greek, Anthrakites composed original mathematical treatises. He wrote the monumental The Way of Mathematics (Ὁδὸς Μαθηματική), which contained works from Euclid’s Elements, Theodosius’ Sphaerics, theoretical and practical geometry, trigonometry, stereometry, works of Proclus as well as works on astronomy, physics and geography. With this book he taught mathematics to all of Greece. His aim was to present the history of mathematics from the time of Homer until Pappus of Alexandria so that to stimulate the Greek youth’s interest in the sciences and have the Greeks reclaim the global lead in mathematics that they had in antiquity. This is the reason why the book does not mention the mathematicians of the Renaissance, but instead focuses on the achievements of all Ancient Greek philosophers: Thales, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Democritus, Hippocrates, Euclid, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Diophantus, Plato, Aristotle etc.
Major contributions of Anthrakites were in the field of philosophy, logic and pedagogy. He wrote Introduction to Logic and Lesser Logic, two books on the logic of Plato and Aristotle with which he rejected the religious dogmatism and revived the Greek spirit to its wholesomeness. He developed his own philosophical-theological system, primarily influenced from Aristotle, Plato, Descartes and Malebranche, which he taught from his books Spiritual Visitation, Christian Theories and Spiritual Advices and Treatise on Nature and Graces and had widespread appeal throughout Europe.
Methodios Anthrakites became the prodrome of the Greek Enlightenment, one of the greatest Teachers of the Greek Nation and one of the chief representatives of the spiritual revival of Hellenism. Not only did he implement philosophy and mathematics in the Greek schools, but he also implemented new methods of didascaly. His eminence attracted hundreds of students from whole Greece, who came to Castoria to listen to him. Many of his students, most notably Eugenios Vulgaris, Vasilopoulos Balanos and Anastasios Vasilopoulos, became great spiritual leaders of the Greek Enlightenment and successors of his work. For his services to Greece, he was persecuted by the Orthodox Church of Greece, his books were burned in public view and was ultimately nullified by the obscurantists of religion. He died in utter poverty hiding away in a basement, almost 80 years before the awakening of the Greek Nation.
Bibliography
- Pan, Sarantos. Ὁ διωγμὸς τοῦ Μεθοδίου Ἀνθρακίτη ἀπὸ τοὺς σκοταδιστὲς τοῦ Φαναριοῦ. Δαυλός. Issue 169, January 1996. pages 10179 – 10188. Print.
- Tsigoni, A. Μεθόδιος Ανθρακίτης, ένας πρόδρομος του Νεοελληνικού Διαφωτισμού. Μαθηματική Επιθεώρηση. Issue 59. January-June 2003. pages 95 – 105. Print.