Rigas Feraios

Rigas Feraios was a Greek writer, political thinker and revolutionary, active in the Modern Greek Enlightenment. He is considered the precursor of the Greek Revolution of 1821. Feraios wrote poems that criticized the Ottoman Empire and called for an uprising to overthrow it. He is remembered as a Greek national hero, a victim of Balkan uprising against the Ottoman Empire and a forerunner of the Greek War of Independence. Feraios was born as Antonios Rigas Velestinlis 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 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. He is often described as being of Aromanian ancestry, with his native village of Velestino being Aromanian. Rigas' family had its roots in Perivoli, another Aromanian-inhabited village, but it usually overwintered in Velestino. Conflicting views exist however, with some historians stating that there is no evidence of such ancestry, and that Rigas was simply Greek. According to his compatriot 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. 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 Wallachia, Rigas returned to school, learned several languages and eventually became a clerk for the Wallachian Prince Nicholas Mavrogenes. After the death of his patron Rigas returned to Bucharest to serve for some time as dragoman at the French consulate. There he came in contact with the French Revolution and was influenced by its ideas. He began to write a series of radical texts that expressed his vision of a democratic and independent Greek state. He also translated and published important works of the European Enlightenment, such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen and the works of Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu. He also composed his own poems, such as the Thourios or patriotic hymn, which invoked the Greeks to rebel against the Ottoman tyranny. He also wrote a constitution for a pan-Balkan federation that would include Greeks, Albanians, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians and Turks, based on the principles of equality, justice and freedom. In 1796, he moved to Vienna, where he hoped to gain support from the Austrian Empire or the Russian Empire for his revolutionary cause. He founded a Greek printing press and published his works, as well as other books and maps that he considered useful for the liberation struggle. He also established contacts with other Greek exiles and revolutionaries, and formed a secret society called the Ellinoglosso Xenodocheio (Greek: Ελληνόγλωσσο Ξενοδοχείο, "Greek-speaking Hotel"). He also tried to recruit volunteers to form a military force that would invade Greece and start a rebellion. However, his plans were discovered by the Ottoman secret police, who raided his house and confiscated his papers. Rigas and his collaborators were arrested and handed over to the Ottoman authorities. They were taken to Belgrade, where they were tortured and sentenced to death by strangulation. Rigas Feraios showed great courage and determination until the end of his life. He refused to betray his associates or to renounce his beliefs. He declared that he was not a traitor but a benefactor of the Greeks, and that he preferred to die for the freedom of his nation rather than to live as a slave. He also stated that his death would not stop the revolution, but rather inspire others to continue his work. His last words were reportedly "I have sown a rich seed; the hour is approaching when my nation will reap its glorious fruits". Rigas Feraios and his five co-defendants were executed by strangulation on June 24, 1798, in the Nebojša Tower in Belgrade. Their bodies were dumped into the Danube River. The news of his death caused great sorrow and anger among the Greeks and other Balkan peoples, who regarded him as a martyr and a hero. His writings and ideas circulated widely and influenced the later Greek revolutionaries, such as Theodoros Kolokotronis, Alexander Ypsilantis and Ioannis Kapodistrias. He is considered one of the most important figures of the Greek Enlightenment and the precursor of the Greek War of Independence.