Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
Many who joined the andartes were klephts, mountaineer bandits experienced in the hit, run and hide tactics of guerilla warfare.(36) The andartes and comitadjides were equally savage in their attacks on villages. Murder, torture, rape, theft and looting were committed by both sides, and by similar Serbian and Albanian bands that took part in the struggle.(37)
Karavangelis was a brilliant theologian who had studied at the Theological College at Chalki(38) and earned a doctorate of philosophy in Germany. He was appointed Metropolitan in the year of Dimitraki's birth, and served his Metropolitanate carrying a Mannlicher rifle strung over one shoulder, a bandolier over the other, and a belt around his middle from which hung a large pistol and a knife. Riding beside him was an equally armed bodyguard. Karavangelis frequently conducted the liturgy in small village churches with his pistol on the altar.
To survive in the hostile environment of Macedonia at the turn of the century an Orthodox prelate had to be a political savant and an able civil administrator. The Orthodox Church was part of the Turkish civil administration and operated as a semi-autonomous theocracy within the Turkish Empire. Karavangelis played multiple, conflicting roles. He worked with the Kaimakam in Kastoria to govern the Orthodox populace and used his relationship to obstruct Bulgarian encroachments.(39) He secretly led the Greek guerilla movement that was at times in conflict with the Turks, but also used the Turkish military to foster Greek Orthodox supremacy in the region. The Turkish government had an interest in maintaining a Greek community that was loyal to the Patriarchate and therefore subservient to the Turkish state.
On the 24 September 1905, when Dimitraki had just turned five, Bulgarian Exarchist(40) comatidji killed two Greeks in Mavrovo.(41) These killings were in retaliation for Patriarchist(42) murders and massacres committed against Serbian and Bulgarian populations who had rebelled against the dominance of Hellenism and the Patriarchate. Religion was a tool of geopolitical and nationalist aims, and the religious used politics to serve their ends.
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