Cyrysanthos & Trapezouda

Chrysanthos was a scholarly cleric who became well known for his ecclesiastical ministration and his national action. Chrysanthos was born in Komotini in 1881 and died in 1949 in Athens. His real name was Charilaos Filippidis. He studied at the Divinity School of Chalkis and in 1903, after his graduation, he worked as an archdeacon and as a churchwarden of the Metropolitan of Trapezouda, Konstadinos Karajopoulos. In 1907, he went to Switzerland and then to Germany in order to continue his postgraduate studies. In 1911, he returned to Istanbul where he was appointed as a filing-clerk of the Great Church and as chief editor of The Ecclesiastical Truth till 1913, when he was ordained Metropolitan of Trapezouda by the Patriarch, Germanos.

After the declaration of the war, Chrysanthos managed all teachers and clerics to be excepted from the recruitment so as the schools and churches could remain open. He also managed the Greeks to be treated in a much better way and cancel decisions, taken by local commanders, concerning evacuations of villages. Although he tried hard, he could not prevent the bloody massacre of the Armenian people, which was planned to take place in Trapezouda in June 1915.

When, in 1916, the Russian troops marched against Trapezouda, the Turkish government charged Chrysanthos with the protection of the Turkish people who lived in the region. During the period of the persecutions, many prosecutions were made in the ecclesiastical periphery of Trapezouda where Chrysanthos had created the conditions of collaboration between the ecclesiastical command and the political authorities.

The humanitarianism and all the other virtues of Chrysanthos also survived during the Russian occupancy with the hospitalisation of thousands of Turkish refugees in Trapezouda and their safety from the revenge of the Armenian soldiers of the Russian Army. There is a song written by the Turkish refugees of Trapezouda for Chrysanthos in which they show their gratefulness.

After the October Revolution in Russia, Chrysanthos keep his presidency at the temporary government of Trapezouda and he was also an adviser of the local soviet. Finally, the Metropolitan played an important role at the limitation of the violent way the Greeks who lived in the countryside were treated by lot of Turkish irregulars during the other conquest of Trapezouda (December 1918).

With the reformation of the Turkish domination, Chrysanthos managed to renew his peaceful relationships with the Turkish rulers.After the First World War, Chrysanthos was sent by the Patriarchate to Paris, to London and to San Remo in Italy as their representative of the peaceful negotiations. In these negotiations Chrysanthos defended courageously the rights of the Greeks who lived in Asia Minor and especially those who lived in Pontos. Then, he returned to Trapezouda and went to Tiflida, in Georgia, and then to Erivan, in Armenia, in order to persuade people who lived in Armenia of the necessity of the formation of a Greek-American federation together with the union of Pontos with Armenia. For this action, Chrysanthos was condemned by the Turks to death.

After the destruction of Asia Minor he came to Athens where he was a representative of the Patriarchate. In 1938, he was elected archbishop of Athens and of Greece as a whole and he established a pastoral activity. He remained archbishop of Athens until 1941.

Chrysanthos also wrote many texts, concerning religion and he published them in The Ecclesiastical Truth and in the magazine with the title The Comninians, which he stared publishing in Trapezouda. After the persecution of people who lived in Pontos, he was charged with the presidency of their committee in Athens and with this capacity he made the annual publication of File of Pontos, which was awarded a prize by the Academy for the role it played for the safety of valuable historical and folklore material. For this activity, Chrysanthos made in this field, he became a doctor of the university of Athens, in 1937, and in 1940 was elected an academic.

Boulougouris Vasileios

5th Lyceum of New Smyrna, Athens