26 Facts About Adamantios Korais

Adamantios Korais's activities paved the way for the Greek War of Independence and the emergence of a purified form of the Greek language, known as Katharevousa.

Adamantios Korais was exceptionally passionate about philosophy, literacy and linguistics and studied greatly throughout his youth.

Adamantios Korais initially studied in his hometown, Smyrna, where he graduated from the Evangelical Greek School.

Adamantios Korais studied the Hebrew, Dutch, French and English languages, apart from his knowledge of ancient Greek and Latin.

Adamantios Korais traveled to Paris where he would continue his enthusiasm for knowledge.

Adamantios Korais believed Western Europe was the heir of the ancient Greek civilization, which had to be transmitted to the modern Greeks through education.

Adamantios Korais was influenced by the revolutionary and liberal sentiments of his age.

Adamantios Korais admired Thomas Jefferson; and exchanged political and philosophical thoughts with the American statesman.

Adamantios Korais believed that education would ensure not only the achievement of independence but the establishment of a proper constitution for the new liberated Greek state.

Adamantios Korais envisioned a democratic Greece, recapturing the glory of the Golden Age of Pericles.

Adamantios Korais died in Paris aged 84 soon after publishing the first volume of his autobiography.

Adamantios Korais felt eternally grateful to these merchants, since without them, it would have been financially impossible for him to publish his works.

Adamantios Korais's political writing begins with the publication at the opening of the nineteenth century of Asma Polemistirion and Salpisma Polemistirion, celebrating the presence of Greek troops fighting alongside the French in Egypt.

Adamantios Korais went on to publish in 1803 his Report on the Present State of Civilization in Greece, based on a series of lectures he had given in Paris, extolling the link between the rise of a new Greek mercantile class and the advance of the Greek Enlightenment or Diafotismos.

Away from contemporary politics, Adamantios Korais did much to revive the idea of Greece with the creation of the Hellenic Library, devoted to new editions of some of the classic texts, starting with Homer in 1805.

Adamantios Korais was a Greek Orthodox but a critic of many practices of the Orthodox church.

Adamantios Korais was a fierce critic of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, considering it a useful tool in the hands of the Ottomans against the Greek independence.

Adamantios Korais was critic of the monasticism, the lack of education in the clergy, and practices like that of the "Holy Fire".

Adamantios Korais was a supporter of religious freedom, empiricism, rationalism and tolerance.

Adamantios Korais set himself in opposition to some metaphysical ideals of Greek custom and sought to mould Greek Orthodoxy towards a more syncretic religious basis, in order to bring it under the auspices of liberal thought and government.

Adamantios Korais decided to purge the language of foreign elements.

Adamantios Korais decided to take the "middle path" and cleanse the language from elements that he considered to be too "vulgar".

Adamantios Korais' vision led to the creation and adoption of "Katharevousa" by future scholars and the Greek state, which was an artificial language based on the ecclesiastical language used by the Greek Orthodox Church, close to the Koine Greek.

Unknown to most, Adamantios Korais held passionate views on how the legal system should function in a democracy and managed to have a great, albeit indirect, impact on the Constitutions of the Greek Revolution, but, primarily, on the Constitution or Syntagma created after the end of the Greek Revolution.

Proof of this relationship and of the strong and progressive views Adamantios Korais held on how the legal system of the new Greek state should be formed, is based on correspondence exchanged between the two men, during a long period of time, beginning before the Greek Revolution.

Adamantios Korais was declared Pater Patriae by the revolutionaries at the Third National Assembly at Troezen.