17 Facts About Rigas Feraios

Rigas Feraios was born in 1757 as Antonios Rigas Velestinlis into a wealthy family in the village of Velestino in the Sanjak of Tirhala, Ottoman Empire.

Rigas Feraios 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 sometimes known as Konstantinos or Constantine Rhigas.

Rigas Feraios is often described as being of Aromanian ancestry, with his native village of Velestino being Aromanian.

Conflicting views exist however, with some historians stating that there is no evidence of such ancestry, and that Rigas Feraios was simply Greek.

Rigas Feraios later went to the monastic community of Mount Athos, where he was received by Cosmas, hegumen of the Vatopedi monastery; from there to Constantinople, where he became a secretary to the Phanariote Alexander Ypsilantis.

Rigas Feraios learned about the French Revolution, and came to believe something similar could occur in the Balkans, resulting in self-determination for the Christian subjects of the Ottomans; he developed support for an uprising by meeting Greek Orthodox bishops and guerrilla leaders.

Around 1793, Rigas Feraios went to Vienna, the capital of the Holy Roman Empire and home to a large Greek community, as part of an effort to ask the French general Napoleon Bonaparte for assistance and support.

Rigas Feraios published Greek translations of three stories by Retif de la Bretonne, and many other foreign works, and he collected his poems in a manuscript.

Rigas Feraios entered into communication with general Napoleon Bonaparte, to whom he sent a snuff-box made of the root of a Bay Laurel taken from a ruined temple of Apollo, and eventually he set out with a view to meeting the general of the Army of Italy in Venice.

Rigas Feraios was handed over with his accomplices to the Ottoman governor of Belgrade, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

Rigas Feraios, using demotiki rather than puristic Greek, aroused the patriotic fervor of his Greek contemporaries.

Rigas Feraios's republicanism was given an aura of heroism by his martyrdom, and set liberation of Greece in a context of political reform.

Rigas Feraios wrote enthusiastic poems and books about Greek history and many became popular.

Rigas Feraios's call included the Muslims of the empire, who disagreed and reacted against the Sultan's governance.

Statues of Rigas Feraios stand at the entrance to the University of Athens and in Belgrade at the beginning of the street that bears his name.

Rigas Feraios was the name taken by the youth wing of the Communist Party of Greece, and a split of this youth wing was Rigas Feraios - Second Panhellenic.

Rigas Feraios's image is stamped on the Greek 10 lepta euro coin.