22 Facts About Theophilos Kairis

Theophilos Kairis was a Greek priest, philosopher and revolutionary.

Theophilos Kairis was born in Andros, Cyclades, Ottoman Greece, as a son of a distinguished family.

Theophilos Kairis spoke many languages ranging from Ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, French, German, and English, that would allow him to participate in organizing the Greek War of Independence and to one day build the "Orphanotropheio", a progressive school that embraced the modern university system.

Theophilos Kairis studied with Benjamin of Lesbos at the school of Kydonies, Asia Minor, and was introduced to contemporary science and Greek interpretations of natural science.

Theophilos Kairis studied in Pisa and Paris, and shared to the ideas of the Age of Enlightenment.

Theophilos Kairis had an interest in archaeology, making some major findings upon his native island of Andros.

Theophilos Kairis had an interest in botany and cataloged many of the plants of his local area, as well as documenting pharmacologic properties of various plants.

Many of the orphans from the Greek War of Independence, especially from the massacre from the island of Psara would form the body of the Orphanotropheio, in which Theophilos Kairis taught many of the ideas learned from Philhellenes from all over Europe.

King Otto offered him the position of Director of the University of Athens and awarded him the Gold Cross for his contribution to the war, but Theophilos Kairis turned both of these down.

Theophilos Kairis became a victim of the Eastern Orthodox Church's equivalent of the Holy Inquisition.

Theophilos Kairis suffered a tragic end reserved by fate for those who, being pioneers, tried to introduce to Greece the liberal ideas of Western Europe and the Enlightenment.

The philosopher priest, Theophilos Kairis, following his conviction by the Holy Synod in 1839, was confined to the monastery in political exile on the island of Skiathos.

Theophilos Kairis had been located to Syros for trial but died in 1853,10 days before his judicial hearing, of natural causes.

Theophilos Kairis had a very different vision for an independent Greece, one that was based upon the concept of separation of church and state as proposed by Thomas Jefferson.

Theophilos Kairis advocated for a pan-Balkan state similar to the United States, that preserved the cosmopolitan nature of the post-Byzantine Empire era, where all creeds were equally free of tyranny from the oppressive Ottomans.

Also the mathematical treatises of Theophilos Kairis are present, representing a very active and original intellect, who had written on complex themes, including on mathematical extensions of Pierre-Simon Laplace's Celestial Mechanics.

Theophilos Kairis has been referred to as the "new Socrates" and was very active in didactic education.

Theophilos Kairis has incorporated these ideas into the curriculum of the orphanotropheio.

Theophilos Kairis spoke many languages and was interested in teaching philosophy from the ancient Greeks, translating the great poetry and theatre from antiquity, as well as the philosophic treatises of Aristotle and Plato.

Theophilos Kairis would teach theosphitism, but in the context of world religions, ranging from Buddhism, many describing the philosophical thought of Theophilos Kairis similar in vein as with the Transcendentalism of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Unfortunately, the school was disbanded after Theophilos Kairis was declared a heretic, but many of the orphanotropio would go on into the shipping professions, and were versed in accounting and probability.

Indeed, Theophilos Kairis had taught his students the early field of Archeology, and conducted field trips on the island to the place he had discovered the ruins of a temple dedicated to Aphrodite prior to the Greek revolution.