Rhigas Velestinlis : The Proto-Martyr of the Greek Revolution

Limni,Evvia,Greece: Denise Harvey, 1995 Book. New Book from Greece. Soft cover. (New - will be sent to you direct from the publisher in Greece) Rhigas of Velestino (1757-1798), popularly known as Rhigas Pheraios, is one of the greatest national heroes of modern Greece for it was he who some thirty years before the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821 first conceived the possibility of a full-scale national revolution to free Greece from the domination of its Ottoman overlords. His aim was not simply an armed rebellion but a regeneration of his people, through education, literature and social and political awareness. To this end he wrote patriotic stories, poems, scientific lectures, he published maps and translations, and drafted a constitution, and he was the first Greek to insist that the popular language, or demotic Greek, should become the country's official language. But he was not to witness the realisation of his vision. On his way up to stir up the Greeks of the Mani he was betrayed, arrested in Trieste by the Austrian police, extradited to the Turkish authorities and executed, with seven colleagues, at Belgrade. This book is the first comprehensive study of Rhigas's life and ideas in English, and includes 14 black and white illustrations..