Speech by Giorgis A. Kalomiris, on the occasion of the celebrations of the Municipality of Anogeia for the historic anniversary of the explosion of Arkadi
The clash of civilizations — yesterday and today

Human history is the history of civilizations. We cannot think of our development as humans in any other way; we cannot define our very identity by any other means.

In reality, culture is the greatest of all the stories of the world, a story that begins with the acknowledgment that “civilizations contain without being contained.”

The concept of culture provides the measure by which we can judge societies. Civilizations are the great “we” that simultaneously separates us from the equally great, larger, or smaller “them.”

I mention this as an introduction because we are living in times of the clash of civilizations, in days when flags and symbols — like the cross and the crescent, language, blood ties, the functioning of common institutions, customs and traditions, lifestyle, and, above all, memory — prove stronger than ideologies and politics (both as individuals and movements).

We are not living in “the end of history,” as significant scholars predicted, but in a transformation that, as equally important historians argue, marks the end of Western expansion and the rise or evolution of a rebellion against the West.

It is a consistent phenomenon in history that places treated as colonies rise up against the metropoles.

Peoples seeking identity or a way to reintroduce themselves to the world, proving that they exist, often need enemies, and potentially the most dangerous hostility develops along the borderlines between the great civilizations of the world.

We do not live in the single world of the 1920s nor the three worlds of the 1960s, but in the six or more worlds or poles that began emerging from the 1990s to today.

In all this, if anything remains constant, it is the axiom that:
There are only two powers in the world: the sword and the spirit. Over time, and in the war of humanity, the spirit defeats the sword — the fire of cannons, rockets, even nuclear weapons — because after destruction, the thinking human will prevail over the warrior in the battle of regeneration. 
 

The chronicle of a revolutionary November

If history were to crown a month as revolutionary, it would be November.

From the Gunpowder Plot on November 5, 1602, to the Bolsheviks on November 7, 1917, and the November or “Lost” Revolution on November 9, 1918, the first ten days of November have given history significant milestones.

It inspired people to revolt, to say within themselves, “enough is enough,” and to reject kings, princes, emperors, and powerful systems of the time, changing what seemed inevitable according to their own destiny.

People who, for Camus, say no. They refuse, but do not resign. Slaves who had obeyed orders all their lives suddenly judge a new command unacceptable.

Living until then in the comfort of “getting through today,” the slave is abruptly thrown from “that’s how things are…” to “all or nothing,” to “Freedom or Death.”

Consciousness, in the end, is what erupts into the light along with rebellion.

A peculiar revolution — The historic explosion

In these days of November 1866, the climax and most significant act of the Cretan liberation struggle occurs: the real holocaust of Arkadi Monastery (November 6–9), where the whole place self-immolates, not by the conqueror’s order of destruction, but by the living collective decision of free yet besieged people — a supreme act of self-sacrifice for freedom.

The explosions at Arkadi Monastery, collectively referred to as the “Explosion,” are the most significant episode of the Cretan Revolution of 1866–1869.

The fire that lit the beacon of a suppressed revolution laid a first foundation for our land, Crete, to remain intact and not be divided into zones of dominance, but to assert as its principal goal the union with the homeland and the newly founded Greek state.

A state that, from the flame of the 1821 revolution until that moment, struggles between traditional and modern symbols to create its present, drawing self-confidence from its two heavy pasts (Ancient Greek and Byzantine) to envision its future.

Arkadi arose as a peculiar revolution, where oppressed yet uncompromising villagers, devout Christians, Greek and Cretan fighters, clergy and anti-clericalists, utopian Garibaldini, united in a chaotic yet symbolic movement, reopening the wounds of the Sultan at the crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean.

At the monastery, 964 people had taken refuge; 325 were men, the rest women and children, a mosaic of diverse origins but with one common, universal outcome: the decision of self-sacrifice for freedom.

Among them were organized volunteers, military personnel from mainland Greece, such as Ioannis Dimakopoulos, Arkadi’s fortress commander, Garibaldini revolutionaries like Emmanouil Melissiotis and Emmanouil Anagnostou Skoulas, uncompromising inland Cretans like Kostis Giaboudakis and Drakos Delis (Tsibragos), along with the monks of the monastery and the emblematic figure of Abbot Gabriel Marinakis.

Because a revolution begins with refusal, a refusal that actually triggers reluctant acceptances, the spark for the siege and ultimately the burning of Arkadi came from the Ottoman administration’s violation of the reform decree Hatt-i Humayun, failing to provide social and religious equality to Cretan citizens.

Meanwhile, the involvement of the Cretan governor Ismail Pasha in the monastic issue, in the most repressive manner, accelerated this bloody uprising of 1866 and the slogan that transcended the immediate cause: “Union or Death.”

But Arkadi was not a lightning strike in clear weather; a century of uprisings preceded it. The beginning starts with Daskalogiannis in 1770, followed by uprisings in 1821 and 1828, the Mournides movement in 1833, the Chaereti-Vasilogeorgis Revolution in 1841, and the Mavrogenis movement in 1858. Gunpowder, blood, and fire continued in the great revolution of 1866–1869, sparked by Arkadi, leading up to the revolutionary assembly at Fre under Tsouderos in 1878 and the bloody suppressed uprising of 1889.

A heavy toll of sacrifice was required for another revolution in 1896, deemed “fortunate,” so that from the flames, Crete, bound in its chains, could break free, bringing the last precursor of union with Greece and the Cretan State on November 2, 1898.

The Garibaldini, the sacred struggle

The Cretan who grew our country and rebuilt Greece’s Democratic Party, Eleftherios Venizelos, said:
 “Civilized peoples gain power with the vote of the many, govern with the ability of the few, and achieve greatness with the breath of one.”

This “breath” is what many seek in history, as a mechanism of memory and skill, to bring vivid events before us in an “innate” need to honor or take responsibility. But History, ladies and gentlemen, is not a tool of small-scale politics but a seed for cultivating politics that cannot be subjected to ideologies but only inspire ideologues.

Above all, history is not the affair of one; it has wings of Inquiry, Overturning, and Proof, and progresses by acknowledging ignorance to reach Truth.

Standing today beneath the heavy shadow of the statue of Emmanouil Anagnostou Skoulas and the aim of his weapon, fleeting thoughts pass through my mind before the holocaust — a leap from life to existence, from experience to ideals, from logic to values, from human emotion to insight.

These are the critical moments when one ceases to belong to one’s household or lineage, passing into the transition of the free human who struggles, even subconsciously, for the unborn, for the great, the classical values of humanity.

The emblematic figure of the Garibaldini teacher leaps from letters to arms, reaching Arkadi to deliver a letter — he burns with Arkadi to bring a revolution.

He could not have acted otherwise; he was sworn to a core principle: direct participation in every uprising, where national revolutionary action and international solidarity were inseparable.

The Order of Garibaldini, with their red cloaks, was bound by an oath to conquer freedom on the foundation of a sacred alliance of peoples against the Holy Alliance of the last empires’ rulers.

In this core of European ideological ferment, our hero emerges as a teacher in Syros, Greece, in 1865. In cosmopolitan Ermoupoli, a commercial and intellectual center and refuge for Garibaldini revolutionaries, he was initiated, embracing the ideas of democracy, freedom, and patriotism.

From descendant, grandson, son, brother of fighters and sacrificed ones for free Crete, he becomes a mystic of a culture of structured revolutionary thought in the most radical European movement of the time.

Could he have done anything other than make a great self-sacrifice?

The de-symbolization of Arkadi

The terrible explosion glorifies the “defeated”; anguish becomes triumph. Heroic Arkadi fought like a fortress to die like a volcano. These words are echoed in the response letter of French author Victor Hugo to Chania’s military commander Ioannis Zymvrakakis, who, together with Michail Korakas in Heraklion and Panos Koronaios in Rethymno, were key figures in the revolution of 1866–1869.

The symbol of united modern Crete is Arkadi: a collective sacrifice of incompatible, unconquered, free souls, becoming an indisputable torch of interest at the heart of the Free World.

Arkadi belongs to us as much as it belongs to humanity; it cannot be treated as a family chalice, nor a local or even national property, but as a global heritage of the Revolutionary Human for the ideals of Freedom.

Because the idea of Arkadi inherently dissolves local borders that produce localist syndromes, transcends regional and national balances to touch, with historical responsibility, the borders of humanitarianism and the world.

The challenge for us today is transcendence, because ultimately it matters to reimagine forgotten values and ideals that touch the very essence of humans living free and independent, with responsibilities and rights.

Thus, the path to Arkadi cannot stop at double anniversaries that sooner or later become commemorations of representation in a world constantly confronted with the dilemma Civilization or Barbarism.

It is time for us, from the base of Crete, to bring humanity to the next level. From our small, mountainous historic municipality, we must offer volunteers of spirit in a common journey of science, arts, research, and folk wisdom for a new shared vision: the preparation of Arkadi’s candidacy for UNESCO World Heritage status.

A multi-level, multi-dimensional inclusion, approaching Arkadi not merely as a Renaissance-style building, nor as another glorious ruin, but as a cradle of social struggle renaissance that can unite different peoples around common, great, essential causes.

An Arkadi symbolizing spiritual activism of global cultural heritage, without fears or resentments toward History. An Arkadi guided by its history.

Looking again at the statue of Emmanouil Anagnostou Skoulas, I imagine him in the red cloak, this time from the dimension of eternity, brandishing the pen that ultimately triumphs over fire and gun, the warrior who becomes a teacher again, returning from arms to letters, in a letter for the Arkadis of Humanity.

Bibliography
A. Camus, Trans. N. Karakitsou-Douge, M. Katsampaloglou-Robin, Ο Επαναστατημένος Άνθρωπος, Patakis Publishers, 2013.
A. J. Toynbee, Trans. N. Gianadakis, Οι Έλληνες και οι Κληρονομιές τους, Kardamitsa Publications, 2013.
F. Fukuyama, Trans. A. Fakatselis, Το τέλος της ιστορίας και ο τελευταίος Άνθρωπος, Livani Publishing, 1992.
C. Castoriadis, Trans. S. Chalikias, K. Spantidakis, G. Spantidaki, Η Φαντασιακή θέσμιση της Κοινωνίας, Kedros Publishers, 2010.
N. Skoulas, Speech for the 150th Anniversary of Arkadi, Anogeia, 7/11/2016.
S. P. Huntington, Trans. S. Rizothanasi, Η σύγκρουση των πολιτισμών και ο ανασχηματισμός της παγκόσμιας τάξης, Patakis Publishers, 2017.
S. P. Huntington, L. E. Harrison (eds), Trans. M. Maragoudakis, Οι Πολιτισμικές Αξίες και η σημασία τους για την Ανθρώπινη πρόοδο, Kyromanos Editions, 2017.
Collective Work, Έλλην, Ρωμηός, Γραικός: ΣΥΛΛΟΓΙΚΟΙ ΠΡΟΣΔΙΟΡΙΣΜΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΤΑΥΤΟΤΗΤΕΣ, Eurasia Publications, 2018.
Ch. Koulouri, Φουστανέλες και Χλαμύδες: ΙΣΤΟΡΙΚΗ ΜΝΗΜΗ ΚΑΙ ΕΘΝΙΚΗ ΤΑΥΤΟΤΗΤΑ 1821-1930, Alexandria Publications, 2020.