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April 10, 2026

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April 10, 2026

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"It is irrelevant in that ethnies arc constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i.e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in distinctive myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population. In that sense much has been retained, and revived, from the extant heritage of ancient Greece. For, even at the time of Slavic migrations, in Ionia and especially in Constantinople, there was a growing emphasis on the Greek language, on Greek philosophy and literature, and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such a ‘Greek revival’ was to surface again in the tenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as subsequently, providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. This is not to deny for one moment either the enormous cultural changes undergone by the Greeks despite a surviving sense of common ethnicity or the cultural influence of surrounding peoples and civilizations over two thousand years. At the same time in terms of script and language, certain values, a particular environment and its nostalgia, continuous social interactions and a sense of religious and cultural difference, even exclusion, a sense of Greek identity and common sentiments of ethnicity can be said to have persisted"

- Anthony D. Smith

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"This shifted the centre of a truly Hellenic civilization to the east, to the Aegean, the Ionian littoral of Asia Minor and to Constantinople. It also meant that modem Greeks could hardly count as being of ancient Greek descent, even if this could never be ruled out.’ There is a sense in which the preceding discussion is both relevant to a sense of Greek identity, now and earlier, and irrelevant. It is relevant in so far as Greeks, now and earlier, felt that their ‘Greekness’ was a product of their descent from the ancient Greeks (or Byzantine Greeks), and that such filiations made them feel themselves to be members of one great ‘super-family’ of Greeks, shared sentiments of continuity and membership being essential to a lively sense of identity. It is irrelevant in that ethnies arc constituted, not by lines of physical descent, but by the sense of continuity, shared memory and collective destiny, i.e. by lines of cultural affinity embodied in distinctive myths, memories, symbols and values retained by a given cultural unit of population. In that sense much has been retained, and revived, from the extant heritage of ancient Greece. For, even at the time of Slavic migrations, in Ionia and especially in Constantinople, there was a growing emphasis on the Greek language, on Greek philosophy and literature, and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such a ‘Greek revival’ was to surface again in the tenth and fourteenth centuries, as well as subsequently, providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage."

- Anthony D. Smith

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"Though Latin long held sway in Court and bureaucratic circles, the cultural cement of the empire’s core populations was Greek and its education was in the Greek classics and tongue. Imperial tradition, Christian Orthodoxy and Greek culture became even more the bases of Byzantium and her Hellenic community, after she had lost most of her western and Asiatic possessions in the seventh century — to Visigoths and then Arabs m Spain and North Africa, to the Lombards in much of Italy, to the Slavs in the Balkans and to Muslim armies in Egypt and the Near East. Political circumstances, and the resilience of Greek culture and Greek education, made her predominantly Greek in speech and character. After the sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the establishment of a Latin empire under Venetian auspices, the rivalry of the Greek empires based on Nicaea, Epirus and Trebizond to realize the patriotic Hellenic dream of recapturing the former capital further stimulated Greek ethnic sentiment against Latin usurpation. W1cn in the face of Turkith threats, the fifteenth-century Byzantine emperor, Michael Palaeologus, tried to place the Orthodox Church under the Papacy and hence Western protection; an inflamed Greek sentiment vigorously opposed his policy. The city’s populace in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, their Hellenic sentiments fanned by monks, priests and the Orthodox party against the Latin policies of the government, actually preferred the Turkish turban to the Latin mitre and attacked the urban wealthy classes. But the Turkish conquest and the demise of Byzantium did not spell the end of the Orthodox Greek community and its ethnic sentiment. tinder its Church and Patriarch, and organized as a recognized milliet of the Ottoman empire, the Greek community flourished in exile, the upper classes of its Diaspora assuming privileged economic and bureaucratic positions in the empire. So Byzantine bureaucratic incorporation had paradoxical effects: as in Egypt, it helped to sunder the mass of the Greek community from the state and its Court and bureaucratic imperial myths and culture in favour of a more demotic Greek Orthodoxy; but, unlike Egypt, the demise of the state served to strengthen that Orthodoxy and reattach to it the old dynastic Messianic symbolism of a restored Byzantine empire in opposition to Turkish oppression."

- Anthony D. Smith

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"In all things that were either spoke or writ by him, he did loqui cum vulgo so speak as to be understood by the meanest Hearer, and so write as to be comprehended by the most vulgar Reader. "It is true indeed" (as he himself observes) "that when there is necessity of using either Terms of Law, or Logical Notions, or any other words of Art, an Author is then to keep himself to such Terms and Words as are transmitted to us by the Learned in their several Faculties. But to affect new Notions and indeed new Nothings, when there is no necessity to invite us to it, is a Vein of writing which the two great Masters of the Greek and Roman Eloquence had no knowledg of. But knowledg many think that they can never speak elegantly, nor write significantly, except they do it in a language of their own devising, as if they were ashamed of their Mother-Tongue, and thought it not sufficiently curious to express their fancies. By means whereof more French and Latine words have gained ground upon us since the middle of Queen Elizabeth, than were admitted by our Ancestors (whether we look upon them as the British or Saxon Race) not only since the Norman, but the Roman Conquest. A folly handsomly derided in an old blunt Epigram, where the spruce Gallant thus bespeaks his Page, or Laquey Diminutive and my defettive Slave, Reach my Corps Coverture immediately: 'Tis my complacency that Vest to have, T' insconce my person from Frigidity. The Boy believed all Welsh his Master spoke, Till rail'd in English, Rogue go fetch my Cloak.""

- Peter Heylin

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"There are some... Points relating to Episcopacy, which Dr. Heylyn has long time since cleared and determined. And if some of our pretending States-men had considered and read what was written upon those Subjects, their time and pains would have been more profitably spent to the honor and security of this Church and Kingdom, than in raising doubts and scruples which had long before been so clearly stated and resolved. For, 1. As for Bishops sitting in Parliament to Vote in Causes of Blood and Death, this the Doctor evinced not only in the Tract, entituled, De Jure paritatis Episcoporum, but in his Observations upon Mr. L'Estrange's History, where he says, "that altho the ancient Canons disable Bishops from Sentencing any man to Death, yet they do not from being Assistants in such cases; from taking Examinations, hearing Depositions, of Witnesses, or giving Counsel in such matters as they saw occasion. The Bishops sitting as Peers in the English Parliament, were never excluded from the Earl of Straffords Trial, from any such Assistances, as by their Gravity and Learning and other Abilities, they were enabled to give in any dark and difficult business (tho of Blood and Death) which were brought before them. 2. With the like solid reasoning, the Doctor has evinced the Bishops to be one of the Three Estates."

- Peter Heylin

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"Here also is a dictum in respect to the political position and power of islands which, could the author be suddenly reanimated, he would find had been startlingly disproved in the course of a few generations. "As concerning the situation of ilands," says Peter, "whether commodious or not, this is my judgment. If a Prince desire rather to keep than augment his dominions, no place fitter for his abode than an iland, as being by itself and Nature sufficiently defensible. But if a King be minded to adde continually unto his empire, an iland is no fit seat for him; because, partly by the uncertainty of winds and seas, partly by the longsomenesse of the wayes, he is not so well able to supply and keep such forces as he hath on the continent. An example hereof is England, which hath even to admiration repelled the most puissant monarch of Europe [ Philip II of Spain ]; but for the causes above-named cannot show any of her winnings on the firme land: though shee hath attempted and atchieved as many glorious exploits as any country in the world." See what genius and energy can effect, even in spite of what seems a very plausible theory. Our insular position remains unchanged; yet we have acquired and maintained a foreign empire greater than Alexander's. On the other hand, Spain, then "the most puissant" of monarchies, has been stripped of nearly all its foreign possessions."

- Peter Heylin

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"High Churchman and scholar though was, our friend Heylyn puts on no saturnine or crabbed visage. His manner, on the contrary, is gay, lively, unctuous, flavorous, good-humoured, and full of character. His style has a chuckle in it whenever he can tell you a quaint story or an odd bit of national manners. Great relish for a joke has Peter; and you may now and then catch him telling a naughty tale with a twinkle in the eye. With no solemn pretence of abstruse wisdom does our geographical mentor conduct us on the long pilgrimage through a world; but rather with the air of a genial and well-informed companion, familiar with history, antiquity, and tradition; full of anecdote and illustration; observant of new forms and modes of life; not deficient in the broad daylight of statistics (such as were then known) yet having strong love for glimmering fables and twilight myths; no indiscriminate swallower of lies, though willing to believe any strange tale; and, poet-like, increasing in riches as he passes onward into regions and more remote. Sometimes we laugh with Peter, sometimes at him; yet there is no denying that his book is the result of great industry, great learning, much careful research in many volumes, and considerable literary tact in selection and condensation. Let us dip a little into the old quarto, and see how the world has altered in many things—how remained stationary in some—since the year sixteen hundred and twenty-nine."

- Peter Heylin

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"Here we have lying before us an old geography book, printed early in the reign of Charles the First. It is what Mr. Carlyle happily designates "a dumpy quarto"... presenting somewhat the appearance of a modern school-book; and is entitled Mikrokosmos: A Little Description of the Great World. The Fourth Edition. Revised. By Peter Heylyn. Oxford, Printed by W. T. for William Turner and Thomas Huggins. 1629." The first edition appeared in sixteen hundred and twenty-one; so that we see the work was held in no inconsiderable estimation at the time. Indeed, Peter, though now known only to a few inquirers, was a man of some importance during his life; and, for several years after his death, was quoted as an authority. The substance of the quarto now before us was originally delivered in the form of lectures at Magdalen College, Oxford, when the writer was only seventeen years of age; and, being afterwards enlarged, was published as a book. Subsequently, Heylyn entered the Church; became one of the chaplains of Charles I., a great favourite of Laud, and a doughty champion of kingly and priestly domination; suffered for his opinions under the Commonwealth; and finally died in prosperity after the restoration of the Stuarts. He was a ready and voluminous author; and will be regarded with interest as one of our earliest newspaper-press men, having published at Oxford a weekly paper called the Mercurius Aulicus."

- Peter Heylin

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