Lord Byron and Greek Orthodoxy

Abstract

Byron’s allusions to the Greek Church and its clergy in his verse are few
and insignificant. However, in his letters, journals, and notes, as well as in
accounts by others, Byron referred to personages and matters of Greek Orthodoxy in a manner that showed his mastery of the relevant lore. These
cultural echoes include views by his Albanian servant Basil, Byron’s two encounters with “bishop” Gregorius (1809, 1823), comments on Ayia Sophia,
the fit Byron had in the Monastery above Sami in Cephalonia, his theft of
a precious volume by Archbishop Meletius, his desire to publish his English
translation of a treatise by Eusebius—which the poet had done from an Armenian version of the lost Greek text—his hostility to St Athanasius’s strict
concept of Orthodoxy (which Byron understood and discussed in secular
terms), and his answer to Dr Kennedy concerning N. Vamvas’s possible correction of the Greek vernacular translation of the Testaments. Under political
contacts I discuss Metropolitan Ignatius’s letters to, and about, Byron, after
his departure for embattled Greece; Byron’s friendship with Bishop Joseph,
acting Metropolitan at Missolonghi in 1824; Joseph’s and Metropolitan
Porphyrius’s possible functions during the poet’s funeral; and Joseph’s
fittingly “Byronic” death in the aftermath of the heroic Exodus from Missolonghi (1826). Although the cultural echoes were not particularly significant, Byron’s political contacts with these Prelates were important to the
cause of Greek Independence.