VENIZELOS' ANATHEMA

On the afternoon of 12 December 1916, a curious procession made its way towards the Field of Ares in Athens. Members of the Holy Synod, headed by Archbishop Theoklitos of Athens, emerged from their carriages and approached a vast crowd already assembled around a growing mound of stones. Gathered there were ministers, military officers, members of patriotic associations, reservists and ordinary Athenians, many of whom had come carrying stones in their pockets for a purpose that had been advertised in the royalist press for days beforehand. As the Archbishop lifted the first stone and pronounced the words «Ανάθεμα έστω», thousands responded in unison before adding their own contribution to the pile, an irony that would scarcely have been lost upon those familiar with Christ's injunction that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. By the conclusion of the ceremony, Eleftherios Venizelos, the former Prime Minister of Greece and head of the rival government established in Thessaloniki, had been publicly anathematised by the leadership of the Church of Greece in one of the most extraordinary episodes of the National Schism.

This medievalesque event did not arise suddenly. Rather, it represented the culmination of a political and constitutional crisis that had divided Greek society with an intensity unmatched until the Civil War. By the closing months of 1916, Greece effectively possessed two centres of authority. In Athens, King Constantine I and the royal government maintained control over the old kingdom. In Thessaloniki, Venizelos and his supporters had established the Provisional Government of National Defence, arguing that the King's insistence upon neutrality in the First World War endangered both the country's security and its territorial aspirations. The disagreement over foreign policy gradually evolved into a dispute concerning the nature of sovereignty itself, drawing into its orbit not only politicians and military officers, but also journalists, intellectuals and churchmen.

The origins of the crisis lay in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars. Constantine emerged from those campaigns at the height of his popularity. The liberation of Thessaloniki, Ioannina and vast tracts of Macedonia transformed him into a symbol of national success. His admirers spoke of him in language that often transcended ordinary politics. The coincidence of his name with that of the last Byzantine emperor encouraged comparisons with the legendary Marble King of popular tradition, while his military victories appeared to many as evidence of providential favour. Venizelos, whose diplomatic skill had contributed enormously to those same victories, enjoyed immense popularity of his own, yet the partnership between the two men proved incapable of surviving the challenges posed by the outbreak of the First World War.

The dispute centred upon Greece's response to the First World War. Venizelos regarded participation on the side of Britain, France and Russia as essential if Greece were to secure Allied support for its territorial aspirations in Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace. Constantine, brother in law of Kaiser Wilhelm II, favoured neutrality, maintaining that a country exhausted by two successive wars could not sustain another military adventure. Soon, the disagreement expanded beyond the sphere of foreign policy. At issue was the very nature of political authority within the Greek state. Venizelos insisted that the elected government possessed the right to determine national policy. Constantine maintained that, as constitutional monarch and commander of the armed forces, he bore an independent responsibility for the nation's welfare. A succession of ministerial resignations, parliamentary dissolutions and increasingly bitter confrontations gradually transformed constitutional disagreement into political warfare.

By 1916, the language employed by both sides reflected the extent of the division. Royalist newspapers portrayed Venizelos as a firebrand willing to sacrifice national unity to personal ambition. Venizelist publications described the King as an obstacle to national fulfilment and accused the court of leading Greece towards diplomatic isolation. Each side claimed exclusive possession of patriotism. Increasingly, compromise appeared impossible. The establishment of the Provisional Government in Thessaloniki formalised the division. Greece possessed two governments, two armies and, in effect, two competing narratives regarding the nation's future.

The events known as the Noemvriana intensified the atmosphere still further. In November 1916, Allied forces landed in Athens seeking the surrender of military matériel demanded by the Entente. Fighting broke out between Allied troops and Greek government forces. Casualties occurred on both sides, while sections of the capital experienced scenes of violence unprecedented in recent memory. The aftermath witnessed attacks upon Venizelist citizens and a wave of arrests, dismissals and reprisals. Royalist organisations, particularly the Reservists, emerged as powerful forces within public life, organising demonstrations and exerting influence far beyond their nominal role. Within this charged atmosphere, the idea of publicly anathematising Venizelos acquired increasing support among elements of the royalist movement.

The role of the Church of Greece in the affair remains among its more revealing aspects. Contrary to later assumptions, the Holy Synod did not immediately embrace the proposal. Contemporary accounts suggest a period of uncertainty during which the hierarchy weighed its options with considerable care. While the canonical difficulties associated with anathematising a politician rather than a heresiarch were evident enough, the Synod's hesitation appears to have owed at least as much to the fluid political situation as to ecclesiastical scruple. The outcome of the struggle between Athens and Thessaloniki was far from certain, and the Church, like many institutions of the period, seems initially to have been reluctant to identify itself too closely with either camp. As pressure from reservist organisations intensified, however, such caution became increasingly difficult to maintain. Delegations visited the Synod, appeals were made, positions were revised and reconsidered, and, after a period of conspicuous vacillation, Archbishop Theoklitos, a staunch royalist, and his fellow hierarchs ultimately resolved to participate in the ceremony.

The ceremony itself was carefully choreographed. According to contemporary newspaper reports, the Archbishop cast the first stone while declaring: “Upon Eleftherios Venizelos, who plotted against the King, brought suffering upon the people, occasioned sedition and bloodshed, and persecuted the Church, let anathema be pronounced.” Members of the Synod followed. Thereafter, representatives of various organisations approached the mound and cast their own stones while repeating the formula. By the end of the proceedings, the pile had grown into a substantial monument to political hostility. Photographs taken on the day reveal a crowd stretching across the surrounding area, bearing witness to the extent of popular engagement with the ritual.

One ecclesiastical figure whose name became associated with the episode through his absence was Metropolitan Nektarios of Pentapolis, the future Saint Nektarios. By 1916, Nektarios was already living at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity on Aegina, having endured years of marginalisation following his removal from ecclesiastical office in Alexandria decades earlier. Later accounts maintain that he declined invitations to associate himself with the anathema. While contemporary documentation concerning the precise circumstances remains limited, the tradition surrounding his refusal became firmly embedded within subsequent narratives of the event. In later retellings, the contrast between the participation of the Synod and the absence of Nektarios assumed a significance that exceeded the immediate political context, particularly following his canonisation in 1961.

The Holy Synod subsequently sought to reinforce the significance of the ceremony by communicating its actions beyond Greece. Correspondence was reportedly dispatched to the Ecumenical Patriarchate and other ecclesiastical authorities informing them of the decision. Yet the political circumstances that had produced the anathema were already changing. Allied pressure upon the royal government intensified. The blockade of Greece continued to undermine the position of Constantine and his supporters. Within months, developments overtook the ceremony itself.

In June 1917, Constantine departed Greece and Venizelos returned to Athens, confronting those who had organised and celebrated the anathema with a government headed by the very man they had publicly condemned. The ecclesiastical consequences followed swiftly. A special ecclesiastical tribunal was convened to examine the conduct of members of the hierarchy during the Schism, resulting in the removal of Archbishop Theoklitos from the Archiepiscopal throne and disciplinary measures against a number of bishops associated with the ceremony. If the events of December 1916 had demonstrated the willingness of sections of the hierarchy to employ the language of theology in the service of politics, the years that followed revealed the extent to which ecclesiastical fortunes had become tied to the shifting currents of political power. Following Venizelos' electoral defeat in 1920 and the restoration of Constantine, Theoklitos was reinstated, only to be removed once more after the Asia Minor Catastrophe and the Revolution of 1922. The repeated rehabilitation and deposition of prominent churchmen illustrated the degree to which the administration of the Church had become entangled in the rivalries of the National Schism, while questions concerning the legality and canonical validity of the anathema continued to be debated long after the political circumstances that had produced it had passed into history.

Particularly significant was a letter sent by Archbishop Chrysostomos Papadopoulos to Venizelos in 1930. In that correspondence, the Archbishop effectively argued that the anathema lacked proper canonical standing, noting the absence of the procedures ordinarily required before the imposition of such a sanction. The issue resurfaced periodically throughout the twentieth century as historians, theologians and political commentators revisited the events of 1916. In 2000, Archbishop Christodoulos publicly referred to the anathema as a mistake, reflecting the extent to which attitudes towards the episode had changed within the Church itself.

More than a century after the mound of stones rose in the Field of Ares, the anathema remains among the most revealing episodes of the National Schism. Above all, it offers a glimpse into a period when political divisions penetrated every institution of Greek society, drawing into their orbit not only governments and armies, but also bishops, monasteries and the Church itself. Ecclesiastes observed that there is a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together. In December 1916, thousands of Greeks gathered stones only to cast them at another Greek. The pile they created serves as a reminder that the deepest divisions in modern Greek history have often been those Greeks fashioned for themselves.

DEAN KALIMNIOU

kalymnios@hotmail.com

First published in NKEE on Saturday 20 June 2026