The "lost" Greece of the Pontus… A Greece that hurt, she teared up, he bled, like no other. Who was humiliated, without ever losing her dignity, where……..
she submitted while remaining free, who followed the path of the refugee, from the shores of the Black Sea, who with her activity renamed him Black, to the depths of Asia, who insists on living, to create and above all to preserve and cultivate its customs and traditions….
The Pontus, before it was so brutally destroyed from the map, but not from our hearts, it has been a source of inexhaustible spirit and culture. It became a place where the Greeks excelled, they created.
It is referred that, at the time of the Great Komnenos, were built in the Pontus 3.000 about Christian churches with nice frescoes, artistic hagiographies and rich decoration, artistic mosaics and wonderful miniatures, who continued the Byzantine tradition without interruption.
The miniature art, especially in the Pontus , reached such a height during the 14th century, so that the foreign scholar Strzygowski could compare it with the miniature art of the students of Giotto's school(Giotto) in Italy, and even find her superior.
Great growth, also, presented by astronomy, physics and mathematics. Students studied at the Faculty of Science of Trebizond, who came to study at it from Constantinople itself and Armenia.
The monasteries of Pontus, Moreover, in the 13th and 14th centuries, they were Schools of wisdom. Mathematics and astronomy were cultivated there, because the Church considered these sciences, even before the Renaissance in the West, auxiliaries of theology and philosophy.
indeed, "citadel of the Monasteries", the eponymous Holy Monastery of Panagia Soumela, still retains its luster in the collective Pontic memory, and its annual celebration in recent years is brightened by the presence of the Ecumenical Patriarch, another proof of the dynamics of Pontic Hellenism.
Children of Pontus selectively cultivated the sciences and preserved Greek education, art and culture, distinguished themselves and are distinguished in the arts and social life of our country, able Pontian Hierarchs decorated and decorate our Church.
The contribution of the Pontic state of Trebizond to the preservation and spread of Orthodoxy and Greek culture in the region of North-Eastern Asia Minor was the greatest. Both of these national elements, they were preserved by titanic struggles and sacrifices, initially facing the Frankish flood of Crusaders and, subsequently, against Seljuk and Turkish expansion and the consequent threat of assimilation.
The historian Joinville, rightly calls Trebizond "deep Greece", while the Byzantine historian Laonikos Chalkokondylis, in the 15th century, he refers with admiration to the empire of Trebizond, calling it "the hegemony of the Greeks and the manners and diet of the Greeks"!
But, difficult and terrible days have come, when Turkish nationalism, driven by German militarism and fueled by National Division, uprooted Hellenism from Pontus and scattered it, those who escaped the massacre, at the ends of the world, with the pain of lost happiness incurable in their memory and the hope and will of creation alive.
Today, 100 about years after the Pontic holocaust, they live in Greece 1.500.000 approximately Greeks of Pontic origin, functionally integrated into Greek society and holding important positions in all branches of spirituality, scientific and professional life of the country.
In the countries of the former Soviet Union and the Siberian exiles they still live 1.000.000 Greek Pontians, 500.000 of whom they proudly preserve their Pontic mother tongue. Another half a million Pontians are scattered across Australia, America, Europe and Africa.
Next to them they stand, with a dignity won by pain, thousands of Pontians of Turkey, which with characteristic stubbornness they maintain, as a living reminder of their origins, the Pontic language, some also support their religion, secretly, inside their homes.
The centuries-long and adventurous historical course of Pontic Hellenism remains a constant challenge of national responsibility and national unity, a reminder of national self-awareness and an invitation to activate historical memory.
Why, peoples without historical memory are a tree without roots… Peoples, those who forget their past are "doomed" to repeat it, with even greater disasters, something for which, of course, no stranger will be responsible!
† Syros and Dorotheos II
( "DEMOKRATIA" newspaper, Saturday, 14.11.2015)