Paparrigopoulos on Continuity, Constantine, and the Council of Nicaea

Abstract:Konstantinos Paparrigopoulos was the “father” of modern Greek historiography, and his monumental Ιστορία του ελληνικού έθνους (History of the Hellenic Nation) was for its time a comprehensive and controversial achievement, an imaginative and learned tapestry of Greek history from antiquity to the present, woven with the golden thread of Hellenism. Against the prevailing views of European intellectuals, Paparrigopoulos understood the history of the Greek nation, people, culture, and language as unbroken—certainly subjected at times to the rule of foreign powers—but always enduring. To link ancient, medieval, and modern Greece into a single story, he developed a narrative of continuity in which Greece was guided by Providence toward a teleology that was realized in the fusion of Hellenism and Christianity and a polity of church and empire whose institutions were simultaneously, and paradoxically, democratic and monarchic. Two critical historical events made this possible: the reign of Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.