User:Eugeniatheod/sandbox/Ioannis Philemon

Ioannis Philemon (1798/1799–1874) was a 19th century Greek historical writer and publisher of the newspaper Aion for over fifteen years, from 1838 to 1854.

Biographical information
Ioannis Philemon was born in Istanbul in 1798 or 1799. His father came from Thrace and practiced in Constantinople the profession of painter or variety, while elsewhere it is reported that he was of Cypriot origin. He studied at the Phanar Greek Orthodox College and also learned the printing press working at the Patriarchal Printing House in the establishment of the first volume of the Ark of the Greek Language. Then he also learned the Turkish language.

According to one tradition, Philemon in an early childhood found refuge as a refugee in the house of the Ypsilantis family in Constantinople. Ypsilantis had a chapel dedicated to Saint Tryphon, from whom they gave the surname to little John. With the help of the Ypsilantis family, young Philemon acquired a high education.

His action in rebellious Greece
From October 1821, when he arrived in the Peloponnese from Istanbul, he served as secretary of Demetrios Ypsilantis, with whose family he had long been associated. In 1825 he entered the service of the Mavromichalis, to return to the services of Demetriou Ypsilantis as secretary of his staff until 1829. When he was in the service of Ypsilantis, he attended the failed siege of Nafplio (on December 4, 1821) and the surrender of Acrocorinth by the Turks on January 14, 1822. He fell ill with typhoid and was unable to accompany Ypsilantis to his campaign in Eastern Greece in 1822. So, after recovering, he was hired as secretary of the Executive by Theodoros Negris and copied the first Constitution of Greece which had been voted by the First National Assembly. Two months later he went to Fthiotida to meet Ypsilantis and then they returned together to Tripoli, where D. Ypsilantis took over, President of the Parliamentarian. With the invasion of Dramalis in the Peloponnese on July 5, 1822, he provided Kolokotronis with accurate information about the forces of the enemy's vanguard and that the fortress of Argos Larissa was empty and so he could understand it. He became chief secretary of Dimitrios Ypsilantis, while from July 16 to July 19, 1822 his life was in danger in the battles with Dramalis. He participated in the battle of Dervenakia. He worked as a secretary in the government of Georgios Kountouriotis and in the spring of 1825 secretary of P. Mavromichalis.

= Philemon in the Kapodistrian period = Philemon declared himself uninvolved in all the anti-Kapodistrian turmoil and until the beginning of 1831 he enjoyed the trust of the Mavromichalis.Kanellos Deligiannis informs us that he was willing to collaborate with Petrobey Mavromichalis in the best organization of the opposition in Mani. Deligiannis mentions that but then Philemon backtracked and betrayed Mavromichalis. In fact, Philemon was offered to publish an anti-government newspaper, but he refused. This follows from the fact that, as he himself admits, he had joined the pro-government camp and had also submitted a report to the Governor regarding the unsettled internal political situation and how to overcome it. But the main reason was that he wanted to cooperate more actively against the opposition by publishing a pro-government newspaper. Philemon agreed with Kapodistrias that a prerequisite for the smooth functioning of the parliamentary regime was the distribution of national estates to the landless. There were, however, obstacles that delayed this development: the demarcation of the new state had to be preceded in order to ascertain the demographic situation and the number of estates to be distributed to the landless. The allegations against Kapodistrias had to be refuted, so he proposed to Augustine Kapodistrias, at the end of March, beginning of April 1831, the publication of a newspaper titled The Pacific.

= Death = He contracted hemiplegia in 1870 and again in 1871 and the third time on December 28, 1873. He died in Athens on January 1, 1874. He was buried the next day and was given honors of a major of the Phalanx.

= Writings =

In the first volume of his work he returns to the subject of Filiki Eteria as in the meantime he has managed to locate from research and from the confidential relationship he had with Dimitrios Ypsilantis an unstoppable part of the central Archive of the Filiki Eteria. Philemon does not hesitate to confess his mistake regarding the derogatory judgments he made regarding Emmanuel Xanthos in his first work, where he accused him of wasting the money of Filiki Eteria and was responsible for the death of Skoufas. However, after reading the Apology of Xanthos, he restored the truth with an article in the newspaper Aion (March 19, 1839).
 * Ioannis Philemon (1834) Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Φιλικής Εταιρίας.Nafplio. Archived from the original on 19 May 2017.
 * Ioannis Philemon, Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Φιλικής Εταιρίας, Hellenic Parliament Foundation for Parliamentarism and Democracy, Athens 2021.
 * Ioannis Philemon (1859-1860), Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Eλληνικής Eπαναστάσεως,volumes 3 (The editorial data of the volumes differ).
 * Ioannis Philemon (1861), Δοκίμιον ιστορικόν περί της Eλληνικής Eπαναστάσεως, volume 4.

Ioannis Philemon was one of the first historians to collect and publish some Ottoman documents explicitly recognizing the importance of Turkish archives for the writing of the history of the Greek Revolution.