Who Invented the “Modern Greeks”, and Why?

Abstract

This article argues that the distinction, which is today intuitive, between ancient Greeks and modern Greeks has its origin in western medieval polemics that sought to establish the hegemony of the Catholic Church over its orthodox counterpart. Since the renaissance, the “ancient” Greeks in this polar distinction were those of classical antiquity, who are usually valourised in western perceptions, but before that, in the original medieval form of the distinction, the ancient Greeks were the Greek fathers of the church who, western polemicists needed to argue, sided with Catholic thought rather than with contemporary orthodox thinking. Thus, in order to appropriate the Greek fathers for the Catholic side in theological debates, western writers distinguished them – as the original “ancient Greeks” – from the “modern” (that is, contemporary) Greeks who had allegedly deviated from the Catholic faith. The article thereby offers the first historical genealogy of this now familiar distinction.