1. Birth-family-education

Paisios, secularly known as Petros Kepoglou, was born at Pharasa of Cappadocia in 1780¹ (or 1777).² He came from a family as poor as his own birthplace, Pharasa. His father was called Anastasios and his mother Barbara. His father was a priest, whereas his mother was the daughter of a priest also. Paisios learned his first letters, as well as the ritual of the holy mass, by his father during his childhood. Nursed in this way in a very religious environment, when in 1796 he heard from a certain Christian named hatzi Aslan that in Kaisareia (Kayserı) a convent school was founded by the teacher Germanos (who was from Alexandretta), convinced his father to allow him to leave Pharasa and to enter the educational convent. His ability, his intensive study and his ethos attracted the attention of Germanos, who saw his new student, after two years, “reaching” in knowledge his two-years older colleagues. Thus, when in 1799 he had to travel to Constantinople to collect contributions for his school he appointed him as a substitute director, after first christening him with the name Paisios.

2. Activity of Paisios as an abbot of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist

Paisios remained the school’s director until the return of Germanos from the capital; when he finally graduated he made a pilgrimage trip to Mount Athos. When he returned to Kaisareia he was appointed as a teacher at Kermira, where he taught until 1804.

In the same year³ he was invited by his teacher Germanos to assume the position of the abbot at the renovated monastery of Saint John Prodromos at Zincidere. Since, however, the metropolitan of Kaisareia Philotheos had to travel to Constantinople and with the occasion of the visit of the metropolitan of Ikonion Kyrillos, the former, after a petition of the first, christened Paisios a holy deacon and right after -the next day- a monk.

After Germanos’ death the whole weight of the attendance of the monastery (and consequently of the operation of the convent school) fell on Paisios. Seeing that the targets placed by Germanos for the educational level of the school were in danger of not being fulfilled because of the ignorance of the teachers, he chose to invite teachers of high educational level from Cydoniae (Ayvalik), which he had met during his travel to Mount Athos. Furthermore, Paisios was the one who personally greeted all the inhabitants of the province which chose to study in the convent school. For some of them he took personal care of their education, whereas others he sent abroad in order to perfect their knowledge and others he positioned in the functions of the monastery.

Since, however, there were various accusations about the aims the (re)-founding of the monastery served, a special emissary was sent (probably in 1807) by the Ottoman government in order to investigate their validity. As a result of these inquiries, which were greatly influenced by the kadi of Kaisareia, a large fine was imposed on the monastery. This event forced Paisios, after first leaving as a substitute at the monastery the later bishop of Nazianzos Gregorios and after receiving the necessary approval from the notables of his province, to travel to Constantinople to convince the Ottoman authorities to revoke the fine. His trip was successful and with this he managed to gain once more the favour of the Ecumenical Patriarch and of the Holy Synod, as well as of some very important Phanariots notables, who allowed him to remain in Constantinople and to work as a preacher at the churches of the capital, also gathering money for the support of the monastery. In 1808 he returned to the direction of the monastery of Saint John Prodromos, having meanwhile gained the Patriarchate’s permission to receive two piasters per year from each Christian household of the ecclesiastic province of Kaisareia for four years in order to cover the debts of the monastery.

Seeing, however, that the money gathered was not enough to pay off the debt, and in collaboration with Alexandros Chatzeres, who was in that time exiled in Kaisareia, and the ephor of the monastery in Constantinople lord Chatmanos Demetrios Schinas, he managed to secure the publication of relative patriarchal decrees, according to which he was allowed to travel in the year 1810 in every province of Asia Minor with the same target: to financially support the monastery of Saint John Prodromos. During the middle of his tour, however (maybe in 1812) he was called by the Holy Synod to Constantinople.

Alexandros Chatzeres, returning from Cappadocia and after witnessing with his own eyes the problems of the ecclesiastic and educational things of the province (which were greatly caused by the fact that certain prelates refused to take the seat of the metropolis there, because they felt they were strangers to the habits and the customs of the Cappadocians), he proposed to the Holy Synod to elect Paisios, who had already given samples of his interest for the position, as the metropolitan of Kaisareia. This proposal was accepted, but, to the surprise of all the metropolitans of the synod and of Chatzeres himself, Paisios with great modesty rejected the offer and insisted in maintaining his position as the abbot of the monastery. Nevertheless he took new patriarchal and synodic letters and continued his travels in various areas of Asia Minor until 1814. During this second phase of his travels he had the fortune of meeting important scholars of his age, such as Konstantinos Oikonomos of the Oikonomos family, his brother Stefanos, Konstantinos Koumas, Veniamin Lesvios etc.

The political turbulence caused by the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821 forced the monks of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist as well as the teachers and the students of the convent school to abandon it. They started returning after 1826, when the relative imperial firman which “forbade the persecution of the innocent subalterns of the mighty kingdom”. In 1829, after Paisios’ constant efforts, the Ecumenical Patriarch Agathangellos (1826-1830) published a sigillion letter, which validated a similar sigillion which had already been published under the Patriarch Theodosios. A series of decrees supported the financial and social status of the monastery. More precisely: a) every abbot of the monastery would be elected exclusively by the fathers (monks) of the monastery and with the approval of them only, b) each lender or donor of the monastery would not have the right to ask for the return of his loans “again” or of his donations, c) the priests of the surrounding villages would not have the right to hire teachers from the monastery, without the approval of the abbot, d) the inheritors of the deceased monks would not have the right to claim their fortune, which would belong to the monastery.

3. The activity of Paisios as the metropolitan of Kaisareia

In March 1832 Paisios was elected as a metropolitan of Kaiesareia, after the resignation of the previous metropolitan Gerasimos. He was christened metropolitan of Kaisareia at the patriarchal church of Saint Georgios by the metropolitan of Derkoi Nikephoros. Along with his election he managed to have a patriarchal sigillion published (under the Ecumenical Patriarch Konstantinos I of Sinai), which ordered that the most suitable of the fathers (monks) of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist was to be christened as a bishop under the title of the bishop of Nazianzos and to succeed each retired or deceased metropolitan of Kaisareia.

Paisios, in order to assume the metropolitan throne of Kaisareia, paid an important amount of money (56,000 piasters), which was part of his debt towards the Ecumenical Patriarchate, and it is possible that the paying of this amount contributed to the publication of the sigilion. The next year (1833) he returned to his province and, along with the metropolitan of Ikonion Anthimos and the metropolitan of Nikopolis Christoforos, christened Nektarios, a monk of the monastery of Saint John Prodromos, as the bishop of Nazianzos. Also in 1833 a new patriarchal sigillion was published, according to which the monastery obtained the position of a metropolis, which meant that the metropolitan of Kaisareia could dwell there (just as in the building of his metropolis) and oversee the work of the school and the operation of the monastery in general.

In 1835, when the church of the monastery was damaged by a great earthquake, the metropolitan Paisios managed to have an imperial decree published, which foresaw the restoration of the church (mainly of its ruined roof) but also the erection of a new church dedicated to Saint Charalambos.

One of the main aims of Paisios during his service as a metropolitan was to hinder the wave of proselytisms which had appeared in Cappadocia (mainly by protestant missionaries). For this reason he often made tours in his province founding schools and churches. He ordered the teachers and the educated priests to preach the word of God each Sunday, after the reading of the gospel in the vernacular language of the inhabitants (most of them were after all Turkish-speaking), until it would be possible through the education to extend the use of the Modern Greek language.

But the problems he tried to face were connected to the policy of many Ottoman governors, which did not always correspond favourably to the petitions of the ecclesiastic authorities. Paisios tried to change this policy in many points. When he was elected as the metropolitan of Kaisareia and went to settle in the building of the metropolis, he found it in a very bad condition, almost collapsing. He thus asked the local governor the necessary permission to restore the edifice. The former, since he could not refuse due to the decisions of the Ottoman government which ordered for the free restoration of all the religious buildings, pretended he was insulted by the metropolitan. Paisios saw that the situation was led to a dead end turned to the lord Chatmanos Stefanos Bogorides, a person with a great influence in the circles of the Ottoman capital and of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Bogorides managed to have a relative imperial decree published which protected the rights of the metropolitans, whereas it also regulated with precision the duties of the local governors. Under these circumstances the governor of Kaisareia retreated and changed his position against the metropolitan, giving him the permission to restore the building.

This event helped Paisios solving a series of issues easily. For example, it contributed to the publication of an imperial decree according to which the lenders of the metropolis of Kaisareia could not ask for the full payment of their money in case 10 years would pass. During this time the money had to be paid gradually by the metropolis, but without interest.

Also Paisios managed to stop the monopoly of food on behalf of the local Ottoman administration with the result of winning the general esteem of the inhabitants of the province (and not only the Greek Orthodox ones).

Paisios of Kaisareia, as we saw, maintained close relations with high ranking persons of the Ottoman political scene. He was under the influence of the Phanariotes Alexandros Fotiades and of his relative by marriage Stefanos Bogorides (we saw the role the former played in Paisios’ clash with the local governor), who tried to place him on the patriarchal throne in 1835, as an adversary of Gregorios VI, without success; Gregorios finally became a patriarch with the favour of the Grand Logothetes of the Ecumenical Patriarchate Nikolaos Artistaches.⁴

In 1839 the metropolitan Paisios made an extremely pioneering act, which, however, brought him against the Patriarch Gregorios. He translated various theological texts, such as the Orthodox Teaching of the metropolitan of Moscow Plato, in caramanlidic, in an effort to stop the increasing influence of the protestant missionaries in his province, who distributed Turkish translation of the Holy Bible.

Paisios also as a member of the synod largely contributed to the foundation of the Theological School of Chalki (1844). In 1845, under the Patriarch Meletios, he managed to save many inhabitants of Yozgat from famine, thanks to his foresight to store great quantities of grain. However, he did not feed them for free, but convinced them to cultivate lands for the monastery of Saint John the Baptist.

In 1852, after first christening the protosyngellos Gerasimos as a bishop of Nazianzos, he left for Constantinople, where he contributed to the efforts to solve a quarrel between the Greek Orthodox and the Gregorian Armenians about the cemeteries of Sevasteia and Kaisareia. In 1854 he returned to his province and, once again aiming in elevating even more the educational standards in the convent school of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist, he invited Ioannes Symeonides, Christos Symeonides, Ioannes Anastasiades, Anastasios Levidis and Abraam Eliades as teachers.

In 1862 he was called as a member of the Holy Synod and again contributed to the calming of the passions caused by the recent voting and validation of the General Regulations by the National Assembly of the years 1858-1860. In 1863 he returned to his province determined to retreat to the monastery of Saint John the Baptist, practically leaving the administration of the province in the hands of the bishop of Nazianzos Gerasimos. During the duty of the patriarch Sophronios III (1863-1866) some convinced the metropolitan to return to Kaisareia –something which, however, aggravated his already weak health.

4. Death

Paisios was the abbot of the monastery of Saint John the Baptist for 28 years and the prelate of the metropolis of Kaisareia for 39 more years. He died on 30th January 1871 and was buried the next day in the narthex of the holy monastery of Saint John the Baptist. It is characteristic for his fame and validity what Georgios Papadopoulos wrote: “…the honourable Paisios did a great lot for the province of Kaisareia and is justly called by his contemporaries Caesareans Paisios the great”.⁵