FAMOUS PERSONS

FROM PATMOS

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Emmanuel Xanthos was one of the three founders of Filiki Eteria (meaning Society of Friends), a secret organization whose purpose was to overthrow the Ottoman rule and create a the New State of Greece. Xanthos was born in 1772 on the island of Patmos, in a house that lies only a few miles from Patmos Villa Sophia and is still preserved today, and graduated from the renowned Ecclesiastical School of the island. He frequently travelled first to Trieste and later to Russia, where he met Athanasios Tsakalof and Nikolaos Skoufas.

These three traders founded Filiki Eteria in 1814 in Odessa and seven years later, in 1821, the members of this organization launched the ultimately victorious Greek War of Independence. Xanthos spent the first years of the war (1821-1826) in Peloponnese but later moved to Wallachia, present Romania, where he stayed until 1837.

That year marked his return to Greece, which, by then, had become an independent state. He was appointed to a minor administrative post in Hydra but was shortly dismissed and, in 1845, he published his memoirs which constitute a precious source of information about the Greek revolutionary war. He spent the rest of his life in poverty and died in the capital of the newly founded state, Athens, in 1852.