ABSTRACT
The celebration honors the actions of Bishop Germanos, the Metropolitan of Patras, who on March 25, 1821, raised the standard of revolt at a monastery in the northern Peloponnesus. In 1821, conditions were severe enough in the area that was to become Greece to precipitate a rebellion, but it was largely external factors that facilitated its spread and continuation. The Ottoman administration found itself preoccupied with conflicts ranging far and wide. Greeks were not united behind a single vision of what the future state would look like. The interests of the Orthodox Church, which was nonnational despite its use of the Greek language, were more powerful than Greek national feeling. The interest of secular leadership, whose strength came from largely local connections, was simply independence from the Turks, not an alteration of government forms, practices, and power relationships. The revolution had a somewhat more democratic character in the islands, including those off Attica and those elsewhere in the Aegean Sea.
