by NIKOS RAPTIS
Also, what I never learned through the official Greek educational system is why the Ottomans lasted in Greece for four centuries. Here is an explanation: “Much of the land was held by [Christian!] monasteries and absentee landlords, and as the Turkish conquerors ‘liberated’ it and turned it over to the destitute peasants they were hailed as deliverers.” [Lewis, p. 13]. Then when the Turks left, after 1821, the Christian monasteries grabbed back the land. To this day a great part of the choicest Greek land belongs to the monasteries. A few miles from my place there is the “Monastery of Pendeli” at the foot of the Pendeli mountain. The mountain that offered the Greeks the marble to build the Parthenon. Now, this monastery started selling [!!!] the land to the Greeks [!] after the Second World War. The owned surface was and is vast. Also, the money earned by the representatives of God on earth was and is vast. As a matter of fact one of the main economic scandals of the present economic crisis in Greece is the “Vatopedi” scandal. “Vatopedi”, of course, is a monastery in northern Greece.
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