Anthimos Gazis

Who was Anthimos Gazis?

Anthimos Gazis was a Greek scholar, philosopher during the Greek Enlightenment, cartographer and one of the heroes of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. He was born in Milies in Ottoman Greece in 1758 and died in 1828. His real name was Anastasios Gazalis.

Gazis studied in Greece and then he went to Constantinople where he was ordained priest.He became rector of the Greek Church of Vienna in 1797. In 1811 he received his Diploma from the “Philological Institute of Bucharest”. In 1813 Gazis was elected a Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. His efforts were concentrated to the development of a higher education system in Greece.

He was the editor of the very first periodical in Greek, Hermes o Logios, published in Vienna. In 1799, he translated and published Benjamin Martin’s “Philosophical Grammar”.

Gazis published in 1800 Vienna a map of Greece and the Balkans called Pinax Geographikos tes Hellados. It is a reduced edition of the famous map of Rigas Feraios. He edited also a worldmap called Atlas e Chartes [...] hydrogeiou..., owned today by the National Library of Australia.