The Flanginian School was a Greek

Greeks

The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....

 educational institution that operated in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, Italy, from 1664-1665 to 1905. The Flanginian produced several teachers that contributed to the modern Greek Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Background

The Greek community in Venice, dating from the Byzantine

Byzantine Empire

The Byzantine Empire was the Eastern Roman Empire during the periods of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, centred on the capital of Constantinople. Known simply as the Roman Empire or Romania to its inhabitants and neighbours, the Empire was the direct continuation of the Ancient Roman State...

 era, had became the largest foreign community in the city during the end of the 16th century, numbering between 4,000 and 5,000, mostly concentrated in the Castello

Castello, Venice

Castello is the largest of the six sestieri of Venice, Italy. The district grew up from the thirteenth century around a naval dockyard on what was originally the Isole Gemini, although there had been small settlements of the islands of San Pietro di Castello , also called Isola d'Olivolo, since at...

 district (sestiere). Moreover, it was one of the economically strongest Greek communities of that time outside the Ottoman Empire

Ottoman Empire

The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

.

History

At 1626 a wealthy Greek merchant that lived in Venice, Thomas Flanginis

Thomas Flanginis

Thomas Flanginis was a wealthy Greek lawyer and merchant in Venice, who founded the Flanginian School, a Greek college where many teachers were trained. His family were originally from the island of Corfu.-See also:...

, offered to the community a large sum of money for the foundation of a new school. The project for the construction of the school was entrusted to the famous Venetian architect Baldassare Longhena. Finally, the Flanginian school, named after its sponsor, started to function at 1664 and its students came from various Greek-populated regions.

The teaching staff included famous Greek scholars and representatives of the modern Greek enlightenment, like Theophilos Korydaleus, Eugenios Voulgaris

Eugenios Voulgaris

Eugenios Voulgaris or Boulgaris or Vulgares was a Greek Orthodox educator, and bishop of Kherson . Writing copiously on theology, philosophy and the sciences, he disseminated western European thought throughout the Greek and eastern Christian world, and was a leading contributor to the Modern...

, Ioannis Chalkeus

Ioannis Chalkeus

Ioannis Chalkeus or Chalkias, was an Aromanian scholar, philosopher and figure of the modern Greek Enlightenment....

 and Ioannis Patoussas.
The curriculum included advanced philosophy, rhetoric

Rhetoric

Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...

s, philology and logic

Logic

In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...

. The Flanginian produced a total of 550 graduates during the 214 years of its existence (1665–1797 and 1823–1905). Its graduates had the opportunity to continue their studies at Padua University, in order to obtain a doctor's degree

Doctorate

A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

. The school began to decline after the dissolution of the Venetian Republic (1797), and finally closed down in 1905.

Literature

The school is perhaps best remembered for an anthology of prose and poetry entitled Flowers of Piety , which was composed by the students of the school, made up of epigrams, both in ancient Greek and Latin, Sapphic

Sapphic stanza

The Sapphic stanza, named after Sappho, is an Aeolic verse form spanning four lines ....

 odes, Italian sonnet

Sonnet

A sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...

s, and, most significantly, prose and verse compositions in (Demotic) modern Greek

Modern Greek

Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...

. As such it offers the first surviving demotic poetry following the termination of the Cretan Renaissance. Additional works composed by the staff of the Flanginian were: "Greece’s Homage to the Venetian Senate", as well as a literary encyclopedia by Ioannis Patousas composed in four volumes, which was a valuable resource for Greek schools operating in the Ottoman Empire.

Location

The school was located in the Campo dei Greci, near the Greek Orthodox church of Saint George

San Giorgio dei Greci

San Giorgio dei Greci is a church in the sestiere or neighborhood of Castello, Venice, northern Italy. It was the center of the Scuola dei Greci, the Confraternity of the Greeks in Venice....

. Today the building of the Flanginian School houses the Hellenic Institute of Byzantine and post-Byzantine Studies in Venice.