Dorotheos Proios

Dorotheos Proios (about 1765 to 3 June 1821) was a Greek scholar, teacher and hierarch, metropolitan of Philadelphia in Asia Minor and then of Adrianople, hanged by the Turks at Constantinople in 1821. The Greek source calls him a saint of the Orthodox Church, commemorated on 3 June, the day of his martyrdom; it gives, however, no act of canonization and we could not find one, so we cannot say in what way and when he was numbered among the saints.

Youth and studies

He was born about 1765 in Chios; his name in the world was Demetrios Proios or Progakis. He made his ordinary studies in his homeland and at the School of Patmos, under the teacher Daniel Keramevs. Then, between 1786 and 1793, he took university studies in philosophy and physics at the universities of Pisa, Florence and Paris, where he met Adamantios Korais. He returned then home and taught at the school there until 1796, when he moved to Constantinople and Bucharest, following Konstantinos Hangerlis, then dragoman of the fleet and later prince of Wallachia.

School director and metropolitan

In 1804 Demetrios Mourouzis founded the Patriarchal School at Xirokrini, in Constantinople, and its direction was entrusted to Dorotheos Proios. In three years he attracted many young students, introducing new methods of teaching, made in collaboration with Korais, who was in Paris. He taught physics, mathematics, geometry, philosophy and logic; he arranged the school's library and the collection of teaching aids for geography, physics and chemistry. He remained at the head of the school until 1807, when he was elected metropolitan of Philadelphia in Asia Minor. In 1813, by decision of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, he was transferred to the metropolis of Adrianople, where he reorganized the city's gymnasium; he founded a school and a library together with the Adrianopolitan G. Sakellarios, one of the richest merchants of Austria; Stephanos Karatheodoris was named school director, and Dorotheos taught theology, philosophy and the sciences. Among his writings are mostly school textbooks (arithmetic, geometry, algebra, logic, translations from Archimedes and others); he also collaborated in 1819 on the work "Kivotos of the Greek Language".

Prison and death

At the beginning of the Revolution in the Danubian Principalities, the sultan demanded seven hierarchs as a guarantee, among them Dorotheos. The Turkish authorities arrested him and imprisoned him at Constantinople, in the Bostanci prison, together with other arrested hierarchs: Joseph of Thessalonica, Athanasius of Nicomedia, Gregory of Derkoi, Eugenius of Anchialos, Dionysius of Ephesus and Ioannikios of Tarnovo. On 10 April Patriarch Gregory V was hanged and on the same day the hierarchs Athanasius of Nicomedia, Eugenius of Anchialos and Dionysius of Ephesus. On 3 June 1821 the remaining imprisoned metropolitans were hanged, in different places of Constantinople: Dorotheos of Adrianople at Megas Revma, Joseph of Thessalonica at Neochori, Ioannikios of Tarnovo at Arnavutkoy and Gregory of Derkoi at Therapia.