Theofan Stilian Noli | |
|---|---|
 Noli in c. 1924 | |
| 13th Prime Minister of Albania | |
| In office 16 June 1924 – 23 December 1924 | |
| Monarch | Wilhelm I |
| Preceded by | Ilias Vrioni |
| Succeeded by | Ilias Vrioni |
| Metropolitan of Durrës | |
| In office 21 November 1923 – January 1925 (exiled) | |
| Preceded by | Iakovos of Durrës (under Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople) |
| Succeeded by | Visarion of Albania |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1882-01-06)6 January 1882 |
| Died | 13 March 1965(1965-03-13) (aged 83) |
| Political party | |
| Alma mater | Harvard[1] Boston University |
| Occupation | Writer,priest,Bishop, translator, composer, politician |
| Profession | Priest and politician |
| Signature | .svg) |
Theofan Stilian Noli, known asFan Noli (6 January 1882 – 13 March 1965), was anAlbanian-American writer, scholar, diplomat, politician, historian, orator, bishop, and founder of theAlbanian Orthodox Church and theAlbanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America who served asPrime Minister and regent ofAlbania in 1924 during theJune Revolution.[2]
Fan Noli is venerated inAlbania as a champion of literature, history, theology, diplomacy, journalism, music, national unity and ecumenism. He played an important role in the consolidation ofAlbanian as the nationallanguage ofAlbania with numerous translations of world literature masterpieces.[3] He also wrote extensively in English: as a scholar and author of a series of publications onSkanderbeg,Shakespeare,Beethoven, religious texts and translations.[3] He produced a translation of theNew Testament in English,The New Testament of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ from the approved Greek text of the Church of Constantinople and the Church of Greece, published in 1961.
Noli earned degrees atHarvard[1] (1912), theNew England Conservatory of Music (1938), and finally his Ph.D. fromBoston University (1945).[4][5] He was ordained a priest in 1908, establishing thereby the Albanian Church and elevating the Albanian language to ecclesiastic use. He briefly resided in Albania after the 1912 declaration of independence. After World War I, Noli led the diplomatic efforts for the reunification of Albania and received the support of US PresidentWoodrow Wilson. Later he pursued a diplomatic-political career in Albania, successfully leading the Albanian bid for membership in theLeague of Nations.
A respected figure who remained critical of corruption and injustice in the Albanian government, Fan Noli was asked to lead the 1924 June Revolution. He then served as prime minister until his revolutionary government was overthrown byAhmet Zogu. He was exiled to Italy and permanently settled in theUnited States in the 1930s, acquiring US citizenship and agreeing to end his political involvement. He spent the rest of his life as an academician, religious leader, and writer.
Fan Noli was born Theofanis Stylianos Mavromatis 1882 inİbriktepe, a small village situated in the Thracian OttomanVilayet of Adrianople (modernTurkey) which was originally settled by Albanians fromQyteza. Qyteza is a village in the County ofKolonjë, and İbriktepe was known to the local townspeople as Qyteza at the time.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14] He was anAlbanian[15][16] of theEastern Orthodox faith. Noli was a descendant of these OrthodoxChristian Albanian settlers who fled what is todaysouthern Albania and resettled inThrace in areas that had been depopulated due to regional conflicts.[17] During his youth, Noli received his education from Greek elementary and secondary schools.[5] As a young man, Noli wandered throughout the Mediterranean Basin, living inAthens inGreece,Alexandria inEgypt andOdessa inRussia, and supported himself as an actor and translator. As well as his nativeAlbanian, he spoke many languages such asGreek,English,French,Turkish, andArabic.[18] He went to Athens to become a teacher, and there he used the name Theofanis Mavromattis. Thereafter he went as a teacher or a member of a theater in theAlbanian diaspora in Egypt, where he followed the Albanian national program.[19] Through his contacts with the Albanian expatriate movement, he became an ardent supporter of his country's nationalist movement and moved to the United States in 1906.[20] He first worked inBuffalo, New York, in a lumber mill and then moved toBoston, Massachusetts, and worked as an operator on a machine which stamped labels on cans.[18] TheYoung Turks (CUP) had a hostile view of Albanian leaders such as Fan Noli who were doing political activities with the assistance of outside powers.[21]
The earliest Orthodox Christian Albanian immigrants to Boston were communicants of theGreek Orthodox Church, the leadership of which was vehemently opposed to the Albanian nationalist cause. When Kristaq Dishnica, a young factory worker who had died of influenza, was refused burial on the grounds that, as an Orthodox Christian who identified as an Albanian, he was therefore automatically excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church, Fan Noli and a group of Albanian émigrés inNew England set about laying the groundwork for an independent, autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church. The event, which came to be known as theHudson Incident, was a seminal moment in the establishment of an independent Albanian Orthodox Christian religious consciousness.[22][5] Noli, the new church's first clergyman, wasordained as apriest in 1908 by ArchbishopPlaton (Rozhdestvensky) of theRussian Church in the United States.[18][5][23] By achieving Patriarchal recognition for the autocephaly of the Albanian Orthodox Church and the full translation of the Orthodox liturgy from the original Greek text intoTosk Albanian, Noli aimed to peacefully neutralize and dismantle the ideological platform of Greek irredentism promoted by reactionaries within the Orthodox Church in Albania and to defend the right of Orthodox Christian Albanians to coexist with their Greek neighbors in a secular Republic immune to the sectarianMegali Idea.[24] Noli was a staunch supporter of Albanian patriotic unity and a separation of religion from the state and moreover, considered it important for religious office to be held by clergy fluent in Albanian and possessing Albanian citizenship.[25]
.jpg)
In 1908, Noli began studying at Harvard, completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1912.[26] During April 1912Vatra (Hearth) anAlbanian American diaspora organisation was founded with Noli andFaik Konica serving as its leaders and advocating for Albanian sociopolitical self determination with the Ottoman Empire.[27] He returned to Europe to promote Albanian independence, setting foot in Albania for the first time in 1913.[26] Noli returned to the United States during World War I, serving as head of the Vatra organization, which effectively made him leader of the Albanian diaspora.[26] His diplomatic efforts in the United States andGeneva won the support of President Woodrow Wilson for an independent Albania and, in 1920, earned the new national membership in the fledgling League of Nations.[28] Though Albania had already declared its independence in 1912, membership in the League of Nations provided the country with the international recognition it had failed to obtain until then.[29]
In 1921, Noli entered the Albanian Parliament as a representative of the liberal pro-British "People's Party" (Albanian:Partia e Popullit), the chief liberal movement in the country.[30] The other parties were the conservative pro-Italian "Progressive Party" (Albanian:Partia Përparimtare) founded byMehdi Frashëri and led by Ahmet Zogu, and "Popular Party" (Albanian:Partia Popullore) ofXhafer Ypi. The conservatives of Zogu would dominate the political scene.[31][32] ACongress of Berat in 1922 was convened to formally lay the foundations of an Albanian Orthodox Church whichconsecrated Fan Noli asBishop of Korçë and primate of all Albania while the establishment of the church was seen as important for maintaining Albanian national unity.[22][33]
Noli served briefly as Foreign Minister in the government ofXhafer Ypi.[34] This was a period of intense turmoil in the country between the liberals and the conservatives.[35] After a botched assassination attempt against Zogu, the conservatives revenged themselves by assassinating another popular liberal politician,Avni Rustemi.[36] Noli's speech at Rustemi's funeral was so powerful that liberal supporters rose up against Zogu and forced him to flee toYugoslavia (March 1924).[37] Zogu was succeeded briefly by his father-in-law,Shefqet Vërlaci, and by the liberal politicianIliaz Vrioni; Noli was named prime minister and regent on 16 June 1924.[38]
Despite his efforts to reform the country, Noli's "Twenty Point Program" was unpopular, and his government was overthrown by groups loyal to Zogu onChristmas Eve of that year.[39] Two weeks later, Zogu returned to Albania, and Noli fled to Italy under sentence of death.[40]
Conscious of his fragile position, Zogu took drastic measures to consolidate his return to power. By the end of winter, two of the main leaders of the opposition,Bajram Curri andLuigj Gurakuqi, were assassinated, while others were imprisoned.
Noli founded the "National Committee" (Albanian:Komiteti Nacional Revolucionar) also known asKONARE inVienna. The committee published the periodical called "National Freedom" (Albanian:Liria Kombëtare). Some of the early Albanian communists as Halim Xhelo orRiza Cerova would start their publishing activities here. The committee aimed in overthrowing Zogu and his cast and restoring democracy. Despite the efforts, the committee's access and influence in Albania would be limited. With the intervention ofKosta Boshnjaku, an old communist andKONARE member, the organization would receive unconditioned monetary support from theComintern. Also Noli and Boshnjaku would make possible for exile members of theCommittee for the National Defence of Kosovo (outlawed by Zogu) to get the same financial support.[41]
In 1928, KONARE changed its name to "Committee of National Liberation" (Albanian:Komiteti i Çlirimit Kombëtar). Meanwhile, in Albania, after three years of republican regime, the "National Council" declared Albania aConstitutional Monarchy, and Ahmet Zogu became king.[42]Noli moved back to the United States in 1932 and formed a republican opposition to Zogu, who had since proclaimed himself "King Zog I". Over the next years, he continued his education, studying and later teachingByzantine music, and continued developing and promoting theautocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church he had helped to found.
After the war, Noli established some ties with the communist government ofEnver Hoxha, which seized power in 1944. He unsuccessfully urged the U.S. government to recognize the regime, but Hoxha's increasing persecution of all religions prevented Noli's church from maintaining ties with the Orthodox hierarchy in Albania. Despite the Hoxha regime'santiclerical bent, Noli's ardent Albanian nationalism brought the bishop to the attention of the U.S.Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The FBI's Boston office kept the bishop under investigation for more than a decade with no final outcome to the probe.
In 1945, Fan S. Noli received a doctor's degree (Ph.D.) in history fromBoston University,[5] writing a dissertation onSkanderbeg.[43][44] In the meantime, he also conducted research at Boston University Music Department, publishing a biography onLudwig van Beethoven. He also composed a one-movement symphony calledScanderbeg in 1947. Toward the end of his life, Noli retired toFort Lauderdale, Florida, where he died in 1965.
Fan Noli is interred inForest Hills Cemetery, situated in the southern part of Boston'sJamaica Plain neighborhood.
TheAlbanian Orthodox Archdiocese in America founded by Noli went on to join theOrthodox Church in America, today led by MetropolitanTikhon Mollard as theAlbanian Archdiocese. Until recently overseen byArchbishop Nikon of Boston and the Very Reverend Arthur E. Liolin, the Albanian Archdiocese of the Orthodox Church in America is currently headed by Interim Chancellor Igumen Nikodhim Preston. It consists of eleven urban and suburban parishes situated primarily in the urban centers of theNortheastern United States and theMidwestern United States. The Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania, which Noli served in Albania, is presided over by ArchbishopAnastasios of Albania, headquartered in the Albanian capital city ofTirana and a member of theWorld Council of Churches. In addition, theGreek Orthodox Archdiocese of America administers two Albanian Orthodox parishes in Boston and Chicago. All Albanian Orthodox parishes are today in full communion with one another and with the broader worldwide body of the Orthodox Church and fully recognized by theEcumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
Writing in his diary two days after Noli's death, Albanian leader Enver Hoxha gave his analysis of Noli's work:[45]
As we are informed, Fan S. Noli died from an operation done last week in which, because of his age, he did not survive. A cerebral hemorrhage caused a quick death. Noli was one of the prominent political and literary figures of the beginning of this century. The balance sheet of his life was positive ... Fan Noli today enjoys a great popularity in our country, deserved as a literary translator and music critic. He was a prominent promoter of the Albanian language. His original works and translations, especially ofShakespeare, ofOmar Khayyám andBlasco Ibáñez, are immortal. But especially his anti-Zogist, anti-feudal elegies and poems are beautiful jewels that have inspired and will inspire our youth, especially in creativity. He was also respected as a realistic politician, as a revolutionary democrat in ideology and politics.The Party has assessed the figure of Noli. As is deserved, we have had a patriotic duty to point out the really great merits of his in literature, the history of the arts, and his merits and weaknesses in politics. I think we will do our best in bringing his body to Albania, as this distinguished son of the people, the revolutionary patriot, deserves to bask in his homeland, which he loved and fought for his entire life.
— Enver Hoxha
Fan S. Noli is depicted on theobverse of the Albanian 100lekë banknote issued in 1996. It remained in use until 2008 when it was replaced by a coin.[46]
The following poems were written by Fan Noli:
It was from his family that Fan Noli received a sense of identity as an Albanian
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Prime Minister of Albania June 16, 1924 – December 26, 1924 | Succeeded by |
| Independent Albania (1912–14) | |
|---|---|
| Principality of Albania (1914–25) | |
| Albanian Republic (1925–28) | .svg) |
| Albanian Kingdom (1928–39) | .svg) |
| Italian Albania (1939–43) | .svg) |
| German occupation (1943–44) | |
| Communist Albania (1944–91) | |
| Republic of Albania (since 1991) | |
| Presidential elections | |
| Independent Albania (1912–14) | .svg) |
|---|---|
| Principality of Albania (1914–25) | |
| Albanian Republic (1925–28) | |
| Albanian Kingdom (1928–39) | |
| Italian Albania (1939–43) | |
| German occupation (1943–44) | |
| Communist Albania (1944–91) | |
| Republic of Albania (since 1991) | |
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
.svg)
