[It was] a very beautiful event today at the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Athens for the
presentation of the book, a life-work—the Archives of Vatoussa (1733-1912)—of our dear
Christos Stavrakoglou. In a particularly moving atmosphere of speakers-friends and students
of Christos, . . . [there was presented] the report and analysis of the role of the Church and of
the Dimogerontias during the subjugation of Lesvos and Vatoussa in the era of the Ottoman
Empire. [It is] a life work of Christos and a great job for us all. [In the book there are] published
Patriarchal letters, contracts, deeds, dowry-contracts, . . . decisions of the Dimogerontias for the
life [of the village, and] the traditions and customs of our village. [It is] one great work, [a] legacy
for generations to come [27 March 2014].

Stavrakoglou has done a masterful job in presenting the original records. His choice to transcribe all of the hand-written documents is sound, as is his decision to select a representative sampling for reproduction on pages 475-529. Even for those Western scholars with a reading knowledge of Modern Greek, the task of translating these records would prove Sisyphian, given the range of penmanship and writing styles in vintage Katharevousa, as well as anomalies of Mytilinian dialect. A laborious decoding of the fine, sometimes blurred handwriting was a task at which only a native scholar could hope to succeed.

Each document was arranged in chronological order within its category and subgroup. Among unbound records, Stavrakoglou created more than a dozen subgroups, including ecclesiastical documents (concerning engagements, marriages, baptisms, etc.) with excommunications treated separately, inventories of assets, dowry contracts, wills, donations, sales, leases, distributions, promissory notes, letters of attorney, documents pertaining to the Monastery of St. Antonios (no longer extant), a catch-all cluster of documents that don’t fall within any other subgroup, and a final section of unbound Ottoman-script documents. Each document was dated and received a collection number, as well as a brief introduction to contextualize it for readers and researchers. Footnotes shed light on obscure points of local history, offering explanations and additional information wherever necessary, demonstrating the depth and breadth of Stavrakoglou’s scholarship.

For instance, on page 254, he elaborates on the identification of the author of the document: “Minas Taxis was an uncle of the historian Stavros Taxis and brother of Ioannis Taxis, the famous scholar of the Greek Mercantile School of Halki.” Few Vatoussans would have made the connections between the three men, since Stavros and Ioannis are not specifically mentioned, but many would readily recognize the surname Taxis as that of a distinguished family from the village. In another footnote of the same document, the author skillfully describes how letters were conveyed in the mid-1800’s without use of a postal system. Writing papers were folded carefully, with the name of the addressee on one side, and then sealed and stamped with wax on the other. The author thoughtfully included images of the actual documents, both sides, so that readers could see the traces of sealing wax and letter folds (pages 500-501) opposite the hand-written original.

But his extensive knowledge of local custom was nowhere more apparent than in his explanations for abbreviated items among church expenses. An itemized account of 1854 included a “bed” for the church, which the author explained was a local term for “climbing vine,” while another mention of a “bed” for the dead in a following line was exactly that, a bed used solely in funerals. Another puzzling entry, “gathering and salting of olives,” became clear with Stavrakoglou’s footnote: growers had to wait their turn for use of the olive press, so olives were stored in yards and cellars and salted to prevent spoilage.

The book has much to offer experts and lay readers alike. Stavrakoglou has superbly annotated and presented the villages’ archives in an eminently useful fashion, setting a new standard for accounts of local and regional histories.

The Christos and Mary Papoutsy Foundation for the Revitalization of Vatoussa underwrote the costs of researching and printing The Archives of Vatoussa, Lesvos 1733-1912. All proceeds of the sale of the book will benefit renovation of the village’s small museum (Gogos Museum).