Georgios Tertsetis (; 1800,
Zakynthos
Zakynthos (also spelled Zakinthos; ; ) or Zante (, , ; ; from the Venetian language, Venetian form, traditionally Latinized as Zacynthus) is a Greece, Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands, with an are ...
– 15 April 1874,
Athens
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
) was a Greek
independence fighter, historian, politician, poet, writer, judge and philosopher. He is best known, along with
Anastasios Polyzoidis
Anastasios Polyzoidis (, 1802–1873) was a Greek politician and judicial official.
He was born in Melnik, Ottoman Empire (nowadays in Bulgaria), where he graduated local Greek school. From 1818 he was studying law, history and social studie ...
, for his refusal to agree to the condemnation and execution of
Theodoros Kolokotronis
Theodoros Kolokotronis (; 3 April 1770 – ) was a Greek general and the pre-eminent leader of the Greek War of Independence (1821–1829) against the Ottoman Empire.
The son of a klepht leader who fought the Ottomans during the Orlov revolt ...
and
Dimitrios Plapoutas, in 1834.
Biography
Tertsetis was born in Zakynthos but studied law at the
University of Padua
The University of Padua (, UNIPD) is an Italian public research university in Padua, Italy. It was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from the University of Bologna, who previously settled in Vicenza; thus, it is the second-oldest ...
. Soon he became interested in Italian literature and the European Enlightenment. When the Greek Revolution broke out in 1821, Tertsetis returned to Zakynthos, fired up with patriotic fever, and took part in some battles in Peloponnese. As he was under great financial difficulties, he worked as a tutor to the Botsaris family in Patras. He was able to find some work in Nafplion where he was given the post of History Professor at the Military Academy.
In 1833, Tertsetis was appointed a magistrate. He is mostly known in Greece as one of the two judges who refused to succumb to government pressure and condemn Theodoros Kolokotronis to death in 1834, a brave act that put him to exile, though. The passion of Georgios Tertsetis was literature. He wrote many verses and in 1833, he published a poem dedicated to King Otto, entitled The Kiss, a poem inspired by the folklore language of the common people. However, his poetry didn't have much popularity and remains unknown. It was his prose that was much appreciated. The most famous work of Tertsetis was The Memoirs of Kolokotronis, a narrative biography of the great hero of the Greek Revolution. Georgios Tertsetis died in Athens in 1874.
Sources
*Roderick Beaton, David Ricks, ''The making of modern Greece: nationalism, Romanticism, & the uses of the past (1797-1896)'', Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2009
p. 117
*
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1800 births
1874 deaths
Greek people of the Greek War of Independence
19th-century Greek historians
Greek politicians
Greek male poets
Heptanese school (literature)
19th-century Greek judges
19th-century Greek philosophers
People from Zakynthos
19th-century Greek poets
History of Greece (1832–1862)
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