How the autocephaly of the Church of Greece was declared in 1833

This article constitutes the first part of a historical and theological study devoted to the declaration of autocephaly of the Church of Greece in 1833. Spyridon Galanis reconstructs the context of the Ottoman occupation and the revolution of 1821, then analyzes the political conditions surrounding the arrival of King Otto I and the role of the Bavarian regent Georg Ludwig von Maurer in the ecclesiastical reorganization. The study examines in detail the thought of Archimandrite Theoklitos Pharmakidis, the principal theological architect of autocephaly, whose argumentation combines the ecclesiology of the local Church, the rejection of any visible primacy, and the identification between political independence and ecclesiastical independence. The contribution of the article is to shed light on the doctrinal foundations and theological ambiguities of a unilaterally proclaimed autocephaly, thereby revealing the enduring tensions between Orthodox ecclesiology, nationalism, and caesaropapism in the formation of national Churches.