On March 14th, 2013, Greek artist Dionysis Kavalieratos was tried in court on blasphemy charges brought on him by members of the ultra-conservative “Genuine Orthodox Christians” Church (the Greek Old Calendarists, that also starred in the “Corpus Christi” charade). The charges were due to the following three sketches exhibited by the artist in a private art gallery (the owner of the venue was a co-defendant).
The trial was more or less a farce. Most of the hostile witnesses (including the GOC Archbishop Macarius) had not even seen the sketches in the gallery, but in a morning talk show and a single witness admitted that he visited the art gallery specifically to see the sketches up close (and later admitted that he intended to destroy them in a video). They stated that the sketches offended their religious sensibilities and wondered why the artist didn’t draw Mohammad and his mother instead (a typical christian argument; basically lamenting that they’ve outgrown their murderous past). Needless to say, the justification for the whole thing was the same antiquated art.199 of the Penal Code on malicious blasphemy.
The artist was defended by art critics and professors of Fine Art that explained to the court the meaning of the sketches, their place in the whole exhibit and the artist’s personal style and artistic evolution. It was also stressed that the event was private and not public (a necessary component of the blasphemy “crime”).
After the artist was acquitted, the plaintiffs and their supporters were up in arms, screaming at the defendant and his lawyer loving christian wishes, such as “cancer on your children”, “you’ll be tortured by demons in hell” and “how much did the arch-rabbi pay you?”. The trial was interrupted and the judges and the defendant were besieged by the crowd and they managed to leave with a police escort.
If you understand Greek you can see the news being reported by an Old Calendarist, accusing everyone involved in the defense and the judge of being a Freemason (typical target of Greek christian conspiracy theorists for decades). He also rants against Surrealism, because it was used as a defense in the trial and somehow manages to also involve “Hebrew Talmudists” as having orchestrated Surrealism to discredit Christianity and Nationalism. The rant is topped off with accusations against Rockefeller, Rothschild, mentions of the satanic “microchip” that will turn us into cyborgs (LOL!) and the admission that he intended to destroy the sketches when he visited the gallery. Do watch the whole thing; it’s quite the hoot!
The video subtitle reads “The Antichrists and Anti-hellenic judges, satisfying both the Jewish Synagogue and Freemasonry, on March 14th, 2013, acquitted Kavalieratos who made the insulting paintings against Jesus Christ and the Most Holy Virgin Mary”.
Try to stick to English in english articles. Thx 😉
may God forgive me for my mistake 😉
Reblogged this on @SimonKnowz and commented:
While the Corpus Christi and “Elder Pastitsios” pending blasphemy cases have grabbed most of the headlines, this is a case I was not aware of. Given the timing with Greek Orthodox Easter this weekend, this is a very timely and interesting case, which thankfully ended in an acquittal.
Thx for the plug, Simon! Truth be told, I was surprised that the Old Calendarists didn’t show up in court with a few Golden Dawn boys in tow, like they did with Corpus Christi. Perhaps they merely guest-starred there.
Good question. Do we know if this case was on the radar of the Old Calendarists?
Sure it was. It was them who filed the charges (the guy in the video was also the spokesman in the protests during the Corpus Christi affair).
Oh I see. My guess is they have no interest in actually pursuing a long term legal strategy. Maybe they just care about immediate intimidation and getting attention from the press.
Pretty much. Their lawsuits are more or less reactionary, as far as I can tell
Odd request for you: In the first paragraph you have a relative hyperlink to ‘/2012/10/12/corpus-christi-censorship-attempts-escalate/’. Because the WordPress “re-blog” functionality transfers the code “as-is” to my post and I have no way of editing it, the result is that it creates a relative hyperlink to my subdomain which naturally returns a 404.
Proposed solution/request: Can you switch the link to an absolute ‘https://onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com/2012/10/12/corpus-christi-censorship-attempts-escalate/’ ? Hopefully that will resolve this rather annoying issue 😦
Oh… sure. I typically use relative links so, if I change host I won’t have to edit all the links, but it’s cool. I didn’t know that reblogging tethers the copy to the original.
“Tethering” is exactly the right word. It actually propagated the new link out to my post as well 🙂
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[…] On March 14th, 2013, Greek artist Dionysis Kavalieratos was tried in court on blasphemy charges for three of his Christian-themed cartoons that were displayed in a private Athens art gallery. The gallery owner was a co-defendant. He was acquitted. <onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/greek-artist-acquitted-of-blasphemy-charges/> […]
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[…] On March 14th, 2013, Greek artist Dionysis Kavalieratos was tried in court on blasphemy charges for three of his Christian-themed cartoons that were displayed in a private Athens art gallery. The gallery owner was a co-defendant. He was acquitted <onthewaytoithaca.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/greek-artist-acquitted-of-blasphemy-charges/> […]