Christos D. Merantzas is a Professor at the Department of History and Archaeology at the University of Patras, where he teaches the history and theory of civilizations. He has published extensively on the cultural history of the Byzantine and post-Byzantine periods, on environmental aesthetics, cultural management, the body and the formation of cultural identities in modernity, as well as on the sustainable development of mountainous regions. His scholarly output includes eleven books and three co-authored monographs, along with numerous articles in academic journals covering topics ranging from the cultural history of the body, time, and landscape to issues of cultural management. In 2013, he received the Award for the Best Academic Work from the Metsovion Interdisciplinary Research Center of the National Technical University of Athens. He served as the scientific coordinator of the research project “The Virtual Museum” funded by the Ioannis S. Latsis Public Benefit Foundation (2015), and as project manager of the In-NovaMusEUm research program within the framework of the Creative Europe “Culture 2014–2020” Programme (2016–2018). He is also a faculty associate and thesis supervisor in the Postgraduate Program in Cultural Management at the Hellenic Open University.

Co-direction of the excavation program of the Roman villa at Stroggili, Arta, Greece
The Excavation Program implemented since 2024 and based on the 5/cooperation protocol between the Ephorate of Antiquities of Arta/Ministry of Culture and the University of Patras (Department of History - Archaeology), concerns excavation, surface, archaeobotanical and geomorphological research at the archaeological site of Strongyli Arta, under the direction of the Head of the Department of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities and Museums and Deputy Head of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Arta, Ms. Theodora
Kontogianni and Professor of Cultural History Mr. Christos Merantzas of the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Patras.

Links:
https://ha.upatras.gr/profile/cmerantzas/
https://hmerantz.wixsite.com/topio-graphies

Four short narratives of cultural history, Pedio, Athens 2025

The four short narratives of cultural history are constituted by an equal number of exemplary case-chapters that are referred to, in the order in which they are presented: a. an early anti-Jewish manifesto drawn from a 10th century hagiological novel (Life of Basil the New, b. the anti-Chalcedonian theology of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ as evidence of a cultural confrontation, given that Martin Scorsese's film based on the novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis was censored and severely criticized by Christian groups around the world upon its release in cinemas (12 August 1988); c. a case of the ultimate defense of the ideal of love, as highlighted in Spyridon Peresiadis' (1854-1918) Golfo, a play in five acts that draws on contemporary popular culture; and finally, d. the impairment of popular culture, as it is realized in four advertisements of technological innovation [Lenovo's advertisement on the durability of the Think Pad laptop (2008), that of the mobile phone company Cosmote (2010) on the quantification of milk production by the seemingly identical goats Filitsa and Nina, and a two-part Vodafone advertisement (2012), featuring the pair of lovers Kitsos and Tasoula].

Four exemplary cases are examined here, which constituted at an early-stage papers in as many conferences, which have as a common foundation the management of otherness or the formation of a radical difference in its many manifestations in the public sphere, enabling us to identify the instrumental presence of this difference. The denial of the other, of literary and artistic creation, of compromise in the loss of love and, finally, of the essence of the identity of popular culture, emphasizes the revelatory potential of certain events of human life to be transformed into principles of the formation of a difference. Specific positions, priorities and attitudes shape the enclosure into identities that ultimately determine the dynamic process of shaping the self in order to maintain and strengthen its selfhood. Our four paradigmatic cases attempt, at the micro-scale level, to illuminate the complexity of the symbolic relations that constitute the coherent essence of an experienced corporeality and the way in which a society constructs its identity on it.

The literary texts of Byzantine culture, when they refer to the Jews, contribute crucially to the formation of cultural barriers and differences, aiming at an unyielding stance on issues of cultural preservation and conservation, providing political, ideological and religious motivation to persuade the members of the empire to reproduce them. The Byzantines' reinforcement of the political and ideological claims of difference constituted the ideal conceptual tool for strengthening their cultural identity, as they did when they railed against the Muslims or even the iconoclasts as a justified appeal to the political claims of a common and unified culture. This constant renegotiation and reaffirmation of the plausibility of the familiar culture shows precisely how for its orchestrators cultures are porous and fluid, and this constant need to essentialize the constraints and limitations within the boundaries of the familiar culture is a consequence of normativization in terms of political and religious identity. As S. Trojanos rightly points out, since the Jews had no legal status in Byzantine society, legislation constantly restricted their rights, even though their Jewish past was an essential element in the legitimation, within the res publica christiana, of imperial power. It is precisely this Jewish past of Christianity that succeeded in stirring Gregory's thought in the Life of Saint Basil the Younger.

The philosophical anthropology of Nikos Kazantzakis' Last Temptation, a 1955 novel for which the Holy Synod of the Church of Greece will exert extreme pressure for its prohibition, arguing that it "perverts and abuses the inspired gospel narrative", discusses the duality of Christ's natures, human and divine, and bypassing the theology of the 451 Council of Chalcedon, Jesus' physicality is understood as a living organism that is crucial to the conception of his being. It is not a static and strictly entrenched dichotomy where the relationship between the divine and human elements is governed by the theological doctrine of a binary difference with the capacity of each nature rather to be preserved and jointly define a single person and a single substance, but for a dynamic dualism in becoming where divine/spiritual and human/terrestrial are not simply the opposing poles of a dipole, but the organic and indispensable elements of a dual unity in eternal conflict. Regarding the relevance of Jesus' lived body to his fleshly environment, it is not a static and unreal condition but is based primarily on a living process transmuted into specific ways of making sense of embodied reality.

We also attempted to understand here, with the tools of cultural history, the reasons why the dramatic bucolic romance Golfo by Spyros Peresiadis, written and first presented in 1893, has been an incredible theatrical and cinematic success, not only in the decades that followed but until today. In order to save the essentiality of love, Golfo confronts and accepts for herself the borderline state of death. Death involving the body constitutes here a sacrificial practice in the pursuit of a greater degree of cognitive control in order to expand, either in the realm of the transcendental or the realm of the existent, in quality and intensity, beyond the grave, the field of refinement of a supreme purpose. Death may threaten the sense of ontological security, including the social identity of the being and the existential understanding of the self, but the death of Golfos brings us back to the Christian anthropology where the body, in the service of a higher purpose of fulfilment - in our case that of eros and love - serves a Christian form of salvific perspective. Golfo, though embodying the extreme and deconstructive pre-modern oscillations of the thymic, ultimately denies the dynamics of the desiring for the sake of a normative modern principle of body management inextricably linked to the virtue of restraint, the capacity for self-limitation and control. By denying the instinctive generative function of pleasure and passion, she renders self-compulsion, through the acceptance of death and the rejection of material corporeality, a self-contained and closed field for the constitution of modern subjectivity.

In the last paradigmatic case and on the basis of the bipolar view of nature-culture, popular culture-technoscientific culture, we examined the production of four Greek advertisements accessible on the You Tube platform, which undermine the identity of popular culture. We wanted, in this context, to exploit hermeneutically the issue of what we would call the "re-imagination" of popular culture and its intertwining with techno-scientific culture. In particular, we examined and analyzed three advertisements by mobile phone companies and a laptop company whose subject matter draws directly from constitutive elements of the pre-industrial world and popular culture and, in particular, we analyzed the particular challenges of these advertisements with regard to the reception of tradition, at the ontological, epistemological, moral-political and aesthetic levels, in the context of the new techno-scientific organisation of the world, at the heart of which, according to M. Serres, should be the demand for the reactivation of the symbiotic play of man and Biogea.

Christos Merantzas (2020). Topio-graphies. Athens: Smili 

Over-exploitation, without the much required development standards to protect the environment and ecosystems, can create a sensory experience with negative signs and values due to the extensive field of mechanical production and profit generation therefore offending historical values, the policy of spatial arrangement in force concerning exploitative potential zones, the cultivated civilization, the biological status of ecosystems or the physical composition of the natural environment following a marked manifestation of technical domination. The lack of boundaries has ethical and cultural implications and is one of the main elements that manifests industrial domination. Its defining revelation is evident because limits that otherwise objectify the many profit-making activities are absent. The consequences of a dense industrial world, the demands of ever-increasing production and the immediate replaceability of entire natural fields with industrial interventions that alter the cultural landscape and deplete raw materials are visible and at the mercy of the enforced mechanisms of a technical order. An industrial world is certainly not, nor to be naively believed, as the forefront to innovation thanks to all available technological means, instead this world brings the unconditional enforcement of a treaty that entirely demotes the aesthetic values where the environment is downgraded to the level of a degraded nature. In this case, the imprint of the anthropogenic alterations of the landscape following industrial exploitation constitutes a coherent code of intervention, resulting from a multitude of synergies exploiting bauxite reserves. Itea and the northern part of the Gulf of Corinth are currently host to intense industrial activity, contributing to a labor-intense deterioration of environmental aesthetics where the dominance of tools is expressed through a variety of activities. Intense tool-prone activity serves an aggressive role as it imprints onto the landscape’s anatomy the content of a permanent and irreversible industrial alteration of the environment at large, with the potential deterioration of biodiversity and the ecosystem’s operation.

In particular, overfishing, coupled with a lack of Marine Zoning or Spatial Planning, aquaculture zoning within the Gulf of Itea, and this considering the shores of Delphi land have been confirmed as a Natura Protected Area, marine pollution, the mass dumping of fertilizers and pesticides in the marine environment, illegal fishing, and the above performed via destructive practices, the destruction of marine habitats and the underwater fields of Posidonia oceanica, non-compliance with European and Domestic environmental legislation, the decades-long scrapping of heavy industrial waste at sea in addition to largecapacity olive waste, the invasion of habitats by environmentally unfriendly human activity and interventions as well as the construction of hazardous and risky industrial installations within Natura 2000 sites, red bauxite-rich heavy metal residues flowing into the Gulf of Antikyra in Corinth, where the 1970- 1994 period recorded an estimated 43 million tons of deposited red bauxite residues, covering a total area of 288 square meters, not to mention the overwhelmed overland and coastal zones around the industrial complex of Aluminum SA in Ag. Nikolaos of Boeotia due to certain inorganic pollutants, but mainly organic pollutants (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons), which currently define the region as one of the most polluted areas in the country, the shock absorbed by Itea Bay in terms of natural radionuclides, both of the 238U and 232Th series, as a result of the burdensome operations of the company exploiting bauxite, the strain caused by fluorine gas emissions from the production of aluminum which has severely afflicted the soils east of the Antikyra and within a radius of more than ten (10) kilometers, the extremely high values of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) found in the soils, the lack of research on the cumulative effects of wind park installations over an extended period of time, particularly within Natura zones, the Approval of the Revised Regional Spatial Framework for the Region of Central Greece and its Certified Environmental Protection Plan published in Government Gazette 299/14.12.2018, which puts forward a proposal for mining works in line with the region’s future development, the proclamation of the prefectural area as an “Area of Exclusive Mining Activity”, with mining activities surrounding the perimeter of archaeological protection zones A and B of the Delphic landscape, shifting their scalability to penetrate into these sites, all of the above encouraging the need for an aesthetic evaluation of the Delphic landscape

 The narrow and unrestricted dependence of populations on bauxite and fish farming is a fundamental foundation for the livelihood of local populations and this dependence explains how two monocultures, within a dynamic and culturally rich environment, reap the creative power of local populations. There’s the impression that while two systems co-exist, one comes to exclude the other. The first is closer to nature and consists of a network of cultural terms, historical wealth, where the olive grove and Apollo dominate. The other emerged in the region as a form of aggressive discontinuity, and strongly leans towards the irreversibility of its industrial choices and consists of an important employment prospect that absorbs the labor of the local population, but also oppressively interrupts communication with the natural environment, therefore demonstrating a high relevancy deficit with respect to the region within which it operates. 

Consequently new balances shared between three types of values – ecological, socio-cultural and economic – can define the boundaries of the lineal urge for development and the field of forced conservation of natural envirnoment. The social and economic values include the labor structure and employability of the local population, as well as the utilization of natural resources both locally and nationally, the ecologiacal values include endangered species and the importance of the area as a repository and conservation site, and finally cultural values include the depth and density of a historical wealth as the potential for a culture to express itself. 

The active encounter of the human body with the environment is a decisive and crucial driver in the uptake and transformation of environmental aesthetics, similar to the way that German philosopher Gernot Böhme perceives the ecological aesthetics of nature, making environmental aesthetics dependent on how the human body is positioned within the natural environment. The quality and essence of environmental aesthetics solely depending on this re-emergence of anthropocentrism reintroduces the ultra-authority of a human supremacy to the body of land and sea. On the basis of this treaty, the environmental aesthetic cannot simply be reduced to a subjective human experience, nor can it be weakened because of a simplistic empirical sense exclusive to the human being according to Arnold Berleant. The multiple constituent structures of a region include both the human and non-human, geology, weather phenomena, climatic conditions, fauna and flora, water systems, culture, history, everyday practices, power mechanisms, exploitation, production management, industrial laws, dissemination of knowhow, scientific legitimacy, etc. which are the building blocks for coherent content and narrative on how a particular environment is structured, this approach being specific to the Chinese holistic perception of environmental aesthetics where humans and nature are treated as a single whole.

The priority for the appraisal of environmental aesthetic is to layout the terms of a process rich in social content that does not demote the essence of man to behaviors of personal consumption, thus providing human actions with the necessary foundation to communicate a holistic perspective where the subject serves as an active representative of environmental and cultural values. The challenge is not simply to distort the physical characteristics of a place, but extends deeper into citizens’ democratic consciousness by defending the environmental characteristics of the landscape, the ecological sensitivity and ethical quality that results from defending environmental aesthetics. The greater the interest of societies in environmental aesthetics, the more they invest in the content and substance of a fundamental moral good in order to maintain a strong level of community democratization. Therefore, the pursuit of ecological sustainability as a matter of priority to protect the natural landscape is linked to a higher degree of democratic citizenship, that will strive towards a dialogue of evaluative thinking aimed at establishing accountability for ecological and democratic citizenship. At this crucial junction point emerges the public presence and outreach of Corinthian ecological organizations, mainly the Alcyon, where information and awareness of environmental values are precisely the practices that give an inherent democratic dynamism to their public discourse.

In this context, environmental aesthetics include the interpretation of a whole, advocated by the need for an approach with a scientifically and practically sound basis and where any environmental intrusion that causes the impairment and degradation of natural resources and biodiversity is identified. However, in addition to the regulatory treaty of an approach embraced by a technocratic perspective and cognitive certitude, imagination, emotion, and varying degrees of dialectic practice and cultural engagements build a webbed and dense array of processes for interpreting, approaching, absorbing and conceptualizing environmental aesthetics. Between technocratic expertise and creative imagination there is a middle point, that is a more liberating, open and creative way of absorbing environmental aesthetics.

Understanding, also, the complexity and uniqueness of nature through the scientific view of the world, and consequently the approach to environmental aesthetics, is a principle that assumes we live in a technological biocosm and this approach that certainly belongs to the future of a world dominated by technological rationality, therefore acknowledging the only way to access the truth of nature within the scientific realm. Allen Carlson supported the interpretation of environmental aesthetics on the basis of scientific criteria that reveal its greatness regardless of human intervention. Science penetrates the innermost conditions and relationships of the physical and can guide a scientific evaluation on the basis of specific criteria, not simply of a superficial exterior but that intrinsically allow a multifaceted biocosm to function. Even though environmental aesthetics, through the scientific exploration of nature, can be reduced to quantifying a reality that extends beyond any sensory experience, we cannot overlook the fact that scientific evidence researches and highlights the individual constituents of a natural world, i.e. organic components of a biocosmic reality, demonstrating the specific and complex nature of natural phenomena.

That said, any terms for a clear instrumentation of observability should not burden the appreciation of environmental aesthetics because of the dynamics of a technological rationality, instead should be accompanied by a poetic and contemplative exploration that penetrates beyond the surface of the landscape into the endless stocks of the cultural formations that make up it. A holistic appraisal should be sought, one that will converge scientific and cultural elements under a completely unified treaty. Nor could the degradation of nature serve as the sole condition for the appraisal of environmental aesthetics as a contemporary matter, where environmental aesthetics is consumed solely as a sensory or even imaginary object, depending on the will of the human subject and its conscious realities.

Unlike the positions of Allen Carlson, Marcia Muelder Eaton and Yuriko Saito, we could not claim the exclusive reliance of environmental aesthetics solely on scientific knowledge and documentation just to avoid giving priority to subjective and unsubstantiated opinions, because landscapes are not cut off from vocal pre-modern traditions and practices, mythical elements and fairytales, where fortunately, people still remain their carriers despite the intense industrialization of our civilization. We cannot expect a “radical” aesthetic cut off from the metaphysical search of the past, just as we cannot expect the eradication of local folk languages and force speech to succumb to the priorities of a common exclusive official language. If there is one thing needed opposite present-day challenges is to establish an aesthetic overlap with the complexity of the very challenges facing the whole biocosm in unity against the empowered challenges of technology. This aesthetic will not abandon the historical dimension of places, as it is founded on the understanding of diverse differences and establishes valid and pragmatic proposals.

Perhaps in order to define its dominant field, technical expertise eliminated the idea of unity in nature, however it is now imperative to reverse the correlation of forces toward the nature-culture dipole and practice a sense of humility with nature in order to establish a new sense of familiarity that takes into account the constitution of human interventions and practices, the historicity and regulation of culture, the global technological rule together with the inclusiveness of nature in its entirety, this notion being understood as a completely unified concept. A holistic approach to nature should foresee a future beyond the exclusive objectification of profit and shift to a form of development that will set further boundaries on the will for any activity to dominate within the natural environment. The notion of a holistic approach is radically different from the standards of sustainability and livability, both of which are understood as anthropocentric egoism, as it highlights a single place of coexistence that prioritizes nature rather than culturally mediated technicalization and power relations imposed by the individual’s uniqueness. The uniqueness of man must be re-merged into the totality of the natural single place. Within a framework of a reshaping universalism, the basic concern therefore is to define practices within everyday life under a light of unbreakable unity between nature and culture, simultaneously recognizing the essential fact of viewing nature as a coherent whole.

The single cohesive route for the biocosm together with the complexity of its individual systems should be borne in mind whenever, from the point of view of environmental aesthetics and ecological landscape, we wish to re-establish our essential position within the natural environment, all the while considering that nature’s reckless industrialization removes from environmental aesthetic its focal ability to think of the world as a single system in which a multitude of organisms inhabit, grow, and die. In the case of the Delphic landscape, the crucial protection of the intrinsic value of local historical and cultural heritage, not only in consideration of archaeological landmarks but all aspects of the human condition, including traditional knowledge and skills, working practices and the impact of exploiting existing infrastructure, biodiversity, social structures, modern farming and fishing practices, artistic creativity, environmental protection, pollution, technological changes and mining production, should also be embedded into every effort to achieve the holistic protection of the natural environment and its resources. The essential concern for nature should serve to counterbalance the exploitation of natural resources seeing that modern subjectivism degrades and commercializes nature, driven by the narrow understanding of capitalist maximization of human well-being and its preferences.