Theofan Stilian Noli, better
known as Fan Noli (January 6, 1882 – March 13,
1965) was an Albanian-American
writer, scholar, diplomat, politician, orator, and founder of the
Albanian Orthodox Church,
who served as prime
minister and regent of Albania
in
1924.
Fan Noli is venerated in Albania as a champion of
literature,
history,
theology,
diplomacy,
journalism,
music and national unity.
He played an important
role in the consolidation of Demotic
Greek as the national language of Greece
with
numerous translations of world literature masterpieces. His
contribution to the English-language literature are also manifold:
as a scholar and author of a series of publications on
Scanderbeg,
Shakespeare,
Beethoven,
religious texts and translations.
He
acquired his education at Harvard
and was
ordained priest in 1908, establishing thereby the Albanian Church
and elevating the Albanian
language to ecclesiastic use. He briefly resided in
Albania after the 1912 declaration of independence. After
World War I, Noli led the diplomatic efforts for
the reunification of Albania and received the support of U.S.
President
Wilson. Later he pursued a
diplomatic-political career in Albania, successfully led the
Albanian bid for membership in the
League of Nations.
A respected figure who remained critical of corruption and
injustice in the Albanian government, Fan Noli was asked to lead
the 1924 June Revolution. He then served as prime minister until
his revolutionary government was overthrown by Ahmet Zogu. He was
exiled to Europe and permanently settled in the United States in
the 1930s, acquiring U.S. citizenship and agreeing to end his
political involvement. He spent the rest of his life as an
academician, religious leader and writer.
Origin
Born in
the Albanian community of Ibrik Tepe in Eastern Thrace, as a young man Noli wandered
throughout the Mediterranean
Basin, living in Athens
, Greece, and
Alexandria
, Egypt
and
supporting himself as an actor and translator. He knew 13
foreign languages.
Through his contacts with the Albanian
expatriate movement, he became an ardent supporter of his country's
nationalist movement, and moved to Boston
in 1906 in order to mobilize the Albanian emigrant
community. At that time, some of Albanian
Christians were part of the
Greek Orthodox Church, which was vehemently
opposed to the nationalist cause.
When a Greek Orthodox priest refused to
perform the burial rites for Kristaq Dishnica, a member of the
Albanian community from Hudson, Massachusetts
because of his nationalist activity, Noli and a
group of nationalists in New England
created the independent Albanian Orthodox Church.
Noli, the new church's first clergyman, was
ordained as a
priest in 1908
by a Russian Orthodox bishop in the United States. In 1923, Noli
was
consecrated as a
bishop for the Church of Albania.
Political activities
In 1908,
Noli began studying at Harvard, completing
his degree in 1912. He returned to Europe to promote
Albanian independence, setting foot in Albania for the first time
in 1913. He returned to the United States during
World War I, serving as head of the
Vatra organization, which effectively made him
leader of the Albanian diaspora.
His diplomatic efforts in the United
States and Geneva
won the
support of President Woodrow Wilson
for an independent Albania, and in 1920 earned the new nation
membership in the fledgling League of
Nations. Though Albania had already declared its
independence in 1912, membership in the League of Nations provided
the country with the international recognition it had failed to
obtain until then.
In 1921 Noli entered the Albanian parliament as a representative of
the liberal
Vatra party, the chief liberal movement in the
country. He served briefly as foreign minister in the government of
Xhafer Ypi. He was consecrated in 1923 as
the senior Orthodox bishop of the newly-proclaimed Autocephalous
Orthodox Church of Albania. This was a period of intense turmoil in
the country between the liberals, represented by
Vatra,
and the conservatives, led by prime minister
Ahmet Zogu. After a botched assassination attempt
against Zogu, the conservatives revenged themselves by
assassinating another popular liberal politician,
Avni Rustemi.
Noli's speech at Rustemi's funeral was so
powerful that liberal supporters rose up against Zogu and forced
him to flee to Yugoslavia
(March 1924). Zogu was succeeded briefly by
his father-in-law,
Shefqet Verlaci,
and by the liberal politician
Ilias Bej
Vrioni; Noli was named prime minister and regent on July 17,
1924.
Downfall and exile
Despite his efforts to reform the country, Noli's "Twenty Point
Program" was unpopular, and his government was overthrown by groups
loyal to Zogu on
Christmas Eve of that
year. Two weeks later, Zogu returned to Albania, and Noli fled to
Italy under sentence of death.
He moved back to the United States in 1932 and formed a republican
opposition to Zogu, who had since proclaimed himself King Zog I.
Over the next years, he continued his education, studying and later
teaching
Byzantine music, and
continued developing and promoting the
autocephalous Albanian Orthodox Church he had
helped to found. While in exile, he briefly allied with King Zog,
who fled Albania before invading Italians in 1939, but was unable
to set a firm anti-Axis, anti-Communist front.
After the war, Noli established some ties with the communist
government of
Enver Hoxha, which seized
power in 1944. He unsuccessfully urged the U.S. government to
recognize the regime, but Hoxha's increasing persecution of all
religions prevented Noli's church from maintaining ties with the
Orthodox hierarchy in Albania. Despite the Hoxha regime's
anticlerical bent, Noli's ardent Albania
nationalism brought the bishop to the attention of the U.S.
Federal
Bureau of Investigation
. The FBI's Boston office kept the bishop
under investigation for more than a decade, with no final outcome
to the
McCarthyite probe.
Toward
the end of his life, Noli retired to Fort
Lauderdale, Florida
, where he died in 1965. The branch of the
Albanian Orthodox Church that he had governed eventually became the
Albanian
Archdiocese of the
Orthodox Church in America.
Fan S. Noli is depicted on the
obverse of the Albanian 100
lekë banknote issued in 1996.
See also
References
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