"The Evangelika" (in Greek : " Τα Ευαγγελικά" ) is the name of a series of very important incidents which occured in Athens at the fall of 1901 and they reffered to the riots that occured in Greece after the newspaper Acropolis deared to publish parts of a translated version of Gospels under the Queen's protection. The result was massive riots in Athens, five people dead, a few dozens wounded, a government resigning, the Archibishop of Greece leaving his post and the Ecumenical Patriach puting an anathema on the translation......
Before starting posting , there is a need to refer to the lunguistic issue that then existed in Greece. People used to speak , think and communicate in Modern Greek. But not in Modern Greek in general, a form of it, called Dimotiki (Δημοτική). However, Dimitiki was not taught in schools , Kathareuousa (Kαθαρεύουσα) was. Kathareuousa was a scholarly artificial form of Modern Greek, which was a link between the Ancient Greek and the Modern Greek. It was rather difficult to understand it and if one was not educated, it was impossible but, this was the language used in all official documets and in newspapers. However, the Gospels were written neither in Kathareuousa nor in Dimotiki. They were preserved in the form they were first written during 70 AD which means that they were written in Ellinistiki Koini . At the point, scholars, priests, professors , politicinas and even peasants were debating about which language should be officially used in Greece (although I feel that " debating" is a rather polite word to use to descride what was really happening). So, the linguistic issue was a very heated one who had many different factors involved with it ( national, cultural, political, religious etc).
What happened in 1901 was that Alexandros Pallis (a Greek merchant living in London, who was greatly involved in the lingustic fight and had translated many pieces on literature in Dimotiki) , funded by Queen Olga, translated the Gospels without permission given from The Patriarch and published it. Olga was a very devout person and she was very upset when she found out during visits at the hospital in 1897 that most Greeks, even those who had some schooling , couldn't understand what the Gospels were actually saying. So , in an effort to tone Orthodox morality and devotion in the country and get preople closer to religion, Olga had previously, in 1898 published 1,000 copies of Gospels translated by her presonal secretary Ioulia Swmaki and had them distributed to hospitals . They were made " for a private and domestic study of the Holy Gospels" so the Holy Synod let it go, although many Greeks were greatly irritated that two women ( the Queen and Miss Swmaki) deared to mess with the Holy Gospels. But when Pallis's translation was published, people didn't let it go, and chaos erupted
Before funding Pallis's translation , Queen Olga tried to make a translation on her own, with Miss Swmakis' assistance, after having succesfully distributed the first 1000 copies they made in 1898. So in December 1898, Olga sent a letter to the Holy Synod , asking for theri approval. The response came on March 1899 and it was negative. Olga didn't gave up and contacted with the Patriarch of Constantinople, because if he gave his approval, then the Holy Synod's approval wouldn't be nessecary. But the Patriarch of Constantinople as well as the Patriarchs of Jerusalem and Alexandreia were against a translation. Archibishop Prokopios then did a grave mistake. He said to Olga that the Holy synod would insist on the first decision, but he didn't inform her that The Ecumenical Patriarch and two other senior Orthodx Patriarchs were also dissaproving. So, when Olga funded Pallis' translation , she had no idea that the translation would face an anathema and that she herself could face penalties and even excommunication.