Tommaso Stanislao Velasti e il filellenismo di fine Settecento

The work of the Greek Jesuit originally from Scio, Tommaso Stanislao Velasti, constitutes a compendium of the philhellenic ideology which, starting from the second half of the eighteenth century, influenced the irredentist processes which in 1821 led Greece to proclaim its independence from the Sublime Porte. In his research path, Velasti was lucky enough to come across the works of Albanian intellectuals from Sicily, at whose Palermo seminar he was able to dwell in the crucial years of his ideological turning point. The study of some fundamental documents that emerged from the archive of the Seminary founded by Fr. Giorgio Guzzetta highlighted the filiation of fundamental ideas of identity ideology that Velasti adapted to the "Greek question".