NICOLA D. CATRAMI
(1820-1886)

"Archbishop Nicola Catrami", 1885
by Apostolos Latsis (1840-1909)
[Byron Macris Collection]

Son of Dionisio Catrami and Pigi Chr. Plarino, scholar and historian archbishop of Zante Nicola II was born on the island.  He studied in Corfu, first at the Theological Seminary and later at the Theological and Philosophical School of the Ionian Academy.  After being ordained into priesthood, he was assigned as theology teacher at Zante while at the same time officiating at the church of Our Lady of the Revelation, close to his house.  Subsequently he went to Naples, Italy, where as parish priest of the Greek-Orthodox Community (1865-1868) he succeeded in despatching the Uniates.  He then travelled to Rome and Venice in order to study their archives, libraries and museums.  In 1868 he was ordained archbishop of Zante, where, among others, he founded the city cemetery.  As a member of the Holy Synod he was sent by the Greek Government to Odessa (1871) in order to carry over to Athens the remains of Ecumenical patriarch Gregory V (born George J. Angelopoulo, 1745-1821), who was hanged in 1821.  He delivered a memorial speech there.  With special interest in literary and historical research, he wrote and published a series of weighty studies and biographies amongst which is the significant work "Literary Selections from Zante" (1880).  Due to a long illness and the political intrigues of the time, he was dismissed shortly before his death, full of bitterness.  He was decorated with the Russian Imperial Order of St. Anne 2nd Class and the Silver and Gold Crosses of the Greek Royal Order of the Redeemer and was named a Knight of the Italian Royal Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus.

Before being ordained archbishop, Nicola D. Catrami was married and widowed to Constantina Riga, with whom he had already had a son and a daughter.  It is she who gave her name to their grand daughter, daughter of their son Dionisio N. Catrami, Constantina (1900-1937) wife of Evangelos J. Macris (1896-1943), and thereafter to their great great grand daughter Diana Macris-Cangelaris (1959).