Krifo scholio-Secret school

In Greek history, a krifó scholió (Greek “κρυφό σκολειό” or “κρυφό σχολείο”, lit. ‘secret school’) was a supposed underground school for teaching the Greek language and Christian doctrine, provided by the Greek Orthodox Church under Ottoman rule in Greece between the 15th and 19th centuries. Many historians agree that there is no evidence that such schools ever existed. Other historians accept that secret schools only existed during periods of intense islamisation, other see it as a possible “myth” and others believe that the Krifo Scholio was a reality. Professor of philology Alkes Angelou (1917-2001), in one of his last publications on the subject, finds that the krifó scholió persisted as a national myth.

School textbooks in Greece treated the krifó scholió as factual until the late 20th century, when it was finally removed, despite some political controversy, as a “national memory which had been, to some extent, fictitious”, creating conflict with “the Church and ethnonationalism”