He wrote about every discipline: legal, historical, theological, grammatical, linguistic, astronomy, political, mathematics, archaeology, music, secularism, euthanasia, and the tides.

Though he was considered one of the most eminent teachers, his eagerness to communicate some of the new ideas of the western European 'Enlightenment' caused a negative reaction among some Orthodox Christian leaders on Mount Athos.

[4] After his unsuccessful attempts to introduce Enlightenment ideas to the Athonite School and Patriarchal Academy Eugenios accepted the patronage of the Russian Empress Catherine II, and spent the rest of his career in Russia.

[dubious – discuss] The new diocese included lands of the Novorossiya and Azov Governorates north of the Black Sea, recently conquered by Russia from the Ottoman Crimean Khanate.

Along with Russians and Ukrainians Orthodox Greeks were invited to settle in the region, and the Imperial Government thought it appropriate to appoint a Greek-speaking bishop to preside over the new diocese.

The following year (1776), Eugenios invited another Corfiot, Nikephoros Theotokis, to join him in Poltava, and started training the younger Greek as his successor.

While they remained largely uninvolved in dialogue with western Christians until the 19th century, they nevertheless grappled with new intellectual challenges emanating from the west in the form of secular learning.

Voulgaris' model for the revival and development of learning in Orthodox Christian society included the maintenance of training in the classics combined with an exposure to modern European philosophy.

While supporting the language of the people, Korais sought to 'cleanse' it from elements that he considered 'vulgar' and evolved the 'purifying' or Katharevousa forms, which were supposedly set at some midpoint between ancient and contemporary Greek.

He presented his views in the form of a consoling sermon, enriched with references to classical texts, the Bible and the Church Fathers, as well as to secular sources, including statistics from contemporary Britain and France.