Gospel riots: Bloody clashes take place in Athens following the translation of the Gospels into demotic Greek.

The Gospel riots, which took place on the streets of Athens in November 1901, were primarily a protest against the publication in the newspaper Akropolis of a translation into modern spoken Greek of the Gospel of Matthew, although other motives also played a part. The disorder reached a climax on 8 November, "Black Thursday", when eight demonstrators were killed.

Athens is the capital and largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica region and is the southernmost capital on the European mainland. With its urban area's population numbering over 3.6 million, it is the eighth-largest urban area in the European Union (EU). The Municipality of Athens, which constitutes a small administrative unit of the entire urban area, had a population of 643,452 (2021) within its official limits, and a land area of 38.96 km² (15.04 sq mi).

Gospel originally meant the Christian message, but in the second century AD the term euangélion came to be used also for the books in which the message was reported. In this sense a gospel can be defined as a loose-knit, episodic narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus, culminating in his trial and death, and concluding with various reports of his post-resurrection appearances.

Demotic Greek is the standard spoken language of Greece in modern times and, since the resolution of the Greek language question in 1976, the official language of Greece. "Demotic Greek" contrasts with the conservative Katharevousa, which was used in formal settings, during the same period. In that context, Demotic Greek describes the specific non-standardized vernacular forms of Greek used by the vast majority of Greeks during the 19th and 20th centuries.