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After staying two years in the Monastery he was ordained deacon, while at the age of eighteen years he became a priest. He learnt how to read and write at the monastery, but the thirst for knowledge led him to Giannena for higher education in the School of Kosmas Balanos and later in Metsovo, close to the teacher Dimitrios Vardakas. After exhausting every source of knowledge in the town of Metsovo, around 1786 he travelled to Bucharest and became a student of Lambros Fotiadis. His stay in Bucharest was a time of fruitful spiritual preparation, since at the side of his great teacher he formed his spiritual and linguistic beliefs and he laid the foundations of his linguistic training.
In 1803 he travelled to Vienna, following an invitation by the Greek community there in order to undertake the position of Saint George parish priest. There, he stayed for twelve years and developed a remarkable activity and distinguished himself as one of the most important figures of his time. From the first months of his stay in Vienna, at the same time with his clerical duties, he showed signs of a dynamic and fruitful spiritual presence, mainly as regards the sector of editions. He attempted unsuccessfully to print a Greek newspaper and at the same time he initiated a distinguished editor’s work.
Another interesting aspect of his activity in Vienna is his effort to convince fellow Greeks to establish a Greek school in Vienna. At the same time, he mobilizes the Greek community in Vienna as well as other Greeks to establish schools, of lower and higher education in Greece. He makes a remarkable effort to establish a higher education school in his hometown, Zagori, in Epirus. This effort though it was highly promoted, it was not completed as the Greek Revolution broke out.
In Vienna he published the entirety of his pre-revolutionary work. The work of Doucas as an author and an editor is great and multifaceted, since it covers a wide range of theoretical sciences: philology, philosophy, pedagogy, linguistics and physics. Through his numerous publications he covered to a great extent the educational needs of Greek children and the lack of appropriate textbooks. The pre-revolutionary publications of ancient Greek writers examine the themes of ancient Greek and roman history, ancient Greek philosophy, rhetoric and mythology, while they cover a wide range of writers from a chronological point of view.
As regards the language question, Doucas adopted the position advocating the progressive establishment of ancient Greek in writing and the introduction in modern vocabulary of forms of the ancient language and the elimination of foreign words. The use of archaisms that Doucas believed in is connected to the vision of the glory of ancient Greece, which created the belief among many Greek scholars that by imitating ancient Greeks modern Greeks could approach their glorified ancestors. Doucas notes in a text of his “although we imitate phrases, we imitate the virtues of speech and thus we achieve imitating our ancestors”.
While staying in Vienna he had to face the circle of Korais, with which he had a long-lasting dispute. At the same time, due to his “heretic” views in religious matters as well as due to the criticism he made about leading figures of the Church he faced the danger of being excommunicated.
In 1817, he was invited by the notables of Bucharest and took over the management of the Greek school (high school) there. As a director of the school he organized the school, paying particular attention to the teaching of language courses, especially the course of ancient Greek. He implemented new teaching methods that were quite progressive for the time. His personality, his prestige and his reputation, mainly due to the numerous publications he had made, helped the school prosper.
His presence in Bucharest, apart from the educational aspect also had a social dimension. Having friends in high places in the society of Bucharest he made efforts to establish charities, hospitals, orphanages and other foundations.
Two years later he was forced to resign after a former student of his attempted to murder him. After he recovered, he began to teach again in private and to write. At the same time, he continued his efforts to gather money in order to establish a higher school in Zagori. At the same time, in Bucharest he contacted the leaders of Filiki Eteria and on 25-7-1819 he was initiated by Panagiotis Anagnostopoulos to the objectives of the Eteria. During the period 1819-1821 as one of the two supervisors of Filiki Eteria in Bucharest he works under absolute secrecy in the preparation of the Greek Revolution.
After the failure of the movement of Ipsilandis he fled to Braciov in neighbouring Transylvania where he stayed for six years working for the end of the Revolution and preparing new books. In 1827, he returned to Bucharest, where he continued to teach in private. In 1830, he sent to the Governor Ioannis Kapodistrias ten thousand volumes of books, also announcing him his intention to return to independent Greece.
In 1831, after many days on the road, he returned to Greece after an absence of almost fifty years abroad and he made preparations to meet Ioannis Kapodistrias to present to him his plans to establish a University, offering all the funds he had gathered while abroad. However, this meeting never took place, since shortly after his arrival he was informed that the Governor had been murdered.
This event moved him deeply, but he did not remain inactive. He established himself in Egina, old and sick, and continued to work in an effort to educate his fellow Greeks. One year later, he was nominated as supervisor of the newly built Orphanage of Egina, that had been established by Kapodistrias for war orphans; there he taught free of charge and he took care of the orphans, while at the same time he prepared the publication of his works. Egina, like Vienna before, became his second spiritual base, where he excelled once again in publishing, thanks to his collaboration with the editor of Andreas Koromilas, whom he had helped to establish the printing house on the island. In his post-revolutionary publishing period he published works of ancient Greek poets, many of which he had processed in the previous years and other texts of philosophical content, as well as older speeches and letters of his.
While staying in Egina, apart from his publishing and teaching work, he developed remarkable social activities. He wrote hundreds of letters and intervened in different social and church matters that arose. He opposed the intention of the administration to make Greek Church independent of the Patriarch, by submitting memoranda and letters to the ministry of Education and to the Synod. He played a leading role in establish the Rizarios Church School, after convincing his fellow Greek Georgios Rizaris to use his big fortune to this end. As an honour and due to the effort he made to establish the school, the administration elected him as the first director. The same year Ioannis Koletis administration nominated him as a member of the church board charged with drawing up the church bill of law.
On 20-12-1845, he died in Athens and he was buried at the entrance of Rizarios School. The same year, the Parliament unanimously proclaimed him national benefactor of Greece.
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