Georgios Gemistos Plethon (; /1360 – 1452/1454), commonly known as Gemistos Plethon, was a Greek scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era. He was a chief pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe. As revealed in his last literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he circulated only among close friends, he rejected Christianity in favour of a return to the worship of the classical Hellenic gods, mixed with ancient wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi.
In 1438–1439 he reintroduced Plato's ideas to Western Europe during the Council of Florence, in a failed attempt to reconcile the East–West schism. There, Plethon met and influenced Cosimo de' Medici to found a new Platonic Academy, which, under Marsilio Ficino, proceeded to translate into Latin all of Plato's works, the Enneads of Plotinus, and various other Neoplatonist works.
Plethon also formulated his political vision in several speeches throughout his life. The boast in one of the speeches that "We are Hellenes by race and culture" and his proposal of a reborn Byzantine Empire following a utopian Hellenic system of government centered in Mystras, have generated discussion about Byzantine and modern Greek identity. In this regard, Plethon has been labelled both "the last Hellene" and "the first modern Greek".
Biography
Early life and career
Georgios Gemistos Plethon was born in Constantinople in 1355/1360. Raised in a family of well-educated Orthodox Christians, he studied in Constantinople and Adrianople, before returning to Constantinople and establishing himself as a teacher of philosophy. Adrianople, the Ottoman capital following its capture by the Ottoman Sultan Murad I in 1365, was a centre of learning modelled by Murad on the caliphates of Cairo and Baghdad. Plethon admired Plato (Greek: Plátōn) so much that late in life he took the similar-meaning name Plethon. Some time before 1410, Emperor Manuel II Paleologos sent him to Mystra in the Despotate of Morea in the southern Peloponnese, which remained his home for the rest of his life. In Constantinople, he had been a senator, and he continued to fulfil various public functions, such as being a judge, and was regularly consulted by rulers of Morea. Despite suspicions of heresy from the Church, he was held in high Imperial favour.
In Mystra he taught and wrote philosophy, astronomy, history and geography, and compiled digests of many classical writers. His pupils included Bessarion and George Scholarius (later to become Patriarch of Constantinople and Plethon's enemy). He was made chief magistrate by Theodore II. He produced his major writings during his time in Italy and after his return.
Council of Florence
In 1428 Plethon was consulted by Emperor John VIII on the issue of unifying the Greek and Latin churches, and advised that both delegations should have equal voting power. Byzantine scholars had been in contact with their counterparts in Western Europe since the time of the Latin Empire, and especially since the Byzantine Empire had begun to ask for Western European help against the Ottomans in the 14th century. Western Europe had some access to ancient Greek philosophy through the Catholic Church and the Muslims, but the Byzantines had many documents and interpretations that the Westerners had never seen before. Byzantine scholarship became more fully available to the West after 1438, when Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos attended the Council of Ferrara, later known as the Council of Florence, to discuss a union of the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches. Despite not being a theologian, Plethon was chosen to accompany John VIII on the basis of his renowned wisdom and morality. Other delegates included Plethon's former students Bessarion, Mark Eugenikos and Gennadius Scholarius.
Plethon and the Renaissance
At the invitation of some Florentine humanists he set up a temporary school to lecture on the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Few of Plato's writings were studied in the Latin West at that time, and he essentially reintroduced much of Plato to the Western world, shaking the domination which Aristotle had come to exercise over Western European thought in the high and later middle ages.