The revival of Platonism that marked fifteenth-century Florence has a Byzantine prologue. Before Marsilio Ficino translated Plato and the Corpus Hermeticum, an elderly Greek philosopher who had come to Italy for a church council had spoken of Plato to the Florentine scholars with contagious enthusiasm. His name was George Gemistos, but he has gone down in history under the nickname Plethon. He was one of the most original and most controversial thinkers of Byzantium's last century.
A life between Constantinople and Mystras
George Gemistos was born in Constantinople around 1355-1360. Information about his youth is scarce; a hostile testimony, from his adversary George Scholarios, claims that as a young man he studied with a Jewish teacher linked to the doctrines of Zoroaster, but the information cannot be verified.
Around 1410 he settled at Mystras, in the Peloponnese, capital of the Despotate of the Morea, a lively city governed by members of the imperial Palaiologos family. There Plethon held public offices, served as a judge and gathered a circle of pupils. He also wrote memoranda to the emperors and despots proposing political, military and economic reforms to save the Peloponnese from crisis: a citizen army, a redistribution of land, a society ordered on the model of Plato's Republic.
The Council of Florence
In 1438 Plethon, by then very old, left for Italy with the Byzantine delegation led by Emperor John VIII Palaiologos. The aim of the council, first at Ferrara and then in Florence, was to reunite the Greek and Latin Churches, in the hope of obtaining military help against the Turks.
Plethon played a secondary part in the theological discussions, but he left a deep mark on humanist circles. In Florence he held conversations and lectures on Platonic philosophy and wrote a short treatise, On the Differences between Aristotle and Plato, in which he argued for the superiority of Plato, then little known in the West, over Aristotle, who dominated the universities. The treatise sparked a long controversy among Greek scholars that lasted decades.
It was in this period that he adopted the nickname Plethon, which in Greek has a meaning similar to Gemistos, "full", but echoes the name of Plato.
Ficino and the Academy
Many years later, in the preface to his translation of Plotinus's Enneads, published in 1492, Marsilio Ficino wrote that Cosimo de' Medici, listening to Plethon during the council, had conceived the plan of reviving a Platonic academy in Florence. Historians debate how accurate this account is and how much it is a rhetorical construction after the fact; the fact remains that Ficino himself named Plethon as one of the points of origin of Florentine Platonism.
The Chaldean Oracles and Zoroaster
Plethon edited and commented on a collection of the Chaldean Oracles, oracular verses of late antiquity much prized by the Neoplatonists, attributing them to the magi who were disciples of Zoroaster. For him there existed a chain of most ancient sages, from Zoroaster to Pythagoras and Plato, who had handed down one and the same theology.
This idea of an ancient wisdom passed from master to master enjoyed great fortune in the Renaissance: Ficino took it up, adding Hermes Trismegistus to the chain, and turned it into the doctrine of the prisca theologia.
The Book of Laws
Plethon's boldest work is the Treatise on the Laws (Nomoi). In it he outlined a religious and political system inspired by the Greek gods, interpreted philosophically: Zeus as the supreme principle, the other gods as ideas and ordering forces of the cosmos, with hymns, calendars and rites.
After Plethon's death the manuscript came into the hands of George Scholarios, who had become Patriarch of Constantinople as Gennadios II; he regarded it as a pagan work and ordered its destruction. Only some parts survived, including the table of contents and some hymns. Scholars still debate whether Plethon really wanted to restore paganism or whether the treatise was a philosophical experiment; the fragmentary text does not allow a definitive answer.
Death and the tomb in Rimini
Plethon died at Mystras, at a very advanced age, around 1452-1454, shortly before or shortly after the fall of Constantinople. About ten years later the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, lord of Rimini, while fighting the Turks in the Morea, had his remains brought to Italy and placed them in a sarcophagus along the side of the Tempio Malatestiano, where they still lie today.
In short
- George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355-1454) was a philosopher and political reformer at Mystras, in the Peloponnese.
- At the Council of Florence (1438-1439) he defended Plato against Aristotle, influencing the humanists.
- He edited the Chaldean Oracles, attributing them to the magi of Zoroaster, and upheld a chain of ancient sages.
- His Treatise on the Laws was largely burned; his remains rest in Rimini.
