An Introduction to The Life of Georgius Gemistus Pletho

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I created this blog to record a diary of some of my more valuable content. I am planning many projects related to paganism in the future, and I hope for this to be a starting point for more interesting work to come. Thank you, and onward with the post.

Georgius Gemistus (Greek Γεώργιος Γεμιστός), later known by the epithet Pletho, or Plethon (Greek Πλήθων) was a renowned scholar of Platonism and a statesman, who, according to conventional sources, lived from about 1355-1360 to about 1452-1454 (i.e. to about age 95). As an unofficial but extremely reputable layman theologian, he was invited to be a delegate at the Council of Florence in 1428, an unsuccessful attempt to repair the Great Schism of the Eastern and Western churches which occurred in 1054, on the side of the Byzantine Orthodox Church in the East. By all accounts of his public life, Gemistus was your typical upper-class Christian scholar of medieval Europe, but he was hiding a secret: Gemistus was a pagan, and a dedicated one at that. In fact, he wrote an entire world philosophy revolving around the pagan Gods and Goddesses, and about their divine role in every aspect of our lives, which unfortunately has not survived in its entirety.

The life of Gemistus should be fascinating to all pagans for many reasons. Firstly, because it proves that so-called pagans did in fact exist throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Secondly, because Gemistus was in fact raised a Christian. Thirdly, because he was immensely important to the intellectual underpinnings of the Renaissance that followed throughout the late 15th and 16th centuries. Pagans, ancient or modern, have been widely criticized for not being men of letters, but Gemistus serves one of countless examples to negate this blatant falsification of our European heritage.

In recent months, I have taken up the study of Georgius Gemistus as a bit of a project of mine. To analyze and preserve the memory of his pagan Renaissance ideals, I see as a noble goal. I am hoping to come out with more posts detailing his philosophy on the Gods, the Universe, and Man, in the coming months.

Gemistus was born in Constantinople during the very late Byzantine Era, during a period more or less in between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. He is said to have been raised by well-to-do Christians in the region, though I can't find any more information on his parents besides this. As a young man he studied in the Ottoman Muslim court of Adrianople (now Edirne), which had been taken by Ottoman Sultan Murat I in 1365. Adrianiople was one of the few places where one could find sources of classical philosophy such as Plato, which was relatively unknown in Western Europe at the time. Gemistus became infatuated with Platonism, and went on to become one of the most influential Neoplatonist thinkers of the Renaissance.

Gemistus' main career rested in his public roles as a statesman. He worked for Emperor Manuel II Paleologus as a consultant for governmental and social reforms, and was sent by him to Morea, also known as Mystras, some time before 1410. Morea was a province of the Byzantine Empire at the time. When Manuel II died in 1425, he served under John VIII Paleologus.

In Morea, Gemistus founded something of a mystery school. He taught advanced knowledge in astronomy, history, geography and philosophy. This included Strabo's Geography, which proved to play a major role in correcting the geographical errors of Ptolemy in Western Europe, and eventually led to the Age of Exploration. Gemistus had a loyal pupil named Bessarion, a bibliophilic monk who preserved much of Gemistus' work, and a pupil named George Scholarius, who would eventually betray him by ordering his works burned. Bessarion abandoned traditional Byzantine Orthodoxy and eventually became a cardinal in the Latin Church, even becoming the Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.

Gemistus and Bessarion alike were famous for being involved in the council to reunite the Eastern and Western churches in the mid 15th century, from 1431–1449. Terms of dispute included Purgatory, and the famous Filioque clause. Gemistus served as a lay theologian, while Bessarion played a heavy role in advocating for the unionist party of the council, who wanted the churches to reunite. Gemistus and Bessarion resided in Italy for quite some time, and it was in Italy that Gemistus wrote some of his greatest works, meeting and influencing Cosimo de' Medici, and Bessarion collected manuscripts to advocate for the New Learning. Medici would go on to found the Neoplatonic Florentine Academy.

Gemistus wrote three major works which are remembered today, those being the Reform of the Peloponnese, De Differentiis, and the Nomoi. The Reform was a concept for social and political reform of the Peloponnese region. I will quote Wikipedia as to the contents of said reform:

Believing that the Peloponnesians were direct descendants of the ancient Hellenes, Plethon rejected Justinian's idea of a universal Empire in favour of recreating the Hellenistic civilization, the zenith of Greek influence. In his 1415 and 1418 pamphlets he urged Manuel II and his son Theodore to turn the peninsula into a cultural island with a new constitution of strongly centralised monarchy advised by a small body of middle-class educated men. The army must be composed only of professional native Greek soldiers, who would be supported by the taxpayers, or "Helots" who would be exempt from military service. Land was to be publicly owned, and a third of all produce given to the state fund; incentives would be given for cultivating virgin land. Trade would be regulated and the use of coinage limited, barter instead being encouraged; locally available products would be supported over imports. Mutilation as a punishment would be abolished, and chain gangs introduced. Homosexuals and sexual deviants would be burnt at the stake. The social and political ideas in these pamphlets were largely derived from Plato's Republic. Plethon touched little on religion, although he expressed disdain for monks, who "render no service to the common good". He vaguely prescribed three religious principles: belief in a supreme being; that this being has concern for mankind; and that it is uninfluenced by gifts or flattery. Manuel and Theodore did not act on any of these reforms.

De Differentiis was a system comparison of Plato and Aristotle's philosophy, especially pertaining to God. Again to quote Wikipedia:

In De Differentiis Plethon compares Aristotle's and Plato's conceptions of God, arguing that Plato credits God with more exalted powers as "creator of every kind of intelligible and separate substance, and hence of our entire universe", while Aristotle has God as only the motive force of the universe; Plato's God is also the end and final cause of existence, while Aristotle's God is only the end of movement and change. Plethon derides Aristotle for discussing unimportant matters such as shellfish and embryos while failing to credit God with creating the universe, for believing the heavens are composed of a fifth element, and for his view that contemplation was the greatest pleasure; the latter aligned him with Epicurus, Plethon argued, and he attributed this same pleasure-seeking to monks, whom he accused of laziness.[8] Later, in response to Gennadius' Defence of Aristotle, Plethon argued in his Reply that Plato's God was more consistent with Christian doctrine than Aristotle's, and this, according to Darien DeBolt, was probably in part an attempt to escape suspicion of heterodoxy.

However, by far Gemistus' magnum opus was the Nomoi, or "The Laws," which comprised his entire world philosophy based on Neoplatonic principles, with a fully pagan theological framework. After Gemistus' death, this monstrously large work was passed to the wife of the despot of Morea, Theodora, who then passed the work to Gennadius II, Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople. Gennadius was simply another name for Gemistus' former pupil, George Scholarius. Gennadius was shocked by the openly pagan work, and burned the book himself around 1460. Portions of it survive in the Summary, which survived in the library of Bessarion untouched. In the Summary, we catch a glimpse of the scope of the Nomoi by the large table of contents listed, by which we can only conclude that the Nomoi was a very large and all-encompassing work. Today the Nomoi survives in the French translation of A. Pellissier and a recent English translation a kind fellow on Twitter pointed out to me, done by John Opsopaus.

In the work, Gemistus proposes Zeus as the One, the Absolute Unity from which all things emanate, his primary emanation being Poseidon. He then goes through a hierarchy of Gods, Titans and Daemons until arriving at Man, in a great chain of being. His hymns to the Gods in book III, chapter 35 are exceptionally beautiful.

To end this post, I will conclude with a quote from George of Trebizond, upon hearing the words of Pletho:

I myself heard him at Florence ... asserting that in a few more years the whole world would accept one and the same religion with one mind, one intelligence, one teaching. And when I asked him “Christ’s or Muhammad’s?,” he said, “Neither; but it will not differ much from paganism.” I was so shocked by these words that I hated him ever after and feared him like a poisonous viper, and I could no longer bear to see or hear him. I heard, too, from a number of Greeks who escaped here from the Peloponnese that he openly said before he died ... that not many years after his death Muhammad and Christ would collapse and the true truth would shine through every region of the globe.

Indeed, we can only hope that the true truth would shine through every region of the globe. I believe in your mission, Gemistus, and I hope to continue it into the future.

Thank you for reading.

Paganus