Background
George Gemistos was born some time after 1355, probably in Constantinople.
George Gemistos was born some time after 1355, probably in Constantinople.
As a young man he went to study at Adrianopolis, by now the Ottoman capital following its capture by the Ottoman Sultan Murad I in 1365. Adrianopolis was now a centre of learning modelled by Murat on the caliphates of Cairo and Baghdad.
He changed his name from Gemistus to the equivalent Pletho ("the full"), perhaps owing to the similarity of sound between that name and that of his master Plato.
But he is chiefly memorable for having introduced Plato to the Western world. This took place upon his visit to Florence in 1439, as one of the deputies from Constantinople on occasion of the general council. Cardinal Bessarion became his disciple; he produced a great impression upon Cosimo de Medici; and though not himself making any very important contribution to the study of Plato, he effectually shook the exclusive domination which Aristotle had exercised over European thought for eight centuries.
He probably died before the capture of Constantinople. The most important of his published works are treatises on the distinction between Plato and Aristotle as philosophers; on the religion of Zoroaster; on the condition of the Peloponnese ; and the Nómoi.
He invented a religious system founded on the speculative mysticism of the Neoplatonists, and founded a sect, the members of which believed that the new creed would supersede all existing forms of belief.