Background
Extremely little is known of his life, but he appears to have been born at Constantinople about 1400.
Extremely little is known of his life, but he appears to have been born at Constantinople about 1400.
Scholarios was an imperial judge and lay preacher at the court of the Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaeologus. He was then named a theological consultant to the general Council of Florence (1439) when the Greek Byzantine Church reluctantly consented to a union with the West in order to win military support against the advance of the Ottoman Turks. Later, in Constantinople, Scholarios repudiated the council’s statement of doctrinal compatibility between Eastern and Western churches. He assumed leadership of the anti-unionist faction that proclaimed Orthodoxy’s absolute autonomy and fundamental differences with Western Christianity. Out of favour with Emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus (1449–53), Scholarios became a monk at Constantinople’s monastery of Pantocrator. When that city fell to the Ottoman Turks, May 1453, he was captured by a hospitable Muslim and then invited to assume the vacant patriarchate by Sultan Mehmed II (1451–81) in order to stabilize the political situation. He was invested with ecclesiastical insignia and political authority as head of the Greek population. The Greek Orthodox Church thus became a civil as well as a religious authority and remained as such for nearly 500 years. He helped persuade the Sultan to adopt a more conciliatory policy toward Christian peoples under Islāmic political control.
Scholarios’ 10-year patriarchal office was twice interrupted by Greek–Arab tensions, and he finally abdicated and retired to the Prodromos monastery at Sérrai. There he produced a wealth of theological and philosophical literature, including commentaries, on the works of Thomas Aquinas (unusual for an Eastern theologian); polemical tracts supporting Aristotelian thought; and many other compositions in liturgy, ethics, and poetry.
Gennadius was, together with his mentor, Mark of Ephesus, involved in the Council of Florence which aimed to end the schism between East and West. Gennadius had studied and written extensively on Western theology.
Gennadius Scholarius was as skilful an opponent of Catholic theology as Mark of Ephesus, and a more learned one. His writings show him to be a student not only of Western philosophy but of controversy with Jews and Muslims, of the great Hesychast question (he attacked Barlaam and defended the monks; naturally, the Barlaamites were "latinophrones"), in short, of all the questions that were important in his time.