George Gemistus Plethon
Plethon also spelled PLETHO (b. c. 1355, Constantinople--d. 1450/52, Mistra, Morea), Byzantine philosopher and humanist scholar whose clarification of the distinction between Platonic and Aristotelian thought proved to be a seminal influence in determining the philosophic orientation of the Italian Renaissance. Plethon studied in Constantinople and at the Ottoman Muslim court in nearby Adrianople. He founded a school of esoteric religious philosophy at Mistra, an important citadel in the Peloponnesus, where he spent much of the rest of his life. He served as a consultant and composed proposals on social and governmental reform for the emperors Manuel II Palaeologus (reigned 1391-1425) and John VIII Palaeologus (1425-48). Most importantly, Plethon served as lay theologian with the Byzantine delegation to the 1438-45 general Council of Ferrara-Florence, which had been convened to reunite the Latin and Greek churches confronted by the rapid encroachment of the Ottoman Turks upon Constantinople. Concerned more with the advancement of Neoplatonic philosophy than with religious questions, Plethon delivered to the Florentine humanists at the Council of Ferrara-Florence his treatise "On the Difference Between Aristotle and Plato." This work fired the humanists with a new interest in Plato (who had been ignored in the West during the Middle Ages because of the preoccupation with Aristotle) and inspired Cosimo de' Medici with the project of founding the Platonic Academy of Florence. Plethon also introduced the Geography of Strabo to the West (where it had hitherto been unknown) and led the way to the overthrow of Ptolemy's erroneous geographical theories. He thus greatly affected the Renaissance conception of the configuration of the Earth and so played an important, if indirect, role in the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, who cited Strabo among his principal authorities. On returning to the Peloponnesus, Plethon wrote his "Code of Laws," evocative of Plato's Laws, in which he set forth a social and political utopia modeled on classic Athenian culture and integrating with it elements of Platonism, Stoicism, Islamic fatalism, and emperor worship. Plethon also composed orations and essays on Zoroaster, astronomy, music, history, rhetoric, and various theological subjects. Nearly all of his writing is marked by passionate devotion to Greece and a desire to restore its ancient glory.
2: See J. Motellius, Bibliothecae regiae Divi Marci Venetialum ... Bibliotbeca manuscripta Graeca et Latina, I, Bassani, 1802, p. 269.
3: Pletho, Traité des Loix, ed. C.Alexandre, tr.A.Pellisier, Paris, 1858, pp.202seq., 230 seq.; cf. Anastos, op. cit., pp. 255, 267 ("In both matter and style, Pletho's hymns closely resemble the pedantic hymns of Proclus and the pseudo-Orpheus"), 268.
4: See Anastos, op. cit., p. 268; Pletho's short treatise on music, printed in his Loix, ed. cit., p. 458.
5: See Anastos, op. cit., p. 268.
6: Pletho, op. cit., ed. cit., pp. 2, 130, 202; cf. ibid., Notice Préliminaire, p. lix.
7: Cf. François Masai, Plethon et le Platonisme de Mistra, Paris, 1956, pp. 222 seq., 305.
8: George of Trebizond, Comparationes Phylosophorum Arirtotelis et Platonis, Venice, 1523, quoted by Anastos, op. cit., p. 211: "Vidi, vidi ego, vidi et legi preces in solem eius [sc. Plethonis], quibus, sicut creatorem totius, hymnis extollit atque adorat . . .".
I have seen, I myself have seen, I have seen and I have read prayers of his to the sun, hymns in which he extolled and adored the sun as creator of all things ...
All that survive of these solar hymns are an altered version of Proclus' Hymn to the Sun, (9) and the 9th hymn in the Nomoi, which begins: (10)
10: Pletho, op. cit., ed. cit., p. 210; cf. ibid. p. 218 (Hymn XIX), and pp. 164-6, 174-8, on the predominant place of the Sun.
w toud ouranou anax Hlie, ilaoV eihV,
--the Sun is ruler of the other planets, and with them governs all terrestrial things. The latter hymn is quoted on a manuscript of Julian's Oratio ad Solem written by Demetrius Rhalles, who collected together the fragments of Pletho's Nomoi. (11) The theory of prayer with which Pletho introduces his hymns is remarkably like the theory of magic behind Ficino's astrological music; Pletho addresses his gods thus: (12)
12: Pletho, Loix, ed. cit., p. 150 Cf. ibid., p. 186.
May we carry out these rites in your honour in the most fitting manner, knowing that you have no need of anything whatever from us. But we are moulding and stamping our own imagination and that part of us which is most akin to the divine, allowing it both to enjoy the godly and the beautiful and making our imagination tractable and obedient to that which is divine in us.
Pletho's hymns and rites, like Ficino's, (13) do not aim at any objective effect on the deity addressed, but only at a subjective transformation of the worshipper, particularly his imagination.
What historical connexion might there be between Pletho and Ficino? Pletho died in 1452, and the only time he was in Italy was for the Council of Florence in 1438-9; most of his Nomoi was burnt and none of it was printed. Ficino finished his De Vita coelitus comparanda in 1489; but his interest in the Orphic Hymns began as early as 1462, when he translated them, (14) and there is one well-known document which may indicate, I think, that Ficino had Pletho's hymns in mind when he was inventing his astrological, Orphic singing. This document is Ficino's preface to his translation of and commentary on Plotinus, (15) which he completed in August 1490. (16)
15: Ficino, Op. Omn., p. 1537.
16: See Della Torre, op. cit., p. 625.
He begins this preface by asserting that Cosimo de' Medici conceived the project of resuscitating Plato after listening with enthusiasm to Pletho talking on Platonism during the Council of Florence. Over twenty years later he provided Ficino with the Greek texts of Plato and Plotinus, and in 1462 told him to produce translations of the Hermetica and Plato's works. Ficino finished the former in a few months. The Plato was not finished until 1477 and not published until 1484, (17) just as it was coming out of the press, Pico, who had been born in the year that Ficino began his Platonic studies (1463), arrived in Florence, and, inspired by the departed soul of Cosimo, incited Ficino to translate and comment on Plotinus. This was an example of divine provi-dence working for the preservation of pure religion; just as it had worked by creating and maintaining the tradition of the Prisci theologi - Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato ...
We are here concerned not so much with the historical truth of these statements as with what they tell us about the state of mind of their writer. We have the following network of related facts which may have been present to Ficino when he wrote this preface. The De Vita coelitus comparanda was part of the commen-tary on Plotinus; this commentary gives the key to Ficino's Orphic singing by connecting it with the astrological music of the De Vita coelitus comparanda; Pico, who encouraged him to write it, had invented a magic use of the Orphic Hymns; Ficino, in introducing his Plotinus, recalls the inception of his Platonic studies in 1462 and connects this with Cosimo and Pletho; in 1462 Ficino translated the Orphic hymns and was already singing them -indeed, in a letter of September 1462, he ascribes Cosimo's patronage of his Platonic studies to the magical, effect of his singing the Orphic "Hymnum ad Cosmum". (18) If we add to this network of facts the supposition that Ficino knew about Pletho's hymn-singing - perhaps far more than we know now, it seems likely that when writing this preface he was thinking, amongst other things, of his astrological music and connecting it with Pico's magic, with his first interest in the Orphic Hymns and Hermetica in 1462, and with Pletho's hymns. The transmission need not necessarily have been through any writing of Pletho's, but may have been through Cosimo and other Florentines who listened to Pletho during the Council of Florence.
Against the supposition of this connexion between Ficino and Pletho we must weigh the following fact. Pletho was, at least in what we now have of the Nomoi, an overtly anti-Christian writer, (19) and philosophically he was a rigid determinist. (20) On both counts he would have been anathema to Ficino. But this objection is by no means conclusive; for I am suggesting not that Ficino was deeply or generally influenced by Pletho, but only that Pletho's kind of hymn-singing and his theory of prayer were one starting-point for Ficino's Orphic singing.
20: Pletho, ibid., p. 64 seq. (11, vi, peri eimarmenhV)
