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Concept
Bessarion
Summary
Bessarion (Βησσαρίων; 2 January 1403 – 18 November 1472) was a Byzantine Greek Renaissance humanist, theologian, Catholic cardinal and one of the famed Greek scholars who contributed to the so-called great revival of letters in the 15th century.
He was educated by Gemistus Pletho in Neoplatonic philosophy and later served as the titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. He eventually was named a cardinal and was twice considered for the papacy.
His baptismal name was Basil (Greek: Βασίλειος, Basileios or Basilios). The name Bessarion he took when entering the monastery. He has been mistakenly known also as Johannes Bessarion (Giovanni Bessarione) due to an erroneous interpretation of Gregory III Mammas.
Bessarion was born in Trebizond, the Black Sea port in northeastern Anatolia that was the heart of Pontic Greek culture and civilization during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. The year of his birth has been given as 1389, 1395 or 1403.
Bessarion was educated in Constantinople, then went in 1423 to Mystras, Peloponnese to study Neoplatonism under Gemistus Pletho. Under Pletho, he "went through the liberal arts curriculum..., with a special emphasis on mathematics...including the study of astronomy and geography" that would have related "philosophy to physics...cosmology and astrology" and Pletho's "mathematics would include Pythagorean number-mysticism, Plato's cosmological geometry and the Neoplatonic arithmetic which connected the material world with the world of Plato's Forms. Possibly it also included astrology..." Woodhouse also mentions that Bessarion "had a mystical streak...[and] was proficient in Neoplatonic vocabulary...mathematics...and Platonic theology".
Bessarion's Neoplatonism stayed with him his whole life, even as a cardinal. He was very familiar with Neoplatonist terminology and used it in his letter to Pletho's two sons, Demitrios and Andronikos, on the death of his still-beloved teacher in 1452.
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