Bessarion, Johannes (c. 1403-1472)

Greek-born humanist scholar, churchman and philosopher. Collecting, editing and translating Greek texts, he became a major figure in Renaissance scholarship (Renaissance Greek studies), and helped to create a keen interest in the philosophy of Plato. He attended the Council of Florence, where he sought to unify the Eastern and Western Churches, and in 1439 was made a cardinal.

Born at Trebizond, he was educated in Constantinople. His interest in Plato began in 1423 when he heard Plethon lecture on him. Unlike Plethon, however, he was a Platonist who could recognize the value in Renaissance Aristotelianism and he endeavoured to reconcile the two systems. By substituting a close study of the original Greek works for the comentaries of Medieval scholastics, Bessarion was the principal author of the philosophical Renaissance.

Created archbishop of Nicaea in 1437, he visited Italy with Emperor John VIII Palaeologus to join in discussions intended to bring about unity between the Eastern and Western Churches. His support for the Roman Church at the councils of Ferrara and Florence recommended him to Pope Eugenius IV, who made him a cardinal. He was papal legate at Bologna 1450-55 and was appointed Catholic patriarch of Constantinople in 1463 (though the city was then in the hands of the Ottoman Turks).

His palace in Rome became a meeting-place for philosophers and scholars. Greeks fleeing Constantinople after the fall of the city to the Turks in 1453 were especially welcome, and he thus made a major contribution to the diffusion of Hellenism.

He translated Aristotle's Metaphysics and also wrote Platonic treatises De natura et arte and In calumniatorem Platonis, the latter being an attack on George of Trebizond.

In 1468 his collection of 800 manuscripts, nearly 500 of them Greek, was presented to the Venetian senate and became the nucleus of the Bibliotheca Marciana.