AMIROÜTZES, GIORGIO. — Byzantine Aristotelian philosopher, b. in Trebizond at the beginning of the 15th century, d. suddenly after 1469. As he belonged to one of the leading families of his native city, he held the highest offices and was entrusted with several embassies under the last kings of Trebizond. At the time of the city’s capture by Mehmed II (1461), he appeared to have behaved almost like a traitor. This did not prevent him from being initially treated harshly by the conqueror and sent as a prisoner to Adrianople, then to Constantinople.
Thanks to the protection of his cousin, the notorious renegade Mahmud Pasha, he gained the intimacy of Mehmed II, who consulted his learning and discussed Christian religion with him. A dialogue in Latin is preserved. His two sons converted to Islam, but there is no evidence that he himself went to this extreme; although his conduct in the final years of his life was anything but Christian. Indeed, he entered into an adulterous union with the Duchess of Athens, widow of Franco Acciaiuoli, which the Patriarch of Constantinople Joasaph I (1465–69) refused to sanction. A. retaliated by having the patriarch ignominiously driven from his see by Mahmud Pasha.
A. was a man of no character. Unfaithful to his wife and his country, he proved unfaithful to his religious faith as well. At the Council of Florence (1438–39), which he attended with the Metropolitan of Trebizond Dorotheus, he showed himself a zealous unionist and fully adhered to the Catholic dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Some time later, however, he returned to schism, attacking the Council’s decrees and the supremacy of the Pope.
His literary output is meagre. Noteworthy is the short work in Latin translation by Johannes Werner: *De his quae geographiae debent adesse*, Nuremberg 1914. Besides the aforementioned dialogue (Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, Latin ms. 3395, fol. 83–144), he wrote to the Duke of Nauplia, Demetrius, “on the events of the Council of Florence”: περὶ τῶν ἐν τῷ Φλωρεντίᾳ συνδόξου συμβεβηκότων.
Despite its title, history occupies little place in this work, which is a polemical pamphlet of the worst kind against the Council, the supremacy, and the infallibility of the Pope. On the procession of the Holy Spirit, doubtless recalling his profession of faith at Florence, he makes an ambiguous declaration that is irreconcilable with Catholic dogma as well as with the teaching of Phatius.