GEMISTO PLETONE, George. – Philosopher,
b. c. 1355 in Constantinople, d. c. 1452
– Sparta. The name Pletone, drawn from an analogy
of meaning with his original surname (γεμῖζον
= πλήθος) was chosen by the philosopher in homage to
Plato. He was among the Greek representatives at the Council of
Florence for the union of the Greek Church, thus having
the opportunity to exert a certain influence on the
culture of the Medici circle. Ficino attests to the im-
(vol
. Ordinari)
GEMINIANO, saint – Return of the Saint to Modena and his death. Sculptures by Wiligelmo on the architrave of the Porta dei Principi (1099–1106) of the Cathedral – Modena.
pression he made on Cosimo. Under the tutelage of a learned Jew, Elisseo, he seems to have come into contact with doctrines attributed to Zoroaster. Very soon he began to envisage and preach to his disciples at Mistra, near the ruins of ancient Sparta, a political-religious reform in which a kind of Platonic republic was to be founded upon a restoration of classical religion similar to that of the Emperor Julian. According to the testimony of George of Trebizond, he was convinced that Islam and Christianity would soon disappear from the world, and all men would be united in a universal religion. He outlined this religion, specifying its dogmas and rites in a work, The Laws (Νομοθεσία, η ζωή νόμου συγγραφή), which his implacable adversary George Scholarius, the Gennadius, had destroyed, and of which only a few fragments remain.
In this work, polemicizing against all poetic distortions, he sets forth a theology in which Neoplatonic and Neopagan themes are linked to the doctrines of the Chaldean Oracles, which G. held dear and commented upon. He accepted a multiplicity of gods, of which Zeus is the king, the greatest, the best possible, whose divinity transcends all things; from him are generated, arranged in ordered hierarchies, the lesser gods, who directly or through subordinate deities govern the entire universe according to an immutable fate that derives from Zeus.
At Florence, in 1439, during an illness, to please those who consoled him on one side and followed Plato on the other, he composed a treatise On the Difference between Plato and Aristotle, in which he extols Plato for having posited a supreme God, unique, of spiritual and separate nature, while Aristotle is treated harshly in every way. Hence arose the venomous polemic of George of Trebizond and the reply of Bessarion, who had been a pupil of G. in Greece.
GEMMA GALGANI, Saint – Portrait, from a photograph taken in a moment of ecstasy.
Gennadius und Pletio, Breslau 1844; J. Wilson Taylor, Pletio’s Criticism of Plato and Aristotle, Menasha, Wis. 1921; B. Kieszkowski, Studi sul platonismo del Rinascimento in Italia, Florence 1936, pp. 13–36; B. Tatakis, La philosophie byzantine, Paris 1940, pp. 281–93, 299–305, 310–11 (with bibl.). Eugenio Garin