GIORGIO SCOLARIOS (GENNADIO II). — Byzantine theologian and writer, patriarch of Constantinople three times (1454–56; 1463; 1464–65), b. there ca. 1405, d. in the monastery of Prodromos (S. Giovanni Battista) near Serres after 1472. He learned the Latin language already in his youth and studied the works of Western philosophers and theologians, especially those of s. Tommaso d'Aquino. Even before the Council of Florence he enjoyed the favor of the emperor Giovanni VIII Paleologo and was able, although a layman, to preach in the Imperial Palace. He accompanied his sovereign to the Council of Florence. He was an ardent promoter of the Union of the Greeks with the Catholic Church. Famous are his three discourses (with an appended letter) that were submitted in writing to the Synod of the Greeks on 30 March 1439. These sermons emphasize the necessity of the Union, demonstrated through texts of the Latin and Greek Fathers (1st discourse); this union must be one and true, that is, dogmatic (2nd discourse); the principal obstacle to the Union is human respect (3rd discourse). Even after the Union of the Greeks, G. S. remained a vigorous supporter of his theory until the death of Marco Eugenico (1444), against whom he also composed a work in favor of the Filioque.
It is not entirely clear how, from 1444 onward, he changed his attitude toward the Union and became an enemy of the Catholic Church. In many polemical writings G. S., as monk and patriarch, opposed the Filioque and the Council of Florence. It was a great boon to the dissident Greek Church that G. S. enjoyed the favor of Sultan Maometto II, who had him return from his captivity in Adrianople (30 May 1453–late September 1453) to Constantinople and paid three visits to the elected patriarch, making him the ecclesiastical and civil head of the Greeks on 6 January 1454. It cannot be denied that G. S. rendered no small service to Christianity through his exposition of Christian doctrine before the sultan, subsequently set down in writing.
The literary legacy left by G. S. is immense: the project of a critical edition of his works was due to the Catholic archbishop of Athens Ludovico Petit, and was carried out in 8 vols. with the assistance of X. A. Siderides and M. Jugie, and not least that of the lay Assumptionist brother Giulio Pector. In this edition there are published, according to
the autographs of G. S. (a most fortunate circumstance that made the edition less arduous, since 4/5 of the works are preserved in autograph), religious sermons, theological and polemical treatises, apologetic writings against Islam, pastoral and ascetic writings, expositions of s. Tommaso’s Summa contra Gentes and of the 1st and 2nd–2nd parts of the Summa theologica, translations, commentaries on philosophical writings by Western authors and by Aristotle, and letters.