## 1. Life



Bessarion was born in Trebizond between 1399 and 1408, and baptized
Basil. At a young age, he went to Byzantium, where he studied with
John Cortasmenos (d. 1431/7). He changed his name to Bessarion when he
became a monk in 1423. Pursuing his ecclesiastical career, Bessarion
engaged in diplomatic activity in the service of the emperor John VIII
Palaiologos. This put him in contact with the court of the Despot of
Mistra, a city where he had the opportunity to deepen his
philosophical and mathematical training under the guidance of Gemistos
Pletho (d. 1454). The decisive year in the life of Bessarion was
probably 1437, when he was made metropolitan of Nicea (hence the
common epithet of *Cardinal Nicenus*) and left for Italy as
member of the Greek delegation to the Council of Ferrara-Florence.


The Council was mainly devoted to an attempt at unifying the Latin
and Greek Churches, which the Western European powers had made a
condition for providing military support to Palaiologos as he
attempted to fend off the Ottoman Turks. As a member of the Greek
delegation, the young Bessarion was not eager to concede the main
dogmatic point of disagreement between the two churches, which had led
to their separation in the eleventh century: the problem of the place
of the Holy Spirit in the Creed. According to the Greeks the Spirit
proceeded only from the Father, while in the Roman formulation it also
proceeded from the Son (*Filioque*). And yet, driven by his
concern for the unstable political situation in Greece and finally
convinced by the texts of the Church Fathers, Bessarion changed his
mind and in April 1439 pronounced an oration (the *Oratio dogmatica
de unione*), in which he advocated for agreement between Greek and
Latin authors. In July 1439 Bessarion read the act of union between
the Roman and the Greek Church in Florence. The same year, while he
was in Greece for the last time, Bessarion was made Cardinal.



Bessarion would spend the rest of his life as one of the most
important and influential members of the Roman Curia. He was selected
for important diplomatic missions; for example, in 1450 Niccolo
V sent him to Bologna as *legato a latere*. He took particular
care of Greek rites abbeys, like those in Calabria, Messina, and
Grottaferrata. He obtained a number of benefices, and in 1458 he was
selected as protector of the Franciscan Order. In 1463 he also became
Patriarch of Constantinople. He even came close to being elevated to
the papacy at least twice, but apparently his beard--which for
many symbolized his Greek origins--prevented him from garnering
the necessary support. His activities as a cardinal were coupled with
scholarly enterprises, which he undertook personally, and also
sponsored as the patron of a circle of intellectuals who were in many
cases Greek emigres like him. Men like Theodore Gaza (d. 1476)
and Niccolo Perotti (d. 1480)--and for a short period even
his nemesis-to-be George of Trebizond (d. 1473)--were all part of
the Cardinal's entourage. 



After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Bessarion's main
interest was in rescuing the cultural heritage of his homeland,
Greece, and he pursued this goal on both intellectual and political
planes. From an intellectual point of view, Bessarion's plan
involved salvaging Greek texts which were until then unknown in
Western Christendom and were generally rare (to the extent that in
some cases they survive today only in the exemplars collected by the
Cardinal). An avid lifelong book collector, Bessarion assembled a
library in order to prevent the loss of these treasures:
"without books, the tomb would cover the names of men, just as
it covers their bodies". Bessarion feared--indeed he was
consumed with terror--"lest all those wonderful books, the
product of so much toil and study by the greatest human minds, those
very beacons of the earth, should be brought to danger and destruction
in an instant". Bessarion felt that Venice--a city with
which he had entertained a long relationship and where he served as
papal legate in 1463--could be a safe haven for his library and
the books he donated around 1468 formed the first nucleus of the
Biblioteca Marciana.



In addition to saving books from destruction,
Bessarion had also a more practical political agenda for his homeland;
he was among the most vocal advocates for the call for a new crusade to
free Greece from Ottoman control. He was therefore engaged in
several diplomatic missions, in Germany and then in Vienna, which
aimed to convince Western rulers to fight the Turks. After an attempt
in 1464 failed because of the death of Pope Pius II in Ancona, Bessarion
worked until the end of his days to build support 
for a project that appeared more and more illusory with every passing
year. It was on the way back from one of these diplomatic missions in
1472, this time to France, that Bessarion fell ill and died in
Ravenna. He was interred in his titular Church, SS. Apostoli in Rome,
where Antoniazzo Romano and Melozzo da Forli had decorated a
chapel in his name between 1464 and 1467.


## 2. Works



Bessarion's *opera omnia* include writings prepared for
audiences in both the Byzantine and the Roman courts, such as orations
and pieces of poetry. Of particular interest are the orations he
addressed to Italian rulers, in order to convince them to join a
crusade against the Turks (the *Orationes ad principes Italiae
contra Turcos*, 1470). The *De errore Paschatis*, devoted
to calculating the proper date of Easter, was probably composed with
the assistance of Regiomontanus (1436-1476) and reflects
Bessarion's early interest in astronomy, which he had cultivated
since the time of his training under Cortasmenos and Pletho. Bessarion
also left behind a rich corpus of letters which he had never edited for
publication. In addition to being the patron of important translations, he
also himself translated Greek works into Latin, including Saint
Basil's *De nativitate Domini*, Xenophon's
*Memorabilia*, and Demosthenes' *First Olinthiac*.
However, Bessarion's most important works, both as an
author and as a translator, are focused on theology and
philosophy.


### 2.1 Bessarion the Theologian



During his years in Greece, Bessarion adopted traditionalist
positions, which included hostility toward the tenets of the Roman
Church and Scholastic theology, which conflicted with the Hesicastic
contemplative doctrines still dominant in Greece at that time. The
experience of the Council of Ferrara-Florence led him to question and
abandon some of his previous convictions. This is evident in the
*Refutationes* of two writings, respectively by Maximus
Planudes (13-14th c.) and Marcos Eugenikos (d. 1444,
present himself at the Council), in which Bessarion defended the
procession of the Spirit from the Son. In other writings, and
particularly in the *Encyclical letter to the Greeks*, composed
when he became Patriarch of Constantinople, he emphasized the primacy
of the Roman Pontiff, inviting the Greeks to restore the union of the
two Churches which had fallen apart after the Council. In *On the
Eucharist*, which he translated from Greek to Latin and
re-elaborated several times over more than two decades, Bessarion
defended the *epiclesis* in the Orthodox Eucharist.


 
One of the most interesting theological writings by Bessarion,
nonetheless, was prompted by a quarrel with George of Trebizond, which
along with their disagreements over George's translations of the
Aristotelian *Problemata* and Ptolemy's
*Almagestus*, ultimately led to the deterioration of their
relationship. When commenting on John 21:22 during a banquet,
Bessarion had observed that the Latin text of the Vulgate Gospel was
corrupted, and rather than reading "sic volo eum manere donec
veniam, quid ad te?", with reference to John, should have read
"si volo eum manere donec veniam, quid ad te?". George of
Trebizond opposed the Cardinal, defending the Vulgate. Bessarion
reacted with a short writing, largely based on the philological
teachings of Nicholas Maniacutia (12th c.), which affirmed
the necessity of verifying the Latin text of the Gospels against the
original Greek. For Bessarion, rejection of George's
philological views went hand in hand with a dismissal of his
millenarian beliefs: by defending the version containing
"sic", George had in fact shown that he accepted the idea
that John was alive and awaiting the second coming of
Christ. George's millenarianism resurfaced--with wider and
different implications--during the Plato-Aristotle controversy,
which represented the crux of his dispute with Bessarion (see
below).


### 2.2 Bessarion the Aristotelian



Bessarion's reputation as a Platonist--mainly associated
with his struggle against the arch-Aristotelian George of
Trebizond--has at times obscured in modern scholarship his
contribution to the Peripatetic tradition. By contrast,
Bessarion's Aristotelian expertise was widely recognized in the
centuries after his death, when his translation of the
*Metaphysics* was celebrated and reprinted several times,
including in Bekker's *Corpus Aristotelicum* (1831).
Undertaken between 1446 and 1451 and dedicated to King Alfonso I of
Naples, the translation was praised by Nicholas of Cusa for its
excellence, and by Giannozzo Manetti for its clarity, which he
attributed to the Cardinal's decision to render the text *ad
sensum*, rather than *ad verbum*.



In addition to his
linguistic skills, Bessarion was aided in this enterprise by a deep
knowledge of the Aristotelian works, cultivated since his
*Bildungsjahre*, as a number of studies on the contents of his
library have revealed. Bessarion was not only receptive to the
Aristotelian tradition, but also to its recent Latin development, as
represented by Scholasticism. Again, studies of Bessarion's
library have revealed this only apparently surprising aspect of his
philosophical training: Thomas Aquinas in particular was a well-known
author in Byzantium, mostly because of the Greek translations of the
*Summa contra gentiles* and of the *Summa theologiae*
made by Demetrios Kydones in the fourteenth century. Bessarion's
familiarity with these matters also influenced the *In
calumniatorem Platonis*, where one of the Cardinal's
recurring arguments is that George of Trebizond was essentially
ignorant of the traditions (Aristotelianism and Scholasticism) he
claimed were superior to Platonism (see below).



Bessarion's reputation as an expert in matters of Aristotelian
and Scholastic philosophy is exemplified by his role as mediator in a
quarrel over the future contingents between two theologians from
Leuven, Henry of Zomeren and Peter de Rivo. From 1469 until his death,
Bessarion played an important role in this controversy not only
because he had once been a patron of de Zomeren himself, but also
because the Cardinal had gathered around him several skilled
Scholastic philosophers, including Francesco della Rovere (soon to be
Pope as Sixtus IV) and Fernando de Cordoba, both of whom took part in
the dispute. This was not the only circumstance in which Bessarion and
members of his entourage took part in Scholastic disputes. For all
these reasons, the case of Bessarion calls into question the simplistic
opposition between Aristotelian Scholasticism and a purely Platonic
Humanism dear to past scholarship, showing instead the blurred lines
between these traditions (see, e.g., Monfasani 2016b). Even the *In
calumniatorem Platonis*, a text consecrated even from its title to
the defense of Plato, was no less the result of this ambiguous
relationship between Humanism and Scholasticism, between Platonism and
Aristotelianism.


### 2.3 The *In calumniatorem Platonis*



George of Trebizond's resentment towards Bessarion was one of
the driving forces behind the *Comparatio philosophorum Platonis et
Aristotelis* (around 1458), in which George bitterly attacked
Plato, a philosopher for whom the Cardinal's preference was
notorious. In three books George attacked Plato as ignorant, impious
and vicious, while celebrating the perfect wisdom, piety and virtue of
Aristotle. This kind of work, a comparison of the respective merits of
Plato and Aristotle, especially in religious matters, was not uncommon
in the Byzantine *milieu*, and Gemistus Pletho had composed his
own *comparatio* at the time of the Council of Florence:
Pletho's booklet, written in Greek and therefore little read,
celebrated the piety of Platonic philosophy in an attempt to expose
the frail Aristotelian foundation of Scholasticism. George's
*comparatio* was by contrast intended to reinforce the role of
Aristotle as authority of reference for Christian theology, to the
extent of making the Stagirite aware of dogmas such as Trinity and
occasionally placing him above even Thomas Aquinas. George's
*comparatio* had an apocalyptic subtext, made explicit in the
final pages of the work, in which the coming of a fourth
Plato--the second and the third were respectively Epicurus and
Mohammed--is connected to the fall of the Byzantine empire, and
characterized as a threat to the Latin West. The unnamed fourth Plato
was possibly either Pletho or Bessarion himself.



George's *Comparatio* was immediately perceived as
dangerous by Bessarion, who needed to respond to it in order to
preserve his reputation and that of Plato. If Plato was perceived as
impious, so too was the Cardinal by association. With the help of
several members of his circle, Bessarion produced over the course of
about ten years his masterpiece: the *In calumniatorem
Platonis* (Against the Slanderer of Plato).



The preparation of the
work required several adjustments, both formal and theoretical. From a
formal point of view, Bessarion realized that a work written in Greek,
as the *In calumniatorem* initially was, would not have had the
desired impact. He therefore translated the work into Latin, and in
order to make it stylistically appealing engaged a skilled Latinist,
his secretary Niccolo Perotti, to revise the text.
Perotti's re-elaboration made the work more accessible and
elegant, though he occasionally struggled to do justice to the
philosophical concepts contained within.



From a theoretical point of view, Bessarion was interested in a
different kind of revision. Around 1457, when he was involved in a
debate on nature and art in an epistolary exchange with Theodore Gaza,
Bessarion had initially argued, like his master Pletho, that Plato and
Aristotle were irreconcilably opposed. Yet, the Cardinal changed this
position, after coming across a treatise--now lost--on the
same topic by George of Trebizond: in his own subsequent
booklet--the *De natura et arte*--destined to become
the sixth book of the *In calumniatorem Platonis*, Bessarion
embraced a conciliatory view modeled on the approach of late-antique
commentator Simplicius. This interpretation--which is adopted
throughout the *In calumniatorem*--cast Aristotle as a
natural philosopher, and Plato as a theologian, thus explaining the
apparent disagreement between the two authors as merely a question of
different subject matter and of different levels of reality. This
exegetical move allowed Bessarion to avoid openly attacking Aristotle,
while implicitly maintaining the superiority of Plato, in particular
as an external aid for Christian faith. It also allowed him to avoid
contrasts with Aristotelians in the Roman curia, and to rely on
Scholastic authorities such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas to
meet his interpretative goals.



This arsenal of sources was crucial for exposing George's scarce
knowledge of Aristotelian philosophy and tradition, and therefore the
unreliability of his praise of the Stagirite's alleged piety:
this problem is the subject of the third book of the *In
calumniatorem Platonis*, which was composed at a later stage,
mainly relying on material provided by the Dominican theologian
Giovanni Gatti (d. *ante* 1484). Finally, by defending the
agreement between Plato and Aristotle, Bessarion could also avoid any
association with Gemistus Pletho, whose ambiguous religious reputation
could have tainted the Cardinal.



The *In calumniatorem* is divided into six books: books one, two
and four mirror the three books of George's
*Comparatio*.


 Book one focuses on proving Plato's wisdom, in spite of the
elusiveness of his style and the dialogical structure of his works,
against George's claim that he was ignorant. After listing
authors who praised Plato above Aristotle--mainly Cicero and
Augustine, and several Fathers of the Church--Bessarion discusses
the apparent absence of certain subjects in Plato's works by
invoking the Pythagorean practice of secrecy. Yet, the Cardinal also
demonstrates that Plato was perfectly trained in all the disciplines,
and offered an alternative encyclopedia of wisdom to the Aristotelian
one.



The second book is the closest to the Byzantine tradition of the
*comparatio*, and addresses the problem of Plato's and
Aristotle's piety. Taking exegeses from authors like Plotinus,
Proclus, the Ps.-Dionysius, Simplicius, and many others, Bessarion
counter-analyzes the different subjects at the center of
George's invective, suggesting that Plato offered theorizations
of decisive topics such as creation, soul and matter that were more
akin to Christian dogma. Bessarion resolved embarrassing impasses in
Plato's philosophy, such as the doctrine of matter and the
doctrine of the *metasomatosis* as presented in the
*Timaeus*, by employing elaborate distinctions in the first
case, and allegorical explanation in the second, in the process making
them acceptable to Christian readers. Again, Bessarion repeatedly
insists on the only apparent disagreement between Plato and Aristotle:
by recovering another argument from Simplicius, he claims that the
Stagirite attacked the words, and not the meaning of Plato's
doctrines, so as to preserve them from distortions and
manipulations. Aristotle, Bessarion claims, did the same with
Parmenides and Melissus, who spoke as theologians no less than
Plato.



The third book, as indicated above, reviews a number of problematic
issues in George of Trebizond's treatment of Aristotle. Lighter
topics--such as those related to sacrifices, and the reliance on
poets and women--give way to more complex issues, such as
Aristotle's purported knowledge of Trinitarian dogma, his views
on the immortality of the soul, and the place of providence in
Peripatetic cosmology. Particularly important here are the chapters
centered on the impossibility of the individual immortality of the
soul *in via Aristotelis*, since it contrasts with the eternity
of the world defended in *On the Heavens*. Bessarion,
conversely, finds both Averroes' and Alexander of
Aphrodisias' interpretations of the soul acceptable according to
the Aristotelian tenets, despite their contrast with the Christian
faith.



The fourth book deals with the problem of the virtue of Plato. Relying
on Ps.-Dionysius, Bessarion offers a spiritual interpretation of
love--as described in the *Symposium* and in the
*Phaedrus*--in radical contrast with the sexual one
postulated by George. In a different section Bessarion employs
Herodotus's comparative method to justify the common use of
women advocated by Plato in the *Republic*. Additionally,
Bessarion defuses George's millenarian prophecy about the fourth
Plato by arguing that the fall of the Greek Empire was due to an
unescapable cyclical decline that the adoption of Plato's
doctrines would have forestalled. In the final chapter of the book,
Bessarion rebukes George for his hypocrisy, since he praised Plato
when he translated the *Parmenides* and the *Laws*.



George's translation of the *Laws* is the primary target
of the fifth book, which contains a list of the errors--actual
and alleged--made by Trebizond in his edition. The goal of this
chapter is to prove George's incompetence in Platonic
philosophy, which in turn further proves the unreliability of his
accusations against Plato. Yet, a peculiar concern with the
translation of Platonic works runs throughout the entire *In
calumniatorem*: Bessarion was aware that Latin Europeans'
scarce knowledge of Plato might have inclined them to listen to George
of Trebizond. Bessarion's practice of offering in his work
translations of Platonic texts, accompanied by alternative exegeses to
those offered by George--was intended to correct this knowledge
gap in the Western world. Bessarion also presented to his Latin
readers Aristotelian authors, such as Alexander of Aphrodisias, who
had until then limited circulation in the Latin world, but whose
interpretations of Aristotle placed the Stagirite in contradiction
with Christian dogma. These insertions were part of Bessarion's
strategy for exposing the religious limits of Aristotelian philosophy,
so providing implicit support for the notion that Plato could serve as
a better external aid for true faith, in the tradition of the Church
Fathers, and of Greek theologians such as Eusebius of Cesarea and
Theodore Metochites.



The sixth book of the *In calumniatorem*, the above-mentioned
*De natura et arte*, is the exegesis of a passage from the
second book of the Aristotelian *Physics*. Written before the
other books composing the *In calumniatorem*, it is the only
one in which Bessarion openly names George as his adversary
and--as stated above--is the first work in which Bessarion
expresses conciliaristic views about Plato and Aristotle. In this
sense the *De natura et arte* represented a sort of
"dress rehearsal" for the *magnum opus* applied to
a single exegetical problem, which had nonetheless significant
implications for crucial subjects (such as the doctrine of Ideas and
divine causality in the world).


## 3. Reception



While George's *Comparatio* appeared in print only
posthumously in 1523 in a single defective edition, Bessarion took
full advantage of the newly discovered technology of the printing
press to reach his audience: it offered Bessarion another advantage
over his opponent by ensuring wider circulation of the finished
text. The *In calumniatorem Platonis* was printed in 1469 by
Schweynheym and Pannartz. In the very the same year they also
published Alcinous's *Didaskalikon*, and Apuleius's
*De deo Socratis* and *De Platone et eius dogmate*,
probably as part of a filo-Platonic editorial project orchestrated by
the Cardinal. The *In calumniatorem* was subsequently reprinted
twice, by the Aldine printing press, in 1503 and 1516. Both editions,
which are not identical, included Bessarion's own revisions to
the 1469 version of the text.



Bessarion's moderate Christianized reading of Plato provided
authors like Marsilio Ficino and Francesco Cattani da Diacceto with
powerful exegetical schemes, such as those taken from Plotinus,
Proclus, and the Ps.-Dionysius (whose authenticity Bessarion defended
even against members of his own circle). In the case of Ficino, these
interpretive keys were magnified in an even more ambitious
Christianization of Plato, in which the ancient philosopher was
compared to Moses. A monumental work which included several lists of
quotations and authorities, the *In calumniatorem* quickly
became a repertory of material for sixteenth-century writers and
philosophers. Sections like those on the Pythagorean secrets (I.2)
enjoyed the attention of numerous readers, as did the letter of Lysis
to Hipparchus. Louis le Roy (d. 1577) relied heavily on the second
book of the *In calumniatorem* for his commentary to the
*Timaeus*. Without citing his source, Symphorien Champier
(d. 1540) recovered passages from the *In calumniatorem* in
many of his works. Champier wanted to convince his friend Jacques
Lefevre d'Etaples (d. 1536) of Plato's
utility for Christian religion and the *In calumniatorem*
offered a wealth of material to support his efforts. Though he admired
Bessarion's translation of the *Metaphysics*, which he
was the first to publish, Lefevre
d'Etaples--along with Guillaume
Bude--nonetheless favored the position of George of
Trebizond.


 
The composite nature of the *In calumniatorem* allowed for
divergent interpretations of the nature of Bessarion's work. In
the *In calumniatorem* Bessarion himself oscillated between
describing the text as an apology of Plato and as a comparison between
Plato and Aristotle. Despite the fact that the *In
calumniatorem* helped to disseminate the genre the *comparatio
Platonis et Aristotelis* in the early modern period, the work was
mostly perceived as an apology of Plato, and this made Bessarion an
obvious target at the time of the anti-Platonic reaction led by the
Jesuits at the end of the sixteenth century. Members of other orders,
like the Franciscans and Augustinians, were nonetheless more
sympathetic to the Cardinal, praising him and the *In
calumniatorem* well into the seventeenth century. Bessarion also
made an impact within the walls of the universities. His emphasis on
Aristotle as a mere natural philosopher, in fact, provided Peripatetic
professors with valid arguments against metaphysical interpretations
of the Philosopher: for example, both Pietro Pomponazzi
(1462-1525) and Francesco Vimercato (d. 1569), though arguing in
favor of the mortality of the soul from different perspectives, were
in debt to passages from the third book of the *In calumniatorem
Platonis*.