Bessarion

gigatos | June 3, 2022

Summary

Bessarion (baptismal name Greek Βασίλειος Basíleios, Latin Basilius, monastic name Greek Βησσαρίων Bēssaríōn, Latin Bessario, Italian Bessarione, erroneously John Bessarion or. Giovanni Bessarione; * between 1399 and 1408 in Trapezunt in northeastern Asia Minor; † 18 November 1472 in Ravenna) was a Byzantine humanist, theologian, church politician, diplomat, orator, publicist, philosopher, philologist, and translator. From 1439 he was a cardinal, and from 1463 Latin Patriarch of Constantinople in exile.

Bessarion received his education initially in Constantinople, where he entered a monastery as a young man. Later he studied Platonic philosophy in Mystras and became a zealous advocate of Platonism. At the Council of Ferrara

After moving to the Latin-speaking world of the Western Church, Bessarion vehemently advocated for his homeland, which was threatened by Ottoman expansion. His main concerns were initially the realization of the Church Union and the mobilization of military aid for the collapsing Byzantine Empire. After the fall of the Byzantine state, which he did not consider to be final, he became involved in saving and preserving Greek cultural assets and in resisting the further westward advance of Ottoman military power. He took on the difficult task of promoting a crusade against the Turks as papal legate, but he failed completely with these political efforts. As a theologian he advocated a synthesis of Christian, Platonic, and Aristotelian thought; as a philosopher he defended Plato and Platonism against a wholesale attack by the contemporary Aristotelian Georgios Trapezuntios. He was a pioneer of research in the history of philosophy and made a fundamental contribution to the knowledge and dissemination of Plato”s works and thoughts, which were still little known in the West at that time.

Bessarion established the largest collection of Greek manuscripts in the West and donated his precious library to the Republic of Venice. He promoted education and research in classical studies and provided generous support to needy humanists. He was remembered by posterity primarily as a distinguished Platonist and a leading representative of Greek culture in the West. Modern research honors him as an important scholar who mediated between cultures and thus earned a high reputation.

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Origin, name and birth

There are different data about Bessarion”s origin, and opinions differ among researchers about the dating of his birth. It is undisputed that he came from Trapezunt, the capital of an independent empire that was one of the successor states of the Byzantine Empire destroyed by the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. According to the account of the contemporary Byzantine writer Michael Apostoles, who knew the cardinal well, his parents lived in modest circumstances and had to earn their living with their hands. Another tradition was followed by the historian and bishop of Alessio Benedetto Orsini, who began his study of the genealogy of the Comnenes in about 1635.

For the birth of Bessarion, the approaches vary between the end of 1399 and January 2, 1408. 2 January 1403 is often mentioned, which was calculated according to his life span, however, dubiously handed down. If his maternal grandfather was the emperor John III, who died in 1362, this speaks for an early dating of the birth. According to his own statements, he had fourteen siblings, all of whom died before their parents.

In older literature, Bessarion”s baptismal name is erroneously given as John. This information is based on wrong reading of a handwritten entry in a codex. Although the mistake was already proven in 1976, the alleged first name John is still used.

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Education and life as a monk in Constantinople (1416

Initially, Basileios attended the public school in Trapezunt, where his talent was noticed. Then his parents gave him to Metropolitan Dositheos of Trapezunt to give him a good education. When Dositheos 1416

Besides Chortasmenos, Basileios also had a teacher named Chrysokokkes, who worked at a public school. This is often equated with the manuscript writer Georgios Chrysokokkes, but it may also be another scholar of that name. In any case, the Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo, who was in Constantinople at the time and later gained renown in Italy for his extraordinary mastery of Greek, was a fellow student of Chrysokokkes with the future cardinal.

Soon after his arrival in Constantinople, Basileios informally joined a monastic community. A few years later, on January 30, 1423, he entered as a monk. After the probationary period, the new monastic received the second, final tonsure on July 20, 1423. In accordance with custom, he changed his name upon entering the monastic state. He now called himself Bessarion. By choosing this name, he showed his devotion to the late antique desert father Bessarion, an Egyptian anachoret, whose cult of saints was particularly cultivated in Trapezunt. He was ordained deacon on December 8, 1425, and priest on October 8, 1430.

As a monk, Bessarion did not limit himself to a contemplative life in the monastery, but developed political activity at an early stage. He participated in 1426

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Study stay in Mystras (1431-1436

Probably in 1431, following the advice of his former teacher Chortasmenos, Bessarion went to the peninsula of Morea to deepen his education in Mystras (Mistra), the capital of the despotate there. There he studied under the famous scholar Georgios Gemistos Plethon, an anti-Aristotelian-minded Platonist who had developed an unusual philosophical-religious system. Plethon, like the Western humanists, glorified ancient cultural goods. In doing so, he went so far as to reject Christianity and to hope for a renewal of the ancient Greek religion. Bessarion held Plethon in high esteem and later remained on friendly terms with him, but remained faithful to his Christian faith. A seminal impulse he received in Mystras was the thorough knowledge of Platonic philosophy that Plethon imparted to him. Bessarion combined Platonism, which he adopted as a personal conviction, with his Christian worldview. One focus of his studies in Mystras was the mathematical and natural sciences, especially astronomy.

Bessarion was also politically active during his stay in the despotate of Morea. He enjoyed the confidence of the ruler there, the despot Theodoros II, who was a brother of Emperor John VIII. His prestige was such that he was able to mediate in a conflict within the imperial family.

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Activity as an orthodox church politician (1437-1439)

On the orders of Emperor John VIII, Bessarion returned in 1436.

Bessarion received his episcopal consecration on November 11, 1437. His elevation to the metropolitan rank took place against the backdrop of the upcoming Council of Union, at which the “union,” the reunification of the Roman and Orthodox churches, was to be accomplished. The churches had been separated since the “Oriental Schism” of the 11th century. Overcoming the schism between the churches was a central concern of Byzantine diplomacy, because it was a prerequisite for the military aid of Western powers against the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, which was urgently needed by the emperor. The Turkish advance threatened to wipe out the Byzantine state. The extent to which Bessarion, as a confidant of the emperor, was involved in the preparation of the council is disputed among scholars. With the emperor and the other metropolitans and other dignitaries of the Patriarchate of Constantinople who participated in the church assembly, he set sail for Italy in November 1437. Among the participants of the long sea voyage were Plethon and the philosopher and future cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (Cusanus), who had been in Constantinople for negotiations on church unity. With Cusanus, Bessarion formed a lifelong friendship that led to fruitful collaboration.

In February 1438, the Byzantine delegation made its entry into Venice. For Bessarion, the city, which he later made his adopted home, left a deep impression; it seemed to him like a second Byzantium. In March, the Byzantines arrived in Ferrara, which had been designated as the site of the Council of the Union. Although the assembly was solemnly opened on April 9, at first only soundings were taken; the official start of negotiations was delayed for months.

The success of the union efforts depended on an agreement on the dogmatic disputes, among which the most important was the disagreement about the “filioque” in the Creed, which had been entrenched for centuries. The question was whether the Holy Spirit proceeds only from God the Father, as the Orthodox theologians believed, or also from the Son of God (Latin filioque “and from the Son”), as Roman dogmatics taught. The Roman Church had inserted the addition “filioque” into the Creed on its own authority, without consulting the other churches first. This was unacceptable to the Orthodox. First, the emperor stipulated that two of the Greek metropolitans, Bessarion and Markos Eugenikos, should act as the sole spokesmen for the Orthodox side in the exploratory talks. The much higher-ranking, resolute Markos Eugenikos had to ensure theological correctness, while the authoritative Bessarion was assigned the task of impressing the opposing side with his rhetorical verve and acting as a mediator to dampen conflicts. In the course of time, the two theologians increasingly distinguished themselves as representatives of two opposing directions: Bessarion thought and acted in a solution-oriented manner, while Markos Eugenikos, as an unyielding defender of the Eastern Church positions, accepted or even sought a failure of the negotiations. Thus, the two metropolitans became estranged and their antagonism escalated.

In the first public session of the Council on October 8, 1438, Bessarion delivered the opening address, with which he passionately advocated the unity of the churches. Regarding the points of contention, he called for an unbiased common search for truth; he did not go into delicate details. In early November, he defended in extensive speeches the Orthodox view that a change in the text of the Creed would be inadmissible in principle even if its content were undisputed. When the positions stiffened, the patriarch gathered a group of orthodox dignitaries to consult with them without the emperor on how to proceed. He suggested that they threaten to break off the negotiations and then leave if the other side continued to be intransigent. Only Bessarion objected to this plan. Finally, the emperor, who was only interested in the political consequences, forced the council to continue.

In the first months of 1439, Bessarion officially adhered to the conventional orthodox position, but after the first days of February, he spoke out only rarely and showed increasing interest and understanding for the arguments of the opposing side. The reason for this reticence was that the argumentation of the “Latins,” the Latin-speaking Western Church theologians, made him reconsider his position. In particular, the remarks of Cardinal Giuliano Cesarini made a strong impression on him.

Even before the council was moved to Florence in January 1439, Bessarion had begun a thorough review of the statements of the ancient church fathers – the authoritative authorities – on the disputed question. After long study, he finally concluded that the position of the Latins was the better founded and that the conflict was due to a misunderstanding. This strengthened him in his struggle for the Union, for now, from his point of view, not only the political-military constraint but also the theological findings spoke fully in favor of unification. In this sense he successfully influenced wavering Orthodox bishops and achieved that the rejection front crumbled.

On April 13 and 14, 1439, Bessarion took the floor before an assembly of Byzantine bishops to dispel misgivings about the union among the hesitant. He argued both theologically and philologically. He traced the controversy over the filioque to an apparent contradiction. He claimed that the contradiction could be bridged by a philological examination of the dogmatic statements. In fact, however, his statements amounted to agreement with the Roman dogma.

In the following weeks, a turnaround occurred; among the Byzantine participants in the council, the will for union increasingly prevailed. Bessarion participated in the elaboration of the unification formula and intensively campaigned in the Orthodox camp for approval of his concept, which essentially corresponded to the ideas of the Latins on the main point of contention. Finally, he prevailed against the opposition of Markos Eugenikos. His efforts were instrumental in bringing about the Union of the Churches. Together with the humanist Ambrogio Traversari, who represented the Latins, he formulated the council decree that laid down the dogmatic basis of the church unity that had been agreed upon. At the unification ceremony on July 6, 1439, Bessarion proclaimed the Greek text of the unification document, Cesarini the Latin.

Pope Eugene IV was so impressed by the success that he granted Bessarion a pension of 300 florins annually, to be increased to 600 if the beneficiary decided to move his residence to Rome and stay permanently at the Curia. On October 19, 1439, the Byzantine delegation embarked in Venice for the journey home, which took more than three months. In Constantinople, the homecomers found a very bad atmosphere; the results of the negotiations were received with indignation by the population. It soon turned out that the implementation of the Florence decisions was far more difficult than expected. The union met with such massive resistance among the people and the Orthodox clergy that it remained largely ineffective in practice.

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Elevation to Cardinal and emigration to Italy (1439

After his return home, Bessarion learned that the pope had elevated him to cardinal in the consistory on December 18, 1439. The appointment of a Greek to the College of Cardinals was intended to strengthen the Union. With this, the decision about the further course of life of the Byzantine metropolitan was made, he finally moved to Italy. His anti-Union opponents at home interpreted his acceptance of the appointment as a betrayal.

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Ecclesiastical and general political activity as cardinal (1440-1472)

Initially, Bessarion belonged to the class of cardinal priests, that is, cardinals who were assigned a title church in Rome. His was Santi XII Apostoli, the Church of the Twelve Apostles. In the early years his income was modest for a cardinal, although he was additionally endowed with minor benefices. This changed after Nicholas V, a zealous promoter of humanism, ascended the papal throne in March 1447. Now, for the purpose of increasing his income, the Greek cardinal received the southern Italian archbishopric of Manfredonia (Siponto) on May 5, 1447, which he kept for two years, and at the end of March 1449 he received the bishopric of Mazara in Sicily. On March 5, 1449, the Pope elevated him to the rank of cardinal bishop. First he assigned him the cardinal bishopric of Sabina; soon after, on April 23, he promoted him to cardinal bishop of Tusculum. In this capacity, Bessarion had a summer residence outside the city near the church of San Cesareo. This is said to have been a villa on Via di Porta S. Sebastiano, which can still be visited today; however, the attribution of the preserved building to Bessarion is not supported by sources. After the death of Nicholas V in 1455, the Greek”s prestige in the Curia was such that some of the cardinals in conclave considered electing him pope, although he himself did not seek it. Only the intervention of French Cardinal Alain de Coëtivy, who allegedly polemicized against the election of a Greek, is said to have prevented this. In 1458, Bessarion gave up the bishopric of Mazara in exchange for the Spanish bishopric of Pamplona, which he retained until 1462. In addition, on April 1, 1463, he received the bishopric of Chalkis on the Greek island of Euboea (Negroponte in Italian), which at that time was still ruled by Venice. Moreover, in the spring of 1463, Bessarion was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople in exile by Pope Pius II. The dignity of such a “titular patriarch” was only nominal; in Constantinople, occupied by the Turks since 1453, an Orthodox patriarch, hostile to the Union, officiated. With the fall of the Byzantine Empire, the church union had finally failed. At least the titular patriarch was subject to the followers of the Union on the Greek islands owned by Venice, especially on Crete, where he had estates whose revenues accrued to him. In October 1468, Bessarion gave up the cardinal bishopric of Tusculum and became, in turn, cardinal bishop of Sabina.

Bessarion”s annual income from the benefices with which he was endowed over time grew from about 300 florins in the early 1440s to about 4500 florins in the mid-1450s, reaching about 19,000 florins in 1458. Later they dropped to about 10,000 florin. Thus, he was not a particularly wealthy cardinal by the standards of the time, but was initially poor, later in the middle range (4000 to 10,000 florins), and at times slightly above. Rich cardinals took in 30,000 to 50,000 florins a year.

The first tasks Bessarion took on as cardinal in Italy again concerned Union policy. In December 1440 he was back in Florence. There the council continued to meet, now seeking union with smaller Oriental churches. It was not until the church assembly was moved to Lateran in September 1443 that the Greek cardinal took up residence in Rome. From the time of the union decision, he addressed a series of writings to his compatriots to convince them of the legitimacy of the church union and to counteract the publicity of the opposing side. Since Emperor John VIII was unable to enforce the realization of the Union against opposition among the clergy and the people, Bessarion turned his hopes to the despot Constantine of Morea, who later became the last Byzantine emperor as Constantine XI. The cardinal believed that the peninsula of Morea could be developed into a bulwark against the Turks, and gave the despot appropriate advice. He was in constant correspondence with Constantine.

Bessarion received his first significant political assignment when Pope Nicholas V appointed him Legate for Bologna, Romagna and the Marche of Ancona and sent him to Bologna. There the legate took up residence in March 1450. As the Pope”s representative, he was authorized to speak and act on his behalf. His main task was to put an end to the political turmoil in his new place of work. The city of Bologna had de facto detached itself from the Papal States, to which it formally belonged, and established itself as an independent republic, where wild power struggles between rival families raged. To put an end to this state of affairs, the pope sent Bessarion “like an angel of peace,” in his words. As a Greek, the legate was particularly suited for this purpose, since he could be considered a neutral authority in the party feuds of the Italians. He succeeded in maintaining internal peace and consolidating papal authority in Bologna through a skillful balancing policy. The city lost its freedom of action in foreign policy, but retained some of its autonomy internally. Bessarion spent five years in Bologna. He was on good terms with the municipal administration, with which he governed jointly, promoted the economy and took care of the beautification of several churches. Because of the fatal illness of Nicholas V, Bessarion returned to Rome in 1455. His departure was regretted in Bologna, where he remained popular and continued to be regarded by the Bolognese as their advocate.

A striking caesura in Bessarion”s life was the Turkish conquest of Constantinople in May 1453. The fall of the Byzantine Empire shook the Western world. Nicholas V and his successors Calixt III (1455-1458) and Pius II (1458-1464) planned the reconquest and made the preparation of a crusade the main content of their foreign policy activities. For Bessarion, this goal became the primary political concern to which he devoted himself tirelessly during the rest of his life. In this, the Republic of Venice played a key role. In July 1453, the Greek cardinal wrote to Doge Francesco Foscari that the Sultan would take the Balkans and then attack Italy if Western Christendom did not immediately confront him with united forces, and that the Republic would face the loss of its territories in Greece. This warning, however, was ineffective; Venice made peace with Sultan Mehmed II. Venice made peace with Sultan Mehmed II to protect its maritime trade, accepting the condition that it would not support military ventures against the Ottoman Empire.

In the crusade efforts under Pope Calixt, Bessarion was among the driving forces at the Curia. He traveled to Naples to persuade King Alfonso V of Aragon (Alfonso I of Naples and Sicily) to participate. The humanist-minded king received the Greek honorably and pledged to participate in the crusade, but then did nothing.

After Calixt”s death, the respected humanist Enea Silvio de” Piccolomini ascended the papal throne as Pius II. Although Bessarion had voted for the French opponent Guillaume d”Estouteville in the papal election and justified his decision with Piccolomini”s poor health, he then became one of Pius II”s most important advisors and aides. Together they pushed forward the crusade project. Eager helpers, who were committed to the great project, were above all the Franciscans. Bessarion had a close relationship with them. On September 10, 1458, he assumed the function of Cardinal Protector of the Franciscan Order, whose representative in the College of Cardinals he thus became.

On Bessarion”s advice, or at least encouraged by it, the pope invited the Christian princes and city republics to a congress in Mantua, where joint action against the Turks was to be decided in the spring of 1459. But when Pius arrived at the meeting place with his court in May, he experienced a grave disappointment: no ruler attended in person, and the legations, whose primary duty was to safeguard the interests of their states, did not arrive until the course of the following months. At the opening session, which did not take place until September, Bessarion delivered a combative speech in which he described the atrocities committed in the conquest of Constantinople and pointed out the acute threat to Europe posed by the continuing Turkish advance. The congress, which met until January 1460, ended in failure, however. Little came of it except declarations of intent of dubious value. The only concrete result of Bessarion”s urging was the financing and raising of a Milanese and papal force of 300 men. This force sailed for Greece and took the city of Patras in a coup d”état, but then did nothing more, confining itself to plunder.

After all, Emperor Frederick III”s legation in Mantua promised to raise a powerful army of 10,000 horsemen and 32,000 infantrymen, provided that the German clergy would finance the enterprise through a tithe. This required Reichstag resolutions. To enable the mutually distrusting German princes to participate in the campaign, the negotiators planned to impose a three-year peace obligation in the empire. A papal legate was to preside over two imperial diets in Nuremberg and Vienna. Pius entrusted this task to his zealous comrade-in-arms Bessarion. He charged him with brokering peace among the princes and obtaining the granting of tithes. The legate was also to gather the army and appoint its commander.

In early February 1460, the aged and sickly cardinal, plagued by a stone ailment, made the arduous winter journey from Venice across the Brenner Pass. At the Nuremberg City Hall on March 2, he opened the Diet, which had relatively few participants, with an impassioned Latin speech in humanist style. He announced the news that Turkish troops were advancing into Hungary and laid out the urgency of repelling them. However, a major obstacle was the disputes among the princes, which threatened to lead to a major military confrontation in the empire. Under these circumstances, a decision on the Turkish war was impossible. Undone, the legate continued his journey to Worms. Frederick III had called a meeting there to settle the feud between the Elector of Mainz, Diether von Isenburg, and Count Palatine Frederick I. The legate left Worms without having achieved anything.

It was not until March 29, 1460, that Bessarion arrived in Worms, where the meeting had already begun. Again nothing was achieved, rather the feared war of princes broke out. Another problem was Diether”s refusal to pay the Curia the 25,500 Rhenish florins he owed it for confirming his election as Archbishop of Mainz and for granting him the pallium. As legate, Bessarion was entrusted with the delicate task of resolving this conflict in the Pope”s favor. However, he did not dare to take decisive action against the powerful Elector of Mainz. Instead of passing judgment, the legate was content to order an investigation.

After the glaring failure in Germany, Bessarion went to Vienna, where Frederick III resided. He arrived there on May 4, 1460. The emperor gave the legate a splendid reception and agreed with him that the Imperial Diet of Vienna, which was to be convened in accordance with the decisions of Mantua, would open on May 11 to discuss the Turkish war. But since not a single prince appeared by then and only a few legations arrived, the beginning had to be postponed until September 1. Finally, on September 17, Bessarion was able to open the assembly, to which, after all, thirteen foreign princes, ten archbishops and bishops, and envoys from thirty-four cities had appeared. The negotiations proved to be very difficult. There was a generally unruly mood among the participants. The critical attitude towards the Pope, which had long been widespread north of the Alps and had already made itself felt at the Council of Basel, also characterized the climate here. Many of those present distrusted the Curia and were dismissive of demands for money from Rome.

The Diet ended in complete failure, they parted in dispute, and the envoys departed angrily in October 1460. The reasons for the failure were presented differently by the two antagonistic sides. In the anticurial camp, people were already miffed by the bitterness in Bessarion”s opening speech. Above all, he was resented for trying to force the payment of tithes with massive pressure. He himself denied this and wrote to the pope that he had only carried out his commission with regard to the tithe and had proceeded cautiously in doing so because of the irritable mood in the assembly. He described the envoys as stubborn and deceitful people. He also sharply criticized the German princes.

After the end of the negotiations, the legate wanted to return home, but at the pope”s insistence he stayed in Vienna for a longer time to explore further possibilities. He achieved nothing, however, with regard to his main concern. An additional mission the pope gave him was to mediate in the dispute between the emperor and King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary over the Hungarian crown. In this difficult mission he achieved success; he succeeded in initiating a peaceful settlement. Bessarion also tried to mediate in the feud between Frederick III and Archduke Albrecht VI, who was allied with Matthias Corvinus. It was not until September 1461 that the legate set off for home. He could only travel slowly because of his illness, which was taking its toll on him. Moreover, he had run out of money; he had taken out a loan of 600 ducats in Vienna for the costs of the return journey and had to ask a friend on the way to advance him funds. In Venice he was given a splendid reception. He arrived in Rome on November 20, 1461.

After the Ottoman troops had also conquered the despotate of Morea and the empire of Trapezunt and had advanced far in the Balkans, a political change occurred in the Republic of Venice. The Turkish expansion also reached Venetian territory and threatened trade. As a result, the ruling class of the Republic came to believe that the previous peace policy had failed and that war was inevitable. This development pleased the pope and the cardinals. At the Curia, great hopes were placed in the new Doge Cristoforo Moro, in office from May 1462, who supported the war. Moro, for his part, could count on the Church to finance the military operation. The Pope willingly fulfilled the Republic”s request to tax the clergy for this purpose. To organize the necessary measures, Bessarion was sent as a legate to Venice, where he arrived on July 22, 1463. There he had long enjoyed high prestige; he considered the city his adopted home, identified with its interests, and was therefore perceived by political observers as a Venetian. The Republic of Venice had admitted him to the Grand Council in December 1461 and had arranged for his name to be entered in the Golden Book. He had thus entered the patriciate of the city. He was now charged with bringing about the Republic”s declaration of war on the Sultan, securing funding for armaments, and coordinating Venetian planning with the papal project of a general crusade. His residence during this period was the Benedictine monastery of San Giorgio on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.

Already at the end of July, the legate managed to dispel the misgivings about the project and, against the resistance of the peace advocates, persuaded the Signory to go to war. To finance it, a special tax was levied on the clergy. Other sources of revenue included the sale of indulgences and the “thirtieth,” an ecclesiastical tax that all laymen in the Italian states were required to pay. Bessarion determined the details of clergy taxation. He determined the amount of the tax, graduated according to annual income. Those unwilling to pay were threatened with excommunication. The legate hoped to collect 150,000 to 200,000 ducats annually in this way.

During his legation, Bessarion intervened in Venetian domestic and foreign policy. In agreement with the government, he saw to it that the anti-Jewish regulations established by Pope Calixt III in 1456, which interfered with economic life, were suspended. The Jews were now promised undisturbed living in the Republic, allowed commercial activity and granted legal security for their business. This was also a matter of protecting them from the usual attacks of the Franciscan crusading preachers. For the legate, this was a delicate act, since he had to rely on the often rabidly anti-Jewish preachers to collect money. To justify his decision, he pointed, among other things, to the usefulness of Jewish lenders, who lent money to their clients at lower interest rates than Christian usurers. Moreover, he argued that Christians who practiced usury thereby endangered their salvation; therefore, it made sense to leave such business to the Jews. Forced conversions to Christianity were forbidden, and the retention of synagogues and cemeteries was conceded. A foreign policy success of the legate was the treaty of alliance between Venice and the Kingdom of Hungary, which he brought about in September 1463.

Independently of the great papal crusading enterprise, Venetian troops fought with varying success on Morea, without achieving any lasting conquests. The crusader army gathered in Ancona, where Bessarion also arrived with a galley he had built at his own expense, in the summer of 1464, even before the arrival of the Doge with the Venetian fleet. However, all the legate”s successes were undone when Pius II died in Ancona in August. After his death, the cardinals were not willing to pursue the project any further. Thus, the crusade had failed even before it began. At least Bessarion managed to get the ships and funds already provided by the Church handed over to the Venetians for the war; the money, 40,000 ducats, was intended for the military efforts of the Hungarian king.

The next pope, Paul II, a nephew of Eugene IV, was of a completely different disposition than his humanist- and education-friendly predecessor, Pius II. He was uncomprehending of humanism. Soon after his election, a conflict arose in the Curia when it became clear that Paul wanted to revoke the written promises of codetermination that he had given to the College of Cardinals in the conclave, but which he had not intended to keep from the outset. With this request he met with indignation in the College. Bessarion in particular, who had been one of the driving forces behind the co-determination initiative, refused to give in. However, the pope possessed superior means of power and prevailed. Paul could only break the Greek cardinal”s resistance by threatening him with excommunication. This power struggle led to estrangement between them. Bessarion withdrew from the Curia for some time. He suffered from his chronic illness and sought relief in the baths of Viterbo.

Meanwhile, the Turks continued their advance in the Balkans. In 1470, they also conquered the Greek island of Euboea, which was part of the eastern possessions of the Republic of Venice, and there they inflicted a massacre. This development caused great horror in the Occident. Now Bessarion took the floor again. He developed an intensive journalistic activity in order to get a crusade going after all. When in the summer of 1471, after the death of Paul II, the election of the pope was due, the Greek cardinal was considered a promising candidate. The Republic of Venice, in particular, lobbied for him because he had distinguished himself as the most notable spokesman for the crusade movement. In the conclave, six of the eighteen participating cardinals voted for him. In the end, however, the Franciscan Francesco della Rovere, who called himself Sixtus IV, was elected.

The new pope was a friend of Bessarion and had been sponsored by him. He was enthusiastic about the Turkish war. To advance the cause, he appointed five cardinals as legates and charged them with promoting the crusade in the most important states. Among them was Bessarion, to whom Sixtus assigned jurisdiction over France, England, and the Duchy of Burgundy. In addition to the war project, the legate was to solve domestic and ecclesiastical problems in France. At times Bessarion wanted to refuse the assignment because of his poor health, but finally he gave in to the urging of the rector of the Paris University, Guillaume Fichet, especially since encouragement also came from the French royal court. On April 20, 1472, the legate left Rome.

On the way, Bessarion visited the ruler of Urbino, the famous condottiere Federico da Montefeltro, with whose family he had long been on friendly terms. In Bologna, where he arrived in May, he took care of an important political project: He had taken charge of the members of the Byzantine imperial family who had fled to Italy, among whom was Zoë (Sophia) Palaiologina, niece of Constantine XI, the last emperor. She was to be married to the Russian Grand Prince Ivan III. Bessarion, who was behind this plan, now made provisions for the marriage. Probably the marriage project was the result of an initiative of the Pope and the Greek Cardinal and aimed at involving the Grand Prince in an anti-Turkish alliance. The marriage, which was more in the papal than in the Russian interest, was consummated in the same year.

While Bessarion was still on the road, a war broke out between the French king Louis XI and Duke Charles the Bold of Burgundy. Louis was not interested in the crusade at all, he was interested in ecclesiastical support in the fight against Charles and the Duke of Brittany, Francis II, who was allied with Burgundy. Moreover, he distrusted the papal envoy because he had to try to mediate as a neutral authority, which exposed him to the suspicion of sympathizing with Charles the Bold. This suspicion had been nurtured by the Milanese Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza at the French court; Sforza was an opponent of the Burgundian, and moreover there was a traditional rivalry between Milan and Bessarion”s adopted city of Venice. The French king, warned by Sforza, received the legate coolly and granted him only a single audience. There seems to have been no mention of the Crusade at the meeting. Louis demanded the excommunication of his opponents if they did not stop fighting. Bessarion did not agree to this. Without having achieved anything with regard to his main concern, the legate started his journey home. He renounced his planned meeting with Charles the Bold, who suspected him of taking sides with the other side. Thus his last attempt to achieve something for the crusade failed.

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Humanism

Only in Italy did Bessarion acquire a solid knowledge of Latin and learn the Italian language. Soon after emigrating, he was able to express himself fluently in Latin like a Western humanist. In doing so, he proved himself to be a good, but not outstanding stylist. In his own judgment, it was hardly possible for a Greek to write Latin with the same fluency as the Italians.

The controversy over the filioque prompted Bessarion to undertake a text-critical study, which he did in an unusually thorough and systematic manner. The goal was to clarify the disputed question of the opinion of the late antique church father Basil of Caesarea, who was considered a preeminent authority in both the West and the East and was held in the highest esteem by the Orthodox. The authenticity of a passage in Basil”s controversial treatise against the Arian Eunomius, the surviving wording of which revealed the church father”s unequivocal commitment to Roman dogma, was disputed. Orthodox theologians rejected this passage as an interpolation; they claimed that the words in question had been inserted later by a forger. After his return from the council negotiations, Bessarion had all the manuscripts that could be found in the Byzantine monasteries investigated. According to his information, it turned out that the disputed words were in all the ancient codices written before the schism of the 11th century. In the copies made later, however, the passage was missing. Moreover, Bessarion found that the words, offensive from the Orthodox point of view, had been erased in two old manuscripts; in one they had been erased, in the other they had been covered with ink. This proved for him the authenticity of the passage and the later deliberate falsification of the wording. In addition, Bessarion defended the authenticity with a stylistic argumentation.

Already during the time in Bologna in the 1450s, the term “academy” was used for a group of intellectuals around Bessarion. Later, the cardinal gathered a circle of scholars around him in his house in Rome, which was occasionally referred to as his “academy.” Among them were renowned humanists such as the historian and archaeologist Flavio Biondo, the Greek scholars Francesco Filelfo and Theodorus Gaza, the manuscript scholar Poggio Bracciolini, and the historian and papal librarian Bartolomeo Platina. Some “academics,” however, stayed in Rome only temporarily. Bessarion”s circle also included the feisty philologist Lorenzo Valla, who had come to Rome in 1448. Valla found employment at the Curia thanks to the Greek cardinal”s intercession, although he was very controversial in church circles and suspected of heresy. The cardinal”s house was also frequented by the Aristotelian Georgios Trapezuntios, who later became his adversary in a fierce controversy over Plato and Aristotle. Bessarion was particularly close friends with the humanist Giacomo Ammanati, whose admission to the College of Cardinals he obtained from Pius II.

Bessarion exchanged ideas with leading foreign intellectuals by letter. His correspondence with Guillaume Fichet, the rector of the Paris University, shows the reputation he enjoyed even in faraway countries. Among his pen pals were such contrasting personalities as the spiritually oriented philosopher Marsilio Ficino and the poet Antonio Beccadelli, who caused a sensation with obscene epigrams. The impartiality of his dealings with people who were highly suspect from an ecclesiastical point of view was unusual for a cardinal. Without prejudice, he associated with the eroticist Beccadelli, who was discredited as shameless, the critic of the papacy Valla, and the anti-Christian Plethon. Not even Plethon”s sharp polemics against the Roman Church and the Church Union dampened Bessarion”s enthusiasm for his old philosophy teacher, whose sons he paid alimony to after their father”s death. His impartiality was also evident in the humanist controversy over the primacy of Platonic or Aristotelian philosophy, in which he strongly defended Platonism; he expressed appreciation for the thought of Aristotle, who was “our teacher in every science,” and criticized anti-Aristotelian polemics that seemed inappropriate. Like the Neoplatonists of late antiquity, he followed a harmonizing approach.

During his legation in Bologna, which lasted several years, Bessarion put special emphasis on the promotion of the university there, which was rich in tradition. He renewed its statutes, appointed capable professors and took care of their salaries, supported poor students and took structural measures. However, he did not succeed in lowering the extraordinarily high examination fees. Among the scholars he brought to Bologna was the young humanist Niccolò Perotti, who first took on the task of teaching poetics and rhetoric at the university, and in 1453 became Bessarion”s secretary and confidant. The legate also took care of the artistic decoration of ecclesiastical spaces, commissioning frescoes from Galasso Galassi. Furthermore, he is said to have installed the first public clock in Bologna.

Bessarion cultivated intellectual exchange with Pope Nicholas V, who was enthusiastic about classical education. He supported him in the expansion of the papal library by procuring Greek manuscripts from Trapezunt. At his suggestion, Nicholas decided to promote the great project of a complete Latin translation of the writings of Aristotle. Bessarion had already begun this task; at his suggestion, the pope entrusted the Byzantine humanist Theodorus Gaza with continuing the work.

During his stay in Vienna, Bessarion sought contact with the professors teaching there. In particular, he began a fruitful collaboration with the eminent astronomers Georg von Peuerbach and Johannes Müller (Regiomontanus). At the Cardinal”s suggestion, Peuerbach first took on the task of compiling an edited Latin version of the great astronomical manual known as the Almagest by the ancient scholar Klaudios Ptolemaios. When the Vienna legation ended, Peuerbach was no longer alive, but Regiomontanus accepted Bessarion”s invitation to accompany him to Rome and completed the work there.

Another of Bessarion”s concerns was the care and support of Byzantine scholars and writers who emigrated as a result of the Turkish conquest of their homeland. Among the refugees he assisted in establishing a new existence in exile were Theodorus Gaza and Constantine Laskaris. He was a close friend of Gaza. He also arranged for the ransom of Byzantine prisoners of the Sultan.

When Paul II took action against the circle of scholars of the classical scholar Julius Pomponius Laetus and had some humanists from this community, whom he suspected of conspiracy and heresy, arrested, Bessarion interceded on behalf of those arrested. A prominent figure among the imprisoned scholars, Bartolomeo Platina, belonged to Bessarion”s circle, and Julius Pomponius Laetus had also frequented the Greek”s house. After some time, the humanist-minded cardinals succeeded in obtaining relief for the prisoners, and finally they obtained the release of what were in reality harmless friends of antiquity.

Bessarion”s library was of outstanding importance for the reception of Greek literature in the West. The impetus for the cardinal to collect books came from the conquest of Constantinople. It led him to the project of saving the intellectual heritage of Greekism, which had been preserved until then in the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and making it accessible to the educated in a safe place. To this end, he systematically purchased manuscripts in the Greek-speaking world. What he could not buy, he had copied. He liked to compile the collected works of an author in a luxurious volume. Thus he created in his private library the largest collection of Greek books in the West. Some of them were rare or even known only through his copy. He wrote dozens of codices entirely or largely himself, many of which he provided with his own handwritten annotations and textual improvements. Technical literature dominated over the underrepresented fiction. Mathematical and astronomical works formed a focal point of the collection. Among the Latin books, scholastic literature was strongly represented. In 1468, he donated the library to the Church of San Marco and thus to the Republic of Venice, which administered San Marco. At that time, according to his catalog, it contained 746 manuscripts, including 482 Greek ones. Later, hundreds more books were added; in total, the donation consisted of more than 1100 manuscripts and incunabula. The patron made it a condition that the collection be open to the public and that no book be sold or temporarily removed from Venice. Lending within the city against a deposit was to be possible. The donation formed the basis of the later famous Biblioteca Marciana. Some codices from this collection are of great importance for the textual transmission of ancient Greek literature. The publisher Aldo Manuzio used some of the manuscripts from Bessarion”s donation for his editions of the classics.

An important field of Bessarion”s activity was textual criticism, the philological study of the surviving versions of a text. In this field he had considerable expertise. The available manuscripts of a work were copied, the copies then collated and corrected. A fair copy was then prepared and, if necessary, corrected again. This produced an optimized version, which was then marked “corrected manuscript” (codex correctus) or “best book” (Latin liber optimus, Greek biblíon áriston).

Bessarion had a series of luxurious liturgical codices made. Among them were chorale books which, according to his will, came into the possession of the Franciscan convent in Cesena. They are among the most important products of northern Italian book art around the middle of the 15th century. After the abolition of the monastery in the 19th century, seven chorale books came to the Biblioteca Malatestiana. Another treasure is Bessarion”s Staurotheque, a magnificent Byzantine reliquary that he donated to the Confraternity of Santa Maria della Carità in Venice. This cult object is now in the Galleries dell”Accademia. In recent times it has been studied in detail from the point of view of art history.

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Monastery reform

A major field of activity was the reform of “Basilian” monasticism in southern Italy. There, many monks lived in monasteries where the liturgy was traditionally celebrated according to the Greek rite, although they belonged to the Roman Church. Since the instructions of Basil of Caesarea formed the basis of monastic life, they are called Basilians. The material and spiritual decline in these communities had led to the need for reform. As a learned Byzantine monk and theologian, Bessarion was eminently qualified to tackle the problems. He assumed responsibility for them. To decide on reform steps, he held a general chapter in November 1446 in his titular Roman church, attended by representatives of the Basilian monasteries of Apulia, Calabria and Sicily. In 1451, Pope Nicholas V granted the Byzantine cardinal the authority to visit all these monasteries. Calixt III appointed him archimandrite of San Salvatore in Messina. Bessarion retained this prebend until 1462, when he assumed instead the position of Commendatary Abbot of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata, a famous but then decrepit Greek abbey in Latium. There, the cardinal had the monastery buildings repaired and expanded, and saw to it that the financial situation was restored.

Since the Greek language skills of many Basilians were inadequate, Bessarion established a school of Greek in the monastery of San Salvatore in Messina to raise the level of education. There, from 1468, the distinguished scholar Constantine Laskaris taught. In addition, Bessarion summarized Basil”s instructions for community life in a Greek compendium. In one of the Greek monasteries of southern Italy, he discovered two previously lost ancient works, the poem The Rape of Helen by Kolluthos and the Posthomerica by Quintus of Smyrna.

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Death and burial

After the unsuccessful legation in France, Bessarion was discouraged and attacked by his illness. On the journey home, the strenuous crossing of the Alps took its toll on him, and he also fell ill with dysentery. Dramatically weakened, he had to interrupt the journey in Ravenna. He died there on November 18, 1472, rumored to have been poisoned.

The body was brought to Rome and buried in the Basilica of the Twelve Apostles, which the deceased had once received as his title church, in the chapel of St. Eugenia. Bessarion had the chapel frescoed in the 1460s; the extent to which the painter Antoniazzo Romano was involved in this work is disputed among researchers. Remains of the structure and the murals were found in 1959

After his emigration, Bessarion continued to appear demonstratively as a Greek. He wore the black Greek monk”s clothing and the long beard common in his homeland. This caused a sensation and also offence in the West. Supposedly his appearance contributed to the fact that he was not elected pope. His political opponent Gregor Heimburg called him a goat because of the beard.

Three portraits of Bessarion on frescoes commissioned by himself have been destroyed. One was in Rome in the Chapel of St. Eugenia, his burial place; another, executed by Bramantino, was in the Vatican; the third was painted by Galasso Galassi in the Chapel of St. Benedict in the Bolognese church of Madonna del Monte. A portrait of the praying cardinal by the Venetian artist Gentile Bellini, which originally adorned a tabernacle door, was acquired by the National Gallery in London in 2002. He appears here as a simple monk in plain robes without the attributes of his dignity as cardinal and patriarch. Another portrait painted by Bellini showing him with his staurotheque has not survived, but a copy made from memory in the 16th century after the original was lost is in the possession of the Gallerie dell”Accademia in Venice. Destroyed is a fresco by Bellini in the Doge”s Palace in Venice. After Bessarion”s death, Federico da Montefeltro had the deceased depicted on a wooden panel in the Ducal Palace of Urbino, along with other famous figures. This painting, which can be seen today in the Louvre, was made by Justus van Gent and Pedro Berruguete. On the funerary monument to Pope Pius II, sculpted by Paolo Romano and now in the church of Sant”Andrea della Valle, Bessarion can be seen on a bas-relief. Furthermore, in a 1502 painting by Vittore Carpaccio in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice, an aged monk wearing glasses and bearing the cardinal”s features kneels in a group of mourners.

Two of Bessarion”s chant books in the Biblioteca Malatestiana in Cesena each contain a profile portrait of the cardinal, showing him kneeling in prayer. He also appears in several other illuminations, including one by Gioacchino di Giovanni (de Gigantibus) in a codex from the 1470s. There Bessarion is depicted with King Ferdinand I of Naples.

Silvia Ronchey presented a thorough iconographic study in 2008. In her judgment, the portraits created in the contemporary Venetian environment are distinguished from the others by a striking ugliness. They are almost grotesque. In reality, however, according to the sources, Bessarion was a glamorous and fascinating figure, and this is confirmed by the portraits created elsewhere. Ronchey believes that the unflattering portrayal by Venetian artists reflects the ambivalent, sometimes distant and sarcastic attitude of parts of the urban aristocracy toward the naturalized Greek.

Bessarion”s best-known work is his large-scale defense of Plato and Platonism against Aristotelian criticism. Otherwise, he wrote mainly statements on theological issues and speeches. In addition, there is his extensive correspondence. Furthermore, he translated ancient philosophical and theological literature as well as his own works from Greek into Latin. He used to compose his writings first in Greek and later translate them or have them translated for the Latin-speaking reading public. In order to meet the high stylistic demands of the humanists on Latin texts, he used the help of collaborators when translating.

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Philosophical writings

In the Byzantine Empire and among the Byzantines in exile, a dispute was underway around the mid-15th century between Platonists and Aristotelians, in which Bessarion”s teacher Plethon was the most prominent representative of Platonism. This conflict was carried to the Western scholarly world by the Greek emigrant Georgios Trapezuntios, who lived in Italy and wrote in Latin. In the 1450s, he wrote a pamphlet, Comparatio philosophorum Platonis et Aristotelis, in which he compared the two ancient thinkers and polemicized fiercely against Plato from an Aristotelian point of view. He was scathingly critical of both the teachings and the character of the philosopher he hated and also criticized the literary quality of the Platonic dialogues. One of his main theses was that Platonism was incompatible with Christianity, while Aristotelianism was close to Christian truth. Moreover, he argued that Plato expressed himself in riddles and wrote dark and untrue things instead of dealing with the basics of logic. He had disregarded principles of ethics and had not proved his assertions. Aristotle, on the other hand, had provided clarity and replaced the aberrant assumptions of his teacher with real knowledge. In addition, Trapezuntios also attacked Plethon, whom he ranked with Plato, Epicurus and Mohammed among the particularly effective false teachers and seducers. He made a topical reference with the assertion that Platonic influence had weakened Greekism and thus contributed to the downfall of the Byzantine Empire. This fate now threatened the West as well.

At first, a competent opinion on this attack was hardly possible for the Latin-speaking humanists, since Plato”s teachings were still little known in the West at that time. This changed only when Bessarion intervened. He wrote an extensive rebuttal to Trapezuntios” polemic, In calumniatorem Platonis (Against the Slanderer of Plato), which he revised several times and had printed in 1469. In this way he aimed to refute the “calumniator,” whom he nowhere mentioned by name, and at the same time to justify himself as a distinguished Platonist. However, he was not only concerned with the current challenge posed by the thesis that Platonism was contrary to faith and its possible effects on his standing in the Curia. Rather, he had a more comprehensive goal in mind: as a thorough connoisseur of ancient philosophy, he wanted to introduce Western educated people who did not know Greek to Plato”s world of thought and to provide them with the hitherto missing complete account of Platonism in Latin. In doing so, he also drew on Neoplatonic sources and medieval specialist literature. He dealt in detail with the individual fields of knowledge treated in Plato”s dialogues, paying particular attention to political theory. Bessarion placed particular emphasis on rejecting the dangerous accusation that Plato condoned homosexuality and pederasty. The humanist defender of Platonism interpreted symbolically statements in the ancient thinker”s works whose wording seemed offensive from the Christian point of view of the time. He interpreted them, following the example of the ancient Neoplatonic commentary tradition, as coded references to hidden sublime truths. This approach served him as an important tool in invalidating the criticisms of Trapezuntios, whose literal understanding of the text he considered misguided. He carefully avoided combining the defense of Platonism with an unnecessary devaluation of the Aristotelian philosophy glorified by Trapezuntios. He presented Aristotle as a further developer of Platonic thought.

Bessarion probably reacted to an antiplatonic writing of Georgios Trapezuntios in 1458 with the treatise De natura et arte (later he added a Latin version to the edition of his main work In calumniatorem Platonis printed in 1469.

De natura et arte is an investigation of the workings of nature. It discusses the views of ancient philosophers on the role of deliberation (to buleúesthai) in artistry or technique (téchnē) and in nature. The questions are whether nature proceeds with a conscious intention that corresponds to human planning, that is, after prior deliberation, and whether artifice or technique necessarily requires deliberation. The starting point are relevant statements of Aristotle in the second book of his Physics. There the two questions are answered in the negative. According to the Platonists, on the other hand, every natural process is based on a deliberation of a divine instance, and nature acts as an instrument of the deity. Bessarion thought that Aristotle also recognized the purposefulness of natural processes. He denied that nature has its own deliberation, but he did not deny that its action presupposes a superior planning consciousness. Rather, he had to assume the latter, because it resulted as a consequence from the purposefulness of the action of nature recognized by him. Thus there is no contradiction between the Aristotelian and the Platonic conception. To support this harmonizing interpretation of Aristotle, Bessarion drew on the ancient Peripatetic and Neoplatonic tradition; he invoked Alexander of Aphrodisias and Simplikios. Thus he contradicted the interpretation of Trapezuntios, according to which Aristotle rejected a reasoning underlying the natural processes and also rejected the idea of a divine planning in the creation. Trapezuntios had argued that deliberation presupposes doubt and ignorance, but that God is omniscient. Therefore, there is purposefulness in the eternal, but no deliberation. Against it Bessarion objected, the divine intellect grasps the purpose and the means with a simple intuitive act and steers so the nature. This act of thinking was meant here with “consideration”.

Bessarion arrived at a differentiated assessment with regard to “deliberation” in artistry or technique. Following Aristotle, he found that the more precisely the object of a technique and the work associated with it were determined, the less deliberation it required.

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Theological works

As bishop of Nikaia, Bessarion examined the controversy over the outcome of the Holy Spirit in a Greek treatise. Later he put on a Latin version. It is his rejoinder to the rebuttals (antirhḗseis in Bessarion, according to the authentic title antepigraphaí) written by Archbishop Gregorios Palamas in the 14th century to refute a pro-Union statement by Patriarch John XI Bekkos. Palamas, the founder of the Palamism named after him, had distinguished himself in the dispute over church union as the spokesman for the strictly Orthodox direction, which rejected any compromise. Bessarion compiled the position of Bekko and the rebuttal of Palam on each of the points in dispute, and then added his own defense of the patriarch”s view. With this writing, written before the conclusion of the negotiations of the Council of Union of Florence, Bessarion was already taking a stance compatible with the dogma of the Western Church.

Bessarion”s oral statement on the filioque, later disseminated in writing, is known as the Dogmatic Address, which he delivered in April 1439 at a private meeting of Byzantine bishops during the Council of the Union in Florence. It has survived both in the original Greek and in a free Latin translation prepared by the author. Building on the preliminary work done by Patriarch John Bekkos in the 13th century, Bessarion analyzed the statements of the ancient Greek Church Fathers on the exit of the Holy Spirit. He examined the texts from a linguistic and logical point of view. His finding was that the commonly revered authorities of the Church Fathers” time would have attributed a participation to the Son of God. To the Latin version he added an explanation (declaratio), in which he explained to his Western readers the way of expression of the Greek theologians.

Shortly before or soon after the conclusion of the Union negotiations in Florence, Bessarion wrote an investigation in Greek on the outcome of the Holy Spirit, in which he argued against four syllogisms of the scholar Maximos Planudes. Planudes had used the syllogisms to attack the teaching of the Western Church. In his reply, Bessarion refrained from supporting his position by invoking the authority of the Church Fathers and relied only on the persuasiveness of his own arguments. To make his remarks lively, he addressed Planudes, who died more than 120 years ago, directly as if he were alive.

In the 1440s, Bessarion addressed a Greek letter to the Byzantine official Alexios Laskaris Philanthropinos, which he later brought to the attention of the Western public in a Latin version. Laskaris had been one of the emperor”s companions at the Council of Union. His interest in the church union related primarily to its political consequences. Bessarion sent him his Dogmatic Address and the letter in which he described the events at the council from his point of view, justified his behavior, and argued for the dogma of the Western Church. According to his account, the factual superiority of the Latins in the negotiations was so great that their opponents finally knew nothing more to say in reply and remained silent. The cardinal presented a thorough discussion of the dogmatic controversy, treating in detail central arguments of the opposing side. For the history of the Council, the letter is a valuable source.

After the council, Markos Eugenikos, Bessarion”s main theological opponent, published his pamphlet Syllogistic Chapters. In the Byzantine Empire, the supporters of the Church Union were fiercely attacked and put on the defensive. Under intense pressure, the pro-union Patriarch of Constantinople, Gregorios III, had to leave Constantinople in 1450. He emigrated to Rome, holding fast to his claim to the patriarchal dignity. To justify his position, he caused to be written a rebuttal to the Syllogistic Chapters. This reply (apókrisis), which has been handed down in Greek and Latin and in which each of the 57 chapters of the opponent”s controversy is dealt with in detail, is the work of two authors: the comments on the first seventeen chapters were written by an unknown Greek theologian even before the patriarch”s emigration; the remaining forty chapters were dealt with later by Bessarion. Only reluctantly did the cardinal take on this task at the insistence of Gregory, to which he probably devoted himself during his legature in Bologna. He considered, as can be seen from his introductory letter to the client, a further repetition of the arguments that had long been exhaustively presented superfluous, but then complied with the request for a thorough presentation.

After the middle of the 15th century, a dispute over a problem of biblical interpretation was underway, involving humanists and theologians. As in the controversy over Plato, Bessarion and Georgios Trapezuntios were the main opponents in this dispute. At issue was the correct Latin rendering of a passage in John”s Gospel. According to the Vulgate text version used at the time, the authoritative late antique translation of the original Greek text, John 21:22 reads in Latin “Sic eum volo manere, donec veniam, quid ad te?” meaning “So I will remain until I come; what is that to you?” This is an error; instead of sic (“so”), the Latin text must read si (“if”) for Greek ean. Then the statement gets its correct content: “If I want him to stay until I come, what is that to you?” From the erroneous Latin sentence, Trapezuntios concluded that the apostle had not died, but continued to live in obscurity until the end of the world. He considered it inadmissible to change the text of the Vulgate, which was considered authoritative, on the basis of the Greek original.

Bessarion took a position on this in a study dedicated specifically to this question. In doing so, he took up text-critical observations made by the Roman scholar Nicola Maniacutia in the 12th century. He proved by philological argumentation that the hitherto accepted translation falsifies the sense of the sentence and that the sic cannot be saved by reinterpreting ean. From this he concluded that a conjecture was inevitable. On this occasion, he also addressed the general problem of Bible translation and textual criticism of the Latin Bible. He used examples to show the unreliability of the common Vulgate text. Thus he came to the conclusion that it was in principle legitimate to correct the Vulgate on the basis of the authentic original Greek version.

In the sixties of the fifteenth century in Constantinople the patriarchal dignity was firmly in the hands of the anti-Latino tendency favored by the Ottoman Sultan, but in some Greek islands the Church Union still had supporters, especially in the Venetian sphere of power. After Pius II appointed Bessarion Patriarch of Constantinople in exile, the latter addressed a circular letter, written in Viterbo on May 27, 1463, to all Unionists in the Patriarchate. This “general letter” (epistolḗ katholikḗ) served to defend the Union and to justify the author. Bessarion presented the position of the Roman church in a generally understandable way. He justified the filioque as well as the papal claim to primacy over the Eastern patriarchs. In doing so, he argued that Christendom needed a single head, for only unified leadership could guarantee order. That individual rule was superior to all other forms of government had already been established by Homer. Plato and Christ had also given monarchy preference in principle. The downfall of the once glorious Byzantine Empire was a consequence of the disastrous division of the church, which was brought about by people who were greedy for power.

Bessarion”s writing on the Eucharist, a late work, is available both in the original Greek and in a Latin translation. This treatise is also devoted to a theological point of contention between the Western and Eastern Churches, and again Markos Eugenikos is the opponent whose view Bessarion opposes. At issue is whether the epiclesis, the invocation of the Holy Spirit at the Eucharist, effects the consecration of bread and wine, as Orthodox dogmatics teach, or whether, according to the Western Church view, the words of institution constitute the act of consecration. While the argument of Markos Eugenikos is based primarily on the early church liturgies, Bessarion appeals primarily to the wording of the words of institution. He argues that the epiclesis in the ancient liturgies has different versions, while the words of consecration in the Gospels have been handed down uniformly and thus guarantee the greatest possible certainty required here.

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Speeches

Even during Bessarion”s student days in Constantinople, his talents caught the attention of the imperial family. He wrote a tribute, often called a funeral oration, to Emperor Manuel II, who died in 1425, but it was not delivered on the day of the funeral but at a later memorial service. This performance apparently made an impression at court. The work survives in an anthology created by the author, which contains, among other things, nine other Greek speeches: a eulogy to St. Bessarion, an encomium addressed to Emperor Alexios IV Komnenos of Trapezunt, three funeral orations to Alexios” wife Theodora Komnene, who died in 1426, three consolation orations to Emperor John VIII. on the death of his third wife Mary of Trapezunt, who had died in 1439, and a speech written for the exiled Metropolitan Dositheos in defense of his claim to his seat in Trapezunt before the synod in Constantinople. Outside the anthology, three other rhetorical works by Bessarion from the period before his emigration have survived: a funeral oration for Cleopa (Kleope) Malatesta, the wife of the despot Theodoros II of Morea who died in 1433, the opening speech of October 8, 1438, at the Council of Ferrara, and the Dogmatic Oration of April 1439.

As legate in Bologna, the cardinal wrote a eulogy for Luigi Bentivogli, an important member of the family that dominated the city at that time. The occasion was the presentation of an honorary papal gene to this prominent citizen.

As part of his crusade efforts, Bessarion appeared as an orator. The speeches with which he promoted his project at the Congress of Mantua in 1459 and at the Diet of Nuremberg on March 2, 1460 have survived, as well as his address to the participants of the Diet of Vienna in 1460. After the Turkish conquest of Euboea, he wrote fictitious speeches to the princes of Italy against the Turks, with which he wanted to rouse the Christian rulers. He stated that it was the Sultan”s intention to conquer Italy and then from there to subjugate the rest of the world. With his plan of world domination, Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople, was following the example of Alexander the Great, whom he admired. One of Bessarion”s main theses was that the Ottoman Empire was expansive by nature, since it could only ensure its continued existence if it continued to expand. Mehmed knew that refraining from further conquests would be interpreted as a sign of weakness by his numerous internal and external enemies. Therefore, he had to attack in order to secure what he had already won. He could only intimidate his Asiatic opponents and keep them in check by ever new victories in Europe. Thus, a lasting peace would be impossible. The failure of the Byzantine attempts to contain Ottoman expansion demonstrated the impossibility of peaceful coexistence. The Turks” previous military successes had been made possible by the discord of their opponents, and such discord was now the starting point in Italy as well. The religious context – the confrontation with Islam – recedes completely into the background in the cardinal”s account. Bessarion”s confidant Guillaume Fichet had the rhetorical work printed in Paris in 1471. Fichet sent the incunabulum to numerous secular and clerical rulers, each with an individual dedicatory letter. An Italian translation by Ludovico Carbone was published in Venice in the same year.

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Eulogy to Trapezunt

Among the early works is Bessarion”s Greek eulogy to his hometown Trapezunt. It is an ekphrasis, possibly delivered as a speech during one of the author”s stays in Trapezunt. It offers a detailed description of the glorified city, including the suburbs and the imperial palace on the Acropolis. Unlike many other cities, Trapezunt was not in decline, but was becoming more and more beautiful. Thanks to the excellent harbor, the best on the Black Sea, the city is an important long-distance trade center, and handicrafts are flourishing. Other advantages are the pleasant climate, the fertile soil and the abundance of wood, which is important for the construction of ships and houses. The history is treated in detail, even the prehistory of the founding of the city is broadly painted. Bessarion emphasizes that Trapezunt was never conquered by enemies.

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Memorandum for the despot Constantine

Insight into the political theory of the Byzantine humanist is provided by his memorandum to the despot of Morea, the future emperor Constantine XI, written around 1444 as a letter. It contains his advice for the security and welfare of the despotate. His plans were based on the optimistic assumption, unrealistic given the conditions of the time, that the peninsula of Morea could be defended against Ottoman expansion in the long term. He proposed sending young Byzantines to Italy for training, so that they could later usefully apply the skills they had acquired there back home. In various fields of technology, especially shipbuilding, the remnants of the Byzantine Empire were then short of skilled workers, as many capable technicians had already emigrated. Among the measures Bessarion encouraged were the founding of new cities, the exploitation of natural resources such as iron ore, and the promotion of manufacturing. Grain exports were to be banned to prevent famine. To firmly establish the church union, he advised marriages of Byzantine nobles to Western women, who would make Roman dogma native to Morea. In contrast to the traditionally dominant conservative state doctrines, according to which changes in the law are harmful and destabilize the state, he advocated legislative flexibility; he believed that legislation should adapt pragmatically to changes in political reality.

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Letters

Numerous Greek and Latin letters from and to Bessarion have been preserved. He himself compiled part of his correspondence in handwriting. The content is partly private, partly literary, philosophical, theological, political or related to his official duties. Some letters are important historical sources.

In terms of the history of philosophy, the correspondence that Bessarion conducted from Italy with Georgios Gemistos Plethon is revealing. He consulted his former teacher about problems of Neoplatonism and the disagreements of the ancient Neoplatonists. Among other things, the two scholars discussed freedom of the will. Plethon, in contrast to Bessarion, held a deterministic worldview and believed that the will was subject to an inner necessity.

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Expert opinion on the Easter bill

In 1470, Bessarion presented Pope Paul II with an expert opinion on the Easter reckoning – the calculation of the date of Easter – which he had probably prepared at the suggestion of the astronomer Regiomontanus and with his support. The subject is the determination of the spring full moon, on which the Easter reckoning depends. In the Julian calendar used at that time, which contained too many leap years, the calendrical beginning of spring had shifted by several days over the centuries in relation to the astronomical one, the vernal equinox. The result was that in 1470 Easter was celebrated more than a month too late. Bessarion pointed out this error, demonstrating the need for calendar reform.

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Latin translations

As part of his efforts to preserve and disseminate Greek cultural assets, Bessarion undertook a major collaborative project: to provide all of Aristotle”s writings in new Latin translations that would meet the requirements of the humanists. The starting point was his translation of the ancient philosopher”s Metaphysics, commissioned by King Alfonso of Naples. For this he compared the literal and therefore linguistically deficient late medieval translation by Wilhelm von Moerbeke with the Greek text. Like Moerbeke, he translated literally and gave preference to accuracy over linguistic elegance, but he strove for a somewhat more fluent style of expression.

Bessarion also translated the memoirs of Socrates (Memorabilia) by the writer Xenophon into Latin. This work he dedicated to Cardinal Cesarini. To his speeches to the princes of Italy against the Turks, he added a translation of the first Olynthian speech of the Athenian statesman Demosthenes, which he had made in order to draw attention to the topicality of the thoughts of the famous ancient rhetor in the face of the Turkish threat. By linking to the Athenian”s resistance to the conquest policy of King Philip II of Macedonia, the cardinal wanted to place his call for defense against Ottoman expansion in the tradition of an ancient struggle for freedom.

As a translator, Bessarion also showed a special interest in the Greek church father Basil of Caesarea. He translated sermons by the late antique theologian into Latin.

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Poems for the dead

With poems for the dead in iambs, Bessarion paid tribute to the Italian Teodora Tocco, the first wife of the future Emperor Constantine XI, who died in 1429, and Cleopa Malatesta, the Italian wife of the despot Theodoros II of Morea, who died in 1433. In the poem on Cleopa, he had the widower Theodoros act as spokesman and glorify the bond of conjugal love. In reality, however, the marriage of the misogynous despot had been marked by serious discord.

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15th century and early modern period

Thanks to his equilibrating nature, his diligence and his literary skills, the Byzantine emigrant was popular among humanists. His expertise in philology and classical studies earned him a high reputation among his contemporaries. In the descriptions of his admirers, he appears as the ideal image of a cardinal. Already during Bessarion”s lifetime Bartolomeo Platina, who owed him his release from prison, wrote a eulogy on him, which is valuable as a biographical source. The funeral oration by the bishop of Fermo, Niccolò Capranica, offers further details; however, Capranica”s credibility is viewed skeptically by scholars. Bessarion”s friend and secretary Niccolò Perotti wrote a biography that is now lost. Another contemporary humanist, the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, devoted a chapter to the Greek scholar in his biographies. Cardinal Giacomo Ammanati, a close friend, expressed himself particularly enthusiastically. After Bessarion”s death, he praised the tireless zeal of the deceased for the common good; without him, nothing had been begun and nothing had been completed at the Curia, everything had rested on his shoulders. Contemporaries also appreciated the generosity of the Cardinal, which he showed above all with the donation of his precious library to the Republic of Venice. Gasparo da Verona, the biographer of Paul II, reported that Bessarion was of a cheerful disposition, and Capranica mentioned the cheerfulness of the humanist”s guests when returning home after the talks in his house.

Lorenzo Valla”s philological criticism of the Bible followed a path in which the Byzantine humanist”s study of the disputed passage in John”s Gospel served as a model for him. From Valla comes the often quoted remark that Bessarion was the greatest Latinist among the Greeks and the greatest Greekist among the Latins (inter Graecos Latinissimus, inter Latinos Graecissimus). These words did not only refer to the excellent command of both languages; Valla praised at the same time the emigrant”s ability to integrate perfectly into the Latin-speaking Western scholarly world, to introduce it to Greek and at the same time to convey Western thinking to his compatriots.

Bessarion”s main work In calumniatorem Platonis appeared in 1469 in an edition of 300 copies, which was high by the standards of the time. It was quickly disseminated in Italy by the author and attracted much attention even during his lifetime. It had an epoch-making effect on the intensive reception of Plato in the late quattrocento. Marsilio Ficino, Francesco Filelfo, Johannes Argyropulos, Niccolò Perotti, Antonio Beccadelli, Naldo Naldi, and Ognibene Bonisoli da Lonigo expressed their approval. In the early 16th century, this work was also known to humanists interested in the subject. The famous Venetian publisher Aldo Manuzio obtained a manuscript containing important subsequent additions and corrections by the author to the first edition of 1469, and published the revised text in 1503. Subsequently, the Aldine supplanted the earlier edition. It became the reference text in the debates that Platonists and Aristotelians had in the early Cinquecento. In addition to approving voices, there were also decidedly critical ones. One critic was Agostino Nifo, who attacked Bessarion in his Metaphysicarum disputationum dilucidarium, first printed in 1511. An opposing position was also taken by the French jurist Arnauld Ferron; he published a rebuttal in 1557 entitled Pro Aristotele adversum Bessarionem libellus, in which he accused the cardinal of bias against Aristotle. In the 1590s, Antonio Possevino and Giovan Battisa Crispo, two antiplatonic-minded theologians of the Counter-Reformation, took sides against Bessarion and for Georgios Trapezuntios.

The Moravian humanist Augustinus Moravus saw to it that two of the cardinal”s works, the Treatise on the Eucharist and the General Circular, were printed in Strasbourg in 1513.

The speeches to the princes of Italy against the Turks, which belong to the genre of the “Turkish speeches” popular at the time, achieved a strong after-effect in the 16th century. Their printing history shows that they received sustained attention. Nikolaus Reusner included them in the second volume of his collection of selected speeches against the Turks in 1596. Filippo Pigafetta, who prepared an Italian translation and published it in 1573, wanted to point out the continuing relevance of Bessarion”s appeals under the impression of the victory over the Turkish fleet in the naval battle of Lepanto in 1571. Also in 1573, a German translation prepared by Nikolaus Höniger appeared in Basel.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, however, Bessarion”s life”s work received little attention. Interest was largely limited to the reproduction of known facts in literature on the history of the church and education. A new biography did not appear until 1777; its author, the abbot Luigi Bandini, praised his hero effusively.

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Modern

In the modern era, systematic research into Bessarion”s life and work began late and hesitantly. A Latin treatise by Jan Conrad Hacke van Mijnden (1840) and an Italian one by Oreste Raggi (1844) did not yield any significant insights. Georg Voigt, an influential pioneer of Renaissance scholarship who was generally very negative about the Byzantine emigrants, delivered a scathing verdict. He found in 1859 that the cardinal”s political undertakings had all “turned to the null and usually to the ridiculous.” Outside the sphere of scholarship, there was nothing to praise in him; he had wrongly considered himself a genius, and instead of being eloquent, he was merely garrulous. In 1871, Wolfgang Maximilian von Goethe presented a collection of materials on Bessarion”s activities during the time of the Union Council. Seven years later, Henri Vast published a detailed biography, but largely confined himself to a compilation of known material. Also a study published in 1904 by Rudolf Rocholl

In 1886, Ludwig von Pastor, in his History of the Popes, written from a decidedly Catholic point of view, was extremely praiseworthy: Bessarion, “equally great as a man and a scholar” and “the last important Greek before the complete decline of his people”, had developed “a great activity for the good of the church, of science and of his unfortunate people” and had earned “the greatest merits for the church”.

Research received a new foundation in 1923 with the publication of the first volume of Ludwig Mohler”s comprehensive, groundbreaking work Cardinal Bessarion as Theologian, Humanist and Statesman. This study, which offers a thorough biographical account, is an extension of the dissertation that Mohler, an ecclesiastical historian, had submitted at Freiburg in 1918. It was followed in 1927 by the second and in 1942 by the third volume containing Mohler”s critical edition of Bessarion”s works and other sources. In the introduction to the biography, Mohler praised the Byzantine humanist”s competence in ancient studies, “his writing ability and creativity, his oratorical talent,” as well as “his moral dignity and noble way of thinking, his friendly, conciliatory nature.” Not only as a scholar had he achieved outstanding things, but also as an ecclesiastical politician he had been brilliantly equal to his task, and he had proved himself as a prudent diplomat. However, he had set his goals too high in bold idealism. Mohler wanted to show that Bessarion had been argumentatively far superior both in the theological disputes and in the philosophical controversy surrounding Plato and Aristotle.

In the second half of the 20th century, efforts to understand Bessarion”s scientific achievement and political significance intensified considerably, and in the early 21st century a lively interest continues to make itself felt. A wealth of research has appeared on individual aspects of his life and work, as well as on his library. John Monfasani and Concetta Bianca in particular stood out with many publications. As a result, Mohler”s comprehensive overall account has become outdated in some details, but it continues to be consulted as a fundamental standard work. Elpidio Mioni was working on a new biography, which, however, remained unfinished; at his death in September 1991, only the part reaching up to the year 1458 was finished, which was then published from his estate.

The fact that Bessarion, even as a cardinal, did not take offense at the openly pagan and anti-Christian attitude of his former teacher Plethon, and after his death sent a letter of condolence to the sons of the deceased, in which he himself used pagan terminology, aroused surprise. He wrote there, among other things, that Plethon had ascended to heaven to the Olympian gods and was now there indulging in the dance of Iakchos. François Masai examined this aspect of Bessarion”s religiosity in 1956. He saw in it an extreme example of the impartiality and unconcern with which pagan ideas were received in the Renaissance, even among the high clergy. Vojtěch Hladký found in 2014 that the letter, often discussed in research, was probably intended for publication. A sublime “pagan” style with mythological allusions was common among Byzantine as well as Western humanists and should therefore not be overrated.

A frequently discussed research topic is the question to what extent Bessarion”s conversion to the faith of the Roman Church was influenced by general political considerations. According to one widespread interpretation, the spectacular step was at least partly a theologically motivated act of conviction. According to this view, the change of denomination was made possible by the fact that the arguments of the Western theologians actually made sense to the Byzantine, irrespective of the fact that he was also warmly in favor of the union of the churches under Western leadership because of the political-military situation of his homeland. However, this explanatory approach is contradicted by skeptical and negative assessments of Bessarion”s theological sincerity, which are especially common in Greece. There, his departure from Orthodoxy is usually seen as a political act, attributed to utilitarian considerations, and evaluated accordingly. In church-oriented Orthodox circles, the conversion has been condemned since the late Middle Ages as a betrayal out of opportunism and ambition. A different view asserted itself in Greek encyclopedias of the 20th century, in which Bessarion was recognized as a forerunner of national freedom and representative of the continuity of the Greek nation. According to some Greek evaluators, as a patriot he sacrificed the Orthodox faith to save his country. For example, in 1976 Polychronis Enepekides found that the Metropolitan of Nikaia had recognized “the greater danger for Christianity and Europe”; this was not the Catholic Church”s teaching of the exit of the Holy Spirit, but the “avalanche-like increasing power of the Ottomans.” Johannes Irmscher concluded in 1976 that Bessarion had been “a true patriot of his people”. As such, he had accepted the church union as an unavoidable necessity. In Italian Byzantine studies, Silvia Ronchey resolutely advocates the hypothesis of a purely political motivation. She describes Bessarion as a pragmatist whose “turn” represents a high point of opportunistic “realpolitik” in Byzantine history.

A controversial research hypothesis states that Bessarion early rejected a fundamental dogma of Palamism and thus alienated himself from the orthodox denomination. He had decided against the teaching of Gregorios Palamas, according to which there is a real difference between the essence and energies of God. With this rejection of an officially binding doctrine of the Orthodox Church, an inner distance to the claim of Orthodoxy to error-free possession of truth had already arisen in him before his conversion to the Roman faith. This hypothesis, advocated by Joseph Gill, is rejected by André de Halleux as insufficiently well-founded.

An international conference on “Bessarion in the Interplay of Cultural Integration” was held at the University of Munich in July 2011. The initial question was to what extent the clash of Eastern and Western culture, which is succinctly tangible in the figure of the Greek cardinal, can be traced and understood with the concept of “integration”. In this context, “integration” was defined as “taking in a ”stranger” into an existing cultural environment while accepting what is peculiar to him,” in contrast to “assimilation,” incorporation without such acceptance. The contributions to the conference, which took place within the framework of the Collaborative Research Center 573 “Pluralization and Authority in the Early Modern Period (15th-17th centuries),” were published in 2013.

In his conference contribution, Panagiotis Kourniakos emphasizes the conflict that arose from the “tense, ambivalent Greek-Catholic double identity” of the Byzantine convert to Roman dogma and his “painful physical and at the same time spiritual self-exile”. His crusading program had depended on a political practice based on “quite pragmatic and cynical factors.” According to Kourniakos, Bessarion acted as a citizen of the Republic of Venice, and it was clear to him that liberation of Greek territories from Turkish rule was possible only with Venetian military power and then had to lead to annexation to the Venetian Empire. In the crusade plan, “there was no room for the anachronistic restoration of a Greek empire”; rather, only an “equally anachronistic and, as it eventually turned out, unrealizable restoration of the Latin empire” could be considered. This would have meant a renewal of the foreign rule hated by the Byzantines, which a crusader army controlled by Venice had established at the beginning of the 13th century. According to Kourniakos”s account, Bessarion”s “unconditional support of Venice on all occasions” was also problematic in Italian politics, as it compromised his reputation as a cardinal above the parties. In 2015, Han Lamers agreed with the assessment that Bessarion envisaged Venetian rule for the period after the planned liberation of Greece.

Bessarion”s promotion of astronomy was recognized in 1935 when the lunar crater Bessarion was named after him.

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