I
THE TRAVELLER WHO has gone into the Peloponnese for the purpose of visiting ancient Sparta, will find his attention diverted from classical scenes to a place whose name is probably unfamiliar to him, and whose appearance is certainly unexpected. From the base of Mount Taygetus a small but steep hill projects into the plain, bearing the ruins of a castle on its summit, and the ruins of churches, palaces, and monasteries on its sides. The castle is surprisingly big, and, though the churches are surprisingly tiny, each has, or has had, its little dome and battered marble pillars, its mosaic pavement under foot, its perishing frescoes of mysterious saints upon the walls. Fifteen people live here now, and act as guides. But the place was once closely — perhaps too closely — populated, and has witnessed an elaborate if defective civilization. Such a place has no business in Greece. Yet the traveller may possibly neglect the Sparta museum, where he had intended to spend so much time over the archaic reliefs, and wander instead through the remnants of this unfamiliar world, nearer in its date than the world of Lycurgus, yet in its spirit even more remote.
The great castle looks up a gorge into the white ridges of Taygetus behind, and in front it looks over the broad blue valley of the Eurotas: over New Sparta with its large pink cathedral and dreary boulevards; over the spacious site of Old Sparta, whose simple buildings have crumbled into the plain and are buried underneath the corn. But, when we enquire into the history of a place which is so wonderful in itself and in its situation, we meet with disappointment. We read that the Franks built it in the thirteenth century and called it Misithras or Mistrà; that it became the chief fortress in the Peloponnese during an uninteresting period; that it was taken from the Franks by the Byzantines, and from the Byzantines by the Turks; that it was governed by a long succession of tyrants whose lives were short and brutal.
Yet one man did live here whose name is worthy of remembrance; and the place is curiously symbolical of him. For his ways were huddled and mediæval; and his cramped limbs were never freed from the barbarism and the stupid pomp and the dirt. But his eyes were fixed outside the narrow enclosure of his century, on the serene plains of antiquity, on temples that stood among gardens, on cities that had no walls, on the spacious country where man had once been beautiful and noble and happy, and whither he hoped men might yet return. We, who also stand looking at that country, owe him gratitude as well as sympathy. For if we stand nearer to it than he did, it is in some measure owing to him.
Georgius Gemistus, afterwards surnamed ‘Pletho,’ was born at Constantinople in 1355. He came to Mistrà when he was quite young, and, with one brief but important interval, remained there until he died. The town was then ruled by younger members of the Palæologus family, nominally in the interests of the Byzantine Emperor. With them, and with the Emperors also, Gemistus kept on friendly terms. He had some high judicial post at Mistrà, and seems to have given political advice to the Governors, who were generally in sore need of it. He advised them to fortify the Isthmus of Corinth against the Turks; and his advice was taken. He advised them to undertake a complete revolution — social, agrarian, and economic — in the Peloponnese; and his advice was fortunately neglected. He wrote congratulatory orations when they ceased quarrelling; he wrote funeral orations when they died; and when they wrote an oration, he wrote an oration in praise of it.
It is as philosopher, not as politician, that he becomes important, or at all events interesting. The European world then knew of three religions — the Christian, the Mohammedan, and the Jewish; and to one of them, or to one of their modifications, every man subscribed himself. Gemistus, from an early age, adopted an attitude that was new. He severed himself from his own church, but he did not join any of her rivals. Truth, he believed, might be in the past rather than the present. Where his intellectual sympathies lay, he placed his spiritual hopes also.
He looked for his religion among the half-forgotten rites of ancient Greece.
The story of the extraordinary scheme which he evolved belongs to a later period of his life. It is a matter for surprise that he was ever permitted to evolve it. His pagan tendencies were early suspected, yet he came to a natural end at the age of ninety-five. Orthodoxy has indeed often distinguished between paganism and heresy, treating the former with a leniency which she will not show to the latter. Such may have been the attitude of the Greek Church towards Gemistus. At all events, he suffered no practical discomfort; and his long life is creditable to his contemporaries as well as to. himself.
His reputation as a philosopher was not confined to Mistrà and Constantinople. Italy, entering on her Renaissance, soon learnt that there lived in the heart of Greece a Greek, marvellously learned, marvellously wise, who had studied Zoroaster and Pythagoras, Plato and Plotinus, Menes and Euhemerus; who was discovering the inner significance of the ancient religions. Many a student, puzzling out the meaning of Plato with little philosophy and less Greek, longed for Gemistus to come over and interpret. Meanwhile, some scholars went to Mistrà, of whom the most important was Bessarion, first a bishop in the Greek Church, and afterwards a Cardinal in the Roman. Gemistus had no inclination to alter his quiet but not ignoble life. He studied, and thought, and wrote, and gave advice; and it was not till he was eighty that an event occurred which introduced him in person to the world.
For many years negotiations had been going on between the Pope and the Byzantine Emperor, with the object of uniting the Roman and Greek Churches. The Pope suggested that a Council should be held, at which the theological differences, which were bitter rather than important, could be discussed, and a reconciliation, which was desirable politically, might be effected. The Emperor consulted Gemistus, who warned him to make no advances to the Pope unless the Pope would first promise a substantial army for the defence of Constantinople against the Turk. The advice was good, and characteristic of the man. But the Emperor was in such straits that he was willing to make religious concessions for even a small subsidy. He was also persuaded by Joseph, the aged Patriarch of Constantinople, whose vanity hoped to effect the conversion of the Latin Church without any concessions at all.
Gemistus, seeing that the Council was inevitable, took the most important step in his life. He determined to attend it personally, and defend the cause of Greek Christianity. It is difficult to account for his behaviour. Patriotism may have had much to do with it, vanity something. And it is well to recollect that, in the fifteenth century, men were more open in their inconsistencies than they dare to be to-day. The orthodox party seem to have been more flattered than puzzled by his support; but at all events, in the autumn of 1437, he, the Emperor, the Patriarch, and many bishops, set sail for Italy at the Pope’s expense. With them sailed the orthodox theologian Gennadius, who was afterwards to play so important a part in Gemistus’ fortunes. ‘It was once believed,’ says Gibbon, ‘that there were two men of this name. But recent investigations have restored the identity of his person and the duplicity of his character.’ As far as Gemistus is concerned, the epigram is unfair. Gennadius was certainly consistent in his hostility. Nor was he, on the whole, an unattractive man. He has testified to the genius of his rival, and to the nobility of his character. Only against his opinions did he wage a cunning and not unreasonable war.
Trouble began at Venice, where the Emperor and the Patriarch Joseph quarrelled. The Emperor hurried on to meet the Pope at Ferrara; the Patriarch would not be parted from his luggage. The Emperor sent him word that he must greet the Pope by kissing his foot. He replied: ‘If the Pope is older than I am, I will treat him as a father; if of the same age, as a brother; if younger, as a son.’ The Pope, of course, was younger. At last the matter was adjusted. The Pope promised that the Patriarch should kiss him on the cheek, provided that not more than six bishops were looking on at the time. Then a new difficulty arose. The Pope, and the Emperor, and the Patriarch, all claimed the most honourable seat at the Council; and a triangular struggle took place, which resulted in the erection of four seats, one for the Pope, one for the Emperor of the West, which remained empty, one for the Byzantine Emperor, and, behind him, one for the exasperated Patriarch. The Pope’s chair had trimming to it. The Patriarch put trimming on his chair, but was obliged to take it off.
It would be a mistake to suppose that Gemistus watched these proceedings with any great cynicism. Such incidents are only ludicrous to posterity; and he probably regarded them as seriously as we regard similar incidents at the Durbar to-day. Moreover, though he was indifferent to the Greek Church, he was jealous for the Greek honour. Patriotism, as well as orthodoxy, demanded that the Patriarch should have trimming to his chair.
At the beginning of 1439, the plague broke out at Ferrara; and the Council fled over the Apennines to Florence. Here Cosimo de’ Medici had recently established himself, and was impressing the peculiar stamp of his dynasty upon; the city. The mediæval Florence of Dante had passed; the Florence that had blindly worshipped the Antique was passing. The new Florence was bound to no one period, to the imitation of no one model. She loved things that are incompatible with each other; and so far only was she eclectic. Illogical, not because she was weak but because she was strong, she could welcome all doctrines and all ideals, even as her merchant despots, a little later, could sing to peasants and make themselves agreeable to princes.
In such a city a scholar from Greece was always welcome, though he now represented only one influence out of many. And Greeks hitherto had been so rude and so dirty that it was an extra pleasure to receive Gemistus, who was at all events polite. His beautiful voice, his venerable beard and dignified manners, accorded well with his eloquence and learning. Painstaking theologians were unimportant beside a man who would give a new, if not a final, interpretation of the classical world. He explained Plato with great success, discoursing for hours upon the Beautiful to men who were then filling the world with beauty, and who listened to him with a patience which we can hardly comprehend. At the instance of Cosimo de’ Medici, he wrote a tract Concerning the difference between Plato and Aristotle. Hitherto it had not been known that there was any difference; and as the Church’s philosophy was based on Aristotle, while Gemistus preferred Plato, a conflict began which divided the learned world for some fifty years.
For the defence of Plato, Gemistus helped Cosimo to found the Neo-Platonic Academy at Florence, and indicated Marsilio Ficino as its first president. Ficino was enthusiastic rather than able; he celebrated Plato’s birthday with a banquet, and burnt lamps before his bust, but did not translate him into Latin with striking success. However, he was well suited for the post. Unlike Gemistus, he remained through all his speculations an orthodox member of his Church; while he sought for an element of truth, not in one religion, but in all. To him Plato was a reconciler rather than a new apostle, and had risen from his grave to bring peace, not war, upon the earth. Later on there was an attempt to canonize Plato as a saint. But the Pope was unable to give the movement any official encouragement. The opinions of Ficino were echoed throughout Italy by wise and thoughtful men, until a new attitude towards spiritual questions was instituted by Savonarola.
People who understand Plato say that the Florentines misunderstood him, and that their philosophy is most unsound. A nation of artists is perhaps seldom sound in its philosophy, and is apt to produce masterpieces which have no metaphysical justification. But in one respect at all events they used him rightly. Through him they recaptured for the world one of the secrets of ancient Greece — the secret of civilized conversation. The Middle Ages had separated serious discussion from daily life, confining it to the study and the lecture room and the hall of disputation. Florence, like Athens, summoned it into the open air, and bade it take its chance against birds and trees, evolve, if it could, from a dinner or a game of fives, yield, if it must, to a dance or to a song. The result might be desultory, but it was certainly spontaneous. The influence of the Florentine Academy was anything but academic; and the sincerity, if not the wisdom of the Cephissus, emerged beside the Arno.
It is by this work in Florence that Gemistus is best remembered. It is true that the work would have been done by others. The ground was already prepared for him; and perhaps the seed did not germinate quite as he expected, for his Platonism and the Platonism of the Academy were to develop on very different fines. But his impulse was decisive; and it is now that he assumes, or permits himself to be given, the surname of ‘Pletho.’ Plato means ‘broad shouldered.’ Gemistus, perhaps thinking broad shoulders unsuitable for a philosopher, interpreted it to mean ‘full,’
‘replete with wisdom’, and adopted ‘Pletho,’ as a purer form. In time his disciples asserted that he had inherited not only Plato’s name but also his soul.
Meanwhile, he did not neglect his duties at the Council, where he was invaluable. As he had missed the spirit of Christianity, there was no reason why he should not keep to the letter. Men like Gennadius, who were sincere in their faith, might make concessions, but nothing could move the orthodoxy of Gemistus. His arguments were sometimes startling, but always effective; and if his patrons failed, it was not owing to him.
The Council of Florence broke up in July, 1439. Shortly before its conclusion, the Patriarch Joseph died, and his tomb is to be seen in the church of Santa Maria Novella.
Happy I lived, and happy I expire,
Lord of myself and of my heart’s desire.
But the epitaph lies horribly, for the Patriarch lost his labours quite as much as he had lost his temper. He had intended to unite the Latin Church to the Greek, instead of which the Greek Church had become united to the Latin. In the hope of a political alliance with Western Christianity, the Byzantine Emperor had sacrificed his national ritual. Religious riots greeted him on his return to Constantinople; and, for all his efforts, he did not save the city from the Turk.
Gemistus had never approved of the Council, and it had been even more disastrous than he expected. However, his experiences had been pleasant. He was scarcely capable of appreciating the wonders of Italy, for a Greek still found barbarism in anything west of the Adriatic. But, old as he was, his visit stimulated him. The ideas which had long been floating in his brain now took clear, if fantastic, shape. ‘Before long,’ he told the Florentines, ‘the world will see a new religion, which will be neither of Christ nor of Mahomet, but will differ not greatly from the religion of the ancient Greeks.’ He was understood to be contemplating a work on this new religion, and, when the Council closed, he returned to Mistrà to compose it.
He was constantly interrupted. His enemy Gennadius led him into a weary controversy on the merits of Plato and Aristotle, and delayed his great work — possibly with intention. And he wasted his own time by composing orthodox pamphlets, in which he seems to have found a kind of intellectual pleasure. One of them — Concerning the Procession of the Holy Ghost — drew a clever letter from Gennadius, who still kept on civil terms.
‘My dear friend, why did you not tell me about this admirable pamphlet? How reticent you are! It almost looks as if you were annoyed with me. I am delighted to think that your splendid talents are so well employed, and are in no way tainted by any pagan sympathies. In these enlightened days, any attempt to recall the darkness of the Antique would be an unpardonable crime. Just imagine! There are philosophers who are seeking for a new Olympus, a new ritual, a “simplified religion” which is to remodel society according to the notions of Plato! If such blasphemies ever find publication in a book, I look forward to confuting that book. Truth and reason would be my weapons; I should not throw it into the fire. That I should reserve for the author.’
Gemistus did not reply; but the publication of his life’s work was still further delayed. There is a great difference between letting out startling opinions in the course of conversation, and presenting them formally in a book. Hitherto he had been sure of the Emperor’s favour. But Gennadius was high in favour also. Two Turkish invasions further distracted his old age, and that revival of ancient Greece which he so ardently desired became even more impossible. He did not see that the revival had really taken place in Italy; that Greece is a spirit which can appear, not only at any time, but also in any land. He died in 1450, three years before the fall of Constantinople, nine years before the fall of Mistrà. He was given Christian burial, and passed away without offering his new pagan religion to the world. The Princess Asanina, wife of the last Imperial Governor of Mistrà, had no reason to love Gemistus. The old man had once called her a nasty little thing, and other things besides—’ expression bien irrévérencieuse,’ remarks the French editor, ‘ne fût-elle même pas appliquée à une princesse.’ It was into her hands that the manuscript of the new religion fell; and, when she was carried by the Turks to Constantinople, she carried it with her. Instead of destroying it, she sent it to Gennadius, remarking that it was a shocking book. Gennadius returned it, saying it was indeed shocking, and that the fact of its being so interesting only made it all the worse. He advised the Princess to burn it at once; the Church would applaud her. Both parties were strikingly deficient in zeal; they seem to have been positively unwilling to destroy a book which they took to be a work of genius. Gennadius, though now Patriarch of Constantinople, received his salary from the Turkish government; and the Princess Asanina was now one of the Sultan’s mothers-in-law. In such circumstances, their orthodoxy may well have relaxed. No one would mind if they let the matter pass. The Princess again sent the manuscript to Gennadius; she wished to have no more responsibility. Gennadius, after some hesitation, burnt it — with the exception of some extracts left to show how bad it was. The result is that quite enough of it survives; and there is no difficulty in listening to the message of Gemistus, should we choose to do so.
The work, which bears the Platonic title of The Laws, opens with a promise of sanity that is not fulfilled. With grave pity Gemistus reviews the diverse opinions by which men are distracted in their pursuit of happiness. Some believe in knowledge or in virtue; others despise them; some put their trust in religious ceremonial; others reject it; none agree about it; some think an anchorite holy; others that a husband or a father is still holier. Even about the gods men are uncertain whether there are any, what they are, or in what relation they stand to men. How can we hope to attain happiness while such bewilderment remains? Let us attempt first to dispel it; and by so doing we may discover the perfect law which alone can guide us to the happy life.
Such thoughts were not original, and perhaps never have been. But any man who repeats them with sincerity is entitled to a hearing, and everything proves that Gemistus was sincere. It is disappointing to think that this sober introduction introduces nothing. With the shameless inconsistency of his century, Gemistus passes without apology to dogmatism of the wildest and most uninspiring kind, and stands forth as the high priest of a creed which cannot even be called ingenious.
The new religion which he is presenting as a cure for humanity’s ills is nothing else but the religion of ancient Greece, ‘adapted to the needs of philosophy, and freed from the idle additions of the poets.’ Accordingly he begins with Zeus, who has little connection with the Zeus who once swam upon the Eurotas to Leda, two miles away. The Zeus of Mistrà is a Neo-Platonic abstraction, without parents or wife, the father of all. He dwells on Olympus, together with those gods who are his legitimate children — Poseidon his first-born, Hera, the wife of Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, and Hephaestus, and about a dozen more. The illegitimate children of Zeus — and why they are thus branded is never explained — live by themselves in Tartarus, presided over by Cronos and his wife, Aphrodite. A third class of deities falls into two divisions, the first consisting of the Sun, Moon and Stars, legitimate children of Poseidon, the second of Demons, who are numerous but kindly. The fourth class, though of divine parentage, is not divine. In it are men, animals, and plants.
Thus did Gemistus awake the ancient gods of his country, and thrust new emblems into their bewildered hands. Apollo found himself presiding over ‘identity,’ and his sister over ‘diversity.’ Dionysus saw to spontaneous movements, while all transmitted movements were owing to Pallas Athene. Zeus, through Poseidon, with the concurrence of Hera and the assistance of Pluto and Persephone, created the human soul. The gods had lost Homeric fierceness during their long sleep. Orderly and decorous, they performed their allotted tasks, never interfering with each other or losing their tempers. They, who have, in the idle additions of the poets, an immortality which Gemistus did not suspect, could endure the philosophy of that day, just as they will endure the archaeology of this.
The gods were served by an elaborate ritual. Every morning, before breakfast, they were addressed in an allocution, which informed them at great length of their nature, parentage, and limitations. There were three more allocutions in the afternoon, and another in the evening. The style of Gemistus, never very clear, now becomes hopelessly involved; nor is he more successful in the ‘Hymns’ — chilly little things in hexameters, to be sung by the assembled people. ‘O Artemis, thou dost preside over diversity; thou hast received the universe united and thou dost divide it as far as thou canst. Permit us to escape what is bad, O venerable goddess, and rule our lives.’ On festal days these hymns were to be accompanied by music. There are also directions for annual sacrifices. But the part dealing with the duties of the priesthood was too bad, or not bad enough, to be preserved; and Gennadius has burnt it.
‘This theology is the foundation of everything; only those who believe it can attain to happiness.’ Perhaps there has never been a scheme so equally unattractive to the heart and to the head. The mere intellectual effort of remembering who is who among the gods is very trying, and it is difficult to believe that the most eccentric of souls could here find any consolation. Yet much of the ritual had probably been actually performed by the little band of disciples who gathered round Gemistus in his closing years. And he directs that ‘any sophist who speaks against it shall be burnt alive.’ This was the traditional language of enthusiasm; after his death his disciples found him a place in the heaven he had constructed so carefully and defended so bravely.
Only occasionally are there moments of sobriety which recall the introduction, and moments of insight which justify it. ‘It is not enough to be happy, fools can be that. We must know what happiness is, and how it comes.’
‘A great name may be defiled by bad usage; yet once used rightly, it again becomes pure.’ Speaking of religious inquiry, Gemistus says: ‘There is no defect in heavenly things, nor any petty jealousy, that could make the gods ashamed to reveal themselves to us.’ And his choice of ancient Greece as an ideal was not always arbitrary.
He saw in it a rule of temperate life, a possible escape from the asceticism which mediævalism had professed, and from the sensuality which it had practised. ‘Neither is pleasing to the gods. The animals in this respect are better than we, for their instinct guides them infallibly; whereas we have only our reason, which is still uncertain and weak. Let us pray the gods to strengthen it, and to preserve us from either extreme.’
It is easy to say that the book is wearisome and absurd. Gemistus tried to recall antiquity by catchwords — by the names of the Greek gods. These names had for him a mysterious virtue: he attached them like labels to his uninspiring scheme, while he rejected all that makes the gods immortal — their radiant visible beauty, their wonderful adventures, their capacity for happiness and laughter. That was as much as his dim, troubled surroundings allowed to him. If he is absurd, it is in a very touching way; his dream of antiquity is grotesque and incongruous, but it has a dream’s intensity, and something of a dream’s imperishable value.
[1905]
During his life-time, by paths he had not suspected, the gods had found their way to Italy, sometimes openly, sometimes in more questionable shape, bearing the emblems of saints and the crowns of martyrs; and there they remain, beautiful in fresco and marble, to this very day. He was, after all, to take up his abode among them. In 1465, Sismondo Malatesta of Rimini captured Mistrà from the Turks, and, out of the great love he had for Gemistus, exhumed his body and translated it to Italy. At Mistrà the mediæval world surveys the empty site of Sparta; in the church of San Francesco at Rimini the Gothic brickwork has disappeared behind the marble arcades of Alberti. Gemistus lived in the one, and is buried in the other. The Renaissance can point to many a career which is greater, but to none which is so strangely symbolical.