ABSTRACT
George Gemistos’ alleged paganism immediately fascinated his contemporaries, in the positive and negative sense, and this is even more true after Scholarios’ spectacular burning of his Laws. In contrast, according to present scholarship virtually all the thinkers have been rehabilitated and are usually taken as good Christians. A revival of ancient Greek polytheism and Christian humanism drawing on ancient pagan texts are thus two extremes between which it is necessary to find a place for Gemistos’ own intellectual position. In contrast, there seems to be no serious attempt by Gemistos to harmonize his Laws with Christianity, nor curiously also to put its philosophical content into practice. Plethon always maintained a strict separation between his philosophy and Christian theology and never tried to harmonize them. The criticism of the conception denying the eternity of the world and the claim that the souls may be released from the cycle of reincarnation need not have been directed against only Christian theology.
