Introduction

George Gemistos Plethon is certainly one of the most important, but at the same time also one of the more mysterious figures of Byzantine and Renaissance philosophy. George Gemistos, later also surnamed Plethon, was born in Constantinople presumably to a pronotarios of St Sophia, Demetrios Gemistos, some time before 1360. Gemistos left behind numerous texts covering such diverse disciplines as grammar, rhetoric, literature, music, geography, astronomy, ancient history, politics, religion, philosophy and theology. The secondary literature on Gemistos is surprisingly rich. To discuss Gemistos’ thought properly, it is convenient to divide his writings into three groups that correspond to the most important aspects of his philosophy: public philosophy, Platonism, and Gemistos’ religious beliefs. The enigmatic Laws, discovered after Gemistos’ death, belong with the latter group of texts, for the reasons that will become apparent later on, subsumed under a common designation as philosophia perennis.