Basilios (or Basilius) Bessarion (in Greek Βασίλειος Βησσαρίων) (January 2, 1403 – November 18, 1472), a Roman Catholic Cardinal Bishop and the titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople, was one of the illustrious Greek scholars who contributed to the great revival of letters in the 15th century. He has been mistakenly known also as Johannes Bessarion due to an erroneous interpretation of Gregory III Mammas.
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He was born at Trebizond, the Black Sea port in northeastern Anatolia that was the heart of Pontic Greek culture and civilization in the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. The year of his birth has been given as 1389, 1395 or 1403.
He was educated at Constantinople, and went in 1423 to the Peloponnese to hear Gemistus Pletho expound the philosophy of Plato. On becoming a tonsured monk, he adopted the name of an old Egyptian anchorite Bessarion, whose story he has related. In 1437, he was made metropolitan of Nicaea by the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaeologus, whom he accompanied to Italy in order to bring about a reunion between the Orthodox and Catholic churches. They had been separated since the Schism of 1054, but the emperor hoped to use the possibility of re-uniting the churches to obtain help from Western Europe against the Turks.
Upon his return to Greece, he found himself bitterly resented for his attachment to the minority party that saw no difficulty in a reconciliation of the two churches. At the Council of Florence, held in Ferrara (1438) and then Florence (1439–1445), Bessarion supported the Roman church and gained the favour of Pope Eugene IV, who invested him with the rank of cardinal at a consistory of 18 December 1439.
From that time, he resided permanently in Italy, doing much, by his patronage of learned men, by his collection of books and manuscripts, and by his own writings, to spread abroad the new learning. His palazzo in Rome was a virtual Academy for the studies of new humanistic learning, a center for learned Greeks and Greek refugees, whom he supported by commissioning transcripts of Greek manuscripts and translations into Latin that made Greek scholarship available to Western Europeans. He supported Regiomontanus in this fashion and defended Nicholas of Cusa. He is known in history as the original patron of the Greek exiles (scholars and diplomats) including Theodore Gaza, George of Trebizond, John Argyropoulos and many others.
He held in succession the archbishopric of Siponto and the suburbicarian sees of Sabina and Frascati. At the papal conclave of 1455 which elected the Aragonese candidate, Alfons de Borja, as Callixtus III, Cardinal Bassarion was an early candidate for his disinterest in the competition between Roman factions that pressed candidates of the Orsini and Colonna factions. He was opposed for his Greek background by the French Cardinal Alain de Coëtivy. "It is probable that the cardinals were less afraid of his Greek training and temperament than they were of his known austerity and passion for reform", Francis A. Burkle-Young has observed.
In 1463, his fellow humanist Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, then Pius II, gave him the purely ceremonial title of Latin Patriarch of Constantinople. As Dean of the Sacred College of Cardinals (from April 1463), he presided over the Papal conclave, 1464 and Papal conclave, 1471. For five years (1450–1455), he was legate at Bologna, and he was engaged on embassies to many foreign princes, among others to Louis XI of France in 1471. Vexation at an insult offered him by Louis is said to have hastened his death, which took place on November 19, 1472, at Ravenna. He is buried in the Church of Twelve Apostles in Rome.
Bessarion was one of the most learned scholars of his time. Besides his translations of Aristotle's Metaphysics and Xenophon's Memorabilia, his most important work is a treatise directed against George of Trebizond, a vehement Aristotelian who had written a polemic against Plato, which was entitled In Calumniatorem Platonis ("Against the Slanderer of Plato"). Bessarion, though a Platonist, was not so thoroughgoing in his admiration as Gemistus Pletho, and he strove instead to reconcile the two philosophies. His work, by opening up the relations of Platonism to the main questions of religion, contributed greatly to the extension of speculative thought in the department of theology.
His library, which contained a very extensive collection of Greek manuscripts, was presented by him in 1468 to the senate of Venice, and forms the nucleus of the famous library of St Mark's, the Biblioteca Marciana.
Most of Bessarion's works are in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, vol. 161.
| Catholic Church titles | ||
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| Preceded by Isidore of Kiev |
Titular Latin Patriarch of Constantinople 1463–1472 |
Succeeded by Pietro Riario |