CONTENTS

Preface
List of abbreviations

page ix
xiii

Introduction: Plethon and the notion of paganism

Plato's escape from Athos
The argument
Structure and outline of the book

38

Part I: Lost rings of the Piatonist golden chain

Underground Platonism in Byzantium
Towards a
of K. N. Sathas' thesis
Divine
pagan Piatonic dissonance in
antiquity
Occult Plato:
and the first
Byzantine
Plato: Psellos and the art of dissimulation
The twelfth-century Proklosrenaissance and
Theodore Metochites

49
49
54
62
85

2 The rise of the Byzantine Illuminati

How to see god: the quest for the Thabor Light
The
anti-Hesychast discourse
according to
sources
Plethon and the twilight of Palamism
The last ring of the Piatonist golden chain: the
Piatonic fraternity of Mistra

93
93

3 The Plethon affair

George of Trebizond and Scholarios against Plethon
Juvenalios
The
in
flames

Siniossoglou, Niketas
Radical platonism in Byzantium
2011

digitalisiert durch:
IDS Basel Bern

CONTENTS

The accusation of dissimulation

The puzzle of the
Part II:
4

The elements of pagan Platonism

optimism
Intellectual versus spiritual
The
of 'Zeus'
Plethon's Plato
The Byzantine civil war on illumination
The Chaldean Oracles reloaded

Pagan ontology
Towards a new ontology
The threat of 'one
of everything, Being'
Against the equivocity of Being
A return to
That 'Zeus' is not beyond Being
the physical world
Unearthing the pagan hereditas damnosa

Symbolic theology: the mythologisation of

Piatonic ontology
Palamite 'energies' and Plethonean 'gods'
Paganism in the Differences:
as intellects,
and originators
The
case of Monodia in Helenam
necessity and freedom
Fate

Part III:
7

223
223
226
230
240
243
250
263
278
278
293
300
306

Mistra versus Athos

Intellectual and
utopias
The birth of social engineering: the Memoranda
Three paths to salvation: Kydones, Scholarios,
Plethon
The secular turn
Paganism and totalitarianism: the Memoranda in
their relation to the Nomoi

327
327
347
359
384

CONTENTS

Part IV: The path of Ulysses and the path of Abraham

8 Conclusion
The origins of Plethon's pagan Platonism: the
thesis
The essence of pagan Platonism
Philosophical implications of the
controversy
Political implications of the Plato-Aristotle
controversy
9 Epilogue:
roots of modernity
Bibliography
Index

395
395
403
408

before Spinoza', or the pagan

427
447