‘Nationalist’ discourse and the political myth in the Memoranda of Georgios Gemistos Plethon

Abstract

The idea which seems to be intuitively evoked by the person of Plethon is that of an inherent paradox. Unquestionably, he was one of the most (if not indeed the most) intellectually influential and prominent figure of his times. At the same time, the body of data regarding his life is painfully scarce. The answer to the question of Plethon’s purported paganism has raised academic dispute of almost biblical proportions and the views of scholars diverge from one extreme hypothesis to the other – from perceiving the Νόμοι as an esoteric handbook for a secret pagan brotherhood in Mistra, to seeing it as a product of a handicapped mind, traumatized by the downfall of the empire, to name but a few. The fiery debate over Plethon’s alleged nationalism, triggered by 19th century Greek intellectual elite, desperately seeking national identity of the nascent state, remains unresolved up until now3, while the shaky ground of national and ethnic sentiments involved in it had blurred this already shadowy picture. […]