Gemistos Pletho: Forgery and Philology

The event will be held in English and in Italian at Istituto Svizzero, Roma
Curated by Anthony Ellis, (Fellow Roma Calling, Classical Philology).
‘I Pomeriggi’ series

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This symposium sets out to understand how and why Gemistos Pletho, one of the most famous philosophers of the Byzantine world, set about rewriting the history of religion by altering ancient texts. It explores the relationship between Pletho’s scholarly pursuits and the radical Neopaganism for which he was condemned after his death. Finally, it seeks to understand how Pletho and other scholars of the late-Byzantine world would have understood his editing of the ancient Greek historians and philosophers: as correction, censorship, or forgery?

Biographies

Raffaella Cantore teaches Greek Language and Literature at the University of Ferrara. Her research interests include the tradition of Greek historical texts, Greek lexicography, and the scholarship of the Byzantine period. She has particularly focused on the transmission of Herodotus’ Histories, especially its philological, paleographical, and codicological aspects.

Anthony Ellis is a researcher at the Institutes of Classical Philology and Historical Theology at the University of Bern. His research focuses on ancient religion and cross-cultural encounters. In Rome, he is reconstructing how Gemistos Pletho rewrote ancient historical texts and tracing Pletho’s influence on the Greek refugees of Renaissance Italy.

Fabio Pagani Catholic University of America, specializes on the history of philosophy in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, especially on connections between the Byzantine east and the Italian west and the Greek manuscripts of Gemistos Pletho.