Cyriac of Ancona, considered by some as the founding father of modern classical archaeology, while traveling in the winter of 1447-48 in and around ancient Sparta and Mistra, wrote in his diaries the following verses that he says he heard from Calliope, singing in their “most delightful Italian tongue:” “Great Laconian city of Sparta,/ the glory of Greece, once example to the world/ of warfare and of chastity; gymnasium and temple/ and mirror and font of every noble virtue;/ if I contemplate your constitution, customs/ and human law together with you other moral virtues,/ then gaze upon you on the Eurotas, suddenly/ I exclaim to you patron Diana’s chorus:/ ‘Where are your excellent Lycurgus, where the Dioscuri,/ the dire twins, Castor and Pollux,/ Anaxandridas, Orthryadas and Gylippus,/ Eurystus and Leonidas? Where do you dwell/ son of Atreus and Pausanias, o famous leader, / Lysander, Aristo, Agesilaus, and Xanthippus? / Neither in Rome, nor with Philip,’/ it said: ‘But it is your tawdry age. I assign/ the turn to Mistra, under the leadership of Constantine.”[1]
The increasing tone of optimism of Cyriacus in these verses, indeed, poses a striking contrast with the image that he drew before for the Byzantine Morea, where he came to see Constantine Dragas, “the gloriously reigning despot,” and, although at first instance he does not gives his name, Plethon. Cyriac does not give the name of Plethon. However, he says that he was “the reason for my return visit – his guest (Constantine’s).” He describes him as “that eminent personage, the most learned of the Greeks in our time, and, if I may say so, [a man who] in his life, character, and teaching [is] brilliant and highly influential philosopher in the Platonic tradition.”[2] Cyriacus also met Laonikos Chalkokondyles there, “the gifted young Athenian.”[3] On this visit that happened on 30th July 1447, Cyriac found nothing interesting except for the fact that he met with these prominent individuals. However, when Chalkokondyles accompanied him on 2nd August to see the ancient ruins of Sparta, he lamented for what he found there since in that place “great part fallen and fulled down by the ravages of time and the lazy neglect of later inhabitants.“[4]
Having seen the ruins all around Peloponnese, Cyriac decided to return Mistra to see his “very good friend,” Plethon.[5] However, what he had seen before coming to Mistra and seeing the rocky hill on top of which Mistra stood disappointed him. The primary reason was the ruined status of ancient buildings and statues. However, he also criticized the way that local inhabitants live. Since they were performing “a poor sort of agriculture or commerce, or ignorable trades and every kind of worthless superstitious rule, and they were ruled by barbarians or by foreigners.”[6] However, for Cyriacus, this ruined and decadent situation would not prevail since some descendants of noble Lacedaemonians still held the noble origin of their ancestors. Moreover, Mistra, being an example, was a convenient place for renewal. Hence, seeing Mistra from afar and being stunned, influenced by Calliope to sing for Ancient Sparta and Mistra, Cyriacus thought that Mistra could reverse the ill fate of the peninsula:
“For my part, however, I shall by no means pass over the following single [exception], [proving] that, although the Lacedaemonians’ much-talked-of political excellence, military training, and the splendid contests of men and well-born women in the gymnasia have been abandoned and have fallen into disuse, through neglect over a long period of time, still the nature of the place seems not totally to have waned, since it gives birth to human beings who are naturally honorable, able and suited to virtue.”[7]
For several reasons, these excerpts from Cyriacus’ Later Travels are illuminating and exciting, and they offer several explanations for many contexts. Indeed, they point out a new Western gaze, a new curiosity towards the ancient relics of Greeks and Romans. They show, besides, a new interest in cataloging these remnants. Even those sentences witness a cosmopolitan and vivid cultural world of individuals from different geographies, and despite all the enmities that prevailed preceding centuries, Cyriacus tells his acquaintance with such figures as Constantine Dragas, Laonikos Chalkokondyles, and Plethon. However, all these aspects remain out of the context of this paper.
Nevertheless, Cyriacus’ account is still significant for this paper’s aims for two reasons. The first reason is that it shows the elevated position of Late Byzantine city Mistra. His account testifies that Mistra offered a chance for survival and revival, and it housed a vivid intellectual life, even though the countryside was in poor condition. Despite this poor condition, the ignorance and lethargy of people, the ruins of the ancient cities, Mistra offered enough reason for him to think of renewal.[8] It also introduces a prominent figure who will take a significant part in this paper, George Gemistos Plethon, and a second important figure, Laonikos Chalkokondyles. The sentences Cyriacus defines those figures, especially Plethon, also testify that those figures were prominent and internationally known.
However, why is Cyriacus’ mention of Mistra significant for this paper’s ends? Moreover, why is there an emphasis on Plethon? In recent Byzantine scholarship, those urban centers outside Constantinople received prominence contrary to the narratives that focused on that city and related the fate of the Byzantine state with the developments there. However, the notion of Byzantium was not limited to Constantinople. Moreover, beyond Constantinople, there were different development paths, both related and irrelevant to the developments in the capital city. Early scholarship on the Byzantine Empire tends to focus on the political and military aspects of the empire. They mainly associate the Late Byzantine Period with decadence, corruption, losses, shrinking, and ultimately the inevitable end of the empire. However, contrary to these reductionist assumptions, recent scholarship on this period focuses more on the transitions, receptions, interactions, and the changes in this period.
Given the fact that the Byzantine Empire maintained merely a shadow of its former grandeur regarding the territories, economic prosperity, and the military might, plenty of sources produced in this period allow us to trace the social and cultural life of the Byzantines in this period and hence besides the political facts of the period, how Byzantines themselves responded the drastically changing environment around them. As to the Byzantine responses, Mistra had been a place where these responses culminated since it became a court of the Despotate of Morea, which itself functioned as a semi-autonomous state.[9]
Due to the altering political, economic, and social conditions, many Byzantine elements in this period were subjected to change. Matschke focuses on one of these changes in his “The Late Byzantine Urban Economy, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries” in the Economic History of Byzantium (ed. A. E. Laiou).[10] According to him, despite the centrality of Constantinople in previous periods of the existence of the Byzantine Empire, in this late period, cities of the Byzantine Empire were not merely shadows of the great capital city. Mistra was one of these cities and served the unique features of this period. It was not only an “intellectual capital”[11] but analogous with this fact; one can say that Mistra was the city where the last hopes of the Byzantine intellectuals gathered before they carried their intellectual heritage to the West.
Cyriacus’ testimony indicates that Mistra indeed assumed such a position as being the place where the last hopes gathered. However, since he was not a Byzantine writer, his account only remains at the margins for the aims of this paper, and it is a supplementary account that leads us to consider what Byzantines themselves wrote in this regard. Furthermore, one of the figures that Cyriacus mentions, Plethon, is the most prominent figure in this regard, around whom this paper mainly revolves.
For several reasons, contemporary Byzantine scholarship considers Mistra one of the important urban centers of the late Byzantine period. Even sometimes Mistra assumes the position of either third or second most important city of the remaining territories of Byzantine State, after Constantinople and Thessaloniki. Even some historians think that Mistra was also the safe haven for many Byzantines besides an intellectual capital of the Late Byzantine period. However, neither recent scholarship nor Byzantines themselves valued Mistra as Plethon did.
It is true that as a response to the altering world and the shrinkage of the Byzantine territories to the core lands such as the Constantinopolitan hinterland, northeastern Greece, and southern Greece, the Byzantines began to identify themselves not just as Romans but also Greeks and in so doing, they turned their Greek heritage. In this respect, where they considered the mainland of the Greek people, the Peloponnesian peninsula gained significance. However, Plethon considered Mistra in the Peloponnese as a headquarter of his new political ideas and identity politics. Mistra was the core of these new political aspirations and retrospective politics and ideals.
Hence this paper focuses on the function of Mistra in the Late Byzantine period. How was it received in this period? Regarding the new concepts of ideology, how did it function? How did the Byzantine intellectuals in this period give importance to it and attach their hopes about the state’s survival to this city? As to the growing emphasis on the Hellenic identity, or Greekness, how was Mistra conceptualized, or where did it position? Having asked these questions, the present author encountered the fact that, except for Plethon, no one of late Byzantine writers developed a complex series of ideas for survival. Hence apart from his account, all other accounts will be auxiliary sources that help put Plethon’s ideas into context. Hence based on Plethon’s writings, this paper proposes to regard Plethon’s reform program as divided into three groups: Reform in the military, reform in economics and trade, and increasing awareness of identity or being Greek. None of the sources from this period can entirely answer the questions posed by these three groups except for the writings of Plethon. Moreover, not Plethon’s all works, but just two of them are of utmost importance for the ends of this paper. This first one is his Address to Theodore, Despot of Morea, and the second is his Address to Manuel II, The Emperor.
Hence, after a brief survey of the general history of Byzantium after the period of 1204 and Mistra after the same period, this paper will give a brief account of Plethon’s own life before delving into three different themes on which Plethon writes. Furthermore, after examining the primary and secondary sources, this paper concludes that, even though, until the end of his life and beyond, Plethon remained a respected figure, his reform program was never realized.[12]
Historical Background
The capture of Constantinople by the Latins in 1204 created a significant turning point in Byzantine history. Even though that time and the capture itself were the culmination of the greater conjuncture of Eastern Mediterranean politics, this paper does not focus on much the preceding period and the consequences of this event. However, that the Byzantine Empire lost its control of most of its remaining territories, including the Greek peninsula, is significant. The period between 1204-1261 saw the conflicts not only between Byzantine powers and their Latin rivals but among Byzantine powers themselves. Since many Byzantine powerhouses wanted to rule over what was remained to the Byzantine state, the Empire of Nicaea, Despotate of Epirus, and Despotate of Morea rivaled each other. From that conflict of power, the Empire of Nicaea emerged victorious after Michael VIII Palaeologus recaptured Constantinople from the Latins in 1261 and restored the Byzantine Empire in its capital city of Constantinople. However, even though Michael VIII recaptured Constantinople, he assumed a difficult challenge. Because the empire’s resources were in poor condition and the Byzantine state was in the middle of many hostile states. Constantinople and its surroundings were in constant threat, but the territories which Byzantine Empire claimed right were also turbulent. One of those regions was Morea.
In Morea, even immediately before 1204, Western powers planned to share Byzantine territories, and some Greek lords sought ways to claim independence.[13] However, despite many conflicts against Western powers and local Greek landlords, and with effective diplomatic alliances, Palaiologans reestablished Byzantine rule there again in 1382.[14]However, Necipoğlu says that from that time of reassertion of Byzantine power until Morea’s final capture by the Ottomans in 1460, there was a persistent clash between local landlords and Byzantine central authority. Theodore I Palaiologos (r. 1382/3 – 1407) succeeded Manuel Kantakouzenos as the despot of Morea, having arrived there faced several internal severe problems and continued to fight against local landlords.[15] Theodore had neither financial nor military sources to compete with all the internal and external problems, mainly due to internal and external rivals over the dominance in Morea. In this regard, Necipoğlu explains his grant of cities and lands to the aristocracy of Morea to gain their support.[16] Nevertheless, he guaranteed Ottoman support, which at first also cost him some territories in Morea that he regained after, Theodore I restored the Byzantine control there.[17] Theodore ruled until 1407 and was followed by Theodore II, to whom Plethon wrote his Address.
However, despite all the adverse conditions, Morea, or at least Mistra, seems to have been a safe haven for Byzantines. Woodhouse describes Mistra as “a small oasis in a desert of anarchy and confusion.”[18] When Manuel II traveled to the West in 1399-83, Woodhouse says that he left his wife and children in the Peloponnese rather than at Constantinople. Woodhouse also relates that Kydones, in a letter to one of the despots (probably Theodore I), wrote that “after the general shipwreck,” many Greeks fled to the court in Mistra.[19] Hence, Mistra was offering a relatively secure place for Byzantines in a turbulent environment that they had to challenge.
Furthermore, even after the Battle of Ankara in 1402, when Byzantines thought they could survive the state from the worst condition into which it fell, Mistra was presenting a glimmer of hope: “For the next ten years, the Byzantine Empire seemed to have a real chance of survival. It was in this decade that Gemistos re-emerged at Mistra. (…) Mistra was regarded, though over-optimistically, as a haven for security in the Empire’s troubled years.”[20] Whether Byzantine Empire had a chance to survive or not can be disputable; however, it is significant to note that Plethon wrote his reform program in Mistra in this context.
Plethon’s Reform Program
What were the essential elements of Plethon’s reform program? Moreover, how were they related to Mistra, specifically, the Peloponnese, in general? One of the main elements of his program was his conception of identity and his emphasis on the notion of Greekness and Greek identity. In this conception of identity, Peloponnese owned a special place because, for Plethon, Peloponnese was the mainland of the Greeks; it was where Greeks continuously inhabited and also most suitable for the settlement of Greeks. In his Address to Manuel II, he writes: “Now no country can be found which is more intimately and closely connected with the Greeks than is the Peloponnese, with the part of Europe near it and the adjacent islands. It is a country which the same Greek stock has always inhabited, as far back as human memory goes: no other people had settled there before them, nor have immigrants occupied it subsequently.”[21] The accuracy of such as statement is certainly debatable. However, for this paper, what matters is not the historical accuracy of such a statement but how Plethon constructs a historical narrative of geography according to his reform program aimed at the state’s survival.
It is noteworthy that Plethon seems to give up the imperial ambitions of the Byzantine Empire, which had been prevalent until then. Although Byzantine intellectuals were aware of the adverse developments around them and the decadence of the Byzantine state, they never gave up, even though they sometimes diverged from the traditional imperial ideology of the Byzantine Empire. In her book examining the Byzantine response to Frank invasions after 1204, Gill Page indicates that Byzantines themselves, at least those highly educated elite individuals to whose writing we can access, never gave up a traditional imperial ideology that emphasized the Roman-ness of the state. The most used word to denote any political and ethnic allegiance in the accounts of late Byzantine historians was Roman. Hence, the Byzantine state was still the Roman Empire, and the Byzantines were Romans. However, Plethon’s idea poses a striking contrast with such claims. Firstly, neither Rome nor Constantinople were prominent cities around which all the narrative revolves. The Roman and Christian elements of the Byzantine state were also invisible. Instead, Plethon looked for the ancient Greek past for inspiration and constructed his ideas on history and identity accordingly.
In this regard, he considered even Rome and Constantinople regarding their relationship with the ancient Greek past. It is noteworthy that he does not use the word Constantinople but instead says “this great city of our on the Bosporus.”[22] Constantinople’s position in ancient Greek history was evident since Megarians had established a Greek colony on the coast of Bosporus. However, what is interesting is how he connects Peloponnese and Constantinople. He says that the first inhabitants of Byzantium were Greeks and Dorians of Peloponnese origin, and in this regard, Constantinople was “a daughter and a derivative” of Peloponnese. What is even more interesting is his consideration of Rome. Describing Rome as an Italian city, he claims a Greek contribution to the foundation of Rome, claiming that Sabines, who were among the first settlers of Rome, had come from Peloponnese, and they were Lacedaemonians.[23]
Hence the importance and Greekness of Peloponnese were of no question. Moreover, this Peloponnesian geography and geographical consciousness lie at the center of Plethon’s conception of identity. Three more prominent elements were origin, language, and traditions: “We, whose ruler you are, are Greeks by birth, as our language and national culture testify.”[24] Gill Page’s book indicates that Byzantine writers before Plethon also pondered upon the nation of the race (genos) or that the Greek language was significant for them.[25] However, no one before had clearly stated this formulation like Plethon. The only exception is Laonikos Chalkokondyles, who writes at the very end of Byzantine rule. In his book relating the Ottoman expansion at the expense of Byzantine, Chalkokondyles states: “I am referring to the fall of the Greeks and the events surrounding the end of their realm (…).” He also adds: “Let no one disparage us for recounting these matters in the Greek language, for the language of the Greeks has spread to many places throughout the world and has mixed with many other languages.”[26] Moreover, the following sentences share the same kind of optimism that prevails in the addresses of Plethon:
“It is [Greek language] already exceedingly prestigious and will be even more so in the future, when a king who is Greek himself, along with the kings that follow after him, will rule over a substantial kingdom. There the sons of the Greeks may finally be gathered together and govern themselves according to their own customs, in a manner that is most favorable for themselves and from a position of strength with regard to other peoples.”[27]
Chalkokondyles reserved the following pages to a brief story of Greeks, with several references to the classical past until the point where he started relating the weak status of the Greeks: “When I myself was born, I found the Greeks and the king of the Greeks reduced, first by the peoples who in Thrace and after that by the barbarians who drove them out of the rest of their territory, to a small realm, namely Byzantion (…).”[28] Hence, the same elements prevail in Chalkokondyles’ history: geography, language, traditions, and race. It is also noteworthy that Chalkokondyles also writes Byzantion, not Constantinople. However, in Chalkokondyles’ history, there is not much about neither Plethon nor Mistra. Nevertheless, he was a pupil of Plethon, and as Cyriacus’ writings at the beginning of this article show, he spent considerable time in Mistra. Hence, there is no reason not to think that he supported Plethon’s reform program, but there is also no evidence to prove this point.
So far, both writers’ accounts necessitate a brief discussion on the Greekness or Hellenism in Byzantium. As stated before, Gill Page’s Being Byzantine: Greek Identity before The Ottomans, 1200-1420, consists of important information on the notion of identity in the Late Byzantine period. However, her book does not provide much information about Plethon or Mistra. The most important aspect of this book for this paper is that it shows the prevailing idea of Romanness even in the last decades of the Byzantine state. In this regard, Plethon and Chalkokondyles present exceptions not only because they used the words such as Greek or Hellen (since Byzantine writers well before began to use such words) but because, without any outside elements, they used these words with a sense which is very much similar to the modern notions of nation.
However, as Averil Cameron shows in her book Byzantine Matters, Hellenism or Greekness in Byzantium is a highly complex issue.[29] Any further discussion on these notions is out of the scope of this paper. However, as to Plethon, it is worth noting Woodhouse, who mainly considers Plethon in the context of nationalism: “There is good reason for calling him both the last of the Hellenes, in the sense of pagans of the classical age and the first of the Greeks, in the sense of modern nationalists.”[30] According to Woodhouse, all the reform program that Plethon proposed, which aimed “to secure the future of the nation,” was related to his nationalism.[31] When he talks about Chalkokondyles, Woodhouse keeps a similar attitude: “When he spoke of Hellenes, in contrast to Romans, he followed Gemistos’ practice of meaning all Greeks of all periods, not distinguishing ancient pagans from Christians.”[32]
Whether Plethon or Chalkokondyles were proto-nationalist or not, or whether what they meant with Greekness was similar to that of the modern nation-state of Greece, are intricate questions and out of the picture in this paper. However, it is significant to stress the importance that Plethon and Chalkokondyles assigned to those concepts like Greekness, Greek geography, Greek traditions, and Greek language. So much so that they found their inspiration from classical Greek sources, contrary to the settled tradition of Byzantine historiography. Byzantine intellectuals were very aware of the classical tradition they inherited; however, how they used it is strikingly different from Plethon and Chalkokondyles. For example, the reform program that Plethon suggested is not an original one[33] but reminiscent of Platonic ideas and the Spartan constitution. For example, those facts that Plethon cites Hesiod at the end of his Address to Theodore, saying: “Procrastinators ever wrestle with calamity,”[34] or that he, in the same writing referring to the Turks, writes Parapamisadae (people living in antiquity on the North-West frontier of India) were not unprecedented in Byzantine literature.[35] However, whoever diverged from the traditional ideology until then to claim a reform program that in principle a continuation of Platonic ideas and the Spartan constitution than Plethon?
Given the importance of the concept of nation, or being Greek in Plethon, other advice he gave to Theodore II and Manuel II owes much to this nation. A reform in the military and the social structure is one of the examples. However, to understand the context of the writing addressed to Theodore II and Manuel II and state the succession of these writings, we must first deal with the dates of each advisory text. As pointed out by Woodhouse, the dates of the texts are a debated issue. While Masai proposes between 1407-1415 for the Address to Theodore II, Zakythinos suggests the date of 1423. Woodhouse thinks that the date of Address to Emperor Manuel II is 1418. Moreover, there is no reason to think that the Address to Manuel was written before the Address to Theodore. Hence the Address to Theodore is earlier, and the fact that it says, in the Address to Manuel that Plethon in an earlier text gave similar advice proves this.[36] Hence, this paper follows the order set by Woodhouse, which puts the Address to Theodore to an earlier date.
Plethon starts the Address to Theodore, stating the importance of the constitution and likening the administration of a state to the navigation of a ship: “In the realm of human affairs the only way of ensuring a sure and safe recovery for any city or people is constitutional reform. The one and only reason why states succeed, or fail is the merits or defects of their constitution.”[37] Thus having stated the importance and need of constitutional reform, Plethon gave examples from his source of inspiration; from classical Greek history: Lycurgus’ legislation in Sparta and Epaminondas’ reform in Thebes. Constitutional reform was necessary, but that constitution needed to be a monarchy for Plethon. However, that monarchy needed an advisory body composed of the best of men: “Men of good judgement rank monarchy the best of all constitutions, as being the one that is equipped with the best of advisers and also enjoys the benefit of good laws which are actually enforced.”[38]
That advisory body should be composed of a moderate number of educated men since an excessive group of men cannot make rational reflections while a small group of men only considers their personal matters. That group of men should also be moderate regarding their wealth and possessions. Because both poor and rich only seek for their own profit, not taking into account the common good: “(…) one man sees one side of the matter, another sees another; together they see all points of view and bring them all together; (…) The rich, in their love of riches, are prone as a rule to give no advice which will not be of advantage to their own pockets; the poor, in their poverty, are apt to think of nothing but what will relieve their needs.”[39]
According to Plethon, good laws and a good constitution should properly arrange the functions and limits of all respective groups of society, ideally divided into three: the producers, the ministers, and the ruling class. No one from each class should interfere with the matter that interests other classes. In just such a society, harmony can prevail, and everything can function in good order. The most necessary class of society are the producers who produce all the things that society might need. They are also the largest group in each society. They cultivate the land and yield any produce from the land, hence feeding the whole society. The second part is basically artisans and traders. Those who hire their labors as periodic laborers also belong to this part. The last class is the ruling class, composed of soldiers and politicians with the king at their head. Under the king, they secure the state and deal with different state issues. Hence, nobody should be allowed to interfere with the issues of other groups. For example, when a trader enters the administrative group should give up all the affairs about commerce. In such a society, the aim was not equality but order, the order in which each group does whatever necessities that each group requires. Moreover, every society has “parasites,” says Plethon, who does not want to contribute to the functioning of the state. It is the objective of the ruling class, says Plethon, “to keep such men in order:”
“There being naturally these three original parts or classes in the state, each of them has its own specific way of life and mode of action, and a good system of law will lay it down that each of them should perform its own specific function. No class should exchange its way of life or mode of action for that of another; more especially, the ruling class should not engage in any of the pursuits of the ministerial class… such as merchandise, trading, and the like. A good system of law will lay it down that no man who holds office shall be allowed to engage in commerce or trade or any illiberal pursuit: it will also prescribe that soldiers should be distinguished from the masses, and generally that the protectors should be distinct from the protected.”[40]
Those protectors should pay no taxes and protect those who pay taxes; that protector class should also be composed of natives, not foreigners.[41] As to the security of the state, Plethon was aware of Peloponnese’s strategic and favorable position and the walls that Manuel II erected at the isthmus of Corinth,[42] on which Plethon also wrote another text to Manuel II.[43]
In this Address to Manuel II, Plethon repeats his ideas on the structure of the society and army. One can recall Cyriacus’ sentences in his diaries regarding the rural population of Peloponnese from the beginning of this paper. To those same people, Plethon refers in his Address to Manuel II, saying that the majority of the people in Peloponnese are farming and pasturing, hence providing the necessities that both themselves and the remaining part of the society need.[44]However, the problem Plethon notices is that these people, who produce and pay taxes, simultaneously do the military service, which Plethon objects to, as also seen in his Address to Theodore: “How can one and the same person at once do military service and at the same time maintain himself and others.”[45]
Another thing that he rejects is that the taxes were collected by numerous agents and in money, not in kind. For him, society should be divided into those who pay taxes and those who are exempted from taxation. Those who pay taxes should not do military service but provision those who guard the state. When it comes to paying the taxes, all taxes should be collected by one authority and be paid not in money but in kind.[46]
In this way, he continues that all the things produced in the state should be distributed to three groups: producers themselves, those who provide the necessary means for production, and those who secure the state. He prefers to call those who pay the taxes as helot, who “should be regarded as the foster-fathers of the community.” Furthermore, in the same manner, the army should be organized so that to each infantry, one helot should be assigned, while to each mounted soldier, two helots should be assigned.[47]
So far, this paper has covered those aspects of Plethon’s reform program related to Mistra and the Peloponnese (with particular references to Laonikos Chalkokondyles), namely the identity and Greekness (including an awareness of geography and the importance given to it) and social structure and the army. The first part indicated the increasing awareness of identity regarding history, space, boundaries, language, and traditions. Both Plethon and Chalkokondyles indicate a new conception of Greekness never seen before. The new and elevated position of Mistra and Peloponnese regarding the affairs of the Byzantine state (and due to the internal and external developments) has to do with these conceptions of both writers. The second aspect, the reform in social structure and the military, indicated Plethon’s not original but striking proposals for the state’s survival. Given that Plethon considered Mistra and the Peloponnese a suitable place for being a headquarters for the survival program of the Byzantine state, reveals the relationship of this geography with his reform program.
Since Plethon made such proposals considering Mistra and the Peloponnese, the reception of Plethon and his ideas needs further explanation. Moreover, one further aspect of his reform program, which seems like the most tangible one, since it pays regard to the physical conditions of the Peloponnese more, remains to be explained. In the following part, this paper aims to present these points.
The examples above indicated that Plethon’s Address to Theodore and Address to Manuel II show significant similarities, except for slight differences. This is also the case when it comes to the reform program in economics and trade. Since the suggestions about taxation have been discussed, his proposals about land management and trade need to be explained. For him, all the state’s lands should be common property, and hence private property should be prohibited. Everyone should have the right to cultivate wherever they will and build their homes, just on the condition that he can plow as much as land that he claims. Nobody should pay rent to anyone. After the harvest, helots, those who cultivate the land, should pay the necessary amount of tax in kind as regulated, and he should have no other responsibilities than this. In this way, he thinks: “All the land would be under cultivation and crops, and no part would be idle or untended if it were equally possible for all who wished to apply their labor wherever they desired to do so; and the scheme I suggest would thus be to the greater advantage both of the community and of the individual.”[48]
One more important aspect of his reform program and a further reminiscent of the Spartan system is Plethon’s attitude towards coinage. He considers the usage of foreign currency as “the height of folly” and proposes to interdict the use of foreign bronze coins: “(…) it only brings profit to others, and ridicule on ourselves.”[49] Furthermore, since taxes are paid in kind, and those who gained their income from public funds received them in kind, there is no need for money at all: “There would be less need of money; and for the purposes of ordinary daily exchange any sort of ordinary currency would be adequate -especially as the Peloponnese would appear not to need at all any currency such as other countries value.” Furthermore, for Plethon, it seems that the Peloponnese is a self-sufficient country except for iron and arms. Even in the case that iron and arms must be imported, he thinks, Peloponnesians can pay with their silk, and “there would thus be no harm in putting out of circulation this bad foreign currency now in use.”[50]
Moreover, Plethon claims that with their own wool, cotton, and silk, Peloponnesians can produce their own clothing, and there is no need for importation from outside. This claim also makes way for him to claim a regulation in trade. His suggestions on the regulation of trade resemble a closed economy policy with strict taxation on imports and exports. According to him, some commodities can be allowed to import, and some others must be prohibited. The same is also valid for the exports. There are also some commodities whose imports and exports would make little difference. However, even in this case, the state should supervise the commercial process carefully. Moreover, for the commodities that need to be imported, no one should pay taxes for their importation; however, for the commodities which should stay in the country, there must be heavy taxes on their exportation so that they may stay in the country and provide the needs of its citizens.[51]
Conclusion
To sum up, contrary to the reductionist approaches on the late Byzantine period, after the sack of Constantinople 1204, that doomed Byzantine that considered that the fall of Byzantium was inevitable, an insight into the contemporary Byzantine sources reveal the fact that Byzantines themselves, although they were aware of the adverse situation of the Byzantine state, pondered upon the ways for the survival of the Byzantine state. Among those figures, Plethon was the most prominent one. Settled at Mistra, considered by some as a haven far from the turmoil at the capital and its environs, proposed a reform program that revolved around the Peloponnese. Plethon’s reform program, exemplified by his two addresses written to Theodore II, despot of Morea, and Manuel II, the emperor, aimed at the survival of the state, focusing on three different themes: Greek identity, and related to it, the prominence of the Peloponnese, a reform in the army and structure of the society, and reform in the economy and commercial activities.
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[1] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 333-4.
[2] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 299.
[3] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 299.
[4] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 301.
[5] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 329.
[6] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 331.
[7] Cyriac of Ancona, Later Travels, 331.
[8] Shawcross, “A New Lykourgos for a New Sparta,” 446.
[9] Paul Lemerle, Bizans Tarihi (trans. Galip Üstün), (İletişim, 2019), p. 124.
[10] Matschke, “The Late Byzantine Urban Economy, Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries,” 463.
[11] Denis Zakythinos, Le Despotat grec de Morée, Vie et Institutions, (Athènes, 1953).
[12] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 88.
[13] Runciman, Lost Capital of Byzantium,15.
[14] Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins, 234.
[15] Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins, 236.
[16] Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins, 238.
[17] Necipoğlu, Byzantium between the Ottomans and the Latins, 239.
[18] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 4.
[19] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 83.
[20] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 83.
[21] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 198.
[22] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 199.
[23] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 199.
[24] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 198.
[25] Page, Being Byzantine, 41-3 and 58-63.
[26] Chalkokondyles, The Histories, 3.
[27] Chalkokondyles, The Histories, 2-3
[28] Chalkokondyles, The Histories, 2-3.
[29] See Cameron, Byzantine Matters, chapter 3 on “Hellenism.”
[30] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 7.
[31] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 108.
[32] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 12.
[33] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 108.
[34] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 213.
[35] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 206.
[36] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 92.
[37] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 206-7.
[38] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 207-8.
[39] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 208.
[40] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 209.
[41] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 209-10.
[42] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 199.
[43] Woodhouse, George Gemistos Plethon, 99.
[44] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 199-200.
[45] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 200.
[46] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 200.
[47] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 200-201.
[48] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 203-4.
[49] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 205.
[50] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 205.
[51] Barker, Social and Political Thought in Byzantium, 206.
