GENNADIUS. Georgius Scholari or Scholarius, better known as Gennadius, a learned Greek and for some time patriarch of Constantinople, obtains a place in history through the important part played by him in the contest between Platonism and Aristoteliaoism which marks the transition from mediaeval to modern thought. Extremely little is known of his life, and so contradictory are some of the accounts bearing on detached facts in it that it has often been supposed there were two writers of the same name living at the same period. The researches of Renaudot seem, however, to render it approximately certain that all the historical notices we possess relate to one Scholarius, and that the apparent inconsistency in the accounts is due largely to a real change in that writer’s views. Scholarius first appears in history as assisting at the great council held in 1438 at Ferrara and Florence with the object of bringing about a union between the Greek and Latin Churches (see Eugenius IV., Bessaeion). At the same council was present the celebrated Platonist, George Gemistus Pletho, the most powerful opponent of the then dominant Aristotelianism, and consequently the special object of reprobation to Gennadius. In church matters, as in philosophy, the two were opposed,—Pletho maintaining strongly the principles of the Greek Church, and being unwilling to accept union through compromise, Gennadius, more politic and cautiou3, pressing the necessity for union, and instrumental in drawing up a form which from its vagueness and ambiguity might be accepted by both parties. It would seem that at Florence Pletho published the work on the difference between Aristotle and Plato (see Gemistus) which afterwards called forth a reply from Gennadius. Of this reply only the fragments quoted by ...