Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Manuel II (1391-1425) and the Turks

Page 12

The projected reforms of Gemistus Plethon. In Peloponnesian affairs in that time there were two interesting contemporary writers, quite different in character. One was the Byzantine scholar and humanist, Gemistus Plethon, a philhellenist obsessed by the idea that the Peloponnesian population was of the purest and most ancient Hellenic blood and that from the Peloponnesus had come the noblest and most famous families of the Hellenes, who had achieved the greatest and most celebrated deeds. The other was Mazaris, author of the Sojourn of Mazaris in Hades, undoubtedly, as K. Krumbacher said, perhaps not without exaggeration, the worst of the hitherto known imitations of Lucian, a kind of libel, in which the author describes sarcastically the customs and manners of the Peloponnesus-Morea, deriving the latter name in the form of Mora (μωρά), from the Greek word moria (μωρία) meaning silliness, folly. In contrast to Plethon, Mazaris distinguished seven nationalities in the population of the Peloponnesus: Greeks (in Mazaris, Lacedaemonians and Peloponnesians), Italians  (i.e. the remains of the Latin conquerors), Slavs (Sthlavinians), Illyrians (i.e. Albanians), Egyptians (Gipsies), and Jews. These statements of Mazaris are historical truth. Although both writers, the learned utopian Plethon as well as the satirist Mazaris, must be used with caution, both of them afford rich and interesting cultural data on the Peloponnesus of the first half of the fifteenth century.

To the time of Manuel II should be referred two interesting accounts or addresses written by Gemistus Plethon on the urgency of political and social reform for the Peloponnesus. One of these pamphlets was addressed to the Emperor, and the other to the Despot of Morea, Theodore. The German historian, Fallmerayer, was the first, in his History of the Peninsula of Morea, to draw the attention of scholars to the importance of those schemes of the Hellenic dreamer.

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/vasilief/manuel-ii.asp?pg=12