George Gemistus, surnamed Pletho, a scholar and philosopher of the 15th century, born in Constantinople, and said to have lived to the age of 100. He held a high position at the court of the Palaeologi, and at the council of Florence in 1439 opposed the union of the churches of the East and the West. Subsequently banished from his country, he found an asylum in Italy, and declared himself in favor of the Latins.While the philosophy of Aristotle was still reigning, he became an enthusiastic votary of the Platonic theories in metaphysics and natural theology, and being admitted to the circle of the Medici, prompted Cosmo to found his celebrated Platonic academy. His treatise in praise of Platonism inaugurated the long quarrel between the disciples of the two great masters of antiquity, which produced a profound study of their systems. Gemistus, however, mingled with the Platonic philosophy the notions of the later Alexandrian school and of the spurious writings attributed to Zoroaster and Hermes, and revived in the West that eclecticism, half Christian and half pagan, half oriental and half Greek, which flourished during the decline of the Greek philosophy at Alexandria.