Editing Bessarion (section)

===Bessarion's Neoplatonism===
[[File:Basilius Bessarion of Trapezunt.jpg|thumb|Wood engraving from ''Bibliotheca chalcographica'', B1|left|280x280px]]
Bessarion was educated in [[Constantinople]], then went in 1423 to [[Mystras]], [[Peloponnese]] to study Neoplatonism under [[Gemistus Pletho]].<ref>James Hankins, ''Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance'', Volume 1, Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 2003, p. 207.</ref> Under Pletho, he "went through the liberal arts curriculum…, with a special emphasis on mathematics…including the study of astronomy and geography" that would have related "philosophy to physics…cosmology and astrology" and Pletho's "mathematics would include [[Pythagoreanism|Pythagorean number-mysticism]], Plato's cosmological geometry and the Neoplatonic arithmetic which connected the material world with the world of [[Theory of forms|Plato's Forms]]. Possibly it also included astrology…"<ref name=Woodhouse-33>C.M. Woodhouse, ''George Gemistos Plethon, the Last of the Hellenes'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), p. 33</ref> Woodhouse also mentions that Bessarion "had a mystical streak…[and] was proficient in Neoplatonic vocabulary…mathematics…and Platonic theology".<ref name=Woodhouse-33/>

Bessarion's Neoplatonism stayed with him his whole life, even as a cardinal. He was very familiar with Neoplatonist terminology and used it in his letter to Pletho's two sons, Demitrios and Andronikos, on the death of his still-beloved teacher in 1452.<ref>Woodhouse, ''George Gemistos Plethon'', p. 13</ref> Perhaps the most remarkable thing about his life was that a Neoplatonist could have played such a significant role in the Catholic Church for at least a brief time, though he was attacked for his views by more orthodox Catholic academics shortly after his death.