Plethon's hymn

George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355-1452) taught at Mistra, attended the Council of Ferrara-Florence, and there, by his talk of Plato, prompted Cosimo de' Medici to found the Platonic Academy. And in private he was writing a book, the Laws, proposing to replace Christianity with a reformed Hellenic polytheism — with a calendar, a priesthood, and hymns to the Olympians. This is one of them, the twenty-second.

After his death Gennadios Scholarios, the first patriarch under Ottoman rule, burned the book. What survives is what he himself copied out in condemning it, and a few leaves. This prayer has reached us because the man who destroyed it transcribed it.

Its content is unusual for this collection: nothing is asked for. Gratitude for what has been received; to serve the common good "and to count this a great profit to myself"; to be the cause of no evil; to become blessed in the measure of one's likeness to the gods. No harvest, no health, no victory — only moral undertakings spoken aloud. It is nearest not to cult hymns but to the notebooks of Marcus Aurelius.

The heading in the edition says when the hymn was sung: "the first of the daily hymns, sung on the second day". Plethon set out not only the gods but the week — every day has its hymn, and this one opens the working round.

The provenance field reads unclear, and not because the text is in doubt. The corpus distinguishes ancient, modern and unclear, and a fifteenth-century Hellenist has no place among the three.

The card greek-mousaios-001 is also routed through Plethon.