Gennadius Scholarius
A lay judge who attended the Council of Florence as George Scholarios, then as the monk Gennadius led the opposition to the union in Constantinople. After the conquest Mehmed II made him patriarch.
Doukas lists George Scholarios, the general judge (in Greek katholikos krites), among the laymen who represented the Greek side at Florence (Doukas, History 31.3 (Bekker p. 214)). By 1452 he was a monk named Gennadius in the monastery of the Pantokrator at Constantinople. When the union was about to be celebrated in Hagia Sophia he shut himself in his cell and posted on the door a written warning against it, and the opponents of the union took him as their teacher (Doukas, History 36.3–4 (Bekker pp. 253–254)). Doukas, a supporter of the union, says that he wrote daily against the unionists and against the works of Thomas Aquinas (Doukas, History 37.10 (Bekker p. 264)).
Kritoboulos relates that Mehmed II, who had heard of his learning, had him sought out after the conquest, found him at Adrianople, admired his conversation and appointed him patriarch (Kritoboulos, History 2.2). See the Fall of Constantinople.
In the timeline
- 29 May 1453, firm dateThe Fall of Constantinople
After a siege of some eight weeks the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II takes Constantinople on 29 May 1453. The last emperor, Constantine XI, dies in the fighting, Hagia Sophia becomes a mosque, and the sultan makes the anti-unionist monk Gennadius patriarch.