This is basically a placeholder for now, to remind me to come back and do this right. Essentially what I have in mind is just a good old-fashioned literature survey. The focus will be on contemporary scholarship relevant to the question of what one might call (if anyone has alternative suggestions, I am all ears) "Byzantine Underground Platonic Paganism". The literature I have in mind falls into four groups:
- The works of Anthony Kaldellis, Niketas Siniossoglou and Aslihan Akisik.
- Other Byzantinists who concede that at the very least George Gemistos Plethon (and possibly others) provide genuine examples of crypto-Paganism.
- Non Byzantinist scholars of Esotericism (I have Wouter Hanegraaff especially in mind) who, like category 2 above concede that at the very least George Gemistos Plethon etc etc.
- Other scholars who continue to hold to some verion of the Kristeller/Febvre Party Line that underground Paganism not only did not exist at the times and places in question, but that it was, as a matter of existential fact, an impossibility.
Perhaps as much as 50% (or even more) of this survey already exists, at least in outline form, in scattered posts in this blog over the last 5+ years or so.
