Mathematical thought before the fall of an empire: the cardinal Bessarion's vita sum numa et arte plato.

Abstract

An empire is just about to collapse for ever bringing about an intellectual sort of death that is detrimental not only to the nation that su ers the loss of his heart, the Greeks, but also the whole western civilization. In these last tragical moments where survival monopolizes the human existence as a form of self-preservation, mathematical thinking prevails on the mind of a clergy personality. It is the cardinal Bessarion, whose manuscripts scattered in the aristocraticsometime ago full of Greeks -suburbs of Bosporus reveal parallel to his love for such a wellstructured science another application of mathematics rarely conceived by today educators:oratory and its undoubted power.