GENNADIUS II. or GEORGIOS SCHOLARIOS (d. c. 1468), patriarch of Constantinople from 1454 to 1456, philosopher and theologian, was one of the last representatives of Byzantine learning. He appears to have been born at Constantinople and to have served the emperor John VII. Paleologus as counsellor. He was present at the great council held in 1438 at Ferrara and Florence with the object of uniting the Greek and Latin Churches, and there met the celebrated Platonist, Gemistus Pletho. In church matters, as in philosophy, the two were opposed,—Pletho maintaining strongly the principles of the Greek Church, Georgios being more willing to compromise. On his return to Greece, how ever, Georgios violently opposed the union. In 1448 he became a monk at Pantokrator, and in 1453 was elected patriarch of Con stantinople by Mohammed II. A few years later he found his position under a Turkish sultan so irksome that he retired to the monastery of John the Baptist near Serrae in Macedonia, where he died about 1468.
His writings, which include philosophical translations and commen taries, defences of Aristotle, and expositions of Christianity for Mo hammedans and Jews, are described in W. Gass, Gennadius and Pletho (1844) , and in Fabricius, Bibliotheca Graeca, ed. Harles, vol. xi. Some are printed in Migne, Patrol. Gr. vol. clx. See also F. Schultze, Gesch. der Phil. d. Renaissance (1874) , i.