Constantinople and Formation (1392–c. 1418)

The early life of the man who would become St. Mark of Ephesus: his birth in Constantinople around 1392, into a family of learning at the heart of the Great Church; the loss of his father in childhood; his education under two of the finest minds of the dying empire, John Chortasmenos and George Gemistos Plethon; and his emergence as the brightest teacher and rhetor of the declining city, the master in whose school the future Patriarch Gennadios II Scholarios was first formed.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox / Byzantine

Birth and Name

The future St. Mark of Ephesus was born in Constantinople, around 1392, and given the baptismal name Manuel — Markos, the name by which the Church now knows him, was the name he received at his monastic tonsure some twenty-five years later (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion of Mark of Ephesus, ed. Pétridès, Revue de l’Orient chrétien 15 [1910]: 99–100; Davies, “Mark of Ephesus: Revisiting the Sources,” JLARC 19.1 [2025]: 28). He was a child of the imperial capital in its last age — a city that within his own lifetime would dwindle to a ringed island in an Ottoman sea, and that would fall, nine years after his death, to Mehmed II.

The chief source for these early years is intimate and one-sided in the best way: the short Life, the Synaxarion, written shortly after Mark’s death by his younger brother, John Eugenikos, the nomophylax (guardian of the laws), who had known him from the cradle and shared his cause (Pétridès 1910: 97–107; on its standing as the principal biographical source, Davies 2025: 24). Because it is the work of a partisan brother, the Synaxarion is hagiography in the strict sense, and this guide treats its claims as what the family attested rather than as adjudicated fact, per the repository methodology §3.5. But for the bare framework of names, teachers, and dates it is corroborated by Mark’s own datable writings and by the modern critical reconstruction of Davies.

The Family

Mark was born into the learned service-class of the Great Church. His father, George (Georgios) Eugenikos, was a deacon and sakellarios — a treasury official — of Hagia Sophia, of Trapezuntine (Trebizond) descent, who himself ran a school in Constantinople and composed liturgical poetry, including an Akolouthia (office) to St. Spyridon (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 99–100]; John Eugenikos, Ekphrasis of Trebizond §18; Davies 2025: 28). His mother, Maria, was the daughter of a physician named Luke (Davies 2025: 28, from the Synaxarion). His younger brother John — the future memorialist — would rise through the patriarchal chancery from notarios to chartophylax to nomophylax, would himself attend the Council of Ferrara–Florence as an expert carrying the letters of the Eastern patriarchs, and would, after Mark’s death, write both the Synaxarion and a point-by-point refutation of the union decree (Davies 2025: 24–28; Syropoulos, Memoirs 4.44 [ed. Laurent 1971: 248]).

George Eugenikos died in 1405, when Manuel was a child of about thirteen, and the boy’s mother carried on the responsibility for his schooling (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 100]; Davies 2025: 28). The premature loss of a learned father, and the inheritance of his school, would shape the next phase of Mark’s life decisively.

The Teachers: Chortasmenos and Plethon

The Synaxarion names two teachers under whom Manuel pursued his higher studies, and both were figures of the first rank in the intellectual life of the late empire (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 100]; Davies 2025: 28–29):

John Chortasmenos (c. 1370 – c. 1436/37; later, as a monk, Ignatius, Metropolitan of Selymbria), a notary of the patriarchal chancery and a celebrated didaskalos, an Aristotelian and a copyist of manuscripts, under whom Mark studied logic and the syllogistic method. Davies argues that it was this training in syllogistic dialectic — not a narrow monastic apophaticism — that equipped Mark for the formal argumentation he would deploy at Florence, where his refutations of the Latin positions were cast as strings of syllogisms (Davies 2025: 28–29, with reference to Hunger’s studies of Chortasmenos).
George Gemistos Plethon (c. 1355/60 – 1452), the Neoplatonist philosopher of Mistra, the most original and controversial mind of the Byzantine fifteenth century, under whom Mark pursued “more advanced studies in philosophy” (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 100]; Davies 2025: 29). The pairing is one of the quiet ironies of the story: Plethon, who at Florence would lecture the Italian humanists on Plato and seed the Florentine Platonic revival, and who in private nursed a frankly pagan philosophical religion, was the teacher of the man who would become the great defender of Orthodox dogma. Plethon, too, would attend the council — and would leave it, like Scholarios, before the union was signed.

[Disputed: the Synaxarion names only Chortasmenos and Plethon as Mark’s teachers (Pétridès 1910: 100; Davies 2025: 28–29). Popular and encyclopedic accounts add Manuel Chrysoloras and Joseph Bryennios to the list, but these are uncorroborated by the primary Life and are best treated as later embellishment rather than established fact.]

The Rhetor and Schoolmaster of the Dying City

Around 1410, while still a layman, Manuel took over the running of his late father’s school, and the Synaxarion presents him as the foremost teacher of the capital — “the brightest teacher of the declining city” (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 100–101]; Davies 2025: 22, 29). He was, in this period, a rhetor and a man of letters in the full Byzantine sense: he held the office of anagnostes (reader), appointed by Patriarch Euthymios II (reigned 1410–1416), and on Euthymios’ death in 1416 composed a hymn (canon) in his memory; he was close enough to the scholar-emperor Manuel II Palaiologos that the emperor entrusted him with the correction of manuscripts of his own writings (Mark, Canon for Patriarch Euthymios, ed. Diamantopoulos 1912: 133–135; John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 100–101]; Davies 2025: 30).

Scholarios and the Circle

The most consequential of Mark’s pupils — for the history that follows — was George (Georgios) Scholarios, the future Patriarch Gennadios II, the first ecumenical patriarch under Ottoman rule and the man to whom Mark would hand the leadership of the anti-unionist cause on his deathbed. Mark was Scholarios’ first instructor: Scholarios himself, in a later letter of dedication addressed to Mark, acknowledged the debt (Scholarios, Lettre d’envoi à Marc d’Éphèse, in Œuvres complètes de Georges Scholarios, ed. Petit, Sidéridès, and Jugie, vol. 4: 116–118; Davies 2025: 22, 29). Others later prominent in the affairs of the council and the Church — the theologian Theodore Agallianos among them — were also formed in this circle (John Eugenikos, Synaxarion [Pétridès 1910: 100–101]; Davies 2025: 29).

The detail matters for more than antiquarianism. The two men who would lead the Orthodox resistance to the Union of Florence — Mark Eugenikos and George Scholarios — and the man who would become its most eloquent Greek defender, Bessarion of Nicaea, were products of the same small and brilliant educational world, shaped by the same teachers (Chortasmenos, Plethon). The drama of the council is in part the drama of that world divided against itself. That Mark was the teacher and Scholarios the pupil, and that on his deathbed the teacher would charge the pupil to take up his fallen standard (see Death and Aftermath), gives the story of the resistance the shape of a single unbroken line of transmission.

References

John Eugenikos. Synaxarion of Mark of Ephesus. Ed. S. Pétridès, “Le synaxaire de Marc d’Éphèse.” Revue de l’Orient chrétien 15 (1910): 97–107. (Birth c. 1392; baptismal name Manuel; father George the deacon and sakellarios; mother Maria daughter of the physician Luke; father’s death 1405; teachers Chortasmenos and Plethon; the school; the office of anagnostes.)
Davies, Ewan. “Mark of Ephesus (1392–1444): Revisiting the Sources on His Life and Work.” Journal for Late Antique Religion and Culture 19.1 (2025): 18–54. DOI 10.18573/jlarc.156. (Critical reconstruction of the early life from the Synaxarion and Mark’s datable works; the syllogistic training under Chortasmenos; Scholarios as Mark’s first pupil.)
Scholarios, George (Gennadios II). Œuvres complètes de Georges Scholarios. Ed. L. Petit, X. A. Sidéridès, and M. Jugie. 8 vols. Paris: Maison de la Bonne Presse, 1928–1936. (Vol. 4: the dedicatory letter acknowledging Mark as his first teacher.)
Diamantopoulos, A. (ed.). Mark Eugenikos, Canon for Patriarch Euthymios II (1416). 1912: 133–135.
Constas, Nicholas (Maximos). “Mark Eugenikos.” In La théologie byzantine et sa tradition, vol. II, ed. C. G. Conticello. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002, pp. 411–467. (Survey of life and formation.)