4. AMYRUTZA, or AMYRUTZES, a native of Trapezus or Trebizond. He was high in favour at Constantinople with the emperor Johannes or John II. Palaeologus, and was one of those whom the emperor consulted about his attendance at the council of Florence, A. D. 1439. George afterwards returned to Trebizond, and was high in favour with David, the last emperor of Trebizond, at whose court he seems to have borne the offices of Logotheta and Protovestiarius. His intellectual attainments obtained for him the title of "the philosopher." On the capture of Trebizond by the Turks (A. D. 1461), he obtained the favour of the sultan, Mohammed H., partly by his handsome person and his skill in the use of the javelin, but chielly through a marriage connection with a Turkish pacha. Mohammed often conversed with him on philosophy and religion, and gave him some considerable posts in the seraglio at Constantinople. He embraced the Mohammedan religion, together with his children; and his death, which occurred suddenly, while he was playing at dice, is represented by some Christian writers as the punishment of his apostasy; from which we may perhaps infer that it followed that event after no great interval.

He wrote in Greek, apparently in the early part of his life, at any rate before his renunciation of Christianity, a work the title of which is rendered into Latin by our authorities, "Ad Demetrium Nauplii Diceln de iis quae contiqerunt in Synodo Florentina." In this he opposed the projected union of the Greek and Latin churches. Allatius mentions this work in his and quotes from it. Two other works, of which the titles are thus given, Dialogus de Fidee in Christo cum Rege Turcarum, and Epistola ad Bessarion Cardinalem, are or were extant in MS. (Gery, Appeidix to Cave's Hist. Litt. p. 182,, ed. Oxon. 1740_43; Bayle, Dictionnaire, &c., s. v. Amyrutzes.)