Greek scholars in the Renaissance

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The migration of Byzantine scholars and other émigrés from southern Italy and Byzantium during the decline of the Byzantine Empire (1203-1453) and mainly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 until the 16th century, is considered by some scholars as very important in the revival of Greek and Roman studies and subsequently in the development of the Renaissance humanism.^[1] These emigres were grammarians, humanists, poets, writers, printers, lecturers, musicians, astronomers, architects, academics, artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians.^[2]

Their main role within the Renaissance humanism was in truth the teaching of the Greek language to their western counterparts in universities or privately together with the spread of ancient texts. Their forerunners were the southern Italians Barlaam of Calabria (Bernardo Massari) and Leonzio Pilato, whose impact on the very first Renaissance humanists could not be really notable.

We may say that in general the Greeks and the whole sunset of the Greek culture offered to the [Italian] humanists some instruments of work, that is, some linguistic data and codices, but very little in regard to suggestions and ideas. Examining the Ethica secundum stoicos of the Calabrian monk [Barlaam of Calabria], Giovanni Gentile saw in it the source of some Petrarchan positions, which can be more easily explained with Cicero and Augustine […] Is it really necessary to assume that Petrarch, an assiduous reader of ancient texts and of the Scholastics, was directly influenced by that teacher [Barlaam of Calabria] who in his opinion was very poor in Latin learning (Latinarum inscius)? Even Boccaccio could not draw very much from Barlaam. Boccaccio refers to Barlaam, in addition to some quotations used in De geneaologia deorum, as the teacher of Paolo Perugino, the learned librarian of Robert of Anjou, at whose court there was no lack of experts in Greek and translators. Boccaccio mentions Barlaam again as the teacher of the strange Leonzio Pilato who, as he was saying, came from Thessalonica, but was born, he too, in Calabria. Leonzio was a difficult man and a weak translator of Homer and Pseudo-Aristotelian writings; he was probably the first public teacher of Greek in Florence. “Our Leonzio”, Petrarch wrote to Boccaccio (Le Senili, bk. 3, num. 6), “in truth, was born in Calabria, though he insisted that he was born in Thessalonica, because he was of the opinion that to have Greek rather than Italian origins was more honorable. He always pretend to be a foreigner, Greek among us, and Italian among the Greeks. But no matter where he came, the fact is that this Leonzio is certainly an idiot.” After Leonzio decided to go to Byzantium and then requested to be called back to Italy, Petrarch wrote again to Boccaccio (Le Senili, bk. 5, num. 3): “Though Leonzio is insistently asking and praying that I recall him, this will not happen, not by letter or messengers. There he should stay where he went after disdaining our hospitality. He could have been of a great help in our studies, if his manners were not so extremely crude and his customs so eccentric. To hell with him! Let him keep his villanous manners, his beard, his mantle, and his anger. What one has sown, he will harvest”.^[3]

Besides the southern Italians who inhabited ex-Byzantine territories of the peninsula which, in part, were still Greek-speaking and connected with the Byzantine culture, by 1500 there was a Greek community of about 5,000 in Venice. The Venetians also ruled Crete and Dalmatia, where many refugees also settled. Crete was especially notable for the Cretan School of icon-painting, which after 1453 became the most important in the Greek world. ^[4]

Contents 1 List of renowned Byzantine scholars 2 Printers, Artists & Patrons 3 See also 4 References 5 Sources 6 External links

[edit] List of renowned Byzantine scholars

• Manuel Chrysoloras -Florence, Pavia, Rome, Venice, Milan
• George Gemistos Plethon -Teacher of Bessarion
• Bessarion
• George of Trebizond -Venice, Florence, Rome
• Theodorus Gaza -First dean of the University of Ferrara, Naples and Rome
• John Argyropoulos -Universities of Florence, Rome
• Laonicus Chalcocondyles
• Demetrius Chalcondyles -Milan
• Theofilos Chalcocondylis -Florence
• Constantine Lascaris -University of Messina
• Henry Aristippus
• Michael Apostolius -Rome
• Aristobulus Apostolius
• Arsenius Apostolius
• Demetrius Cydones
• Janus Lascaris or Rhyndacenus -Rome
• Maximus the Greek studied in Italy before moving to Russia
• Ioannis Kottounios -Padua
• Konstantinos Kallokratos
• Barlaam of Seminara - He thaught Petrarch some rudiments of Greek language
• Marcus Musurus -University of Padua
• Michael Tarchaniota Marullus -Ancona and Florence, friend and pupil of Jovianus Pontanus
• Leo Allatius -Rome, librarian of the library of Vatican
• Demetrios Ducas
• Leozio Pilatus - He taught Boccacio some rudiments of Greek language

• Maximus Planudes -Rome, Venice
• Leonard of Chios -Greek-born Roman Catholic prelate
• Simon Atumano -Bishop of Gerace in Calabria
• Isidore of Kiev
• Elia del Medigo -Venice
• George Hermonymus -University of Paris, teacher of Erasmus, Reuchlin, Budaeus and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
• John Chrysoloras -scholar and diplomat: relative of Manuel Chrysoloras, patron of Francesco Filelfo
• Andronicus Contoblacas -Basel, teacher of Johann Reuchlin
• John Servopoulos -Reading, Oxford; scholar, professor
• Johannes Crastonis Modena, Greek-Latin dictionary
• Andronicus Callistus -Rome
• Gerasimos Vlachos -Venice
• George Amiroutzes -Florence, Aristotelian
• Gregory Tifernas -Paris teacher of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Robert Gaguin
• Nikolaos Sophianos -Rome, Venice: scholar and geographer, creator of the Totius Graeciae Descriptio

• Zacharias Calliergi -Rome
• Mathew Devaris -Rome
• Antonios Eparchos -Venice, scholar and poet
• Maximos Margunios -Venice
• Mathaeos Kamariotis
• Nikolaos Loukanis -Venice
• Iakovos Trivolis-Venice
• Janus Plousiadenos -Venice, hymnographer and composer

[edit] Printers, Artists & Patrons

• El Greco -Cretan painter, Italy, Spain
• Antonio Vassilacchi - painter from Milos worked in Venice with Paolo Veronese
• Michael Damaskenos -Venice, Cretan painter
• Francisco Leontaritis -Italy, Bavaria: singer and composer
• Anna Notaras -Venice, first Greek typing press
• Thomas Flanginis -Venice, funded the establishment of the Flanginian Greek school for teachers
• Angelos Pitzamanos (1467-1535) Cretan painter Otranto, South Italy ^[5]
• Emmanuel Tzanes -Venice, Cretan painter
• Theodore Poulakis -Venice, painter
• John Rhosos -Rome, Venice well-known scribe

[edit] See also

• Byzantine art
• Cretan School
• Byzantine science
• List of Byzantine scientists
• Renaissance humanism
• Arab transmission of the Classics to the West

[edit] References

[edit] Sources

• Deno J. Geanakoplos, Byzantine East and Latin West: Two worlds of Christendom in Middle Ages and renaissance. The Academy Library Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1966.
• Deno J Geanakoplos, (1958) A Byzantine looks at the renaissance, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 1 (2);pp:157-62.
• Jonathan Harris, Greek Émigrés in the West, 1400-1520, Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1995.
• Louise Ropes Loomis (1908) The Greek Renaissance in Italy The American Historical Review, 13(2);pp:246-258.
• John Monfasani Byzantine Scholars in Renaissance Italy: Cardinal Bessarion and Other Émigrés: Selected Essays, Aldershot, Hampshire: Variorum, 1995.
• Steven Runciman, The fall of Constantinope, 1453. Cambridge University press, Cambridge 1965.
• Fotis Vassileiou & Barbara Saribalidou, Short Biographical Lexicon of Byzantine Academics Immigrants to Western Europe, 2007.
• Dimitri Tselos (1956) A Greco-Italian School of Illuminators and Fresco Painters: Its Relation to the Principal Reims Manuscripts and to the Greek Frescoes in Rome and Castelseprio The Art Bulletin, 38(1);pp: 1-30.

[edit] External links

• Greece: Books and Writers.
• Michael D. Reeve, "On the role of Greek in Renaissance scholarship.'
• Jonathan Harris, 'Byzantines in Renaissance Italy'.
• Bilingual (Greek original / English) excerpts from Gennadios Scholarios' Epistle to Orators.
• Paul Botley, Renaissance Scholarship and the Athenian Calendar.
• Richard C. Jebb 'Christian Renaissance'.
• Karl Krumbacher: 'The History of Byzantine Literature: from Justinian to the end of the Eastern Roman Empire (527-1453)'.
• San Giorgio dei Greci and the Greek community of Venice
• Istituto Ellenico di Studi Byzantini and Postbyzantini di Venezia