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Greek scholars in the Renaissance
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The migration of Byzantine Greek scholars and other émigrés from 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 modern scholars as crucial in the revival of Greek and Roman studies, arts and sciences, and subsequently in the formation of Renaissance humanism.1 These emigres were grammarians, humanists, poets, writers, printers, lecturers, musicians, astronomers, architects, academics, artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians.2
They became particularly famous for teaching the Greek language to their western counterparts in universities or privately. Many brought Ancient Greek texts with them which were copied, later printed, and disseminated across Europe. The most widely known financial supporters of those scholars (around the Fall of Constantinople) were: Pope Nicholas V, Anna Notaras and Cosimo de Medici. Anna Notaras established Zacharias Calliergi, one of the very first printing presses for Greek books in Venice in 1499. By 1500 there was a Greek community of about 5,000 in Venice alone, the largest in Europe, apart from the pockets of Southern Italy which were still Greek-speaking. 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. 3
List of renowned Byzantine scholars
- 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
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 4
- Emmanuel Tzanes -Venice, Cretan painter
- Theodore Poulakis -Venice, painter
- John Rhosos -Rome, Venice well-known scribe
See also
References
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 Emigrés: 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.
External links
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