Greek Renaissance scholars

In the last two centuries of its history, the Byzantine Empire became a small and politically weak Christian state. But Byzantium still remained a great power in the spiritual and cultural spheres ^[1] . The first Byzantine scholars in Western Europe came from the Greek-speaking southern Italy, after the Byzantine Empire lost control of its Italian provinces ( southern Italy ). The decline of the Byzantine Empire (1203-1453), the ongoing Turkish invasion, and finally the Fall of Constantinople (1453) caused a huge wave of emigration to the West, including scientists, continuing until the sixteenth century. Greek historians have a different attitude to "those that have left." Paparigopoulos accuses them with undue severity of the fact that they left their people in slavery and darkness in the age of trials ^[2] . Fotiadis writes that hundreds of Greek scholars who left the last fragments of Byzantium and the Greek lands controlled by Venice during the 15th century “ceased to be part of the Greek enlightenment and with their knowledge contributed to the rapid fruitfulness of the Italian Renaissance” ^[3] . Using the term “brain drain” today, the modern Greek historian A.E. Vakalopoulos writes that “these scientists transplanted to the West the seeds of Hellenic-Byzantine culture that were threatened with death” ^[4] . This emigration of Byzantine scholars is regarded by many scholars as the key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies, which characterized Renaissance humanism ^[5] . Among the emigrants were humanists, poets, writers, publishers, teachers, musicians, astronomers, architects, scientists of natural sciences, artists, scribes, philosophers, politicians and theologians ^[6] .

The Greek Paleological Renaissance , interrupted by the Turks, has already turned its eyes to antiquity. Many Byzantine scholars of that era referred to themselves not as Romans, but again as Greeks. Western scholars studied with them, who “after the disaster of 1453” continued the worship of the Paleological Greeks before the ancient world ^[7] . Through its "renewed Hellenism", during the Paleologian Renaissance, Byzantium once again had a huge impact on the West ^[8] . Byzantine scholars brought to Western Europe a much larger and better preserved knowledge of their (Greek) civilization. Their main role in Renaissance humanism was the teaching of modern ( medieval ) and, even more so, ancient Greek to their Western counterparts at universities or in private, along with the dissemination of ancient texts. Their predecessors were the southern Italians Varlaam of Calabria and Leontios Pilatos , whose influence on the first Renaissance humanists is undeniable ^[9] .

Pope Gregory XIII founded the Greek Pontifical College in Rome (Collegio Pontifico Greco) to receive young Greek refugees in Italy, as well as other emigrants who followed the Greek rite . These young people had to study the sacred sciences in order to later distribute them among their compatriots and facilitate the reunion of the divided churches. The construction of the College and the Church of St. Athanasius, connected by a bridge over the Greek Road ( Via dei Greci ), began at the same time. In the same year (1577), the first students arrived, who before the completion of the College were placed in different buildings ^[10] .

In addition to the southern Italians who inhabited the former Byzantine territories of the peninsula and who still remained Greek-speaking and connected with the Byzantine culture, by 1500 the Greek community of Venice totaled 5,000 people. Venice , which first undermined the foundations and power of Constantinople, became in the end, thanks to the free choice of Greek emigrants, the richest heiress of Byzantium. The library of Vissarion was transported here even before his death, in 1472, and for many Greeks this city rich in Byzantine elements became the most bearable place of exile ^[11] . The Venetians also ruled Crete and Dalmatia, where thousands of Greek refugees from Constantinople, Thessaloniki and other Byzantine centers also settled. Crete in particular became famous for its school of icon painting ( Cretan school ), which after 1453 became the most important in the Greek world ^[12] .

Ideas from ancient Rome were already popular among scientists of the XIV century, and their importance for the Renaissance is not in dispute. But modern German scholar Walter Bershin repeats Traube's thesis that “there was no direct line in literature connecting the Renaissance and the Ancient World (and bypassing the Middle Ages)”, and that “not a single Roman author was discovered for the first time” ^[13] At the same time, Bershin repeats the famous phrase of Brucker (DJR Brucker) that "the whisper of Greek is constantly present in the Latin language" ^[14] . Western scholars constantly encountered in Latin texts citations, excerpts and references to Greek. When the first Western humanists “expressed their keen interest and nostalgia for Greek sources, the time came when Greek grammar could get a wide response, and Manuel Chrysolor , who taught Greek at the University of Florence since 1397, wrote his“ Greek Language Issues “as a textbook " ^[15] . Chrysolor, who arrived in the West with a request for help, as the envoy of Emperor Manuel II , in an era when the West “was more interested in the spirit of the Greeks than in the preservation of their statehood” ^[16] , marked the beginning of a new university Greek tradition, the beginning of the “discovery” of Greek authors and their mass transfers ^[17] . Theodore Gaza later received even greater recognition among humanists with his “Grammatical Introduction” ^[18] Texts and ideas brought from Byzantium influenced Western humanism , philosophy and science. The philosophy of Plato, which came close to the ideas of Aristotle , influenced the Renaissance, causing a debate about the place of man in the Universe, about the immortality of the soul, about the ability of man to perfect himself through virtue. The heyday of philosophical work in the XV century revived the influence of ancient Greek philosophy and science on the Renaissance. The echo of these changes passed through the centuries following the Renaissance, not only in the works of humanists, but also in the education and spiritual values ​​of Europe and Western society to the present day ^{[19] [20] [21]} .

Dinos Giannakopoulos in his work on the contribution of Byzantine scholars to the Renaissance summarizes their contribution to three major shifts of the Renaissance:

1. In Florence, the beginning of the fourteenth century, the emphasis shifted from rhetoric to metaphysical philosophy, thanks to the emergence and interpretation of Plato's texts.
2. In the cities of Venice - Padua , the dominance of Averroism in the interpretation of Aristotle in science and philosophy decreased, as it was supplemented by Byzantine traditions, using the ancient and Byzantine commentators of Aristotle.
3. At the beginning and middle of the 15th century, a philosophical school did not prevail in Rome ; instead, more reliable versions of Greek texts were published, covering all areas of humanism and science, and the heritage of the Greek church fathers was also mastered.

The direct or indirect influence of the Byzantines on the exegetics of the New Testament was hardly less; so, Lorenzo Valla , inspired by Vissarion , corrected the Latin Vulgate in the light of Greek texts ^[19] .

• Manuel Chrysolor - Florence, Pavia, Rome, Venice, Milan
• Plifon - teacher of Vissarion of Nicaea
• Vissarion of Nicaea
• George of Trebizond - Venice, Florence, Rome
• Theodore Gaza - First Dean of the Universities of Ferrara, Naples and Rome
• John Argyropool - Universities of Florence and Rome
• Laonik Chalkocondil
• Dimitri Chalkocondil - Milan
• Konstantin Laskaris - University of Messina
• Demetrius Kidonis
• Maxim Grek - studied in Italy before moving to Russia
• Cottunios, Ioannis - Padova
• Barlaam of Calabria - Francesco Petrarch also studied Greek from him
• Marullos, Michael - Ancona and Florence
• Allacy, Leo - Rome, Vatican Library Librarian
• Pilatos, Leontios - he also studied Greek from Giovanni Boccaccio
• Maxim Planud - Rome and Venice
• Atumanos, Simon - Bishop of Jerache
• Isidore (Metropolitan of Kiev)
• George Ermonim - University of Paris, his students were Erasmus of Rotterdam , Reichlin, Johann , Bude, Guillaume and Jacob Faber
• Andronic Callistus - Rome
• Kalliergi, Zachariah - Rome
• Mavroliko, Francesco - mathematician and astronomer from Sicily.
• Filaras, Leonardos - scientist, writer, medic and diplomat, adviser to the French court
• Musalus, Andreas - Venice, mathematician, architect, philosopher
• Kalafatis, Georgios - Venice and Padua, theoretical and practical medicine
• Kigalas, Ioannis - Venice and Padua, philosophy, medicine, law
• Kalliakis, Nikolaos - Rome, Venice, Padua, philosophy, fiction
• Musuros, Marcos - Padova, Venice, Rome, publisher and philologist

• El Greco - artist from Crete, Italy , Spain
• Bazaiti, Marco - artist
• Vasilakis, Antonios - artist from the island of Milos , worked in Venice with Paolo Veronese
• Mikhail Damaskin - Venice, an artist from Crete
• Tzanes, Emmanuel - Venice, artist from Crete

• 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 Constantinople, 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
• Nigel G. Wilson. From Byzantium to Italy: Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.

• 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