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That colony had begun with Manuel Chrysoloras and his relation John, and with George of Trebizond. Then followed, about and after the time of the conquest of Constantinople, John Argyropulos, Theodore Gaza, Demetrios Chalcondylas, who brought up his sons Theophilos and Basilios to be excellent Hellenists, Andronikos Kallistos, Marcos Musuros and the family of Lascaris, not to mention others.
Close upon the artists who followed Da Vinci, to Salvator Rosa, were those scholars of whom Emanuel Chrysoloras, Erasmus, and Scaliger were the representatives, going back to the classic fountains of Greece and Rome, reviving a study for antiquity, breathing a new spirit into universities, enriching vernacular tongues, collecting and collating manuscripts, translating the Scriptures, and stimulating the learned to emancipate themselves from the trammels of the scholastic philosophers.
Among the pupils of Chrysoloras, Guarini of Verona was esteemed the keenest philologist, and John Aurispa as having the most extended knowledge of the classics.
Nor again would Erasmus, when teaching Greek at Cambridge in 1511, have chosen the grammars of Gaza and Chrysoloras to lecture upon, if his audience had been capable of anything better. Eminent scholars do not teach the elements at a university if boys are already learning them at school. The condition of things may fairly be gauged by Duke Humfrey's collections for his library at Oxford.
'I gave myself up to Chrysoloras, he writes, 'and my passion for knowledge was so strong that the daily tasks became the material of my nightly dreams. He told Cosmo de' Médici, when translating Plato's Dialogues, that they alone seemed to be infused with real life, while all other books passed by like fleeting and shadowy things.
He had in his service, either successively or to- gether, George of Trebizond, the younger Chrysoloras, Lorenzo Valla, Bartolommeo Fazio and Antonio Panormita, of whom the two latter were his historians; Panormita daily instructed the King and his court in Livy, even during military expeditions. These men cost him yearly 20,000 gold florins.
He had in his service, either successively or together, George of Trebizond, the younger Chrysoloras, Lorenzo Valla, Bartolommeo Facio and Antonio Panormita, of whom the two latter were his historians; Panormita daily instructed the King and his court in Livy, even during military expeditions. These men cost him yearly 20,000 gold florins.
There are teachers of Roman law to be found everywhere, and thou wilt never want an opportunity to continue that study, but there is but one teacher of Greek, and if he escapes thee there will be no one from whom thou canst learn." Many students took advantage of the opportunity to study Greek, and Chrysoloras prepared the first modern Greek grammar for their use.
It was not till the end of the century that Chrysoloras renewed the knowledge of the classics: but we may regard the austere Leontio as the chief precursor of the crowd of later immigrants, each with a gem, or bronze, or 'a brown Greek manuscript' for sale, and all eager to play their parts in the restoration of learning.
Petrarch and his followers were naturally much interested in the constant references to Greek literature which occur in Cicero and Horace, both of whom freely recognized their debt to Athens. Shortly after Petrarch's death the city of Florence called to its university a professor of Greek, Chrysoloras from Constantinople.
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