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Updated: May 23, 2025
A young Florentine law student, Leonardo Bruni, tells us of a dialogue which he had with himself when he heard of the coming of Chrysoloras. "Art thou not neglecting thy best interests if thou failest now to get an insight into Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, and the other great poets, philosophers, and orators of whom they are telling such wonderful things?
To our uninstructed seaman the scent seemed to exhale from the tulips; it recalled his attention from the gannets, and he drew in deep breaths of it, pondering the parterres of Kaiserskroon and Duchesse de Parme bold scarlet splashed with yellow of golden Chrysoloras, of rosy white Cottage Maids.
He began to teach Greek, and lectured on the grammar of Chrysoloras. Finding that this did not attract pupils, he changed to Gaza; which he evidently expected to be more popular. But he did not persevere. The Schoolmen were still strongly entrenched.
The magistrates of Florence heard of the visit of Chrysoloras. The people of their city were "crazy to learn Greek." Would he please come and teach them?
In the fifteenth century the more active intercourse with the Greek Church, and the efforts at union with it, helped to bring into Italy learned Greeks, like Chrysoloras and Bessarion, and numerous manuscripts of Greek authors. The fall of Constantinople increased this influx of Greek learning.
In the year 1393 the Emperor, Manuel Paleologue, sent Emmanuel Chrysoloras to western Europe to explain the desperate state of old Byzantium and to ask for aid. This aid never came. The Roman Catholic world was more than willing to see the Greek Catholic world go to the punishment that awaited such wicked heretics.
The study of the classics had languished for a time after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccaccio. It revived again upon the coming of Chrysoloras, who is said to have lighted in Italy 'a new and perpetual flame. Poggio Bracciolini was one of his first pupils; and he became so distinguished in literature that the earlier part of the fifteenth century is known as the age of Poggio.
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