Greek Scholars in The Renaissance

Greek Scholars In The Renaissance

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 key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies and subsequently in the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These emigres were grammarians, humanists, poets, writers, printers, lecturers, musicians, astronomers, architects, academics, artists, scribes, philosophers, scientists, politicians and theologians. They brought to Western Europe the far greater preserved and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization.

Their main role within the Renaissance humanism was 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 was indisputable.

Collegio Pontifico Greco was a foundation of Gregory XIII, who established a college in Rome to receive young Greeks belonging to any nation in which the Greek Rite was used, and consequently for Greek refugees in Italy as well as the Ruthenians and Malchites of Egypt and Syria. These young men had to study the sacred sciences, in order to spread later sacred and profane learning among their fellow-countrymen and facilitate the reunion of the schismatical churches. The construction of the College and Church of S. Atanasio, joined by a bridge over the Via dei Greci, was begun at once. The same year (1577) the first students arrived, and until the completion of the college were housed elsewhere.

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.