Demetrios Chalkokondyles

Demetrios Chalkokondyles was one of the most eminent Greek scholars in the West. He taught in Italy for over forty years; his colleagues included Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano, and Theodorus Gaza in the revival of letters in the Western world, and Chalkokondyles was the last of the Greek humanists who taught Greek literature at the great universities of the Italian Renaissance (Padua, Florence, Milan). One of his pupils at Florence was the famous Johann Reuchlin. Chalkokondyles published the first printed publications of Homer (in 1488), of Isocrates (in 1493), and of the Suda lexicon (in 1499). Chalkokondyles was born in Athens in 1423 to one of the noblest Athenian families and was the cousin of the chronicler of the fall of Constantinople, Laonicus Chalcocondyles. He soon moved to the Peloponnese, with his Athenian family who had migrated after its persecution by the Florentine dukes. He migrated to Italy in 1447 and arrived at Rome in 1449 where Cardinal Bessarion became his patron. He became the student of Theodorus Gaza and later gained the patronage of Lorenzo de Medici, serving as a tutor to his sons. Afterwards Chalkokondyles lived the rest of his life in Italy, as a teacher of Greek and philosophy. Chalkokondyles composed several orations and treatises calling for the liberation of his homeland Greece from what he called “the abominable, monstrous, and impious barbarian Turks.” He also wrote commentaries on Plato, Aristotle, and other classical authors, as well as grammatical and rhetorical works. He was a pioneer in the editorial activity of Greek texts in fifteenth century Italy. He contributed greatly to the intensification of Greek learning and the advancement of the study of philosophy in Renaissance Italy. He died in Milan in 1511.