§ 65. GREEK TEACHERS AND ITALIAN HUMANISTS. 591
better remuneration. He is said to have read all the Greek authors and imported six chests of manuscripts from Greece. Constantine Lascaris, who belonged to a family of high rank in the Eastern empire, gave instruction in the Greek language to Ippolita, the daughter of Francis Sforza, and later the wife of Alfonso, son of Ferdinand I. of Naples. He composed a Greek grammar for her, the first book printed in Greek, 1476. In 1470, he moved to Messina, where he established a flourishing school, and died near the close of the century. Among his pupils was Cardinal Bembo of Venice.
His son, John Lascaris, 1445-1535, was employed by Lorenzo de' Medici to collect manuscripts in Greece, and superintended the printing of Greek books in Florence. He accompanied Charles VIH. to France. In 1513, he was called by Leo X. to Rome, and opened there a Greek and Latin school. In 1518, he returned to France and collected a library for Francis I. at Fontainebleau.
Among those who did distinguished service in collecting Greek manuscripts was Giovanni Aurispa, 1369-1459, who went to Constantinople in his youth to study Greek, and bought and sold with the shrewdness of an experienced bookseller. In 1423, he returned from Constantinople with 238 volumes, including Sophocles, ^schylus, Plato, Xenophon, Plutarch, Lucian. Thus these treasures were saved from ruthless destruction by the Turks, before the catastrophe of 1453 overtook Constantinople.
The study of Greek suffered a serious decline in Italy after the close of the 15th century, but was taken up and carried to a more advanced stage by the Humanists north of the Alps.
The study of Hebrew, which had been preserved in Europe by Jewish scTioIars, notably in Spain, was also^ revived in Italy in the 15th century, but its revival met with opposition. When Lionardo Bruni heard that Poggio was learning the language, he wrote contending that the study was not only unprofitable but positively hurtful. Manetti, the biographer of Nicolas v., translated the Psalms out of Hebrew and made a collection of Hebrew manuscripts for that pontiff. The Camalduensian monk, Traversari, learned the language and,
692 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
in 1475, began the printing of Hebrew books on Italian presses. Chairs for the study of Hebrew were founded at Bologna, 1488, and in Rome 1514.
Passing from the list of the Greek teachers to the Italian Humanists, it is possible to select for mention here only a few of the more prominent names, and with special reference to their attitude to tlie Church.
Lionardo Bruni^ 1369-1444, a pupil of Chrysoloras, gives us an idea of the extraordinary sensation caused by the revival of the Greek lanffuaofe. He left all his other studies for the language of Plato and Demosthenes. He was papal secretary in Rome and for a time chancellor of Florence, and wrote letters, orations, histories, philosophical essays and translations from the Greek, among them Aristotle's Ethics, Politics and Economics, and Plato's Phcedo, Crito, Apology, Plicedrus and Gorgias and his Epistles and six of Plutarch's Lives. Foreigners went to Florence expressly to see his face. He was apious jC.atholjic . ^
Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, 1380-1459, was secretary of Martin V., then of Nicolas V., and lived mostly in Florence and Rome.2 He was the most \videly known Humanist of hj_s day, and had an unbounded passion for classical antic^uity and for literary controversy. He excelled chiefly in Latin, but knew also Greek and a little Hebrew. He was an enthusiastic book-hunter. He went to Constance as papal secretary and, besides discovering a complete copy of Quintilian's Institutes, made search in the neighboring Benedictine abbeys of Reichenau and Weingarten for old manuscripts. In Cluny and other French convents he discovered new orations of Cicero. He also visited " barbarous England." Although in the service of the curia for nearly 50 years, Poggio detested and ridiculed the monks and undermined respect for the church which supported him. In his Dialogue against Hypocrisy, he gathered a number of scandalous stories of the
1 Lionardo Bruni Aretini EpistolcB, ed. Mehus, 2 vols., Flor., 1742.
2 Opera Poggii, Basel, 1513, and other edds. EpistoJm Poggii, ed. Tonelli, 3 vols., Flor., 1832, 1859, 18(51. Shepherd; Life of Pugg io. Pastor's castigation of Poggio, I. 33 sqq., is in his moat vigorous style.