Janus Lascaris
Janus Lascaris (
Biography
After the Fall of Constantinople Lascaris was taken to the Peloponnese and to Crete. When still quite young he came to Venice, where Bessarion became his patron, and sent him to learn Latin at the University of Padua.[1][2]
On the death of Bessarion, Lorenzo de' Medici welcomed him to Florence, where Lascaris gave Greek lectures on Thucydides, Demosthenes, Sophocles, and the Greek Anthology. Lorenzo sent him twice to Greece in quest of manuscripts. When he returned the second time (1492) he brought back about two hundred from Mount Athos.[1]
Meanwhile, Lorenzo had died. Lascaris entered the service of the
In the meantime he had assisted Louis XII in forming the library of Blois, and when Francis I had it removed to Fontainebleau, Lascaris and Guillaume Budé had charge of its organization.[1]
Lascaris prepared a number of
Among his pupils were
.He was buried in the gothic church of Sant'Agata de' Goti, Rome. On his memorial the following epigram is inscribed, composed by himself:[3]
See also
- French humanism
- Greek scholars in the Renaissance
- Laskaris family
Notes
- ^ a b c d e Lejay 1910.
- ^ Jonathan Woolfson, Padua and the Tudors: English Students in Italy, 1485-1603, James Clarke & Co, 1998, p. 4.
- ^ John P.A. Ioannidis (MD, DSc), Η φυγή των Ελλήνων επιστημόνων. Μια μετα-ανάλυση [The leaving of the Greek scientists. A meta-analysis], Αρχεία Ελλην. Ιατρικής, [Archives of Greek Medicine] 33(3), 2016, p. 305. In Greek language.
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lejay, Paul (1910). "Janus Lascaris". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 9. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Jonathan Harris, Greek Émigrés in the West, 1400-1520 (Camberley: Porphyrogenitus, 1995). ISBN 1-871328-11-X
- Graham Speake, ‘Janus Lascaris’ visit to Mount Athos in 1491’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 34 (1993), 325–30.
- Francis Walton, ‘Janus Laskaris’, The Griffon 10 (1984), 8-35
- J. Whittaker, ‘Janus Laskaris at the court of Charles V’, Thesaurismata 14 (1977), 76-109
- N.G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy. Greek Studies in the Italian Renaissance (London, 1992). ISBN 0-7156-2418-0