THE BYZANTINE RENAISSANCE AS A FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE – MANOJLO HRISOLORAS IN FIRENCE

Abstract

The impetus of Byzantine scientists upon the development of humanist learning (studia humanitatis): metaphysics, patristics and science, and upon Italian renaissance in particular were at its ultimate strength in-between 1361 and cca 1531. These hundred and seventy years of direct influence of Byzantine scientists refugees upon the development of Italian humanism and thoughtfulness in the country of European West, especially the power of their role and the grade of their contribution, have rarely been systematically analyzed in all complexity of the issue. That is unfortunately not surprising at all, considering the attitude of European mostly Roman Catholic but protestant West too toward European Orthodox East established long ago. In the famous book of G. Voigt in German language “Classical Antiquity Revival”, that was published in 1859, a year before J. Burckhardt book “Renaissance Civilization in Italy”, both authors emphasized the importance of Greek learning revival as a key to the classical antiquity revival that happen in Italian renaissance. Earlier, in the 17th and 18th Century, in the European West the understanding of Byzantine scholars as most powerful strength to move on talian renaissance, after they were forced to leave Constantinople and the Empire before the Turks in 1453. Leaving a side the facts, now obvious, that Greek refugees, scholars of the great importance like Manuel Chrisoloras and others, appeared with their works and in person in Italy and the West even before that time, and the fact that the most important intellectual battle of Italian and Byzantine scholars in the Middle Ages already happen in 1438-39 in Florence, at the Council of both Christian Churches, there is a hypothesis we now can fully confirm that the presence of Byzantine scholar’s works and themselves as professors at Italian universities as well was actually the fact of primary importance for the earliest Italian humanists to revive Greek learning and turn their full attention to its achievements. Internal developments within Italian city-states were of secondary importance of course. In other words, growing self respect of Italian middle class of the time, within a sophisticated urban environment, was the one that influenced certain citizens that were to become humanist to turn their full attention toward Greek learning, which was the most useful confirmation of their respective way of civil life all together, within Italian citystates. Writings of Greco-Roman Classics, written in Greek and Latin languages, became perfect models for the Italian humanists to support their own urban society and culture.