Vasilief, A History of the Byzantine Empire

The fall of Byzantium

Byzantium and the Italian Renaissance

Page 9

But Byzantium contributed greatly to the history of the Renaissance not only by implanting the knowledge of the Greek language and literature by lessons and lectures and by the activity of such talented men as Plethon or Bessarion, who opened new horizons to Italy; Byzantium also gave the West a vast number of earlier Greek manuscripts, which contained the best classical authors, not to mention Byzantine texts and the works of the Fathers of the Greek Church.

Italian humanists, guided by the well known bibliophile Poggio, traveled through Italy and western Europe about the fourth decade of the fifteenth century, i.e. the epoch of the Council of Florence, and gathered together almost all the Latin classics now known. After Manuel Chrysoloras, who aroused an enthusiastic veneration for ancient Hellas in Italy, there was evident an intensive movement for the acquisition of Greek books. For this purpose the Italians hoped to use the Byzantine libraries. The Italians who had gone to Byzantium to learn Greek wisdom returned to Italy bringing Greek books. The first of these was an auditor of Chrysoloras in Constantinople, Guarino. What Poggio did for collecting the works of Roman literature, Giovanni Aurispa did for Greek literature: he went to Byzantium and brought from Constantinople, the Peloponnesus, and the islands no less than 238 volumes, in other words, a whole library comprising the best classical writers.

As, in connection with the Turkish conquest, living conditions in Byzantium were growing harder and more dangerous, the Greeks emigrated in large numbers to the West and carried with them the works of their literature. The accumulation in Italy of the treasures of the classical world owing to conditions in Byzantium, created in the West exceptionally favorable conditions for acquaintance with the remote past of Hellas and her eternal culture. By transmitting classical works to the West and thereby saving them from destruction at the hands of the Turks, Byzantium performed great service for the future destinies of mankind  

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