Manuel Chrysoloras teaches Greek in Florence

1397

Invited by Coluccio Salutati to teach at the Florentine studium, the Byzantine scholar lectured on ancient Greek to a generation of Italian humanists including Leonardo Bruni. For the first time in a thousand years, western Europeans began to learn Greek systematically, unlocking Plato, Thucydides, and Homer in the original. The Italian Renaissance acquired a Greek wing.