Demetrios Chalkokondyles

Chalkokondyles Demetrios (Greek Dimitrios Chalkokondylis Δημήτριος Χαλκοκονδύλης ), also known as Demetrikokondyles, Chalkokondylas, Chalkokondylis or Chalkondyles (* in August 1423 in Athens, † January 9, 1511 in Milan ) was a Greek humanist, scholar, and professor of Greek language in Italy.

Demetrios Chalkokondyles taught for over 40 years, alternately in Padua, Perugia, Milan and Florence, Greek. Among his pupils Janos Lascaris, Angelo Poliziano, Leo X, Castiglione, Giraldi, Stefano Negri and Giovanni Maria Cattaneo, as well as in Florence the famous Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin were; together with Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Theodorus Gaza, he was instrumental in the revival of Greek literature in the Western world. Chalkokondyles published the first printed edition of Homer's work in 1488, by Isocrates in 1493, as well as the Byzantine encyclopedia Suda 1499th In 1463, Demetrius Chalkokondyles urged a crusade for the liberation and reconquest of his home country Greece from the invading Ottomans. He he was one of the most important Greek scholars in the West and contributed to Renaissance literature in Italy. He was also the last of the Greek humanists, the Greek literature as a subject at the major universities of the Italian Renaissance ( Padua, Florence, Milan ) taught.