ARGYROPOULOS, JOHN

Byzantine scholar teaching in the West; b. Constantinople, 1415; d. Rome, June 26, 1487. One of the most celebrated Byzantine scholars to appear in Italy during the years immediately preceding and following the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, Argyropoulos was a member of the Greek delegation to the Council of florence (1438–39) and seems to have remained in Italy after the close of the council, studying and subsequently teaching Greek privately at Venice and Padua. After returning to Byzantium a few years later, he taught Greek literature at Constantinople's higher school, the Mouseion of Xenon, and took the side of the prounionists in the conflict over the union with Rome. Upon the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, he fled to the Peloponnesus, whence, in 1456, he was summoned to Florence by Cosimo de' medici to occupy Chrysoloras's old chair of Greek studies at the University of Florence. During the epidemic of 1471 he moved to Rome, where he continued teaching Greek until his death.

Argyropoulos made major contributions to the transmission of Greek learning to the West, particularly of Aristotelianism. His translations of many of the works of Aristotle (among them the Physics, the Metaphysics, and the Nicomachean Ethics ) facilitated the study of that author among Western humanists. Equally important, Argyropoulos numbered among his students in Florence and Rome some of the most influential Western intellectuals of the age: Politian, reuchlin, Palla Strozzi, Donato acciaioli, and even Lorenzo de' Medici. Lorenzo the Magnificent and Acciajuoli were later to become admirers of Plato. However, Argyropoulos's translations and teaching were signally to help in the diffusion of the philosophy of Aristotle, especially north of the Alps, at a time when it appeared that Aristotelianism might be completely overshadowed by the Quattrocento's concentration on Platonism.

Bibliography: s. lampros, Argyropouleia (in Greek) (Athens 1910), for his minor works. g. cammelli, Giovanni Argiropulo, v.2 of I dotti bizantini e le origini dell'umanesimo (Florence 1941–), for biog. and writings. d. j. geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (Cambridge, Mass. 1962), for the problem of the transmission of Greek learning to the West.

[d. j. geanakoplos]