Giovanni Aurispa

Giovanni Aurispa (* 1376 in Noto , Sicily , † late May 1459 in Ferrara ) was an Italian humanist . He made a special contribution to gaining ancient knowledge by acquiring codices on several trips to the Byzantine Empire and bringing them to Italy.

Life

Aurispa, who had spent part of his youth in Naples and also traveled to the Orient on behalf of merchants, studied law at the prestigious University of Bologna from 1404 to 1410 . Aurispa may have already learned Greek on his travels to the east; he was supposed to familiarize Lorenzo Valla with the basics of Greek. He was able to establish contacts in the cities of Savona , Bologna , Florence and Pisa and also sold Greek codices to local dealers (including copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey as well as the historical work of Thucydides and the works of Aristotle ). In 1419 he belonged to the retinue of Pope Martin V and was able to gain diplomatic experience in this connection, which would later benefit him.

In 1421 he traveled to Constantinople, which was besieged by the Turks . The Byzantine Empire, which once stretched from the Danube to the Euphrates , had meanwhile sunk to a small state. The culture of antiquity was never completely broken there, however, as there was no such break as in the west as a result of the late antiquity process of upheaval. In Constantinople, the works of Homer , Herodotus , Thucydides , Plato and Aristotle were never lost. Aurispa succeeded in establishing good contacts with the Byzantine imperial court of the palaeologists ; he was even appointed secretary by Johannes Palaiologos . At the end of 1423 he left. In his possession were 238 codices, including copies of Plato's Politeia , the history of Cassius Dio and Arrian's Anabasis and others. v. a .; In addition to profane writings, Aurispa was also able to acquire theological texts.

Once in Italy, he had to cover his costs by pledging parts of the precious collection. Aurispa already enjoyed an excellent reputation: the Medici wanted to bring him to Florence, but he decided on Bologna for the time being. Later he went to Florence and taught Greek at the university there. At the end of 1427, however, he moved to the famous court of the Este family in Ferrara . In 1433 he took part in the Council of Basel and translated the opening speech into Greek; soon afterwards he also traveled to Germany, such as Mainz and Cologne. During these trips he bought up Latin and Greek codes wherever possible. He spent the last years of his life in Rome, Naples and Ferrara.

effect

Aurispa, who had a good command of Latin and Greek, left about 100 letters to various humanists, as well as translations by Plutarch and Lucian . Its greatest importance, however, lies undoubtedly in the collection of ancient texts that have been made accessible again to the European West.

literature

• Emilio Bigi:  Aurispa, Giovanni. In: Alberto M. Ghisalberti (Ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 4:  Arconati-Bacaredda. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1962.
• Adriano Franceschini: Giovanni Aurispa e la sua biblioteca. Note and document. Antenore, Padova 1976
• Fritz Schalk: Aurispa (Piciuneri [o]), Giovanni. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 1 (1980) Col. 1245.
• Peter Schreiner : Giovanni Aurispa in Constantinople. Fates of Greek manuscripts in the 15th century. In: Studies on the 15th Century. Festschrift for Erich Meuthen. Edited by Johannes Helmrath and Heribert Müller. 2 volumes, Munich 1994, pp. 623–633.