Constantine Lascaris

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Constantine Lascaris (1434 – 1501) was a Greek scholar and grammarian, one of the promoters of the revival of Greek learning in the Italian peninsula, born at Constantinople.

He was a member of the noble Bithynian family, which had furnished three emperors of Nicaea during the thirteenth century. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he took refuge first in Corfu and then in Italy, where Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan, appointed him Greek tutor to his daughter. Here was published his Grammatica Graeca, sive compendium octo orationis partium, remarkable as being probably the first book entirely in Greek issued from the printing press, in 1476.

After leaving Milan, Lascaris taught in Rome under the patronage of Johannes Bessarion, and in Naples, to which he had been summoned by Ferdinand I to deliver a course of lectures on Greece. Ultimately, on the invitation of the inhabitants, he settled in Messina, Sicily, where he continued to teach publicly until his death. Among his numerous pupils here was Pietro Bembo. Lascaris bequeathed his library of valuable manuscripts to the senate of Messina; the collection was afterwards carried to Spain and lodged in the El Escorial library.

The Grammatica, which has often been reprinted, is the only work of value produced by Lascaris. Some of his letters are given by Johannes Iriarte in the Regiae Bibliothecae Matritensis codices Graeci manuscripti (Madrid, 1769). His name was later known to readers in the romance of Abel-Francois Villemain, Lascaris, ou les Grecs du quinzieme siècle (1825). See also John Edwin Sandys, Hist. Class. Schol., ed. 2, vol. ii (1908), pp. 76 foll.

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