Marcus Musurus

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Marcus Musurus.

Marcus Musurus (Greek: Μάρκος Μουσούρος, c. 1470–1517) was a Greek scholar and philosopher born in Rethymno, Crete. The son of a rich merchant, he became at an early age a pupil of John Lascaris in Venice.

In 1505, Musurus was made professor of Greek language at the University of Padua. Erasmus, who had attended his lectures there, testifies to his knowledge of Latin. However, when the university was closed in 1509 during the War of the League of Cambrai, he returned to Venice where he filled a similar post. In 1516, Musurus was summoned to Rome by Pope Leo X, where he where he lectured in the pope's Gymnasium and established a Greek printing-press. In recognition of a Greek poem prefixed to the editio princeps of Plato, Leo appointed him archbishop of Monemvasia (Malvasia) in the Peloponnese, but he died before he left the Italian peninsula.

Since 1493, Musurus had been associated with the famous printer Aldus Manutius, and belonged to the Neacademia (Aldine Academy of Hellenists), a society founded by Manutius and other learned men for the promotion of Greek studies. Many of the Aldine classics were brought out under Musurus' supervision, and he is credited with the first editions of the scholia of Aristophanes (1498), Athenaeus (1514), Hesychius of Alexandria (1514), and Pausanias the geographer (1516). Musuros' handwriting reportedly formed the model of Aldus's Greek type.

Along with Manutius, Musurus was also a contemporary of Dutch humanist and theologian Desiderius Erasmus. Among his multiple publications, Musurus wrote an epigram in Zacharias Kalliergis's work Mega Etymologikon, the first Latin and Greek lexicon, which praised the ability of the Cretans.