John Argyropoulos

He was in Italy for the Council of Florence during 1439–1444, and returned to Italy following the Fall of Constantinople, teaching in Florence (at the Florentine Studium) in 1456–1470 and in Rome in 1471–1487.

John Argyropoulos studied at University of Padua. Training under Gemistus Pletho, Joseph Bryennios and John Chortasmenos is recorded. Lorenzo de' Medici, Marsilio Ficino and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples are recorded as having studied under John Argyropoulos. The recorded working language is medieval Greek, Latin and Ancient Greek. The field of work recorded is modern Greek philosophy, translating activity and language education. Places of work recorded in the authority are Byzantine Empire. Employment is recorded with University of Florence, University of Padua and Florentine Studium.

John Argyropoulos was born c. 1415 in Constantinople where he studied theology and philosophy. As a teacher in Constantinople, Argyropoulos had amongst his pupils the scholar Constantine Lascaris. He was an official in the service of one of the rulers of the Byzantine Morea and in 1439 was a member of the Byzantine delegation to the Council of Florence, when they accepted Catholicism and abjured Greek Orthodoxy. In 1443/4, he received a Doctor of Theology degree from the University of Padua before returning to Constantinople. When the city fell in 1453, he left for the still autonomous Despotate of the Morea in the Peloponnese. In 1456, he escaped as a fugitive from Ottoman justice in Italy, where he worked as a teacher in the revival of Greek philosophy as head of the Greek department at Florence's Florentine Studium. In 1471, on the outbreak of the plague, he moved to Rome, where he continued to act as a teacher of Greek until his death. His students included Pietro de' Medici, Lorenzo de' Medici, Angelo Poliziano, Johann Reuchlin, Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and, allegedly, Leonardo da Vinci, although no primary source verifies this claim. He also made efforts to transport Greek philosophy to Western Europe by leaving a number of Latin translations, including many of Aristotle's works. His principal works were translations of the following portions of Aristotle: Categoriae, De Interpretatione, Analytica Posteriora, Physica, De Caelo, De Anima, Metaphysica, Ethica Nicomachea, Politica; and an Expositio Ethicorum Aristotelis. Several of his writings still exist in manuscript. He died on 26 June 1487 in Florence, supposedly of consuming too much watermelon.