Francesco Filelfo

Francesco Filelfo (Latin: Franciscus Philelphus; July 25, 1398 – July 31, 1481) was an Italian Renaissance humanist.

Filelfo was born at Tolentino, in the March of Ancona. He is believed to be a third cousin of Leonardo da Vinci. At the time of his birth, Petrarch and the students of Florence had already brought the first act in the recovery of classic culture to conclusion. They had created an eager appetite for the antique, had rediscovered many important Roman authors, and had freed Latin scholarship to some extent from the restrictions of earlier periods. Filelfo was destined to carry on their work in the field of Latin literature, and to be an important agent in the still unaccomplished recovery of Greek culture.

His earliest studies in grammar, rhetoric and the Latin language were conducted at Padua, where he acquired so great a reputation for learning that in 1417, when he was eighteen, he was invited to teach eloquence and moral philosophy at Venice. According to the custom of that age in Italy, it now became his duty to explain the language, and to illustrate the beauties of the principal Latin authors, Cicero and Virgil being considered the chief masters of moral science and of elegant diction.

Filelfo made his mark at once in Venice. He was admitted to the society of the first scholars and the most eminent nobles; and in 1419 he received an appointment from the state, which enabled him to reside as notary and chancellor to the Baile of the Venetians in Constantinople. This appointment was an honour for Filelfo as a man of trust and general ability, and gave him the opportunity of acquiring the most coveted of all possessions at that moment — a scholar's knowledge of the Greek language. Immediately after his arrival in Constantinople at end 1420, Filelfo placed himself under the tuition of John Chrysoloras, whose name was already well known in Italy as that of his uncle Manuel Chrysoloras, the first Greek to profess the literature of his ancestors in Florence.

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