Giovanni Aurispa

Giovanni Aurispa Piciunerio (or Piciuneri) (June/July 1376–c. 25 May 1459) was an Italian historian and savant of the 15th century. He is remembered in particular as a promoter of the revival of the study of Greek in Italy. It is to Aurispa that the world is indebted for preserving the greater part of our knowledge of the Greek classics.

Aurispa was born at Noto in Sicily in 1376. A scholarship from the King of Sicily enabled him to study at Bologna from 1404-1410. Soon after, in 1413-4, he went out to Greece as a private tutor for the sons of a Genoese merchant, Racanelli, and settled on the island of Chios. Here he learned Greek, and began to collect books, including a Sophocles and a Euripides. He also obtained a number of Greek texts, including a work by Thucydides which he later sold to Niccolo Niccoli in 1417. He returned to Italy in 1414, setting in Savona, where he supported himself by teaching Greek and by selling the works he had collected in Greece.

In 1418, Aurispa visited Constantinople, where he remained for some years, perfecting his knowledge of Greek and searching for manuscripts. He worked so hard at this that he later wrote that he had been denounced to the Byzantine emperor for buying all the sacred books in the city. Upon his return from that trip he went to Florence where he entered the service of the papal court, which was then in residence in that city. He moved to Rome the following year when the court transferred there. It was there that he taught one of his most famous students, Lorenzo Valla, later himself a noted classical scholar.

In 1421 Aurispa was sent by Pope Martin V to act as the translator for the Marquis Gianfrancesco Gonzaga on a diplomatic mission to the Byzantine emperor, Manuel Paleologos. After their arrival, he gained the favor of the emperor's son and successor, John VIII Palaiologos, who took him on as his own secretary. Two years later, he accompanied his Byzantine employer on a mission to the courts of Europe. He traveled with this mission as far as Venice, where he left the imperial service.

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