Theodore Gaza

Theodorus Gaza Θεόδωρος Γαζῆς
A portrait of Theodore Gaza.
Born	Theodorus Gaza c. 1398 Thessaloniki, Eyalet of Rumelia, Ottoman Empire
Died	c. 1475 San Giovanni a Piro, Calabria, Kingdom of Naples
Occupation	Greek literature, philosophy and humanism
Literary movement	Italian Renaissance

Theodorus Gaza or Theodore Gazis (Greek: Θεόδωρος Γαζῆς, Theodoros Gazis; Italian: Teodoro Gaza; Latin: Theodorus Gazes), also called by the epithet Thessalonicensis (in Latin) and Thessalonikeus (in Greek) (c. 1398 – c. 1475), was a Greek humanist and translator of Aristotle, one of the Greek scholars who were the leaders of the revival of learning in the 15th century (the Palaeologan Renaissance).

Theodorus Gaza was born a Greek in an illustrious family in Thessaloniki, Macedonia in about c. 1400 when the city was under its first period of Turkish rule (it was restored to Byzantine rule in 1403). On the final capture of his native city by the Turks in 1430 he escaped to Italy. In December 1440 he was in Pavia, where he became acquainted with Iacopo da San Cassiano, who introduced him to his master Vittorino da Feltre. During a three years' residence in Mantua where Vittorino held the celebrated humanistic school "La Giocosa", he rapidly acquired a competent knowledge of Latin under his teaching, supporting himself meanwhile by giving lessons in Greek, and by copying manuscripts of the ancient classics.

In 1447 he became professor of Greek in the newly founded University of Ferrara, to which students in great numbers from all parts of Italy were soon attracted by his fame as a teacher. His students there included Rodolphus Agricola. He had taken some part in the councils which were held in Siena (1423), Ferrara (1438), and Florence (1439), with the object of bringing about a reconciliation between the Greek and Latin Churches; and in 1450, at the invitation of Pope Nicholas V, he went to Rome, where he was for some years employed by his patron in making Latin translations from Aristotle and other Greek authors. In Rome, he continued his teaching activities: it was reported that on one occasion Pope Sixtus IV commissioned Gaza to translate Aristotle’s works into Latin, with the pay of a number of gold pieces; however on receiving the pay Gaza was insulted at the amount paid, and furiously cast the money into the Tiber river. Amongst his students were fellow Byzantine Greeks Demetrius Chalcondyles, a leading scholar of the Renaissance period and Andronicus Callistus, a cousin of Theodore Gaza's.

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