John Argyropoulos student Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples
Biography
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 Constantinople fell in 1453, he left it for Peloponnisos and, in 1456, took refuge 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 till 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.
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