Argyropoulos, John (Janos) (c. 1415–1487)

Byzantine scholar. He taught in Italy, becoming a leading figure in the revival of Greek learning and in the development of Renaissance neo-Platonism among the writers and scholars supported by the Medici. In 1439 he attended Emperor John Palaeologus at the Council of Florence, which sought to reconcile the Eastern and Western Churches.

He was born into a noble family in Constantinople, where he became a priest. By 1434 he was lecturing in Padua on the works of Aristotle, and from 1439 was involved in the negotiations at the Council of Florence, which sought to reconcile the Western and Eastern Churches.

He went back to Constantinople in 1441 but returned the following year, becoming rector of Padua University. He continued to visit Constantinople, but with its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 he settled permanently in Italy. After a brief visit to France in 1456 he moved to Florence. It was there that Cosimo de' Medici became one of his patrons. He became tutor to Piero, Cosimo's son, and to Lorenzo de' Medici, and later became active in Lorenzo's Platonic Academy, where he met Politian, Ficino and other leading humanists. He eventually settled in Rome some time before 1471. It was during this period that the German scholar Reuchlin was among his pupils.

An important member of the first generation of Greek teachers in the West, he wrote many original commentaries on Aristotle and translated a number of Aristotle's works into Latin.