the venetian intellectual world 589
frequently with Greek speakers.54 But prior to the late 14th century, there
was little awareness of the Greek intellectual tradition, which had con-
tinuously pursued the study of ancient philosophy and literature. at that
point, especially as the ottoman advance in asia Minor and the Balkans
threatened the regime at constantinople, Greek scholars began to filter
into Venice as to other italian centers—the presence of demetrio cidone
was critical; and italian natives traveled to constantinople to pursue
Greek studies and acquire Greek books.55
among the most conspicuous of these, in the early decades of the 15th
centuries, were Francesco Filelfo and Guarino Veronese, whose fortunes
were promoted by members of the Venetian nobility.56 The strong and
early influence of Greek learning in Venice accounts for the facility with
Greek that many of the humanists demonstrated in their own translations
of Plutarch and the Greek fathers, their support for other translation proj-
ects (Francesco Barbaro’s for the Byzantine scholar George of Trebizond’s
translation of Plato’s Laws, for instance), and their courting of the Byzan-
tine uniate cardinal Bessarion, whose library Venice eventually acquired.
contacts with Padua and with Byzantine scholarship also meant that
Venetian culture was uniquely open to philosophical pursuits. already
in 1397, by the bequest of Tomà Talenti, a naturalized citizen of Floren-
tine origin and one of the four “friends” who had so discomfited Petrarch,
a school for philosophical study was founded in Venice, located at the
rialto.57 This was a curriculum at the advanced secondary level, which
54 For contacts between Venice and Byzantium, see Gino Benzoni, ed., L’eredità greca
e l’ellenismo veneziano (Florence, 2002), especially the contributions of Giorgio ravegnani,
Gherardo ortalli, and ennio concina; donald M. nicol, Byzantium and Venice: A Study in
Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (cambridge, 1988); Giorgio ravegnani, Bisanzio e Venezia
(Bologna, 2006); and Maria Francesca Tiepolo and eurigio Tonetti, eds., I greci a Venezia:
atti del convegno internazionale di studio: Venezia, 5–7 novembre 1998 (Venice, 2002); also
for Venetian officials in constantinople, Monique o’connell, Men of Empire: Power and
Negotiation in Venice’s Maritime State (Baltimore, 2009).
55 For contacts with Greek learning, see Benzoni, ed., L’eredità greca, especially
contributions of Silvia ronchey, Marino Zorzi, luigi Balsamo, and Jean-claude Margolin;
and Pertusi, “l’umanesimo greco dalla fine del secolo XiV agli inizi del secolo XVi,” in
Storia della cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1980): Dal primo Quattrocento al Concilio di Trento, part 1,
pp. 177–264. deno J. Geanakoplos, Greek Scholars in Venice: Studies in the Dissemination of
Greek Learning from Byzantium to Western Europe (cambridge, Mass., 1962) is still useful.
For Greek scholars in italy generally, see nigel G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy: Greek
Studies in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore, 1992).
56 For Filelfo, Guarino, and the Venetian humanists, see King, Venetian Humanism, pp.
18–23 and passim.
57 For the rialto school, see Fernando lepori, “la scuola di rialto dalla fondazione alla
metà del cinquecento,” in Storia dell cultura veneta, vol. 3 (1981), part 2, pp. 539–605; and