Manuel Chrysoloras

Manuel Chrysoloras (c. 1350–1415) was a Byzantine Greek scholar born in Constantinople, who reached Italy in 1390 on an embassy for Emperor Manuel II, seeking aid against the Ottomans.

Invited by Coluccio Salutati in 1396, he taught Greek in Florence from 1397 to 1400, numbering Leonardo Bruni, Niccolò Niccoli and Guarino da Verona among his pupils, and later taught in Bologna, Venice and Rome. He translated Homer and Plato into Latin, and his Erotemata was the first Greek grammar printed in the West.

In 1408 he went to Paris on an imperial mission, and in 1413 to Germany to help choose a site for a church council. He died at Constance in 1415, on his way to the council as a Greek Church representative.