Michael Apostolius

Michael Apostolius (Greek: Μιχαὴλ Ἀποστόλιος or Μιχαὴλ Ἀποστόλης; c. 1420 in Constantinople – after 1474 or 1486, possibly in Venetian Crete)^[1] or Apostolius Paroemiographus, i.e. Apostolius the proverb-writer, was a Greek teacher, writer and copyist who lived in the fifteenth century.

Life

Apostolius, a student of John Argyropoulos, taught for a short time at the Monastery of St. John of Petra in Constantinople.^[1] Taken prisoner by the Turks during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he was later released and fled to Crete, then a Venetian colony.^[1] There he earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts for Italian humanists, including his patron, Cardinal Bessarion.^[2][1] He often complained about his poverty: one of his manuscripts, a copy of the Eikones of Philostratus, now in Bologna, bears the inscription: "The king of the poor of this world has written this book for his living."^[2]

Apostolius died about 1480, leaving a son, Arsenius Apostolius, who became bishop of Malvasia (Monemvasia) in the Morea.^[2]

Selected works

• Παροιμίαι (Paroemiae, Greek for "proverbs"), a collection of proverbs in Greek
  • an edition published in Basel in 1538^[3]
  • a fuller edition edited by Daniel Heinsius ("Curante Heinsio") and published in Leiden in 1619^[4]
  • a critical edition edited by E. L. a Leutsch and published in Gottingen in 1851^[5]
• "Oratio Panegyrica ad Fredericum III." in Freher's Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, vol. ii. (Frankfort, 1624)
• Georgii Gemisthi Plethonis et Mich. Apostolii Orationes funebres duae in quibus de Immortalitate Animae exponitur (Leipzig, 1793)
• a work against the Latin Church and the council of Florence in Le Moine's Varia Sacra.

See also

• Greek scholars in the Renaissance