Michael Apostolius

Michael Apostolius (Greek: Μιχαὴλ Ἀποστόλιος or Μιχαὴλ Ἀποστόλης; c. 1420 in Constantinople – after 1474 or 1486, possibly in Venetian Crete) 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. Taken prisoner by the Turks during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he was later released and fled to Crete, then a Venetian colony. There he earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts for Italian humanists, including his patron, Cardinal Bessarion. 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."

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

Selected works

See also

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1991. pp. 140–141, s.v. Apostoles, Michael. ISBN 0195046528.
  2. 1 2 3 Chisholm 1911.
  3. ↑ Apostolii Bisantii Paroemiae, Basel, 1538.
  4. ↑ Michaelis Apostolii Paroemiae, ed. Daniel Heinsius, Leiden, 1619.
  5. ↑ E. L. von Leutsch, ed., Corpus paroeimiographorum Graecorum, Göttingen, 1851, vol. 2, pp. 233–744.

References