It seems that Chrysoloras had a natural charisma for communicating and a friendly and warm character. His reputation was not based solely on his teaching ability but also on his methodology, and furthermore on his ideas on education. His approach marked a rupture with the tradition of medieval education; as Paolo Vergerio’s De ingenuis moribus (1404) shows, Chrysoloras has given the learned men in the West a vigorous inspiration as to the ideals of Greek education while Leonardo Bruni’s De studiis et litteris (c. 1425) gives a detailed exposition of the pedagogic technique that Chrysoloras had brought from Constantinople. The technique stressed accurate pronunciation, the use of mnemonics, constant and regular revision of each lesson’s topics and the preparation of copious notes under the headings of methodice (grammar, syntax, and vocabulary) and historice (what we should call “background material’’) (Thomson 1966:66-67). Chrysoloras insisted that for the students to discuss the subject of every lesson was part of a learning technique; he also insisted on the pedagogical value of translating from Greek into Latin. He criticized the literary, word by word, translation as well as the free translation that betrayed the original; he promoted a midway between these two practices, a mean that would accomplish the comprehension of an author’s spirit and its rendering to another language (transferre ad sententiam).
His work as an author has been less valued, but this view is beginning to change. His writings are not many but they give insight to the profile of a scholar that was more than the right man at the right place for the right job. His most known work is a Greek Grammar, the first in the western world, which under the title Erotemata had a very wide circulation as a manuscript and later was repeatedly published in numerous editions. He translated Plato’s Republic with the help of one of his pupils, Uberto Decembrio (and this one’s son Pier Candido), since Chrysoloras’ use of Latin was rather moderate. The rest of his work consisted mainly of letters, some extensive, that give an image of his philosophical, literary, and educational ideas. Chrysoloras appears to have influenced the art criticism of the Renaissance mainly through his pupil Guarino da Verona. We see in him the idea of the visual arts’ inferiority as to the written word through a transposition of the Byzantine ekphrasis (rhetorical description of works of art). Although the rhetoricism of ekphrasis does not help the establishment of critical categories about the fine arts, it nevertheless facilitates the connection between visual representations and the literary universe. Furthermore, Chrysoloras wrote that “the representations are praised in proportion to the degree in which they seem to resemble their originals.. .[but they] rather do indicate a certain nobility in the intellect that admires them;’’ what he is actually saying is not proper to Byzantine icons’ aesthetics and although the frame is traditional, Chrysoloras’ conclusions are related neither to commonplaces of Byzantine Aristotelianism nor to the views of the Iconophiles (the supporters of the icons) of Byzantium. It is the artistic sensibility, the efficient cause of art, that takes, thus, priority over the subject matter, a turn that conforms perfectly to the highly valued role of the artist in the Renaissance Art (Baxandall 1965:198-199).
Regarding the content of Chrysoloras’ “philosophy,” it has been said that he belonged to the Palaiologian revival of letters in Byzantium, which nonetheless covered more than one ideological tendency and thus Chrysoloras’ position has to be further elucidated. He was close to Demetrios Kydones, a key figure in the Latinophile Party of Constantinople, who translated Thomas Aquinas in Greek; Kydones had escorted Chrysoloras to his first trip in the West. Chrysoloras’ work Synkrisis tes palaias kai neas Rom. es (a letter known by the title De comparatione veteris et novae Romae = On the Comparison Between Rome and Constantinople) that was designed to foster good relations between the East and the West shows Chrysoloras’ position. He wrote on the Graeco-Roman origins of Byzantium: ‘‘two were the most powerful and wise nations... Romans and Greeks who by joining up they made Constantinople”; he was translating in these terms Manuel Palaiologos’ politics of reconciliation with the West. His recently published Discourse Addressed to the Emperor Manuel II Palaiologos is more revealing as to Chrysoloras’ philosophy of education: he states there his faith in the value of Greek Paideia, its great importance if the Byzantines were to ensure the safety and the well-being of their country and his confidence in his homeland’s autarky as to the quality of its scholars. In the same discourse, he develops the idea of natural virtue to which the education is complementary.
Although Chrysoloras’ impact on the Italian intellectual scene is certain and most of his pupils were ready to acknowledge his influence, only Guarino da Verona showed a life-long devotion to him. The later praise of Chrysoloras by the Humanists never reached the enthusiasm and this is due to the fact that in the meantime the Italian scholars discovered the value of Latinity and were progressively feeling more assured as to their knowledge of Greek Letters.
See also: > Demetrios Kydones
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