AURISPA, GIOVANNI. - Humanist, born perhaps at Noto, in Sicily, probably in 1369, died at Ferrara in 1459. He studied at Naples at the time of Ladislaus of Anjou-Durazzo, in the first decade of the fifteenth century. Soon after he made journeys to the East. On his return to Italy he taught school at Savona until 1419. Then he was at the court of the new pope Martin V, whom he left to undertake a mission to Constantinople for Gian Francesco Gonzaga. He then became a lecturer at Bologna (1424) and moved from there to Florence (1425). But the fury of war soon drove him (1427) to Ferrara, a safer haven: as tutor to the son of the Marquis of Este, he was entrusted by him with missions to Rome (1433) and to the Council of Basel (1433). From then until the close of the Council at Florence in 1443, though remaining attached to the Este family, he was secretary of the papal Curia. The last years of his life were spent actively in the service of the Curia and the marquises, at whose court he was to die.
Not outstanding as a teacher, contemporary with Vittorino and Guarino Veronese, mediocre as a poet, a discreet translator from Greek, he was nevertheless a most active and fortunate discoverer of manuscripts. In Germany he found the Panegyrics and the Commentary on Terence by the grammarian Donatus, and from his travels in the East he brought back precious Greek codices (among them the Palatine Anthology; the two volumes of the Iliad, later deposited in the Marciana Library; Aeschylus, Sophocles and Apollonius Rhodius, later in the Laurentian Library; the Homeric Hymns; the Moralia of Plutarch; Plato, Pindar, Empedocles).