With the figure of Constantine Lascaris (see 2.2), we now enter a different chapter in history: Italian Humanism, and with it, another of the ‘renaissances’ of the Greek-Byzantine world —indeed, the Renaissance par excellence. Intellectuals, scribes, and exiles from the Eastern Roman Empire, which was gradually falling into Turkish hands, moved throughout the Italian peninsula and across Europe, with varying fortunes, invigorating the new cultural climate. The first chairs of Greek were established, the earliest grammars were printed, and the knowledge of the Greek language and literature, after centuries of neglect, gradually and— albeit within an elite milieu —once again became an indispensable component of European and Western culture.

The three manuscripts of Callimachus exhibited here were produced between the fifteenth century and the very beginning of the following one (A 63 sup.). After many centuries, the geographical center of Greek-language intellectual production had shifted once more to the West. The manuscripts of this period were sometimes private copies made by scholars for personal use, but more often elegant commissions prepared for important patrons—sovereigns, princes, and bankers.

The Ambrosianus B 98 sup. was produced in the first half of the fifteenth century in Constantinople, in the scriptorium of George Chrysococcas. It transmits a poetic miscellany accompanied by marginal scholia, those on Callimachus being linked to the text by reference signs. Chrysococcas’s handwriting — graceful and free of ligatures — was probably intended for patrons not particularly well-versed in Greek, and it became a model for one of the many graphic fashions of the Humanist and Renaissance periods. Among the Italian patrons who commissioned manuscripts from Chrysococcas were two of the most celebrated humanists of the fifteenth century, Francesco Filelfo and Giovanni Aurispa — the latter probably being the patron of the manuscript displayed here.

The same refinement of layout characterizes Ambrosianus S 31 sup., the work of another émigré from the Byzantine Empire, Demetrius Damilas of Crete, a prolific scribe in the service of Western patrons. The marginal scholia are marked by red reference signs, and likewise in red are the regular initial letters of each scholium written in ekthesis, as well as the interlinear glosses.