him speak.

In 1463 Demetrius transferred to Padua as professor of Greek, and was the
first professor of Greek in a western European university to be paid a
fixed salary. He also taught for a time at Milan, and from 1471 to 1491
was professor of Greek at Florence.

A number of other learned Greeks had reached Italy prior to the fall of
Constantinople (1453) before the advancing Turks, [12] and after its fall
many more sought there a new home. Many of these found, on landing, that
their knowledge of Greek and the possession of a few Greek books were an
open sesame to the learned circles of Italy.

[Illustration: FIG. 70. DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511)
(Drawn from a picture of a fresco by Ghirlandajo, painted in 1490, on the
walls of the church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence)]

ENTHUSIASM FOR THE NEW MOVEMENT; LIBRARIES AND ACADEMICS FOUNDED. The
enthusiasm for the recovery and restoration of ancient literature and
history which this work awakened among the younger scholars of Italy can
be imagined. While most of the professors in the universities and most of
the church officials at first had nothing to do with the new movement,
being wedded to scholastic methods of thinking, the leaders of the new
learning drew about them many of the brightest and most energetic of the
young men who came to those universities which were hospitable to the new
movement. [13] Greek scholars in the university towns were followed by
admiring bands of younger students, [14] who soon took up the work and
superseded their masters. Academies, named after the one conducted by
Plato in the groves near Athens, whose purpose was to promote literary
studies, were founded in all the important Italian cities (R. 129). The