Curated playlist
15th-century writers in Latin
- Matteo PalmieriMatteo Palmieri served Florence for more than four decades, yet an effigy of him was burned.
- Antonio BonfiniA king hired an Italian scholar, Antonio Bonfini, to write Hungary's history.
- Manuel ChrysolorasNo one had taught Greek in northern Italy for seven hundred years until Chrysoloras came.
- Leon Battista AlbertiAt twenty, Leon Battista Alberti wrote a comedy that fooled a famous printer.
- John GowerJohn Gower wrote nearly thirty thousand lines of verse in three languages, and almost nobody knows his name.
- Conrad CeltesHistorian Richard Unger calls Conrad Celtes a large-scale book thief. Celtes called it protecting German heritage.
- Leonardo BruniLeonardo Bruni was the first to split the past into three ages. He named Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Modern age.
- Janus PannoniusJanus Pannonius was around thirteen when he wrote his first epigrams. He later became Bishop of Pécs.
- Lorenzo VallaLorenzo Valla, a priest, proved a famous papal land grant was a fraud. He used grammar and history.
- Filippo BuonaccorsiScholars credit a 1490 letter by Filippo Buonaccorsi as the first Western use of the word Balkan.
- Nicholas of CusaNicholas of Cusa said the earth is not the center of the universe. This was before Copernicus published.
- Flavio BiondoWhen Flavio Biondo reached Rome in 1433, the Forum was a cow pasture. He set out to recover the lost city.
- Giovanni Pico della MirandolaAt 23, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola offered to pay any scholar's way to Rome to debate his 900 theses.
- Poggio BraccioliniPoggio Bracciolini, an Italian scholar born on the 11th of February 1380, once bribed a monk to take books out of a monastery. The monastery was Hersfeld Abbey. The books were a Livy and an Ammianus. When a codex could not be had by fair…