.14-16 Century Byzantine Scholars Study The Italian Renaissance Relations

The period of 14th-16th centuries is both the period of Italian Renaissance and the acme of the west transmission of Byzantine culture. Before the arising of Italian Renaissance, Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, was the important cultural center of the eastern Mediterranean region and Europe all the time. For the sake of learning Hellenic classic culture, a lot of Italian humanists went to Constantinople to study in the Renaissance. When returned to Italy, they not only took along many ancient manuscripts, but also brought the academic tradition of Byzantium to Italy. Meanwhile Ottoman Turkish was attacking Byzantine Empire from all sides, lots of Byzantine scholars migrated to Italy in order to seek military help from Latin West for Byzantine Empire. Using their abundant attainments of classical culture, they participated in the movement of reviving ancient Greek culture in Italy, and had promoted the development of the Renaissance of Italy forcefully.Applying the fundamental theories of historical materialism and dialectical materialism, and using the research method of social history and cultural history for reference, the dissertation started its study from the Byzantine exile scholars, and linked its discussion with concrete historical facts and documents. Through analyzing the cultural transmitting activities in Italy performed by the Byzantine scholars lived in exile, it designated the contributions that Byzantine scholars had made to the Renaissance of Italy, and then stepped further to illustrate the significant influence of Byzantine culture on the development of the culture of Western Europe. The author hopes this thesis can be helpful for Chinese scholars to revaluate the position of Byzantium in world cultural history, and prompt the Chinese academic community to value Byzantine studies.First, the dissertation analyzed the social background of Byzantine scholars'westward migration during 14th-16th centuries. Since the 14th century the Byzantine Empire had started to step into its last stage in which its society disintegrated thoroughly. Its superstructure and economic basis decomposed gradually, and its social contradictions intensified continuously. The empire kept on becoming poorer and weaker. At the same time, Italy was displaying a tendency of flourishing developing. The rising bourgeoisie had replaced the feudal lords and controlled the regimes of the city states. In the process of the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern times, five great powers had formed in Italy, and diplomatic principles bearing modern senses also came into being.Next, the dissertation explored the cultural reasons of Byzantine scholars'west migration, their destinations and the route of their migration. At the beginnings of the Renaissance, an upsurge of reviving classic culture sprang up in Italy in the process of developing new culture of bourgeoisie. But as the West was long controlled by the Catholic Church on minds in the Middle Ages, the classic culture especially the Hellenic culture almost had nothing left there. At that time, the arriving of those Byzantine scholars bearing rich attainments of classical culture happened to satisfy Italy's cultural needs. Since the 14th century, Byzantine scholars migrated to the west in succession because of the pressure of the Ottoman Turkish army's powerful offensive. When the Byzantine Empire faced the crisis of surviving, in order to save the empire, more Byzantine scholars migrated to the West to seek help from Latin West which is of the same religion with them. Because of the long maintained commercial and cultural communications between Byzantium and Italy, and their geographical nearness, Italy became these Byzantine scholars'first choice of foreign resident area. After entered Italy by way of the Crete Island which belonged to Venice, they mainly gathered in Venice, Florence and Rome. And these three cities therefore became the center of Hellenic studies of Italy during the Renaissance.Finally, taking the Byzantine exile scholars who had performed most prominently in the movement of reviving Hellenic culture in Italy as examples, the dissertation concretely analyzed the Byzantine exile scholars'cultural transmitting activities and the influences they had had on the Italian Renaissance from the perspectives of Hellenic language teaching, the west transmission of classical documents and the revival of Plato.