Lascaris, Constantine

Constantine Lascaris, (born 1434, Constantinople, Byzantine Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]—died 1501, Messina, Sicily [Italy]), Byzantine exile, primarily a grammarian and copyist, who taught Greek in Italy.

After the fall of Constantinople (1453), Lascaris went to Milan, where he became tutor to the Duke of Milan’s daughter, Ippolita Sforza, and wrote for her his Erotemata (1476). Published in Milan, this was the first book printed entirely in Greek and enjoyed long popularity as an elementary grammar. He held university chairs at Naples in 1465 and at Messina from 1467 to his death; he tutored the writer Pietro Bembo in 1491–93. A scholarly copyist, Lascaris produced many valuable manuscripts, including collections of the Greek rhetoricians and epistolographers.