How Byzantine scholars supercharged Renaissance Italy

The unusual connection between Venice and Byzantium

This article explores the complicated relationship between Venice and the Byzantine Empire. Venice grew up in the shadow of Byzantium, serving as a trade partner and faithful ally for centuries. Gradually, relations grew hostile, and Venetian ships would carry the Fourth Crusade to its fateful rendezvous with Constantinople. Visitors to San Marco can still see marble and porphyry from Constantinople, built into the walls of Venice’s preeminent church.

The Etruscans laid the foundations for Roman civilization

When we put aside the myths and legends about Rome's founding, one group takes center stage: the Etruscans. This now-vanished, Greek-like culture laid the foundations of Rome's alphabet, art, and more. Etruscan culture dominated northern Italy in the centuries before the Roman Republic.

A medieval Italian visits Constantinople

In the tenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I sent Liudprand of Cremona, an Italian bishop, to Constantinople on a diplomatic mission. He was not successful. But the very undiplomatic report he sent back to the emperor about his experiences provides a unique – and often very entertaining – look at life and ceremony in the Byzantine capital, dramatically different from anything in Liudprand’s Italy.

Florence as it was: a digital reconstruction of a medieval city

Florence, Italy, is widely considered the birthplace of the Renaissance in Europe, where artists, poets, architects, and entrepreneurs renewed interest in ancient cultural forms. Using data from primary works, researchers have created a digital reconstruction of the city where users can explore buildings, artworks, and more.

Being a Byzantine emperor

The Byzantium and Friends podcast, hosted by Anthony Kaldellis, surveys current research in the history of the Byzantine Empire and its neighbors. In each episode, Professor Kaldellis interviews a scholar about their recent work. The cumulative effect is to reveal a world much more complex, and much more interesting, than the Byzantium found in traditional surveys. The linked episode considers the perks and pitfalls of being a Byzantine emperor.

The Chora Church, the height of Byzantine art

The Palaeologan Renaissance took place in the final centuries of Byzantium, and in the face of steep political and economic decline. Perhaps the movement’s most famous artistic product is the Chora Church in Istanbul. Renovated in the early fourteenth century by Theodore Metochites, a learned court official, the church features remarkably vibrant mosaics and frescoes. Although the building was recently reconverted into a mosque, most of its decorations are still visible.

The printing press spread novels widely

Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440 changed how writing was reproduced. It allowed multiple manuscripts to be copied via movable type rather than by hand, making more literature more widely available. Over time, that change caused literacy rates to rise, creating a market for even more literature.

Charlemagne sparked a medieval revival of learning and Roman culture

During the Carolingian Renaissance, Charlemagne—the king of the Franks and later the emperor of much of Western Europe—and his successors promoted education, the arts, and scholarship. Monasteries preserved hundreds of Roman texts, while architecture and artistic styles drew inspiration from classical Rome.

Raphael's 'School of Athens' visually contrasts the views of Plato and Aristotle

As part of a commission from Pope Julius II to decorate his private library (and while Michelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel), Raphael created four frescoes representing different branches of knowledge: theology, philosophy, law, and poetry. "The School of Athens" depicted philosophy, staging classic thinkers Plato and Aristotle alongside others from intellectual history.

Medieval monasteries preserved ancient knowledge through hand-copied books

Medieval monks and nuns lived in religious communities devoted to work and prayer. Still, their script-copying traditions had a lasting impact: through illuminated manuscripts, monasteries preserved hundreds of ancient texts that might have otherwise been lost.

The land where Greece's ancient language survives

In a remote corner of Turkey, locals speak Romeyka, a language with no written form and an "impressive" similarity to ancient Greek. This article details how the language may have survived and highlights the roughly 5,000 Romeyka speakers in the area. Research shows that Romeyka bears a startling resemblance to the Koine Greek spoken at the height of ancient Greek influence between fourth century BCE and fourth century CE.

The Rosetta Stone helped scholars decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics

With the same verses written in three languages, the stone—discovered during Napoleon's campaign in Egypt—let scholars decipher hieroglyphics for the first time, unlocking the secrets of ancient Egypt. Learn why the task, originally expected to take two weeks, ended up taking 20 years with this fascinating essay.

The Medicis of Italy innovated 'bills of exchange,' precursors to checks

At the time, lending money for interest (also known as usury) was banned in much of the Christian world. The enterprising Medicis developed bills of exchange to allow merchants to promise payment without cash or coin (with some discrete means of earning interest woven in). Learn more about how this family laid the foundation for modern banking.

The term “Middle Ages” was invented by Renaissance thinkers to belittle the era

The label “Middle Ages” reflects Renaissance writers’ admiration for ancient Greece and Rome, not medieval reality. They frame the post-Roman centuries as a cultural backslide—a view later reinforced by Edward Gibbon and modernized as the “Dark Ages” myth.

Mapping the shifts in ancient Greek territories

The jagged coastlines and many islands of the eastern Mediterranean peninsulas cultivated a seafaring civilization, which helped the Greeks colonize and trade in the Middle East, North Africa, and the rest of Europe. See the evolution of their territory with this quick animated map video.

See a collection of ancient Roman coins used on the Silk Roads

As ancient Rome's appetite for eastern luxuries grew, long-distance trade routes linking the Mediterranean to Asia emerged along what became known as the Silk Road. Without shared language or legal systems, merchants could use the reliable Roman coins to exchange with other cultures. This exhibit features gold and silver pieces bearing the portraits of emperors and Latin inscriptions.

The word 'influenza' comes from a 15th-century Italian belief in the stars

In Renaissance Italy, epidemics were thought to result from the influence of natural disasters or celestial bodies. The illness was named "influenza", meaning “influence” in Italian.

'The Republic of Letters' was an analog internet for the Enlightenment.

The virtual intellectual society exchanged tens of thousands of letters and spanned several continents. Some of its most avid correspondents were Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

How the Code of Justinian formed the basis of modern law

This video explores the significance of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis. The most important component of the Corpus, the Digest, collected the opinions of eminent Roman jurists. The Digest went on to become the legal framework of medieval Europe, and the basis for the civil codes used across two-thirds of the globe today—an underappreciated legacy of Byzantium.

The strange, unsolved story of Filippo Bernardini and the stolen book manuscripts

Over the last five years, a mysterious figure has been stealing manuscripts, often unpublished, from individuals and organizations in the publishing industry across three continents. The scammer, later identified as Filippo Bernardini, was an...

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Shakespeare played a major role in the history of the sonnet

The Renaissance writer Petrarch first developed the 14-line poem with a two-part structure. Through English translations of his sonnets by Sir Thomas Wyatt in the 1500s, the form took on new life, particularly through Shakespeare. Variations on the form have continued to evolve since.

Lord Byron was Romanticism's chief heartthrob

A prolific and often controversial figure in life and death, Lord Byron helped shape romanticism and left an enduring literary legacy, including creating the archetype of the Byronic hero. But Byron was more than just an artist—he was also a romantic era celebrity and predecessor to the modern rock star.

Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons led to multiple scientific advancements

Beyond challenging Earth-centric views upon their discovery in 1610, the Galilean moons were also later analyzed to contribute to early astrometry and astronomical interferometry. Measurements of eclipses were also used to estimate the speed of light.

A literary critic on why classic Russian literature matters

Gary Saul Morson has spent his life studying Russian writers like Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. In this 2022 talk at Hillsdale College, Morson focuses on classic texts like "The Brothers Karamazov" and "War and Peace," suggesting these Russian novels had as much to say about their home country as they did about the larger world. Most importantly, he argues, they still have much to offer modern readers.

The belief that classical music enhances intelligence is mostly incorrect

"The Mozart Effect" was based on a 1993 study by psychologist Francis Rauscher. Rauscher played a Mozart Piano Sonata for college students and then assessed their spatial reasoning, finding it improved for 10 to 15 minutes. The media ran with a simpler story: listening to classical music made you smarter.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

See photos of Meteora, a mountainous site in central Greece, home to 14th-century monasteries perched atop soaring outcroppings.

The 19th-century painters of the Hudson River School were among the first American romantics, with portraits that displayed the natural beauty of the young country.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

As of 2025, the most cited papers in science include a review of graphene, methods to improve image recognition, streamlining electron density calculations, and optimizing protein studies.

Trace how the Bill of Rights, inspired by centuries of political theory, took shape between 1774 and 1789.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

NBA superstar Victor Wembanyama spent the 2025 summer training with monks in central China to enhance his body and mind.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

Hookworm infection, though risky, may help fight certain autoimmune conditions by tamping down the immune system's inflammatory response.

While the sun's gravity keeps the planets in orbit, their gravity also pulls on the sun, causing it and everything else in the solar system to orbit around a mutual balance point called the barycenter—the true center of the solar system.

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

Before humans, the Soviet Union and the United States sent animals—including apes, dogs, and cats—to space during the Space Race.

In preparation for this weekend's Eurovision finale, which is something like the World Cup of pop music, here's a young Céline Dion performing (for Switzerland?) at the 1988 competition.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.