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 410 DESTEUCTION OF THE GEEEK EMPIEE philosophy and its new vision of life, were all to produce won- derful fruit within a generation after 1453 and to culminate in Italy in an age of singular intellectual brilliancy, study of The study of Greek, at first almost confined to Florence, Sam up in gradually spread over the whole of the peninsula and finally Europe^ P asse ^ north of the Alps into Germany, where it was taken up with great earnestness. Opposed by the ignorant monks everywhere, and by others who feared that the authority and repute of Latin authors would be terminated, it gradually won its way. In 1458 a Greek professor was appointed in Paris, and one in Eome. Similar professor- ships were established in most of the Italian universities, following in this respect the example of Florence. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, Oxford consented to receive Grocyn and Linacre as teachers of Greek. 1 As the zeal for a knowledge of Greek died out in Italy it took deeper root in Germany. Chrysoloras and George of Trebizond were followed by a succession of students, until we meet with the names of Germans and Dutchmen who had gone to Italy to make themselves acquainted with the recovered language and literature. Among them that of Erasmus holds the foremost place. The movement known as ' The Kevival of Learning ' was accomplished before the end of the fifteenth century, and all investigators are agreed that it had been very largely contributed to by Greek exiles during the half-century preceding and following the Moslem conquest. Its paganisation of Christianity proved temporary. But the critical examination of the text of the Greek New Testament and of the Greek Fathers had more durable results. It called attention to the contents of a book which had hitherto been taken as outside controversy. When the study of Greek passed north of the Alps, the examination of the sacred writings was no longer in the hands of dilettanti 1 It is curious that the non-progressive party in Oxford, who violently opposed the introduction of the new studies, called themselves Trojans. Roper's Life of Sir T. More (ed. Hearne), p. 75. The archbishops of Chios and Pusculus invariably describe the Turks as Teucri.