as Lanfranc or William of
Malmsbury.[915] It is said that Roger Bacon understood Greek; and that
his eminent contemporary, Robert Grostete, bishop of Lincoln, had a
sufficient intimacy with it to translate a part of Suidas. Since Greek
was spoken with considerable purity by the noble and well educated
natives of Constantinople, we may wonder that, even as a living
language, it was not better known by the western nations, and especially
in so neighbouring a nation as Italy. Yet here the ignorance was perhaps
even more complete than in France or England. In some parts indeed of
Calabria, which had been subject to the eastern empire till near the
year 1100, the liturgy was still performed in Greek; and a considerable
acquaintance with the language was of course preserved. But for the
scholars of Italy, Boccaccio positively asserts, that no one understood
so much as the Greek characters.[916] Nor is there probably a single
line quoted from any poet in that language from the sixth to the
fourteenth century.

[Sidenote: Its study revives in the fourteenth century.]

The first to lead the way in restoring Grecian learning in Europe were
the same men who had revived the kindred muses of Latium, Petrarch and
Boccaccio. Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, during an embassy from the
court of Constantinople in 1335, was persuaded to become the preceptor
of the former, with whom he read the works of Plato.[917] Leontius
Pilatus, a native of Thessalonica, was encouraged some years afterwards
by Boccaccio to give public lectures upon Homer at Florence.[918]
Whatever might be the share of general attention that he excited, he had
the honour of instructing both these great Italians in his native
language. Neither of them perhaps reached an advanced degree of
proficiency; but they bathed their lips in the fountain, and enjoyed the
pride of being the first who paid the homage of a new posterity to the
father of poetry. For some time little fruit apparently resulted from
their example; but Italy had imbibed the desire of acquisitions in a new
sphere of knowledge, which, after some interval, she was abundantly able
to realize. A few years before the termination of the fourteenth
century, Emanuel Chrysoloras, whom the emperor John Palaeologus had
previously sent into Italy, and even as far as England, upon one of
those unavailing embassies, by which the Byzantine court strove to
obtain sympathy and succour from Europe, returned to Florence as a