Michael Apostolius


Michael Apostolius or Apostolius Paroemiographus, i.e. Apostolius the proverb-writer, was a Greek teacher, writer and copyist who lived in the fifteenth century.

Life

Apostolius, a student of John Argyropoulos, taught for a short time at the Monastery of St. John of Petra in Constantinople. Taken prisoner by the Turks during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he was later released and fled to Crete, then a Venetian colony. There he earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts for Italian humanists, including his patron, Cardinal Bessarion. He often complained about his poverty: one of his manuscripts, a copy of the Eikones of Philostratus, now in Bologna, bears the inscription: "The king of the poor of this world has written this book for his living."
Apostolius died about 1480, leaving a son, Arsenius Apostolius, who became bishop of Malvasia in the Morea.

Selected works

  • Παροιμίαι, a collection of proverbs in Greek
  • * an edition published in Basel in 1538
  • * a fuller edition edited by Daniel Heinsius and published in Leiden in 1619
  • * a critical edition edited by E. L. von Leutsch and published in Göttingen in 1851
  • "Oratio Panegyrica ad Fredericum III." in Marquard Freher's Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum, vol. ii.
  • Georgii Gemisthi Plethonis et Mich. Apostolii Orationes funebres duae in quibus de Immortalitate Animae exponitur
  • a work against the Latin Church and the council of Florence in Étienne Le Moine's Varia Sacra.