A Reassessment of the Character of Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481)*

Abstract

Francesco Filelfo's stature as the first important Western European professor of Greek after Guarino Veronese has long been recognized. At thirty-six Filelfo had already held academic posts at Padua, Venice, Bologna, Florence, and Siena. He spent the last four decades of his life, for the most part, in the service of the Visconti-Sforza Dukes of Milan. But even during these years the Este of Ferrara, the Gonzaga of Mantua, and the Malatesta of Rimini had entertained him too, and three successive popes had called him to Rome. At the same time his brush with death at the hands of an assassin in Florence and his battles with the Medici had made Filelfo the most notorious of the early humanists.