Renaissance teacher of Greek and of Platonic philosophy.

In 1447 Demetrius went to Italy, where Cardinal Bessarion became his patron. He was made professor at Padua in 1463. In 1479 he was summoned by Lorenzo de' Medici to Florence, but in 1492 he moved to Milan. He was associated with Marsilio Ficino, Politian, and Teodoro Gaza in the revival of letters in the Western world. One of his pupils at Florence was the German scholar Johann Reuchlin. Demetrius Chalcondyles published the first printed editions of Homer (1488), of Isocrates (1493), and of the Suda lexicon (1499), and a Greek grammar (Erotemata) in question-and-answer form.