Nestor Denied: Francesco Filelfo's Advice to Princes on the Crusade against the Turks

作者：Meserve Margaret^*

来源：Osiris, 2010, 25: 47-65.

DOI：10.1086/657262

Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) was one of the most accomplished scholars of Greek and Latin in fifteenth-century Italy. He was also perpetually indigent and a tireless seeker of patronage and attention. For a variety of reasons including personal, ideological, and political commitments Filelfo campaigned avidly for a Latin crusade against the Ottoman Turks. He used the literary form of the familiar letter to address a series of Christian princes in Italy and northern Europe, advising them of the necessity and utility of a military expedition to the Islamic East. In his letters Filelfo drew on various arguments to advocate for a new crusade, from history, philology, and geography, as well as politics, military strategy, anthropology, and his own direct knowledge of Ottoman diplomacy and statecraft. His crusade appeals were largely ignored in his lifetime and have long been dismissed as unrealistic at best and shockingly self-serving at worst. His motives may not have been pure, but Filelfo's crusade letters offer a valuable perspective on the relative merits of academic and practical knowledge at the Renaissance court.

• 出版日期2010