Friday, June 26, 2026

It is the 26th of June 2026. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

Can you think of the teacher or teachers who most influenced your life? Name them in your head- I’ve got Ms. Vogler, Mr. Colbert, Dr. Rosenbladt, and Bruce Gordon. It’s cliché, but that's for a reason: teachers belong in the pantheon of heroes as agents of change, personal and societal. And so today, on our somewhat unplanned series of really important people you’ve likely never heard of, I’d like to introduce you to one of the most important teachers of all time, unheralded in many ways, but our world, which includes our churches, doesn’t exist as they do today without him. He was John Argyropoulos, likely born in Constantinople around 1415 and died on the 26th of June in Rome in 1487.

 

If you want someone to pin the question on: when did the Middle Ages become the Renaissance and Reformation, he might be as good as any.

 

He was born in an affluent family and was given the opportunities to study in Constantinople and become an excellent scholar on the classical Greek thinkers. We know he was part of the Byzantine delegation to the Council of Florence in the 1430s and 40s that sought to reunite the Eastern and Western churches. He was a professor in Constantinople in 1453, the year of the fateful sack by the Ottomans.

 

You’ve heard here and elsewhere that the threat of the Ottoman Turks to the West was one of the reasons the Reformation took place as it did, but we shouldn’t forget that the Renaissance was also caused by this, as the diaspora of Greeks to the West brought their texts and academic style. Not to oversimplify, but we can mark the change in academics from an emphasis on rhetoric and eloquence to that of metaphysics.

 

Argyropoulos survived the sack of Constantinople and fled to the Peloponnese- by 1456, he had found refuge in Padua and then became the head of the Greek department at the University of Florence. Here, he taught the son of Cosimo de ’ Medici, who would serve as a great patron for the school at Florence. He would teach Marsilio Ficino, who would in turn become the major figure in the Florentine Platonist movement, which has long been recognized as one of the hinges upon which the Middle Ages turned into the Early Modern age.

 

And if teaching a Medici and Ficino doesn’t convince you (it should), how about another one-time student of John Argyropoulos: Leonardo Da Vinci (whose “code” somehow proved that Tom Hanks knew that Mary Magdalene married Jesus or something…. I’m kidding).

 

John Argyropoulos can also be tied to the nascent Reformation movement, despite dying on this day in 1487- two of his students were Johannes Reuchlin and Jacques Lefevre D’Etaples.

 

Both men imbibed the spirit of Argyropoulos in insisting on textual fidelity and the collecting and translating of texts- for these two men, it was primarily the Old Testament. Reuchlin was a contemporary of Luther, and his grand nephew was Phillip Melanchthon (it was Reuchlin who suggested that Phillip Schwarzherd change his name to the cooler-sounding Melanchthon). And while Reuchlin didn’t join the Reformation, his appeal to go back to the original sources was key to the movement.

 

D’Etaples was part of the reforming Meaux circle in France and translated the Bible into French. The French Reformation wouldn’t have happened as it did without D’Etaples.

 

And, lest we simply see John Argyropoulos as one of the most important teachers of all time, it should also be noted- as it is by almost everyone who writes on him- that he was thought to have died- on this day in 1487- by the overconsumption of… watermelon. Early modern Europeans were strangely suspicious of the delicious melon, thinking that its sweetness and moistness, its “cooling and exhilarating Nature,” could cause putrefaction in the stomach. Rest assured, he died of something else- eat your melon, and remember John Argyropoulos, the exiled Greek and first-class teacher for both Renaissance and Reformation, who died on this day.

 

The Last word for today comes from the daily lectionary and… let’s go with Psalm 13… we could go with Galatians, but we needn’t hear about the painful prescription of Paul for the Judaizers this early in the morning…

How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever?
 How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
 and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
 How long will my enemy triumph over me?

3 Look on me and answer, Lord my God.
 Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death,

4 and my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
 and my foes will rejoice when I fall.

5 But I trust in your unfailing love;
 my heart rejoices in your salvation.

6 I will sing the Lord’s praise,
 for he has been good to me.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 26th of June 2026, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who reckons both Turner and Hooch and Joe vs. the Volcano to be more edifying than the DaVinci Code- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who knows that his friends Mary and Sam Pepke will agree that one Hanks movie stands about all the rest- I’m signing, you're signing, we’re all signing… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.