A rage for Greek learning and Greek books now for a time set in. Aurispa, a Sicilian, went to Constantinople, learned Greek, and returned to Italy, in 1422, with 238 Greek manuscripts. Messer Filelfo, of Padua, after seven years at Constantinople, returned, in 1427, with forty manuscripts and with the grand-niece of Chrysoloras as his wife. In 1448 Theodorus Gaza (c. 1400-75), a learned Greek from the city of Thessalonica, who had fled from his native city just before its capture by the Turks (1430), came to Ferrara as the first professor of Greek in the university there. He made many translations, prepared a very popular Greek grammar, and in 1451 became professor of philosophy at Rome. Another Greek of importance was Demetrius Chalcondyles of Athens (1424- 1511), who reached Italy in 1447. In 1450 he became professor of Greek at Perugia, and of his lectures there one of his enthusiastic pupils [11] wrote: A Greek has just arrived, who has begun to teach me with great pains, and I to listen to his precepts with incredible pleasure, because he is a Greek, because he is an Athenian, and because he is Demetrius. It seems to me that in him is figured all the wisdom, the civility, and the elegance of those so famous and illustrious ancients. Merely seeing him you fancy you are looking on Plato; far more when you hear him speak. In 1463 Demetrius transferred to Padua as professor of Greek, and was the first professor of Greek in a western European university to be paid a fixed salary. He also taught for a time at Milan, and from 1471 to 1491 was professor of Greek at Florence. A number of other learned Greeks had reached Italy prior to the fall of Constantinople (1453) before the advancing Turks, [12] and after its fall many more sought there a new home. Many of these found, on landing, that their knowledge of Greek and the possession of a few Greek books were an open sesame to the learned circles of Italy. [Illustration: FIG. 70. DEMETRIUS CHALCONDYLES (1424-1511) (Drawn from a picture of a fresco by Ghirlandajo, painted in 1490, on the walls of the church of Santa Maria Novella, at Florence)]