Dodecanese Dodecanese The Dodecanese (, ; , "Dodekánisa" , literally "twelve islands") are a group of 15 larger plus 150 smaller Greek islands in the southeastern Aegean Sea, off the coast of Asia Minor (Turkey), of which 26 are inhabited. Τhis island group generally defines the eastern limit of the Sea of Crete. They belong to the wider Southern Sporades island group. The most historically important and well-known island, Rhodes, has been the area's dominant island since antiquity. Of the others, Kos and Patmos are historically the more important; the remaining eleven are Agathonisi, Astypalaia, Kalymnos, Karpathos, Kasos, Leipsoi, Leros, Nisyros,
Greek scholars in the Renaissance Greek scholars in the Renaissance The migration waves of Byzantine scholars and émigrés in the period following the Crusader sacking of Constantinople and the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Dark Ages in the West. Their main role within Renaissance humanism was the teaching of the Greek language to their