To the Sources When the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453,
many Christians in the city fled to Europe to avoid capture. In
their flight, the refugees brought with them Greek manuscripts
of the Bible as well as writings of early church fathers and
ancient classical writers. Latin had been the scholarly language
of Europe for a millennium. The sudden availability of numerous
Greek manuscripts encouraged the Renaissance humanists to go
back to the sources (ad fontes in Latin) of Greek Desiderius
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) was an important Renaissance
scholar who went to the sources of not only classical learning
but the Bible itself. He was the first to print a Greek edition
of the New Testament. The printing of the Greek New Testament
made the Scripture in the original language available to a wider
number of scholars. First Printed Greek New Testament, 1516
Erasmus, at the encouragement of his friend and printer Johann
Froben, rushed to prepare an edition of the Greek New Testament
to get it into prin