The Greek Diaspora: Italian port-cities and London, c.1400-1700

After Constantinople fell into Turkish hands in 1453, Greek emigration to the West, particularly Italy, became continuous and fairly concentrated. This chapter is dedicated to the phenomenon of the Greek diaspora, looking into the formation of Greek communities in the Italian peninsula -- Ancona, Naples, Leghorn, Genoa and Venice -- and in England -- where the communities were not so numerous but still important from a cultural point of view. While on one hand the institution of a Greek church represents a point of cohesion for every community and is a common denominator of all Greek communities independently of their size; on the other hand the different political-economic context in which they were inserted had a bearing on their development. The aims of this work include surveying the birth and growth of these communities and studying the churches and other institutions they founded, their relations with the authorities and, in particular, the cultural exchanges they fostered and the urban mark they left in their host cities.