Michael Apostolius (Greek: Μιχαὴλ Ἀποστόλιος or Μιχαὴλ Ἀποστόλης; c. 1420 in Constantinople – after 1474 or 1486, possibly in Venetian Crete)[1] or Apostolius Paroemiographus, i.e. Apostolius the proverb-writer, was a Greek teacher, writer and copyist who lived in the fifteenth century.
Apostolius, a student of John Argyropoulos, taught for a short time at the Monastery of St. John of Petra in Constantinople.
[1] Taken prisoner by the Turks during the fall of Constantinople in 1453, he was later released and fled to Crete, then a Venetian colony.
[1] There he earned a scanty living by teaching and by copying manuscripts for Italian humanists, including his patron, Cardinal Bessarion.
[2][1] He often complained about his poverty: one of his manuscripts, a copy of the Eikones of Philostratus, now in Bologna, bears the inscription: "The king of the poor of this world has written this book for his living.