Most studies of emigrants from Constantinople and Greece in western Europe in this period have focused on the scholars who contributed so much to the revival of the study of Classical Greek during the Italian Renaissance. This original investigation reveals that they also included physicians, shipbuilders, artists and other skilled craftsmen and argues that the readiness of western regimes to meploy them undermines assumptions about Byzantium's technological and cultural backwardness in the years before the fall of Constantinople in 1453.