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Also known as Θεόδωρος Γαζῆς, Theodoros Gazes, Thessalonicensis, and Thessalonikeus, Gaza fled his birthplace before its capture by Turks in 1430 and moved to Italy, where he converted to Catholicism. He became one of the cadre of Greek scholars who emigrated to Italy and brought ancient Greek literature to the attention of the Western scholarly world. Gaza produced grammars and schoolbooks for student use in learning Greek which circulated widely throughout Europe and England. Gaza also produced Latin translations of Aristotle and Greek translations of Cicero’s De Senectute and Somnium Scipionis.  Working as a clerk in Constantinople, he met the Italian humanist Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481), who was collecting Greek manuscripts there and hired Gaza as an assistant in transcribing them. While Gaza was in Pavia in 1440, the translator and mathematician Iacopo da San Cassiano (ca. 1395-1454) introduced him to the Mantuan humanist schoolmaster Vittorino da Feltre (1378-1446), with whom Gaza studied Latin. While residing in Mantua from 1440 to 1443, he deepened his knowledge of Latin with study under Vittorino while also teaching Greek and copying manuscripts. In the hopes of reconciling Western and Eastern churches, he attended councils at Siena (1423), Ferrara (1438), and Florence (1439). At the latter of these, Gaza defended Aristotle against the attacks of the Neoplatonist George Gemistius Plethon (ca. 1356-1450) with what Wilamowitz called “the Byzantine conception of the Aristotelian philosophy.” He declined a professorship at Platonist Florence. 

         In 1446 the historian and Hellenist Giovanni Aurispa (1376-1459) appointed him to a chair at the University of Ferrara where he lectured on Demosthenes and drew students from across Italy. Here he published his influential Greek grammar, the first such grammar to include a syntax. The grammar was ultimately translated into Latin by Erasmus in England and Budaeus in France. 

         Pope Nicholas V (1397-1455) had a scheme to translate Greek classics into Latin and to that end brought Lorenzo Valla (ca. 1407-57) to Rome to translate Greek histories. Gaza was also lured from Ferrara to Rome in 1450 by a professorship in history. He translated Theophrastus, Hippocrates and others. At the death of Nicholas he returned to Naples where he was given a pension of 500 ducats by King Alfonso I of Aragon. There he began work on Aelian under Pope Callixtus III (1378-1458). When Callixtus retired a monastery in 1458, Gaza likewise moved to a monastery on the Lucanian coast. He was in Venice (1459-63) and Calabria (1463-4) but  was called to Rome in 1464 by Paul II  returned to Rome in 1464  where he worked on the editio princeps of Aulus Gellius and joined the circle of Cardinal Basilios Bessarione (1403-72), who was a leader in assisting Greek scholars after the fall of Constantinople. He quickly became one of the leaders of Bessarion’s circle and reorganized the Basilian monastery as Bessarion’s procurator. He assisted Giovanni Andrea Bussi (1417-75) with editions of Apuleius, Strabo, and others. 

       Pope Sixtus IV (1414-84) in 1471 commissioned Gaza to translate Aristotle promising that he would be paid in gold, but when Gaza finished, he felt that his remuneration was so small that he threw the gold pieces into the Tiber. Dissatisfied with his living conditions in Rome lack of support, etc, In this period he re-worked his translations of Theophrastus Historia plantarum, and Aristotle’s Historia animalium  and the pseudo-Aristotle Problemata. He translated Hippocrates’ Aphorismata (Venice 1495) and an extract from the Suda. In addition to his Aristotle, Gaza’s other translations of Aristotle, Hippocrates, Aphrodisias, Aelian, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and John Chrystostom were considered flawless renditions and were used throughout Europe.When Bessarion died in 1472, Gaza went back to Lucania, where he translated Cicero’s De Senectute, (translations of De Amicitia, and Somnium Scipionis previously attributed to him are probably not by him)  before his death.