En las entradas sobre Francesco Filelfo (1398-1481) en diferentes enciclopedias en internet encontramos una sorprendente diatriba, que parece demasiado personal y exagerada:
Filelfo deserves commemoration among the greatest humanists of the Italian Renaissance, not for the beauty of his style, not for the elevation of his genius, not for the accuracy of his learning, but for his energy, and for his complete adaptation to the times in which he lived. His erudition was large but ill-digested; his knowledge of the ancient authors, if extensive, was superficial; his style was vulgar; he had no brilliancy of imagination, no pungency of epigram, no grandeur of rhetoric.
Therefore he has left nothing to posterity which the world would not very willingly let die.
En la versión castellana está suprimida la última frase.
Francesco Filelfo será recordado favorablemente en la historia de las matemáticas porque en 1427 trajo de Constantinopla a Italia un manuscrito con las Cónicas de Apolonio de Perga.
Ese manuscrito es probablemente el hoy conocido como Vaticanus Graecus 206, que contiene los cuatro primeros libros de las Cónicas y del cual son copia, directa o indirecta, todos los manuscritos griegos que tenemos de esa obra.