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External links

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	* Lorenzo Valla: [http://roderic.uv.es/uv_ms_0408 ''Elegantiarum Laurentii Vallae'']. Naples (c. 1473). At [http://roderic.uv.es/handle/10550/43 Somni]		* Lorenzo Valla: [http://roderic.uv.es/uv_ms_0408 ''Elegantiarum Laurentii Vallae'']. Naples (c. 1473). At [http://roderic.uv.es/handle/10550/43 Somni]
	* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/churches/Lateran/interior/Lorenzo_Valla.html Tomb of Lorenzo Valla]		* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/churches/Lateran/interior/Lorenzo_Valla.html Tomb of Lorenzo Valla]

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	[[Image:Lorenzo Valla - Imagines philologorum.jpg\|thumb\|right\|Lorenzo Valla]]		[[Image:Lorenzo Valla - Imagines philologorum.jpg\|thumb\|right\|Lorenzo Valla]]

	'''Lorenzo''' (or '''Laurentius''') '''Valla''' ({{loˈrɛnt͡so ˈvalːa; [[1407 AD]] - 1 August [[1457\|1457 AD]]) was an [[Italy\|Italian]] [[Renaissance humanism\|humanist]], [[rhetoric]]ian, [[education\|educator]] and [[Catholic Church\|Catholic]] priest. He is best known for his textual analysis that proved that the [[Donation of Constantine]] was a forgery.		'''Lorenzo''' (or '''Laurentius''') '''Valla''' (loˈrɛnt͡so ˈvalːa; [[1407 AD]] - 1 August [[1457\|1457 AD]]) was an [[Italy\|Italian]] [[Renaissance humanism\|humanist]], [[rhetoric]]ian, [[education\|educator]] and [[Catholic Church\|Catholic]] priest. He is best known for his textual analysis that proved that the [[Donation of Constantine]] was a forgery.

	== Early life ==		== Early life ==

Nick: New page: Lorenzo Valla '''Lorenzo''' (or '''Laurentius''') '''Valla''' ({{loˈrɛnt͡so ˈvalːa; 1407 AD - 1 August [[1457|1457...

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New page: thumb|right|Lorenzo Valla '''Lorenzo''' (or '''Laurentius''') '''Valla''' ({{loˈrɛnt͡so ˈvalːa; 1407 AD - 1 August [[1457|1457...

New page

[[Image:Lorenzo Valla - Imagines philologorum.jpg|thumb|right|Lorenzo Valla]]

'''Lorenzo''' (or '''Laurentius''') '''Valla''' ({{loˈrɛnt͡so ˈvalːa; [[1407 AD]] - 1 August [[1457|1457 AD]]) was an [[Italy|Italian]] [[Renaissance humanism|humanist]], [[rhetoric]]ian, [[education|educator]] and [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] priest. He is best known for his textual analysis that proved that the [[Donation of Constantine]] was a forgery.

== Early life ==

Valla was born in Rome.[1] His family was from [[Piacenza]]; his father, Luciave della Valla, was a [[lawyer]] who worked at the papal court.

In [[1431 AD|1431]], he entered the [[priesthood]], and after trying in vain to secure a position as [[Secretariat of State (Holy See)|apostolic secretary]], he went to Piacenza, whence he proceeded to [[Pavia]], where he obtained a professorship of eloquence. His tenure at Pavia was made unpleasant by his attack on the Latin style of the great jurist [[Bartolus de Saxoferrato]]. Valla wandered from one university to another, accepting short engagements and lecturing in many cities.[1]

==Latin stylistics==
By this time Valla had won a high reputation for two works: his dialogue ''De Voluptate'', and his treatise ''De Elegantiis Latinae Linguae''. In ''De Voluptate'' (''On Pleasure''), he contrasted the principles of the [[Stoics]] with the tenets of [[Epicurus]], openly proclaiming his sympathy with those who claimed the right of free indulgence for man's natural appetites. It was a remarkable utterance. Here for the first time in the [[Renaissance]] the ideas of Epicurus found deliberate and positive expression in a work of scholarly and philosophical value.[1]

''De Elegantiis'' was no less original, although in a different sphere of thought. This work subjected the forms of Latin [[grammar]] and the rules of Latin style and [[rhetoric]] to a critical examination, and placed the practice of composition upon a foundation of analysis and inductive reasoning. It was a basis for the movement of the Humanists to reform Latin [[prose]] style to a more classical and [[Cicero]]nian direction on a scientific basis. Valla's work was controversial when it appeared, but its arguments carried the day. As a result, [[humanist Latin|humanistic Latin]] sought to purge itself of [[medieval Latin|post-Classical]] words and features, and became stylistically very different from the [[Christianity|Christian]] Latin of the [[Europe]]an [[Middle Ages]]. This was thought to be a major improvement in style and elegance in Latin usage.

==Exposing historical hoaxes==
Valla's originality, critical acumen, and knowledge of classical Latin style were put to good use in an essay he wrote between [[1439 AD|1439]] and [[1440 AD|1440]], ''De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione declamatio'' which analyzed the document known as the ''Constitutum Constantini'' (or "donatio Constantini" as he refers to it in his writings), or the ''[[Donation of Constantine]]'',. The Donation of Constantine suggests that Constantine I "donated" the whole of the [[Western Roman Empire]] to the [[Roman Catholic Church]] as an act of gratitude for having been miraculously cured of [[leprosy]] by [[Pope Sylvester I]]. In this he demonstrated that it could not possibly have been written in the historical era of [[Constantine I]] (4th Century), as its vernacular style dated conclusively to a later era (8th Century). One of Valla's reasons was that the document contained the word ''[[satrap]]'' which he believed Romans such as Constantine I would not have used.[2] The document, though met with great criticism at its introduction, was accepted as legitimate, in part owing to the beneficial nature of the document for the western church.This would have obviously discounted [[Pepin the Short]]'s own [[Donation of Pepin]], which consigned to the Church the Lombard holdings north of Rome.

Valla was motivated to reveal the ''Donation of Constantine'' as a fraud by his patron of the time, [[Alfonso V of Aragon]], who was involved in a territorial conflict with the [[Papal States]], then under [[Pope Eugene IV]]. The ''Donation of Constantine'' had often been cited to support the temporal power of the Papacy, since at least the 11th century. Valla’s work in disproving the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine could be used to weaken or possibly negate the Church’s authority and claim over the territory. The essay began circulating in 1440, but was heavily rejected by the Church. It was not formally published until 1517. It became popular among [[Protestantism|Protestants]]. An English translation was published for [[Thomas Cromwell]] in 1534. Valla's case was so convincingly argued that it still stands today, and the illegitimacy of the ''Donation of Constantine'' is generally conceded.

==Subsequent career==
From Naples, Valla continued his [[philological]] work. He showed that the supposed letter of [[Christ]] to [[Abgarus]] was a forgery, and by throwing doubt upon the authenticity of other spurious documents, and by questioning the utility of monastic life, he aroused the anger of some of the faithful. He was compelled to appear before a tribunal composed of his enemies, and he only escaped by the special intervention of Alfonso. He was not, however, silenced; he ridiculed the Latin of the [[Vulgate]] and accused [[Augustine of Hippo|St Augustine]] of [[heresy]]. In 1444 he visited [[Rome]], but in this city also his enemies were numerous and powerful, and he only saved his life by fleeing in disguise to [[Barcelona]], whence he returned to Naples. But a better fortune attended him after the death of Eugene IV in February 1447. Again he journeyed to Rome, where he was welcomed by the new pope, [[Pope Nicholas V|Nicholas V]], who made him an apostolic secretary. This entrance of Valla into the Roman [[Curia]] has been called "the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition."

On 7 March, the feast of St. [[Thomas Aquinas]] the ''studium generale'' of the [[Dominican Order]] at Rome, the future [[Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas|Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ''Angelicum'']], invited Valla to deliver the annual ''encomium'' of the "angelic doctor," pressing him not only to praise but also to voice humanist criticism of scholastic thomism.[3]

Valla also enjoyed the favour of [[Pope Calixtus III]].[1]

==Textual criticism==
As a specialist of Latin translation, he made countless suggestions to improve upon [[Petrarch]]'s study of [[Livy]] [4] The emendation of [[Livy]] was also a topic discussed in book IV of his ''Antidotum in Facium'', an invective against [[Bartolomeo Facio]]. In this part of the treatise, which also circulated independently under the title ''Emendationes in T. Livium'', Valla elucidates numerous corrupt passages and criticises the attempts at emendation made by [[Panormita]] and [[Bartolomeo Facio|Facio]], his rivals at the court of [[Alfonso the Magnanimous]].[5]

In his critical study of the official bible used by the Roman Catholic church, [[Jerome]]'s [[Latin Vulgate]], Valla called into question the church's system of [[penance]] and [[indulgences]]. He argued that the practice of [[penance]] rested on Jerome's use of the Latin word ''paenitenia'' (penance) for the Greek ''metanoia'' - which he believed would have been more accurately translated as "repentance." Valla's work was praised by later critics of the Church's penance and indulgence system, including [[Erasmus]].[6]

==Biographies and critical esteem==
All the older biographical notices of Valla are loaded with long accounts of his many literary and theological disputes, the most famous of which was the one with [[Gianfrancesco Poggio Bracciolini|Poggio]], which took place after his settlement in Rome. It is almost impossible to form a just estimate of Valla's private life and character owing to the clouds of dust which were stirred up by this and other controversies, in which the most virulent and [[obscene]] language was employed. He appears, however, as a vain, jealous and quarrelsome man, but he combined the qualities of an elegant humanist, an acute critic and a venomous writer, who had committed himself to a violent polemic against the temporal power of Rome. In him posterity honors not so much the scholar and the stylist as the man who initiated a bold method of criticism, which he applied alike to language, to historical documents and to ethical opinions.
[[Martin Luther|Luther]] had a very high opinion of Valla and of his writings, and [[Robert Bellarmine|Cardinal Bellarmine]] calls him ''praecursor Lutheri,'' while [[Richard Claverhouse Jebb|Sir Richard Jebb]] says that his ''De Elegantiis'' "marked the highest level that had yet been reached in the critical study of Latin."[1]
[[Erasmus]] stated in his ''De ratione studii'' that for Latin Grammar, there was "no better guide than Lorenzo Valla."

==Works==
Collected, but not quite complete, editions of Valla's works were published at Basel in 1540 and at Venice in 1592, and ''Elegantiae linguae Latinae'' was reprinted nearly sixty times between 1471 and 1536.
* ''Opera omnia'', Basel 1540; reprinted with a second volume (Turin: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1962).
* ''Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie'', ed. G. Zippel, 2 vols. (First critical edition of the three versions: Padua: Antenore, 1982).
* ''Elegantiae linguae Latinae'', Venice 1471, edited by S. López Moreda (Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 1999).
* ''De vero falsoque bono'', edited by M. de Panizza Lorch, Bari, 1970.
* ''Collatio Novi Testamenti'', edited by A. Perosa (Florence: Sansoni, 1970).
* ''De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione'', ed. W. Setz (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1976; reprinted Leipzig: Teubner, 1994).
* ''Ars Grammatica'', ed. P. Casciano with Italian translation (Milan: Mondadori, Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, 1990).
* ''On the Donation of Constantine.'' The I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007).
* ''Dialectical Disputations.'' The I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, London, 2012).
* ''Correspondence'', ed. Cook, Brendan. The I Tatti Renaissance Library (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2013).

==English translations==
* ''On the donation of Constantine'' translated by G. W. Bowersock, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008.
* ''Dialogue on Free Will'', translated by C. Trinkaus. In: 'The Renaissance Philosophy of Man', edited by Ernst Cassirer et al., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.
* ''The profession of the religious and selections from The falsely-believed and forged donation of Constantine'' translated, and with an introduction and notes, by Olga Zorzi Pugliese, Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 1998.
* ''De vero falsoque bono'' translated by A. K. Hieatt and M. Lorch, New York: Abaris Books 1977.
* ''In Praise of Saint Thomas Aquinas'', translated by M. E. Hanley. In ''Renaissance Philosophy'', ed. L. A. Kennedy, Mouton: The Hague, 1973.
* ''Dialectical Disputations,'' Latin text and English translation of the ''Repastinatio'' by B. P. Copenhaver and L. Nauta, Harvard University Press, 2012 (I Tatti Renaissance Library, two volumes).

==Notes==
* 1. Chisholm 1911.
* 2. [https://web.archive.org/web/20080517201252/http://www.covenantseminary.edu/worldwide/en/CH310/CH310_T_33.html "Archived copy"].
* 3. ''Lorenzo Valla: umanesimo, riforma e controriforma : studi e testi'', 2002, by Salvatore Ignazio Camporeale, 150–152. Accessed 10 April 2013. "Fu lo stesso Valla ad individuare il nucleo essenziale della controversia teologica circa il tomismo contemporaneo nel dibattito commeorative che si svolse, il 7 marzo 1457...per la festa di S. Tommaso. ... Il Valla, dunque, e' salito sul pulpito del tempio minervitano dietro pressante richiesta dei frati domenicani."
* 4. See especially Giuseppe Billanovich, 'Petrarch and the Textual Tradition of Livy', in Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XIV (1951), pp. 137-208.
* 5. For a critical edition, see Lorenzo Valla, Antidotum in Facium, ed. M. Regoliosi, Padua 1981, pp. 327-370.
* 6. Prosser, Peter E. (2001). "[http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=GPS&sw=w&u=wikipedia&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA80303684&asid=2e95f78ae926bf1bb8b214ce55f2aabb Church history's biggest hoax: Renaissance scholarship proved fatal for one of the medieval papacy's favorite claims]. Christian History. 20 (Journal Article): 35–. ISSN 0891-9666. – via General OneFile (subscription required)

==References==
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Valla, Lorenzo". Encyclopædia Britannica. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 861.

==Further reading==
For detailed accounts of Valla's life and work see:
* G. Voigt, ''Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Alterthums'' (1880–81);
* [[John Addington Symonds]], ''Renaissance in Italy'' (1897–99);
* G. Mancini, ''Vita di Lorenzo Valla'' (Florence, 1891);
* M. von Wolff, ''Lorenzo Valla'' (Leipzig, 1893);
* [[Jakob Burckhardt]], ''Kultur der Renaissance'' (1860);
* J. Vahlen, ''Laurentius Valla'' (Berlin, 1870); L Pastor, ''Geschichte der Päpste,'' Band ii. English trans. by FI Antrobus (1892);
* The article in [[Johann Jakob Herzog|Herzog]]-Hauck's ''Realencyklopädie, Band xx.'' (Leipzig, 1908).
* [[John Edwin Sandys]], ''Hist. of Class. Schol.'' ii. (1908), pp. 66‑70.
* Lisa Jardine, "Lorenzo Valla and the Intellectual Origins of Humanist Dialectic," ''Journal of the History of Philosophy'' 15 (1977): 143-64.
* Maristella de Panizza Lorch, ''A defense of life: Lorenzo Valla's theory of pleasure.'', Humanistische Bibliothek 1/36, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1985,
* Peter Mack, ''Renaissance Argument: Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic'', Leiden ; New York : E.J. Brill, 1993.
* Paul Richard Blum, "Lorenzo Valla - Humanism as Philosophy", ''Philosophers of the Renaissance'', Washington 2010, 33-42.
* Matthew DeCoursey, "Continental European Rhetoricians, 1400-1600, and Their Influence in Renaissance England," ''British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500-1660, First Series'', DLB 236, Detroit: Gale, 2001, pp. 309–343.
* Melissa Meriam Bullard, "The Renaissance Project of Knowing: Lorenzo Valla and Salvatore Camporeale's Contributions to the Querelle Between Rhetoric and Philosophy," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 66.4 (2005): 477-81.
* Brian P. Copenhaver, "Valla Our Contemporary: Philosophy and Philology," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 66.4 (2005): 507-25.
* Christopher S. Celenza, "Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy,” ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' 66 (2005): 483-506.
* Lodi Nauta, ''In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla's Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy'', Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 2009.
* {{cite journal |last=Byrne |first=Phillipa |title=‘Cast out into the hellish night’: Pagan Virtue and Pagan Poetics in Lorenzo Valla's De voluptate |journal=Ex Historia |url=http://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/collegeofhumanities/history/exhistoria/volume5/Bryne_Vallas_De_voluptate_48-73.pdf |format=PDF |year=2013 |volume=5 |issn=2041-0824 |pages=48–73}}

==External links==
* [http://history.hanover.edu/texts/vallatc.html Lorenzo Valla, Discourse on the Forgery of the Alleged Donation of Constantine]
* Lorenzo Valla: [http://roderic.uv.es/uv_ms_0408 ''Elegantiarum Laurentii Vallae'']. Naples (c. 1473). At [http://roderic.uv.es/handle/10550/43 Somni]
* [http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/churches/Lateran/interior/Lorenzo_Valla.html Tomb of Lorenzo Valla]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Valla, Lorenzo}}
[[Category:1400s births]]
[[Category:1457 deaths]]
[[Category:Italian Renaissance writers]]
[[Category:Writers from Rome]]
[[Category:Renaissance Latin-language writers]]
[[Category:Italian rhetoricians]]
[[Category:Italian Renaissance humanists]]
[[Category:Christian humanists]]
[[Category:15th-century Italian writers]]

Lorenzo Valla - Revision history

Nick: /* External links */

Nick at 04:22, 12 January 2018

Nick: New page: Lorenzo Valla '''Lorenzo''' (or '''Laurentius''') '''Valla''' ({{loˈrɛnt͡so ˈvalːa; 1407 AD - 1 August [[1457|1457...