Valla, Lorenzo (lōrān`tsō väl`lä), c.1407–57, Italian humanist. Valla knew Greek and Latin well and was chosen by Pope Nicholas V to translate Herodotus and Thucydides into Latin. From his earliest works, he was an ardent spokesman for the new humanist learning that sought to reform language and education. From the late 14th through the 16th cent., the humanists researched the texts of classical antiquity, believing that the spirit of Greco-Roman times that had been lost during the Middle Ages could be revived. By concentrating on the humanistic disciplines of poetry, rhetoric, ethics, history, and politics, they claimed a special dignity for human life and conduct. In a pioneering work of criticism, Valla proved that the long suspect Donation of Constantine (see Constantine, Donation of Constantine, Donation of, Lat. Constitutum Constantini, forged document, probably drafted in the 8th cent. It purported to be a grant by Roman Emperor Constantine I of great temporal power in Italy and the West to the papacy .
..... Click the link for more information. ) was a forgery because the Latin text was written four centuries after Constantine's death. At 26 he wrote De Voluptate, a dialogue in three books that analyzes pleasure and offers a humanist condemnation of scholasticism and monastic asceticism. Aggressive in tone, it was received with hostility. De libero arbitrio demonstrated that theological disputes over divine prescience and human free will could never be resolved. His masterwork, the six books of the Elegantiae linguae latinae (1444), was a brilliant philological defense of classical Latin in which he contrasted the elegance of the ancient Romans' works—especially those of Cicero and Quintilian—with the clumsiness of medieval and Church Latin. This enormously influential work ran to 60 editions before 1536. Valla's investigations into the textual errors in the Vulgate spurred Erasmus to undertake the study of the Greek New Testament.

Bibliography

See selections in E. Cassirer et al., ed., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man (1948); M. de P. Lorch, A Defense of Life (1985).

Valla, Lorenzo

(born 1407, Rome, Papal States—died Aug. 1, 1457, Rome) Italian humanist, philosopher, and literary critic. Unable to find a post as a papal secretary, Valla left Rome in 1430 and spent five years traveling in northern Italy. He was royal secretary and historian for Alfonso V of Aragon (1435–48). In his polemical style, he criticized the works of Boethius (for his viewpoint), Aristotle (for his “barbarisms,” among other things), and Cicero (for his prose style). Found heretical by the Inquisition for his refusal to believe that the Apostles' Creed was composed by the 12 Apostles, he narrowly avoided being burned at the stake. His Elegantiae linguae Latinae (printed 1471; “Elegances of the Latin Language”) was the first textbook of Latin grammar written since late antiquity. His Annotations on the New Testament (printed 1505) was his last major work.