Lorenzo Valla
| Lorenzo Valla | |
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Lorenzo Valla, polemicist and pioneer of philology | |
| Birth name | Lorenzo Valla |
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| Other names | Lorenzo Della Vale, Laurentius Valla "Romanus" |
| Activity (s) | Papal Secretary |
| Birth | 1407 Rome |
| Deaths | 1457 Rome |
| Writing language | Neo-Latin |
| Movement (s) | Humanism |
| Genre (s) | essay, poetry |
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Laurentius Valla, Latinized name of Lorenzo della Vale, known in French literature under the name of Lorenzo Valla Biography Lorenzo Valla studied Latin and Greek at Rome under the supervision of Professors Leonardo Bruni and Giovanni Aurispa and rhetoric and philosophy at the University of Padua. Tempted by a diplomatic career, he had to be resolved, however, after two successive failures with the Holy See (1428, 1431), teaching in universities in Pavia , Naples and Rome. His lessons of rhetoric at Pavia, where he criticized the corruption of the Latin of the famous jurist of Bartolus Saxoferrato , made him many enemies. Finally, in 1433 he obtained the protection of Alfonso V of Aragon and joined the court of Naples as secretary. This job allowed every opportunity to Valla continue his research on the writings of the Fathers of the Church. The results of his studies on the Acts of the Apostles , to show that this book was not written by the Apostles themselves, he received an indictment before the Inquisition, which he took with the support of his protector. He then published the letter of Christ to Abgar of Edessa , and other materials once considered sacred, were forgeries, involving the Christian character of the monastic ideal. When in 1444 he traveled to Rome, he could not escape the hatred of his many enemies in disguising themselves to escape to Barcelona, where he took the boat to Naples. The wheel turned to the death of Pope Eugene IV in February 1447: Valla was now again in Rome when the new pontiff, Nicolas V , recruited him as apostolic secretary and appointed him to the Roman Curia. Now respected for his knowledge, Valla retained his credit in the reign of Calixtus III. In his early work, he presented himself as a staunch critic of a new humanism to reform language and education. He sought the forgotten texts of the ancient classic, thinking that the spirit Greco-Roman who had been lost in the Middle Ages was to be restored. Knowing both the Greek than Latin , he was chosen by Pope Nicolas V to translate Herodotus and Thucydides into Latin. By focusing on the humanistic disciplines, that is to say, poetry, rhetoric, ethics, history and politics, he gave a special dignity to life and human conduct. In an exemplary job, Valla proved that the long text named Donation of Constantine was a forgery because the Latin text coarse was very likely written in 754 , four centuries after the death of Constantine I in 337. At 26, he wrote De voluptate, a dialogue in three books, which analyzes the pleasure and opted for a humanist condemnation of scholasticism and monastic asceticism. Aggressive in its tone, this book was received with hostility. In the libero Arbitrio he demonstrated that the conflict between divine foreknowledge (grace) and will of free will can never be solved. His comments will be taken word for word by Martin Luther. But what are the six books of Latin Linguae Elegantiis, or abbreviated elegantiae ( 1444 ), which constitute his masterpiece. He presents a defense philological brilliant classical Latin in which he contrasted the elegance of the work of ancient Rome (especially those of Cicero , Seneca and Quintilian ) to the awkwardness of Church Latin Middle Ages. This work had enormous influence and underwent 60 (re-) editions from before 1537. Valla's research on the textual errors in the Vulgate led scholars, Erasmus among others, to study the Gospels in the original Greek text. Since its inception, the new style born in the Ile-de-France was called the "French style". Fierce opponent of the Middle Ages, Lorenzo Valla enunciated in 1440 that "Everything that is wrong is the Gothic, and all that is wrong is the Gothic." Works The humanist
Lorenzo Valla and the Gothic
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