On the Donation of Constantine Between 1439 and 1440, Valla wrote the essay,
De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione declamatio, which analyzed the document usually known as the
Donation of Constantine. The
Donation suggests that
Constantine I gave the whole of the
Western Roman Empire to the
Roman Catholic Church. This was supposedly an act of gratitude for having been miraculously cured of
leprosy by
Pope Sylvester I. From 1435 to 1445, Valla was employed in the court of
Alfonso V of Aragon, who became involved in a territorial conflict with the
Papal States, then under
Pope Eugene IV. This relationship possibly motivated his work; in any case, he was put on trial before the
Catholic Inquisition in 1444, but was protected from imprisonment by the intervention of Alfonso V. In addition, Valla believed that the quality of Latin for such a supposedly important text was undeniably poor, evidencing this by the fact that the text constantly switched tenses from "we have proclaimed" to "we decree", for instance.
Textual criticism A specialist in Latin translation, Valla made numerous suggestions for improving on
Petrarch's study of
Livy. 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 Facio, his rivals at the court of Alfonso V. 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
paenitentia (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.
Manuscript works Valla made a contemporary reputation with two works: his dialogue
De Voluptate and his treatise
De Elegantiis Latinae Linguae.
Richard Claverhouse Jebb said that his
De Elegantiis "marked the highest level that had yet been reached in the critical study of Latin".
Printed editions Collected editions of Valla's works, not quite complete, 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, Massachusetts: 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, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013).
English translations •
On the donation of Constantine translated by G. W. Bowersock, Cambridge, Massachusetts: 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==