Valla, Lorenzo

(1405-1457)

   Renaissance humanist and philosopher who in 1440 wrote The Donation of Constantine, declaring an eighth-century document used by the papacy to support its claims to temporal power to be a forgery. Lorenzo was a student of Florentine Chancellor Leonardo Bruni. In 1430, he accepted a lecturing position at the University of Pavia after his attempts to obtain employment in the papal court had failed. At Pavia he wrote his De voluptate (1431), composed as a discussion between Florentine humanists that criticizes Ciceronian Stoic ethics. An open letter he wrote in 1433 attacking a jurist and ridiculing Pavian jurisprudence forced him to leave the city. First he went to Milan and later Genoa, finally settling in Naples where he became secretary to King Alfonso I of Aragon. Aside from writing The Donation of Constantine while in his service, he also published the Dialecticae disputationes attacking Aristotelianism. His skepticism toward the papacy and Christian philosophy led to charges of heresy. In 1448, in spite of the allegations, he was invited by Pope Nicholas V to Rome to translate Greek texts. He died in Rome in 1457.