Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Robert J. Bast
Knoxville, Tennessee
In cooperation with
Heiko A. Oberman
VOLUME 172
Christianity, Latinity,
and Culture
Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla
By
Patrick Baker
Edited by
Patrick Baker
Christopher S. Celenza
Patrick Baker
LEIDEN BOSTON
2014
Cover illustration: Detail of Filippino Lippi (ca. 1457-1504), Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over
the Heretics, fresco, 1489-1492 (Cappella Carafa, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome), depicting the
equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in front of the Lateran (courtesy of Scala Archives).
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrationsxi
Note on the Translation xiii
Acknowledgementsxv
Introduction: Salvatore Camporeale and Lorenzo Valla1
Christopher S. Celenza
Lorenzo Valla and the De falso credita donatione: Rhetoric,
Freedom, and Ecclesiology in the Fifteenth Century 17
Salvatore I. Camporeale
1Introduction to a Reinterpretation of the De falso
credita donatione 19
2Causa veritatis: From the Exordium to the Peroration 28
3The Antinomy of imperium and evangelium 37
4Section I of the Oration and Parallel Passages in
Vallas Works 54
5The Body of the Oration: From Section III to Section VI 57
6Section IV: From the Constitutum Constantini to the
Legenda Silvestri 73
6.1The Constitutum 76
6.2The Legenda Silvestri 84
7Section V: From the Pactum Hludovicianum to the
respublica romana; Vallas Anti-Caesarism in Opposition
to Augustine101
7.1The Hludovicianum and the Transfer of the Empire
(translatio imperii)102
7.2From imperium to respublica: The Second Part of
Section V109
7.3From Valla to Augustine: The Critique of the
City of God112
8Epilogue: Vallas Defense of the Oration in his Letters to
Cardinals Trevisan and Landriani134
viii
contents
contentsix
3The Aporias of Scholasticism203
3.1Philosophy/Theology203
3.2Dialectic/Rhetoric234
4Rhetoric as a Mode of Theologizing: The Humanist Solution
to the Problem254
4.1The proemium to Book IV of the Elegantiae255
4.2The Letter to Eustochium and Jeromes Dream257
4.3The Mechanical Arts, the Liberal Arts, and the
Christian Religion263
4.4The Opposition between Philosophical Theology and
Rhetorical Theology, and the Critical Reduction of the
Vulgate to the Greek Truth (veritas graeca)276
4.5The Preface to Thucydides History, Nicholas Vs
Literary Project, and the Question of Translation281
4.6The Arts and Sciences as a Middle Ground (medietas)287
4.7Erasmuss Humanism from the Antibarbari to the
Life of Jerome291
Lorenzo Valla, Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas297
Patrick Baker (ed. and tr.)
Bibliography317
Index331
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1Andrea di Bonaiuto (fl. 13431377), Triumph of the
Catholic Doctrine Embodied by St. Thomas Aquinas,
fresco, 13651367. Cappellone degli Spagnoli, Santa
Maria Novella, Florence (courtesy of Scala Archives)160
2Filippino Lippi (ca. 14571504), Triumph of St. Thomas
Aquinas over the Heretics, fresco, 14891492. Cappella
Carafa, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome (courtesy of
Scala Archives)163
xiv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors would like to thank Memorie Domenicane for permission to
translate Camporeales essays, which originally appeared in its pages:
Lorenzo Valla e il De falso credita donatione. Retorica, libert ed ecclesiologia nel 400, Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 19 (1988): 191293; and Lorenzo
Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Encomion s. Thomae 1457, Memorie
Domenicane, n.s., 7 (1976): 11194. We would also like to thank the I Tatti
Renaissance Library for permission to use G.W. Bowersocks translation of
Vallas Oration on the Donation of Constantine (On the Donation of
Constantine, tr. G.W. Bowersock [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 2007]), as well as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica for permission to reprint large portions of Wolfram Setzs critical text of the Latin
Oration (De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram
Setz [Weimar: Bhlau, 1976], Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen
zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 10). This volume was made possiblein part thanks to a Lila Acheson Wallace Readers Digest Publications
Subsidy from Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian
Renaissance Studies. It was put into final form at the American Academy
in Rome, where Patrick Baker resided in 20122013 as the Lily
Auchincloss Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Renaissance and Early
Modern Italian Studies.
P.B. and C.C.
INTRODUCTION:
SALVATORE CAMPOREALE AND LORENZO VALLA
Christopher S. Celenza
Italian Renaissance studies lost one of its most valued scholars on 17
December 2002, when the Dominican scholar Salvatore Camporeale
passed away. Camporeales life took him from southern Italy (where he
was born in 1928, in Bari), to California (where he attended a small Catholic
college, St. Alberts, receiving his Bachelors degree in 1950), Pistoia,
Florence, and to visiting lectureships all over the world. He was a regular
visitor to the Johns Hopkins University, where he taught yearly minicourses from the early 1980s until the later 1990s. And he was a beloved
interlocutor for many years at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center
for Renaissance Studies in Settignano, near Florence, where Camporeale
had his real and final home, in the Dominican community of Santa Maria
Novella. After his death, no less than three publications in his honor
appeared, testimony to the immense esteem Camporeale enjoyed among
his students and colleagues worldwide, all the more noteworthy since he
never held a permanent university position.1
While Camporeale wrote on different topics, his principal contribution
to scholarship came in his studies of the fifteenth-century thinker
Lorenzo Valla (140657), a Roman intellectual whose historical, literary,
1See Francesco Ciabattoni and Susanna Barsella (eds.), The Humanists Workshop:
Special Issue on Salvatore I. Camporeale, special issue of Italian Quarterly, vol. 46 (179182 =
Winter to Fall, 2009), entire issue (there see Susanna Barsella, Biocritical Note, 1517 and
Bibliography, 1921, for a list of Camporeales publications); Walter Stephens (ed.), Studia
Humanitatis: Studies in Honor of Salvatore Camporeale (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2004), supplement to Modern Language Notes 119 (2004); and a section of
the Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 477556: Salvatore Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla,
Humanism, and Theology, edited by Melissa Meriam Bullard, with essays by Bullard, The
Renaissance Project of Knowing: Lorenzo Valla and Salvatore Camporeales Contributions
to the Querelle between Rhetoric and Philosophy (47781); Christopher S. Celenza,
Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy (483506); Brian
P. Copenhaver, Valla Our Contemporary: Philosophy and Philology (50725); Mariangela
Regoliosi, Salvatore Camporeales Contribution to Theology and the History of the
Church (52739); and Nancy S. Struever, Historical Priorities (54156). There are profiles
of Camporeale posted by Villa I Tatti (accessed 12.17.2012: http://www.itatti.it/camporeale
_memoriam.htm) and Santa Maria Novella (accessed 12.17.2012: http://www.smn.it/
convento/campo.htm).
christopher s. celenza
and philosophical works proved influential, both in his own epoch and,
more noticeably, after their rediscovery in the twentieth century.
Camporeale took part in that wave of rediscovery (indeed he was one of
its prime movers), and his work served to introduce serious analysis of
Valla into the then highly specialized scholarly conversation on the intellectual history of Renaissance Italy. Little of Camporeales work has
appeared in English, despite his international reputation; and now that
study of Lorenzo Valla has grown, aided by new editions and translations
of his work as well as by recent scholarship, the time has come to present
in book form the two monographs that Camporeale believed best encapsulated his life-long work on this important Renaissance thinker.2 To set
these studies in context, it is worthwhile to spend a little time with Valla
and on the two main works under discussion in this volume before moving on to Camporeales own background and guiding assumptions.
Lorenzo Vallas key preoccupations lay in the realms of the Latin language, Christianity, and culture. He saw those three areas as linked, believing them mutually interdependent. Both of the texts on which Camporeale
focuses here, Vallas treatise on the Donation of Constantine and his
Encomium of Saint Thomas Aquinas, serve as keystones to Vallas thoughts
and to Camporeales vision of Vallas importance. Both texts, especially
that on the Donation, have had traditional interpretations that are accurate on the surface but that, in light of Camporeales examination, reveal
much more: about Valla, about the history of philology, and about the history of institutional Christianity.3
2For recent editions, translations, and bibliography, see Christopher S. Celenza,
Lorenzo Vallas Radical Philology: The Preface to the Annotations to the New Testament
in Context, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012), 365394; Lorenzo
Valla, Dialectical Disputations, ed. and tr. Brian P. Copenhaver and Lodi Nauta, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012); Lodi Nauta, In Defense of Common
Sense: Lorenzo Vallas Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2009); Mariangela Regoliosi (ed.), Lorenzo Valla: La riforma
della lingua e della logica, 2 vols. (Firenze: Polistampa, 2010); eadem (ed.), Lorenzo
Valla e lumanesimo toscano (Firenze: Polistampa, 2009); eadem (ed.), Pubblicare il
Valla (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008); Lorenzo Valla, Raudensiane note, ed. Gian Matteo
Corrias (Firenze: Polistampa, 2007); Lorenzo Valla, Encomion Sancti Thome, ed. Stefano
Cartei (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008); Lorenzo Valla, Ad Alfonsum regem Epistola de duobus
Tarquiniis and Confutationes in Benedictum Morandum, ed. Francesco Lo Monaco (Firenze:
Polistampa, 2009); Lorenzo Valla, Emendationes quorundam locorum ex Alexandro ad
Alfonsum primum Aragonum regem, ed. Clementina Marsico (Firenze: Polistampa, 2009).
3See Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine, ed. and tr. G.W. Bowersock
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007); there the Latin edition is based on
Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz, in the
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 10 (Weimar: Bhlau, 1976); Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas
The basic contours of Vallas life and work are easy enough to sketch, at
least in broad outline.4 Roman in origin, he was raised in the environment
of the papal court, and he spent part of his youth in the company of an
uncle, Melchior Scrivani, himself a curialist.5 Valla spent much of his life
trying to become part of the papal court. It was not until 1447 that he succeeded, when he obtained a position at the court of Nicholas V (the former Tommaso Parentucelli), a great supporter of humanistic studies.6 In
the intervening years, Valla spent a significant amount of time at the
Neapolitan Court of Alfonso of Aragon, and it was there that he drafted
most of his major works, the treatise on the Donation of Constantine
among them. Other works that date from this period include Vallas
Annotations on the New Testament, in which he applies his knowledge of
the Greek language to the Latin Vulgate translation of the New Testament,
which Valla argues does not always reflect adequately the meaning of the
Greek text; a dialogue On Pleasure, in which Vallas interlocutors take different positions regarding the place of pleasure in Christian life; a dialogue
On Free Will, in which Valla confronts the classic question of the relationship between divine omniscience and human free will; his On the
Profession of the Religious, a dialogue in which Valla, through his interlocutors, argues that sincere Christian religiosity cannot be measured by the
taking of religious vows; his Pruning, or Re-digging up, of all Dialectic, an
ambitious attempt on Vallas part to reframe the way logic was studied
and conceived in the late middle ages; and, among other works, his
Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung, De falsa credita et ementita Constantini donatione: Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte. Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen
Instituts in Rom, 44 (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1975); Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine
and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007); Alfred Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents
in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 13674; and
for the Encomium, see the edition of Cartei, as in previous note.
4The most complete biography is still Girolamo Mancini, Vita di Lorenzo Valla (Firenze:
Sansoni, 1891). In a vast sea of studies, for basic orientation, see, in addition to the cited
studies, Jill Kraye, Lorenzo Valla and Changing Perceptions of Renaissance Humanism,
Comparative Criticism 23 (2001): 3755; Maristella Lorch, Lorenzo Valla, in Renaissance
Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Alfred Rabil, 3 vols. (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 1:33249. For a recent discussion on the meaning
of Vallas philosophical work, see W. Scott Blanchard, The Negative Dialectic of Lorenzo
Valla: A Study in the Pathology of Opposition, Renaissance Studies 14 (2000): 149189; and
Lodi Nauta, William of Ockham and Lorenzo Valla: False Friends, Semantics, and
Ontological Reduction, Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003): 613651.
5W. von Hofmann, Forschungen zur Geschichte der kurialen Behrden vom Schisma bis
zur Reformation, 2 vols. (Rom: Loescher, 1914), 1: 232, 2:111; Mancini, Vita di Lorenzo Valla,
124.
6Mancini, Vita di Lorenzo Valla, 22678.
christopher s. celenza
Elegances of the Latin Language, a guide to Latin usage that became Vallas
one major success in the early modern period (at least in terms of the
number of extant manuscript copies and early printed editions), adopted
as it was by many late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century educators as a
reference work for teaching and learning correct Latin usage.7
Yet it is certainly his De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione
declamatio (Declamation on the falsely believed and lying Donation of
Constantine) that has earned Valla his modern reputation. For it was in
this treatise, so the story goes, that Valla used his knowledge of the Latin
language to unmask a forgery, showing that some of the language used in
the Constitutum Constantini (the document that represented the Donation
of Constantine in written form) derived from a later period than that of
the document itself. If Valla appears in textbooks of western history, it is
this unmasking for which he is centrally featured, with his linguistic skill
seen as a predecessor of scientific philology. Yet there is so much more to
be said about this work and about Camporeales interpretation thereof,
that it is worthwhile stepping back and examining the constituent parts,
as it were.
The first of these parts is the document of donation itself. The Donation
of Constantine refers to the notional gift of the Emperor Constantine,
whereby, converted to Christianity and ready to transfer the seat of imperial power from Rome to Byzantium, he decided to donate the western
territories of the Empire to Pope Sylvester. The consensus of modern
scholarship is that the document in which this gift was formalized (the
Constitutum) was produced in the environment of the Papal Court in the
eighth century; in other words, almost five centuries after the putative
event.8 It is often indicated, therefore, as a forgery, which at the most
literal level it surely is. Yet it is productive to reflect on what a forgery
might mean, not only in the pre-modern world but also in the pre-print
world. Suppose that consensus emerged, in the eighth-century curial environment whose members went on to produce the document, that
Constantine had indeed ceded the rights to the western territories to the
7On the Annotations, with literature, see Celenza, Lorenzo Vallas Radical Philology;
for the editorial state of play with respect to the other works mentioned, see Regoliosi
(ed.), Pubblicare il Valla.
8Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini, has made the important
step of separating, conceptually, the Donation from the document, showing that each
had, in a sense, a separate existence in different intellectual and cultural communities
throughout the middle ages. This and the succeeding paragraph follow his emphasis; see
also Hiatt, Making of Medieval Forgeries, 13642, whose approach to the Donation has also
informed what follows.
christopher s. celenza
There are the etymological arguments for which Valla is justly celebrated,
such as when he highlights the absurdity of the document containing the
term Constantinople when Byzantium had not yet acquired that name,
or when he shows that words are used that would have made no sense in
the documents supposed chronological context (such as the use of the
term satrap, for which there is no other contemporary evidence, or the
use of the word ecclesia for church referring to the building when
templum would have been more appropriate in that case).16
The criticisms that Valla makes add up to more than an unmasking of
a forged document. Taken together they amount to a strong critique of the
Church as it situated itself in Vallas day, which is to say as the custodian
of universal Christendom, on the one hand and, on the other (and simultaneously), a regional political power:
13The quotation comes from Valla, On the Donation of Constantine (tr. Bowersock), 12.
14The quotations come from ibid., 16 and 21, respectively.
15Ibid., 39.
16Ibid., 45, 42, 47, respectively.
It is true that when Valla wrote this text he was in the employ of a ruler,
Alfonse of Aragon, who was at odds with the then Pope, Eugenius IV. But
the incisiveness, range, and sheer amount of Vallas criticisms belie the
notion that this text was little more than the product of a paid rhetorician.
There is a vision behind the text about Christianity, Latinity, and culture,
a vision also manifested in Vallas Encomium of Saint Thomas, the second
of the two texts around which Camporeales two studies revolve.
Valla delivered the Encomium, an oration, on 7 March 1457, the feast
day of St. Thomas Aquinas, at the seat of the Dominican Order in Rome,
Santa Maria sopra Minerva.18 As it turned out, this was his last work, and
it stands as a small masterpiece of restrained reflection: restrained for
Valla, that is. For here too, Valla launches a critique, but it is a subtler critique than those to which readers of Valla are accustomed. He had been
asked, after all, to speak at a commemorative occasion honoring Thomas
Aquinas, and in so far as it was possible for him to do, given his guiding
assumptions concerning philosophy and theology, he took the obligation
seriously. As is often the case, his critique emerges not against an auctoritas, in this case Aquinas, but rather against those who make uncritical use
of the authority. Valla followed the same procedure, for example, when
dealing with Aristotle in the Preface of his Repastinatio totius dialecticae,
where it is not Aristotle himself but his uncritical followers who bear the
brunt of critique.19
The entire Encomium, in fact, represents an attempt to put Aquinas in
his proper place, in the most literal sense of that expression. Valla notes
the difference, for example, between martyrs, who died because of their
faith, and confessors (confessores), who lived a chaste and spotless life
accompanied by divine signs and miracles.20 Aquinas is a confessor,
and as such possessed innumerable virtues, but he was not a martyr,
Valla reminds his audience, and he should not be accorded that sort of
17Ibid., 96.
18In addition to Camporeales own study, for context see the important work of John
W. OMalley, Some Renaissance Panegyrics of Aquinas, Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974):
17492; idem, The Feast of Thomas Aquinas in Renaissance Rome: A Neglected Document
and Its Import, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 35 (1981): 127.
19See Valla, Dialectical Disputations, 213.
20The quotation is from Lorenzo Valla, Encomium of Saint Thomas, ed. and tr. Patrick
Baker (in this volume, pp. 297315), 2 (cited according to paragraph number).
christopher s. celenza
The impression is that there can be only one founder, but that there could
have been more who contributed to ornamenting the original foundation.
As it happened, Aquinas was the most prominent of those later contributors, but he still should not be confused with the founder.
Similarly, Valla has in mind the larger history of Christian thinkers, a
history in which the early Church Fathers loom large, or at least ought to.
Valla expresses surprise at how Aquinas has been regarded:
It has not escaped me that certain people who held an oration here today
on the same subject not only made Thomas second to none of the doctors of
the Church but also placed him above them all.
What is more,
The reason they gave for being able to put him above everyone is that for
proof in theology he used logic, metaphysics, and all philosophy, which the
earlier doctors are supposed to have barely tasted with the tips of their
tongues.22
Valla indicts what he sees as an overemphasis on metaphysics and dialectic at the expense of more important concerns. This move leads him to the
other concern, the Church Fathers:
This I will make clear not with my own arguments (although I could) but by
citing the authority of the ancient theologians Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary,
Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine who were so far from treating such matters in
their works that they did not even mention them.
The Fathers do not devote themselves to detailed discussions of metaphysics and logic for two reasons. First, they do not seem to lead to the
knowledge of divine truths.25 Second, both of these areas operate with
crucial terminology that has roots in Greek philosophical discussion and,
23Ibid., 15.
24Ibid., 16. Modes of signifying = modi significandi. Valla is referring to philosophers
of the thirteenth and fourteenth century who studied the specialized ways that different
words acquired meaning in propositions and sentences. Martin of Dacia and Boethius of
Dacia are most commonly named when studying this tendency, though they profited from
the earlier work of twelfth-century speculative grammarians like William of Conches
(the term speculative grammarians is often used to refer to both groups). See Costantino
Marmo, Semiotica e linguaggio nella scolastica: Parigi, Bologna, Erfurt, 12701330 (Roma:
Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1994); Jan Pinborg, Speculative Grammar, in
The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony
Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 25469; idem, Die
Entwicklung der Sprachtheorie im Mittelalter (Mnster: Aschendorff, 1967); and Irne
Rosier, La grammaire spculative des Modistes (Lille: Presse universitaires de Lille, 1983).
25Valla, Encomium of Saint Thomas (tr. Baker), 18.
10
christopher s. celenza
ultimately, in the Greek language. Even if latterly coined Latin words exist
to reflect certain Greek concepts (concepts around which much discussion in metaphysics and dialectic revolve, such as the ten categories of
Aristotle), they are not organic to the Latin language and thus not organic
to the kind of thinking and writing about religion that the Church Fathers
prized. The Latin Fathers dreaded words which the great Latin authors
never used.26 Once again one observes that uncontaminated Latin,
meaningful Christianity, and human culture are linked for Valla, a presupposition he takes with him into his evaluation of the Fathers and their
exemplary value.
The Fathers mentioned are so important that Valla uses them to end his
oration, arguing that, to understand Aquinas, if he is indeed to be considered as having the kind of status that a Father should have, he must be
paired with a Greek Father, the way one might pair the older Latin Fathers
with Greek counterparts. And after suggesting that Aquinas should be
considered above a series of medieval theologians (St. Bernard, Peter
Lombard, Gratian, and Albert the Great, among others), this is precisely
what Valla does. Ambrose is paired with Basil, Jerome with Gregory
Nazianzen, Augustine with John Chrysostom, Gregory the Great with (for
us pseudo) Dionysius the Areopagite, and Aquinas with John Damascene.
Though Valla does not expatiate on these pairings beyond a few words
each, there is a rationale to them. Ambrose considered himself a rival to
Basil; Jerome claimed to have been a pupil and disciple of Nazianzen;
Augustine often followed and emulated John Chrysostom; and Gregory
the Great (Pope from 490504) is the first to have mentioned Dionysius
the Areopagite (Valla mentions that Gregory is the first of the Latins to
mention Dionysius and notes that Dionysius was unknown to the Greeks
as well).27 As for Aquinas and John Damascene, Valla writes that their
pairing is justified, because John wrote many logical and well-nigh metaphysical works.28
All things considered, one observes a restrained and balanced Valla. Yet
Valla adds what could be read as another note of ambiguity. Sacred writers
26Ibid., 19.
27For Vallas part in the story of the interpretation of ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, see
John Monfasani, Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in mid-Quattrocento Rome, in
Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. James Hankins, John
Monfasani, and Frederick Purnell, Jr. (Binghamton: MRTS, 1987), 189219, reprinted with
the same pagination as essay IX in John Monfasani, Language and Learning in Renaissance
Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994).
28Valla, Encomium of Saint Thomas (tr. Baker), 23.
always make music in the sight of God, and each pair has its part to play
in the musical group Valla outlines: The first pair is Basil and Ambrose,
playing the lyre; the second, Nazianzen and Jerome, playing the cithara;
the third, Chrysostom and Augustine, playing the psaltery; the fourth,
Dionysius and Gregory, playing the flute The fifth? John Damascene
and Thomas, playing the cymbals, which are, Valla says, an instrument
emitting happy, cheerful, and pleasing music.29 What sort of praise is
this? Happy, cheerful, and pleasing are positive attributes. But do
they imply the requisite gravity, holiness, and depth due on the occasion
of Thomass feast day? Valla does not address these questions and closes
his oration piously.
These and other moments in Vallas oeuvre demand interpretation, and
there was no finer interpreter of Valla than Salvatore Camporeale. To
understand Camporeales scholarship, two aspects come to the fore:
Camporeales work with his mentor, Eugenio Garin, and his attention to
language. Eugenio Garin (19092004), twentieth-century Italys leading
historian of Italian philosophy, had a powerful imprint on the many scholars who studied with him.30 After a period teaching in Italian secondary
schools Garin was Professor at the University of Florence from 1949 onward,
and then from 197484 at the Scuola normale superiore di Pisa, Italys equivalent to Frances cole normale. Garin was also a generous correspondent
and, both through his letters and through his tenure as President of Italys
National Institute for the Study of the Renaissance (198088), advised a
wide array of informal students. Camporeale was proud to have had
Garin as his mentor for his laurea (then Italys highest academic degree),
and it was Garin who encouraged Camporeale to publish his thesis, even
writing a preface to Camporeales Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e teologia.31
Garin believed that the Italian Renaissance gave birth to a distinct type
of philosophy, rooted in detailed attention to history, that had not been
given its due in the historiography of philosophy.32 Heir to the work of
29Ibid., 24.
30On Garin, see Michele Ciliberto, Eugenio Garin: Un intellettuale nel Novecento (Roma:
Laterza, 2011); Rocco Rubini, The Last Italian Philosopher: Eugenio Garin (with an
Appendix of Documents), Intellectual History Review 21 (2011), 209230; Luciano Mecacci,
Contributo alla bibliografia degli scritti su Eugenio Garin, Il Protagora 38 (2011), 519526;
Christopher S. Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latins
Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 1657; and Garins autobiographical statement in Eugenio Garin, La filosofia come sapere storico (Roma: Laterza, 1990).
31(Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1972).
32See Eugenio Garin, History of Italian Philosophy, ed. and tr. Giorgio Pinton, 2 vols.
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008).
12
christopher s. celenza
14
christopher s. celenza
38For one example of Luther on Valla (after reading Vallas treatise on the Donation of
Constantine), see Martin Luther, Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, part 4:
Briefwechsel, vol. 2, ed. J. Ficker (Weimar: H. Bhlaus Nachfolger, 1931), 28.
In 1433 Lorenzo Valla presented his De voluptate (On Pleasure) to prominent members of the humanist circle in Florence: Leonardo Bruni, Carlo
Marsuppini, and Ambrogio Traversari. From these three readers he knew
to expect a rather critical response, or at least one not without reservations. Nevertheless, his respect for the Florentine humanists and for their
special competence in both Greek and Latin literature moved Valla to
offer up his De voluptate to their reading and judgment.
Contrary to what would be said of him later, and above all in the wake
of Poggio Bracciolinis invectives against him, Valla always submitted his
own writings, especially the most demanding, to the judgment of those he
esteemed and admired. He had already done so with his first essay, De
comparatione Ciceronis Quintilianique (A Comparison of Cicero and
Quintilian). This he sent by way of his friend Antonio Beccadelli to
Marsuppini, whom he (Valla) considered the greatest connoisseur of the
classical tradition among all his contemporaries.
In the specific case of De voluptate, Valla nurtured the desire for a positive, even if critical, reaction from the Florentines. With this his most
demanding work since the Comparatio, he even hoped for the affirmation
1Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung, De falsa
credita et ementita Constantini donatione: Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte.
(Tbingen: M. Niemeyer, 1975), 123: Rationes autem, quibus Valla non certe omnino
indocte motus est, nemo unquam medulitus evacuabit, nisi pontificium ius et veram
theologie cognitionem adeptus fuerit.
18
salvatore i. camporeale
Now, it is undoubtedly true that Traversari was busy with activities that
denied him the leisure to discuss in detail Vallas ethics of the Good (summum bonum) as pleasure (voluptas). Nevertheless, one has the impression
2Lorenzo Valla, Epistole. Ed. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padova:
Antenore, 1984), 125f., 215f. Poggio Bracciolini, Lettere. Ed. Helene Harth. 3 vols. (Firenze:
Olschki, 19841987), 2:178ff.: it is the first letter (to Guarino Veronese, Roma 17 October
1433) in which Bracciolini sets forth in strongly polemical terms his critique of Valla and his
early writings (denouncing his loquendi arrogantia, 178.9); in fact, the letter contains in
nuce what Poggio will explain more fully, both in form and in content, in his Orationes in
L. Vallam, at the height of his controversy in the 1450s with Valla and his school.
Cfr. Salvatore I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1972), passim and especially 31146; idem, Poggio Bracciolini
contro Valla. Le Orationes in L. Vallam, in Poggio Bracciolini: 13801980: nel VI centenario
della nascita (Firenze: Sansoni, 1982), 137161.
3The text of Traversaris letter to Valla is in Luciano Barozzi and Remigio Sabbadini, Studi
sul Panormita e sul Valla (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1891), 64ff.: Liberum [est] semper cuique et
tueri et constanter asserere opiniones suas; non itaque improbo si quid contra philosophorum sentiamus inventa, si modo nostra probabilibus verisque rationibus muniamus.
20
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redeemed by saving grace christianus homo both of which are determined by the freedom of man as an essentially political animal. Freedom,
although it is a specific property of human nature, can necessarily only
achieve actualization in the civitas or polis. This is Vallas romana libertas.
Both natural and civil liberty receive their fullest explication and actualization within the sphere of the evangelical6 ecclesia and according to its
economics of salvation (in the age of grace), and together they constitute
for Valla christiana libertas. Therefore, if the community of believers
should ever cease to be the home of Christian freedom, the ecclesia would
find itself in antithesis with the message of the Gospel. More precisely, it
would constitute a negation of both civil and natural freedom, both of
which pertain to the (defining) essence of man.7
Second: Vallas reflection on the Constitutum Constantini is at once historical and philological. Consequently he chose for the method and content of its written form, in accordance with his humanist conception of the
art of rhetoric, the literary genre of the oration. With this argumentative
method Valla attempts to identify contradictions in scholastic, ecclesiological, and political language as well as juridical and theological antinomies, all based on the language historically derived from the Constitutum.
For the tradition of the Constantinian Church had in fact been founded
on the pseudo-Constantinian Pagina Privilegii.8 The Constantinian ecclesiological tradition was elaborated in various ways, actualized by the
Roman Church, theorized by theologians and canon lawyers, raised almost
to the level of dogma by Innocent III and Boniface VIII, and was still being
perpetuated in the time of Eugenius IV.9 Therefore Vallas rhetorical
strategy instead of being an apodictic demonstration or the proposal of
a new ecclesiological and/or political theory is an historical and philological analysis that reduces the tradition to its ideological foundations. In
this way Valla intends to demonstrate how the Constitutum Constantini, as
well as the practices resulting from it and the very language of the Roman
Church, are falsifiable by means of the internal contradictions found in the
text itself and in its successive re-elaborations.
6[In the sense of deriving from the Evangelium, i.e., the Gospel. Eds.]
7Valla, De falso, 147.16 (76), 162.10ff. (86), 163.17ff. (87), 65f. (9), 7375 (1718), 78.12,
163167 (8789), with Setzs notes and commentary.
8[The formal Document of Privilege supposedly authorizing the Donation of
Constantine. Eds.]
9Valla, De falso, 90f. (33), 158f. (83), 160f. (84); cf. as well Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift,
1824.
22
salvatore i. camporeale
24
salvatore i. camporeale
conflict between the Roman curia, papal government, and his status as
a citizen of Rome. This conflict slowly intensified, and it expanded
not only in the arena of Vallas own intellectual work and the circle of the
best-known curial humanists, but also in that of the dominant culture of
scholasticism. His inquisitorial trial at the hands of the scholastics in
Naples in the 1440s, and the polemics of Poggio Bracciolini and his supporters in the 1450s, ultimately constituted the furthest and thus the
most evident extremes of this clash of opposed positions.
This constant and forced wandering, this intellectual journey, this frustrating relationship with Eugenius IV, for whom Valla would not only nurture a sense of friendship and esteem but to whom he would also direct
(as did other humanists like Bruni and Flavio Biondo) his appeals for an
effective promotion of the new cultural renaissance all these form, it
would seem, the biographical background and the rather personal rationale, perhaps the true motivation, for Vallas consideration of and discourse on the Donation of Constantine.22
This is the source of Vallas determination to investigate what he himself calls a matter of canon law and theology, and he therefore directs his
attack against all canonists and theologians.23 Hence his exordium,
which is dominated by that I dissent with which the Oration begins.24
This dissent is an ecclesiological awareness contrary to tradition and a
manifest expression, within the very context of Christendom, of a new
paradigm of criticism that is at once theological and political. It is different from the classic paradigm of heresy, which is a stance contrary to
dogma.25 In line with this dissent Valla rejects and denounces what he
calls the new tyranny of the Pope, the hypocrisy (in the strong, original
sense of the word) by which the vicar of Christ behaves as a despot in the
persona of Caesar instead of acting in the persona of Christ. Such rule is
characterized as tyranny because the Roman pope presents himself as
the historical heir of the very imperial power which had violated the
political and civil freedom of the Roman Republic. Now it reveals itself as
22Cf. Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 5975; and Eugenio Marino, Eugenio IV e la storiografia di Flavio Biondo, Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973): 240287.
23Valla, Epistole, 192f.: res canonici iuris et theologie; contra omnes canonistas atque
omnes theologos; Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 5159.
24Valla, De falso, 55.6 (1): dissentio [translation modified].
25Salvatore I. Camporeale, Giovanmaria dei Tolosani O.P.: 15301546. Umanesimo,
Riforma e teologia controversista, Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 17 (1986): 145252, passim
(reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 331461), on Valla
and heresy as a stance contrary to tradition; John M. Headley, The Reformation as Crisis
in the Understanding of Tradition, Archiv fr Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987): 522.
26
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28
salvatore i. camporeale
30
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reputation . I know that for a long time people have been waiting to hear
the accusation I would bring against the Roman pontiffs: a massive accusation assuredly, of either supine ignorance or monstrous avarice, which is
enslavement to idols [Eph. 5:5], or pride of rule, which is always accompanied by cruelty. Already for several centuries they either did not realize that
Constantines Donation was a lie and a fabrication, or else they invented it
themselves. Their descendants, following the deceitful path of earlier generations, defended as true what they knew to be false dishonoring the majesty of the pontificate, dishonoring the memory of the pontiffs of old,
dishonoring the Christian religion . For, as I shall show, that Donation,
from which the supreme pontiffs want to derive their legal right, was
unknown to Sylvester and Constantine alike.34
The dissent put forward in the Oration is aimed at the papacy and its
authority in the realm of Christendom. More precisely, Vallas criticism is
directed against the historical ecclesiology surrounding the Roman
papacy and the exercise of papal authority, as well as how both have been
jointly theorized and put into practice on the foundation of the Donation
of Constantine.
The course of the argument proceeds as follows. The validity of a doctrine, as well as of any political, juridical, or spiritual authority, depends
on the (historically and/or theoretically verifiable) origin and premises to
which it is reducible. But the Donation (from which the supreme pontiffs
want to derive their legal right) is an historical and ideological forgery.
Therefore the basis of Constantinian ecclesiology and the consequent historical development of the Roman papacy is invalid. In reality, both constitute a perverse heterogeneity of ends in the history of the papacy, the
vicariate of Christ, and of the Christian religion (dishonoring the
Christian religion).
Again, by expressing the purpose of his dissent in these terms, Valla
also affirms and it is made quite explicit in the Oration that tradition in
itself alone can guarantee neither theological orthodoxy nor canonical
34Valla, De falso, 55.1ff/59.1760.10/60.2061.2 (14): Plures a me libri compluresque
emissi sunt in omni fere doctrinarum genere, in quibus a nonnullis magnisque et longo
iam evo probatis auctoribus dissentio . Scio iandudum expectare aures hominum, quodnam pontificibus Romanis crimen impingam: profecto ingens sive supine ignorantie sive
immanis avaritie, que est idolorum servitus, sive imperandi vanitatis, cuius crudelitas
semper est comes. Nam aliquot iam seculis aut non intellexerunt donationem Constantini
commenticiam fictamque esse aut ipsi finxerunt sive posteriores in maiorum suorum dolis
vestigia imprimentes pro vera, quam falsam cognoscerent, defenderunt, dedecorantes
pontificatus maiestatem, dedecorantes veterum pontificum memoriam, dedecorantes
religionem christianam . Nam ut ostendam donatio illa, unde natum esse suum ius
summi pontifices volunt, Silvestro pariter et Constantino fuit incognita [translation
modified].
32
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he has already recognized the truth, to move back voluntarily from a house
that is not his own into the one where he belongs and into a haven from
irrational tides and cruel storms . I wish, how I wish that one day I might
see indeed, I can scarcely wait to see, particularly if it is carried out on my
initiative that the Pope is the vicar of Christ alone and not of Caesar as well
. At that time to come the Pope will be called, and really will be, Holy
Father, father of all, father of the church. He will not provoke wars among
Christians but, through apostolic censure and papal majesty, bring an end to
the wars provoked by others.35
(He will not provoke wars among Christians but bring an end to the
wars provoked by others). This is the politics that behooves the pope and
to which he is bound by duty. Only thus will he be the Holy Father, the
one destined by vocation to evangelize. Only thus will he be the father of
all, the shepherd of all believers. Only thus will he be the father of the
church, the bringer of peace to Christendom if necessary even by means
of the apostolic censure that is his due, invested as he is with papal majesty as the Bishop of Rome, the successor to St. Peter.
These are the objective dimensions of Vallas dissent as outlined in
the exordium and peroration of the Oration. But the subjective dimensions of that dissent are also made explicit in these very same sections.
This is another aspect of Vallas initial motive that helps to explain better,
as if from within, the complexity of the goal towards which he strives in
this composition.
As a text, the Oration brings historical and ecclesiological criticism to
bear on the jurisdictional, political, and spiritual rule assumed and exercised by the Roman papacy over the course of centuries. This exercise of
power was taken up in accord with the Constitutum, from which, according to the exordium, the supreme pontiffs want to derive their legal right,
and which in the peroration is called the principle of papal power.38
The position that Valla adopts as the ultimate justification for his criticism of the pope his dissent towards the Bishop of Rome, the successor
to Peter is that he (Valla) is imitating Paul.39 After having made reference to the conflict between Peter and the Apostle of the Gentiles in
Galatians 2:11 a reference that he will use again in his letter of defense
to Serra regarding the Oration Valla writes:
But I am not a Paul who can reproach a Peter: I am rather a Paul who imitates Paul in such a way which is something much greater as to become
one spirit with God, since I scrupulously obey his mandates. Personal status
does not make anyone safe from attacks. It did not do so for Peter and for
many others endowed with the same rank .40
38Ibid., 60.2061.1 (4): unde natum esse suum ius summi pontifices volunt; 173.1f. (96):
principium potentie papalis.
39Ibid., 58.4ff. (2), and Setzs notes.
40Ibid., 58.7ff. (2): At non sum Paulus, qui Petrum possim reprehendere: immo Paulus
sum, qui Paulum imitor, quemadmodum, quod multo plus est, unus cum Deo spiritus efficior, cum studiose mandatis illius optempero. Neque aliquem sua dignitas ab increpationibus tutum reddit, que Petrum non reddidit multosque alios eodem preditos gradu . [The
letter to Giovanni Serra is available in idem, Epistole, 193209 and in English translation in
idem, Dialectical Disputations, ed. and tr. Brian P. Copenhaver and Lodi Nauta, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 2:436447; the reference to Gal. 2:11 is
found in idem, Epistole, 204.241243 and Dialectical Disputations, 2:444 (par. 26). Eds.]
34
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As Paul clashed with Peter over the necessity of circumcising the Gentiles
converted to the new faith, thus Valla clashes with the Roman papacy over
the assumption of the Constitutum as the political and spiritual norm
for the government of the Christian community. The opposition to Peter
in the first case, and the criticism of his successor in the second, are both
raised in the name of evangelical freedom, which is the sole foundation of
the community of believers in Christ. It is precisely in this similarity of
intentions between the apostles action and his own Oration that Valla
sees himself as an imitator of Paul. In the exordium, where this comparison is made, Valla elaborates upon his Pauline imitation. To the citation of
Galatians 2:11, Valla adds Pauls confession (Acts 23:1ff.) to the high priest
Ananias and his ensuing punishment: to be struck on the mouth. Valla
cites another similar instance from the Bible, this time from Jeremiah
20:1ff., when the priest Phasur has Jeremiah imprisoned for his outspokenness.41 Therefore Valla despite the certainty of a political and spiritual anathema from the papacy will openly take up the part of
opposition to the new priesthood of the Law in the name of evangelical
liberation from the Law. By thus obeying the Gospels mandates, by giving
evidence and an open declaration (with the Oration) of his dissent, he
will become similar to the apostle Paul and to the prophet Jeremiah. The
imitation of Paul which Valla adopts as both a justification and a thematic motivation for his dissent towards the papacy thus becomes a
normative criterion for his argument in the Oration.
Having followed in the footsteps of the Apostle in the defense of evangelical liberation from the Law, Valla wants to continue along the same
path in his method of argumentation. This procedure consists in using
demonstrative rhetoric, in the realms of both preaching and theology.
This, according to Valla, was Pauls method of theologizing, as he would
eventually argue in more explicit terms in his later Encomion s. Thomae
(Encomium of St. Thomas).42
Vallas Pauline imitation advances on several levels in the Oration.
First, as Paul argued against Peter by revealing the (implicit and explicit)
contradictions in the latters behavior (on the one hand liberation from
the Law, on the other making a distinction between Jews and Gentiles),
41Valla, De falso, 5657 (1): os eius verberari; ob libertatem loquendi.
42On Vallas imitation of Paul, whom he describes as by far the prince of all
theologians and the master of theologizing (omnium theologorum longe princeps ac
theologandi magister), see Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento,
47 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 169 and translated in the
present volume, 194).
thus Valla lays bare the papacys theoretical and operative contradictions
with respect to its necessary role as vicariate of Christ for an evangelical
church. Second, Valla explicitly reaffirms (in the exordium) that his oration should not be understood as a Philippic, that is as a speech of a
persecutory juridical character whose aim is to convict the pope.43 He has
no intention of appealing to the Christian community, nor to any member
of it, to employ the force of violence or of right against the pope or to
deprive him of the rule usurped on the basis of the pseudo-Constitutum.
Indeed, no one, neither a community nor a single member of a community, could have such authority or juridical competency. Valla is an anticonciliarist, as can be seen clearly by this section of the Oration (and as
Wolfram Setz has emphasized with great perspicacity).44
To Vallas mind the Oration is, let us repeat, a demonstrative mode of
argumentation, not a judicial one. He wants to persuade the papacy and
induce it to dismiss the donation, not by force but by dint of its own
awareness of the ecclesiological and historical contradictions in which the
Constitutum has placed the Roman church:
I am not acting to satisfy a desire to harass anyone and to write Philippics
against him may I not be guilty of such a heinous deed , but to eradicate
error from peoples minds, to remove persons from vices and crimes by
admonition and reproof. I would not dare say that others, instructed by me,
should prune with steel the papal seat vineyard of Christ which is teeming with undergrowth, and force it to bear plump grapes instead of emaciated berries.45
In this passage Valla makes it clear that the protest included in his dissent is no different in intention or in form from Pauls confession, which
is manifestly critical towards Peter.
Finally, although aware that his Oration also undermines the spiritual
power employed by the papacy to condemn transgressors to proscription
from the Christian community,46 Valla refuses to behave politically and
43Valla, De falso, 59.3ff. (3).
44Ibid., 58.1559.1f. (2) and Setzs n. 21.
45Ibid., 59 (3): Neque vero id ago, ut quenquam cupiam insectari et in eum quasi
Philippicas scribere hoc enim a me facinus procul absit , sed ut errorem a mentibus
hominum convellam, ut eos a vitiis sceleribusque vel admonendo vel increpando summoveam. Non ausim dicere, ut alii per me edocti luxuriantem nimiis sarmentis papalem
sedem, que Christi vinea est, ferro coerceant et plenas uvas, non graciles labruscas ferre
compellant. But to understand Vallas passage correctly, it is necessary to relate it directly
to the definition of rhetoric fully discussed and established by Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, II.1521.
46[I.e., through excommunication, anathema, or execration, as explained in Valla, De
falso, 56.5f. (1). Eds.]
36
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intellectually in the manner of the Roman orator Asinius Pollio. That eminent political personage and grand orator, whom his contemporaries
were wont to call a man for all seasons, had said, I am unwilling to write
against those who have the power to proscribe. Valla alludes to Pollio in
order to take a stance diametrically opposed to him.47 Driven by his search
for truth and justice, Valla feels that he must opt for the one posture
towards the Christian political community that seems to guarantee
authentic virtue in deed:
But there is no reason why this double threat of danger [political and ecclesiastical proscription] should trouble me or keep me from my plan. For the
supreme pontiff is not allowed to bind or release anyone contrary to human
and divine law, and giving up ones life in the defense of truth and justice is
a mark of the greatest virtue, the greatest glory, the greatest reward .
Anxiety be gone, let fears retreat far away, and worries disperse! With a
bold spirit, great confidence, and good hope, the cause of truth, the cause
of justice, and the cause of God must be defended. No one who knows
how to speak well can be considered a true orator unless he also dares to
speak out.48
Thus Valla contrasts Roman virtue (virtus romana), which he had subjected to criticism in De vero bono (On the True Good),49 with the courage
(fortitudo) of a Christian. This virtue constitutes the only mode of acting,
i.e., the sole praxis possible on the ethical plane, that exhausts the full
semantic pregnancy of the word virtus.50 And it is precisely along these
ethical lines that the freedom of the orator without which there can be
no art in oratory becomes the freedom of the Christian orator (orator
47On Gaius Asinius Pollio, see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VI.3.110ff. ( a man for all
seasons [ esse eum omnium horarum]; Erasmus will use this expression in the prefatory letter to Thomas More in his Praise of Folly, and he will also dedicate one of his Adages
to it: Desiderius Erasmus, Opera omnia (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1969-), ord. 2, tom. 1
(1993), 286 (= pp. 389390). Cf. Wolfgang Buchwald, Armin Hohlweg, and Otto Prinz (eds.),
Tusculum-Lexicon griechischer und lateinischer Autoren des Altertums und des Mittelalters
(Mnchen: Artemis, 1982), sub voce, 659. [Vallas allusion to Pollio (Valla, De falso, 56.9f. [1]:
nolo scribere in eos, qui possunt proscribere) is adapted from Macrobius, Saturnalia,
II.4.21. Eds.]
48Valla, De falso, 57.812/1520 (2): Verum non est causa, cur me duplex hic periculi
terror conturbet arceatque a proposito. Nam neque contra ius fasque summo pontifici licet
aut ligare quempiam aut solvere, et in defendenda vertitate atque iustitia profundere animam summe virtutis, summe laudis summi premii est . Facessat igitur trepidatio, procul
abeant metus, timores excidant. Forti animo, magna fiducia, bona spe defendenda est
causa veritatis, causa iustitie, causa Dei. Neque enim is verus est habendus orator, qui bene
scit dicere, nisi et dicere audeat.
49[A revised version of De voluptate. Eds.]
50Valla, Repastinatio, 408422, 7398. Cf. Lorch, A Defense of Life, 119130; Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 476481.
christianus). All this is similar to Paul, writes Valla, who made his confession to Ananias in line with his own good conscience (bona conscientia).
Later, in a letter to Cardinal Landriani in defense of the Oration, Valla
will confirm that he had been directed by his conscience to write what
he did.51 These words confirm the comprehensive sense, both objective
and subjective, of that I dissent that is asserted programmatically in the
very first lines of the Oration and fully elaborated from the exordium to
the peroration.
3.The Antinomy of imperium and evangelium
The first section of the Oration deals with the relationship between imperium (rule or empire) and evangelium (the Gospel). This relationship is
characterized by radical conflict and extreme opposition and is resolvable
only through the reciprocal negation of the two terms. This theme is a
constant that runs throughout the Oration. In section I and also in section II, which is actually an extension of the first this theme is treated
specifically and is taken up as an historical and theoretical premise to the
overall argument against the Constitutum Constantini.
Section I is composed of four parts made up of speeches given by the
dramatis personae involved in Constantines supposed donation of the
empire to the papacy. In the manuscript tradition of the Oration, each part
is glossed with a heading. These are indicated in Setzs critical apparatus
and in all likelihood are attributable to Valla himself.
The first part of the section begins with a question posed by the Orations
author himself to kings and princes, those seasoned in the wielding of
power, regarding the Donations supposed historical possibility: would
Constantine have ever given the empire to another?52 The question
posed to the wielders of power constitutes the authors own direct discourse; it is the oration of the orator Valla himself. How could the Donation
of Constantine ever have occurred, when all of history teaches that he
who conquers and exercises rule can never cede his own power without
falling into an absurd repudiation of himself?
I speak to you, kings and princes. Since it is hard for a private person to form
any idea of a royal disposition, I probe your mind, I examine your conscience, I ask for your testimony: Would any one of you, had he been in
51Valla, Epistole, 256.2: contentus animi conscientia.
52Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 62.5): nunquam Constantinum fuisse
facturum ut alteri daret imperium.
38
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Constantines place, have thought he should act to bestow upon another
person, by gracious liberality, the city of Rome his own fatherland, the
center of the world, the queen of cities, the most powerful, noblest, richest
of peoples, which triumphed over nations and was sacred to behold ? As
far as I have heard or read, not one of you was ever deterred from the effort
to increase his empire . On the contrary, this blazing passion for extensive
rule most of all goads and drives one who is already supremely powerful .
I forebear to mention how many crimes, how many abominations have
been committed in the cause of gaining or increasing empire . In no other
endeavor does human recklessness normally assert itself so much and so
fiercely . But if dominion is apt to be sought by so great an effort, how
much greater must be the effort to keep it! Not enlarging an empire is not so
wretched as reducing it. Even more grotesque than not adding anothers
realm to yours is allowing yours to be added to anothers.53
The second part of the section contains the speech of Constantines sons
and kinsmen to him.54 They urge the emperor not to disinherit them, giving to others (the Roman pope) that rule which is their due in virtue of
dynastic succession and of their service in capturing the imperial crown
and the government of the empire.
Father, do you really deprive, disinherit, and cast off your sons, you who
loved your sons very much until now? We do not so much bemoan as wonder at your desire to strip yourself of the best and greatest part of your
empire. But bemoan it we do, because you are transferring it to others at our
expense and to our disgrace. What reason is there for you to cheat your children from the anticipated succession to your empire, when you yourself
ruled together with your father? What have we done against you? In what
way do we appear guilty of disrespect towards our fatherland, the name of
Rome, and the majesty of her empire? If only, Caesar, we had fallen in
battle with your reputation intact and victory secure rather than look upon
53Valla, De falso, 62.1263.1/63.1520/64.1122 (78): Vos appello, reges ac principes,
difficile est enim privatum hominem animi regii concipere imaginem, vestram mente
inquiro, conscientiam scrutor, testimonium postulo: nunquid vestrum quispiam, si fuisset
Constantini loco, faciendum sibi putasset, ut urbem Romam, patriam suam, caput orbis
terrarum, reginam civitatum, potentissimam, nobilissimam, ditissimam populorum, triumphatricem nationum et ipso aspectu sacram, liberalitatis gratia donaret alteri ?
Siquidem neminem vestrum aut audivi aut legi a conatu ampliandi imperii fuisse deterritum : quin ipse hic ardor atque hec late dominandi cupiditas, ut quisque maxime potens
est, ita eum maxime angit atque agitat . Taceo quanta scelera, quot abominanda propter
imperium assequendum ampliandum ve admissa sunt . Adeo nusquam magis, nusquam
atrocius grassari solet humana temeritas . Quod si tanto conatu peti dominatus solet,
quanto maiore necesse est conservetur? Neque enim tantopere miserum est non ampliare
imperium quam imminuere, neque tam deforme tibi alterius regnum non accedere tuo
quam tuum accedere alieno .
54Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 68.17): oratio filiorum ac necessariorum Constantini ad illum.
The third part of the section is the speech of the Roman people to
Constantine.56 The Senatus Populusque Romanus claim for themselves
the right of directing the affairs of the respublica and the imperial government of the city. They beg Constantine in the name of romana libertas not
to subject Rome and its empire to a barbarian, a worshiper of a religion
foreign and adverse to the cult of the household gods.
Caesar, if you are unmindful of your own family and even of yourself , nevertheless the Senate and the People of Rome cannot be unmindful of its
right and its reputation. For how can you arrogate to yourself so much of the
Roman empire, which was brought forth from our blood, not yours? You,
Caesar, will look after yourself, but this matter concerns us just as much as
you. You are mortal. The empire of the Roman people must be immortal
and, insofar as lies with us, it will be not only the empire but our sense of
honor as well. But shall we accept an empire of those whose religion we
scorn? And shall we, as princes of the world, be subservient to this most
contemptible creature? And, since you force us to speak rather candidly
in support of our right, you need to realize that you have no legal claim on
the empire of the Roman people: Julius Caesar seized rule by force, Augustus
took over the crime and made himself the ruler by wiping out the opposing
factions. Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasianus
and all the rest plundered our freedom by the same or a similar route. You
too became ruler after expelling or exterminating others, and I forbear to
mention that you were an illegitimate child. Therefore, to make our mind
known to you, Caesar, if you do not care to keep the government of Rome,
you have sons, one of whom you may put in your place with our permission,
and on our proposal, in accordance with the law of nature. Otherwise it is
55Valla, De falso, 68.1769.7/69.2570.2 (14): Ita ne, pater antehac filiorum amantissime, filios privas, exheredas, abdicas? Nam, quod te optima maximaque imperii parte
exuere vis, non tam querimur quam miramur. Querimur autem, quod eam ad alios defers
cum nostra et iactura et turpitudine. Quid enim cause est, quod liberos tuos expectata succesione imperii fraudas, qui ipse una cum patre regnasti? Quid in te commisimus? qua in
te, qua in patriam, qua in nomen Romanum ac maiestatem imperii impietate digni videmur? Utinam nos, Cesar, salva tua dignitate atque victoria in bello contigisset occumbere potius quam ista cernamus. Et tu quidem de imperio tuo ad tuum arbitratum agere
potes atque etiam de nobis uno duntaxat excepto, in quo ad mortem usque erimus contumaces: ne a cultu deorum immortalium desistamus magno etiam aliis exemplo, ut scias
tua ista largitas quid mereatur de religione christiana .
56Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 70.17): oratio populi romani ad
Constantinum.
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our intention to defend the public interest together with our own personal
reputation. For this is no less an affront to the descendants of Romulus than
was the rape of Lucretia, nor will a Brutus be wanting to offer himself as a
leader to this people against Tarquinius in the restoration of our freedom.57
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Constantine is no different:
This was a man who launched wars on nations out of lust for rule; who had
deprived allies and relatives of their empire after pursuing them in civil
war ; who remembered, just like the other Caesars, that he had taken his
rule not through senatorial election and consent of the plebs, but through
an army, weapons, and war.65
63Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 59ff.; Valla, De falso, 64, n. 43; 74, n. 70.
64Valla, De falso, 64.48 (7) and Setzs n. 43: Ipse sibi nihil effecisse videbatur, nisi et
occidentem et omnes nationes aut vi aut nominis sui auctoritate sibi tributarias reddidisset. Parum dico: iam Oceanum transire et, si quis alius orbis esset, explorare ac suo subicere arbitrio destinaverat [translation modified].
65Ibid., 65.911/1921 (9): hominem, qui cupiditate dominandi nationibus bella
intulisset, socios affinesque bello civili persecutus imperio privasset ; qui se meminisset
more aliorum Cesarum non electione patrum consensuque plebis, sed exercitu, armis,
bello dominatum occupasse .
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Therefore, Valla argues, power is nothing other than the human lust for
rule far and wide. Such was its origin, and such is thus its nature. The
advent of power and its self-manifestation throughout history are determined by the constants of its own internal logic, by the requirements necessary for its subsistence and survival. Power can perpetuate itself only by
reaffirming itself, which is possible only to the degree that it expands itself
in depth and in breadth in the direction of absolute and total rule. Since
power is by its nature identified with rule, it had to rise to the forms and
strategies of imperial rule: expanding to the greatest extent possible by
means of the force of arms and territorial conquest. Its very survival was
necessarily determined by its own increase and by the destruction of every
other competing power.
It was first the use of force against the civitas founded on the senatus
populusque romanus with the resulting rule over the Roman Republic,
and then the subjection of other peoples outside of Rome and Italy, that
established Caesar and Caesarism, the emperor and the Roman Empire.
Through their conquest of power, those who suppressed the Republic
gained full control over civil and political liberties: the Roman people
lost its true Romanness. That conquest went on to be gradually consolidated through the mass of power that flowed to the Caesars from the political subjugation of other peoples and the territorial extension of the empire,
which was executed by the military force the emperor himself had created.
Here Valla reinterprets Jeromes statement that it is the army that makes
the emperor, making it so that its truth is understood adequately only if
the terms of the proposition are taken as reciprocally convertible. That is to
say that it is true that the army makes the emperor, but it is equally true,
and perhaps historically more precise, that it is the emperor who creates
the army and establishes his rule, the emperor who executes the conquest
of power and the destruction of civil and political liberties.66
Vallas argument is continuously unfolded along lines of historical
induction the specific method of composition in section I, as should
now be evident from what has been said. If power is essentially the effort
to increase empire, and such turns out to be historically true, then the
Donation can be nothing other than an historical absurdity. It would be an
event in no way in agreement with the nature and existence of Roman
66Ibid., 74, n. 70 (the quotation who suppressed the Republic [qui oppressere
Rempublicam] is from the Elegantie, IV.70 suffragia, in Lorenzo Valla, Opera omnia, ed.
Eugenio Garin, 2 vols. [Torino: Bottega dErasmo, 1962], 1:145) and 165.14f. (88); 174.22 (96):
populus Romanus veram illam Romanitatem perdidit; 65, n. 46.
power, which with the advent of Constantine had risen to the apex of
imperial power. The Donation would have brought about the very negation and self-destruction of the power that Constantine had established
for himself and greatly reinforced with conquests on the borders of the
empire and victories over his rivals.
Hence according to Valla the attempt of the Constitutum and the
Legenda Silvestri (Legend of Sylvester) to posit the strictest of ties between
Constantines abdication of the Western Empire in favor of the papacy
and his conversion to Christianity. Because he had become a Christian
is the response to whoever objects to the Donation and considers impossible such an imperial gesture towards the papacy.67 But the evidence of
the document of donation, counters Valla, testifies against itself; indeed,
it would stress with greater force the falseness of the Donation. The irreconcilable relationship between imperium and evangelium would sink the
imperial gesture deeper into the void of inexplicability. If Constantines
conversion to Christianity had indeed been authentic, he should not
have abdicated his imperial power but rather put it in the service of
Christians:
In fact, if you wish to show yourself a Christian, to demonstrate your piety,
to provide for I do not say the Roman church, but the church of God you
should now, now above all, play the prince, to fight for those who cannot
and must not fight, to keep safe through your authority those who are subject to plots and injuries.68
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that the God of Israel had demanded for the Hebrew people from their
ancient masters and imperial conquerors:
God wanted the sacrament of truth to be made manifest to Nebuchadnezzar,
Cyrus, Ahasuerus, and many other princes, and yet he demanded of none of
them to withdraw from empire or to make a gift of part of his realm, but only
to give back freedom to the Hebrews and to protect them from hostile
neighbors. This was enough for the Jews. This will be enough for the
Christians too. Did you become a Christian, Constantine? Yet it is most
improper for you now as a Christian emperor to have a smaller dominion
than you had as an unbeliever. Dominion is a certain special gift of God, for
which even pagan princes are thought to be chosen by God.70
The Senates opposition to Constantines deed (the Constitutums supposed donation) would have been voiced, as far as Valla is concerned, in
terms necessarily and consistently in accordance with the political power
70Ibid., 66.2067.3 (10): Nabuchodonosor, Cyro, Assuero multisque aliis principibus
sacramentum veritatis Deus aperiri voluit, a nullo tamen eorum exegit, ut imperio cederet,
ut partem regni donaret, sed tantum libertatem Hebreis redderet eosque ab infestantibus
finitimis protegeret. Hoc satis fuit Iudeis, hoc sat erit et Christianis. Factus es, Costantine,
christianus? at indignissima res est christianum te nunc imperatorem minori esse principatu, quam fueras infidelis. Est enim principatus precipuum quoddam Dei munus, ad
quem gentiles etiam principes a Deo eligi existimantur [translation modified].
71Ibid., 73.79/74.7f. (17): quorum religionem contemnimus, eorum accipiemus
imperium? et principes orbis terrarum huic contemptissimo homini serviemus? ipsum
regni caput peregrino atque humillimo homini addicere?
that was technically still its legitimate right under Roman law, although at
this point only partially and formally. The Senate had to act resolutely
towards Constantine in defense of its power as a last attempt to recover
its strength on its deathbed, which would in fact happen during the fourth
century and claim its former republican freedom to the extent still
possible.
In other words, for Valla particularly in this first section if Constan
tine had actually instituted the Constitutum, he would have acted in contradiction with the very nature of his imperial power. Similarly, if the
Senate had quietly suffered the transfer of the empire, it would have repudiated itself. It alone would have deprived itself of its authority and ancient
republican liberty, soiled by Caesar and gradually usurped by his successors. Therefore Valla has the Senates speech to the emperor end with the
lapidary assertion: you have no legal claim on the empire of the Roman
people.
With the first three speeches (of the orator, of Constantines kinsmen,
and of the Senate), Valla aimed to expose the Donations historical unreality by demonstrating its irreconcilability with the historical reality of
Roman power generally and especially of Constantines imperial power.
The nature and logic of imperium brought forth by Valla through his
analysis of the historical phenomenology of power cannot lead to an act
like the Donation without slipping into the self-negation both of imperium
and of whoever enjoys its power. With the final speech, of pope Sylvester,
the humanist goes on to treat the other and not dissimilar historical
and ideological irreconcilability of the donation and its acceptance: the
irreconcilability of imperium with the evangelium of the vicar of Christ.
Sylvesters assent to the transfer of the (Western) Empire to the papacy
would have entailed the negation of his own position as the vicar of
Christ, as head of the Church (caput ecclesiae) in the apostolic administration of the pontifical office (munus pontificale). Just as Constantine
would have repudiated his own status as the supreme wielder of Roman
power if he had ceded the empire an absurdity thus Pope Sylvester
would have committed the greatest possible betrayal of his evangelical
faith also an absurdity in the context of Christianity in its first few centuries. But, Valla reaffirms, Pope Sylvester was fully aware of being at the
head of that Christian army an army in stark contrast to the Roman
legions in which the convert Constantine, general of the Roman military, was a mere recruit.72
72Ibid., 78.12f. (21); 83.16 (26); 76.16 (21): in christiana militia tiro.
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This biblical text specifically highlights the contrast between the Roman
emperor and the vicar of Christ. The former wields the power of
76Ibid., 82.1ff. (24): regnum celi; regnum seculare.
77Ibid., 84.2885.4 (26): Cuius ad extremum, ut iam finem faciam, illam de hac re sententiam accipe, quam quasi inter me et te tulit: Reddite, que sunt Cesaris, Cesari, et que
sunt Dei, Deo, quo fit, ut nec tu, Cesar, tua relinquere neque ego, que Cesaris sunt, accipere
debeam, que vel si millies offeras, nunquam accipiam.
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imperium; the latter is an apostle of evangelium. The former is an incarnation of power in the form of Roman rule; the latter is anti-power incarnate in the form of Christian servitude.
The conflict between imperium and evangelium (and their representatives) is made to derive directly from their respective natures and historical forms: each one manifests itself and exists as the opposite of the other.
Their reciprocal contradiction is so radical that if the two terms were to be
placed outside of their natural and necessary logic, the same contradiction would be duplicated inside each of the terms themselves taken individually. If Constantine puts the Donation into effect, he repudiates
himself and self-destructs in his imperium. If Sylvester consents to the
Donation, he betrays himself and his evangelium. He would deny the absolute difference between the Gospel and worldly power, and he would
destroy it by turning it into its opposite.
Therefore, if the donation had in reality occurred, it would have been a
transaction (Valla will later call it a collusion) in which Constantine and
the Roman Empire on the one hand, and Sylvester and Christendom on
the other, fell into complete contradiction with themselves and with their
historical reality. All this serves to identify the radical antinomy between
imperium and evangelium as the greatest and all-inclusive contradiction
of the Constitutum. This antinomy corrupts the whole Constitutum from
its roots: both the Constantinian Church, existing, theorized, and in fact
deriving from it; and the theocratic ideology of the papacy, gradually
developed until virtually dogmatized by the Bishop of Rome.
The particular conclusions of Pope Sylvesters speech set up the transition to section II of the Oration. Valla returns to direct discourse and proceeds from arguing about the historico-ideological inauthenticity of the
Constitutum to demonstrating the absence of documentary sources for
Sylvesters theoretical acceptance of the donation.
There seems to be no evidence at all, he writes, either direct or indirect,
that such an acceptance ever occurred. But if Sylvester had never
accepted the Donation, i.e. never effectively received it in a formal manner and according to juridical norms, then the Donation could not be
endowed with any real moment, either political or jurisdictional:
Let us move on. To believe in that donation, which your document mentions,
there has to be some evidence of Sylvesters acceptance. None now exists .
We do not have to think that the donation was accepted just because the
grant is mentioned in the document about the donation. On the contrary, we
must say that the donation was never made because there is no mention of
an acceptance. There is more evidence against you that Sylvester rejected
No greater evidence is needed for section II. It will suffice to quote from its
concluding passage, as illustrative as any of Vallas rhetorical use of irony:
You do not perceive that, if the Donation of Constantine is true, the
emperor I am speaking of the one in the Latin West has nothing left.
What sort of Roman emperor or king will he be, if any holder of his kingdom
78Ibid., 85.2086.6 (28): Age porro, ut credamus istam donationem, de qua facit pagina
vestra mentionem, debet constare etiam de acceptatione Silvestri. Nunc de illa non constat . Nec quia in pagina privilegii de donatione fit mentio, putandum est fuisse acceptatum, sed e contrario, quia non fit mentio de acceptatione, dicendum est non fuisse
donatum. Ita plus contra vos facit hunc donum respuisse quam illum dare voluisse, et beneficium in invitum non confertur.
79Ibid., 87.24ff. (3031); 88.189.2 (31): nihil horum scimus, respondetis; ita puto nocturno termpore hec omnia gesta sunt et ideo nemo vidit. Age, fuit in possessione Silvester.
Quis eum de possessione deiecit? Nam perpetuo in possessione non fuit neque successorum aliquis, saltem usque ad Gregorium Magnum O admirabilem casum! Imperium
Romanum tantis laboribus, tanto cruore partum tam placide, tam quiete a christianis sacerdotibus vel partum est vel amissum et per quos hoc gestum sit, quo tempore, quomodo, quandiu prorsus ignotum. Putes in silvis inter arbores regnasse Silvestrum, non
Rome et inter homines, et ab hibernis imbribus frigoribusque, non ab hominibus
eiectum.
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who lacks another kingdom has absolutely nothing at all? But if therefore it
is plain that Sylvester did not have possession, in other words that
Constantine did not hand over possession, there will be no doubt that, as I
have said, he did not even give the right to possess, unless you assert that the
right was given but that for some reason possession was not assigned. Thus
did he clearly give what he realized would not at all come into being? Did he
give what he could not assign? Did he give what could not pass into the
hands of the recipients before it ceased to exist? Did he give a gift that would
not be valid until five hundred years later or never? To talk or think like this
is lunacy.80
Gospel bars, indeed proscribes, all alien terms, every foreign tongue (lingua peregrina). Indeed, the language of the Christian city would deteriorate in specificity and meaning if philosophical discourse were made use
of in the theological language of Christianity. In such a case theological
language would be forced into an impossible marriage; it would be unable
to discourse in evangelical speech, but rather would have to make due in
a barbarian tongue (lingua barbara) that is devoid of sense and in itself
false (falsa) in the context of the Gospel. Such is the case in the text of
the Constitutum. It is an ideological statute that has been utilized to introduce the political language of the kingdom of Caesar into the Christian
polis. As a result the Christian message is expressed there in a foreign
language, i.e. in a language alien to the Gospel.
Setting aside metaphors, the situation can also be described historically.
If the vicar of Christ had also become the vicar of Caesar, the papacy
would have introduced into the community of believers and right from
the first centuries of the diffusion of the new religion the will to power of
the kingdom of Caesar in place of the Christian message. Thus the evangelical praxis of Christendom would have transformed into its opposite,
into the praxis of the power of rule the power of the Roman Empire.
Thus Valla identifies an historical and ideological convergence between
the Constitutum and the advent of scholastic theology. Let us now see how
he describes that convergence in the first section of the Oration and in
parallel passages in other works. The assumption of philosophy into
theological discourse (according to De libero arbitrio) had acted as the
seedbed (seminarium) for heresy within Christendom, and the reception
of the precepts of philosophy (praecepta philosophiae), or rather the
doctrines of the philosophers (dogmata philosophorum), had distorted
evangelical wisdom (folly). Similarly, the Constitutum had moved the
foundation of the Church away from Christ and apostolic praxis and
toward worldly power and the politics of rule, corrupting the pastoral duty
of the vicar of Christ and of the community of believers. In this way the
praxis of charity and evangelical freedom was perverted into a rule of
imperial power that was both political and spiritual.
Valla sees the Constantinian ecclesiology that emerges from the
Constitutum, both for its ideological meaning and for the chronology of its
origins, as an integral part of medieval scholasticism. For Valla, the scholasticism which began with Boethius flourished in his own day in the form
of the absolute cultural hegemony of metaphysical and theological
thought. He considered this thought at length and quite incisively in the
first book of his Repastinatio.
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There the falsifiability of philosophical language and its illicit assumption into theological discourse are treated in a particularly rhetorical way.
This approach consists in a critical (morphological and semantic) analysis
of the language of philosophy for the purpose of demonstrating that the
logical and ontological categories of Aristotelianism are devoid of any real
referent, and particularly of the referent which those categories had presumed as a given in itself and substantial. Those categories, Valla concludes in the most incisive statements of the first book of the Repastinatio,
are devoid of meaning in the strongest sense of the word. The same criticism is repeated, even amplified, with respect to philosophical language
subsumed into theological discourse. In this case, in fact, Valla not only
demonstrates that the philosophical categories do not comprehend the
res (things) that they presume to express, but also, and a fortiori, that these
same categories cannot comprehend the mystery-res of biblical revelation, of faith, or of saving grace of supernatural realities, as the scholastics would have called them.
Hence the conflict between philosophy and theology on the one hand
and the proposal of a functional convergence between rhetoric and theological study on the other. Valla expresses this conflict and convergence in
different ways, but both are based on the same fundamental epistemological premises. He consistently sees philosophy as an absurd handmaiden (in the scholastic expression) to theology and as a mistaken
adhesion to theological discourse. Rhetoric, on the other hand, becomes
for Valla a tool for analyzing both secular and sacred literature. It is the
only epistemological methodology compatible with theology, because
rhetoric is a purely formal instrument (without contents of its own irreconcilable with biblical faith) and at the same time one abounding in criteria for the critical analysis of philosophical and theological language.81
In the specific case of the Constitutum, Valla stresses how the language
and political praxis of empire fail to comprehend the fundamental realities of civil life; indeed, they destroy the freedom of the respublica as such.
More importantly, this language and praxis lie at the polar extremes of the
respublica christiana, a spiritual and religious community based on the
message of the Gospel. Therefore, neither imperial language nor any other
civil and political strategy deriving from it can be used by the individual
81Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla tra Medievo e Rinascimento, 6382 (= idem, Lorenzo
Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 185204 and translated in the present volume,
pp. 212233); idem, Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio, passim; idem, Da Lorenzo Valla a
Tommaso Moro. Lo statuto umanistico della teologia, Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973):
9102 (reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 19119).
destined to govern the evangelical Church. The Roman pontiff can be the
vicar of Christ and of him alone, but not also of the Roman emperor.
As a result of his critical analysis of the political and anti-evangelical language of the Constitutum, Valla concludes first the ideological and second
the historical falseness of the document of donation. Its (pseudo)-origins
simply cannot be found in a time when Christendom was still expanding
along evangelical lines. Its Christian inauthenticity and the anachronism of
its origins thus lead Valla to state and this is the central theme of the
Oration that the Constitutum is an ideological and historical imposter
(falso creditum), flimsily attributed to early Christianity, and a juridicocanonical forgery (ementitum). It is a legal counterfeit tailored to the papal
theocracy of the Constantinian Church of medieval Christendom.
5.The Body of the Oration: From Section III to Section VI
With the first section of the Oration together with the second, which is
an extension of Pope Sylvesters speech we have seen how Valla falsifies the Constitutum by demonstrating it to be unsuitable to, indeed
incompatible with, its ostensible immediate context. Covering the entire
range of the imperial donations supposed context, Vallas argument
reveals Constantines act to be an inauthentic event in light of the historical and ideological dimensions of imperium and evangelium, dimensions
which are personified in the Oration by Constantine and Pope Sylvester.
In other words, Valla falsifies the Constitutum by falsifying its referents.
The imperial power (Constantine) and the papacy (Sylvester) the referents assumed as the real agents of the Constitutum would have contradicted (or negated) themselves if the donation had actually occurred. And
this means that the reference of the document of donation is in and of
itself absurd, and thus not true. Therefore, as the title of the Oration claims,
the Constitutum is falsely believed and forged.82
The continuation of Vallas analysis in sections III, IV, and V is respectively dedicated to the early church, to the true and proper text of the
Constitutum, and to the Pactum Hludovicianum (Pact of Louis the Pious).
These sections seem, in the context of the Orations overall structure, to
constitute its body of the text. This is the part of his discourse in which
Valla fully elaborates the philological procedure that he pioneered and
82On falsification of reference and textuality, see the essential analysis on language in
Ennio Floris, Sous le Christ, Jsus: mthode danalyse rfrentielle applique aux vangiles
(Paris: Flammarion, 1987), especially 41219.
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that has justifiably made his Oration famous. But this part is also marked
by a change in argumentation with respect to the preceding sections
that is decisive for understanding the work as a whole.
Indeed, in the body of the Oration, Vallas argumentation shifts from
the context of the Constitutum to its text. The analysis moves to the content of the document to the text of the document of donation and
subjects it to an enarratio, a form of morphological and semantic criticism that Valla derived from Quintilians Institutio oratoria and fully reelaborated himself. His rhetorical argumentation (as a critical analysis of
language) therefore takes on a strictly philological character. It nevertheless retains the aim, which is the aim of the whole Oration, of exposing
the explicit and implicit contradictions in the text of the Constitutum.
Let us further refine the foregoing considerations on Vallas argumentation and on the way it changes in the transition between sections I and II
and the body of the Oration. Valla bases his rhetorical strategy, which
examines the truth and falseness of the relationship between res (things)
and verba (words) (in this case between the donation and the Constitutum),
on intertextuality. The change, or new direction, therefore, in argumentation travels along the same path as the correlation between text and context (precisely of intertextuality). Valla believes this correlation to be
inseparable. In section I (and II) of the Oration Valla had proceeded from
the context to the text of the Constitutum. Starting from the context of
imperium and evangelium, that is from the nature and historical phenomenology of each, he had arrived at the text (and an evaluation) of the
Constitutum and concluded by induction from the historical reality and
nature of imperium and evangelium the logical absurdity of the donation and thus its historical unreality. Within these boundaries of inter
textuality, Vallas analysis seems to have proceeded from the truth of the
context the historical reality and the awareness of imperial power and
the Christian Gospel to the falseness of the text in consideration. And
since the context and the text of the Constitutum turned out to be in
mutual conflict and negation, the supposed reality of the donation was
revealed as false: it contradicted the effectual (historical) truth of imperium and the essence of evangelium.
Valla uses quite a different method of argumentation in the Orations
body. He reverses direction, so to speak, and proceeds from the text of the
Constitutum to its context. But the context to which Valla refers, it must
be noted immediately, is not the one presumed by the Constitutum (in the
intentions of its forger), but rather its authentic historical context, the
context of its real origins. Thus, Valla proceeds along intertextual lines
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Section IV is entirely dedicated to a linguistic, morphological, and semantic analysis of the Constitutum. It is the longest section of the Oration. Here
are laid down, indeed laid bare, the foundational materials for Vallas
treatment of the historical and ecclesiological question of the Donation of
Constantine. His critical epistemology, together with his philological and
historical methodology, reveal here the full measure of the original argumentation that he pioneered.
Valla proceeds concentrically from a direct and indirect analysis of the
Constitutum considering its implicit and explicit sources along with the
84Valla, De falso, 93f. (34) and Setzs notes: Sed iam tempus est cause adversariorum iam concise atque lacerate letale vulnus imprimere et uno eam iugulare ictu. Omnis
fere historia, que nomen historie meretur, Constantinum a puero cum patre Constantio
christianum refert multo etiam ante pontificatum Silvestri, ut Eusebius, ecclesiastice
scriptor historie, quem Rufinus, non in postremis doctus, in Latinum interpretatus duo
volumina de evo suo adiecit, quorum uterque pene Constantini temporibus fuit. Adde
huc testimonium etiam Romani pontificis, qui his rebus gerendis non interfuit, sed prefuit, non testis, sed auctor, non alieni negotii, sed sui narrator. Is est Melchiades papa, qui
proximus fuit ante Silvestrum, qui ait, Ecclesia ad hoc usque pervenit, ut non solum
gentes, sed etiam Romani principes, qui totius orbis monarchiam tenebant, ad fidem
Christi et fidei sacramenta concurrerent. E quibus vir religiosissimus Constantinus primus fidem veritatis patenter adeptus licentiam dedit per universum orbem suo degentibus imperio non solum fieri christianos, sed etiam fabricandi ecclesias, et predia
constituit tribuenda. Denique idem prefatus princeps donaria immensa contulit et fabricam templi prime sedis beati Petri instituit, adeo ut sedem imperialem relinqueret et
beato Petro suisque successoribus profuturam concederet. En nihil Melchiades a
Constantino datum ait, nisi palatium Lateranense et predia, de quibus Gregorius in registro facit sepissime mentionem. Ubi sunt, qui nos in dubium vocare non sinunt, donatio
Constantini valeat nec ne, cum illa donatio fuerit et ante Silvestrum et rerum tantummodo privatarum?
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document itself to the individual lexemes of its text. Hence the opening
passage of the section:
Although this issue [the Constitutum] is clear and obvious, we must nevertheless discuss the document itself, which those blockheads keep putting
forward. First of all, not only must we charge with dishonesty the person
who wanted to pose as Gratian by making additions to Gratians work, but
we must also charge with ignorance those who think that the text of the
document was included in Gratians collection.85
This is the point of departure not only for the section in consideration, but
also for a kind of analysis that must indubitably be classified as deconstructionist literary criticism, to use a modernist term of our own day.
What better analytical tool, what more fitting type of literary criticism
could Valla have employed to expose a text like the Constitutum as a
forgery?
Valla maintains first off that the text of the grant (pagina privilegii)
does not belong to Gratians original Concordantia discordantium canonum (Concordance of Discordant Canons). On the contrary, it is a later editorial addition inserted by another hand (Paucupalea) into the collection
of canons. There is no trace whatsoever of the text of the grant in any of
the oldest manuscripts of Gratians Decretum. What is more, its text
stands in utter contradiction to everything else collected by the renowned
jurist Gratian, whom Valla describes as learned in civil law. Furthermore:
it is highly demeaning to suggest that the compiler of decrees [Gratian]
either did not know what this man [Paucupalea] added or valued highly and
considered it authentic.86
Actually, Valla maintains, the text of the grant was taken from the
Legenda Silvestri, and it is there that it has its origin. And since the Legenda
Silvestri is just that a legend, or fabula the text of the grant (pagina
privilegii, i.e. the Constitutum), as an integral part of that Legenda, is itself
also a fabula.
Now, in the received text of the Decretum, and more precisely in the
brief introduction to the text of the grant (Decretum Gratiani, Dist. XCVI
85Ibid., 95.17 (35): Que res quanquam plana et aperta sit, tamen de ipso, quod isti
stolidi proferre solent, privilegio disserendum est. Et ante omnia non modo ille, qui
Gratianus videri voluit, qui nonnulla ad opus Gratiani adiecit, improbitatis arguendus est,
verum etiam inscitie, qui opinantur paginam privilegi apud Gratianum contineri .
86Ibid., 95.8f. (35): in vetustissimis quibusque editionibus; 13 (Gratianus, doctus in
iure civili is quoted from the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, Rom. 15:29); 96.25
(35): indignissimum est credere, que ab hoc adiecta sunt, ea decretorum collectorem
aut ignorasse aut magnifecisse habuisseque pro veris.
cap. 13), two references are made to it and its tradition: one from the
Decree of Gelasius, and the other from the Gesta Silvestri (Acts of Sylvester).
This double reference is supposed to sustain: (1) that the Constitutum
comes directly from the Gesta Silvestri; (2) that the Gesta Silvestri is
respected as authentic by the Decree of Gelasius; and (3) that consequently
the Constitutum must also be respected as an authentic text, since it is said
(by the Decretum) to be an integral part of the Gesta Silvestri.87
But, Valla objects, this double reference, brought forth to prove the
authenticity of the original source (the Gesta Silvestri) from which the
text of the grant is supposed to derive, is belied by its ambiguity. Indeed,
the Gesta Silvestri to which Gelasius Decree refers and to whose existence
it testifies together with its liturgical reading current in the Roman
Church and in others as well is not to be identified with the Legenda
Silvestri. The two hagiographic texts are different. While the Gesta does
not contain the Constitutum, the Legenda does. Valla writes:
Gelasius testifies that it [the Gesta Silvestri] was read by many Catholics, and
Voragine mentions it. We too have seen thousands of copies written long ago,
and they are read out in almost every cathedral on Sylvesters birthday. Yet
no one says that he has read there what [i.e., the Constitutum] you put in it.
No one says he has heard of it, or dreamt of it.88
So far Valla has made the following points. First, the insertion of the
Constitutum into Gratians Decretum is inauthentic, since it was actually
added later by a fellow canonist, Paucupalea. Not only is it an editorial
addition, it is in conflict (almost dysfunctionally so) with the original
ordering and juridico-canonical systematics of the Concordance as they
were established and understood by its author. Second, the Constitutum
does not come from the Gesta Silvestri but from another source or text.
Valla identifies this other source as the homonymous Legenda.
As a result of these conclusions and of the Constitutums being an
integral part indeed the most significant and prominent part of the
Legenda Silvestri, Valla is ready to proceed to his own reading and evaluation of the Legenda. At the same time, he is able to conduct his philological and historical analysis of the Constitutum within the investigation of
the Legenda. Therefore, ascending and descending along an analytical
87Ibid., 95.15ff. (35) and n. 156.
88Ibid., 98.1217 (38): Testatur Gelatius a multis catholicis legi, Voraginensis de eo
meminit, nos quoque mille et antique scripta exemplaria vidimus, et in omni fere cathedrali
ecclesia, cum adest Silvestri natalis dies, lectitantur, et tamen nemo se illic legisse istud ait,
quod tu affingis, nemo audisse, nemo somniasse (emphasis added).
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Valla concludes that the Legenda Silvestri and the Constitutum share a
relationship of what can certainly be called infratextuality. With this term
we clarify that, for Valla, the Constitutum is not only an integral part of the
Legenda in the sense that the latter contains the former and is thus its
original source, but also that the Constitutum gives structure to the text
and (literary and ideological) meaning of the Legenda. This infratextual
relationship of the Legenda to the Constitutum, and the corresponding
structural relationship of the Constitutum to the Legenda, necessarily
result in the following conclusion: the fictional aspect of the hagiography
of Sylvester its evangelical inauthenticity and historical falseness
makes the Constitutum equally fictional.
The Roman nationalists of Arnold of Brescias revolution had called
the Constitutum a lie and an heretical fabula (mendacium et fabula heretica, as Wezel reported to Frederick Barbarossa in a letter of 1152). Now
Valla uses the same phrase to characterize the Constitutum, on the grounds
that the perverted Legenda Silvestri itself is a very brazen fabula.90
Thus the humanist proceeds from a consideration of the whole literary
composition of the Legenda to its structural component, the Constitutum.
Then he continues in the opposite direction from the Constitutum to the
Legenda, since the latter stands in infratextual relation to the former. For
Valla, then, the Legenda is the true and specific infratext that governs the
entire (formal and semantic) textuality of the Constitutum; in the same
way, the inauthentic text of the Constitutum is the buttress stabilizing the
historical falseness of the pseudo-Donation of Constantine.
Following on what has just been said, it is necessary to highlight two of
Vallas observations on the Constitutum. Here is the first:
But this Donation of Constantine, so splendid and so unexampled, can be
proven by no document at all, whether of gold or on silver or on bronze or
on marble, or finally, in books, but only, if we believe that man, on paper or
parchment.91
putarem, cum historia illa non historia sit, sed poetica et impudentissima fabula ut posterius ostendam nec quisquam alius alicuius duntaxat auctoritatis de hoc privilegio
habeat mentionem. Et Iacobus Voraginensis, propensus in amorem clericorum ut archiepiscopus, tamen in gestis sanctorum de donatione Constantini ut fabulosa nec digna, que
inter gesta Silvestri poneretur, silentium egit, lata quodammodo sententia contra eos, si
qui hec litteris mandavissent [translation modified].
90Martini, Traslazione dellImpero e Donazione di Costantino, 65f.
91Valla, De falso, 100.37 (39): Ista vero tam magnifica Constantini et tam inaudita
donatio nullis, neque in auro neque in argento neque in ere neque in marmore neque
postremo in libris, probari documentis potest, sed tantum, si isti credimus, in charta sive
membrana.
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The Donation, since it was a fabula, could not be entrusted to a permanent written form that would withstand time, as had been the practice
(and still was) with the great documents of the past concerning the historical, and not fictitious, origins of peoples, for example the Mosaic tablets of the Ten Commandments or the Twelve Tables of Roman law. From
antiquity on, Valla observes, the statutory provisions of peoples assumed
a monumental written form in order to provide an everlasting and indelible witness to historical reality against the ravages of the elements, the
length of time and the violence of fortune.92
Such was not the case with the Donation. The entire history of Sylvester
is demoted to the status of a myth (fabula) and the Constitutum to a
charter (chartula). These most fragile and inconsistent witnesses are
supposed to testify to the transfer of the Roman Empire to the papacy!
For its part, Valla continues, the Constitutum accrued the most absurd
title possible: text of the grant (pagina privilegii). As a mere grant we
are to understand the gift of the whole world (donatio orbis terrarum).
And a puny text is supposed for centuries to have constituted, in the
tradition of the Roman curia, the statutory basis for the Constantinian
Church!93
Vallas second observation, also made in the course of the fourth section, is as follows:
Some who have been overcome by all arguments are apt to answer me:
Why have so many supreme pontiffs believed that this was true? You are
my witnesses that you urge me where I would not go, and you force me
unwillingly to speak ill of supreme pontiffs over whose mistakes I would
rather draw a veil. But let us continue to speak frankly since this case cannot
be conducted in any other way so that I may admit that they held that belief
and did so without malice.94
This passage seems to have been inserted by Valla almost by chance into
his discourse on the Constitutum, but it is actually essential to the general
flow of his argument. Indeed, it occurs in the context of his discussion
according to the headings glossed in the margin on the ignorance of the
92Ibid., 101.2 (39): diuturnitatem temporis et fortune violentiam.
93Ibid., 100.7; 101.1216 (39): chartula; imperium Romanum; 1721 (39): Paginam
privilegii; privilegium; 136.11137.4 (67); 137.1315 (68).
94Ibid., 140.17141ff. (7172): Quidam omnibus defecti rationibus solent mihi respondere: cur tot summi pontifices donationem hanc veram esse crediderunt? Testificor vos,
me vocatis quo nolo, et invitum me maledicere summis pontificibus cogitis, quos magis in
delictis suis operire vellem. Sed pergamus ingenue loqui quandoquidem aliter agi nequit
hec causa ut fatear eos ita credidisse et non malitia fecisse (emphasis added) [translation modified].
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created and then buttressed the entire theocratic ideology of the papacy,
formulated over time and eventually canonized by the Constitutum.
Valla intends with his Oration, then, to overturn the Constitutum by
means of the most radical historical criticism of it ever dared. He hopes
therewith to spark a renaissance of pre-Constantinian Christianity and a
renewal of the Christian and patristic evangelism that preceded the Edict
of Milan and the Codex Theodosianus. More generally, the Oration aims to
restore Christianity to the state it was in before the rise of the ChristianRoman Empire of the fourth century.
Let us now turn to sections V and VI, the sections that conclude the
body of the Oratio. After having identified (in section III) the texts of
Eusebius and Rufinus, Pope Melchiades, and Gratian as the documents
that are historically valid for a critical-philological analysis of the Legenda
Silvestri and the Constitutum (carried out in section IV), Valla turns in section V to a consideration of the so-called Pactum Hludovicianum, a pact
drawn up in 817 between the emperor Louis the Pious (814840) and Pope
Paschal I (817824). Valla uses the text of the Pactum as it appears in
Gratians Decretum, Dist. LXIII cap. 30.
The Pactum Hludovicianum was the first explicit historical confirmation of the Constitutum, illustrating for the first time the Roman Churchs
effective use of the document. On account of its historical and canonical,
ecclesiastical and jurisdictional importance, Gratian included the text of
the agreement between pope and emperor in his Concordantia discordantium canonum. And it was as such, on account of its juridical and ecclesiological significance, that Valla read the Pactum Hludovicianum.
The Pactum provided a juridical norm and theoretical basis for policy as
well as for diplomatic relations between the Empire and the papacy. Such
was the case as much for the papacys political and ecclesiological praxis
in the past as for the canonistic and scholastic ecclesiology contemporary
with Valla. It is precisely in consideration of these political and ecclesiological premises, brought to light by the Pactum, that Valla conducts his
critical analysis in section V. And again, in accordance with the modes and
objectives of his peculiar argumentative procedure, he attempts to identify and highlight the internal contradictions that invalidate both the
Pactums juridical validity in civil and canon law and its use in governing
relations between pope and emperor.
The sections opening passage is indicative of Vallas argumentative criteria, as well as of his tone (sharp irony), in this section of the Oration:
Louis, are you really making an agreement with Paschal? If all this belongs to
you, in other words the Roman empire, why are you granting it to someone
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else? If it belongs to Paschal and is his possession, what is the point of the
confirmation? How much Roman empire will you have left, if you lose the
capital itself? The Roman emperor is so called from the name of Rome. Tell
me, is everything else you possess yours or Paschals? Yours, I suppose you
will say: therefore the Donation of Constantine is invalid if you are the
owner of what he gave the pontiff. If it is valid, by what right does Paschal
turn all the rest over to you after retaining for himself only what he already
possesses? What is the sense of such largesse involving the Roman empire,
either yours to him or his to you? You therefore rightly speak of an agreement as if it were a kind of collusion.98
In section V together with section VI, its continuation Valla does not
change his style of argumentation, at least in the sense that he sticks to the
fundamental modality of his critical analysis. Nevertheless, in these two
final sections of the body he seems to turn his discourse with a direct
comparison and extremely explicit language more towards the canonistic and scholastic ecclesiology of his own day. Valla aims his criticism specifically at the Constantinian rule and corresponding praxis (based on
the Constitutum) of the contemporary papacy, still in full force in the fifteenth century with Pope Eugenius IV, the actual addressee of the Oration.
Hence, again, Vallas fully articulated response in section VI (the last
before the peroration) to the final objection of those who would defend
the Constitutum on the basis of the right of prescription:99
Our adversaries, who have been kept from defending a donation that never
was and, even if it had been, would have collapsed over the course of time,
resort to another form of defense, and, as if they had retreated from their
city, gather themselves into the citadel, which they are compelled to surrender just as soon as the food runs out. The Roman church, they say, has
exercised its authority in those territories it possesses.100
98Valla, De falso, 156.16157.7 (82): Tu ne, Ludovice, cum Pascale pacisceris? Si tua,
idest imperii Romani sunt ista, cur alteri concedis? si ipsius et ab eo possidentur, quid
attinet te illa confirmare? Quantulum etiam ex imperio Romano tuum erit, si caput ipsum
imperii amisisti? A Roma dicitur Romanus imperator. Quid, cetera que possides, tua ne an
Pascalis sunt? Credo, tua dices: nihil ergo valet donatio Constantini, si ab eo pontifici
donata tu possides. Si valet, quo iure Pascalis tibi cetera remittit retentis tantum sibi que
possidet? Quid sibi vult tanta aut tua in illum aut illius in te de imperio Romano largitio?
Merito igitur pactum appellas quasi quandam collusionem.
99[In Roman law, the right of prescription (longe possessionis prescriptio) is a right to
property that one does not technically own based on authority over that property over a
long and established period of time. Eds.]
100Valla, De falso, 167.5ff. (90): Exclusi a defendenda donatione adversarii quod
nec unquam fuit et, si qua fuisset, iam temporum condicione intercidisset confugiunt
ad alterum genus defensionis, et velut relicta urbe in arcem se recipiunt, quam statim
deficientibus cibariis dedere cogerunt: prescriptsit, inquiunt, Romana ecclesia in iis que
possidet .
Thus section VI concludes the body of the Oration by denying the papacys
ability, on the basis of the Constitutum, to appeal to the right of prescription in defense of powers supposedly devolving to the Roman Church
from the pseudo-Donation of Constantine.
This last consideration on section VI still concerns only its formal
aspect and structural placement in the Orations literary composition. Let
us remember, however, that Vallas writing has its motivations and origin
in an assault, against the papacy in general and Eugenius IV in particular,
in defense of the Aragonese succession to the Kingdom of Naples, and that
it is thus an issue of Alfonso the Greats chancery. From this point of view,
section VI enjoys a nearly absolute preeminence, whether it is considered
in and of itself or viewed within the scope of a decidedly relativistic interpretation of the Oration (a type of interpretation, by the way, that would
be more than legitimate).
Indeed, the Oration was born, drafted, and developed in a complex
articulation of theoretical and historical arguments. It is a political, juridical, and canonistic discourse aimed at radically criticizing contemporary
papal power (potestas papalis), especially as that power was manifested in
the political and ecclesiological praxis of Pope Eugenius IV. Valla is quite
explicit about all this right in section VI, which constitutes the final and
definitive conclusion of his whole discourse. Therefore, this section
becomes a paradigmatic and formal expression of his chief intention, and
thus of the primary and determining purpose of the Oration as a whole.
Here are Vallas most significant and prominent statements:
The Roman church has exercised its authority [Codex 7, 3335]: Why, therefore, is it so often concerned that this right be confirmed by the emperors?
Why does it boast of the donation and the imperial confirmation, if just one
of these would suffice? How can it have done this, when it is based on no
title but only on possession in bad faith? If you deny possession in bad faith,
you certainly cannot deny in stupid faith. Or, in a matter so great and so
conspicuous, ought ignorance of fact and law to be excused? Fact because
Constantine did not give Rome and the provinces: an ordinary person might
be unaware of this but not the supreme pontiff. Law because those places
could not have been given or accepted: one could scarcely be a Christian
and not know this. Will stupid credulity give you a right to what would never
have been yours, had you been more prudent? Now at least, after I have
demonstrated that you had possession through ignorance and stupidity, will
you not forfeit that right, if you ever had it? But if you persist in keeping
possession, your ignorance is straightaway transformed into malice and
deceit, and you plainly become a possessor in bad faith.
The Roman church has exercised its authority: You transfer to man an
authority that is exercised over mute and mindless objects. The longer a
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man is kept in slavery, the more detestable it is. Birds and wild animals do
not want to be subject to authority, but however long they have been confined, as soon as the occasion presents itself, they escape as they like. Will a
man, when possessed by a man, not be free to escape? But the Pope, as
may be observed, assiduously plots against the liberty of peoples. Therefore,
as the occasion arises, they rebel in turn every day look at Bologna recently.
If any of them ever voluntarily consented to papal rule which can happen
when some danger is threatening from another quarter, it must not be imagined that they consented to make themselves slaves, that they could never
pull their necks out from under the yoke, that afterwards they and their offspring would have no jurisdiction over themselves. This would be foully
unjust. Voluntarily, supreme pontiff, we came to you to govern us: voluntarily we now go away from you, lest you govern us any longer . As for you,
look after your sacral duties. Do not enthrone yourself in the North and
thunder from there as you hurl bolts of lightning against [the Roman] people and all others.101
The preceding excursus has served as an overview of sections III, IV, V, and
VI of the Oration. The following pages will be dedicated to highlighting
certain aspects and nodal points that are essential for fully comprehending Vallas investigation into and meditation on the Constitutums pseudodonation. The following essential aspects and themes will be treated:
(1) Vallas philological study of the Constitutum within the context of
101Ibid., 167.1416 (91); 167.20168.15 (92); 169.713 (94); 170.18171.9 (94); 172.11ff. (95):
Prescripsit Romana ecclesia: cur ergo ab imperatoribus totiens curat sibi ius confirmandum? cur donationem confirmationemque Cesarum iactat, si hoc unum satis est? Et
quomodo potest prescripsisse, ubi de nullo titulo, sed de male fidei possessione constat?
Aut si male fidei possessionem neges, profecto stulte fidei negare non possis. An in tanta re
tamque aperta excusata debet esse et facti et iuris ignorantia? facti quidem, quod Romam
provinciasque non dedit Constantinus quod ignorare idiote hominis est, non summi
pontificis , iuris autem, quod illa nec donari potuere nec accipi quod nescire vix christiani est. Ita ne stulta credulitas dabit tibi ius in iis, que, si prudentior fores, tua nunquam
fuissent? Quid, nonne nunc saltem, postquam te per ignorantiam atque stultitiam possedisse docui, ius istud, si quod erat, amittes? Quod si adhuc possidere pergis, iam inscitia
in malitiam fraudemque conversa est planeque effectus es male fidei possessor.
Prescripsit Romana ecclesia: Prescriptionem, que fit de rebus mutis atque irrationabilibus, ad hominem transfers, cuius quo diuturnior in servitute possessio eo est detestabilior. Aves ac fere in se prescribi nolunt, sed quantolibet tempore possesse, cum libuerit
et oblata fuerit occasio, abeunt: homini ab homine possesso abire non licebit? At papa,
ut videre licet, insidiatur sedulo libertati populorum. Ideoque vicissim illi quotidie oblata
facultate ad Bononiam modo respice rebellant. Qui si quando sponte quod evenire
potest aliquo aliunde periculo urgente in papale imperium consenserunt, non ita accipiendum est consensisse, ut servos se facerent, ut nunquam subtrahere a iugo colla possent,
ut postea nati non et ipsi arbitrium sui habeant, nam hoc iniquissimum foret. Sponte ad te,
summe pontifex, ut nos gubernares, venimus: sponte nunc rursus abs te, ne gubernes diutius, recedimus . Tu vero, que sacerdotii operis sunt, cura, et noli tibi ponere sedem ad
aquilonem et illinc tonantem fulgurantia fulmina in hunc populum ceterosque vibrare
[translation modified].
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of the text) makes manifest the natures of Constantinian and preConstantinian Christianity, as well as the historico-ideological distance
between them. Ultimately, we are speaking of a profound divergence
between modern (medieval and scholastic) and ancient ecclesiology, to
use a terminology of binary opposition (moderna/antiqua) typical of
Valla.102 Indeed, we must add immediately and in part to justify fur
therthe interpretation of the Oration proposed here that the point of
bifurcation (as seen by Valla) between pre-Constantinian (antiqua) and
Constantinian (moderna) ecclesiology is the fundamental premise of the
entire Oration, and thus of its criticism of contemporary canon law and
theology. At the center of this controversy is the meaning of the formulation, the pope is the vicar of Christ (papa, vicarius Christi).
It is known that the popes status as Christs vicar had been the premise
and the point of departure for scholastic and modern ecclesiology. By way
of a full and sophisticated reformulation on the part of scholastic theorizers of canon law, that assertion the pope is the vicar of Christ had
become the final conclusion of the papacy (as the vicariate of Christ), as
well as a package description for a host of secondary attributes encompassed by the formula. Since the pope was the vicar of Christ, he was also
the high priest (summus sacerdos), the successor of Peter (successor
Petri), and the Bishop of Rome (Romanus pontifex),
to whom all kings of the Christian people must be subjects, just as to the lord
Jesus Christ himself . Accordingly, divine providence miraculously saw to
it that in the city of Rome, which God had prophesied would become the
capital of the Christian people, the custom slowly took root that the leaders
of the cities were subject to the priests.103
Valla accepts the statement, the pope is the vicar of Christ, as a point
of departure and a first premise for his criticism, and he recognizes it as
102Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento, 3637 [= Camporeale,
Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 157159, and translated in the present
volume, 182184].
103Maccarrone, Il Papa Vicarius Christi, passim, together with his Vicarius Christi.
Storia del titolo papale (Roma: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1952).
For this passage, quoted from the De regimine principum, I.15 (summus sacerdos, successor
Petri, Romanus pontifex, cui omnes reges populi Christiani oportet esse subditos, sicut ipsi
Domino Iesu Christo . Propter quod mirabiliter ex divina providentia factum est ut in
Romana urbe, quam Deus praeviderat Christiani populi principalem sedem futuram, hic mos
paulatim inolesceret ut civitatum rectores sacerdotibus subiacerent.), see Kurt Flasch, Das
philosophische Denken im Mittelalter. Von Augustin zu Machiavelli (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986),
333; Charles Till Davis, Dantes Italy and other Essays (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 254289: Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic, esp. 273
278. See also idem, Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 139 and passim.
completely valid. But, one step at a time, he ends up arguing against the
whole of scholastic ecclesiology, which is based on the same premise.
The papacys ecclesiological attributes are said to be inconsistent with the
premise (the pope is the vicar of Christ) from which they were derived.
Some are even judged to be in clear contradiction from a strictly evangelical point of view with the very nature of the papacy, insofar as it is
the primary apostolic see of the other Christ (alter Christus) on earth. It
might be noted, by way of digression, that Vallas writings often show
affinities with the evangelical ecclesiology of Wycliffe and Hus.
Valla reaches his ecclesiological conclusions in the following way. First
he reduces every religious title (high priest, successor of Peter, Bishop of
Rome, to whom all kings ) that with the passage of time was tacked
onto the syntagma the pope is the vicar of Christ, or which was developed on the basis of that syntagma, to the one authentic attribute of the
bishopric of Rome, the one on account of which the papacy exists, always
and only, as the vicariate of Christ. Then he reinterprets and reconfirms
the statement the pope is the vicar of Christ in a strictly evangelical
sense: the pope, since he has the preeminent claim to apostolic succession, is the perfect personification of the christianus homo, and thus he is
always (and only) the vicar of Christ par excellence.
Once again, it may be observed that in the Oration Valla follows the
very same argumentative procedures with respect to the ecclesiological
language of scholasticism as he does in the Repastinatio with respect to
scholasticisms philosophical and theological language. In the first book of
the Repastinatio, Valla uses philological, morphological, and semantic
analysis in a two-step operation. First, he reduces the transcendentals (for
example) to the single concept of res (thing), or the predicaments (another
example) to the category of qualitas-actio (quality-act). Then he reinterprets those basic terms to which the theoretical language had been
reduced by charging them with new meanings.104 Here, in the Oration,
Valla follows the same procedure and repeats the same operation. First he
reduces the multiple ecclesiological attributes of the papacy developed by
scholastics and canonists to one fundamental affirmation: the pope is the
vicar of Christ. Then he reinterprets that affirmation according to a meaning that it could have in the light either of the New Testament scriptures
(restricted to the evangelical books) or of a spiritual and reforming tradition, which had often emerged in Christianitys history in the form of
radical evangelism.
104Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 153171.
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Let us now see exactly how and in what sense Valla executes in
section IV his critique of the ecclesiological language of medieval and contemporary scholasticism and canon law. He begins his philological and historical critique with the Constitutum the text of the grant or document
of donation and finishes with the Legenda Silvestri taken as a whole, that
is as the comprehensive whole of the Constitutum. It should be added
that Valla develops his analysis, both of the Constitutum and of the Legenda,
at various levels. These are pursued distinctly one after another, but they
are always correlated within the individual texts under consideration.
6.1.The Constitutum
Valla first uses his grammatical study to reveal the barbarity of language
(loquendi or sermonis barbaries) typical of the document of donation. He
conducts this study on the text of the Constitutum by subjecting it to a
linguistic analysis based on fourth-century Latin, the language that the
document has as a referent and in which it most often presumes to
express itself.105
According to Valla, the linguistic analysis of the Constitutum reveals
inelegant and often inexact syntactical structures:
He is so enchanted by the sound of turgid vocabulary that he repeats the
same things and regurgitates what he has already said . A fine reason to
speak like a barbarian, to make your utterance go more prettily, as if anything pretty could be found in such coarseness.106
And again,
A style worthy of Constantine, an eloquence worthy of Lactantius, not only
in other places but also in that phrase be mounted on mounts! May God
destroy you, wickedest of mortals, for ascribing barbarous speech to an age
of learning.109
Still using the criterion of Latinity (and with particular reference to fourthcentury Latinity), Valla continues on to the morphological, semantic, and
pragmatic analysis of the lemmas and syntagmas of the whole Constitutum:
Should I attack the foolishness of ideas more than words? You have heard
about the ideas. Here is the foolishness of words.110
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What people is this? The Roman people? Why not say Roman people rather
than subject people? What is this new insult to the Quirites, whom the best
of poets eulogized: You, Roman, take care to rule over peoples with your
imperial power [Virgil, Aeneid 6.851]. So the people that rules over other
peoples is itself called a subject people. This is unheard of. For, as Gregory
attests in many of his letters, the Roman emperor differs from all other rulers
in this particular point: he alone is the leader of a free people. But even if
what you claim be granted, are not other peoples also subject? Or do you
also have other people in mind? How could it happen in three days that all
peoples subject to the rule of the Church of Rome were on hand for that
decree?113
As a result of the donation Valla notes again the papacy would have
risen to the absolute and total imperium of the Roman Empire. The Roman
pope would have been invested by Constantine with its power and absolute rule, which would now have a priestly nature to boot. What is more,
the neo-Christian emperor whom Valla deprecates as made to take over
epithets of God and to effect an imitation of the language of Sacred
Scripture, which he had never read114 would have converted the pope
from the successor of Peter to the vicar of Peter. Pope Sylvester would
thus appear to have been called to the primacy of the Roman see by the
will and deliberation of the emperor Constantine:
He calls the Roman pontiffs vicars of Peter, as if Peter is still alive or all the
others are of lesser eminence than Peter was. Although the Roman see
received its primacy from Christ, and the Eighth Synod [Constantinople,
869/70] declared it, according to Gratian and many of the Greeks, it is said
[in the Constitutum] to have received this from Constantine, who was barely
a Christian, as if from Christ . In honor of blessed Peter, as if Christ were
not the most important cornerstone on which the temple of the Church has
been built, but Peter . He not only makes Constantine similar in office to
Moses, who adorned the High Priest on the order of God, but he makes him
an expounder of secret mysteries something extremely difficult even for
those who have long been immersed in sacred texts. Why did you not also
make Constantine the chief pontiff, as indeed many emperors were, so that
113Ibid., 104.19105.5 (42) (and Setzs note 191): Et quis iste est populus, Romanus ne? At
cur non dicitur populus Romanus potius quam populus subiacens? Que nova ista contumelia est in Quirites? de quibus optimi poete elogium est: Tu regere imperio populos,
Romane, memento. Qui regit alios populos, ipse vocatur populus subiacens, quod inauditum est. Nam in hoc, ut in multis epistolis Gregorius testatur, differt Romanus princeps a
ceteris, quod solus est princeps liberi populi. Ceterum ita sit ut tu vis: nonne et alii populi
subiacent? an alios quoque significas? Quomodo fieri istud triduo poterat, ut omnes populi
subiacentes imperio Romane ecclesie illi decreto adessent?
114Ibid., 107.1214 (43): titulos Dei sibi arrogare fingitur et imitari velle sermonem
sacre scripture, quem nunquam legerat.
According to the Constitutum, Constantine had also given to the pope the
imperial insignia and vestments belonging to the Caesars. Thus,
Constantines investiture of the pope with Roman imperium over the
church of believers is described by the Constitutum as a ritual transmission of signa and vestimenta from the emperor to the vicar of Christ. Valla
dwells thoughtfully on this extensive passage of the Constitutum (which
he quotes in its entirety) describing the emperors investiture of the pope.
Among other things he observes:
You Roman pontiffs, will the vestments, the appurtenances, the pomp,
the horses, in short the lifestyle of an emperor thus befit the vicar of Christ?
What does a priest have to do with an emperor? The wickedest of men
fail to understand that Sylvester ought rather to have put on the garments
of Aaron, who was Gods highest priest, than the vestments of a pagan
ruler.116
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above) have the same meaning, and thus that his repetition of them
results in banal pleonasm. However, Valla continues ironically, maybe the
forger wanted to conflate in his composition, as if to endow it with a
devout scriptural resonance, the texts of Matthew 27:28 and John 19:2,
where the two evangelists describe the burlesque regalia placed upon
Christ by the Roman soldiery.118 But it is precisely these perverted scriptural resonances, it is this treacherous and faithless language employed by
the forger in the Constitutum the barbarous language of this most monstrous of men (improbissimi mortalium sermo barbarus) that amplifies
the sharp dissonance between the document of donation and the Gospel
and the Christian community:
Would that very modest emperor [Constantine] have been willing to say
this, and that very pious pontiff [Sylvester] to hear it? What is more idiotic
than to say that all the emperors vestments are appropriate for a pontiff?
There is nothing emptier, nothing more inappropriate for a Roman pontiff
than this.119
of the universal Church and to the equally supreme rule of the Western
Empire.121
Further glosses on the many and dire inconsistencies of such an absurd
text lead Valla to reaffirm sarcastically, yet again, the Constitutums falseness on every level:
Will servants in the employ of the Roman church be assigned the rank of
general? Who fails to see that this fiction was concocted by persons who
wanted complete license for themselves to dress up? I would imagine that if
somewhere various games took place among the demons who live in the air,
those creatures would be engaged in copying the ritual of clerics, their pageantry, and their luxury, and they would derive their greatest pleasure from
this kind of theatrical competition.122
121Ibid., 12223 (54): imperialia vestimenta universis clericis; effici patricios consules; culmen singularis potentie et precellentie.
122Ibid., 123.1f./611 (54): Ministri, qui Romane ecclesie servient, dignitate afficientur
imperatoria? Et quis non videt hanc fabulam ab iis excogitatam esse, qui sibi omnem
vestiendi licentiam esse voluerunt? ut existimem, si qua inter demones, qui aerem incolunt, ludorum genera exercentur, eos exprimendo clericorum cultu, fastu, luxu exerceri et
hoc scenici lusus genere maxime delectari.
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Valla outlines a path from the political ecclesia of Athens (and of the
Roman respublica) to the religious ecclesia of the Gospel. It is a development, at once semantic, political, and theological, to which he will often
refer in his writings, from the Elegantiae to the Adnotationes on the New
Testament.123 Here in the document of donation, he seems to hope to
secure the most authoritative testimony to the perversion of that term,
which was established by apostolic and New Testament linguistic usage to
mean above all evangelical communion and the community made up (in
the various cities) of the first Christians. Valla makes the parallel clear: as
the evangelium had been institutionalized as an imperium divided among
secular and religious, juridical and cultural hierarchies of power, thus the
evangelical ecclesia had mutated from a communion of believers into a
construction of walls and arches (stones that were in no way living).
From a community of the faithful it was changed into a templum (in no
way built on the foundation of apostolic faith). According to Valla, the
Constitutum was responsible for this utterly profound historical and
semantic degradation of ecclesiology. It provided the essential testimony,
as it was the original act of canonical institution and standardization.
Hence the tone of sarcasm in Vallas comment:
You miserable dog, did Rome have ecclesiae, or rather templa, dedicated to
Peter and Paul? Who built them? Who would have dared to build them?
After all, as history tells us, nowhere was there any place for Christians apart
from secret places and hidden dens. If there had been any templa at Rome
dedicated to those apostles, they would not have required great lamps to be
lit inside them. They were little shrines, not buildings; chapels, not templa,
places of prayer in private dwellings, not public places of worship. No one
therefore had to worry about temple lamps before there were the templa
themselves. What are you talking about when you make Constantine speak
of Peter and Paul as blessed, but Sylvester, when he is still alive, as most
blessed, and his own ordinance as sacred when he had been a pagan shortly
before? Does so much have to be provided for keeping up the lamps that the
whole world is worn down?124
123On the semantics of ecclesia, see Lorenzo Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, redazione
inedita a cura di Alessandro Perosa (Firenze: Sansoni, 1970), 169 (Acts 19:39); idem,
Elegantiae, IV, 47 (cited in Valla, De falso, 111, n. 218); Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum
(Acts 19:39) in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 297.
124Valla, De falso, 111.417 (47): O furcifer, ecclesie ne, idest templa Rome erant Petro et
Paulo dicate? Quis eas extruxerat? quis edificare ausus fuisset? cum nusquam foret, ut historia ait, christianis locus, nisi secreta et latebre. Aut si qua templa Rome fuissent illis
dicata apostolis, non erant digna, in quibus tanta luminaria accenderentur, edicule sacre,
non edes; sacella, non templa; oratoria intra privatos parietes, non publica delubra: non
ergo ante cura gerenda erat de luminaribus templorum quam de ipsis templis. Quid ais tu,
qui facis Constantinum dicentem Petrum et Paulum beatos, Silvestrum vero, cum adhuc
Valla penetrates ever deeper with his critico-philological analysis into the
dense textual thicket of the Constitutum. He clearly perceives that it is
impossible to offer an adequately comprehensive exegetical reading of
the heap of contradictions rising up from the document of donation.
Thus he observes:
But why do I attack one individual point after another? I should run out of
time if I try to mention, to say nothing of discuss, all of them.125
Nor will it be possible for us to follow Vallas whole discourse in its particulars. It is far too complex, even if we were just to consider the details of its
philological analysis. Let us then limit ourselves to a consideration of a
final, insightful annotation, with which it seems Valla hopes to underline
the fundamental contradiction of the whole Constitutum and of its corresponding Constantinian ecclesiology. First Valla cites from the text of the
Constitutum:
Before all else, however, we assign to the blessed Sylvester and to his successors, according to our indiction [sc. the Constitutum], the right to name anyone he wishes to the clergy at his pleasure and by his own decision and to
include that person in the pious ranks of the pious clergy, and that no one
whatsoever should consider that he is acting arrogantly.
Valla immediately points out the dreadful inelegance of the Latin. In a few
sentences the text piles up a heap of absurdities that are not only graceless
but also and this is much more injurious heterodox. Constantine,
vivit, beatissimum et suam, qui paulo ante fuisset ethnicus, iussionem sacram? Tanta ne
conferenda sunt pro luminaribus continuandis, ut totus orbis fatigetur? [translation
modified].
125Ibid., 125.1012 (56): Verum quid ego in singula impetum facio? Dies me deficiat, si
universa non dico amplificare, sed attingere velim (emphasis added).
126Ibid., 125.1317 (57); 134.711 (65): Pre omnibus autem licentiam tribuimus beato
Silvestro et successoribus eius ex nostro indictu, ut, quem placatus proprio consilio clericare voluerit et in religioso numero religiosorum clericorum connumerare, nullus ex
omnibus presumat superbe agere . Si quis autem, quod credimus, in hoc temerator extiterit, eternis condemnationibus subiaceat condemnatus, et sanctos Dei apostolos Petrum
et Paulum sibi in presenti et in futura vita sentiat contrarios, atque in inferno inferiori
concrematus cum diabolo et omnibus deficiat impiis [translation modified].
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Constitutum as a part of that entirety. In line with this premise, Valla conducts his analysis as if by expansion and contraction: from the Constitutum
to the Legenda and then back again. That is, the analysis proceeds in opposite directions along lines of infratextuality. These link, on the one hand,
the pseudo-Donation of Constantine as it appears in the text under consideration in Vallas Oration, with the Legend of Sylvester on the other,
which, since it contains the Constitutum as part of its structure, underlies
it at the same time as an infratext.
Valla writes:
I shall say something about the fabula of Sylvester, because the entire issue
turns on this, and for me it will be fitting to speak above all about the Roman
pontiff, since my discourse is concerned with Roman pontiffs, with a view to
facilitating inferences about the others from this one example. Of the many
absurdities that are told, I touch only upon the one about the dragon, in
order to show that Constantine never had leprosy. For the acts of Sylvester
were written down by a certain Eusebius, a Greek man according to the testimony of the translator. That nation is always highly inclined to mendacity,
as Juvenal says in a satirical assessment [Sat. X 174f.]: whatever the lying
Greeks make bold to claim as history.128
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For Valla, fabula takes on a double meaning. The first is that of a fictional narrative that is in and of itself false, being an account or discourse
totally devoid of factual events (res gestae) either present and contemporary or handed down in memory from the past. It stands in contrast to
historical narration, which, being an authentic account or discourse
reporting factual events, is in and of itself true. The second meaning of
fabula is that of a narrative (narratio) that is in itself false but nevertheless
still capable of taking on, and indeed of bearing in itself, a certain verisimilitude towards accounts or discourses reporting factual events. In this
way it is portrayed or offered to the reader as a true and authentic history.
The typical kind of verisimilar fiction narratio is for Valla the hagiographic legend, which developed as a sacred fictionalization in the sphere
of Christianitys origins, spanning from the apocryphal Gospels to the
Legenda Silvestri. The defining characteristic of this type of sacred fictionalization or hagiographic legend is the constant interweaving of the
miraculous (the thaumaturgical) into the narrative, or rather of divine
intervention in events and worldly reality as the object (as if they were
factual events) of narration. The verisimilitude of such fictional narratives
comes, in this case, from the (supposed) similarity and even intended (at
least implicitly) assimilation of the miraculous and the thaumaturgical to
the apparently similar canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
Hence Vallas attempt in section IV to demonstrate the falsities contained
in the Legenda Silvestri, the hagiographic legend that contains and determines the documentary act of the Constitutum and thus the whole event
of the Donation of Constantine.
Valla takes two aspects in particular of the Legenda into consideration.
The first is the healing of Constantines leprosy, which occurs at the
which there is neither truth nor anything resembling truth [De inventione, I.27 and
Rhetorica ad Herennium, I.13], since, to give only one example, comedies are fabulae but
nevertheless resemble the truth. As Terence says, [the poet] should compose the kind of
fabulae that would please the public [Andria, prol. 3]. Likewise, [Quintilian] did not say
that historia is comprised of events remote from our own time, since again to name
only one example of many Sallust refers to the works he himself composed as histories
[cf. Cat. 14]. Nor did [Quintilian] say that argumentum is a fiction that nevertheless could
have happened, since only in comedies is argumentum a fiction. (Non dixit quemadmodum Cicero, fabula est in qua nec vere nec verisimiles res continentur, quia, ne alia dicam,
comediarum fabule sunt, et tamen verisimiles. Ut apud Terentium: populo ut placerent
quas fecisset fabulas. Item, non dixit: historia est gesta res ab etatis nostre remota, cum hic
quoque plura non dicam, ipse Sallustius historias de se compositas dicat. Nec dixit: argumentum est ficta res, que tamen fieri poterit, quia non nisi in comediis argumentum est
ficta res) [f.19r]. On Quintilians text (lib. II.iv.2), cf. Wesley Trimpi, The Quality of Fiction:
the Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory, Traditio 30 (1974): 1118, at 47 and
passim.
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learned and reliable translator, Apollinaris, Origen, Eusebius, and others
maintain that the story of Bel is a fiction, if even the Jews do not know it in
the original of the Old Testament, in other words if the most learned of the
Latin writers, most of the Greeks, and certain Hebrews condemn it as a fabula, shall I not condemn this story [the Legenda Silvestri], which is inspired
by it, when it is supported by the authority of no writer and greatly surpasses
its model in idiocy?132
We ought to take notice here of Vallas procedure. First he strongly emphasizes both the Legendas implicit allusion to the Book of Daniel and the
former texts verisimilitude, through intentional assimilation, to the latter.
Then he resolutely extends his criticism to the inauthenticity of the Book
of Daniel itself, for the purpose of demonstrating, almost as an argument
a fortiori, the unquestionable non-veracity of the Legend of Sylvester.
Valla reminds the reader that the Book of Daniel was thrown out of the
Hebrew scriptural canon and was never included in the Christian one,
either in the Greek or the Latin patristic traditions. Although technically
within the sphere of the Christian scriptural canon, it will always be numbered among the so-called deuterocanonical books. What is more, Valla
continues, the reasons for the books elimination from the canon nearly
all stem from the peculiar nature of its narrative. It is a tale full of extraordinary events and purported miracles, just like the Legend about Pope
Sylvester, the virgins, and the dragon.
Considerations of this type recur throughout Vallas writings, not only
in the Oration but also in other works of commentary and annotation. One
can thus say that it is Vallas standard operating procedure to reduce all
apocryphal writings, in a most radical way, completely to the status of
fabula. This is the case both for biblical pretenders to a place in the Old or
New Testaments the deuterocanonical books and the apocryphal
Gospels of early Christianity and for the mass of medieval hagiography,
132Valla, De falso, 144.14146.15 (7475): Unde draco ille venerat? Rome dracones non
gignuntur. Unde etiam illi venenum? Unde preterea tantum veneni, ut tam spatiosam
civitatem peste corrumperet ? Cur ergo, ut Daniel illum dicitur occidisse, non et Silvester
hunc potius occidisset, quem canabaceo filo alligasset, et domum illam in eternum perdidisset? Ideo commentor fabule noluit draconem interimi, ne plane Danielis narratio
referri videretur. Quod si Hieronymus, vir doctissimus ac fidelissimus interpres,
Apollinarisque et Origenes atque Eusebius et nonnulli alii narrationem Beli fictam esse
affirmant, si eam Iudei in veteris instrumenti archetypo non agnoscunt, idest si doctissimi
quique Latinorum, plerique Grecorum, singuli Hebreorum illam ut fabulam damnant, ego
non hanc adumbratam ex illa damnabo, que nullius scriptoris auctoritate fulcitur et que
magistram multo superat stultitia? [translation modified]. The reference to Jerome is
found in Commentariorum in Danielem libri III, ed. Franciscus Glorie (Turnhout: Brepols,
1964), 773, 774.
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only not true, but not even plausible [see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, II.4].
But, they say, demons gained this power among the pagans to mock those
who served the gods. Be quiet, you utterly ignorant people, not to say criminals, who invariably draw a veil like this over your fabulae. Christian candor
has no need to shelter under falsehood. It is defended enough and more
than enough on its own through its light and truth without those lying and
flashy tales that are profoundly insulting to God, to Christ, and to the Holy
Spirit. Had God so turned over the human race to the will of demons that
they would be seduced by such obvious, such imperious miracles, to such an
extent that he could almost be accused of injustice for having entrusted
sheep to wolves, and men would have a signal excuse for their errors? But if
the demons had so much license before, they would have even more now
among the infidels. We see that this is not at all the case, and no fabulae of
this kind are advanced by them. I shall say nothing of other peoples: I shall
speak about the Romans, among whom very few miracles are reported, and
these both ancient and uncertain.134
It need arouse no wonder, Valla continues, that pre-Christian peoples created various myths about their origins and told their prehistory in epic
language, where human actions are muddled with heroic and divine intervention. He reminds us of Livys statement that the traditions of extraordinary events concerning Romes origins, diversely found in ancient
recorders of Roman affairs, must be used by historians to construct fables
that will establish an epic version (epos) of the peoples roots. Historians
must create a poetic (mythic) fiction of a past that has been lost in prehistory. Valla quotes two passages of Livys text:
This allowance is granted to antiquity, that by commingling the human
with the divine it may make the origins of cities more grandiose, and elsewhere: But in such ancient history I would be satisfied if whatever is like the
truth be accepted as truth. All this is more suited to theatrical spectacle,
134Valla, De falso, 147.15148.18 (76): Pudeat nos, pudeat harum neniarum et levitatis
plus quam mimice, erubescat christianus homo, qui veritatis se ac lucis filium nominat,
proloqui, que non modo vera non sunt, sed nec verisimilia. At enim, inquiunt, hanc
demones potestatem in gentibus optinebant, ut eas diis servientes illuderent. Silete,
imperitissimi homines, ne dicam sceleratissimos, qui fabulis vestris tale semper velamentum optenditis. Non desiderat sinceritas christiana patrocinium falsitatis, satis per se
superque sua ipsius luce ac veritate defenditur sine istis commenticiis ac prestigiosis fabellis in Deum, in Christum, in Spiritum sanctum contumeliosissimis. Siccine Deus arbitrio
demonum tradiderat genus humanum, ut tam manifestis, tam imperiosis miraculis seducerentur? ut propemodum posset iniustitie, accusari, qui oves lupis commisisset, et homines magnam errorum suorum haberent excusationem? Quod si tantum olim licebat
demonibus et nunc apud infideles vel magis liceret, quod minime videmus, nec ulle ab eis
huiusmodi fabule proferuntur. Tacebo de aliis populis, dicam de Romanis, apud quos paucissima miracula feruntur eaque vetusta atque incerta (emphasis added) [translation
modified].
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the apocryphal and canonical Gospels: the former subvert the latter
because they deny the properly evangelical truth of specifically Christian
historia. Regarding the apocryphal Gospels, then, one must not only confess to not knowing their authorship. One must also affirm, and without
reservation, their falseness, which was propagated in an anti-evangelical
and anti-Christian way. The apocrypha are then pseudo-scriptures,
impious pseudo-Gospels.
Therefore Valla blames Pope Gelasius for not condemning in the least
an indubitably legendary and apocryphal hagiography like the Actus
beati Silvestri presulis (the title of the book recording the gesta Silvestri, or
acts of Sylvester). The failure to take such a position had the effect of
according to the Actus and other hagiographic legends (like the apocrypha of the Old and New Testaments) an official sanction of credibility. It
is as if such pseudo-scriptures, while they do not have to be recognized as
canonical, can instead be regarded as if they were sacred and served to
strengthen religion (emphasis added). Let us not forget here Vallas position. He goes beyond even Jeromes skepticism and his cautionary principle regarding the entire body of Old Testament apocrypha/hagiography.
Jerome, for his part, stands in direct contrast to Augustine, who considered the deuterocanonical books as accepted along with the canonical
ones and having equal authority. On the contrary, Jerome reduced the
apocryphal/hagiographic parts of Scripture to the following general principle, which is of a wholly pastoral order: these books are read by the
church to edify the people, not to strengthen the authority of ecclesiastical
doctrines.139
Valla, instead, with his criticism of the papacy vis--vis the credibility of
apocryphal and hagiographic texts, goes well beyond Jeromes position.
He peremptorily indicts both the authors of such writings and above all
the papacy for having inserted such anti-Scriptural fabulae into the
Christian tradition and thus for having counterfeited the true faith:
The supreme pontiff calls these books Apocrypha, as if there nothing wrong
with an unknown author, as if the stories told were believable, as if they
were sacred and served to strengthen religion, so that now whoever [i.e., the
pope] approves something bad is no less culpable than the person [i.e.,
the author] who made it up.
139Augustine, De doctrina christiana, lib. II, cap. 8 (PL 34: 4041): aequalis auctoritatis,
in auctoritatem recipi meruerunt; Jerome, Praefatio in libros Salomonis, PL 28:12411244,
at 1243: ad edificationem plebis, non ad authoritatem ecclesiasticorum dogmatum confirmandam (emphasis added). Cf. Camporeale, Giovanmaria dei Tolosani, 170174 (= idem,
Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 363367).
He continues:
We detect spurious coins, we separate them out and throw them away: shall
we not detect spurious teaching, but rather hold on to it? Shall we mix it up
with good teaching and defend it as good?140
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Later, in the second version of the Repastinatio (bk. 2, ch. 4), he would add:
Nor should we accord any mercy to the jurists and theologians of our time,
the dialecticians and philosophers who do not obey the words of their own
discipline. Rather, with their debased manner of speaking they seem to have
conspired and, like a group of daughter cities, to have sworn an oath against
their own metropolis.142
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it false and not worth reading, not only in other points but particularly in
what is related about the dragon, the bull, and the leprosy, which I have done
so much to refute. If Naaman was a leper, we shall not say straightaway that
Constantine was too. Many authors have mentioned the former case, but
about the latter, involving the ruler of the world, no one, not even one of his
own citizens, has written, unless some foreigner did.143
Writings like the Actus beati Silvestri (whether including the document of
donation or not), and even more so those which subsequently, according
to Valla, make up the Legenda Silvestri, are without a doubt false literature. As texts they are unfit for reading in the context of a Christian liturgical assembly, especially (as attested by Pope Gelasius) in the liturgical
assemblies of the Roman church. The hagiographies of Pope Sylvester are
singularly false and unworthy, both and above all for what is said about
Sylvesters miraculous healing of Constantines leprosy, and for the connection they posit between the miracle, the emperors conversion to
Christianity, and the donation. Here is the core of the fabula of Pope
Sylvester and Constantine. Here is the foundation and the origin of the
donations status as a legend. Here is the source from which springs Vallas
Oration, the source which I have done so much to refute. This sentence
contains the key both to understanding Vallas procedure and to reading
his text.
All in all, Vallas thesis can be summed up as follows. The Donation of
Constantine is a legend because it can be distilled to the legendary status
or inauthentic account of Pope Sylvesters miraculous healing and conversion of the emperor. And it was the sacred and hagiographic fictionalization about Pope Sylvester (the Legenda Silvestri) that simultaneously
forged and contained the pseudo-Donation of Constantine.
Let us now conclude by returning to our reading of this section of Vallas
discourse. It continues:
But why should I be surprised that the pontiffs did not understand these
things, when they are ignorant about their own name? They claim that Peter
was called Cephas because he was the head of the apostles, as if this word
were Greek from kephal, and not Hebrew or rather Syriac. The Greeks write
Kphas, which among them is translated as Petros [John 1:42] not head.
143Valla, De falso, 152.312 (79): Ego vero, ut ingenue feram sententiam, gesta Silvestri
nego esse apocrypha, quia, ut dixi, Eusebius quidam fertur auctor, sed falsa atque indigna
que legantur existimo, cum in aliis tum vero in eo, quod narratur de dracone, de tauro, de
lepra, propter quam refutandam tanta repetii. Neque enim, si Naaman leprosus fuit, continuo et Constantinum leprosus fuisse dicemus. De illo multi auctores meminerunt, de hoc
principe orbis terrarum nemo ne suorum quidem civium scripsit, nisi nescio quis alienigena (emphasis added) [translation modified].
In this final part of section IV, Valla shifts the focus of his critical analysis
from the text of the Constitutum and its wider context in the Legenda
Silvestri to the medieval grammarians and their etymology. Using a philological procedure similar to that deployed in his Adnotationes on Livy and
on the New Testament, Valla brings morphological and semantic analysis
to bear on the grammar of medieval etymologies spanning from the
Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (the first and the most arrogant among
the unlearned) to the Catholicon of Balbi of Genoa (the rather unlearned
teachers Eberhard, Huguccio, the Catholicon, and Aymo, who profess to
know nothing for a high fee).145
As the hagiography of the Legenda established Constantinian ecclesiology for the purposes of the papacys imperial theocracy, thus medieval
grammar later helped to nourish that same ecclesiology for the purposes
of that very theocracy. As hagiography was a false coinage with the power
to de-evangelize original ecclesiological language, thus that counterfeit
currency was later recoined and defused by the ideological etymology of
144Ibid., 153.3154.6 (80) and Setzs notes: Sed quid mirer hec non intelligere pontifices, cum nomen ignorent suum: Cephas enim dicunt vocari Petrum, quia caput apostolorum esset, tanquam hoc vocabulum sit Grecum apo tou kephal et non Hebraicum seu
potius Syriacum, quod Greci Kphas scribunt, quod apud eos interpretatur Petrus, non
caput. Est enim Petrus et petra Grecum vocabulum stulteque per etymologiam Latinam
exponitur petra quasi pede trita. Et metropolitanum ab archiepiscopo distinguunt voluntque illum a mensura civitatis dictum, cum Grece dicatur non metropolis, sed
mtropolis, idest mater civitas sive urbs; et patriarcham quasi patrem patrum, et multa
alia similia, que transeo, ne culpa aliquorum omnes summos pontifices videar insectari.
[Valla does not himself identify the etymologists he attacks in his text; their names have
been supplied here in square brackets from Setzs apparatus. Eds.] See also Francisco Rico,
Nebrija frente a los brbaros. El canon de gramticos nefastos en la polmica del humanismo
(Salamanca: Universidad, 1978), 2227.
145[Valla, Elegantiae, book II, preface: primus indoctorum arrogantissimus; indoctiores Hebrardus, Hugutio, Catholicon, Aymo magna mercede docentes nihil scire.
Eugenio Garin, Prosatori latini del quattrocento (Milano: R. Ricciardi, 1952), 602, n. 1, identifies three of the teachers and texts as Ebehrard of Bethune, Graecismsus, Huguccio of Pisa,
Magnae derivationes, and Giovanni Balbi of Genoa, Catholicon. Aymo might refer to Nicola
de Aymo, whose Interrogatorio (1444) was a Latin-vernacular grammar; see La grammatica
latino-volgare di Nicola de Aymo (Lecce, 1444), ed. Maria dEnghien (Galatino: Congedo,
2008). Eds.]
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the negotiation between pope and neo-emperor is rather a pact of collusion meant to appropriate the Roman empire for themselves. What is
more, this pact was agreed upon in contempt of every norm of civil
(Justinianic) law. Thus what we have is a legal absurdity contracted by
parties who ought to have been the guarantors of civil law. The parties
(the pope and emperor) to this negotiation-collusion, therefore, which
was effected against all civil and natural law, ought to have paid the penalty stipulated by Roman law for forgers: capital punishment.150
Similar to section I, where Valla made use of characters arguing diverse
points of view, here he has the emperor Louis the Pious argue his own case
and defend his behavior towards the pope.
But what am I going to do? you say, Shall I recover by armed force what the
Pope is holding? But he has now become more powerful than I am. Shall
I recover it by legal action? But my legal right is no more than he wants it to
be. I did not come to the empire by inheritance, but by an agreement that if
I wanted to be emperor I should make various promises to the Pope in
return. Shall I say that Constantine gave away nothing of his empire? In that
way I would be making a case for the Greek emperor and would be cheating
myself of all imperial rank. The Popes rationale in making me emperor is
that I am, as it were, his vicar, and if I fail to make promises he will not do
this, and if I fail to obey he will depose me. As long as he gives to me, I shall
admit to anything, I will agree to anything. Only believe me if I actually
owned Rome and Tuscany, I would not be acting as I am now. Paschal would
be chanting in vain the tune of the Donation, since I consider it a forgery. It is
not my business to look into the legal rights of the Pope, but it is the business
of the emperor of Constantinople.
You are altogether forgiven in my eyes, Louis, and every other ruler in
your position.151
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power to create the Western emperor. And it was this very power that the
pope, according to his claim, had received from Constantine with the
Constitutum! Finally and here we arrive at the height of juridical absurdity in this case the papacy bases on the Donation its claim to the right
and the power of imperial election and coronation. But electing and
crowning the emperor in Rome are the sole and exclusive right of the
respublica romana and, more precisely, of the Senate and the People of
Rome. Valla writes:
What is more contradictory than for someone to be crowned a Roman
emperor when he had renounced Rome itself? And to be crowned by a man
whom he acknowledges and, to the extent it lies with him, makes the lord of
the Roman empire? And to consider valid a donation which becomes true
only if the emperor has nothing left of his empire? In my view, not even
children would have done such a thing. So it is hardly surprising if the Pope
takes upon himself the coronation of a Caesar, which ought to be the responsibility of the Roman people. If you, Pope, can deprive the Greek emperor of
Italy and the western provinces and create the Latin emperor, why do you
make use of agreements? Why do you divide up Caesars property? Why do
you transfer the empire to yourself? Therefore anyone who is called emperor
of the Romans should know that in my judgment he is neither Augustus nor
Caesar nor emperor if he lacks full power at Rome, and that if he makes no
effort to recover the city of Rome he is clearly guilty of perjury. Those former
Caesars Constantine first among them were not forced to take the oath
by which todays Caesars are bound. As far as human resources allowed, they
would take away nothing from the size of the Roman empire and would zealously augment it. But this is not why they were called Augusti, because they
were supposed to augment the empire (as some [like Isidore and Accursius]
think in their ignorance of Latin), for Augustus is called, so to speak, sacred
from the gustatory habits of those avians that were customarily used in taking the auspices . Better for the supreme pontiff to be called Augustus,
from augmenting, except that in augmenting his temporal resources he
reduces his spiritual ones.154
154Ibid., 158.16160.7 (8384), and Setzs notes: Quid magis contrarium quam pro
imperatore Romano coronari, qui Rome ipsi renuntiasset? et coronari ab illo, quem et confiteatur et, quantum in se est, dominum Romani imperii faciat? ac ratam habere donationem, que vera si sit nihil imperatori de imperio reliqui fiat? Quod, ut arbitror, nec pueri
fecissent. Quo minus mirum, si papa sibi arrogat Cesaris coronationem, que populi Romani
esse deberet. Si tu, papa, et potes Grecum imperatorem privare Italia provinciisque occidentis et Latinum imperatorem facis, cur pactionibus uteris? cur bona Cesaris partiris? cur
in te imperium transfers? Quare sciat, quisquis est, qui dicitur imperator Romanorum, me
iudice se non esse nec Augustum nec Cesarem nec imperatorem, nisi Rome imperium
teneat, et, nisi operam det, ut urbem Romam recuperet, plane esse periurum. Nam Cesares
illi priores, quorum fuit primus Constantinus, non adigebantur iusiurandum interponere,
quo nunc Cesares obstringuntur: se quantum humana ope prestari protest, nihil imminuturos esse de amplitudine imperii Romani eamque sedulo adaucturos. Non ea re tamen
The formula for the emperors oath, which he was bound to swear in obedience to the pope as his candidate, did not just have its (pseudo-)juridical
foundation in the Constitutum. It first and foremost took from that document the notion and the politics of the imperialism that was created by
the Roman Caesars and brought to perfection by Constantine in the fourth
century. Valla makes this point with an aside on classical syntagmas,
which seems to be a mere erudite digression but actually serves as a premise to what is argued later in the final pages of section V. At stake is the
etymology of the word augustus as either coming from augmenting temporal resources (ab augendo temporalia) or as meaning sacred, so to
vocati Augusti, quod imperium augere deberent ut aliqui sentiunt Latine lingue
imperiti est enim Augustus quasi sacer ab avium gustu dictus, que in auspiciis adhiberi
solebant . Melius summus pontifex ab augendo Augustus diceretur, nisi quod, dum temporalia auget, spiritualia minuit (emphasis added).
155Ibid., 160.7161.4 (84), and Setzs notes and commentary: Itaque videas, ut quisquis
pessimus est summorum pontificum, ita maxime defendende huic donationi incumbere,
qualis Bonifacius octavus . Hic et de donatione Constantini scribit et regem Francie privavit regnumque ipsum, quasi donationem Constantini exequi vellet, ecclesie Romane
fuisse et esse subiectum iudicavit .
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speak, from the gustatory habits of birds (quasi sacer ab avium gustu).
Valla treats both etymologies as more or less philologically plausible; they
are distinguishable only by their ideological charge.
Valla insistently criticizes both the etymologist Isidore and the jurist
Accursius as ignorant of Latinity and elegance (latinitas atque elegantia).
Both had made the imperial title Augustus derive directly from the verb
augere (to augment), thus indicating that the primary duty of the emperor,
as an augustus, was to extend (territorially) and to consolidate (politically) the imperium of Rome. With this double valence of meaning, the
imperial title was taken up by the papacy and later transferred along with
the empire to the Western emperor. At his coronation, then, the emperor
had to swear solemnly to the pope that he, as a new Augustus, would take
away nothing from the size of the Roman empire and would zealously
augment it in line with the formula of the imperial oath quoted by Valla.
Against Isidores interpretation (an etymology that might be original to
him), Valla takes up a piece of classical elegantia according to which the
lemmas augustus and sacer (sacred), whether said of a place or a person,
are related. More precisely, he connects the imperial title (assumed for the
first time by Octavian) to the immediate context from which it was taken:
the divination of the augurs. In Suetonius biography of Octavian Augustus,
which Valla follows on this point, the term augustus is said to come from
the increase or the movement or the gustatory habits of birds, as Ennius
teaches.156 Nevertheless, the semantic implications of Isidore and
Accursius (much more reliable than Valla would have thought) had been
established historically by the fact that the title of Augustus which initially
possessed a strong religious patina (like its Greek counterpart, sebastos)
came to be more and more associated with the enlargement (in extension)
and the consolidation (in sovereignty and unification) of the empire.
Vallas attack on Isidores etymology is harshly critical and bitterly
ironic: Better for the supreme pontiff to be called Augustus, from augmenting, except that in augmenting his temporal resources he reduces his
spiritual ones. This philological observation is attuned to both the remote
implications and the immediate consequences of the event (whether historically true or false) of the Constantinian donation. He accuses it of having led the papacy to the enlargement of its imperium in terms of temporal
156In addition to Setzs note 438, see: Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig: Teubner,
1900-), vol. 2, augustus, 13791413, at 13791392; ibid., vol. 2, augur, 13631367; Alois Walde,
Lateinisches etymologisches Wrterbuch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1910), augeo, 73, augur,
73f.; Giannelli Mazzarino, Trattato di storia romana, 49.
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To get the measure of divine law, Valla scans the Scriptures and runs
through the history of salvation as found in the Old and New Testaments.
To understand natural law and the law of nations, he reconsiders Roman
history, from the republic to the empire. Valla does not argue by means of
theoretical and philosophical analysis. That is, he does not use the analytical methods of philosophy, as he defines the term. Rather, and in conformity with the procedure of rhetorical discourse, he unfolds his argument
along the lines of explicitly historical considerations. His method is to
rethink the history of salvation and the history of Rome as a unified
whole.159
Vallas discourse proceeds in short stints and makes direct reference to
indeed it mirrors Augustines historical reflections in books IV and V of
his City of God. This reference to Augustine was, incidentally, as unavoidable for Valla as it is unmistakable for his readers. Indeed, Valla explicitly
cites a particular passage of Augustines text. We shall have more to say
about this later. For now let us consider the following.
In books IV and V of the City of God, Augustine reflects on Roman history from a Christian perspective. He is especially interested in the origins
of the Republic and the formation of the Roman Empire. Augustine considers the following issues in particular: the evolution and/or fall of the
republic in the context of its own ethical and political dimensions and
also of diverse historical situations; the expansion of Roman rule and the
transformation of the republic into an empire as a result of the military,
territorial, and political conquest of other peoples; the Roman empires
move towards Christianity with the coming of Constantine. His treatment, which comes from an historico-Christian standpoint, is highly original and critical, and it was just as formative for medieval ecclesiology.
For Augustine, the territorial and political expansion of Rome, as well
as the perverted imposition of its rule across the centuries up to the point
of becoming an empire, are the result of a double order of factors. And
although they are dissimilar indeed they stand on opposite sides of good
and evil they nevertheless remain strictly complementary in the (both
teleologically and theologically) providential economics of history.
According to one way of seeing things, Augustine attributes the expansion of Roman rule to the pride (superbia) and the will to power of the
Roman people, which were sustained by military heroism and the desire
159Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio, 222; idem, Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e
Rinascimento, passim (reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 121330 and translated in the present volume, 145296).
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for glory. The conquest and subjection of other peoples was initially
imposed on the Romans by the necessity of self-preservation. But the
republics later wars of conquest were also brought on, Augustine argues
with a heavy tone of irony, by the specifically Roman will to subdue the
injustice of other peoples. Once conquered, they were then ruled and
governed with justice, and thus they were made fit to participate,
although always as subjects, in the Roman civitas.
According to another way of seeing things that is, from the Christian
viewpoint of the City of God Augustine retells the history of Rome along
the dimensions of the economics of salvation. Here his markers are the
divine order and the providential course of universal history and of
Roman history in particular. Rome creates its empire in the sphere of the
divine order the order of God and of the Sacred Scriptures and pursues
its hidden end (telos) within the salvific economics of the coming of
Christianity. This is the historical juncture at which the Roman empire of
the pagan gods is transformed into the Roman empire of the Christian God.
The Christian historical turn occurred in the fourth century, with the
emperors Constantine and Theodosius. Constantine, after having converted to the Christian religion, nevermore made supplications to
demons, but adored the one and true God. For this he had a long reign
and was the sole Augustus ruling over the entire Roman world. Theodosius
defeated the final resistance of the worshippers of pagan Rome, ordered
the demolition of the temples and images of the idols, and reconstituted
Roman law in favor of the religio catholica,160 which had by then ascended
to the status of the one and true religion of the empire. In return God
rewarded him with a vast and unified imperial rule. With this encomiastic exaltation of the fourth-century Christian turn and the advent of
Constantines and Theodosiuss empire, Augustine brings his historicoprovidential reflection to a climax, wrapping it in highly charged terms.161
7.3.From Valla to Augustine: The Critique of the City of God
Valla contrasts his own reflection on Roman history with that of Augustine
by means of a point-by-point critique. He begins with the fundamental
premises of the City of God and continues through Augustines entire
discourse.
160[I.e., the Catholic religion, but with the the understanding that catholicus connotes
universality and orthodoxy. Eds.]
161Cf. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1969), 287328.
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thus Valla introduces his hypothesis about the donations factual possibility
Even so, I say that neither divine nor human law enables you to effect a
recovery.
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[1] In the Old Testament a Hebrew was forbidden to be a slave to a Hebrew
for more than six years [Deut. 15:12], and also every fifty years everything
returned to its original owner [Lev. 25:10ff.];
[2] In the age of grace shall a Christian be oppressed in eternal slavery by
the vicar of Christ, who redeemed us from slavery? What should I say: will he
be recalled to slavery [Gal. 2:4] after he has been made free and long enjoyed
his freedom?163
The final phrase (in italics) contains Vallas most explicit statement on
christiana libertas, which for him is the pivot on which the entire structure
of the Oration hinges. It is from this point that it gains its force against the
Donation of Constantine and the related ecclesial ideology developed by
the papacy and scholasticism. Valla uses human and divine law to substantiate this notion of freedom and to show its deepest foundations.
As for divine law, he first cites the orders of the Torah: personal servitude
of whatever kind had to be dissolved every sixth year, and every fiftieth
year all property (in whatever way acquired) had to be returned to its original owner. The consequence is implicit but clear: even the acceptance of
the Donation whose authenticity was assumed for the sake of argument
in section II had to be subject to these Old Testament ordinances.
Moving on to the divine law of the New Testament, which is fundamentally an economics of saving grace, Valla depicts the Donation in all its
absurdity. The Donation is revealed to be the absolute negation of christiana libertas and to stand in extreme antithesis to Pauls teaching in the
Letter to the Galatians. By accepting the Donation of Constantine, the
vicar of Christ ends up claiming a (spiritual and political) slavery for
Christians in the age of grace. That is, in the age of the economics of salvation he would reduce Christians to the (spiritual and political) subjection of a slave after they had been redeemed and returned to freedom by
Christ himself: he has been made free and long enjoyed his freedom.
Whence flow the historical consequences of the papal and Roman
priesthoods barbaric exercise of power and rule:
I keep quiet about how savage, how violent, how barbarous the domination
of priests often is. If this was unknown previously, it has recently been
163Valla, De falso, 162.114 (86): Age vero, demus Constantinum donasse Silvestrumque
aliquando possedisse, sed postea vel ipsum vel aliquem successorum a possessione deiectum . Tamen dico vos nec iure divino nec iure humano ad recuperationem agere posse.
[1] In lege veteri Hebreus supra sextum annum Hebreo servire vetabatur, et quinquagesimo quoque anno omnia redibant ad pristinum dominum;
[2] tempore gratie Christianus a vicario Christi, redemptoris nostre servitutis, premetur
servitio eterno? quid dicam, revocabitur ad servitutem, postquam liber factus est diuque
potitus libertate? (empasis added) [translation modified].
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At this point the Oration takes the form of a series of conflicting arguments
enunciated by the principle interlocutors, who again act in the guise of dramatis personae. One part is played by the pope, who appeals to the Donation
of Constantine to claim his territorial and political rule as a right; the other
by the orator Valla himself who as a citizen of Rome contests the
popes pseudo-right as baseless. Indeed, he denounces it as a usurpation in
possessionem perdis, et ius perdidisti. Ideoque captivos, si fugerint, nemo ad iudicem
repetere solet, etiam nec predas, si eas priores domini receperint. Apes et quedam alia
volucrum genera, si e privato meo longius evolaverint et in alieno desederint, repeti non
queunt: tu homines, non modo liberum animal, sed dominum ceterorum, si se in libertatem
manu et armis asserant, non manu et armis repetes, sed iure, quasi tu homo sis, illi pecudes?
(emphasis added).
167Ibid., 163.20164.8 (87) and Setzs commentary: Neque est quod dicas: Romani iuste
bella nationibus intulerunt iusteque libertate illas exuerunt.
Noli me ad istam vocare questionem, nequid in Romanos meos cogar dicere, quanquam
nullum crimen tam grave esse potuit, ut eternam mererentur populi servitutem, cum eo, quod
sepe culpa principis magni ve alicuius in re publica civis bella gesserunt et victi immerita
servitutis pena affecti sunt. Quorum exemplis plena sunt omnia (emphasis added) [translation modified].
violation of the right, guaranteed by natural law and the law of nations
(and first and foremost of Roman citizens), to natural and civil liberty.
To the orators denial of legitimacy, in the name of human law, to any
war of conquest, the pope, as heir to the empire, responds with
Augustines justification of Romes subjection of peoples: the Romans
justly waged war upon nations, and they justly deprived them of liberty.
As Setz has noted, this is a reference to book IV, chapter 15 of Augustines
City of God (Setz has also noted that this passage is used by Gratian in the
Decretum, C. XXII q. 2.).168 It seems worthwhile to dig deeper into the
meaning and the implications of this reference to Augustine, a reference
introduced as the objection of Vallas dramatic antagonist, the pope.
We should first observe that the phrase, the Romans justly waged war
upon nations ), is not a precise quotation but rather an abbreviated
formulation of what Augustine said in book IV (chapters 115) of the City
of God. What is more, although the phrase is a deduction based on what
Augustine wrote, it should have been precluded by Augustines statements to the contrary in chapter 14 of the very same book. For Augustine
offers no defense whatsoever for the theoretical or actual lawfulness of the
war of conquest. In point of fact, he writes eloquently and profoundly
against it. He condemns all types of war in favor of the most peaceful
cohabitation possible among peoples and cities (for example, in chapter 7
of book XIX of the City of God). On the contrary, Augustine considers the
justification of the wars of conquest of the Romans in particular, who
were forced to conquer and rule other peoples on account of those peoples injustice. Indeed, the Romans could not otherwise have defended
their own respublica founded on law and freedom, nor would it have been
possible to extend to the barbarian peoples Roman justice and law, the
bases of civil and political freedom and thus of romana libertas. Thus the
Roman empire sprang from the will to justice and freedom. Its expansion
was the inevitable product of its victories, of good fortune, and of the
destiny of the city of Rome. For into the Roman empires progressive journey Augustine inscribes the providential, divine plan for the coming of
Christianity.
Augustine concedes, however, that it would have been better had the
empire never existed. He would have preferred for concord among peoples to have permitted a multiplicity, even of various forms, of autonomous and free kingdoms and cities, communities and states, none subject
to another. But such was not permitted by the goddess Injustice, who
168Ibid., 164, n. 455.
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held sway among the enemy peoples hostile to Rome. For their part, the
Romans were constrained almost by necessity whether considered
in the light of their own common good or that of the enemy peoples
themselves to conquer and rule other cities and nations, all for the purpose of endowing them with Roman justice.
Augustines premises, when developed by Gratians canon law and the
political thought of scholasticism, had led to the thesis of just war. Valla
critiques these premises minutely, then, in order to combat the theory of
just war at its root. First, he argues that Romes expansionist wars were
not provoked by the hostilities of other peoples towards the Romans. The
true reasons for which the Romans waged wars of conquest are to be found
solely in the fault of a leading man or some great citizen in the respublica.
Valla, it is true, declares his intention not to overstep the bounds of historical analysis: do not bring me into that debate, lest I be compelled to
speak against my fellow Romans. But this suspension of judgment is
purely formal. It is a rhetorical figure that actually functions to highlight
his own personal judgment. For Valla and these are his own terms no
matter why Romes wars (defensive or offensive) were waged and eventually won, they should never have led to the rule and subjection of conquered peoples. Nevertheless this is what happened, against the right of
nations: no offense could have been so serious as to warrant peoples
everlasting slavery.
Furthermore, Vallas formal reluctance to universally condemn Roman
military expansionism allows him to emphasize better the real reasons
that, according to his historical reflection, underlie the truer origins of the
wars of conquest and the subsequent rule over other peoples: they have
often waged wars through the fault of a leading man or some great
[Roman] citizen in the respublica and then, after being defeated, were
undeservingly penalized with slavery. The origins, therefore, of Romes
expansionism, of the foundation of the empire, and of the subjection of
other peoples, are for Valla to be found in the power acquired within the
civitas romana itself by historically identifiable leading men and great
citizens. This power was assumed in opposition to the Senatus Populusque
Romanus and was therefore subversive of the respublica and of civil liberty. So, the subjection of peoples to the rule of Rome, and their resulting
loss of autonomy and civil liberty, were the direct political and historical
consequences of the subjection and destruction of the Roman republic. It
remains only to observe the historical reprisal of the law of nature itself,
which makes itself felt every time that law is broken by the violence of
power and rule.
Valla now elevates his discourse on the history of Rome to the theoretical level in order to incorporate further support for his personal judgment
of the citys military and political expansion:
Nor in truth is it assured by the law of nature that one people subjugate another.
We can instruct others and persuade them. We cannot rule over them using
force, unless, abandoning our humanity, we want to imitate the wilder beasts
which impose their bloody imperium upon the weaker, as the lion upon
quadrupeds, the eagle upon birds, and the dolphin upon fish. But even these
creatures do not make claims upon their own kind, but upon lesser breeds.
We ought to do this all the more, and a man should scrupulously respect
another man, since as Quintilian said, no creature on earth is so fierce that it
does not revere the likes of itself [ps.-Quintilian, Declamatio XII.27].169
Valla had written above that there is no baser crime than the subjection of
a community or a people. In the passage cited here, he reaffirms that it is
a crime against nature to subject a people to ones own rule and power,
depriving it of political independence and civil liberty. It violates the specific nature of humanitas.
Vallas discourse now takes the form of a clarification of the vast semantic range he finds in the term humanitas. Here he continues a point made
in section I, where he quotes a relevant passage from Ciceros De amicitia
(13,48). For Valla, the meaning of humanitas can be understood by reflecting on the binary opposition between praecipere/exhortari (instructing/
persuading) and imperare/vim afferre (ruling/using force). This binary
opposition evinces a contradiction between terms and correlative functions concerning the essence of humanitas: the first element (praecipere/
exhortari) is a requirement of humanity, while the second (imperare/vim
afferre) is a negation and an annihilation of it. The two sides are utterly
and mutually exclusive.
It should be noted that persuasion, or exhortari (when practiced with
fellow humans), is understood as an integral component of instructing, or
praecipere. Thus Valla considers the art of rhetoric, as the technique or
strategy of persuasion, to be the supreme art of human communication
and learning. It is the (one and only) preferred instrument for transactions
169Ibid., 164.919 (88): Neque vero lege nature comparatum est, ut populus sibi populum subigat. Precipere aliis eosque exhortari possumus, imperare illis ac vim afferre non possumus, nisi relicta humanitate velimus ferociores beluas imitari, que sanguinarium in
infirmiores imperium exercent, ut leo in quadrupedes, aquila in volucres, delphinus in
pisces. Veruntamen he belue non in suum genus sibi ius vindicant, sed in inferius. Quod
quanto magis faciendum nobis est et homo homini religioni habendus, cum, ut M. Fabius
inquit, nulla supra terras adeo rabiosa belua, cui non imago sua sancta sit (emphasis
added) [translation modified].
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these the first is, to some extent, honorable, the second less so, and the last
two in no way at all.173
Here, too, Valla observes his formal dictum: to suspend all value judgments regarding Romes wars on other peoples. And he repeats here what
was said above in nearly the same exact terms. Valla does not want to
speak about the justice or injustice of Roman wars of conquest.
173Valla, De falso, 164.19165.2 (88): Itaque quattuor fere cause sunt, ob quas bella inferuntur. [1] aut ob ulciscendam iniuriam defendendosque amicos, [2] aut timore accipiende
postea calamitatis, si vires aliorum augeri sinantur, [3] aut spe prede, [4] aut glorie cupiditate. Quarum prima nonnihil honesta, secunda parum, due posteriores nequaquam honeste
sunt (emphasis added).
174See Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia. Sei saggi politici in forma di proverbi, ed. Silvana
Seidel Menchi (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), 195295 (Latin text with facing Italian translation),
with the introduction and commentary by Seidel Menchi.
175Valla, De falso, 165.314 (88): Et Romanis quidem illata fuere frequenter bella, sed,
postquam se defenderant, et illis et aliis ipsi intulerunt, nec ulla gens est, que dicioni
eorum cesserit nisi bello victa et domita, quam recte aut qua causa ipsi viderint. Eos ego
nolim nec damnare tanquam iniuste pugnaverint, nec absolvere tanquam iuste. Tantum
dicam eadem ratione Romanos ceteris bella intulisse qua reliqui populi regesque, atque ipsis,
qui bello lacessiti victique sunt, licuisse deficere a Romanis, ut ab aliis dominis defecerunt, ne
forte, quod nemo diceret, imperia omnia ad vetustissimos illos, qui primi domini fuere,
idest qui primi preripuere aliena, referantur (emphasis added).
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And yet the Roman people had a stronger claim over nations conquered in
war than the emperors who demolished the Republic. Accordingly, if it was
right for nations to revolt from Constantine and, even more, from the Roman
people, it will certainly be right to revolt from the man to whom Constantine
surrendered his authority. To speak too boldly, if the Romans were free to expel
Constantine as they did Tarquin or to kill him as they did Julius Caesar, all the
more will the Romans and the provinces be free to kill that man, whoever he
may be, who has taken Constantines place. True as this is, it goes beyond my
subject, and therefore I want to restrain myself and not exploit anything that
I have said except this: it is foolish to apply a verbal claim where there is
armed force, because anything acquired by force is lost by force.177
Vallas text, always extremely dense, here has particular need of explication, above all to highlight the shifts that shape the course of the Oration.
The Caesars, in Vallas view, were responsible for subduing the respublica
to their command and then suppressing it altogether. Now, if the people
subject to Rome had full right to claim their territorial and political autonomy from the republic, all the more so, Valla continues, could they exercise that right to freedom by rising against the empire, based as it was on
the Caesars innovations in political and civil structures. Indeed, the
Caesars had appropriated for themselves the republics conquests (in
themselves already illicit) after stripping the autonomy and freedom from
the Senate and the People of Rome, the civil and institutional foundations
of the republic.
But these subject peoples, formerly in revolt against the empire, would
now have even greater reason to rebel against the papacy, to which the
last and most imperial of the Caesars (Constantine with his monarchism)
decided to bequeath, as if his own inheritance, the right to rule over Rome
and the Western Empire. And as it would have been fully licit for the
Romans to banish Constantine from their City for betraying the respublica
(as happened with Tarquinius Superbus) or rather to kill him (as happened with Julius Caesar, the founder of the Augustan clan), thus now it
would be licit and legitimate for the citizens of Rome and the Roman
provinces to banish or kill Constantines direct successor, the Roman
177Valla, De falso, 165.1427 (8889): Et tamen melius in victis bello nationibus populo
Romano quam Cesaribus rem publicam opprimentibus ius est. Quocirca si fas erat gentibus
a Constantino et, quod multo plus est, a populo Romano desciscere, profecto et ab eo fas erit,
cuicunque cesserit ille ius suum. Atque ut audacius agam, si Romanis licebat Constantinum
aut exigere ut Tarquinum aut occidere ut Iulium Cesarem, multo magis eum vel Romanis vel
provinciis licebit occidere, qui in locum Constantini utcunque successit. Hoc et si verum, tamen
ultra causam meam est, et iccirco me reprimere volo nec aliud ex his colligere que dixi, nisi
ineptum esse, ubi armorum vis est, ibi ius quenquam afferre verborum, quia quod armis
acquiritur, idem rursus armis amittitur (emphasis added) [translation modified].
pope: all the more will the Romans and the provinces be free to kill that man,
whoever he may be, who has taken Constantines place.
It should also be noted that this trenchant observation is introduced by
a qualifying to speak too boldly (ut audacius agam), with which Valla
emphasizes (and he will insist on it again in the peroration), that he in no
way intends to solicit violence from anyone against the pope. This is not
only because the force of violence does not establish (nor is it capable of
establishing) any right, but also, and above all, because anything acquired
by force is lost by force.
With this last declaration (because anything acquired by force is lost
by force), Valla has reused almost verbatim (from section I of the Oration)
the final words of the Senates speech dissuading Constantine from effecting the Donation. He does so to make definitively explicit that the hypothesis of the donation has by now become its thesis as a real event. It is a
reality brought about by history, and it took place in the fourth-century
shift also an historical occurrence marked by the political and religious
convergence between Christianity, the pope, and the empire.
Valla has thus called into question the very foundations, and more precisely the Christian premises themselves, of Augustines historical assessment. Thus he has also radically de-theologized the Bishop of Hippos
historical retrospective. Augustine had posited an evangelical preparation (praeparatio evangelica) in Romes shift from republic to empire,
thus rendering it the providential juncture for the rise of Christianity,
constituted by the foundation of a Romano-Christian empire and the victory over paganism announced by Constantine and his successors. Valla
denies this is the case and in so doing arrives at the following conclusions.
First, the gospel can give rise only to a church of believers founded on
christiana libertas (saving grace) and thus a community of believers in
Christ that is constituted as a respublica christiana. Second, Constantines
conversion of the Roman empire into a Christian empire was in reality the
definitive historical fall both of the civil and political libertas of the Roman
republic and of the evangelical libertas of the new respublica christiana.
Third, the Bishop of Rome, from the succession from Christ (the apostolic and evangelical vicariate of Christ) lapses into the succession from
Caesar, so that the pope is the new High Priest of imperial Rome and the
Augustus of the Western Empire.
These developments, in Vallas description, created a new historical
reality: the Roman papacy with its primacy and imperial hegemony, both
juridico-political and spiritual, over the West. But the papacys inheritance,
Valla goes on to reflect critically, was the inheritance of imperial Rome,
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to have his imperial hegemony accepted as well, and perhaps most of all,
by the Germanic peoples. He will also have to adduce the same reasons to
have his universal power recognized by all those cities and nations that, in
the process of the empires crumbling, had arrived at their own civil and
political freedom, their own autonomy and self-government, with the
installation of urban seignories or national monarchies. The West had
become a map of juridical and political autonomies, of communes, of cities and nations after the fall of the Roman Empire. They had set themselves up as sovereign states precisely for the purpose of defense from the
barbarian invasions that followed the collapse of the empire and of central government at Rome.
Now, if the Germanic peoples who had inherited the empire, along with
the cities, nations, and states that had emerged from the wreck of imperial
government, had affirmed with a fresh will and energy and also often
with arms their personal autonomy and identity against the universal empire and absolute rule of the Caesars, then these same cities,
nations,and states were spurred to reaffirm, perhaps more steadfastly and
willfully, their freedom and sovereignty against the papacys imperialChristian rule, the new tyranny of the pope. Thus Valla writes:
It is foolish to apply a verbal claim [i.e. the Constitutum and its derivatives]
where there is armed force . All the more since other new nations (as we
have learned about the Goths), nations never subject to Roman rule, have
occupied Italy and many provinces after driving out the original inhabitants:
what is the justice in making them slaves, which they never were, particularly since they are victors and would perhaps be slaves of the people they
conquered? At the same time, if any cities and nations which were deserted by
the emperor, as we know happened, considered it necessary, as the barbarians
were approaching, to choose a king under whose leadership they won a victory,
should they depose this man from his position? Should they order his sons,
esteemed as much for their fathers advocacy as for their own virtue, to be
reduced to private status? So that they might be once again subject to a
Roman emperor, particularly when they were in great need of the sons support and hoped for help from no other source?
If that emperor or Constantine were to come back to life or the Senate and
the Roman People were to summon them to a general tribunal, such as the
Amphictyons had in Greece, he would be immediately rebuffed on his first plea,
because he was calling back into dependence and slavery those who had been
formerly deserted by him as their protector, those who had been living for a long
time under another ruler, those who had never been subject to a foreign king,
those who were, in short, born to freedom and laid claim to their freedom by the
strength of their minds and bodies. Hence it is clear that if the emperor and the
Roman people are excluded from reclaiming their control, the Pope is excluded
much more decisively, and if other nations that were under Rome are free either
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to create their king or maintain a republic, the Roman people is much more
free, especially in opposition to the new tyranny of the Pope.178
This incisive passage constitutes the final part of section V, which should,
as I have already hinted, be considered the effective conclusion of Vallas
entire discourse on the Donation. The closing of section V encapsulates
the whole meaning of the Oration. It highlights (1) Vallas dissent (his
personal ethical stance) towards Constantinian ecclesiology, and (2) the
fundamental premise (his objective understanding of that ecclesiology)
underlying both his philologico-historical considerations and the course
of his rhetorical argumentation.
It must be added immediately, however, that Vallas personal dissent
comes to coincide, if not to be identified with, that fundamental premise of
the Oration. Indeed, this dissent is the very freedom posed by Valla the orator, the Roman citizen who stands up to contest the papal rule of Rome;
and the fundamental premise underlying the whole critical discourse on the
pseudo-Donation is itself also freedom: the romana libertas of the respublica,
destroyed by the empire of the Caesars, and the christiana libertas of the
Gospel (Evangelium), suppressed by the papacys Constantinian primacy.
In the final analysis, Vallas speech is revealed as a study of historical
retrospection and reflection with unquestionably critical aspects on
the fourth century and the major events that constituted its historical
significance: the coming of Constantine and his conversion, and the
resulting Constantinian foundation of the Christian empire in connection
178Ibid., 165.25167.3 (89): ineptum esse, ubi armorum vis est, ibi ius quenquam
afferre verborum . Eo quidem magis, quod alie nove gentes ut de Gothis accepimus
que nunquam sub imperio Romano fuerunt, fugatis veteribus incolis Italiam et multas provincias occuparunt, quas in servitutem revocari, in qua nunquam fuerunt, que tandem
equitas est, presertim victrices et fortasse a victis? Quo tempore si que urbes ac nationes, ut
factum fuisse scimus, ab imperatore deserte ad barbarorum adventum necesse habuerunt
deligere sibi regem, sub cuius auspiciis victoriam reportarunt: nunquid hunc postea a principatu deponerent? aut eius filios tum commendatione patris tum propria virtute favorabiles
iuberent esse privatos? ut iterum sub Romano principe essent, maxime cum eorum opera
assidue indigerent et nullum aliunde auxilium sperarent?
Hos si Cesar ipse aut Constantinus ad vitam reversus aut etiam Senatus Populusque
Romanus ad commune iudicium, quale in Grecia Amphictyonum fuit, vocaret, prima statim
actione repelleretur, quod a se olim custode desertos, quod tam diu sub alio principe degentes,
quod nunquam alienigene regi subditos, quod denique homines libertati natos et in libertatem robore animi corporisque assertos ad famulatum servitiumque reposceret, ut appareat, si
Cesar, si populus Romanus a repetendo exclusus est, multo vehementius papam esse exclusum, et si licet aliis nationibus, que sub Roma fuerunt, aut regem sibi creare aut rem publicam
tenere, multo magis id licere populo Romano, precipue adversus novam pape tyrannidem
(emphasis added) [translation modified]. I would like to thank Charles Till Davis (cited
above in n. 103) for his attentive, pointed, and critical reading of my manuscript, which has
given me greater insight into the comparison between Augustine and Valla.
with the religio catholica and the Roman papacy. Vallas historical judgment
of these events comes, therefore, to stand in opposition to the one expressed
variously by the Christian writers and rhetoricians of that age and the next.
Specifically, Valla has his eye on the range of authors from Eusebius of
Caesarea and Rufinus (Ecclesiastical History), along with Lactantius (On the
Deaths of the Persecutors), down to Augustine (City of God).
Valla reaches his own historical and critical assessment of the fourth
century by means of a rhetorical argumentative strategy supplemented
by critical techniques. With his initial historico-philological reinterpretation of the Constitutum its immediate contextual and infratextual
dimensions Valla establishes the temporal dimension of the document
of donation down to the remote past, to the outer margins of its origins.
Panofsky assimilated Albertis geometric perspective (as the rediscovery
of the third dimension of space) to Vallas philological retrospective of history (as the rediscovery of the third dimension of time), which the humanist created through the morphological and semantic analysis of classical
literature (humanae litterae).179 And in fact, in his Oration on the Donation
of Constantine Valla does identify the Constitutums most proper historical place, and he reveals its origins openly in the most adequate and true
temporal dimension possible. By retracing the complex and multiform
tradition of Constantinian ecclesiology in canon law and theology, Valla
arrives at the impulse for that tradition: the fourth-century appropriation
of Christianity by Constantine and his successors.
The multiple aspects of the Orations overall meaning, which we have
tried to explain here, as well as the importance of its historico-philological
critique of the Constitutum, were fully understood by the canon lawyers
and scholastic theologians of Vallas time. Those of them who were
strongly critical of Valla, in addition to humanist writers and other attentive readers of the text, reacted to specific sections of the Oration with
arguments that were often as insightful as they were erudite. The texts
greatest historical impact, however, was felt in the following century, in
the first decades of the Cinquecento with the coming of the Reformation.
The Oration was first printed and popularized by Ulrich von Hutten in
1518/19.180 Luther knew the text, profoundly absorbed it, and was busy
reworking it for his written manifestos already in 1520/21. Its presence can
179Cf. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (London: Paladin,
1970), 108.
180[Actually, the first printed edition was issued in 1506. It was, however, little noticed
and is now very rare (G.W. Bowersock, Introduction, in Valla, On the Donation of
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Cochlaeus was undoubtedly right when he noted that Luthers interpretation of the Oration did not adhere to Vallas specific arguments in criticism of the papacy or to the (explicit and/or implicit) intentions of Vallas
text. No different from Cochlaeus, in this respect, were certain preeminent
theorists of controversialist (and still pre-Tridentine) anti-Reformation
theology such as Augustino Steuco and Giovanmaria dei Tolosani.
Although Vallas humanism (together with that of Erasmus) was in their
view linked in many ways to Luthers ecclesiological criticism, they never
claimed an operative, fully continuous connection between Vallas Oration
and Luthers writings against the papacy.182 What is more, the judgmentshared by Steuco and Tolosani reveals an awareness on the part of
contemporaries critical of both Luther and of humanism, and especially
of Valla that seems the most authoritative verification of what Coch
laeus had discerned. Indeed, as far as these critics were concerned,
Vallas Oration was not, nor could it be, the premise leading to Luthers
conclusion that the pope was the incarnation of the Antichrist, as Luther
would write (for example) in the Vorrede to the Apocalypse of his Biblia
deudsch for the Oration was founded completely on the presumption
that the Bishop of Rome is the vicar of Christ.183
Moreover, Cochlaeuss point of view, like that of the controversialist
theologians Steuco and Tolosani, constitutes further exemplary evidence
of humanist cultures autonomy, as Charles Trinkaus has written, with
regard first to the Reformation and then to the Counter-Reformation.
Renaissance humanism both in Italy and north of the Alps in the early
sixteenth century was a literary, philosophical, and theological culture
with its own distinct features. It came into its own, above all in the camps
of theology and politics, rather as what Delio Cantimori has called the
heresy of the sixteenth century and what Friedrich Heer identifies as the
third power of ideas and practices in the Confessional Age (between
the pluralist Reformation and the unitary Counter-Reformation).184
182Camporeale, Giovanni Tolosani, O.P., e la teologia antiumanistica agli inizi della
Riforma, 809831; Ronald Keith Delph, Italian Humanism in the Early Reformation:
Agostino Steuco (14971548) (Ph.D. dissertation in History, University of Michigan), 1987,
esp. ch. 3: Humanist Scholarship in Defence of Papal Supremacy (pp. 218326).
183Camporeale, Giovanmaria dei Tolosani O.P.: 15301546. Umanesimo, Riforma e teologia controversista, 216227 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma,
416428).
184Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Firenze: Sansoni, 1939); Friedrich
Heer, Die Dritte Kraft. Der europische Humanismus zwischen den Fronten des Konfessionellen
Zeitalters (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1959); Charles Trinkaus, The Scope of Renaissance
Humanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983).
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requested permission from Eugenius IV and his court once again to enter
the city the place of his birth, which gave him the privilege of calling
himself a Roman citizen. His objective was to visit his mother, who at that
point was in difficult circumstances (not precisely identifiable from the text
of the letter, but probably related to her health). To this, Vallas umpteenth
request to enter Rome came a response naming the condition: he must
retract his writing on the Donation of Constantine, which he had composed to aid King Alfonso of Aragon in his dispute with Pope Eugenius IV.
In the letters to Trevisan and Landriani both influential personages in
the Roman curia we are thus able to trace the issues and characteristics
of Vallas personal and emotional life, which intersect in his cultural development and give shape to his biography. The letters provide us with the
clearest view of the most distinctive and original ideal of this humanist of
the early fifteenth century: critical intellectual study and radical freedom
of spirit.
Vallas letters are dated between the end of 1443 and the beginning
of 1444. The first was written from Naples to Cardinal Trevisan on
19 November (1443), the second, again from Naples, to Cardinal Landriani
on 21 January (1444).186 The central theme of both letters is the demand,
made by Eugenius IV and by several members of his curia, that Valla definitively retract the Oration in its entirety. Valla pointedly refuses, and the
reasons he gives for doing so are quite illuminating for the composition
and contents of the Oration. Indeed, what Valla says here in his private
correspondence is as valuable for understanding that text as his Apologia,
published in response to his imminent inquisitorial trial in Naples (April,
1444), would be for his Repastinatio. In both his public apology and private
pleas, Valla refuses to retract any part of any of his works. He justifies such
action on the one hand with arguments exonerating himself from the
charge of heresy. On the other, he provides further evidence confirming
the validity of his writings, both on a strictly doctrinal level and on a
broader cultural and political plane.
In the sections of the letters that interest us, Valla highlights the fundamental dimensions, at once objective and subjective, of his writing on the
Constitutum. These can be summarized as human and Christian freedom.
This freedom must be understood on the one hand as the specific domain
of the intellectual in his critical and historical studies. On the other hand
it is the freedom to publicly proclaim ones insight and dissent regarding
186Valla, Epistole, 246248, n. 22; 254256, n. 25.
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We can also clearly see the contents of the Orations exordium and peroration. Let us remember that in the Oration Valla had given dramatic expression to his dissent from the reigning cultural tradition in general and from
Constantinian ecclesiology in particular. And he had affirmed his stance
contesting the pseudo-Donation and the papacy, attacking the roots of
their juridical and ecclesial premises. In his letter to Landriani he uses
nearly exactly the same terms as in the Orations exordium. In their new
context, however, these arguments serve most of all to defend the Orations
validity, as well as its original motivations and fundamental themes.
Valla protests his right of conscience (directed by my conscience ):
it is from this principle, operating on the planes of morality and of
religion/Christianity, that Valla derives the right to communicate, publiclyand for the benefit of the community of believers, the historical and
ecclesial truth he has discovered ( blessed with discoveries). Above all,
however, Valla is sure to guarantee Landriani that the Oration was born
and bred of that noble freedom of speech with and in which the orator,
and in the first place the Christian orator, fulfills his task in imitation of
the Apostle Paul, as he had written the Orations prologue.
In accordance with the original motivations for and results of his study,
as well as the freedom of speech he claimed within the Christian church,
Valla has absolutely no intention of justifying (so as to excuse) what he
had written in the Oration. His insight had never been invalidated, nor
would it ever be, by the jurisdictional and spiritual terror and power exercised by hierarchical authority in the Church and in Christendom. Indeed,
once the papacy was declared to have usurped an illicit imperium over the
civil and political society of the community of believers, what sense could
it have to make retractions or to supplicate for absolution from heresy?
And what sense could such retractions and supplications have in the light
of that freedom of dissent by which Valla had charted his course? After all,
he had come to identify the Orations very historical study and critical
reflection with the freedom of conscience and of speech guaranteed
within Christendom. Thus Valla insistently informs Landriani that his
request (supplication) to reenter Rome after long exile is not spontaneous but rather forced upon him by his love for his mother (filial piety).
Valla seems to perceive at this moment in his life that his personal existence hangs, as if stretched between opposing forces, at the intersection of
the tensions that had stirred him most: the freedom of the orator and of
the intellectual, and the love of family and of his own origins. He feels like
a ship surprised by adverse winds and forced to strike the sails, a metaphor that he had previously employed in the proem to the second book of
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With this passage together with what precedes it in the letter Valla
reaffirms first and in no uncertain terms what was already implicit in the
Oration, namely that his criticism of the pseudo-Donations tradition and
of the papacys Constantinian primacy throughout the ages was the
product of an historico-philological analysis and no mere personal attack
on Pope Eugenius IV.
Valla is able to support these declarations by recalling the familiarity
and friendship that he had enjoyed with Condulmer. Accordingly he
reminds Trevisan of the esteem the future pope had expressed for his De
comparatione Ciceronis Quintilianique, the first work he wrote as a young
man on classical literature. And he calls to mind how, many years earlier,
when he was barely a youth, he had attended the private lessons in Greek
that Condulmer had received from Giovanni Aurispa:
When still just a boy I felt great respect and love for Eugenius. This was
before he became pope, when we studied Greek with the same teacher ,
when he accorded high praise to my treatise.190
189Valla, Epistole, 247f.4073: Cur de Constantini donatione composui? Hoc est quod purgare habeam, ut quod nonnulli optrectent mihi et quasi crimen intendant. Id ego tantum
abest ut malivolentia fecerim, ut summopere optassem sub alio pontifice necesse mihi
fuisse id facere, non sub Eugenio. Neque vero attinet hoc tempore libelli mei causam defendere, nisi Gamalielis verbis: Si est ex hominibus consilium hoc aut opus, dissolvetur; sin
autem ex deo, non poteritis dissolvere. Opus meum conditum editumque est, quod emendare
aut supprimere nec possem si deberem, nec deberem si possem. Ipsa rei veritas se tuebitur aut
ipsa falsitas se coarguet. Alii de illo iudices arbitrique iam sunt, non ego. Si male locutus
sum, testimonium perhibebunt de malo; sin bene, non cedent me virgis equi iudices. Sed
opus illud in sua, queso, causa quiescere sinamus. Hoc tantum consideres velim, non odio
pape adductum, sed veritatis, sed religionis, sed cuiusdam etiam fame gratia motum, ut quod
nemo sciret, id ego scisse solus viderer. Multum etiam nocere potuissem, si alieno animo
fuissem in rebus que mentem animumque magis solicitant. Nam quod feci, hoc non modo
ad pudorem presentium, sed mortuorum etiam ac futurorom pertinet: qui enim nemini parcit,
nullum ledit. Verum cum non minus prodesse in posterum possim quam uno libello offendi,
ego te per superiorum temporum meam in summum pontificem benivolentiam pietatemque obsecro id (quod, cum per se facile, tum vero tue virtuti facillimum): non beneficum, non munus, non gratiam, non veniam, sed ut similis tibi sis, ut quod semper fecisti
facias, ne aliter ac sentis de animo erga me tuo summique pontificis rescribas, etiamsi me
tibi odio esse nec licere mihi in patriam [redire] dicas . An parum tibi videtur ob tantulam
noxam me exilium pati? an ulterior tibi ultio querenda est? (emphasis added).
190Ibid., 246f.2024: Ego Eugenium ante papatum dilexi atque amavi adhuc adolescentulus, cum eidem preceptori grecarum litterarum uterque operam daret cum
opusculum meum magnopere laudasset (emphasis added).
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After these allusions to his personal history with Eugenius IV, Valla sets
forth his arguments in defense of the Oration. They are of two kinds. The
first line of defense is to stress his clear opposition to contemporary conciliarism and the conflict raging between Eugenius IV and the conciliarists
of Basel. Here again he refers to what he had said, at least implicitly, in the
Oration, even though his fundamental ecclesiological ideas were perhaps
more radical than those of the conciliarists. Indeed, his ideas attacked the
very foundations of the papacy and of traditional ecclesiology, and thus he
did not emphasize them in the letter to Trevisan. As for conciliarism, it is
noteworthy that Valla seems to have been impervious to the influence
even of Tudeschi, one of the greatest canon lawyers of conciliarism. And
this despite their close personal ties and the fact that Tudeschi represented Alfonso of Aragons interests at Basel.191 It is his theoretical and
political autonomy from the conciliarist struggle against Eugenius IV that
allows Valla to boast to Cardinal Trevisan obviously with the intention
of addressing the pope himself of never having written against the pope
like the conciliarists, in spite of their explicit solicitation:
I never went to Basel, although many people promised me great rewards;
nor did I write against the pope, although with respect to writing and every
kind of learning I was as capable, if I do say so myself, as anyone there past
or present.192
The other is against the background of what Valla had written in the
Orations exordium, about the orators autonomy and freedom when menaced with proscription by censors and men of power.
There is no doubt that Valla was commissioned to defend the Crown of
the Kingdom of Naples from the feudal power of the papacy. Nevertheless,
the exact methods and contents, and above all what we can call the rhetorical strategy of the work were fully of Vallas own independent will and
choosing. Therefore, his composition of the Oration ends up being configured against an ample background, in which the defense of Alfonso is
situated according to relationships of continuity and discontinuity with
the political and ideological struggle that had always existed between the
Empire and the papacy. Indeed, in writing the Oration Valla was on the
one hand aligning himself with the tradition of the imperial chanceries
and jurists, employing their tried and true practice of claiming the
Constitutums inauthenticity. On the other hand he was taking up a novel
line, discontinuous with the past at least on an ideological level, and thus
his philological exegesis of the Constitutum and his rhetorical strategy
constitute something new and all his own.
In this context of tradition and originality, Vallas claim to necessity in
writing the Oration (to have had to write) cannot simply be reduced to
the necessity of courtly service and the fealty owed to a prince. Instead it
must be expanded and understood as conditions of necessity that
imposed themselves on his conscience and dignity as an intellectual. In
this sense he could not remain silent. In the name of truth he had to publicize political and ecclesial ideas that put the Constantinian papacy in
crisis and dictated the emancipation of the nations of Christendom from
its feudal rule. The necessity, then, that gave rise to the Oration was the
singular challenge of high political and theological value that Valla could
not resist. Alfonso of Aragons commission coincided with the ecclesiological and historical notions that Valla had been developing for some
time, both regarding the Constantinian Church, as lacking in evangelical
authenticity, and concerning the decline of the empire, as occasioned by
the emancipation of the subject peoples from Romes rule.
With his critique of the empires Caesarism and his exaltation of the
Roman respublica as a form of radical evangelism in the face of the
Constantinian pope, Valla gave an alternative (historical and ideological) meaning to the insurrection of peoples against the rule of the Roman
empire as well as to their will to emancipation from the feudal and spiritual rule of the Roman papacy. At stake in the first case was the conquered
barbarians recovery and reappropriation of their civil and political
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freedom in the face of Roman imperialism. In the second it was the citizens of the respublica christianas recovery of their evangelical and ecclesial freedom, which the Rome of the popes had expropriated with the false
Donation of Constantine.
These are the very themes addressed in the Oration, the work whose
incrimination Valla laments (there are more than a few people who
regard it as a crime) and whose retraction had been demanded from him.
Hence the necessity of erecting a new defense both of dissent and of
rhetorical freedom (of speech) in the face of the Church. Valla accomplishes this task by drawing on Gamaliels response (in Acts 5:38f.) to the
Sanhedrins resolute condemnation of the new doctrine of the Apostles,
and by citing Christs words (in John 18:23) to the man who beat him
before the High Priest for having announced his new message. And he
offers a commentary. The truth or falsity of a doctrine or message, once it
is written, is perpetuated or destroyed without the necessity of outside
help, either from the original author or from censors. Every written work,
by the fact of having been reduced to the letter, has a life of its own. An
object of interpretation for both the present and the future, Vallas work is
already independent of its author and of its individual readers. It will
stand or fall only in virtue of its truth or falsity.
Valla concludes his defense of the Oration to Trevisan by reaffirming
that his writing is a civil and ecclesial witness to the truth and to the faith:
I was not moved by hatred of the Pope but acted for the sake of the truth, of
religion, and also of a certain renown to show that I alone knew what no
one else knew.
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Such praise of Thomas will crop up often in the correspondence of humanists. Even though they would seem to be at a greater distance from the
philosophical and theological disputations of the contemporary Schools,
they, too, are capable of appreciating Thomass precise literary place in
the history of culture. And indeed, this is what we find when they speak of
Thomas, such as in a letter Poggio Bracciolini sent to Niccol Niccoli from
London in 1420:
4Firenze, Archivio di Stato, Signori, Carteggi, Legazioni e Commissarie, Reg. 12, f. 16r-v:
Perch fra quelli di santa Reparata e di santa Maria Novella certa discordia per la solennit del Corpo di Christo, voglamo che in nostro nome supplichiate al prefato pontefice
degni provedere per sua bolla decta festa si celebri a santa Maria Novella, assegnando che
sempre quivi fu usitato farla, et factone provedimento per pi nostre leggi. Et che sempre
va l, la Signoria et tucte lArti. Et finalmente come nobilissima chiesa nella quale sono
habitati pi pontefici. Et non ha altra festa solenne. Et etiandio per rispecto di molti nobilissimi citadini populari di decta chiesa. Et ancora per contemplatione di Santo Thomaso et
molti frati singularissimi theologi di quello Ordine.
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152
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Spina sees the timelessness of Thomism with the Summas rise to preeminence during the fifteenth century as the long route of the Dominican
theological tradition connecting the first Thomas, Aquinas, to the second,
Gaetano:
Thomas Gaetanus, coming much later, whose wisdom and exemplary life
were just about second to none in these days, like a living image of Aquinas
was inspired by the Lord to proceed with the work of this most incredible
man. His merits compel, and his perpetual monument induces, posterity to
imitate him . The doctrine which the divine Thomas had diffused throughout the whole world was given a brighter sheen by this second Thomass
interpretations . Thus everyone can rightly recite these verses when bursting into the praise of both princes: as the morning star in the midst of a
cloud, and as the moon at the full, and as the shining sun [Ecclus. 50:67],
thus they shine on the temple of God.11
11Bartolomeo Spina, preface to Cajetan, Prima Secundae Partis Summae, III, f. a2v-a3v:
[Thomas Aquinas] inter omnes ecclesiae doctores, sancti denominatione, ab his etiam,
qui doctrinae eius in aliquibus (ex hoc imperiti) adversantur, antonomasice vocitetur,
dum inter disputandum legendumve doctores dicere consueverunt: Haec est sancti doctoris sententia; vel, sic tenuit sanctus doctor . Sapientiam quoque illius qui non admiratur
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1.4.The Cappellone degli Spagnoli in Florence
(Second Half of the Fourteenth Century) and the Cappella Carafa
in Rome (End of the Fifteenth Century): Iconographic
Themes at the Poles of the Thomist Tradition
The object of what has been said so far is to differentiate the neoThomism of the fifteenth century into two contrasting interpretive nodes
that simultaneously act as highly meaningful historical delimitations:
Capreolos Defensiones and the Commentarii on the Summa Theologiae.
Indeed, the works of Capreolo and Gaetano constitute the polar extremes
of a development the Thomistic revival of the fifteenth century that
underlies the organic partition of Thomass systematic theology. Let us
now turn from the panegyric of the commentators to the iconographic
triumph, and thus to the symmetrical correspondence between theological literature and pictorial visualization which we mentioned at the
beginning of this essay. In this way we shall find artistic confirmation
of the contrast, in terms of cultural distance and thematic variation,
between the two poles of the Thomist tradition in the century of Italian
humanism.
As is known, Thomist encomiastic iconology was born around the
middle of the fourteenth century with Trainis triumph (Pisa, ca. 1340).
Using narrative cycles and ecclesiological and dogmatic elements, the
painting elaborates an increasingly detailed and pregnant historicodoctrinal canonization of Aquinas. The Dominicans, who in Pisa, Florence,
Rome, and elsewhere summoned well-known artists to fresco the walls of
their city churches, were the ones who superintended the harmonic and
systematic orchestration of the triumph. They were the ones who suggested to the painter the symbolic figures, the historical and allegorical
personages, the doctrinal references and connotations. The triumph,
the Liber notarum and in the Diarium, as cited by Kristeller, ibid., p. 61 [= Johann
Burchard, Liber notarum: ab anno 1483 usque ad annum 1506, ed. Enrico Celani, 14 fasc.
in 4 vols. (Citt di Castello: S. Lapi, 19071942); idem, Diarium, sive, Rerum urbanarum
commentarii (14831506), ed. L. Thuasne, 3 vols. (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 18831885); precise
references in Kristeller]. An historical profile of this celebration at Santa Maria sopra
Minerva is found in A. Zucchi (d. 1956), Il Collegio di S. Tommaso dAquino alla Minerva,
unpublished work held in the churchs archives (Arch. Conv.), ch. IX: La festa di
S. Tommaso e il Collegio della Minerva, ff. 6171. I owe my photocopies of this
unpublished work to Father Benedetto Carderi, whom I thank cordially. Cf. also MarieHyacinthe Laurent, Autour de la fte de saint Thomas; Revue Thomiste 40 (1935): 257263;
see also B. Carderi, I Registri del Collegio S. Tommaso dAquino in Roma, conservati
nellarchivio del convento di S. Maria sopra Minerva, Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 7 (1976):
346358.
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Lombard). It makes use of civil and canon law and ecclesiology, takes up
the ancient Greek and Latin authorities (auctoritates), and comes to be
expressed, at the same time, in the divine rhythms of the Holy Spirit,
which breathes its gifts into the theologian. Corresponding in number and
pictorial space to the allegorical figures of the seven planets, which are
placed above the arts of the quadrivium and trivium, the seven gifts of the
Holy Spirit are represented by an equal number of allegorical figures, lined
up with the symbolic series of the sciences and a procession of the historical personages related to them.
It seems obvious that the synchrony of Thomass triumph is inserted
into an architectural and semantic arrangement with a specifically medieval perspective: it is an integral part of a space and time that is structurally Gothic and ideologically scholastic. The Cappellones vast mural cycle
is laid out and tied together in concentric circles: the triumph of Thomas
is set within the kerygmatic and apologetic function of the Dominican
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towards God; (3) of Christ, who, as a man, is our way to God.17 The
Summas tripartite scheme is manifested in the Minervan Chapels walls
as follows: the dogmatic and philosophical disputation (with the sequence
of historical personages form the ranks of theological heresy and philosophical error) corresponds to pars 1 of the Summa (the unity and trinity
of God, and the nature of man); the portrayal of Christian theological and
moral practice corresponds to pars 2 (the theological and cardinal virtues,
and their contrary vices); and the Annunciation, the initium Incarnationis
(beginning of the Incarnation) corresponds to pars 3 (dedicated to the
mystery of the God-man who is the way to salvation).
The pictorial cycle, which takes us back to the right wall from which it
began, is nothing other than the doctrinal illustration of the large Book,
open in all its fullness, in the large rose window inscribed at the apex of
the Renaissance arch. Above the Disputation scene, the arch majestically outlines the throne where Thomas is seated; gathered at the feet of
the throne in a grouping that is significantly reduced in comparison with
the triumph of the Florentine Cappellone are the allegorical figures of
Grammar and Dialectic on one side, Philosophy and Theology on the
other. The large book of the Summa theologiae (as identified by Berthier),
decorated with lilies and illuminated by a sun above it, is held up by two
putti: the work of the Angelic Doctor hovers in an almost divine and timeless glorification that transcends its very author.18 Finally, the fresco runs
to the end of the high wall and continues through the entire curve of the
lunette. Here is depicted, in an uninterrupted sequence (as Bertelli has
noted), an event in Thomass life mocked by Valla in a long passage of
the Adnotationes that is directly related to the doctrine of his theological
work.19 Thomas deposits his Book at the feet of the Cross, and Christ gives
him the divine seal of dogmatic orthodoxy, saying: you have written well
of me, Thomas (bene scripsisti de me, Thoma).
If the triumph of Thomas in the Cappellone degli Spagnoli celebrates
Thomas as the greatest theologian of the universal church and as a thinker
profoundly organic to medieval Christianity, the triumph in the Cappella
Carafa is undoubtedly dedicated to the glorification of the Summa
theologiae.Is it not perhaps within this perspective which, incidentally,
17Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, prol. quae. 2, pars 1: Ad huius sacrae doctrinae
expositionem intendentes primo, tractabimus de Deo; secundo, de motu rationalis in Deum;
tertio, de Christo, qui, secundum hominem, via est nobis tendendi in Deum. Translation by
the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948).
18[Berthier, Lglise de la Minerve, 167, 180.]
19[Bertelli, Appunti sugli affreschi nella cappella Carafa alla Minerva, 117, n. 11.]
Figure 2.Filippino Lippi (ca. 14571504), Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over
the Heretics, fresco, 14891492. Cappella Carafa, Santa Maria sopra Minerva,
Rome (courtesy of Scala Archives).
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speculation of the Schools, and on the other hand the complex and systematic anti-humanist response of neo-Thomism. Vallas Encomium was a
programmatic call for a humanist theology, and in the early sixteenth century it would yield Erasmuss theory or method of true theology (ratio
seu methodus verae theologiae). In the mid-fifteenth century, however, it
functioned as a critique of scholasticism, which saw in Thomism the origins of a timeless and normative theology.
Timelessness is semantically a very rich category of iconography. Zeri
based his Pittura e Controriforma on it, thereby reconstructing the origins
of timeless art. By transferring this concept to theology and we are
prompted to do so on account of analogical correlations we could
describe the critical objective of Vallas 1457 speech as identifying, in the
fifteenth-century scholastic-Thomist shift, the beginning of a zeitlose
Theologie, a timeless theology, that would remain a constant in Christian
culture.20 Indeed, precisely this seems to be the essential, contextual
nucleus of the Encomium of St. Thomas. We now offer as close a reading of
the text as possible in order to substantiate this position, which has been
stated here as a mere hypothesis in a purely formal way.
2.Encomium of St. Thomas
The Encomiums composition is dense, full of literary and extra-literary
interrelations, contextual combinations and contrasts, and different
20We owe the phrase zeitlose Theologie (timeless theology) to Federico Zeri, Pittura e
Controriforma. Alle origini dellarte senza tempo (Torino: Einaudi, 1957). Our coinage zeitlose Theologie is based on his zeitlose Kunst (timeless art) (p. 84), which he defines as the
escape of a work (of art) from the fleeting frailty of taste and of style. His work also suggested the subtitle to our introduction: at the origins of neo-Thomism in the fifteenthcentury, as it also effects a conceptual transfer from iconography (the iconography of
timeless art) to the history of theology. But we owe not only this to Zeri; indeed our debt
to him involves something much more important. Beyond the intentions of the author himself, our reading of Pittura e Controriforma leads us to conclude the existence of a strict
parallelism between the vicissitudes of timeless art and the multiform course of theological study between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries although the relative periods
and corresponding chronological rhythms do not match up exactly. This proposition has
undoubtedly been stated too briefly for the observation that we would like to make in this
regard and that would require a fuller and more in-depth discussion. The reader, however,
will easily be able to comprehend it by rereading Zeris monograph from the point of view of
the history of theology and of the Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What Zeri
wrote on p. 113 finds clear confirmation here: the artistic thermometer is the most precise
indicator of societys values and meanings. This is what the Renaissance art historian Georg
Weise demonstrated and repeated on many occasions (also with regard to other, more complex, aspects), in his Lideale eroico del Rinascimento e le sue premesse umanistiche (Napoli:
Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1961), ch. 1: Il duplice concetto di Rinascimento, 178.
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168
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170
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172
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Dominic was the pillar of the brothers
Thomas their shining example.
Dominic planted
Thomas gave water.
The one shunned honors and episcopacies
the other fled nobility, wealth, kinsmen, and parents.
The one imitated the chastity and continence of Paul
the other the virginity of John the Evangelist.
Of the one nothing was more admirable than his humility
the other had so much humility that he was even astonished at the
boasting and bragging of others.40
From the praises of their virtues, the comparison continues to the corresponding testimonies of their virtues including the prediction of
their deaths:
Both men
saw and heard
the holy Apostles Peter and Paul,
the most holy mother of God,
the Lord our Savior.
Both men were told about their imminent deaths.
The one wrote the brothers most excellent Rule
the other the most outstanding and the greatest number of books.
Thomas devotes himself to writings
Dominic rules the provinces ,
Certainly Thomas sends no more men to heaven with his writings
than Dominic does with his Rule.
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Valla, then, has ascended the pulpit of the Minervan temple at the pressing request of the Dominican brothers. The historic Roman monastery
hosts a religious community that is both numerous and diverse, with
many different nationalities converging there from the various countries
of Europe. What is more, it is also the seat of the Provincial Prior (of the
Roman Province), the Master General of the Order, and the General
Curia. The commemorative debate for the feast of St. Thomas, therefore,
was planned and organized by the Dominicans of the Minerva themselves,
and put on for a cultivated Roman public of both clerics and laymen.
The decision to invite Valla to participate in the debate was by no
means random. He was by then a well-known personage: professor of
rhetoric at the Roman Studio, known and fiercely discussed in the liveliest
cultural centers across the entire peninsula, recognized by opposite camps
as the head of a new school of Italian humanism, opposed and accused
of heresy for his radical criticism of contemporary scholasticism and his
interpretive stance on the Vulgate Bible and the Donation of Constantine.
In spite of his notorious theological and ecclesiological ideas, Valla had
been taken into the service of Nicholas V. A translator of Greek classics for
the Vatican Library (directed by Giovanni Tortelli, the person closest to
46Ibid., 14.157164.
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2.6.The Stylistic Qualities of Thomass Writings and the Canons
of Latin Rhetoric
I praise the simplicity (subtilitas) of his writing: subtilitas properly concerns argumentative prose, or better, linkage in probative discourse. It
consists in the absence of ornatus (adornment), which would obscure the
essential lines or somehow unravel the fabric of its demonstrative
published by Innocenzo Taurisano, Beato Angelico (Roma: Fratelli Palombi, 1955), 148149;
but cf. also Gilles Meersseman, La bibliothque des Frres Prcheurs de la Minerve la fin
du XVe sicle, in Mlanges Auguste Pelzer (Louvain: Bibliothque de lUniversit, Bureaux
du Recueil, 1947), 605631.
48Valla, Encomion, 15.165172.
Would it exceed the limits of this passage of the Encomium if, within this
context of rhetorical critique, we were to note that Valla seems to be
applying Quintilians description of Lysias literary style to the quaestiones
of the Summa theologiae? At any rate, a more than superficial reading of
the Encomium cannot fail to notice that Valla, by exalting the subtilitas of
their prose, situated Aquinass works in the literary tradition of the Latin
Fathers. As Marrou and Auerbach in particular have shown, the patristic
tradition, especially from Augustine on, had theorized and developed the
sermo humilis (humble style) of Christian language, in which the lowest of
the classical genres of rhetoric was deployed for theology. Indeed, the
Christian orator and writer, conforming to the stylistic forms of Sacred
Scripture in order to achieve the utmost accessibility and comprehension
on the part of the faithful, had to assimilate his own language to the Word
made flesh, where the sublimity of the divine mystery was embodied in
the humility of the passion.
I admire his carefulness (diligentia): diligentia, which is closely connected to subtilitas, is another quality typical of Attic style. But here the
focus is on the accurate choice of words and terms, and thus of precision
and exactness of language, in argumentative discourse. Quintilian, following in the tradition of the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Ciceros rhetorical
works, speaks of the utmost carefulness in words and names C. Asinius
49Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, X.1.78: subtilis atque elegans et quo nihil, si oratori
satis sit docere, quaeras perfectius; nihil enim est inane, nihil arcessitum, puro tamen fonti
quam magno flumini propior.
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2.7.The Critique of Scholastic Speculation and the Humanist
Refounding of Theological Study
According to Valla, scholastic theologians professed to explain the dogmatics of revelation by making use, for speculative purposes, of conceptual and argumentative tools like metaphysics, logic, the modes of
53Salvatore I. Camporeale, Da Lorenzo Valla a Tommaso Moro. Lo statuto umanistico
della teologia, Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973): 9102 [reprinted in idem, Lorenzo valla.
Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Studi e testi (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura,
2002), 19119]; Heinz Holeczek, Humanistische Bibelphilologie als Reformproblem bei
Erasmus von Rotterdam, Thomas More und William Tyndale (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 138165.
See also Marie-Dominique Chenu, Antiqui, moderni. Notes de lexicographie mdivale,
Revues des Sciences Philosophiques et Thologiques 17 (1928): 8294.
54Valla, Encomion, 16.173181 (emphasis added).
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signifying (modi significandi), and the like.55 But in doing so they transgressed the specific and irreducible boundaries of the things and the language that constitute the proper object of Christian faith; their endeavor
was just as useless for this seems to be the meaning of Vallas comparison as the attempt to correct the internal incoherence of geocentric cosmology by theorizing the ninth sphere and planetary epicycles. It might
be mentioned that Vallas words curiously echo the polemics found in the
Byzantine Cosmas Indicopleustess Topographia christiana, a work (probably written between 547 and 549) that was similarly critical of
Aristotelianism (that of John Philoponus) and that sharply rejected any
kind of synthesis between Greek science and Christian revelation. The
immediate source for Vallas scientific and astronomical knowledge, however, was certainly Johannes de Sacroboscos treatise De sphaera mundi
(On the Sphere of the World), an elementary text of the quadrivium.56
2.8.Philosophy as an Impediment to Authentic Christian
Thought and the Distinction/Opposition between Patristic
Theology and Scholasticism
In the practice of the scholastics, philosophy functioned as a handmaiden
to theology. Here it is described in a contrary way, as an impediment
(impedimentum) to Christian thought, an obstacle blocking its most
genuine and coherent development. Valla insists that the Latin Fathers,
together with their Greek counterparts, had in some fashion foreseen the
destination at which such a theoretical co-optation of Hellenic speculation would arrive, and that therefore they had rejected classical philosophy. He then goes on to inquire into the ancient (veteres) theologians
primary motivation for having rejected this kind of philosophical speculation, after which he gives his own incisive reply. It should be emphasized
that this reply accords with Vallas standard interpretation of the epistemological basis that, in his mind, underlies the theology of the Greek and
Latin Fathers of the Church.
55Cf. the parallel passages of the Dialecticae disputationes cited in Camporeale, Lorenzo
Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 178 and 229; and Alfonso Maier, Terminologia logica della
tarda Scolastica (Roma: Ateneo, 1972), passim (index sub voce modi significandi). For a
general view of the question: Eugenio Garin, Leducazione in Europa 1400/1600. Problemi e
programmi (Bari: Laterza, 1976), 329.
56On Cosmas Indicopleustes: Salvatore Impellizzeri, La letteratura bizantina (Firenze:
Sansoni, 1975), 186189. For the scholastic use of De sphaera mundi and De modis significandi
seu grammatica speculativa, cf. Armando F. Verde, Lo Studio Fiorentino 14731503. Ricerche e
documenti, 6 vols. in 9 (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1973), 2:641.
We immediately note that Vallas argument runs along the axis of the rhetorical relationship between res (contents) and verba (words). The polarization of the two terms is by no means merely formal; on the contrary, it
underlies a precise line of argument, in which a particular historiographical interpretation of the Church Fathers is offered and then infused into a
humanist principle of theology, which is presented as an alternative to
scholasticism.
Let us first consider the formulation of Vallas critique of scholasticism
in relation to divine truths, the object of theological science:
Regarding their contents: because these subjects did not seem to lead to the
knowledge of divine truths. Such also seemed to be the case to the Greek
theologians Basil, Gregory, John Chrysostom, and the others of that age.
They did not think that the sophisms of dialectics, the obscurities of metaphysics, or the trifles of the modes of signifying should be mixed in with
sacred questions. Nor did they even lay the foundations of their disputations in philosophy, for they heeded Pauls exclamation: not through philosophy and vain deceit [Col. 2:8]. This we know from experience as
well.59
Philosophy, then, is defined once again on the basis of dialectics, metaphysics, and the modes of signifying. And it is as such, according to Valla,
that it was rejected not only by the Latin Fathers named earlier but also by
the greatest figures in the Greek patristic tradition: Basil, Gregory, and
John Chrysostom (the same trio of Greek Fathers that recurs in identical
thematic contexts in other passages in Vallas corpus). Let us note in
57Valla, Encomion, 17.183184.
58Ibid., 17.184186 (emphasis added).
59Ibid., 18.187195.
186
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188
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The reduction of philosophy to rhetoric, as the omni-comprehensive science of res et verba, is thus absolute and radical in Quintilian. In the sections omitted from the passage cited, Quintilians discourse descends into
the particulars of the various branches and disciplines of philosophy in
order to demonstrate rhetorics epistemological and methodological
primacy.64
63Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, XII.2.720: Ego illum, quem instituo, Romanum quendam velim esse sapientem, qui non secretis disputationibus, sed rerum experimentis atque
operibus vere civilem virum exhibeat. Sed quia deserta ab his, qui se ad eloquentiam contulerunt, studia sapientiae non iam in actu suo atque in hac fori luce versantur, sed in
porticus et in gymnasia primum, mox in conventus scholarum recesserunt: id, quod est
oratori necessarium nec a dicendi praeceptoribus traditur, ab iis petere nimirum necesse
est, apud quos remansit, evolvendi penitus auctores, qui de virtute praecipiunt, ut oratoris
vita cum scientia divinarum rerum sit humanarumque coniuncta . Utinamque sit tempus
unquam, quo perfectus aliquis, qualem optamus, orator hanc artem superbo nomine et
vitiis quorundam bona eius corrumpentium invisam vindicet sibi ac, velut rebus repetitis,
in corpus eloquentiae adducat. Quae quidem cum sit in tris divisa partes, naturalem,
moralem, rationalem, qua tandem non est cum oratoris opere coniuncta? Nam ut ordinem
retro agamus, de ultima illa, quae tota versatur in verbis, nemo dubitaverit, si et proprietates vocis cuiusque nosse et ambigua aperire et perplexa discernere et de falsis iudicare et
colligere ac resolvere quae velis oratorum est . Jam quidem pars illa moralis, quae dicitur
Ethice, certe tota oratori est accommodata . Pars vero naturalis, cum est ad exercitationem dicendi tanto ceteris uberior, quanto maiore spiritu de divinis rebus quam humanis
eloquendum est, tum illam etiam moralem, sine qua nulla esse, ut docuimus, oratio potest,
totam complectitur (tr. E.H. Butler) (emphasis added).
64Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 395424; Gerl, Rhetorik als Philosophie, 8497. Here
we cite Vallas glosses to ch. 2, book XII of the Institutio oratoria contained in ms. Paris, Bibl.
Nat., lat. 7723, ff. 142v.-144r. [N.B. Not all the glosses transcribed by Camporeale are reported
in Valla, Le postille allInstitutio oratoria, and sometimes Camporeales readings differ from
those in the edition.] On the basis of clear graphic evidence it seems obvious that the
glosses were written at different times. Among other things, they constitute a series of
statements and references that are illuminating for a comparative reading of the preface to
book I of the first redaction of the Dialecticae disputationes. (We have printed the text of
the preface from ms. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb. lat. 1207 in
Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 405408). Vallas glosses are transcribed
here with the incipits of Quintilians text in italics and the standard paragraph numbers in
brackets.
Quando igitur orator est vir bonus si forte accedamus iis [XII.2.12]: nature alone does
not establish mores (non constare sola natura mores). // Ad illud sequens [4]: the orator
must learn wisdom through and through (penitus perdiscendam oratori sapientiam). // Ac
philosophos cum ea [5]: this must be sought or obtained from the philosophers (hanc esse
petendam seu reperiendam a philosophis). // Quod Cicero pluribus libris [6]: as in the preface to the first book of the Tusculans and On Fate (ut in proemio primi libri Tusculanarum
et De fato). // Quapropter hec exhortatio [6]: the orator should not be a philosopher but a
truly civic wise man of the Roman type. Lactantius, Book III [Div. inst., ch. 14: PL 6:38990]
writes against Cicero: But how you confessed the truth about philosophy when instructing
your son, advising that he should know the precepts of philosophy, but that he should live
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as a citizen (non philosophum sed romanum quendam sapientem ac vere civilem esse
oratorem debere. Lactantius Li III in Ciceronem: At quam fessus fueris philosophie veritatem docens ad filium composita precepta, quibus mones philosophie quidem precepta
noscenda, vivendum autem esse civiliter). // Quis denique in ipsa [7]: Macrobius, from the
Somnium Scipionis [II.17,8]: Greece was as full of men wholly given to wisdom as Rome was
bereft of them (Macrobius de Somnio Scipionis: soli enim sapientie [otio] deditos ut
abunde Grecia tulit, ita Roma nescivit). // Atque ego illum, quem instituto [7]: this means
that the philosophers did not treat of the republic completely, since they lacked experience of it (hoc significat non perfecte philosophos de re publica tradidisse, quam experti
non fuissent). // Evolvendi penitus [8]: the orator should read the philosophers (evolvendi
oratori philosophos). // Que ipse quanto maiores [9]: the same material can be treated better by orators than by philosophers, and if only it were treated such that it not be so hateful
on account of the vices of the philosophers and their reputation for pride. From this it is
clear that neither Aristotle nor Plato were eloquent enough (eandem materiam tractari
posse ab oratoribus melius quam a philosophis, et utinam tractetur ne tantopere sit invisa
propter vitia philosophorum et superbum illorum nomen. Ex hoc constat nec Aristotelem
nec Platonem satis eloquentes esse). // Superbo nomine et vitiis [9]: because philosophers
want to be the only lovers of wisdom, as their name indicates (quia philosophi solos se
sapientie volunt esse amatores, ut ipsorum nomen indicat). // De ultima illa, que tota versatur in verbis [10]: on dialectics (de dialectica). // Quanquam ea non tam [11]: how the
orator uses it (quomodo ea utatur orator). // Ita, si totum sibi vindicaverit [13]: pure dialectic
is inconsistent with the forum (abhorret a foro mera dialectica [N.B. Camporeales text
reads: meram dialecticam; this gloss is not reported in Valla, Le postille allInstitutio oratoria; the editors of the present volume have not consulted ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7723.
Eds.]). // Iam pars illa moralis [15]: on moral philosophy [ethics] (de morali). // Sed ille vir
bonus [17]: orators speak more easily and better about moral philosophy than philosophers
(oratorum facilius ac melius moralem loqui quam philosophorum). // Profecto nemo dubitabit [18]: regarding general questions in philosophy (de generalibus questionibus in philosophia). // Pars vero naturalis [20]: on natural philosophy [physics] (de naturali). //
Siquidem, ut nobis placet [21]: this is clear, for example, from the experience of the greatest
orators (hoc constare vel experimento summorum oratorum). // Vim tamen quandam [22]:
Aristophanes and Eupolis, Plato in the Phaedrus, Thucydides book I, in the letters of
Demosthenes (Aristophanes Eupolisque, Plato in Phedro, Thucydides libro 1o, in epistolis
Demosthenis). // Nam M. Tullius [23]: in The Orator, in Partitiones oratoriae (in Oratore, in
Partitionibus). // Pyrron quidem [24]: Aulus Gellius, book 11: Those philosophers whom we
call Pyrronists are called skepttai in Greek, which means something like searchers and
considerers: for they decide nothing, determine nothing, but they are always busy searching and considering what of all things in the world it is possible to decide or determine. Nor
do they think that they see or hear anything clearly, but rather that they sense or are
affected only as if they saw and heard, etc. Although the Pyrronists and the Academics say
very similar things about this, they were thought to differ amongst themselves for several
reasons but mostly on this account: that the Academics determine as it were that nothing
itself can be determined, while the Pyrronists say that not even this seems to be at all true,
since nothing seems to be true. (A. Gellius libro XIo: Quos pyrrones philosophos vocamus
ii greco cognomine skepttai appellantur, id ferme significat quasi quesitores et consideratores: nihil enim decernunt, nihil enim constituunt, sed in querendo semper considerandoque sunt, quidnam sit omnium rerum de quo decerni constituique possit ac ne videre
quoque quidem plane quicquam, neque audire sese putant, sed id pati afficique quasi
videant vel audiant, etc. Cum hec autem ita consimiliter tam Pyrronei dicant quam
Academici, differe tamen inter sese et propter alia quedam et vel maxime propterea existimati sunt, quod Academici quidem ipsum illud nihil posse decerni quasi decernunt,
Pyrronei ne id quidem ullo pacto verum videri dicunt quod nihil esse verum videtur.) //
Sed hec inter ipsos [26]: the task of the orator is greater than that of the philosopher, and
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2.10.The Linguistic-Semantic Critique of Scholasticism and the
Interrelation between Greek and Latin: Pauls Genuine Mode of
Theologizing and Vallas Paulinism
This passage of the Encomium, once again synthetically dense and expressed
in concentric abbreviations, provides a retrospective summary of Vallas
essential ideas. An integral part of Vallas work as a humanist was the linguistic-semantic critique of the philosophical and theological terminology
of scholasticism and, more precisely, of the creation and formulation of
Aristotelian-scholastic language as begun by Boethius. Indeed, it is important to note how Vallas critique, simultaneously philological and theoretical in accord with a particularly humanist mode of analysis that sees the
two aspects as inseparable takes shape in the specific question of the relationship between the Greek and Latin languages and the issue of translating between them. Valla then goes on to treat this problem in greater depth
66Ibid., 19.199207 (emphasis added). [On the scholastic terminology in this passage,
see n. 9 on p. 311 below. Eds.]
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70Ibid., 20.216221. For the general context of Vallas Paulinism and the renewal of
patristic theology, one should keep in mind Foiss whole book and particularly the
passages cited in his index under the entry Padri della Chiesa; but see also the other recent
studies on Valla, and above all those of Di Napoli and of the present writer, as well as
Franco Gaeta, Lorenzo Valla. Filologia e storia nellUmanesimo italiano. (Napoli: Istituto
italiano per gli studi storici, 1955), with the earlier bibliography indicated there.
196
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198
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In what relation, then, does Valla see Aquinass philosophical and theological works (and those of his school) with respect to the patristic thought
represented by the greatest Greek and Latin Doctors of the Church?
Turning once again to traditional themes and reasoning, he introduces a
final pairing: Thomas, the Latin, with John Damascene, the Greek.
Closest to these comes John Damascene, a most famous author among the
Greeks, as Thomas is amongst us. It will therefore be perfectly right for John
and Thomas to be paired together, and all the more so because John wrote
many logical and well-nigh metaphysical works.79
The heavenly choir before the throne of God and the Lamb,80 according
to the celestial vision of the Apocalypse of John (Apoc. 45), is now fully
described. The five pairs of princes of theology accompany the twentyfour elders of the Apocalypse in their eternal choral praise: for the writers
of holy things always make music in the sight of God.81 And to complete
77Ibid., 22.243252.
78Ibid., 23.254261.
79Ibid., 23.261264.
80Ibid., 24.265266.
81Ibid., 24.266267.
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his fresco of the triumph of Thomas, Valla describes, using medieval and
Renaissance iconographic references, the orchestral and hierarchical
distribution of musical instruments among the five pairs: the lyre is
assigned to Basil and Ambrose, the cithara to Gregory Nazianzen and
Jerome, the psaltery to John Chrysostom and Augustine, the flute to
Dionysius and Gregory the Great, and the cymbals to John Damascene
and Thomas. Valla then adds immediately:
And it will not be unharmonious for their number to be five now instead of
four since for musicians there are five tetrachords, not four nor to have
Thomas playing the cymbals. For as the name Thomas means twin, and as
he enjoyed playing equally in the twin tones of theology and philosophy,
thus the cymbals are a double instrument emitting happy, cheerful, and
pleasing music.82
202
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according to Valla, had already achieved the Perfect System of theological methodology and speculation. This system was complete in itself and
had long become a common element of traditional Christian culture. In
comparison to patristic theology, then, the achievement of scholastic
theology and its greatest representative, Aquinas (together with John
Damascene) i.e., the assumption of classical philosophy within the
realm of Christian thought and doctrinal language amounted to nothing
more than a thematic and formal variation. Valla reiterates this point by
assigning the cymbals to Thomas and John, a musical instrument composed of two small discs beaten together, similar to the twin tones of theology and philosophy. For Valla, they resound with the musical whole,
already complete and perfect in itself, of the four other instruments, one
wind (the pipe or flute) and three stringed (the psaltery, the cithara, and
the lyre).
It is with these theoretical references to music and instruments that
Valla ends the Encomium, doubtless in imitation of medieval and contemporary iconographic representations of the glory of paradise. Let it suffice to think of the paintings finished only a few years earlier by Beato
Angelico, during his first and second stays in Rome, on the invitations of
Nicholas V and Cardinal Juan de Torquemada. And Valla could very well
have known the works of the Florentine Dominican master, who died in
Rome in 1455 and was buried in the same temple of Minerva where in 1457
the humanist declaimed his Encomium. Even if the attribution to Valla of
the Latin couplets on Beato Angelicos tomb has still found no confirmation in any source or document, nevertheless the final lines of the
Encomium remain fully within the iconographic context of the Dominican
painter, completing the triumph of Thomas in heavenly glory:
Such is the tune of Thomass books. With this harmony Saint Thomas
delights both the pious men who read him and the holy angels who now
hear him. For he is always singing and playing before God with the other
holy doctors, perpetually either praising the Lamb of God, or entreating Him
that we mortals may reach the same place he has.84
84Valla, Encomion, 25.277281. In ms. Rome, Bibl. Angelica, 1500 (see n. 12 above), the
closing ( nobis concedat qui vivit et regnat in saecula benedictus. Amen) is followed by
this addition (printed in Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, 321): Oration of Lorenzo Valla, a most
learned and eloquent man, which he held in praise of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Church of
Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in the city of Rome, a.d. 1457, the seventh day of March. He
died in the same year on the first day of August (Doctissimi viri ac eloquentissimi
Laurentii e Valle Oratio, quam habuit in laudem Sancti Thomae Aquinatis in Ecclesia
Sanctae Mariae Minervae, in urbe romana a.d. 1457, VII die Martii, obiitque eodem anno
die primo Augusti).
The Encomium of 1457 will have found its proper historical and theoretical
place if it is understood as the organic summary and the definitive statement of Vallas critique of scholasticism. Indeed, it contains the two essential features of that critique: the rejection of the fundamental premise of
scholasticism, which had informed the renewal of Thomism in the second
half of the fifteenth century; and the proposal of an alternative to Thomism,
a humanist principle for the epistemic refounding of theology. Within the
cultural and historiographical space of Vallas oration, these two features
have theoretical and normative value. On the one hand, the Encomium
identifies the epistemic principle underlying the restoration of Thomism:
that no one can become a theologian without the teachings of the dialecticians, metaphysicians, and the other philosophers. On the other hand,
it reproposes the mode of theologizing that had been fully elaborated by
Greek and Latin patristics and that was derived from the apostle Paul, the
normative model for Christian speculation.
Since these appear to be the two poles between which the Encomium
runs, it would seem worthwhile to deepen the analysis of them beyond
85Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate: Modus de Trinitate
tractandi duplex est, sc. per auctoritates et per rationes . Quidam vero sanctorum
Patrum alterum tantum modum prosecuti sunt, sc. per auctoritates. Boethius vero elegit
prosequi per alium modum, scilicet per rationes (tr. Brennan, as cited below in n. 100).
86Valla, De libero arbitrio, 526: Boethius nulla alia causa, nisi quod nimis philosophiae
amator fuit, non eo modo quo debuit, disputavit de libero arbitrio in V libro De Consolatione
(tr. Trinkaus, modified, as cited below in n. 87).
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what was said in the first part of the present essay. Comparing the
Encomium with certain parallel and otherwise essential texts of Vallas
corpus will aid in understanding its deeper significance, as well as in situating its most original aspects within the context of the most important
moments and phases in Vallas intellectual development. We shall confine
ourselves to carefully chosen parallel passages, namely the opening pages
of De libero arbitrio, chapter 12 of book III of De vero falsoque bono, and the
preface to book IV of the Elegantiae.87
3.1.1.Boethius as the Starting Point for Scholasticism and Vallas AntiBoethian Critique: The Christian Religion and the Protection of
Philosophy
Valla consistently identifies Boethius with the starting point of scholasticism (increasingly so, and with greater significance, with each subsequent
redaction of the Dialecticae disputationes). It is in Boethius, he affirms
repeatedly and variously, that the essential epistemological dimension of
scholasticism the use of classical philosophy for theological study
emerges for the first time, immediately rife with consequences for the
Latin culture of the West and already charged with its full historical and
theoretical significance. And it is in this context, as far as Valla is concerned, that The Consolation of Philosophy throughout the Middle Ages
a renowned pedagogical and scholastic literary text takes on emblematic meaning, with respect both to its contents and to its methodology.
87These texts are available in the following editions: De libero arbitrio, in Prosatori latini
del Quattrocento, Latin text and Italian translation, ed. Eugenio Garin (Milano: R. Ricciardi,
1952), 523565; De vero falsoque bono, ed. Maristella De Panizza Lorch (Bari: Adriatica,
1970), 111113; Elegantiae, Book IV, Preface in Garin (ed.), Prosatori latini, 612622, and in
Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, 228246, with Latin text and Spanish translation. [An English
translation of De libero arbitrio by Charles Trinkaus, which has been used here, appears in
The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John
Herman Randall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 155182. De vero falsoque
bono has also been translated into English: Lorenzo Valla, On Pleasure, De voluptate, tr. Kent
Hieatt and Maristella Lorch (New York: Abaris Books, 1977).] An Italian translation of De
libero arbitrio and De vero falsoque bono is available in Valla, Scritti filosofici, 253282, and
3ff. (ch. 12, bk. III is found on 202205). For the text of the preface to bk. IV of the Elegantiae,
the following mss. (sec. XV) have also been consulted: Florence, Bibl. Laur., Conv. soppr. 187
(ff. 58v-60r); Vatican City, Bibl. Apost. Vat., Pal. lat. 1759 (ff. 89v-92r). See Jozef Ijsewijn and
Gilbert Tournoy, Un primo censimento dei manoscritti e delle edizioni a stampa degli
Elegantiarum linguae latinae libri sex di Lorenzo Valla, Humanistica Lovaniensia 18 (1969):
2541; idem, Nuovi contributi per lelenco dei manoscritti e delle edizioni a stampa delle
Elegantiae di Lorenzo Valla, Humanistica Lovaniensia 20 (1971): 13; [and Francesco Lo
Monaco and Mariangela Regoliosi, I manoscritti con opere autentiche di Lorenzo Valla,
in Pubblicare il Valla, ed. M. Regoliosi (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008), 6797, at 94].
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know or did not want to know them [the teachings of philosophy] were
stupid.90 Roman law, Valla continues, prohibited the speaking of foreign
languages (lingua peregrina) in senatorial assemblies, even in the official
reception of embassies, and stipulated that only the language of Rome
(vernacula Urbis) could be used. Scholastic theologians, in violation of the
laws of the evangelical church (ecclesia), introduced the language of
paganism (sermo gentilis) into the community of believers (respublica
christiana).
By attacking what has been called the methodological premise of scholastic theology in this way, Vallas critique actually rejected an entire tradition of theological thought. Although that tradition achieved its greatest
and most comprehensive systematization in Thomas Aquinas, it had its
origins in Augustine, who employed it not only for basic apologetic purposes but also, in a methodologically more sophisticated form, in his De
doctrina christiana (On Christian Doctrine). It is no accident that Vallas
critique of Boethiuss theology also involves Augustine and Thomas and
groups them all into the same historical perspective, both in De libero arbitrio and, especially and quite explicitly, in the Adnotationes.91
For Valla, the Christian religion (christiana religio) unlike the theological tradition that converged in scholasticism, from Boethius to Abelard
and then to Thomas and Thomism has no need of the protection of
philosophy (praesidium philosophiae). It is therefore necessary to condemn scholasticism absolutely, for it is a systematic theology contrary to
the preaching of the Apostles and thus to the normative model of theological study. The Apostles, although (or perhaps because) they were
ignorant and weaponless, preached the Gospel so effectively that they
reduced so much of the world to their authority. Hence the fact Valla
says with the Church Fathers in mind that men emerged at the origins of
Christianitys theological tradition who were truly pillars in the temple of
God and whose writings have now been extant many centuries. The
Fathers are at the head of the whole ecclesial community precisely
because they were in every way imitators of the Apostles. These men,
who were the first to proceed into theological study, took the imitation of
apostolic preaching, in contradistinction to philosophical doctrines, as a
premise and a methodological principle for that study. For they were
90Valla, De libero arbitrio, 524: neminem posse theologum evadere nisi qui praecepta
philosophiae teneat eaque diligentissime perdidicerit, stultosque eos qui antehac vel
nescierunt haec vel nescire voluerunt (tr. Trinkaus, modified).
91See, e.g., Valla, Opera omnia, 1:808a: Adnotationes in Matthew 4:10.
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95Jean Isaac, Le Peri hermeneias en Occident de Boce saint Thomas. Histoire litteraire
dun trait dAristote (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 4449.
Thus wrote Peter Damian, the bitterest enemy of the liberal arts in the
history of medieval theology, in his De divina omnipotentia (On Divine
Omnipotence), in direct opposition to Boethius and scholasticism.
Nevertheless, and by a wonderful irony of fate, as Isaac says, it was precisely as a result of this attack against the theological use of chapter 9 of
On Interpretation that this renowned passage of Aristotle on modal logic
and future contingents would become an essential source for the philosophical and theological treatment of and solution to the question of free
will and predestination.97 In his De concordia praescientiae et praedestinationis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio (On the Concord of Foreknowledge,
Predestination, and Gods Grace with Free Will), Anselm of Canterbury,
one of the greatest figures in scholasticisms formative period, used the
same passage of Aristotle, but in a positive way, to open the way for philosophico-theological argumentation of a kind diametrically opposed to
that of Peter Damian. And it is precisely this issue that would become
96Peter Damian, On Divine Omnipotence, in Peter Damian: Letters 91120, tr. Owen J.
Blum (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 356: Videat ergo
imperitia sapientium et vana quaerentium caeca temeritas, quasi haec, quae ad artem pertinent disserendi, ad Deum procaciter referant . Qui nimirum, quia necdum didicerunt
elementa verborum, per obscuras argumentorum suorum caligines amittunt clarae fidei
fundamentum, et, ignorantes adhuc quod a pueris tractatur in scholis, querelae suae
calumnias divinis ingerunt sacramentis! Et, quia inter rudimenta discentium, vel artis
humanae, nullam apprehendere periciam, curiositatis suae nubilo perturbant puritatis
ecclesiasticae disciplinam! Haec, plane, quae ex dialecticorum vel rhetorum prodeunt argumentis, non facile divinae virtutis sunt aptanda mysteriis (emphasis added).
97[Isaac, Le Peri Hermeneias, 47: par une charmante ironie du sort, entre sous la plume
de lennemi le plus virulent des artes libraux dans lhistoire de la thologie mdivale.]
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emblematic and extremely significant for reasserting Aristotelian philosophys function, especially in its logical and ontological categories, as the
handmaiden to theological investigation.
Thus Valla took up Peter Damians radical critique of philosophy, but
he placed it within the specific viewpoint of early humanism. The opposition to the introduction of philosophy into theology had continued, as is
well known, beyond Peter Damian. An entire cultural current of medieval
theology constantly maintained a contrary and antithetical stance to the
Boethian origins of scholasticism, from Bernard to the Victorines to
the Masters of theology at the University of Paris in the first decades of the
thirteenth century. Two of these Masters were Jean de Saint-Gilles
(the first to hold the second chair of the Dominicans), who polemicized
against the barbarization of theological language through Aristotelian
metaphysics, and Odo of Chteauroux (chancellor of the church of
Paris), who rebuked theologians who sell themselves to the sons of the
Greeks, that is to the philosophers.98
And yet, to understand the full import and the true sense of this comparison between the various anti-Boethian stances, which span from the
eleventh century to the thirteenth (but that continue thereafter as well),
and the introductory pages to De libero arbitrio, it must be added immediately that Valla profoundly modified Peter Damians critique of philosophy. Valla rejected any and every union of theology with philosophy, but
he did so within a perspective inverse to that of the Bishop of Ravenna.
For his rejection had a different aim, namely that of formulating a new
principle of theology: the use of rhetoric, as described in Quintilians
Institutio, as a new instrument of philological and categorical criticism,
both for the study of scripture and for theological argumentation. Thus
Vallas polemic inhabited a specific and unique historico-cultural context.
On the one hand, it stood in antithesis to the neo-Thomism of his time. It
was the critique of a theological methodology that Valla judged unsuitable
to the new exigencies arising from contemporary Christian praxis and
from the shift taking place in the first half of the fifteenth century. On the
other hand, it stood in opposition to Boethiuss theological Aristotelianism,
which had reached its culmination in Thomas and in the special role he
had given to philosophy, namely that of handmaiden to theology.99
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Valla yet again identifies moments of cultural rupture and assaults the
theoretical foundations of his contemporaries (in this specific case, the
neo-Thomists of the fifteenth century). He achieves this complex operation by working on two levels. On one, he revaluates Thomass work per se
in an historiographic retrospective. On the other, he illustrates its unique
character, thus showing that its revival under wholly different circumstances is not valid. To Vallas mind, Thomass thought was organically
related to the historical circumstances of the thirteenth century. Lacking
new investigatory tools, it was unsuitable for resolving new problematics.
In this sense, the cultural break on which Valla insists appears as the clear
reversal of the theoretical arguments underlying the restoration of
Thomism in the fifteenth century.
3.1.4.The Epistemological Correlation between Philosophy and Theology in
Question II, Article 3 of the Commentary on Boethius, and the References
to Jeromes Letters to Eustochium, to the Orator Magnus, and to
Pammachius
Question II of the Commentary on Boethius is entirely devoted to the
theme of the epistemological relationship between philosophy and theology.100 In Aquinass terminology (as announced in the Questions very
title), the problem concerns the possibility of, and the analytical and argumentative instruments proper to, the manifestation of divine knowledge
(manifestatio divinae cognitionis). Article 3 constitutes the problematic
nucleus as well as the resolution of Thomass treatment. Since he desired
to demonstrate the reducibility of the knowledge of divine truths (cognitio divinorum) to a science (scientia), i.e. to demonstrate the very possibility of theology, he had to describe its method both on a formal level of
investigation and language (Article 1: treating divine truths by means
of inquiry; Article 4: concealing divine truths by new and obscure
words)101 and on the plane of its specific contents (Article 2: the existence of a science of divine truths; Article 3: whether in the science of
100For the text, we follow the critical edition: Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum
Boethii de Trinitate, ed. Bruno Decker (Leiden: Brill, 1965). For the dating of the work, cf.
ibid., p. 44. [English translations are based on those of Rose Emmanuella Brennan in
Thomas Aquinas, The Trinity and the Unicity of the Intellect, tr. R.E. Brennan (St. Louis:
B. Herder, 1946), from the on-line text (accessed 03.09.2013): http://dhspriory.org/thomas/
BoethiusDeTr.htm#23.]
101Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, quae. II, art. 1: divina
investigando tractare; art. 4: divina velanda novis et obscuris verbis (tr. Brennan,
modified).
102Ibid., quae. II, art. 2: de divinis esse aliqua scientia; art. 3: utrum in scientia fidei,
quae est de Deo, liceat rationibus philosophicis uti (tr. Brennan, modified).
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There was an uninterrupted tradition of using Greek and Latin culture for
Christian apologetics and theology, constantly pursued even by those
closest in time to Jeromes cultural context. Thus, with a view to their literary style, Jerome characterizes Lactantius as Ciceronian and Hilary of
Poitiers as Quintilianesque. To those who took a stand against pagan
culture, Jerome was therefore able to respond in defense of his own works:
What is so amazing if I, too, desire to turn secular wisdom, on account of the
charm of its eloquence and the beauty of its aspect, from a slave and prisoner into an Israelite?106
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This is the passage cited by Aquinas in the sed contra, but with a variant
and an omission that show his own peculiar take on it. Thomas leaves out
the phrase especially the Platonists and changes ought to be claimed
(vindicanda) to ought to be taken up (assumenda). As for the missing
Platonists, might Aquinas have had an interest (in the context of the sed
contra, and above all in the corpus of his solution to the problem at hand)
in enlarging and extending Augustines statement to all of pre-Christian
philosophy, and perhaps even in insisting (especially) on the peripatetic
strain (Aristotelians), thus diverging from Augustines view on GrecoHellenistic culture?
Regarding the expression ought to be claimed (vindicanda), it is
immediately connected in Augustines text to the discourse that follows,
and its meaning is illustrated allegorically with a scriptural reference to
Exodus 3:22, 11:2, and 12:35. In contrast, Thomass substitution of assumenda
for vindicanda removes the statement from its immediate context and
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obscures Augustines specific solution for reducing Greek and pagan philosophical knowledge to Christian preaching. Augustines text continues:
For just as the Egyptians had not only idols but also vases and ornaments
of gold and silver and clothing which that people [sc. the Israelites], when
leaving Egypt, secretly claimed as its own so as to put them to better use ,
thus the combined teachings of the pagans not only include false and superstitious images and heavy burdens of superfluous toil, which each of us,
departing the community of pagans with Christ as our guide, ought to
despise and avoid; but they also contain liberal disciplines that are quite
suited to the service of the truth as well as certain very useful moral teachings . What is perversely and unjustly abused in obedience to demons, a
Christian ought to carry away and apply to the just employment of preaching the Gospel.110
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E. Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism. The Union of Eloquence and
Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 330; and
Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 7687. It has not been possible to consult Edward Kennard Rand, Cicero in the Courtroom of St. Thomas (Milwaukee: Marquette
University Press, 1946). This means that also from the perspective of the use of secular
literature (litterae saeculares) within the realm of the study and the teaching of theology
(academic and pastoral), a profound difference distinguishes Valla from Thomas: rhetoric, as it is employed by Valla in the service of theological science, is placed outside of
Ciceronianism and, differently from Thomass conception, is essentially inscribed in
the Quintilianesque model. But this topic will be fully treated in the fourth part of the
present essay. Here it is important to cite a passage from ch. 12 of Contra impugnantes,
significant for its theoretical denseness and synthesis, which must be kept in mind during
the discussion of Vallas Quintilianesque rhetoric and theological investigations.
Thomass text reads: It should be known that the use of secular wisdom and eloquence
in theology is in a certain way to be approved, in another to be blamed. It is to be blamed
when someone uses them for boastful ostentation or when he is chiefly interested in
secular wisdom and eloquence: for then he thinks it necessary either to be silent about or
to reject what is not approved by secular knowledge, such as articles of faith that are
above human reason. And likewise whoever is chiefly interested in eloquence has as his
object to lead his listeners to admiration not of the subject of his speech, but of the
speaker himself; this is the way that worldly wisdom and eloquence were used by the
pseudo-apostles, against whom the Apostle spoke in his letter to the Corinthians . It is,
however, to be approved when someone uses secular wisdom and eloquence not for the
display of his own vanity but for the utility of his audience, who are thus at any moment
more easily and more effectively taught or, if adversaries, convinced; and likewise when
someone does not treat them chiefly as ends but uses them as means in the service of
sacred doctrine, which is his chief interest, just as he takes up all other things in its service
; it was thus that the apostles, too, used eloquence. Hence Augustine in bk. IV [ch. 7] of
De doctrina christiana says that in the words of the Apostle wisdom was the guide with
eloquence following as its fellow, and wisdom in the lead did not cast off eloquence following behind. But nevertheless later doctors have since made greater use of secular wisdom and eloquence, and this is the reason why earlier it was not philosophers and
rhetoricians who were chosen to preach but common folk and fishermen, who then converted the philosophers and orators: the reason is so that our faith would not consist in
human wisdom but in the power of God (ibid., ch. 12.14787, p. A136: Sciendum est
quod uti sapientia et eloquentia saeculari in sacra doctrina quodammodo commendatur
et quodammodo reprehenditur. Reprehenditur quidem quando aliquis ad iactantiam eis
utitur et quando eloquentiae et sapientiae saeculari principaliter studet: tunc enim oportet quod illa vel taceat vel neget quae saecularis scientia non approbat, sicut articulos
fidei qui sunt supra rationem humanam. Et similiter qui eloquentiae principaliter studet,
homines non intendit ducere in admirationem eorum quae dicit sed dicentis; et hoc
modo mundana sapientia et eloquentia pseudoapostoli utebantur contra quos Apostolus
loquitur in epistola ad Corinthios . Commendatur autem quando non ad se ostentandum sed ad utilitatem audientium, qui sic quandoque facilius et efficacius instruuntur
vel convincuntur adversarii, utitur aliquis sapientia et eloquentia saeculari; et iterum
quando aliquis non principaliter eis intendit sed eis utitur in obsequium sacrae doctrinae
cui principaliter inhaeret, ut sic omnia alia in obsequium eius assumat et ita etiam
apostoli eloquentia utebantur. Unde Augustinus in IV De doctrina christiana dicit quod
in verbis Apostli erat dux sapientia et sequens comes eloquentia, et sapientia praecedens
eloquentiam sequentem non respuebat. Sed tamen posteriores doctores adhuc magis usi
sunt sapientia et eloquentia saeculari propter eandem rationem qua non prius philosophi et rhetores sunt electi ad praedicandum, sed plebei et piscatores qui postmodum
philosophos et oratoresconverterunt: ut scilicet fides nostra non consistat in sapientia
hominum sed in virtute Dei).
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Now, as sacred doctrine is founded upon the light of faith, so philosophy
depends upon the light of natural reason; wherefore it is impossible that
philosophical truths are contrary to those that are of faith; but they are deficient as compared to them. Nevertheless they incorporate some similitudes
of those higher truths, and some things that are preparatory for them, just as
nature is the preamble to grace. If, however, anything is found in the teachings of the philosophers contrary to faith, this error does not properly belong
to philosophy, but is due to an abuse of philosophy owing to the insufficiency of reason. Therefore also it is possible from the principles of philosophy to refute an error of this kind, either by showing it to be altogether
impossible, or not to be necessary. For just as those things which are of faith
cannot be demonstratively proved, so certain things contrary to them cannot be demonstratively shown to be false, but they can be shown not to be
necessary. Thus, in sacred doctrine we are able to make a threefold use of
philosophy .112
112Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, quae. 2, art. 3: Sicut autem sacra
doctrina fundatur supra lumen fidei, ita philosophia fundatur supra lumen naturale rationis; unde impossibile est quod ea, quae sunt philosophiae, sint contraria his quae sunt
fidei, sed deficiunt ab eis. Continent autem aliquas eorum similitudines et quaedam ad ea
praeambula, sicut natura praeambula est ad gratiam. Si quid autem in dictis philosophorum invenitur contrarium fidei, hoc non est philosophia, sed magis philosophiae abusus ex
defectu rationis. Et ideo possibile est ex principiis philosophiae huiusmodi errorem refellere vel ostendendo omnino esse impossibile vel ostendendo non esse necessarium. Sicut
enim ea quae sunt fidei non possunt demonstrative probari, ita quaedam contraria eis non
possunt demonstrative ostendi esse falsa, sed potest ostendi ea non esse necessaria. Sic
ergo in sacra doctrina philosophia possumus tripliciter uti (tr. Brennan).
113Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: preambula fidei ad notificandum per aliquas similitudines
quae sunt fidei, sicut Augustinus in libro de Trinitate utitur multis similitudinibus ex
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116Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: ut scilicet propter eam [sc. doctrinam philosophorum] veritas
fidei credatur.
117Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: quantum ad eius veritatem (ad secundum), propter rationem
dictorum (ad octavum), in obsequium fidei (ad quintum), solum in errorem ducit (ad
sextum) (tr. Brennan, modified).
118The fundamental study, also because it uses the earlier work of Mandonnet, Congar,
Chenu and others, is Martin Grabmanns ample analytical and historical work, Die theologische Erkenntnis- und Einleitungslehre des hl. Thomas von Aquin, auf Grund seiner Schrift In
Boethium de Trinitate, in Zusammenhang der Scholastik des 13. und beginnenden 14.
Jahrhunderts dargestellt (Freiburg, Switzerland: Paulus, 1948). In particular see ch. 1 (pp.
132) and ch. 4 (pp. 101186), for the contemporary cultural context and the analysis of
Question II, Article 3. Important are the references to the doctrinal theses against which
Aquinas argues, and the study of the developments given rise to by the discourse on theological method elaborated by Thomas in his Expositio. A direct reading of Chenu, La
Thologie comme science au XIIIe sicle, is still useful.
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For just as those things which are of faith cannot be demonstratively proved,
so certain things contrary to them cannot be demonstratively shown to be
false, but they can be shown not to be necessary. (emphasis added)
Thus the distinctions already underlined on the gnoseological and epistemological level are repeated on the methodological level as well. From a
logico-argumentative point of view, the two sciences diverge without a
continuous solution, and thus neither interference nor immediate transfer between them is possible. Such an argumentative procedure as has
already been seen with Aquinass responses to the objections prefacing
the article in question would lead either to a type of philosophical rationalism (the reduction of theology to philosophy) or to its contrary (the
reduction of philosophy to theology): a theological syncretism that, only
when used ideologically, can succeed in establishing immediate implications and univocally apodictic (demonstrative) connections between
qualitatively different levels. But beyond these procedures of reduction,
which in one direction favor theology and in the other philosophy a
most disagreeable mixture of water and wine (ad quintum) Aquinas
sees a deeper, intrinsic relationship between classical philosophy and
Christian theology: a subordinate relationship (in subordinatione), in
which the principle of analogy directs the use of philosophical categories
within the language that is specific and proper to faith. The ontological
foundation for such a logical and cognitive transfer and not only on the
theoretical level, as Augustine noted in De doctrina christiana is
expressed in the formula nature is the preamble to grace. Thomas thus
takes up and expands Augustines proposition for resolving the antinomy
between Christian faith and classical culture, but at the same time he
moves it onto a theoretical plain informed by ontological and theological
principles.119
3.1.8.Thomass Commentary and the Controversy over Philosophy in the
Parisian Faculty in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century
Aquinass reformulation of Augustines proposition in his extremely lucid
Commentary on Boethius (1255/59) actually constituted a position diametrically opposed to the conservative views of his contemporaries, which
prevailed not only in the Parisian theology faculty but also within the
119On Aquinass responses to the obiectiones, which represent various contemporary
and traditional doctrinal positions, cf. Grabmann, Die theologische, esp. 179186. It must be
added, though, that we interpret Thomass text differently from Grabmann.
120Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et lAverroisme latin au XIIIme sicle, 1:33, n.1: Sunt
aliqui qui bene linguam spiritualem didicerunt, id est theologiam, sed tamen in ea barbarizant, eam per philosophiam corrumpentes; qui enim metaphysicam didicit semper vult
in sacra Scriptura metaphysice procedere: similiter qui geometriam didicit semper loquitur de punctis et lineis in theologia. Tales induunt regem vestibus sordidis et laceratis; item
spargunt pulverem in lucem et inde nascuntur cyniphes.
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It is reprehensible for the theological faculty, which is and is called the city
of the sun of truth and understanding, to strive to speak in the language of
the philosophers. That is, those who study and teach in the theological faculty try to furnish it with authority from the sayings of the philosophers, as if
such had not been handed down by the highest wisdom, which is the font of
all other wisdom . Many almost despise the words of theology and of the
saints but think those of philosophy and of the pagans to be the best, and
they sell themselves to the sons of the Greeks, that is to the philosophers.121
The passages by these two figures (who were mentioned before the examination of Thomass text) have been reproduced here almost in their
entirety, as they are exemplary and indicative of the polemic against philosophy that was waged by Parisian theologians in the first half of the thirteenth century. Above all they are emblematic of the context in which
Aquinas outspokenly proffered his response to such sentiments. For
Thomas, philosophy is the indispensable instrument (organon) for creating a new theoretical foundation for theology. And philosophy, precisely
as secular wisdom and despite the (Pauline) antinomy between it, on the
one hand, and the folly of the Cross and divine wisdom, on the other
remained the noblest and historically the most fully developed cultural
fruit, the most scientifically structured episteme, the most perfect model
of rationality that Christendom could derive or receive from Greek and
Hellenistic antiquity. Furthermore, this philosophy came to be identified
precisely with Aristotelianism, which was taken up and reassessed in
Thomass time as the synthesis of Greek culture and the richest source of
analytical tools for the study of the material world. Nature (natura), having been rediscovered, was now studied and understood by way of the
Aristotelian concept of physis.122
3.1.9.The Prologue to De libero arbitrio and Vallas Renewal of the AntiPhilosophical Tradition
The passages cited above of the two eminent Parisians, polemicizing
against philosophy and for the purity of spiritual language, lead us, on
121Ibid., 1:32, n. 3: Reprehensibile est quod facultas theologiae, quae est et vocatur
civitas solis veritatis et intelligentiae, nititur loqui lingua philosophorum, id est illi qui
in facultate theologiae student et docent conantur ei praebere auctoritatem e dictis philosophorum, ac si non fuerit tradita a summa sapientia, a qua est omnis alia sapientia .
Multi, verba theologica et verba sanctorum quasi nihil habentes, verba philosophica,
verba ethnicorum optima arbitrantur, et seipsos vendunt filiis Graecorum, id est
philosophis.
122Cf. Grabmann, Die theologische, 147149.
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126Valla, De libero arbitrio, 562: Fugiamus igitur cupiditatem alta sapiendi, humilibus
potius consentientes; christiani namque hominis nihil magis interest quam sentire humiliter; de ista quaestione, quod ad me attinet, amplius curiosus non ero, ne maiestatem
Dei vestigans, obscurer a lumine (tr. Trinkaus).
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3.2.Dialectic/Rhetoric
If only Boethius had preferred to devote the effort he expended
in writing dialectical texts to reading Quintilian! He would thus
not have made mistakes in rhetorical matters, and he would
have become a weightier and more religious philosopher.
L. Valla, De vero falsoque bono, III. 12.1518 (var. )130
With De libero arbitrio (1438), Valla definitively completed his anti-philosophical critique of Boethiuss Consolation of Philosophy. This critique was
begun in De voluptate (the alpha redaction of 1431), was developed gradually and elaborated into several individual themes, and was finally concentrated, the whole being nearly recapitulated in the classic problematic
of freedom vs. predestination, in the writing and immediate diffusion of
De libero arbitrio. To be sure, Valla would continue working on this topic,
slowly moving beyond the negative phase and towards the positive elaboration of a new guideline for theology alternative to that of Boethius. At any
rate, by 1438 he had definitively completed his critique of philosophy and
had made his consequent demand for an alternative theology, therewith
signaling a break with the philosophical and theological culture of scholasticism from Boethius to Thomas to the neo-Thomists of his own time. It is
on the basis of these radical positions that Valla made his name among his
contemporaries. He enjoyed the support of many humanists, who often
tenaciously agreed with his new propositions. Nevertheless he was attacked
and denounced as a heretic in the Invectivae (Invectives) of Poggio
Bracciolini, an accusation leveled at him earlier in his inquisitorial trial in
Naples in 1444 (and even by scholastics outside the Aragonese realm).
3.2.1.Chapter 12, Book III ofDe vero falsoque bono: Text and Context
Following in the scriptural footsteps of Paul (Col. 2:8), as he repeatedly
states throughout his oeuvre (from the Epistola apologetica [Letter of
Defense] to De professione religiosorum [On the Profession of the Religious]
all the way to the Encomium), Valla dedicated his De voluptate and De
libero arbitrio to a kind of damnatio philosophiae. On the one hand he condemns classical philosophy in almost courtroom fashion, definitively
130Valla, De vero fasloque bono, 202 (Apparatus I to p. 113.1518): Boethius qui utinam
operam quam scribendis dialecticis libris impendit, Quintiliano legendo maluisset impendere! Nam nec ita in rhetoricis errasset, et gravior et religiosior philosophus evasisset.
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also damn him for not furnishing you with a reward? And will you dictate to
him which favors he should especially grant you, as if you were wiser or
greater than he? And although he, knowing what is to your advantage, has
done you a favor, will you reject it and most ungratefully call his kindness an
injury? This is the rebuke with which those who complained about fortune
and God ought to have been scourged. But boastful philosophy was never
able to do this, because it did not love and worship God, despite knowing
him or having the capacity to know him. It preferred instead to fornicate
with the lovers of the earth.132
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work that indicate the stages of its transformation from one revision to the
next. Unfortunately, this issue is extremely complicated and has not, as far
as we are concerned, been definitively resolved by Lorchs critical edition
of 1970 and this despite her insightful introduction to the text. It will
therefore be necessary to pass over issues marginal to the chronological
sequence of the dialogues various drafts and revisions and to reduce
Lorchs complex solution, for use as a working hypothesis, to a rather simplified outline.
3.2.2.The Editorial Evolution of the alpha, beta, and gamma Versions of
De vero falsoque bono and De Panizza Lorchs Edition: Chronological
Correlations between the gamma Redaction and the First Version of the
Dialecticae disputationes, and the Impact of Vallas Inquisitorial Trial
(1444) on His Work
Lorch established the following stages in the editorial evolution of Vallas
dialogue. There are ultimately four versions of De vero falsoque bono, with
variant titles and continual expansion of the text: de voluptate (on pleasure), de vero bono (on the true good), de vero falsoque bono (on the true
and false good). The first two are: the alpha redaction of 1431 (often called
the Rome-Piacenza version, referring to Vallas geographical location at
the time of writing) and the beta redaction of 1433 (a revision of alpha,
finished during Vallas incomplete two-year teaching stint at Pavia, edited
at Milan, and known as the Pavia-Milan version). Vallas work undergoes
a clean temporal and qualitative break in its third redaction, gamma.
A profound and complex revision of beta, it is to be placed in the period of
Vallas residence at the court of Alfonso the Magnanimous, from 1435 to
1448. More precisely, Lorch hypothesizes that the gamma revision belongs
to ca. 1444 or, at the latest, 1449. Finally, the fourth and last version of the
work is delta. This is the definitive redaction, consisting in a further revision of the gamma text that is purely formal and stylistic. From what Lorch
writes, and according to the dating established for gamma (1444 or 1449),
it seems possible to infer that Valla completed the delta redaction in the
final years of his Neapolitan period, ca. 14471448, or at a time (immediately?) succeeding his move to Rome (the end of 1448), where he joined
the curia of the newly elected Nicholas V. Valla would serve the papal
court until his death in 1457, first under Nicholas V and then Callixtus III.
Since the revision of gamma to delta was, as has been said, mostly stylistic
and did not affect the central contents, Lorch combines both versions of
Vallas dialogue into one single redaction, thus taking the Neapolitan (or
This is a summary of the chronological succession of the various redactions of Vallas dialogue as amply reconstructed by Lorch in her critical
edition. It must nevertheless be noted that, although the broad outline is
valid, the chronological relationship between the Neapolitan revision
of De vero falsoque bono and Vallas overall literary production during
his years at the Aragonese court (143548) remains unclear. This problem must be confronted when trying to achieve precision with regard
to the various phases of revision of De vero falsoque bono, both from
achronological point of view and for understanding the dialogues contents in the context of Vallas broader humanistic and theological work.
In particular and at issue here is the passage cited above from chapter 12,
book III of the dialogue Lorch seems to fall into contradiction concerning the chronological nexus between the dating of the gamma revision of
De vero falsoque bono and the composition (first version) of the Dialecticae
disputationes. She retains 1438/39 as the date of the Dialecticae disputationes (first version), which is generally accepted and which, we believe,
ought to be considered approximately correct. Then, she maintains that
the gamma revision of De vero falsoque bono was completed by 1444 or
by 1449 at the latest. Finally, and despite what has been said so far, she
explicitly states that the gamma version of the dialogue was composed by
Valla while he was working at the Dialectica.135
This last statement is based on what is said in the long passage cited
above from chapter 12, book III of the dialogue, where the interlocutor
Antonio da Rho emphatically refers to Vallas Dialecticae disputationes.
Indeed, the reference is explicit and leaves no room for doubt:
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This is how Boethius should have acted, who like so many others was
ensnared by an excessive love for dialectic. But how much error was in dialectic, and that no one has written circumspectly about it, and that it is a part of
rhetoric, our Lorenzo here, in my opinion, has begun to write most truly.
(emphasis added)
A basic reading of this passage and the context in which it occurs would
certainly suggest that the gamma redaction of De vero falsoque bono was
composed at the same time as (the first version of) the Dialecticae disputationes the very conclusion reached by Lorch.
Nevertheless, the force and the significance of the mention made of the
Disputationes in the dialogue transcend that of a simple chronological reference. Indeed, only by considering the larger theoretical import of the
statement made by Antonio da Rho (the main speaker in book III) can its
meaning be understood for the interpretation of the text. Thus while
accepting Lorchs sketch of the evolution of Vallas dialogue as the most
likely hypothesis, we would be inclined to move the chronological confines of the gamma redaction to the period (immediately) following 1444.
The general reasons and the particular textual analysis that induce us to
correct, or better, to refine the editorial phase of the gamma (and then the
delta) version can be encapsulated in the following points.
First, it seems necessary to repeat here something we have had occasion to note elsewhere: 1444 the year of the inquisitorial trial held in
Naples against Valla must not be considered solely as one biographical
fact or incident, important as it may be, among the various affairs and
complex situations that dot the humanists life. Instead it marks a turn, or
at the least it was a decisive moment, in Vallas cultural development,
which was starkly characterized by tenacious dissent and by a radical criticism of both the scholastic tradition and of contemporary Ciceronianism.
The inquisitorial trial had defining repercussions for and notable impacts
on Vallas successive literary production. It gives us the opportunity to
mark a biographico-cultural caesura in his residence at Alfonso of Aragons
court: between an early period (from 1435 to 1444) and a late one (comprising the final years of service to Alfonso, until Vallas return to Rome in
1448/49 and his definitive transfer to Nicholas Vs curia). This distinction
between the two periods, split by the year of the inquisitorial trial, is made
with a view to the following two objectives: on the one hand, to understand more adequately, even if only approximately, the fluctuations that
occurred in Vallas personal position in the Neapolitan chancery between
the years before 1444 and the period following the trial; on the other hand,
to establish a basis for grasping more precisely the developments and
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and the critical aims represented by those editorial revisions has already
proved revealing and incisive in the one particular case where successive
versions have been studied, namely with the Dialecticae disputationes.
Indeed, the comparison of the first redaction of the Disputationes (1438/39)
with the second and the third, to be placed respectively at the close of the
late Neapolitan period and the final years of the Roman decade, has led to
two conclusions of great importance for understanding the historico-cultural place of Vallas humanism.
The first conclusion concerns the significance of the inquisitorial trial
of 1444 and the dimensions that it eventually took on. It was not only a
specific reaction on the part of current scholasticism to Vallas theses,
namely his critique of logical and metaphysical Aristotelianism, and his
patristic renewal of rhetorical theology by means of a systematic deployment of philology and Quintilians categorical schematics. Actually, the
trial (to which Valla reacted with his Apologia ad papam Eugenium IV
[Apology to Pope Eugenius IV] of 1445) turned out to be the reactionary
counterpart of a simultaneous conservative counter-critique, more complex and thus more significant, hailing from humanist circles with
Ciceronian leanings. This other, humanist trial was geographically much
more diffuse and ideologically much more profound. Also begun within
the Aragonese chancery itself, by Bartolomeo Facio and Panormita, it was
prosecuted to the full as a veritable Kulturkampf by Poggio Bracciolini in
his Invectivae against Valla (14521454) and in related letters. Poggio had
fully understood from the very beginning the nature of the shift that Valla
and his followers were effecting within humanist culture. In his Invectivae,
he took up and sharpened nearly all of the essential elements of the
polemic against Valla that had already converged in Facios writings in
Naples and that had thenceforth ricocheted in humanist circles throughout central and northern Italy. Valla was gradually induced, indeed constrained, to undertake and devote increasing energy to a systematic
self-defense (going well beyond the appeal to Eugenius IV). This he produced in his Invectivae in Facium (Invectives against Facio) of 1447 and his
Antidota in Pogium of 1452/53. Here we might observe, with reference to
the general theme of this essay, that in the Encomium of 1457 Valla would
ultimately take what had initially been two lines of defense against his
accusers, gradually developed and elaborated in the Apologia to Eugenius
(against the scholastic tradition) and the Antidota in Pogium (in opposition to the old school of early humanism), and fuse them into a single
proposition for theological renewal (renovatio).
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beta
136This is the thesis that underlies the whole of ch. 1 of Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla.
Umanesimo e teologia, esp. 3387, and is treated explicitly in other parts of the same work.
But see also Di Napoli, Lorenzo Valla, 5799.
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write most truly. But to return to our philosopher. But to return to our
subject .137
subject .138
Let us first consider the initial part of chapter 12, book III of the dialogue,
which directly precedes the long passage (including the editorial variant
in question) cited above. In this way we will be able to reconstruct in full
the extensive critique of Boethius that Valla elaborates in this important
chapter, clarifying its rationale and identifying the alternative solutions
proposed in its final sentences.
According to Valla, Boethius argued in book IV of The Consolation of
Philosophy that good men always possess the true good (verum bonum)
while evil ones lack it utterly, thus identifying the true good with upright
behavior and the integrity of moral virtue (honestas). Now, to say what I
think of him, Valla continues in the guise of Antonio da Rho,
begging the pardon of a man so learned in every area of study, he called in
philosophy as his patroness and bestowed upon her almost greater honor
than on our religion, and thus he did not resolve the question, nor did he
demonstrate what the true good is.139
But this reasoning, Valla observes, can be easily refuted. In the syllogisms
major premise, what is meant by the good (bonum)? Does it mean the
good of happiness (bonum felicitatis)? Then the statement must be denied,
for no one is called good because he is happy but because he is virtuous
(virtute praeditus). Does it mean the good of virtue (bonum virtutis)? Then
the reasoning remains completely valid, but it will be necessary to reformulate the argument in the following way:
Whoever is good has the good,
the good is virtue,
therefore every good man is virtuous.144
Valla notes that where Boethius errs, Cicero did not, namely in the
Tusculan Disputations (I 5,9), where he treated exactly the same question
using the same terminology: this linguistic ambiguity did not dupe
Cicero.145 Valla concludes:
although blessedness and virtue are called good, nevertheless the good are
ultimately those who are graced with virtue, not with happiness and
blessedness; here Boethius, who had a greater fondness for dialecticians
than for rhetoricians, was deceived.146
142Ibid., 112.1723: Quis crederet virum ita diligentem et acutum, taceo elegantem, in
huiusmodi errorem propter ignorationem unius verbi, et quidem facillimi devenisse? Nam
bonum tum virtutum tum felicitatem dicimus, sicut e contrario malum. At virtus
quidem et vitium actiones sunt, felicitas vero atque infelicitas qualitates, res etiam effectu
ipso inter se longissime distantes.
143Ibid., 112.3233: quicunque est bonus is habet bonum, bonum autem est beatitudo,
ergo omnis bonus beatus.
144Ibid., 112.3738: quicunque est bonus is habet bonum, bonum autem est virtus, ergo
omnis bonus, virtute praeditus.
145Ibid., 112.3839: non Ciceronem fefellit ista verbi ambiguitas.
146Ibid., 113.47: Ita cum bonum beatitudo dicatur et virtus, boni tamen ii demum
sunt qui virtute affecti sunt non qui felicitate et beatitudine; in quo Boethius dialecticorum
quam rhetoricorum amantior deceptus est.
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148[For these and subsequent quotations of chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque
bono, consult n. 132 above.]
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Valla rebukes Boethius above all for devoting himself excessively to dialectic and neglecting rhetoric. This first criticism of Boethiuss work must be
traced to Vallas peculiar vision of scholasticism. For he was struck by how
forcefully Boethiuss logical writings influenced medieval culture and
scholastic theology itself. But there is something more important in his
critique of Boethius. Valla was certainly aware that Boethius had read and
studied Ciceros rhetorical works; he therefore had to substantiate his criticism in such a way as to implicate all of Boethiuss rhetorical and philosophical writings in the criticism of his dialectics. Hence the fact that the
ultimate cause of the polemic against Boethius must be sought in Vallas
anti-Ciceronianism, or better, in the absolute primacy he accorded to
Quintilians Institutio oratoria. This is what Valla underlines here in no
uncertain terms: If only he had preferred to devote the effort to reading
Quintilian. What follows is even more explicit: He would thus not have
made mistakes in rhetorical matters, and he would have become a
weightier and more religious philosopher. Thus Boethius not only
subordinated rhetoric to dialectic, but he also failed to grasp the dimension Quintilian added to rhetoric. That is to say, he remained within a tradition that left ample room for the dichotomy between rhetoric and
dialectic and accorded the latter a primacy and autonomy that it did not
deserve. Furthermore, by admitting that dichotomy and rejecting rhetoric
in the sense conceived by Quintilian as a universal and organic
science of language Boethian philosophy exhausted itself in the formalism of dialectic (and in the logicism of scholasticism). At the same
time, it kept itself from being used in a way that was more valid and
more consonant with the Christian religion than the Aristotelian Organon
(and the Aristotelianism of scholasticism) had been. In short, we have
here in nuce the motive force behind the full range of the critique of
Boethius, to which Valla devoted the three books of De vero falsoque bono
and De libero arbitrio.
With the gamma redaction, Valla switched to a new (and definitive)
formulation of his critique of Boethius. The purely negative assessment
and rejection of Boethian dialectic was replaced by the positive and thematic statement on the nature and validity of Quintilians rhetoric.
Boethius erred as Valla continues in the gamma redaction by letting
himself be seduced, like so many others, by the procedures of peripatetic
logic: he was ensnared by an excessive love for dialectic. That was the
source of formal and substantive errors which it was necessary to oppose
with a new conception of rhetoric, one that at the same time would assign
the art of dialectic a more precise and valid place.
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Later he adds, well does one of our own writers say, the philosophers are
the patriarchs of the heretics. It is they who have stained with their perverse doctrine the spotlessness of the Church.151
Valla echoes Jeromes words, transferring them to the immediate context of his critique of Boethius. What is more, this same letter of Jerome
causes Valla to connect the theoretical antinomy (philosophy vs. theology) closely with the actual theological life of a Christian. Hence the final
words of Vallas passage, which once again echo well-known texts of Paul:
boastful philosophy did not love and worship God, despite its knowing
him or capacity for doing so. It preferred to fornicate with the lovers of the
earth.152
151Ibid., 1148: Quae enim potest alia maior esse temeritas, quam Dei sibi non dicam
similitudinem, sed aequalitatem, vindicare, et brevi sententia omnium haereticorum
venena complecti, quae de philosophorum et maxime Pythagorae et Zenonis principis
Stoicorum fonte manarunt? pulchre quidam nostrorum ait: philosophi, patriarchae haereticorum, Ecclesiae puritatem perversa maculavere doctrina (tr. Fremantle, Lewis, and
Martley, in Schaff and Wace (eds.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers).
152In Valla, De vero falsoque bono (ed. Lorch), 203 (apparatus II), Lorch cites as sources
for this passage Jerome, In Isaiam V 23,2 and In epistulam ad Galatas III 5, respectively in
PL 24:206207 and PL 26:416419. These same references are provided by Radetti in Valla,
Scritti filosofici e religiosi, 204, n. 3, but to our mind they are insufficient and should be substituted with those we have spoken about here. Vallas critique of Boethiuss Consolation of
Philosophy is not considered at all by Pierre Paul Courcelle, La Consolation de Philosophie
dans la tradition littraire. Antcdents et postrit de Boce (Paris: tudes Augustiniennes,
1967), 317332; but how to explain the new spirit developed by the Renaissance and that
this new spirit caused the Consolation to be read much less? It seems to us rather reductive to assign the reason to a change in literary taste: ibid., 332.
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In his book on Lorenzo Valla, Mario Fois writes compactly and suggestively, and with the full support of precise references to primary and secondary sources, on the problem of conscience in the realm of humanist
culture. The problem of conscience is the antinomy with which the religious believer has had to grapple, ever since the beginning of Christianity,
between the love of literature and the desire for God. This phrase is the
well-known title of a book by Jean Leclercq, who treated the theme
throughout the medieval period. Fois, who can be thought of as continuing Leclercqs work, followed the question of the antagonistic relationship
between the Christian faith and the study of ancient pagan literature
(humanae litterae) into the Renaissance, to see how it was recast in the
context of humanism. Moreover, Fois sought to identify the many and varied solutions offered to this problem across the whole arc of early humanism, beginning with the polemic between Albertino Mussato and
Giovannino da Mantova in the early fourteenth century and ending with
Vallas position, especially as it appears in the preface to book IV of the
Elegantiae. Fois concludes that, for Valla, eloquence is both the forum and
the definitive means for resolving the matter of conscience, such that
Vallas solution is the triumph of rhetoric in humanism.154
Foiss reference to the Elegantiae and his related conclusion are dead
on; they perfectly highlight Vallas original and unique contribution to
overcoming the problem of conscience (in the first half of the fifteenth
century). The preface, or proemium, to book IV of the Elegantiae is perhaps
the text that gives most explicit and complete voice to the humanist
attempt to establish the proper relationship between rhetoric and theological study. What would be declared programmatically in the Encomium
of 1457 regarding the proper mode of theologizing is developed compactly
153Ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7723, f. 2v: Lumen ingenii sunt litterae.
154See Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, above all ch. 5: Il problema di coscienza dellUmanesimo e la soluzione valliana (pp. 195260), esp. 249258. The other
reference is to Jean Leclercq, Cultura umanistica e desiderio di Dio (Firenze: Sansoni, 1965)
(from the original French: Lamour des lettres et le dsir de Dieu [Paris: ditions du Cerf,
1957]) [English translation = The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic
Culture, tr. Catharine Masrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961)].
These are the first lines of the preface, the first blows of the objection to
which Valla intends to respond with an apology both for his work in general and for the Elegantiae in particular. Actually, it was the same objection
that, ever since the beginning of Christianity, had continuously cropped
up across the centuries in the learned and devout tradition of the religious
community. Raised and sustained by those who think themselves holier
and more religious, it insisted on the radical antinomy between the reading of the secular books of the pagans and a specifically Christian culture,
i.e. the insuperable antagonism between the study of ancient pagan literature (humanae litterae) and being a Christian. According to this view, the
love of literature ought to stay on the fringes of the Gospel, if not be extinguished altogether in theological faith and repudiated as unworthy of a
Christian, since it stands in antithesis to the desire for God.
Thus we once again encounter, clearly enunciated in the first lines of
the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae, the same problematic that
Thomas recast in Question II of his Commentary on Boethius. If visualized
155Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 612: Scio ego nonnullos, eorum praesertim qui sibi sanctiores et religiosiores videntur, ausuros meum institutum hoc
laboremque reprehendere, ut indignum christiano homine, ubi adhortor ceteros ad librorum saecularium lectionem. [All translations of the proemium are based on Garins Italian
version in ibid., which Camporeale follows.]
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graphically, the coordinates of the problem would be plotted symmetrically: along the axis of the constant (being a Christian) they would overlap
or perhaps be identical, while in the quadrants of the variable (the various
aspects and heuristic tools of classical culture) they would diverge, perhaps radically. Therefore, their respective solutions, reached or devised in
different historical periods of Christianity, actually end up being positions
whose adoption and particular significance lie in systems with utterly disparate points of reference. In Thomas, the terms of the antinomy were:
philosophy, or secular wisdom (sapientia saecularis), on the one hand,
and theology (sacra doctrina), or the science of faith (scientia fidei),
on the other; in Valla, they are: eloquence, or knowledge of literature
(doctrina litterarum), on the one hand, and the Christian religion (chris
tiana religio), or being a Christian (christianus homo), on the other.
Nevertheless, both Thomass Commentary and Vallas text are founded on
the same patristic authority: Jeromes Letter to Eustochium.
Thus Vallas objector takes up the traditional topos of Jeromes dream
along with the unappealable and inescapable judgment handed down in
it by Gods tribunal: a Ciceronian, not a Christian. To Jeromes mind, so
the objection goes, every believer in the Gospel should aim to be the latter:
the same man cannot be both religious and a Tullian. But if Jeromes
reading of Cicero caused him to be sentenced to flogging and to repudiating his Ciceronianism both practically and theoretically, should not the
lovers and promoters of humanae litterae be prosecuted and punished in
like manner? Writings and undertakings like the Elegantiae, and more
generally the new literary culture of its time, should suffer the same judgment and be convicted of the same crime as Jerome, a crime perpetrated
against Christian tradition and thought:
this charge does not pertain so much to the present work [the Elegantiae] as
to me in particular and to other literati whose erudition and study of secular
literature is condemned.
The conclusion: lovers of literature ought therefore to be forced to repudiate pagan antiquity and to repeat Jeromes pledge that he would not read
secular books.156
Vallas ample response as if forced into methodological alignment
with the issues at hand had to be developed along argumentative lines of
156Ibid., 612: ciceronianus , non christianus, quasi non potest fidelis esse et idem tullianus. Eoque spopondisse libros saeculares se non esse lecturum. Hoc crimen non
magis ad praesens opus pertinet, quam ad me ipsum ac ceteros litteratos, quorum studium
ac doctrina litterarum saecularium reprehenditur.
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Valla does not immediately pursue the contrast between rhetoric and
ornamentation, by which he might have resolved the antinomy in question. Instead, the differentiation, based on an organic and holistic conception of rhetoric (in the tradition of Isocrates and Quintilian), is taken up
159Ibid., 612: omnes oratores, omnes historici, omnes poetae, omnes philosophi,
omnes iurisconsulti, ceteri quoque scriptores.
160Ibid., 614: Cum Hieronymus quod ciceronianus est, reprehenditur, id reprehenditur
quod studiosus eloquentiae esset. Ideoque damnati et repulsi intelliguntur, qui comparandae eloquentiae gratia lectitantur.
161Ibid., 614: Nihil ne in illis libris [saecularibus] nisi eloquentia est? non memoria
temporum gentiumque historiae, sine quibus nemo non puer est? non multa ad mores
pertinentia? non omnium disciplinarum tractatio?
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The response to this question actually takes the form of a reiteration of the
anti-humanist stance. But once again, Valla brings the objectors insistence on combating the study of literature back around to the initial ambiguity between eloquence and ornamentation. Thus the renewal of the
objection is now turned on its head, transformed into the definitive and
precise clarification of the fundamental ambiguity. Vallas adversary
responds to the counter-question by repeating his own interpretation of
Jeromes text but the ornamentation, not the knowledge, of speaking is
what was rebuked167 and so Valla puts his case as explicitly as possible:
165Ibid., 61416: Cum eos duos lectitasse se Hieronymus fateatur, vide ne non tam de
oratoriis potius Ciceronis operibus quam de philosophicis dictum existimare debeas. Ego
certe de philosophicis dictum accipio, ubi soli philosophi nominantur; quodque platonicus esset ideo non obiectum, quasi sancte faceret Platonem legens, sed tantum ciceronianus, quod homo latinus magis Ciceronis stylum cupiebat exprimere, stylum, inquam, quo
ille utebatur in quaestionibus philosphiae, non quali in forensibus causis concionibusve
aut in senatu. Non enim orator causarum civilium Hieronymus, sed scriptor sanctarum
disputationum studebat evadere.
166Ibid., 616: Cur non ergo credamus non minus Platonem nocuisse ei quam
Ciceronem? Cur non magis philosophos quam oratores?
167Ibid., 616: at ornatus ipse dicendi reprehensus est, non scientia.
It is at this point that Valla raises the central issue, the one which the
entire preface is aimed at expressing and providing with argumentative
coherence: the distinction, or better, the contrast between philosophy
and eloquence vis--vis theology, stated here, finally, in its full range
of meaning. The ambiguity between eloquence and ornamentation
thefoundation of the objection to humanism disappears, and the art
ofspeaking (ars dicendi) takes on the organic and holistic significance of
rhetoric (rhetorica). Vallas text thus ends up being directly connected
(even the same expressions and patristic references are encountered)
with chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono and with the openingpages of De libero arbitrio. The conclusions are identical: (1) philosophy is the origin and (historical) manifestation of heresy; (2) the
negativejudgment of philosophy is a constant in the Christian tradition;
(3) the incompossibility between philosophy and the Christian religion is
radical.
Now we come to the most significant passage of Vallas text, which follows immediately upon the last quotation:
Here I do not want to compare philosophy and eloquence by saying which
one is able to do more harm. Many people have spoken on this matter, showing that philosophy is barely consonant with the Christian religion and that
all heresies flow forth from the fonts of philosophy, whereas rhetoric has
nothing that is not praiseworthy: it teaches to invent and to arrange, as if
giving bones and sinews to speech; to ornament, that is, to endow speech
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with flesh and color; and finally to memorize and deliver properly, that is, to
give speech life and action.169
169Ibid., 616: Nolo hoc in loco comparationem facere inter philosophiam et eloquentiam, utra magis obesse possit, de quo multi dixerunt ostendentes philosophiam cum religione christiana vix cohaerere omnesque haereses ex philosophiae fontibus profluxisse,
rhetoricam vero nihil habere nisi laudabile, ut invenias, ut disponas, quasi ossa et nervos
orationi des, ut ornes, hoc est, ut carnem coloremque inducas, postremo ut memoriae
mandes decenterque pronunties, hoc est, ut illi spiritum actionemque tribuas (emphasis
added).
170Jerome, Epistola ad Eustochium (ep. 22), PL 22:394425, at 416: infelicitatis historia;
ibid., 417: Domine, si unquam habuero codices saeculares, si legero, te negavi (tr.
Fremantle, Lewis, and Martley in Schaff and Wace (eds.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers,
modified).
171For fifteenth-century discussions on the conception and practice of rhetoric, see the
important and rich contibution of John Monfasani, George of Trebisond. A Biography and a
Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: Brill, 1976), esp. 241299.
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Let us now consider these three passages, in order of last to first, with
regard to the theme in question, namely the relationship between rhetoric and theology. In the passage cited from the introduction to the
Collatio,rhetoric is taken up as the unique and necessary tool for biblical
174Ibid., 622: Ceterae autem scientiae atque artes in medio sunt positae, quibus et bene
uti possis et male . Vides quam mirabili ornamento vestes Aaron distinguantur, quam
arca foederis, quam templum Salomonis. Per hoc mihi significari eloquentia videtur, quae,
ut ait nobilis tragicus, regina rerum est et perfecta sapientia. Itaque alii ornant domos privatas: hi sunt qui student iuri civili, canonico, medicinae, philosophiae, nihil ad rem divinam
conferentes. Nos ornemus domum Dei, ut in eam ingredientes non ex situ ad contemptum,
sed ex maiestate loci ad religionem concitentur (emphasis added).
175Lorenzo Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, redazione inedita a cura di Alessandro
Perosa (Firenze: Sansoni, 1970), 6.25ff.-7.1ff.: Singula enim verba divine scripture sunt tanquam singule gemme lapidesque pretiosi, ex quibus Hierusalem celestis extruitur. Nam
aliarum doctrinarum, ut ita loquar, urbes partim e lateribus, ut ius civile, partim e topho,
ut medicina, partim e marmore, ut astronomia, et item cetere extructe sunt; evangelica
vero nonnisi e gemmis, in qua vel minimum structorem esse preclarius, est quam in ceteris
architectum. Quid igitur? Sum ne ego eius architectus? Utinam essem vel structor! Cuius
tamen non tot architecti sunt atque structores, quot vulgo creduntur, nequaquam digni
hoc nomine qui lapidea, ne dicam lignea, cretacea, stramentitia opera in ea edificare
audent, vanas quasdam ineptasque scientias divinis admiscentes. Equidem ipse nihil operis novi condo sed velut huius urbis templi sarcta tecta prestare pro mea virili conatus sum,
quod nisi prestetur templum ipsum perpluat necesse est, nec in eo res divina fieri commode possit. [The translation of Christopher S. Celenza has been consulted: Celenza,
Lorenzo Vallas Radical Philology: The Preface to the Annotations to the New Testament
in Context, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 42:2 (2012), 365394, at
380383.]
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exegesis, which for Valla consists in the collation of the Vulgate Bible with
the Greek truth (veritas graeca) of the original text of the New Testament.
Vallas statement, it might be noted, is the finale to a series of historicophilological premises considered and discussed in the long dedicatory letter to the Collatio.
Valla concludes that no science or art can substitute for rhetoric. It
is the sole art capable of supplying the proper tools for restoring the temple that is Sacred Scripture. For it is only in rhetoric that the divine (res
divina), i.e., the Word of God, can be recovered and unfurled in all its
solemnity and hieratic dignity. In plain language, rhetoric is the only scientific discipline that can offer an analytical and organic principle capable
of fully restoring the authentic, original text of the Bible. Despite their
great effectiveness, the other arts and sciences, from law to medicine to
astronomy, are unable to assist adequately in restoring this Temple of the
Word, this worldly reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem. Unlike the cities
constructed by the other arts and sciences, this temple has no architects
or builders but only, so to speak, restorators. It would certainly be a sin to
aim for more, to attempt a sacrilegious renovation of the Temple of the
Word, or at least to claim to repair and reinforce walls and roofs and every
other supporting element, but with an unsuitable and ruinous mixture of
divine truths and human arts.176
The relationship between the temple (templum) and the city (civitas),
as spaces for the arts and sciences to be put to use, takes on grander
dimensions (although still with specific reference to theology) in the second passage, cited from the preface to the fourth book of the Elegantiae.
With a statement as explicit as it is rare for his writings, Valla affirms that
the deployment of cultural tools involves, or better, is determined by an
ethico-political choice. The arts and sciences in general, he specifies further, are intended and often used for the purpose of decorating and adorning private dwellings (domus private). This example concerns not only
sciences like medicine and civil law, but also disciplines like canon law
176Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, 37. [For the full Latin text and English translation of
the preface, see Celenza, Lorenzo Vallas Radical Philology. Eds.] Vallas analogy is obvious, as are its implications, which are the result of a corresponding operational parallelism
between the restoration of the authentic text of the Bible and that of the sacred monument of the temple. In both cases the same attempt at reconstruction is put in motion, a
restoration to an original editorial (of the text) or architectural (of the building) state. We
are not able to ascertain the level of originality in Vallas comparison between operations
and techniques that continue to be expressed in terms of restoration. Let us only say that
here the analogy is used by Valla within the particular sphere of the historico-religious
world: Word of God/Temple of God (Verbum Dei/Templum Dei).
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harvest of delight than can ever be gathered from the pleasures of the
ignorant.178
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All that can actually be gathered from the Letter to Eustochium, Valla
argues, is the indication, or better, the declaration of a phase or moment
of cultural and religious crisis at this point along Jeromes development as
a Christian thinker. Jerome the Ciceronian, the worshipper of classical
rhetoric, is no longer a thinker organic to Christianity; and Jerome the
Christian, disgusted by the style of Scripture, is not yet able to understand rhetoric in its dimension as perfect wisdom. Jerome had arrived at
the dramatic impasse, experiencing it with deep personal suffering, of the
theoretical and practical opposition between pagan culture and biblical
revelation, manifested in the dilemma of the antinomy between human
and sacred literature (humanae litterae and sacrae litterae). Thus the
Jerominian topos, as invoked by the anti-humanist, is in its essence an
exemplary referent, emblematic both of and in the history of the Christian
tradition.
But equally emblematic, Valla immediately adds, is the solution provided to that specific antinomy by Jeromes own works a solution
embodied fully and profoundly in the interpretive task of translation and
the exegetical task of commentary to which the Latin Father would dedicate the rest of his life. For this he becomes the greatest exponent and the
exemplary figure in the Latin Christian tradition (much more so than the
other Church Fathers, who had not undergone the same punishment):
Nor did Jerome dare to prohibit others from engaging in it [the study of literature]; on the contrary he praised the eloquence of many, from both earlier times and his own. But why talk of others? Who is more eloquent than
Jerome himself? Who is more rhetorical? Who, although he is wont to hide
it, is more prepared, more eager, or more careful to speak well?184
It must first of all be noted that Vallas argumentative line regarding the
censure of Jerome, a reference that had been cited throughout history by
those opposed to philosophy and literature, actually follows a traditional
186Cf. Salvatore I. Camporeale, Giovanni Tolosani, O.P. e la teologia antiumanistica
aglinizi della Riforma. LOpusculum antivalliano De Constantini Donatione, in Xenia Medii
Aevi historiam illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaeppeli, eds. Raymundus Creytens and Pius
Knzle (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1978), 809831. [See also the discussion of
the term oratorium in idem, Lorenzo Valla and the De falso credita donatione: Rhetoric,
Freedom, and Ecclesiology in the Fifteenth Century, on pp. 27 and 143 of this volume. Eds.]
187Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 618: Obiciente sibi hoc somnium
Rufino hominem deridet planeque fatetur se lectitare opera gentilium et lectitare debere,
idque cum in aliis multis locis, quamquam etiam sine confessione palam est, tum vero
epistola illa Ad Magnum oratorem.
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Valla connects the reference from the Contra Rufinum to the pertinent
passage in the Letter to Magnus, which was the other traditional topos for
combating those who maintained the absolute incompatibility between
the love of Sacred Scripture and the study of literature. As mentioned
above, the Letter to Magnus was the counter-citation to the Letter to
Eustochium, i.e. to the topos of the dream in which Jerome was condemned
for Ciceronianism.189
At this point, Valla is in a good position to reject all reductive interpretations of Jeromes corpus. The utilization of Greek and Roman literature in
Jeromes hermeneutical work is so abundant and consistent that it cannot
be traced to any sort of sedimentation from his early school days. All of his
188Jerome, Contra Rufinum, bk. III, ch. 32: PL 23:481: te exigere a dormiente quod
numquam vigilans praestitisti. Magni criminis reus sum, si puellis et virginibus Christi dixi
saeculares libros non legendos et me in somniis commonitum promisisse ne legerem?;
but see also bk. I, chs. 3031: PL 23:421424.
189For an overview of Jeromes biblical exegesis and the controversies in which he was
involved, see Angelo Penna, Principi e caratteri dellesegesi di S. Girolamo (Roma: Pontificio
Istituto Biblico, 1950); E.F. Sutcliffe, Jerome, in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols.
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19631970), vol. II (ed. G.W.H. Lampe, 1969),
80101; and ibid., vol. I (eds. P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans, 1970), 510541; J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome:
His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975).
Valla continues: once Jerome decided to devote his efforts to the study of
Sacred Scripture (which he had earlier scorned), he began reading pagan
authors again with equal seriousness, either to acquire their eloquence or
to condemn their false opinions while approving their correct ones.191
Actually Valla goes on all Jerome did was to continue along a trail
already blazed in the past, namely the early tradition of the Eastern and
Western Church Fathers. Indeed, Jerome himself testifies to this often,
especially in his letters. Valla identifies the particular authors as Hilary,
Ambrose, Augustine, Lactantius, Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom the same
names that would crop up again in the Encomium. At the end of this list he
immediately adds: and very many others who in every age adorned the
precious gems of divine utterance with the gold and silver of eloquence.
To Vallas mind, Jeromes exegetical work, as well as the dominant, most
significant part of the Greek and Latin patristic tradition, offers definitive
and irrefutable proof of the compossibility between classical literature
and Sacred Scripture, between Greco-Roman rhetoric and doctrinal study.
Indeed, the great Greek and Latin Fathers saw no insoluble antinomy
between the scientific disciplines of rhetoric and theology: they did [not]
abandon one science on account of the other.192
190Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 618: Quid quod libros gentilium
saepe in testimonium assumit? Quod si non licet legere, minus profecto legendos exhibere; et si nos dehortaretur a lectione gentilium quod non facit magis intuendum putarem quid ipse ageret quam quid agendum aliis diceret.
191Ibid., 620: sive ut illinc eloquentiam mutuaretur sive ut illorum, bene dicta probans,
male dicta reprehenderet.
192Ibid., 620: Hilarius, Gregorius, Chrysostomus aliique plurimi qui in omni aetate
praetiosas illas divini eloquii gemmas auro argentoque eloquentiae vestierunt, neque
alteram propter alteram scientiam reliquerunt.
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193Ibid., 620 (italicized section is a variant found in ms. Florence, Bibl. Laur., Conv.
soppr. 187, f. 60r): At mea quidem sententia, si quis ad scribendum in theologia accedat
parvi refert an aliam aliquam facultatem, sive canonum sive geometriam sive medicinam sive
philosophiam afferat an non afferat. Nihil enim fere conferunt. At qui ignarus eloquentiae
est, hunc indignum prorsus qui de theologia loquatur existimo. Et certe soli eloquentes,
quales ii quos enumeravi, columnae ecclesiae sunt. Etiam ut ab Apostolis usque repetas,
inter quos mihi Paulus nulla alia re eminere quam eloquentia videtur.
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280
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200The text of the preface to the translation of Thucydides History is available in Valla,
Oraciones y Prefacios, 278289, but see also 7475 of Adornos introduction (to the anthology). Adornos entire essay (78 pp. with an invaluable bibliography) is still an excellent
piece of scholarship on Vallas work as a whole.
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284
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wisdom of the patron of the humanists202 along the parallels and contrasts of a series of significant comparisons and assimilations: commerce/
translation (mercatura rerum/translatio linguarum), language/money (lingua/nummus), traffic in translation/transfer into Latin (transferendi
negotiatio/in latinum traductio), etc. With this project, was the Pope not
extending, in breadth and depth, his Roman Empire (imperium romanum),
but in such a way that his hegemony would be different from that of the
ancient emperors? Certainly he expressed his will to conquer differently
from Augustus, Antoninus, and the other Roman emperors.203 He did so in
accordance with the specific character of his rule as a Christian Pope:
through your own person you see to sacred things, religion, divine and
human laws, and the peace, greatness, and welfare of the Latin world. But to
others, especially us, you have assigned other tasks, sending us off as your
prefects, tribunes, and captains, expert in both languages, to subject as
much of Greece as possible to your rule, that is, to translate Greek books into
Latin for you.204
actually made reference, although only obliquely, to the persistent problematic that is at the heart of Vallas entire oeuvre. In that simple, allusive
formulation, Valla seems to have wanted to compress the long labor necessary for an adequate solution, as well as to temper his discontent at the
lack of one.
But by calling attention, in the same preface to Thucydides, to the problem of Scripture We Latins would not even have commerce with God if
the Old Testament had not been translated from Hebrew and the New
from Greek Valla raised the traffic in translation to a philological
question of theological grammar. Here the transaction between the
Latin of the Vulgate and the Greek truth (veritas graeca) of the New
Testament (and the Hebrew truth of the Old, to use Jeromes phrase)
involved by returning it to its beginnings the theological and dogmatic,
ecclesiological and liturgical question of Judeo-Christian revelation.
In this way Valla inserted into Nicholas Vs project exalted throughout
the entire introduction to his translation of Thucydides the scriptural,
philological, and theological question on which he himself had concentrated in his unpublished Collatio Novi Testamenti. Composed in 1443, during his early Neapolitan period, the Collatio would be publicly circulated
286
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in the same years as the Latin translation of the History, and in 1453 Valla
dedicated it, too, to Nicholas V. He would subsequently return to the
Collatio, reconsidering and reworking the whole text for a second edition,
this time under the title Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum.
Scripture, then, was for Valla the original setting for commerce with
God and the space in which that commerce had its specific foundation.
Scripture was the literary source from which Valla drew his theological
problematic, which turned out to be essentially a hermeneutic investigation. Thus Vallas theological critique of scholasticism reached its culmination. He redirected his own basic arguments and made them converge
on a radical objective, reframing his critique as philological criticism
within the biblical space of the Old and New Testaments. He aimed at
nothing less than the transcendence of the Vulgate, from which theology
took its scriptural premises, and the reconstruction, through the exegesis
of the Greek truth (veritas graeca), of new, more pristine and authentic
premises for an alternative language of theology. Hence also Vallas other
decisive undertaking, chronologically the last but still fundamental to his
work: the critico-philological re-examination of Thomist exegesis as the
focal point of a more proper critique of scholastic theology. Returning the
Vulgate to the Greek truth through the linguistic and categorical critique
of Thomass theologico-scholastic exegesis was the specific operation,
both methodological and substantial, of Vallas humanist theology; and
the revision of the Collatio in the 1450s, which would eventually result in
the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, acted as the pivot for that
operation.
A reading of the Adnotationes that directly correlates Vallas philological analysis of the New Testament with Thomass exegetical Commentary
permits the reconstruction of the supporting axis of that operation, undertaken by Valla as a direct alternative to scholastic theology. Even if the
Adnotationes must indubitably be considered as the end of an incredibly
laborious journey that began with De vero falsoque bono and passed
through the Disputationes and the Elegantiae, it achieves full meaning on
its own. It stands as the greatest and fullest expression of that humanist
theology which Valla described in abridged and nearly concentric formulas in the Encomium of 1457.206
206See La caduta di Costantinopoli, ed. and tr. Agostino Pertusi, 2 vols. (Verona:
Mondadori, 1976). This important collection, fastidiously and perceptively furnished with
an introduction and notes by Pertusi, could be supplemented with further witnesses from
the correspondence of other contemporary humanists. Concerning the cultural function
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It is therefore not the classical and Hellenistic science of language (litteratura) nor its related analytical tools that the Christian must reject as nontransferable to his own cultural studies and creations. On the contrary,
since the New Testament and, above all, the letters of Paul occupy an
important place among writings in Koine Greek, the message of the
Gospel must be studied and deciphered, and in two ways: on the one hand
in relation to the contribution it made to the stylistic and semantic development of Koine, and, on the other hand, as a text whose comprehension
is accessible only along the synchronic and diachronic coordinates of that
language. These are the two sides, the two points of view, whose convergence or referential system defines and clarifies the exegetical method put
into practice by Valla in his Adnotationes.
Litteratura must therefore not be rejected prejudicially but used freely,
though mediated and made commensurable with Sacred Scripture. What
the Christian must reject, however following in the footsteps of the
Fathers theological and literary practice, and in line with the principles of
the methodological theory enunciated by Jerome in his letters are the
doctrines (dogmata) of the philosophers, the religion (religio) underlying
the cultural and political praxis of the pagans, and the opinions (opiniones) of Greek and Hellenistic ethics. This is precisely what Valla had
attempted to put into practice, in order to find solutions on which to
base an authentic humanist theology, respectively in the Disputationes
207Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 620: gentiles hoc modo locutos esse,
non decere eodem loqui.
208Ibid., 620622: Non lingua gentilium, non grammatica, non rhetorica, non dialectica, ceteraeque artes damnandae sunt, siquidem Apostoli lingua graeca scripserunt; sed
dogmata, sed religiones, sed falsae opiniones de actione virtutum per quas in coelum scandimus. Ceterae autem scientiae atque artes in medio sunt positae, quibus et bene uti possis
et male. Quapropter conemur obsecro eo pervenire, aut saltem proxime, quo luminaria illa
nostrae religionis pervenerunt.
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Valla gives concrete form to when he exalts rhetoric as queen of the world
and perfect wisdom in relation to contemporary theological discourse.
Hence his identification of patristic theology, which he understands as
rhetorical theology (theologia rhetorica), as the source of the humanist
alternative to the contemporary decadence of late scholasticism.
Valla continues:
I cant hold back from saying what I think. Those ancient theologians seem
to me like certain bees that, flying to far-off pastures, have used their marvelous art to produce the sweetest honey and wax; modern theologians, however, rather resemble ants who steal off into their hiding places with pieces
of grain swiped from their neighbor.211
This is Vallas contrast between the Fathers and the scholastics, between
the theology of the ancients, which is critically rigorous but still open to
cultural acquisitions and developments, and that of the moderns, crawling with disputations and dialectical subtleties, by now encased in its own
inaccessible jargon. He programmatically proclaims his choice between
the two:
For my part, I would not only rather be a bee than an ant, but I would also
rather fight in the service of a king bee than captain an army of ants. We are
confident that this will be approved by right-minded youths; the old are simply hopeless.212
This last statement finds an echo in the break, already in force while Valla
was writing, between the Laurentians (laurentiani) and the Poggians
(pogiani), between the followers of Valla and the old school (antiqua
schola), as Bracciolini would himself call it in his Invectivae.213
In the Elegantiae Valla intends to limit himself to offering a methodological and historical (in Quintilians terms) investigation of Latin grammar to be used by theological discourse in its own argumentative
procedure and exegetical study of Scripture. That is, he intends to systematically elaborate theologys morphological and semantic premises,
211Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 622: Non possum me continere quominus quod sentio dicam. Veteres illi theologi videntur mihi velut apes quaedam in longinqua etiam pascua volitantes, dulcissima mella cerasque miro artificio condidisse; recentes
vero formicis simillimi quae ex proximo sublata furto grana in latibulis suis abscondunt
(emphasis added).
212Ibid., 622: At ego, quod ad me attinet, non modo malim apes quam formica esse, sed
etiam sub rege apium militare quam formicarum exercitum ducere. Quae probatum iri
bonae mentis iuvenibus, nam senes desperandi sunt, confidimus.
213On the controversy between the Laurentians and the Poggians, cf. Camporeale,
Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 128129, n. 13 and 374ff.
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preface seems clear in his two thematic foci: first, the formulation of the
terms of the aporia as it was reproposed by the anti-humanism of the barbarians; second, the arguments and solutions put forward regarding the
supposed dichotomy between theological culture and classical literature.
Erasmus consciously takes his own anti-barbarian counter-response
directly from Valla, proposing a rhetorical theology in the place of the
philosophical theology of the contemporary scholastic tradition. It must
nevertheless be observed that Erasmuss reiteration, while expanding
Vallas proposal for a humanist theology to include multiple levels of culture, nevertheless ends up being less convincing, since less radical, than
Vallas proposal.
More precisely, if on the one hand Erasmus repeats arguments that are
distinctly and originally Vallas, on the other he revises Vallas solutions to
the problem. Alongside the commonplace of Jeromes Letter to Magnus in
defense of rhetoric, Erasmus invokes with equal insistence the authority
of Augustines De doctrina christiana, book IV, chapter 11, where the reference to classical culture principally concerns philosophy. In his preface,
however, Valla had deliberately excluded Augustine and instead focused
on Jerome as the authority for his radically unequivocal stance, namely
the exclusive exaltation of rhetorical theology in direct opposition to the
philosophical theology of the scholastic tradition.
In upholding the humanist principle for a theology founded on the science of rhetoric (along the lines traced in Vallas preface), Erasmus also
seems to want to bring De doctrina christiana into the Jerominian sphere
of a specifically philological and scriptural theology. In so doing he
attempted to bridge, at least on a theoretical level, the methodological
and analytical divide underlying the theological work and thought of the
two greatest Fathers of the Latin Church. Here Erasmus in no way agrees
with Valla, for whom there subsists an absolute epistemological difference
between the writings of Augustine and Jerome. And thus Erasmus and his
works variously conditioned by controversialist concerns, by his choice
of literary tools, and by the related periods of his own cultural development display an attitude and critical stance towards scholasticism that
are actually less radical than what appears in Valla, especially concerning
the more important aspect of traditional and contemporary speculative
theology. All this appears more clearly with regard to their respective
revivals of patristic theology. Erasmuss stance is much more complex and
variegated, developed in different times and in relation to multiple lines of
theological inquiry. Vallas is strongly univocal and unilateral, concentrated on Jerome and his works of New Testament exegesis.
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Indeed, as penetratingly traced by Erasmus, the course of Jeromes biography followed a cultural evolution and a lifelong ideal directed towards
overcoming the antinomy between Christianity and the pagan world. To
this end he deployed the theoretical tools of classical literature in his exegetical work on New and Old Testament Scripture. Jeromes entire life was
characterized by constant and intense study, whose goal was to formulate
a rhetorical theology, i.e. a theology that would put the classical science of
language (litteratura) to critical use for understanding the sources of
Judeo-Christian revelation.
Jeromes humanistic education is seen by Erasmus as serving a precise
theological goal: he occupied himself with rhetoric more diligently,
hoping that more would take pleasure in sacred literature if theologians
were to match the majesty of their discipline with dignity of style.219 In
other words, Erasmuss own alternative proposition for theology provides
the perspective for Jeromes biographical and cultural journey, namely his
rediscovery, along the arduous and complicated trails of the philological
criticism of Scripture, of that philosophy of Christ (Christi philosophia)
that flows from the purest fonts, i.e. the literary sources of JudeoChristian revelation.220
It is in this context that Erasmus places the sum of Jeromes analytical
inquiry and writing. Jeromes corpus is as if focused on a convergence of
profane, secular literature with sacred, divine literature, whose combined
stream flows towards a theological grammar of the earliest Christian language and writings. Hence Erasmuss view of the scriptural controversy in
which Jerome engaged with Rufinus and Augustine. Hence also the way
Erasmus depicts the peculiar and original theological position that Jerome
occupied among the Latin Church Fathers. Finally, it is this originality of
thought in Jerome that Erasmus along the line that connects him to
Valla attempts to demonstrate and somehow to appropriate for himself
with the publication of a new edition of Jeromes works.
deceat. Neque quicquam omnino norunt de Hieronymo, nisi quod Ciceronianus dictus
vapularit. Verum huius rei, ab eruditissimis abunde responsum est, Laurentio Valla et
Angelo Politiano, et nos olim adulescentuli minores annis viginti lusimus in istorum stultitiam Dialogis quos Antibarbaros inscripsimus. Translation by James F. Brady and John C.
Olin, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61: The Patristic Scholarship, the Edition of Jerome
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 50.
219Erasmus, Hieronymi stridonensis vita, ll. 236ff.: in rhetorica sese studiosius exercuit sperans futurum ut plures sacris litteris delectarentur, si quis theologiae maiestatem dignitate sermonis aequasset (tr. Brady and Olin, 27, modified). See also Hieronymi
stridonensis vita, ll. 195338 and 489ff.
220Ibid., ll. 489ff. and 1213.
221Ibid., l. 1187: novum theologorum genus; ll. 795ff.: omnium bonarum litterarum
prorsus rudes et mala degustata Aristotelis philosophia freti, pedibus ac manibus illotis
irruant in theologiae professionem; 1193ff.: ex divina faciunt sophisticam, aut thomisticam, aut scotisticam, aut occamisticam (tr. Brady and Olin, 42 and 52).
222Ibid., ll. 1226ff.: magis theologice.
223Ibid., ll. 15341565: Illud hactenus offecit Hieronymo, quod ut a plerisque non legitur, ita a paucissimis intelligitur . At posthac quando per universum orbem christianum
revixerunt bonae litterae et non pauca bonae spei ingenia ad veterem illam ac germanam
theologiam exergisci coeperunt, Hieronymum veluti renatum communibus studiis
complectamur omnes: hunc singuli sibi ceu peculiarem vindicent . Hunc omnis sexus,
omnis aetas discat, evolvat, imbibat. Nullum doctrinae genus est, quod hinc non queat
adiuvari; nullum vitae institutum, quod huius praeceptis non formetur. Soli haeretici
Hieronymum horreant et oderint, quos ille solos semper acerrimos hostes habuit (tr.
Brady and Olin, 6162).
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The Life of Jerome and the prefaces to the Novum Instrumentum provide
Erasmuss perspective on the new theological question of the early sixteenth century, but its center of radiation was fixed in the Encomium of
St. Thomas of 1457. In this way Vallas oration acted as an essential break
between two historical moments of Christian philosophical and theological thought: between medieval scholasticism and the humanist culture of
the Renaissance, between Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus of Rotterdam,
the two emblematic poles that encompass the trends and structures of the
science of faith.
Lorenzo Valla and his work thus play a founding role for humanist theology and, at the same time, provide a retrospective view that historicizes
medieval systematic theology, encasing it within a specific period of
Christianitys development. The Encomium of St. Thomas, which synthesizes Vallas whole corpus, is perhaps the most conscious portrayal of the
crisis that came to a head in Christianity between the early fifteenth century and the beginning of the sixteenth. This crisis was organic to the
political and civic crisis of the same period (acutely identified by the historiography of civic humanism224), but it culminated as a religious and
theological crisis. That is, it was a crisis of Christian existence and categorical systematics, of Church (ecclesia) and ecclesiology, of evangelical faith
and the science of faith. Valla was the first directly to confront, on a theoretical and a practical level, this crisis of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
Christianity, and he did so by extending the use of the philological criticism of humanism into the realm of theological and scriptural study.225
224[For civic humanism, see at least Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian
Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny,
2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955); and James Hankins (ed.), Renaissance
Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000). Eds.]
225For a full discussion of the crisis of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see
Salvatore I. Camporeale, Umanesimo e teologia tra 400 e 500, in Problemi di storia della
Chiesa nei secoli XV-XVII (Napoli: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1979), 137164.
LORENZO VALLA
ENCOMIUM OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
Patrick Baker (ed. and tr.)
Note on the Text: The Latin text, which is provided here as a supplement to
the English translation and as a source for the quotations in Camporeales
essay, is substantially that of the critical edition of Stefano Cartei: Lorenzo
Valla, Encomion sancti Thome Aquinatis, ed. S. Cartei (Firenze: Polistampa,
2008). Camporeale based his own work on direct consultation of the available manuscripts and the earlier edition of Francesco Adorno (Lorenzo
Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, ed. F. Adorno [Santiago: Universidad de Chile,
1955], 290321), but it has seemed preferable to adopt Carteis more correct text. A deciding factor was that Cartei follows what he demonstrates
to be a more reliable manuscript tradition; that is, he argues convincingly
that ms. Paris, Bibliothque Nationale de France, Lat. 7811 A (= P) is more
trustworthy and closer to the author than both ms. Rome, Biblioteca
Angelica, 1500 (= R), on which Adorno primarily relied, and ms. Modena,
Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Lat. 151 (alpha T.6.15) (= M). While following Carteis readings and emendations (none of which represents a
significant departure from the version Camporeale used), I have repunctuated the text, followed my own judgment regarding capitalization, and
preferred classical orthography in the interests of accessibility to a broader
audience. I have also reformatted the text in a manner suggested by
Camporeales interpretation, dividing it, moreover, as he does, into the
five sections exordium, narratio, probatio, refutatio, and peroratio.
In preparing my own English rendering I have consulted the following
existing translations: the Italian version of Giorgio Radetti, in Lorenzo
Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi (Firenze: Sansoni, 1953), 455469 (= In lode
di S. Tommaso dAquino); the Spanish version of Francesco Adorno in Valla,
Oraciones y Prefacios (= Encomio de Santo Toms de Aquino); and the
English version of M. Esther Hanley in Leonard A. Kennedy (ed.),
Renaissance Philosophy: New Translations (The Hague: Mouton, 1973),
1727 (= In Praise of Saint Thomas Aquinas).
Laurentii Vallae
Encomion Sancti Thomae Aquinatis
[Exordium]
10
15
20
25
[1] Moris fuit vetustissimis temporibus cum apud Graecos tum vero
apud Latinos ut qui orationem aliqua de re maiore vel ad iudices vel ad
populum esset habiturus, is fere ab invocatione caelestis numinis exordiretur. Quem ego ritum a veri Dei cultoribus reor introductum, ut sacrificia, ut
primitias, ut caerimonias, ut ceteros divinos honores, mox ut illa, ita hunc
quoque a vera religione ad falsas fuisse translatum. Nam id profecto exstitit
in rebus humanis immanissimum nefas et paene caput malorum omnium,
cultum religionis immortali Deo et soli creatori debitum tribuere mortalibus ac rebus creatis. Haec consuetudo cum per aliquot saecula in utraque
natione viguisset, paulatim in desuetudinem versa est, desitumque numina
invocare non modo ab iis qui malas sed etiam ab iis qui bonas causas agebant: ab iis quidem qui malas quod aut nullos esse deos crederent aut eos
invocare extimescerent quisquis enim deos implorat ideo implorat ut
veritati atque iustitiae assint, quod mali fieri nolunt; ab iis autem qui bonas
agebant, partim quod iuri suo citra deorum praesidium fidere videri vellent, partim quod sese praestantiores atque viriliores visum iri putarent, si
non protinus tamquam feminae ad implorandos deos confugerent muliebre namque iam videbatur, non virile, numina implorare, unde apud
Sallustium Cato inquit: non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia
deorum parantur. Verum sicut improbe illi hunc vetustissimum morem
summoverant et quasi de possessione deiecerant, ita probe fecerunt qui in
integrum restituerunt in possessionemque reduxerunt, non ut gentiles,
quod absit, imitarentur, sed ne a gentilibus superari viderentur; nam si illi
falsis diis tantum honoris tribuebant ut eos in exordiis invocandos putarent, quanto nos magis hunc honorem Deo vero tribuere debemus? Quare
istorum ego institutum tam egregium hodie imitari et debeo et volo, laudes
sancti Thomae Aquinatis relaturus, et, ut consuetum est, sanctissimam Dei
matrem eamdemque semper virginem invocare, salutans eam angelicis
verbis: Ave Maria
Lorenzo Valla
Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas
[Exordium]
[1] It was customary in ancient times among the Greeks as well as the
Latins for whoever was going to give a speech on some important matter,
either to judges or to the people, in general to begin with a divine invocation. I think this rite was introduced by the worshipers of the true God, just
like sacrifices, the offering of the first-fruits, ceremonies, and the other
divine honors; and like them, it too soon passed from the true religion to
false ones. Now, to accord to mortals and created things the religious worship due to immortal God, the lone creator, stands out as quite the most
monstrous of all human transgressions and perhaps the chief of all evils.
After this custom had reigned among both peoples for several centuries, it
slowly fell into disuse, and divinities ceased to be invoked not only by those
pleading bad causes, but also by those pleading good ones. Those pleading
bad ones either believed that there were no gods or were afraid to invoke
them for whoever beseeches the gods beseeches them to attend to truth
and justice, something the evil do not want to happen. As for those pleading good causes, in part they wanted to seem to put greater trust in their
law than in the protection of the gods, in part they thought they would
seem more distinguished and manlier by not continually taking refuge like
women in prayers to the gods. For then it seemed effeminate and unmanly
to invoke deities, wherefore Cato says (in Sallust): the aid of the gods is not
procured with vows and womanish prayers.1 But just as those men were
wrong to cast off this most ancient custom as if banishing it from their possession, others did well to take it back into their possession and restore it
intact. This they did not do, as some might think, to imitate the pagans, but
rather so as not to be seen to be outdone by them. For if the pagans gave
such great honor to their false gods that they thought they should invoke
them when beginning their speeches, how much more ought we bestow
this honor on the true God? Therefore before beginning my praise of
St. Thomas Aquinas, it is my duty and my pleasure today to imitate that
outstanding institution of theirs. And so, as is our custom, I invoke the most
holy mother of God, the eternal virgin, greeting her with the angelic words:
Ave Maria 2
1Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae, 52, 29.
2The exordium ends with a recitation of the Ave Maria.
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[Narratio]
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[2] Etsi omnes qui in Domino moriuntur beati sunt et sancti, tamen eos
demum beatos et sanctos promulgat ecclesia quos cognovit vel mortem pro
religione, pro veritate, pro iustitia oppetisse, vel vita caste integreque traducta divinis signis ac miraculis claruisse. Horum priores graeco vocabulo
martyres, posteriores latino confessores appellat ecclesia, licet utriusque
nominis vis eodem fere tendat. Quid enim martyres aliud tolerandis tormentis et obeunda morte fecerunt, nisi Christum nolentes abnegare confessi sunt? Quorum illa frequentissima in tormentis exstitit vox se non
negare Christum sed esse Dei filium confiteri. Ergo idem est martyrem esse
quod confessorem. Rursus quid aliud confessores egerunt quam pie
vivendo pieque scribendo veritati testimonium perhibuerunt? Siquidem
Ioannes Baptista, qui ad perhibendum testimonium de lumine id est de
veritate missus erat, non minus illud perhibuit praedicando quam mortem obeundo. Ergo cum hoc confessores fecerint, nimirum martyres exstiterunt: martyr enim transfertur latine testis et martyrion testimonium.
[3] Hoc quamquam ita sit, tamen Ecclesia, ut dixi latina dumtaxat
superiores tantum martyres appellandos censuit et praerogativa ordinis
honorandos, quod videlicet milites strenui et fortes cum in ceteris militiae
operibus tum praecipue in proeliis imperatori suo probantur. Martyres
autem, qui fuere Christi milites, pro imperatore suo in acie steterunt sanguinemque ac vitam profuderunt. Confessores vero, et ipsi milites Christi,
solum labores militares, magnos illos quidem atque diutinos, pertulerunt,
parati et mortem pro imperatore Deo subire, verum ipsis ut eam subirent
aut in acie starent non contigit. Idcirco martyres ampliore honore fuisse
afficiendi videntur. Quod etsi iure ac merito factum est, quis tamen
negaverit esse quosdam e numero confessorum qui nonnullis martyribus
non modo aequari possint verum etiam anteferri? Quod divino quoque testimonio declaratur, cum videamus multos confessores fuisse quam quosdam martyres longe miraculis illustriores.
[4] Quorsum autem haec? Ut appareat Thomam nostrum Aquinatem,
etsi confessorem, non tamen esse continuo post martyres reponendum, ut
mea fert opinio, nihilo inferiorem, ne longius exempla repetam, aut Petro
eiusdem ordinis, qui ob tutandam veritatem
[2] Although all who die in the Lord are blessed and saints, nevertheless
the Church expressly designates as blessed and saints those whom it recognizes either as having met death for religion, for truth, for justice, or as having achieved fame for leading a chaste and spotless life accompanied by
divine signs and miracles. It uses the Greek word martyrs (martyres) for the
former and the Latin one confessors (confessores) for the latter, although
both terms have approximately the same meaning. For what else have martyrs done in enduring torture and meeting death than confess themselves
unwilling to deny Christ? Under torture they repeatedly refused to deny
Christ but rather confessed that he was the son of God. Therefore a martyr is
the same as a confessor. On the other hand, what else have confessors done
in living piously and writing piously than bear witness to the truth? John the
Baptist was sent to bear witness to the light that is, to the truth and he did
so no less by preaching than by meeting death.3 Thus by acting in this way,
surely confessors have shown themselves to be martyrs. For martyr is translated in Latin as witness (testis), and martyrion testimony (testimonium).
[3] Although this is the case, the Church, as I have said at least the
Latin one has decided that only the former are to be called martyrs and
honored with the privilege of that rank, because, as vigorous and brave soldiers, they are recognized by their commander for their military service
and especially for their deeds in battle. The martyrs, then, who were soldiers of Christ, stood in the battle line for their commander and poured out
their blood and life. The confessors were themselves also soldiers of Christ,
but they merely performed military labors (albeit great and lasting ones);
and although they were prepared to undergo death for their commander,
God, they did not actually undergo it or stand in the battle line. For that
reason it seems that martyrs ought to have been accorded greater honor.
The justice of this view notwithstanding, who could deny that there are
certain confessors who not only equal but even surpass some martyrs?
Divine testimony makes this clear, as we see that many confessors were
much more renowned for miracles than certain martyrs.
[4] What is the point of these considerations? To show that our Thomas
Aquinas, although a confessor, should not necessarily be placed below the
martyrs. In my opinion he is in no way inferior not to look too far afield
for examples either to Peter the Dominican,4 whose defense of the truth
3John 1:68.
4St. Peter of Verona (St. Peter Martyr).
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roused some mad peasant to kill him with a sickle, or to Thomas, bishop of
Canterbury,5 who, like the good shepherd protecting his flock, died to keep
the clergy from being despoiled of its goods. That he is not inferior is further demonstrated by the following argument: although both men had the
name of Thomas, our Thomas received it not by human but by divine will,
since the meaning of Thomas in Hebrew is both bottomless pit (abyssus)
and twin (geminus). And Thomas Aquinas truly was such a one: a kind of
bottomless pit of knowledge, and a twin due to the pairing of knowledge
and virtue in him, both of which were without parallel and beyond belief.
He was like a kind of sun, shining forth in the dazzling splendor of his
learning and burning bright with the ardor of his virtues. He is to be placed
among the Cherubim for the splendor of his learning, among the Seraphim
for the ardor of his virtues. Of these qualities I shall now speak.
[5] But in my attempt to do so, some people seem to me to be objecting
and just about throwing up their hands, crying, What are you saying? What
are you aiming at with this hyperbole of yours, which is the friend of the
foolish, enemy of the prudent? Will you have no regard for the truth, for
your own conscience, or for your audience, which is composed of numerous men of the greatest importance and wisdom? Are you not content to
make Thomas Aquinas the equal of the martyrs and to prefer him to many
of them? Must you raise him up to the level of the Cherubim, above whom
God sits? Must you also compare him to the very Seraphim, the highest
order of angels? What more will you accord to the apostle Thomas? What
more to Paul the teacher of the Gentiles that he is one of the Cherubim?
What more to John the Baptist that he is one of the Seraphim?
[6] Let me respond that I do indeed think that all who are imbued with
the knowledge of divine truths have something in common with the
Cherubim, just as all who are infused with the love of God are the fellows of
the Seraphim to say nothing of Thomas, so incredibly full of knowledge
and love. Still, I have been justly reproached and warned. Therefore I entreat
the brothers of this order to pardon me if I relate the praises of its saint with
greater temperance than I otherwise might have done, and if I do not mention all of them but focus only on those of the greatest importance. For to
this august body they ought to be narrated briefly, not treated at length, lest
they grow tiresome. And if I tried to praise such great and powerful virtues
with words, the day would sooner than the tale be done,6 as the poet says.
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[Probatio]
[7] Merito igitur talis vir ut de virtutibus eius prius dicam, dicturus
postea de scientiis merito debuit antequam nasceretur mundo praedici,
eius ortus prophetari, vita promitti, mors etiam nuntiari. Etenim matri eius
ventrem ferenti anachoreta quidam, vir Dei qui ad hoc ipsum denuntiandum venerat, gratulabundus dixit genituram esse filium quem Thomam
appellaret, in quo excellentia huius nominis impleretur. Solet Deus, quo100 tiens aliquid eximium ac novum terris dare destinavit, id signis aut vaticiniis enuntiare. Cuius rei sunt non parum multa exempla, sed brevitatis
gratia uno et domestico ero contentus.
[8] Sic beati Dominici, huius familiae progenitoris, magnitudo matri
suae, cum gravida esset, praedicta est. Non dicam utrum praestantius fuerit
105 vaticinium, ne inter patrem et filium videatur, quantum in nobis est, esse
certatio. Sint paria de utroque vaticinia, paria amborum vitae merita.
Neuter alteri praeponatur: sint tamquam duo consules, quo nullus erat
maior magistratus, pari veneratione nobis honorandi, omnibus uterque virtutibus, infinitis uterque miraculis clari. Quorum etsi alterum modo lau110 dandum habeo, tamen utrumque coniungam, primum quia, cum pares
ambos faciam, sic magis liquebit quousque dignitatis et celsitudinis putem
Thomam esse provehendum, deinde quia institutum Praedicatorum est
fratres binos ire, non singulos.
[9] Dominicus igitur domum Praedicatorum condidit, Thomas eius pavi115 menta marmore vestivit. Dominicus parietes struxit, Thomas picturis eos
egregiis adornavit. Dominicus fratrum columen exstitit, Thomas specimen.
Dominicus plantavit, Thomas irrigavit. Ille dignationes atque episcopatus
ultro oblatos refugit atque adversatus est, hic nobilitatem, opes, propinquos, parentes tamquam sirenes effugit. Ille castitatem et continentiam
120 Pauli, hic virginitatem Ioannis Evangelistae reddidit. Illius humilitate
quam significantius graeci tapeinophrosynen vocant nihil admirabilius,
huius tanta humilitas fuit ut etiam de aliorum tumore atque iactantia
miraretur, in se numquam id vitium expertus, ut apud quosdam fratres simpliciter confessus est, cum tamen tot et tanta in se agnosceret ornamenta.
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[10] Hae sunt propriae virtutum laudes. Illa vero testimonia virtutum et
praemia et quasi in hac vita paradisus revelationes, visiones, miracula
quae tanta in his fuerunt, ut cetera taceam,
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[7] Justly, therefore, such a man let me speak first about his virtues and
later about his knowledge justly was he destined to be foretold to the world
before he was born, his birth prophesied, his life predicted, even his death
announced. For when his mother was with child, a certain hermit, a man of
God who had come precisely to bring her this news, congratulated her and
told her that she would bear a son whom she would call Thomas and who
would be filled with the excellence of this name. God, whenever he has
resolved to give something extraordinary and new to the world, is wont to
announce it with signs or prophecies. There are very many examples of this,
but, for the sake of brevity, I shall be content with one from the family.
[8] In the same way the greatness of the blessed Dominic, the founder of
this family, was foretold to his mother when she was pregnant. I will not say
which prophecy was more extraordinary, in order to avoid (to the extent
possible) the appearance of a contest between father and son. Let the
prophecies about each man be equal, equal the merits of both their lives.
Let neither be placed before the other. Let them be like two consuls, the
highest of magistracies. We must honor them with equal veneration, both
of them renowned for all the virtues, both for miracles without number.
Although I am only here to praise one of the two, nevertheless I will join
them together. First, because by setting them equal it will become all the
clearer to what heights of lofty dignity I think Thomas should be raised.
Second, because the rule of the Preachers is that the brothers go in twos,
not singly.
[9] So then, Dominic founded the house of the Preachers; Thomas
covered its floors with marble. Dominic built its walls; Thomas decorated
them with the finest paintings. Dominic was the pillar of the brothers,
Thomas their shining example. Dominic planted; Thomas gave water. The
one shunned and resisted the honors and episcopacies bestowed upon
him; the other fled nobility, wealth, kinsmen, and parents as if they
were sirens. The one imitated the chastity and continence of Paul, the
other the virginity of John the Evangelist. Of the one nothing was more
admirable than his humility (which the Greeks more meaningfully call
tapeinophrosyn). The other had so much humility that he was even astonished at the boasting and bragging of others; he never felt this vice in himself, as he frankly confessed to some brothers, although he still recognized
his own great and numerous talents.
[10]These are the praises of their virtues. Now for the testimonies of their
virtues and their rewards, the revelations, visions, and miracles which are like
paradise on earth. They were so great in them that, to speak of nothing else,
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ut uterque sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum sive re vera sive per speciem,
uterque sanctissimam Dei matrem, uterque Dominum Salvatorem sive in
130 corpore sive extra corpus et viderit et audierit, deque obitu suo imminenti
certior factus sit. Nam adeo ferventes in orationibus erant ut interdum sublimes a terra, Deo miraculum quibusdam fratribus indicante, cernerentur.
[11] Denique, ut finem comparationis faciam, ille optimam fratrum
regulam scripsit, hic plurimos ac praestantissimos libros. At plus est, dicas,
135 libros composuisse quam regulam. Cur ita plus esse ais? Dum hic scribundis libris operam dat, ille regundis provinciis incumbit et, ut optimus rector, suis populis bene vivendi regulam ac legem tradit, et certe non plures
transmittit in caelum scriptis suis Thomas quam Dominicus sua regula.
Concedatur ergo in virtutibus, in miraculis, in gloria pares esse Dominicum
140 et Thomam, non magis inter se differentes atque discretos quam Lucifer est
et Hesperus.
[Refutatio]
[12] Dixi de virtutibus ac miraculis Thomae breviter et nude, nulla usus
amplificatione atque exornatione, ne minus quam pro rei dignitate, ut in
hac temporis angustia, dicerem. Credo iam a me expectari ut quid de huius
145 sancti scientia, quod secundo loco proposui, dicam, quibus eum praeponam, quibus aequiperem.
[13] Non me fugit quosdam, qui de hac re hoc die ex hoc loco orationem
habuerunt, non modo nulli doctorum ecclesiae secundum Thomam fecisse
sed etiam omnibus anteposuisse. Qui, cur nulli secundum facere debeant,
150 ex eo probabant quod quidam integerrimae vitae frater inter orandum
viderit Augustinum, quem summum theologorum statuunt, et una
Thomam, mirabili utrumque praeditum maiestate, Augustinumque dicentem audierit Thomam esse sibi in gloria parem. Cur autem eumdem possint omnibus praeponere, hinc demonstrabant quod dicerent eum ad
155 probationem theologiae adhibere logicam, metaphysicam atque omnem
philosophiam, quam superiores doctores vix primis labiis degustassent.
[14] Lubricus hic mihi et anceps locus, non modo propter sancti cuius de
laudibus loquimur dignitatem, sed etiam propter inolitam apud plerosque
opinionem neminem posse sine dialecticorum, metaphysicorum, cetero160 rum philosophorum praeceptis evadere theologum.
they saw and heard the holy Apostles Peter and Paul (either truly or in a
vision), the most holy mother of God, and the Lord our Savior (either in the
body or out of the body7). Both men were told about their imminent deaths.
What is more, they prayed so heatedly that now and then they were seen
levitating, God revealing the miracle to certain brothers.
[11] Finally, to complete the comparison: the one wrote the brothers
most excellent rule, the other the most outstanding and the greatest number of books. But, you might say, it is a greater thing to have written books
than a rule. Why do you say this? While Thomas devotes himself to writings, Dominic rules the provinces and, as an excellent leader, gives his peoples a Rule and law for living well. Certainly Thomas sends no more men to
heaven with his writings than Dominic does with his Rule. Therefore let it
be granted that virtue, glory, and miracles are equal in Dominic and
Thomas, who are no more different and distinct from one another than the
morning from the evening star.
[Refutatio]
[12] I have spoken of Thomass virtues and miracles briefly and simply,
aving made no use of exaggeration and embellishment, lest, in the short
h
time available, I say less than the dignity of the subject requires. I believe
you would now like me to say something about this saints knowledge,
which I proposed to treat second, saying whom I would set him above and
whom I would call his equal.
[13] It has not escaped me that certain people who held an oration here
today on the same subject not only made Thomas second to none of the
doctors of the Church but also placed him above them all. They claim that
they ought to consider him second to none because a certain friar of the
utmost purity supposedly saw Augustine, whom they count as the greatest
theologian, together with Thomas. Both were endowed with wonderful
majesty, and he heard Augustine say that Thomas was his equal in glory. The
reason they gave for being able to put him above everyone is that for proof
in theology he used logic, metaphysics, and all philosophy, which the earlier
doctors are supposed to have barely tasted with the tips of their tongues.
[14] This is a slippery and perilous place for me, not only on account of
the dignity of the saint we are praising, but also because of the deep-set
opinion, held by so many, that no one can become a theologian without the
precepts of the dialecticians, metaphysicians, and the other philosophers.
72 Cor. 12:2.
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Quid igitur agam? Reformidabone, tergiversabor, dissimulabo quid sentiam dicere, et lingua a corde dissentiet? Quoniam huc ascendi non mea
sponte sed exoratus a fratribus nec tacere mihi integrum est, non committam ut quisquam putet me scientem esse mentitum.
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[15] Ego in sancto Thoma eximiam quidem scribendi subtilitatem etiam
atque etiam laudo, diligentiam admiror, copiam, varietatem, absolutionem
doctrinarum stupeo. Addo quod plerique tribuere nolint id quod ab
ipso dictum esse memorant, eum omnino nullum legisse librum quem non
plane intellexerit, quod haud scio an ulli nostri temporis contigerit, vel
170 iurisperito in iure civili, vel medico in medicina, vel philosopho in philosophia, vel oratori in antiquarum rerum lectione, et item in ceteris artibus
atque scientiis, nedum uni in omnibus.
[16] Ista autem quae vocant metaphysica et modos significandi et alia id
genus, quae recentes theologi tamquam novam sphaeram nuper inventam
175 aut planetarum epicyclos admirantur, nequaquam ego tantopere admiror,
nec ita multum interesse arbitror an scias an nescias, et quae forte sit satius
nescire tamquam meliorum impedimenta. Neque id meis argumentis planum faciam, etsi possem facere, sed veterum theologorum auctoritate, qui
tantum abest ut haec in libris suis tractaverint ut ne nomina quidem ipsa
180 scripta reliquerint: Cyprianus, Lactantius, Hilarius, Ambrosius, Hieronymus,
Augustinus.
[17] An scilicet ob ignorationem? Qui fieri potest? Nam sive in nostra
lingua fundamentum haec habent, illi latinissimi fuerunt, recentes autem
omnes paene barbari; sive in graeca, illi graeca noverunt, isti ignorant. Cur
185 igitur non tractaverint? Quia tractanda non fuerunt, et forte etiam ignoranda. Idque duabus de causis, una rerum, altera verborum.
[18] Rerum quidem, quod ista nihil ad scientiam rerum divinarum conducere videbantur. Id quod etiam visum est theologis graecis, Basilio,
Gregorio, Ioanni Chrysostomo ac ceteris eius aetatis, qui neque dialectico190 rum captiunculas neque metaphysicas ambages neque modorum significandi nugas in quaestionibus sacris admiscendas putaverunt, ac ne in
philosophia quidem suarum disputationum fundamenta iecerunt, cum
Paulum clamantem legerent:
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non per philosophiam et inanem fallaciam. Quod etiam usu ipsi intelligimus. Quid enim in philosophia non dico in rationali, quae tota in verbis est,
de qua et dixi et dicam, sed morali et naturali quod sit indubitatum
ratumque, nisi quod in naturali aut medicorum aut aliorum experimenta
deprehenderunt?
[19] Verborum autem, quod alia est condicio linguae graecae alia latinae,
quae longior foret ad disputandum materia et quaestio ab hoc tempore aliena. Hoc dixisse sit satis, hos doctores ecclesiae latinos reformidasse vocabula quae auctores latinos, id est suos in loquendo magistros, graecarum
litterarum eruditissimos nunquam viderant usurpasse, quae novi theologi
semper inculcant: ens, entitas, quidditas, identitas, reale, essentiale, suum
esse, et verba illa quae dicuntur ampliari, dividi, componi, et alia huiusmodi.
Ergo haec non minima ex parte nugatoria aut non tractanda fuerunt illis
aut ignoranda, ne magis ignorarent.
[20] Neque vero hoc dico ut recentibus theologis derogem cur enim
derogare velim praesertim saeculo meo? sed ut veteres iniuste reprehensos sugillatosque defendam, qui non sunt hunc in modum theologati sed se
totos ad imitandum Paulum apostolum contulerunt, omnium theologorum
longe principem ac theologandi magistrum. Cuius is est dicendi modus, ea
vis, ea maiestas ut quae sententiae apud alios etiam apostolos iacent eae
sint apud hunc erectae, quae apud alios stant apud hunc proelientur, quae
apud alios vix fulgent apud hunc fulgurare et ardere videantur, ut non ab re
gladium, quod est verbum Dei, manu tenens figuretur. Hic est verus et, ut
dicitur, germanus theologandi modus, haec vera dicendi et scribendi lex,
quam qui sectantur ii profecto optimum dicendi genus theologandique
sectantur. Quare non est ut illis veteribus, vere Pauli discipulis, hoc nomine,
quod ab his philosophia theologiae non admisceatur, aut detrahant novi
theologi aut noster Thomas sit praeponendus.
not through philosophy and vain deceit.8 This we know from experience
as well. For what is there in philosophy? I do not mean dialectics, the whole
of which lies in words; I have already spoken about it and will do so again.
No, I mean moral and natural philosophy. What is there in them that is
indubitable and settled except the things discovered in natural philosophy
through the observations of doctors and others?
[19] Regarding their words: because the nature of Greek is different from
that of Latin. This would be a rather tedious subject to discuss, and it is a
question for another time. Let it suffice to have said that the Latin doctors
of the Church dreaded words which the great Latin authors (who were
their teachers in the language), although experts in Greek, never used,
words that are continually pressed into service by modern theologians: ens,
entitas, quidditas, identitas, reale, essentiale, suum esse, as well as those
terms which are given names like ampliari, dividi, componi, and other such
things.9 Thus these largely worthless trifles were either not to be treated, or
else they were to be disregarded, lest they lead to greater ignorance.
[20] I am not saying this to detract from modern theologians why
would I want to detract from my very own age? but to defend the ancients,
who are unjustly blamed and abused for not having theologized according
to this method. Instead they devoted themselves wholly to imitating the
apostle Paul, by far the prince of all theologians and the master of theologizing. His manner of speaking, his power, his majesty were such that what
fell flat when spoken by others, even the apostles, he uttered loftily; what in
the mouths of others stood its ground, rushed from his into battle; and
what from others shone dimly, from him seemed to flash and burn, so that
it is not off the mark for him to be represented holding in his hand a sword,
i.e. the word of God.10 This is the true and, so to speak, the genuine mode of
theologizing. This is the true law of speaking and writing, and those who
pursue it doubtless pursue the very best manner of speaking and theologizing. Therefore the ancients, the true disciples of Paul, should not be criticized by modern theologians or placed second to our Thomas on account
of not having mixed theology with philosophy.
8Col. 2:8.
9The first set of words (being, entity, quiddity, identity, real being, essential being,
its own being) are terms of scholastic philosophy that in Vallas view represent incomprehensible jargon. Ampliari (to be ampliated or ampliation) is a term proper to supposition
theory, a part of scholastic philosophy that deals with the proper referents and significations
of names. Componi (to be composed or composition) and dividi (to be divided or division) refer to types of logical fallacies treated by scholastic philosophers.
10Eph. 6:17.
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[Peroratio]
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[21] Quid autem? Aequandus? Omnibus eum aequare non ausim, plerisque tamen etiam facile praetulerim, quos, ne parum id esse videatur, nominatim recensebo. Praepono Thomam Ioanni Cassiano, quem tamquam
optimum doctorem sanctus Dominicus fertur lectitare solitus. Praepono
Anselmo, in primis acuto atque exculto. Praepono Bernardo, doctori erudito, suavi, copioso, sublimi. Praepono Remigio, omnium suae aetatis viro
doctissimo. Praepono Bedae, his omnibus doctiori. Praepono Isidoro, quem
sui amatores negant esse ulli secundum. Quid dicam <de> Magistro
Sententiarum atque Gratiano, qui magis seduli collectores quam veri auctores dici merentur? Praepono item, etsi de numero recentium theologorum sunt, fratribus omnibus tam huius ordinis quam ceterorum, Alberto
Magno, Aegidio, Alexandro Alensi, Bonaventurae, Ioanni Scoto reliquisque
suo ipsorum iudicio tam magnis ut sese antiquis aequare fastidiant.
Praepono praeterea Lactantio atque Boethio, dumtaxat in theologia, nam
in ceteris nulla est comparatio. Idem dico de Cypriano. Addo etiam,
licet invitus, Hilarium; cuius scriptis quid tandem sanctius, doctius,
eloquentius?
[22] An ne hoc quidem Thomae satis est? O quanti et quanta laude digni
sunt hi quibus Thomam anteposui! An etiam illos quattuor omnium summos, paene alteros Evangelistas, in dubium certamenque vocabimus et
aliquem de illa quadriga detrahemus ut in eius loco Thomam reponamus?
Quorum vix scio quem cui praeferam in sua quemque dote mirabilem. Nam
etsi Augustinus omnibus vulgo praefertur, quia plures tractavit in theologia
quaestiones et est in multis haud dubie omnibus praeferendus, tamen, si
scripta Ambrosii cum altero tanto scriptorum Augustini comparentur, meo
iudicio non sint posthabenda. Nec Hieronymus ulla in parte cedit ingenio
Augustini, in omni autem doctrinarum genere adeo maior ut mihi Augusti
nus tamquam mediterraneum mare, Hieronymus tamquam oceanus, quem
[21] What then? Should he be their equal? I would not dare to call him
the equal of them all. Yet I would prefer him, and willingly, to many whom,
lest it seem of little account, I shall list by name. I set Thomas above John
Cassian, whom St. Dominic is said to have been in the habit of reading as
if the best doctor. I set him above Anselm,11 the sharpest and most refined.
I set him above Bernard,12 a learned, sweet, eloquent, and sublime doctor.
I set him above Remigius,13 the most learned man of his age. I set him above
Bede, more learned than all of them. I set him above Isidore, whom his
admirers deny is second to anyone. What should I say about the Master of
the Sentences14 and Gratian, who deserve more to be called assiduous compilers than true authors? Likewise, I set him above all the brothers of both
his order and the others (although here we are talking about modern theologians): Albert the Great, Giles,15 Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, John
the Scot,16 and the rest, who are so convinced of their own greatness that
they are loath to compare themselves to the ancients. Moreover I set him
above Lactantius and Boethius, although only in theology, for in other areas
there is no comparison. I say the same about Cyprian, and I add, albeit
unwillingly, Hilary as well; for what, finally, is holier, more learned, more
eloquent than his writings?
[22] Or is not even this enough for Thomas? How great and how praiseworthy are these men above whom I have set Thomas! Or shall we also call
into question and dispute the four greatest of all, who were like a second
team of evangelists? Shall we pull one of them out of that team so as to
replace him with Thomas? I barely know which of them to prefer to whom,
as each one had his own extraordinary gift. For although Augustine is commonly preferred to all, because he treated more theological questions and
is in many respects indubitably to be preferred, nevertheless, if Ambroses
writings were compared with an equal number of Augustines, I do not
think they would be ranked second. Nor does Jerome yield in any way to
Augustines intellect; he is so much the greater in all areas of learning that
Augustine seems to me like the Mediterranean, Jerome the ocean, upon
11Anselm of Canterbury.
12Bernard of Clairvaux.
13Remigius of Auxerre.
14Peter Lombard.
15Giles of Rome.
16John Duns Scotus.
314
encomion s. thomae
250 pauci nostrorum navigant, esse videatur. Gregorius his longe impar eruditione, sed cura et diligentia par, suavitate autem tanta atque sanctitate ut
angelicum paene sermonem repraesentet.
[23] Horum alicui parem facere Thomam vereor aut aliquem Latinorum.
Potius eos cum totidem Graecis comparaverim: Ambrosium cum Basilio,
255 cuius, ut video, exstitit aemulus; Hieronymum cum Gregorio Nazianzeno,
cuius auditorem et discipulum se fuisse profitetur; Augustinum cum Ioanne
Chrysostomo, quem multis in locis secutus est et in librorum copia aemulatus; Gregorium cum Dionysio, quem Areopagitam vocant, quod eius ipse
primus Latinorum, quantum invenio, facit mentionem (nam superioribus
260 quos nominavi, non modo Latinis verum etiam Graecis, opera Dionysii
fuere ignota). Ad hos proxime accedit Ioannes Damascenus, apud Graecos
auctor celeberrimus, ut apud nos Thomas: ergo iure optimo Damascenus et
Thomas copulabuntur, eo quidem magis quod Damascenus nonnulla logicalia et prope metaphysicalia conscripsit.
[24] Erunt itaque quinque paria theologiae principum ante thronum Dei
265
et Agnum concinentia cum viginti quattuor illis senioribus. Canunt enim
semper apud Deum scriptores rerum sanctarum. Primum par Basilius et
Ambrosius, canens lyra; secundum Nazianzenus et Hieronymus, canens
cithara; tertium Chrysostomus et Augustinus, canens psalterio; quartum
270 Dionysius et Gregorius, canens tibia; quintum Damascenus et Thomas,
canens cymbalis. Nec absurdum fuerit quinarium numerum nunc esse qui
erat quaternarius, cum apud musicos quinque sint tetrachorda non quattuor, nec Thomam cymbalis fieri canentem. Ut enim Thomas geminus
interpretatur, et ipse gemino sono theologiae pariter ac philosophiae
275 canere delectatus est, ita cymbala gemino constant instrumento laetum,
hilarem, plausibilem cantum reddentia.
[25] Talis est Thomae librorum cantus. Hac harmonia sanctus Thomas et
pios homines qui ipsum legunt et sanctos angelos qui nunc eum audiunt
oblectat. Semper enim apud Deum cum aliis sanctis doctoribus modulatur
280 et psallit, Agnum Dei assidue aut laudans aut pro nobis mortalibus obsecrans ut eodem perveniamus quo ipse pervenit. Quod nobis concedat qui
vivit et regnat in saecula benedictus. Amen.17
17In R, after Amen: Oration of Lorenzo Valla, a most learned and eloquent man, which
he held in praise of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in the
city of Rome, a.d. 1457, the seventh day of March. He died in the same year on the first day
of August (Doctissimi viri ac eloquentissimi Laurentii e Valle oratio quam habuit in laudem Sancti Thomae Aquinatis in Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae Minervae, in urbe romana a.d.
1457, VII die Martii; obiitque eodem anno die primo Augusti). See Valla, Encomion sancti
Thome, 55.
which few of our contemporaries set sail. Gregory18 lags far behind all in
erudition, but he equals them in carefulness and diligence and is possessed
of such great sweetness and holiness that he seems to speak like an angel.
[23] I am afraid to set Thomas or any of the Latins equal to any one of
these men. Rather, I would compare them with the same number of Greeks:
Ambrose with Basil, whose rival I see he was; Jerome with Gregory
Nazianzen, whose pupil and disciple he claimed to have been; Augustine
with John Chrysostom, whom he often followed in his writings and emulated in the number of his books; Gregory with Dionysius the Areopagite,
because he is the first of the Latins, as far as I know, to mention him (for the
works of Dionysius were unknown to the others I named, not only the
Latins but the Greeks as well). Closest to these comes John Damascene, a
most famous author among the Greeks, as Thomas is amongst us. It will
therefore be perfectly right for John and Thomas to be paired together, and
all the more so because John wrote many logical and well-nigh metaphysical works.
[24] So there will be five pairs of princes of theology resounding before
the throne of God and the Lamb, in unison with the twenty-four elders. For
the writers of holy things always make music in the sight of God. The first
pair is Basil and Ambrose, playing the lyre; the second, Nazianzen and
Jerome, playing the cithara; the third, Chrysostom and Augustine, playing
the psaltery; the fourth, Dionysius and Gregory, playing the flute; the fifth,
John Damascene and Thomas, playing the cymbals. And it will not be
unharmonious for their number to be five now instead of four since for
musicians there are five tetrachords, not four nor to have Thomas playing
the cymbals. For as the name Thomas means twin, and as he enjoyed playing equally in the twin tones of theology and philosophy, thus the cymbals
are a double instrument emitting happy, cheerful, and pleasing music.
[25] Such is the tune of Thomass books. With this harmony Saint Thomas
delights both the pious men who read him and the holy angels who now
hear him. For he is always singing and playing before God with the other
holy doctors, perpetually either praising the Lamb of God, or entreating
Him that we mortals may reach the same place he has. May it be granted us
by Him who lives and reigns, praised unto eternity. Amen.
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INDEX
Aaron79, 264, 267
Abelard, Peter206
Abraham84
Accius, Lucius268
Achilles101102
Accursius108
Actus beati Silvestri presulis94, 98
Adorno, Francesco297
Ahasuerus48
Albert the Great10, 149n5, 197, 281, 313
Alberti, Leon Battista131, 267n
Alexander of Hales197, 313
Alexander the Great45
Alfonso of Aragon3, 7, 24, 71, 135, 140142,
238, 240
Alighieri, Dante169
Ambrose, bishop of Milan911, 183,
198200, 218, 275, 309, 313, 315
Ananias34, 37
Angelico, Fra169, 202
Anselm of Canterbury197, 209, 313
Antoninus284
Antoninus Pius284n203
Antonio da Rho236237, 239240, 246
Apollinaris88
Aquinas, Thomas, see Thomas Aquinas
Aratus215
Arian146, 159
Aristophanes190n
Aristotle7, 10, 12, 149, 165166,
190n, 191, 193194, 208209, 229, 231,
250, 270
Arnold of Brescia65
Auerbach, Erich179
Augustine of Hippo911, 94, 101, 179, 183,
198200, 219n, 221, 223225, 275, 294,
307, 309, 313, 315
City of God73, 111113, 115, 119120,
123125, 127128, 131132
De doctrina christiana206, 213, 216220,
223, 225, 228, 292
De Trinitate213, 216, 222
Augustus39, 108, 284
Aureolus, Petrus231
Aurispa, Giovanni27, 139, 272274
Averroes146, 159, 180
Aymo99
Aymo, Nicola de99
Bade, Josse287n
Balbi of Genoa99
Basel, Council of140
Basil of Caesarea (the Great)1011, 185,
199200, 275, 309, 315
Baxandall, Michael263
Beccadelli, Antonio17, 242
Becket, Thomas169, 303
Bede197, 313
Bel88
Bernard of Clairvaux10, 197, 210, 313
Bertelli, Carlo162
Berthier, J. J.158n, 161162
Bible, books of
Acts34, 138, 142, 215
Apocalypse199
Colossians185186, 234, 252, 311
1 Corinthians213215
2 Corinthians307
Daniel8789
Deuteronomy116, 215, 221
Ecclesiasticus153
Ephesians30, 41, 311
Exodus217, 221
Galatians3334, 116
Genesis123
Isaiah214
Jeremiah34
John80, 89, 92, 98, 117n164, 138, 142, 301
Judith89
1 Kings117
Leviticus116
Luke92
Mark92
Matthew4041, 43, 51, 80, 9192
1 Timothy40
Titus215
Tobias89
Wisdom of Solomon159
Biondo, Flavio, see Flavio, Biondo
Boethius55, 159, 192193, 197, 203210, 231,
234236, 240, 245253, 281, 313
Consolation of Philosophy203205, 234,
246, 253n
De institutione musica200, 201n
see also Thomas Aquinas, Commentary
on Boethiuss De Trinitate
Boethius of Dacia9n24
332
index
index333
Gaddi, Taddeo158n
Gaetano, see Cajetan
Gaius, see Caligula
Galba39
Gamaliel the Elder138, 142
Garin, Eugenio1112
Gaspare da Verona177
Gelasius I, Pope51, 59, 6364, 94, 98
Gellius, Aulus190n, 283n
Gentile, Giovanni12
George, Saint89
Gesta Sanctorum, see Jacopo da Voragine
Gesta Silvestri6364, 97
Giles of Rome197, 313
Giovanni da Fiesole,
see Angelico
Giovanni da Mantova254
Giovanni di Napoli, Fra145
Girolami, Remigio de147
Golden Legend, see Jacopo da Voragine
Grabmann, Martin150
Gramsci, Antonio14
Gratian5, 10, 6063, 69, 78, 102, 119120,
197, 313
Gregory I (the Great), Pope1011, 53, 61,
198200, 275, 315
Gregory Nazianzen1011, 185186,
199200, 215, 309, 315
Guarino Veronese18
Guglielmo da Tocco172
Guidi di Nepozzano, Uberto147, 174n
Heer, Friedrich133
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich14
Hermagoras180
Hilary of Poitiers9, 183, 197, 215, 218, 275,
309, 313
Huguccio of Pisa99
Hus, Jan75
Hutten, Ulrich von131132
334
index
Macrobius36n47, 190n
Malchus117
Mamertinus, Claudius166n
Marcus Aurelius284n203
Mariani, Valerio161
Marrou, Henri-Irne179, 216
Marsuppini, Carlo1718, 148
Martin of Dacia9n24
Mary (mother of Jesus)92, 172, 299
Medici, Cosimo de (il Vecchio)283
Melchiades, Pope60, 69
Melchizedek84
Menander215
More, Thomas36n47
Moses78
Mussato, Albertino254
Naaman98
National Institute for the Study of the
Renaissance, see Istituto Nazionale di
Studi sul Rinascimento
Nazarius166n
Nebuchadnezzar48
Nero39
Nestorius159
Niccoli, Niccol148149
Nicea, Council of67
Nicholas V, Pope3, 176177, 202, 238,
240241, 264, 281, 283286
index335
Schlosser, Julius von157n
Scrivani, Melchior3
Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa11
Seigel, Jerrold E.219
Sentences, see Peter Lombard
Serra, Giovanni33
Setz, Wolfram35, 37, 45, 107, 119
Sigismund (Holy Roman Emperor)105
Silvestri, Francesco147
Soboul, Albert14
Solomon117, 267
Spina, Bartolomeo152154
Stephen II, Pope101
Steuco, Agostino133
Suetonius108
Susanna89
Sylvester I, Pope4, 6, 2829n32, 30, 40, 42,
44, 4954, 57, 61, 63, 66, 7980, 8285,
87, 98, 115
Symmachus (Prefect of Rome)67
Tarquinius Superbus40, 126, 207
Ten Commandments66
Terence86n
Tertulian252
Theodosian Code, see Codex Theodosianus
Theodosius45, 67, 110, 114
Thomas (apostle)303
Thomas Aquinas711, 145315 (passim)
Commentary on Boethiuss De
Trinitate203, 211228, 232233,
255257, 274, 286
Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et
religionem219n220n
Expositiones180
Expositio super librum Boethii de
Trinitate, see Commentary on
Boethiuss De Trinitate
Scriptum in libros Senentiarum152
Summa contra gentes159
Summa theologiae149152, 154, 158n,
161163, 175, 180, 182, 211, 226
Super Epistolas s. Pauli lectura287n
Thucydides42n60, 190n
Tiberius39
Tobias89
Tolosani, Giovanmaria dei133
Torquemada, Juan de202
Tortelli, Giovanni176
Tracy, James291
Traini, Francesco156, 169
Traversari, Ambrogio1719, 134
Trent, Council of146, 152, 154, 163
Trevisan, Ludovico28, 134136, 138140, 142
Trinkaus, Charles133
336
index