Lorenzo Valla

Born in Rome around 1407, Lorenzo Valla was an Italian humanist, teacher, rhetorician, and Catholic priest whose work became central to Renaissance learning. He was deeply interested in classical Latin and argued that careful attention to language could reveal when a text truly belonged to the age it claimed.

That approach made him famous. In his study of the Donation of Constantine, Valla showed that the document used to support papal temporal power could not have come from Constantine's time, because its language and ideas were from a much later period. The work became one of the clearest early examples of historical and textual criticism.

Valla also wrote on Latin style, moral philosophy, and the New Testament, and he spent part of his career in the service of Alfonso V of Aragon before later working in Rome. He died on August 1, 1457, but his reputation endured because he helped teach later scholars how to question inherited authorities with evidence, precision, and wit.