author
Lorenzo Valla
1407–1457
A sharp-minded Renaissance humanist, he became famous for using close reading and language analysis to challenge long-accepted claims. His work helped shape the habits of critical scholarship that later readers would take for granted.
1 Audiobook
The treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine
by Lorenzo Valla
About the author
Born in Rome around 1407, Lorenzo Valla was an Italian humanist, teacher, rhetorician, and priest. He wrote in a lively, argumentative style and cared deeply about the power of language, especially the difference between elegant classical Latin and the later forms that had become common in medieval writing.
He is best known for showing that the Donation of Constantine was not an authentic ancient document. By studying its language and historical details, he argued that it had been written much later than it claimed, a bold example of using philology to test authority. He also wrote influential works on Latin style and on philosophical and religious questions, earning both admirers and enemies.
Valla spent part of his career in the service of Alfonso V of Aragon in Naples and later worked in Rome. He died on August 1, 1457. Today he is remembered as one of the great early masters of textual criticism, a scholar who showed how careful attention to words can change history.