Talk:Lorenzo Valla

Disputed?

I see nothing wrong with this, which is essentially a scan of the Britannica; if nothing shows up on this Talk page (in particular by the anonymous editor who put the tag on) within a day or two, it should be removed. Bill 22:51, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

It's honestly probably a Catholic a little hurt that their church made up an entire document so as to maintain power over Italy in the Medieval and Renaissance periods and that Lorenzo Valla called them out on it.

"Them?" Valla was a Catholic priest himself. Mamurra (talk) 10:55, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

May 2007: The article has been vandalized by adding or replacing details. For instance Valla learned Greek and Latin instead of French and Italian and he never tried to become apostolic secretary in China. Please restore the earlier version.87.78.74.82 00:46, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Making Latin harder

However, its ultimate result was that the approved style of humanistic Latin, purged of neologisms and newly developed meanings for words, was much harder to write correctly than the workaday Latin based on the Vulgate which was used as a learned but still living language by lawyers, physicians, and diplomats. Valla may have inadvertently hastened the process of converting literature to the vernacular languages by making Latin much more difficult to use and learn.

To say that classical (or humanistic) Latin is "much more difficult" than medieval Latin is pure POV: from my POV I could actually say the opposite, medieval Latin with its imprecise meaning of words, unstable grammar and fuzziness of thought, is sometimes really hard to understand in comparison with the classical language.

What probably the person writing this had in mind is that Valla demonstrated that the medieval Latin differs badly from the classical standard, and people wanting to command it had to actually learn many constructs and word meanings anew. Which is of course difficult, but it does not come from some natural difficulty of the classical Latin, but from the fact that people having trouble with it have first learned the "corrupted" medieval version of Latin. Mamurra (talk) 18:09, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Bias in critical assessment of Valla

"In him posterity honors not so much the scholar and the stylist as the man who initiated a bold method of criticism, which he applied alike to language, to historical documents and to ethical opinions."

i. The author presents his own, negative view, as that of posterity, but, as the subsequent comments of Luther, Erasmus, and Jebb confirm, Valla was indeed honored as a great scholar and Latin stylist.

ii. The author tries to undermine the radical importance of Valla's criticism by emphasizing its boldness, as if the method or form of his critique were his real and only contribution to posterity, but this is clearly not a serious, neutral evaluation of the content of Valla's criticisms. Medievalen (talk) 04:11, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Dates of composition or first circulation of writings?

The editors who have contributed to the article have not made an attempt to date the major writings of Valla: either the date of composition, or the date of first circulation. Those dates must have been either mentioned or estimated in the sources consulted by the editors to assemble the text. Dating of ancient writings is primordial, and a lot of real scholarship is expended on this aspect. This could not be ignored in this article, especially since Lorenzo Valla is the founder of historical criticism in Europe. --ROO BOOKAROO (talk) 20:29, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Historical hoaxes

Only one is actually mentioned - that of the Donation of Constantine.

The section needs some work - is the 'the document' Valla's work or the Donation? Should it be 'beneficial nature' or 'was useful for the Western Church's claims'? How justified was Valla's claim about the word 'satrap'? (I don't have enough theological-history knowledge to develop the section.) Jackiespeel (talk) 11:05, 22 March 2015 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Lorenzo Valla/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Comment(s)

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The discussion of de Voluptate misrepresents that work. It has been 20 years since I read it, but even so, it might be better described this way: In de Voluptate (On Pleasure), Valla presents three different speakers on the subject of the true good. The first presents a Stoic view, that happiness comes from avoiding extremes. The second presents an Epicurean view, which presents pleasure as a means of deciding what is good. The third presents a revision of the Epicurean view, asserting that Christianity is the means by which one comes to happiness. In this third speech, Valla can be seen as connecting Greek philosophy to Christianity. One important element in de Voluptate is Valla's use of dialog. In his use of three speakers, Valla was imitating a number of important Greek works (Plato's Symposium, for example). Thus, in both content and style, de Voluptate can be seen as a prime example of Renaissance literature. Dr. Davidson (talk) 21:12, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Last edited at 21:12, 30 May 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 22:26, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

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