Italian humanist and philosopher Lorenzo Valla: biography, creativity

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:44

Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) was an Italian humanist, rhetorician, reformer, teacher and ancient philologist. He advocated humanistic ideas for reforming language and education. Extensive knowledge in the field of Latin and Greek linguistics allowed him to conduct a thorough analysis of some documents of the church and contribute to the destruction of the myths and errors surrounding them. Valla demonstrated that the Gift of Constantine, often cited in support of the provisional papacy, was in fact a fake.

Confrontation

Believing that Aristotle perverted logic and hindered the normal development and practical application of philosophy, Valla often challenged scholastics who followed Aristotle's teachings to debates and disputes. His main goal was to create new directions of philosophical thought, and not to establish his own school or system. His treatise On Pleasure (1431) combined the Epicurean and Christian hedonistic ideas that the desire for happiness is a motivating factor in human behavior. Walla also defended the belief thatfree will can be combined with the fate predicted by God, but he emphasized that this concept is beyond the limits of human intellect and therefore is a matter of faith, not scientific knowledge. Many of the philosopher's ideas were subsequently borrowed and developed by other thinkers of the Reformation.

Open criticism has led to many enemies; several times the philosopher Lorenzo Valla was in mortal danger. His teachings in Latin gradually gained attention and won him a position in the Vatican - an event called "the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition".

Life and work

Lorenzo was born around 1407 in Rome, Italy. His father, Luca della Valla, was a lawyer from Piacenza. Lorenzo studied in Rome, studying Latin under the guidance of an outstanding teacher - Professor Leonardo Bruni (Aretino). He also attended classes at the University of Padua. In 1428, the future philosopher tried to get a job as a papal diplomat, but his candidacy was rejected due to his young age. In 1429 he was offered to teach rhetoric in Padua, and he accepted. In 1431, the treatise "On Pleasures" was published. A little later, a work was published, thanks to which even now the work of Lorenzo Valla is being studied at universities - "On True and False Good". In 1433, he was forced to give up his professorship: Valla published an open letter in which he openly denounced the lawyer Bartolo and mocked the scholastic system.jurisprudence.

Tough Times

Valla went to Milan, then to Genoa; tried to get a job again in Rome and finally went to Naples, where he found a good vacancy at the court of Alfonso V, who patronized the outstanding masters of the pen and was known for his love of excess. Alfonso appointed him his personal secretary and protected Lorenzo from the attacks of his many enemies. For example, in 1444 Valla found himself on trial before the Inquisition, because he publicly expressed the opinion that the text of the "Apostles' Creed" was not written successively by each of the twelve apostles. Ultimately, Alfonso managed to end the legal battle and rescue his secretary from captivity.

In 1439, a conflict broke out between Alfonso and the papacy - the problem was the territorial belonging of Naples. Lorenzo Valla wrote an essay claiming that the donation of Constantine, which supported papal rule, was in fact a false text. In his essay, Valla called on the Romans to revolt, and their leaders to attack the pope in order to deprive him of power, since it was the all-powerful papacy, in his opinion, that was the source of all the evils from which Italy suffered at that time. Published in 1440, the essay was so convincing that the entire public soon recognized the false origin of the Gift of Constantine.

The birth of historical criticism

In Naples, Valla, whose life and work were still closely connected withphilological research, aroused the ire of believers by doubting the authenticity of many other religious texts of unknown origin, and also called into question the need for a monastic lifestyle. In 1444, he narrowly escaped the inquisitorial tribunal, but the danger did not silence the philosopher. He went on to ridicule "vulgar" (colloquial) Latin and accused Saint Augustine of heresy. Soon he published the work "On the beauties of the Latin language." This text was the first real scientific work, fully focused on Latin linguistics, and was published with the support of the former teacher Lorenzo. Most literary figures considered the work a provocation and showered insults on the philologist. Valla formalized his witty responses to the wildest remarks in a new literary work, but numerous invectives led to a deterioration in his reputation in Rome.

A fresh start

After the death of Pope Eugene IV in February 1447, Lorenzo again went to the capital, where he was warmly received by Pope Nicholas V, who hired a humanist as an apostolic secretary and ordered him to translate into Latin the works of various Greek authors, including Herodotus and Thucydides. The acceptance of Walla in Rome was called by contemporaries "a triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition".

Ideas and essays

Lorenzo Valla, whose biography is more like an adventure novel, went down in history not only as a scientist and philologist, but as the initiator of the development of suchliterary method as criticism. He combined the traits of a delicate humanist, a shrewd critic and a venomous writer. Valla's writings are focused primarily on the creation of innovative ideas and hitherto unknown currents of philosophical thought - he did not support any specific philosophical systems. He applied his extensive knowledge of Latin and Greek linguistics to carefully study the texts of the New Testament and other religious documents widely used by the church to support its doctrines. Thus, Valla introduced a radically new dimension to the humanist movement - the scientific one. Many of his ideas were adopted by the philosophers of the Reformation period, in particular Martin Luther King Jr. highly valued Valla's philological achievements.

Works

The most famous work of the humanist, without a doubt, remains the scientific study "On the beauties of the Latin language", which withstood almost sixty editions between 1471 and 1536. On Pleasure, published in 1431, is an eloquent study of Stoic, Epicurean, and hedonistic ethics. "Reasoning about the forgery of the Gift of Constantine" (1440) formed the basis of the general belief in the forgery of the well-known religious text. Most of the philologist's works were published as collected works in 1592 in Venice.

Ethics

The treatise "On Free Will" was written in three books in the form of a polyloguebetween Leonardo Bruni (Arentino), Antonio Beccadelli and Niccolo Niccoli on the theme of the greatest good. Arentino argues that, first of all, it is necessary to live in harmony with nature. Beccadelli supports Epicureanism, arguing that restraint is against nature and that the desire for pleasure should only be restrained when it prevents the realization of even greater pleasure. Niccoli opposes both speakers, proclaiming the ideals of Christian hedonism, according to which the greatest good is eternal happiness, which exists only in dynamics (in other words, the path to happiness is happiness). Niccoli is called the winner in the dispute, but Beccadelli gives very eloquent arguments in favor of his point of view - and therefore it is not clear which of the disputants Lorenzo Valla himself supports. This treatise contains an aggressive critique of scholasticism and monastic asceticism, and therefore at one time caused an extremely hostile attitude towards the author.

Latin style

Toward the end of the fourteenth century, humanists began to study the classical texts of antiquity in an attempt to revive the spirit of Greco-Roman times. Lorenzo Valla, whose humanism is reflected in his critical writings, has invested much effort in the unprecedented work "On the Beauties of the Latin Language", where he analyzed the forms of Latin grammar along with the stylistic rules and laws of rhetoric. In this essay, Valla contrasted the elegant style of ancient Roman authors (such as Cicero and Quintilian) with the clumsiness of medieval and ecclesiastical Latin.

Most of Valla's contemporaries, famous literary figures, took this work as personal criticism, although the philologist never mentioned specific names in his books. Because of this, Lorenzo Valla made many enemies, but the essay "On Beauties …" initiated a whole movement to improve the style of the Latin language. Undoubtedly, his work is invaluable; in the distant fifteenth century, they were far ahead of their time and served as the basis for the formation of radically new philosophical currents and literary methods.