Philosophy dictionary

VALLA, LORENZO

(1405–1457)
Italian Renaissance humanist. Valla first exposed as a fraud the Donation of Constantine, the document 390 purporting to express the gift of the western empire to Pope Sylvester by the emperor Constantine, and thereby proving the sovereignty of the Pope over secular government. One of his influential treatises wasDe Voluptate(‘On Pleasure’), playing off the systems of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and Christian ethics.De Libero Arbitrario(‘On Free Choice’) takes issue with Boethius ’ treatment of free will, arguing that God's foreknowledge is compatible with human free will, but that his power is not. Valla was also an acute early critic of the multiplicity of scholastic categories and distinctions, and one of the first writers to see that existence is not a kind of predicate.

  1. valla, lorenzo—Valla Lorenzo Article by U. Benigni on the teachings of this Italian humanist dd Catholic Encyclopedia.Kevin Knight...Catholic encyclopedia
  2. valla, lorenzo—Renaissance humanist and philosopher who in wrote The Donation of Constantineem declaring an eighthcentury document used by the papacy to support its claims to temporal ...Dictionary of Renaissance art
  3. valla, lorenzo—Italian humaniststrong active mainly in Romestrong and Naplesstrong often regarded as the ablest humanist scholar of the th century. He is remembered especially for his i...Historical Dictionary of Renaissance
  4. valla, lorenzo—Philosophy The of the Italian Renaissance....History of philosophy