Valla, Lorenzo

Valla, Lorenzo a Roman priest and controversialist was born about 1410. He was ordained a priest, in 1431, and taught rhetoric and philosophy at Pavia and Milan, where he had bitter controversies with the Aristotelian scholastics. In 1443 he left Rome and went to Naples, where he was patronized by Alfonso I, but for whose protection the inquisitors would have burned him at the stake. He became reconciled to the pope, Nicholas V, by whom he was restored as canon of St. John Lateran. He returned to Rome and remained there until his death, in 1465. He wrote many important works, among which are De Falso Credita et Ementita Constantini Donatione Declamatio: — Elegantiarum Linguae Latinae Lib. VI: — In Novum Testamentum Annotatidnes: — De Collationibus: Novi Testament: — Notes on Sallust, Livy, and Quintilian: and Translations of the Iliad, Herodotus Thucydides, etc.; besides several controversial, works and treatises on logic. His principal works were published at Basle in 1543.,