Lorenzo Valla

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Lorenzo Valla
Lorenzo Valla was an Italian Renaissance humanistic and also double up as a Philosopher. He was born and educated in Rome where he learned Latin and Greek. Among his teachers included Leonardo Bruni, a humanistic and modern historian and Giovani Auripsa an Italian humanistic. Later on, he became a priest and a professor who lector in various universities in Northern Italy. However, his prominence is drawn from his works that focused on the Latin language and its refinement. He is accredited for the restoration of the Latin Language through his various lingual applications. For instance, he is mentioned as a great developer of Erastus’ Intellectual development. Since 1849 Erastus himself recognized the great role that Valla had played in restoring the Latin language.
The Renaissance Humanistic and philosopher is known for famous works that include The Elegance of Latin Language and De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamation. In the latter, he proved that the highly esteemed Donation de Constantine as a fraud. He mainly demonstrated that the syntax used in the donation was from the 4th century thereby making it fake. While he was not the only skeptic towards the donation, he did the bulk of the work by proving its illegitimacy. In his latter work, (Elegantiae Linguae Latinae in Latin) he continued from where he left his previous work and crystallized hos humanistic belief. He argued that the historical significance of words could be used to guide the thoughts and subsequently, human discourse if the study of language was perfected.

He added that through the words, the past could be illuminated and enrich the human condition. Ultimately through his work, Valla created a path through which skeptics and critics could subject works to ensure that texts were viewed in both historical and cultural metric to foster understanding.