Christianity, Latinity, and Culture Studies in the History of Christian Traditions
General Editor Robert J. Bast Knoxville, Tennessee
In cooperation with Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee Eric Saak, Liverpool Christine Shepardson, Knoxville, Tennessee Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana
Founding Editor Heiko A. Oberman†
VOLUME 172
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/shct Christianity, Latinity, and Culture
Two Studies on Lorenzo Valla
By Salvatore I. Camporeale, O.P.
Translated by Patrick Baker
Edited by Patrick Baker Christopher S. Celenza
With Lorenzo Valla’s Encomium of Saint Thomas Aquinas
Edited and translated by Patrick Baker
LEIDEN • BOSTON 2014 Cover illustration: Detail of Filippino Lippi (ca. 1457-1504), Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics, fresco, 1489-1492 (Cappella Carafa, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome), depicting the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in front of the Lateran (courtesy of Scala Archives).
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List of Illustrations ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xi Note on the Translation ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xiii Acknowledgements �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������xv
Introduction: Salvatore Camporeale and Lorenzo Valla ���������������������������������1 Christopher S. Celenza
Lorenzo Valla and the De falso credita donatione: Rhetoric, Freedom, and Ecclesiology in the Fifteenth Century ������������������������������ 17 Salvatore I. Camporeale 1 Introduction to a Reinterpretation of the De falso credita donatione ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 19 2 Causa veritatis: From the Exordium to the Peroration ����������������������� 28 3 The Antinomy of imperium and evangelium ���������������������������������������� 37 4 Section I of the Oration and Parallel Passages in Valla’s Works �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 54 5 The Body of the Oration: From Section III to Section VI ������������������� 57 6 Section IV: From the Constitutum Constantini to the Legenda Silvestri ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 73 6.1 The Constitutum ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 76 6.2 The Legenda Silvestri �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 84 7 Section V: From the Pactum Hludovicianum to the respublica romana; Valla’s Anti-Caesarism in Opposition to Augustine �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������101 7.1 The Hludovicianum and the “Transfer of the Empire” (translatio imperii) ����������������������������������������������������������������������������102 7.2 From imperium to respublica: The “Second Part” of Section V ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������109 7.3 From Valla to Augustine: The Critique of the City of God �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������112 8 Epilogue: Valla’s Defense of the Oration in his Letters to Cardinals Trevisan and Landriani ����������������������������������������������������������134
Lorenzo Valla between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Encomium of St. Thomas – 1457 ������������������������������������������������������������145 Salvatore I. Camporeale 1 At the Origins of Neo-Thomism in the Fifteenth Century ��������������145 1.1 The Literary Encomium and the Iconographic “Triumph” of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Dominican Tradition ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������145 1.2 The History of Thomism and the Centrality of the Summa Theologiae in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������149 1.3 Valla’s Encomium: Its Place in History and Cultural Significance ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������154 1.4 The Cappellone degli Spagnoli in Florence (Second Half of the Fourteenth Century) and the Cappella Carafa in Rome (End of the Fifteenth Century) ����������������������������������������156 2 Encomium of St. Thomas ���������������������������������������������������������������������������164 2.1 Exordium and Divine Invocation ������������������������������������������������165 2.2 The narratio and the Liturgical Celebration of the Saint �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������166 2.3 Probatio and refutatio, the Central Section of the Encomium ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������170 2.4 Knowledge, the Second Thematic Unit �������������������������������������173 2.5 Valla’s Critique of Scholasticism and the Controversy between Thomism and Anti-Thomism in the Fifteenth Century ����������������������������������������������������������������������������175 2.6 The Stylistic Qualities of Thomas’s Writings and the Canons of Latin Rhetoric �����������������������������������������������178 2.7 The Critique of Scholastic Speculation and the Humanist Refounding of Theological Study ����������������������������182 2.8 Philosophy as an “Impediment” to Authentic Christian Thought and the Distinction/Opposition between Patristic Theology and Scholasticism �����������������������������������������184 2.9 The Reduction of Philosophy to Rhetoric and Valla’s Quintilianism �����������������������������������������������������������������������186 2.10 The Linguistic-Semantic Critique of Scholasticism and the Interrelation between Greek and Latin ������������������������������192 2.11 Peroration and Closing of the Encomium ����������������������������������196
3 The Aporias of Scholasticism ������������������������������������������������������������������203 3.1 Philosophy/Theology ����������������������������������������������������������������������203 3.2 Dialectic/Rhetoric ����������������������������������������������������������������������������234 4 Rhetoric as a Mode of Theologizing: The Humanist Solution to the Problem ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������254 4.1 The proemium to Book IV of the Elegantiae ������������������������������255 4.2 The Letter to Eustochium and Jerome’s Dream �������������������������257 4.3 The Mechanical Arts, the Liberal Arts, and the Christian Religion �����������������������������������������������������������������������������263 4.4 The Opposition between Philosophical Theology and Rhetorical Theology, and the Critical Reduction of the Vulgate to the Greek Truth (veritas graeca) ������������������������������276 4.5 The Preface to Thucydides’ History, Nicholas V’s Literary Project, and the Question of “Translation” ����������������281 4.6 The Arts and Sciences as a Middle Ground (medietas) ���������287 4.7 Erasmus’s Humanism from the Antibarbari to the Life of Jerome ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������291
Lorenzo Valla, Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas �����������������������������������������297 Patrick Baker (ed. and tr.)
Bibliography �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������317 Index �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������331
1 Andrea di Bonaiuto (fl. 1343–1377), Triumph of the Catholic Doctrine Embodied by St. Thomas Aquinas, fresco, 1365–1367. Cappellone degli Spagnoli, Santa Maria Novella, Florence (courtesy of Scala Archives) ����������������������������160 2 Filippino Lippi (ca. 1457–1504), Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics, fresco, 1489–1492. Cappella Carafa, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome (courtesy of Scala Archives) ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������163
My intention has been to translate the work of Salvatore Camporeale not only into English but into readable English. His Latinate and at times highly technical style can be difficult to navigate, and it seemed that the service of translation would be less if the text were simply rendered ad litteram into an equally intractable analog. Thus long sentences have been broken up and paragraph divisions reformatted, and wherever possible extremely dense or opaque formulations have been unpacked. Whether this has been done excessively or insufficiently is for the reader to judge. Those intent on recovering Camporeale’s pristine intention can, of course, avail themselves of the original. Both essays translated here first appeared in Italian in the journal Memorie Domenicane and were reprinted, with minimal revision, in the 2002 volume Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma: studi e testi. Occasionally very small portions of Camporeale’s text have been omitted or altered when made irrelevant or redundant in the process of translation. Typographical errors have been silently corrected. Every effort has been made to provide precise citations for quotations, which Camporeale, writing in another era of scholarship and assuming his read- ers knew the sources thoroughly, often did not provide. No systematic attempt has been made to update the bibliography, though when possi- ble English translations or original English editions of works cited by Camporeale in Italian have been supplied. Such bibliographical and other editorial additions, including a sprinkling of explanatory footnotes, appear in square brackets. The essay, “Lorenzo Valla between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: the Encomium of St. Thomas – 1457,” appears here in slightly modified form: a lengthy appendix featuring a comparative read- ing of Aquinas’s commentary on St. Paul’s letters with Valla’s Adnotationes has been omitted, while a Latin text and a new English translation of the Encomium have been added. All translations of Latin sources are mine except where noted. The greatest borrowing of the work of others has occurred with Valla’s Oration on the Donation of Constantine, for which I have made use of the transla- tion by G.W. Bowersock in the I Tatti Renaissance Library. It has, however, been necessary at times to modify his renderings to fit the context of Camporeale’s work; all such departures are noted. In translating primary
Patrick Baker Rome, 2013
The editors would like to thank Memorie Domenicane for permission to translate Camporeale’s essays, which originally appeared in its pages: “Lorenzo Valla e il De falso credita donatione. Retorica, libertà ed ecclesio- logia nel ‘400,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 19 (1988): 191–293; and “Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Encomion s. Thomae – 1457,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 7 (1976): 11–194. We would also like to thank the I Tatti Renaissance Library for permission to use G.W. Bowersock’s translation of Valla’s Oration on the Donation of Constantine (On the Donation of Constantine, tr. G.W. Bowersock [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007]), as well as the Monumenta Germaniae Historica for permis- sion to reprint large portions of Wolfram Setz’s critical text of the Latin Oration (De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz [Weimar: Böhlau, 1976], Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 10). This volume was made possi- ble in part thanks to a Lila Acheson Wallace – Reader’s Digest Publications Subsidy from Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. It was put into final form at the American Academy in Rome, where Patrick Baker resided in 2012–2013 as the Lily Auchincloss Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Renaissance and Early Modern Italian Studies.
P.B. and C.C.
INTRODUCTION: SALVATORE CAMPOREALE AND LORENZO VALLA
Christopher S. Celenza
Italian Renaissance studies lost one of its most valued scholars on 17 December 2002, when the Dominican scholar Salvatore Camporeale passed away. Camporeale’s life took him from southern Italy (where he was born in 1928, in Bari), to California (where he attended a small Catholic college, St. Albert’s, receiving his Bachelor’s degree in 1950), Pistoia, Florence, and to visiting lectureships all over the world. He was a regular visitor to the Johns Hopkins University, where he taught yearly mini- courses from the early 1980s until the later 1990s. And he was a beloved interlocutor for many years at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies in Settignano, near Florence, where Camporeale had his real and final home, in the Dominican community of Santa Maria Novella. After his death, no less than three publications in his honor appeared, testimony to the immense esteem Camporeale enjoyed among his students and colleagues worldwide, all the more noteworthy since he never held a permanent university position.1 While Camporeale wrote on different topics, his principal contribution to scholarship came in his studies of the fifteenth-century thinker Lorenzo Valla (1406–57), a Roman intellectual whose historical, literary,
1 See Francesco Ciabattoni and Susanna Barsella (eds.), The Humanist’s Workshop: Special Issue on Salvatore I. Camporeale, special issue of Italian Quarterly, vol. 46 (179–182 = Winter to Fall, 2009), entire issue (there see Susanna Barsella, “Biocritical Note,” 15–17 and “Bibliography,” 19–21, for a list of Camporeale’s publications); Walter Stephens (ed.), Studia Humanitatis: Studies in Honor of Salvatore Camporeale (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), supplement to Modern Language Notes 119 (2004); and a section of the Journal of the History of Ideas 66 (2005): 477–556: Salvatore Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla, Humanism, and Theology, edited by Melissa Meriam Bullard, with essays by Bullard, “The Renaissance Project of Knowing: Lorenzo Valla and Salvatore Camporeale’s Contributions to the Querelle between Rhetoric and Philosophy” (477–81); Christopher S. Celenza, “Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy” (483–506); Brian P. Copenhaver, “Valla Our Contemporary: Philosophy and Philology” (507–25); Mariangela Regoliosi, “Salvatore Camporeale’s Contribution to Theology and the History of the Church” (527–39); and Nancy S. Struever, “Historical Priorities” (541–56). There are profiles of Camporeale posted by Villa I Tatti (accessed 12.17.2012: http://www.itatti.it/camporeale _memoriam.htm) and Santa Maria Novella (accessed 12.17.2012: http://www.smn.it/ convento/campo.htm).
2 For recent editions, translations, and bibliography, see Christopher S. Celenza, “Lorenzo Valla’s Radical Philology: The “Preface” to the Annotations to the New Testament in Context,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012), 365–394; Lorenzo Valla, Dialectical Disputations, ed. and tr. Brian P. Copenhaver and Lodi Nauta, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012); Lodi Nauta, In Defense of Common Sense: Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2009); Mariangela Regoliosi (ed.), Lorenzo Valla: La riforma della lingua e della logica, 2 vols. (Firenze: Polistampa, 2010); eadem (ed.), Lorenzo Valla e l’umanesimo toscano (Firenze: Polistampa, 2009); eadem (ed.), Pubblicare il Valla (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008); Lorenzo Valla, Raudensiane note, ed. Gian Matteo Corrias (Firenze: Polistampa, 2007); Lorenzo Valla, Encomion Sancti Thome, ed. Stefano Cartei (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008); Lorenzo Valla, Ad Alfonsum regem Epistola de duobus Tarquiniis and Confutationes in Benedictum Morandum, ed. Francesco Lo Monaco (Firenze: Polistampa, 2009); Lorenzo Valla, Emendationes quorundam locorum ex Alexandro ad Alfonsum primum Aragonum regem, ed. Clementina Marsico (Firenze: Polistampa, 2009). 3 See Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine, ed. and tr. G.W. Bowersock (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007); there the Latin edition is based on Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz, in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 10 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1976); Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas
The basic contours of Valla’s life and work are easy enough to sketch, at least in broad outline.4 Roman in origin, he was raised in the environment of the papal court, and he spent part of his youth in the company of an uncle, Melchior Scrivani, himself a curialist.5 Valla spent much of his life trying to become part of the papal court. It was not until 1447 that he suc- ceeded, when he obtained a position at the court of Nicholas V (the for- mer Tommaso Parentucelli), a great supporter of humanistic studies.6 In the intervening years, Valla spent a significant amount of time at the Neapolitan Court of Alfonso of Aragon, and it was there that he drafted most of his major works, the treatise on the Donation of Constantine among them. Other works that date from this period include Valla’s Annotations on the New Testament, in which he applies his knowledge of the Greek language to the Latin Vulgate translation of the New Testament, which Valla argues does not always reflect adequately the meaning of the Greek text; a dialogue On Pleasure, in which Valla’s interlocutors take dif- ferent positions regarding the place of pleasure in Christian life; a dialogue On Free Will, in which Valla confronts the classic question of the relation- ship between divine omniscience and human free will; his On the Profession of the Religious, a dialogue in which Valla, through his interlocu- tors, argues that sincere Christian religiosity cannot be measured by the taking of religious vows; his Pruning, or Re-digging up, of all Dialectic, an ambitious attempt on Valla’s part to reframe the way logic was studied and conceived in the late middle ages; and, among other works, his
Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung, De falsa credita et ementita Constantini dona- tione: Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte. Bibliothek des Deutschen Historischen Instituts in Rom, 44 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1975); Johannes Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini: The Misinterpretation of a Fiction and its Original Meaning (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007); Alfred Hiatt, The Making of Medieval Forgeries: False Documents in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 136–74; and for the Encomium, see the edition of Cartei, as in previous note. 4 The most complete biography is still Girolamo Mancini, Vita di Lorenzo Valla (Firenze: Sansoni, 1891). In a vast sea of studies, for basic orientation, see, in addition to the cited studies, Jill Kraye, “Lorenzo Valla and Changing Perceptions of Renaissance Humanism,” Comparative Criticism 23 (2001): 37–55; Maristella Lorch, “Lorenzo Valla,” in Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms, and Legacy, ed. Alfred Rabil, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), 1:332–49. For a recent discussion on the meaning of Valla’s philosophical work, see W. Scott Blanchard, “The Negative Dialectic of Lorenzo Valla: A Study in the Pathology of Opposition,” Renaissance Studies 14 (2000): 149–189; and Lodi Nauta, “William of Ockham and Lorenzo Valla: False Friends, Semantics, and Ontological Reduction,” Renaissance Quarterly 56 (2003): 613–651. 5 W. von Hofmann, Forschungen zur Geschichte der kurialen Behörden vom Schisma bis zur Reformation, 2 vols. (Rom: Loescher, 1914), 1: 232, 2:111; Mancini, Vita di Lorenzo Valla, 1–24. 6 Mancini, Vita di Lorenzo Valla, 226–78.
Elegances of the Latin Language, a guide to Latin usage that became Valla’s one major success in the early modern period (at least in terms of the number of extant manuscript copies and early printed editions), adopted as it was by many late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century educators as a reference work for teaching and learning correct Latin usage.7 Yet it is certainly his De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio (Declamation on the falsely believed and lying Donation of Constantine) that has earned Valla his modern reputation. For it was in this treatise, so the story goes, that Valla used his knowledge of the Latin language to unmask a forgery, showing that some of the language used in the Constitutum Constantini (the document that represented the Donation of Constantine in written form) derived from a later period than that of the document itself. If Valla appears in textbooks of western history, it is this unmasking for which he is centrally featured, with his linguistic skill seen as a predecessor of scientific philology. Yet there is so much more to be said about this work and about Camporeale’s interpretation thereof, that it is worthwhile stepping back and examining the constituent parts, as it were. The first of these parts is the document of donation itself. The “Donation of Constantine” refers to the notional gift of the Emperor Constantine, whereby, converted to Christianity and ready to transfer the seat of impe- rial power from Rome to Byzantium, he decided to donate the western territories of the Empire to Pope Sylvester. The consensus of modern scholarship is that the document in which this gift was formalized (the Constitutum) was produced in the environment of the Papal Court in the eighth century; in other words, almost five centuries after the putative event.8 It is often indicated, therefore, as a “forgery,” which at the most literal level it surely is. Yet it is productive to reflect on what a forgery might mean, not only in the pre-modern world but also in the pre-print world. Suppose that consensus emerged, in the eighth-century curial envi- ronment whose members went on to produce the document, that Constantine had indeed ceded the rights to the western territories to the
7 On the Annotations, with literature, see Celenza, “Lorenzo Valla’s Radical Philology”; for the editorial state of play with respect to the other works mentioned, see Regoliosi (ed.), Pubblicare il Valla. 8 Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini, has made the important step of separating, conceptually, the “Donation” from the document, showing that each had, in a sense, a separate existence in different intellectual and cultural communities throughout the middle ages. This and the succeeding paragraph follow his emphasis; see also Hiatt, Making of Medieval Forgeries, 136–42, whose approach to the Donation has also informed what follows.
Pope. How central would a document be in “proving” that this donation had indeed taken place, in a world in which catastrophic loss of documen- tation was not uncommon? Medieval archives often possessed mechanisms for ensuring authenti- cation.9 Yet given (what now seems like) the instability of the world of medieval documentary culture, arguments about proof were likely to include, and to hinge upon, more than simply documentation.10 Indeed, this is precisely what occurred during the medieval centuries in which the legitimacy of the donation (rather than the authenticity of the document) constituted matter for intense debate. To offer two from among a number of possible (and similar) examples, the historian and bishop Otto of Freising (1114–58) did not discuss the Donation with reference to the Constitutum. Instead he wondered in his Chronicle how there could have been Emperors subsequent to Constantine who disposed of the very same land Constantine was supposed to have alienated.11 Even Gratian, the foremost of the early legal scholars at the University of Bologna (where the study of law was reborn in the middle ages) did not include the Constitutum in his Concordance of Discordant Canons.12 Though his immediate succes- sors added a version of the document, arguments for most of the middle ages turned on other factors: whether the Pope or Emperor was the supreme leader of Christendom, whether the Donation was legally possi- ble (did the Emperor have the right to alienate the property under discus- sion?), whether the Pope, with his ecclesiastical responsibilities, could legitimately have accepted such a gift, and so on. Different versions of the document circulated, needless to say, along with different summaries of the document. So it is unsurprising that much of Valla’s argumentation, too, turns on factors other than just the text of the Constitutum. He, like everyone in his era, took part in a culture shaped by manuscripts, and no one was more aware than Valla just how precarious these could be. The force of his argu- mentation is compelling, all of it rooted in Valla’s acute sense of history. If the claim sounds implausible that a powerful secular ruler, expert in mili- tary affairs, would simply hand over large swaths of property for which he and his predecessors had paid hefty prices in blood and treasure (“I find no
9 Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, tr. Dáibhí ó Cróinín and David Ganz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 34–37. 10 See, e.g., M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England, 1066–1307 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), 295–329. 11 Fried, Donation of Constantine and Constitutum Constantini, 13. 12 Ibid., 19.
13 The quotation comes from Valla, On the Donation of Constantine (tr. Bowersock), 12. 14 The quotations come from ibid., 16 and 21, respectively. 15 Ibid., 39. 16 Ibid., 45, 42, 47, respectively.
The Pope himself makes war on peaceful nations and sows discord among states and rulers…. Christ lies dying of starvation and exposure among so many thousands of poor.17 It is true that when Valla wrote this text he was in the employ of a ruler, Alfonse of Aragon, who was at odds with the then Pope, Eugenius IV. But the incisiveness, range, and sheer amount of Valla’s criticisms belie the notion that this text was little more than the product of a paid rhetorician. There is a vision behind the text about Christianity, Latinity, and culture, a vision also manifested in Valla’s Encomium of Saint Thomas, the second of the two texts around which Camporeale’s two studies revolve. Valla delivered the Encomium, an oration, on 7 March 1457, the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas, at the seat of the Dominican Order in Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva.18 As it turned out, this was his last work, and it stands as a small masterpiece of restrained reflection: restrained for Valla, that is. For here too, Valla launches a critique, but it is a subtler cri- tique than those to which readers of Valla are accustomed. He had been asked, after all, to speak at a commemorative occasion honoring Thomas Aquinas, and in so far as it was possible for him to do, given his guiding assumptions concerning philosophy and theology, he took the obligation seriously. As is often the case, his critique emerges not against an auctori- tas, in this case Aquinas, but rather against those who make uncritical use of the authority. Valla followed the same procedure, for example, when dealing with Aristotle in the Preface of his Repastinatio totius dialecticae, where it is not Aristotle himself but his uncritical followers who bear the brunt of critique.19 The entire Encomium, in fact, represents an attempt to put Aquinas in his proper place, in the most literal sense of that expression. Valla notes the difference, for example, between “martyrs,” who died because of their faith, and “confessors” (confessores), who “lived a chaste and spotless life accompanied by divine signs and miracles.”20 Aquinas is a “confessor,” and as such possessed innumerable virtues, but he was not a martyr, Valla reminds his audience, and he should not be accorded that sort of
17 Ibid., 96. 18 In addition to Camporeale’s own study, for context see the important work of John W. O’Malley, “Some Renaissance Panegyrics of Aquinas,” Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974): 174–92; idem, “The Feast of Thomas Aquinas in Renaissance Rome: A Neglected Document and Its Import,” Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 35 (1981): 1–27. 19 See Valla, Dialectical Disputations, 2–13. 20 The quotation is from Lorenzo Valla, Encomium of Saint Thomas, ed. and tr. Patrick Baker (in this volume, pp. 297–315), 2 (cited according to paragraph number).
21 Ibid., 9. 22 Ibid., 13.
These two themes dominate the remainder of the Encomium. Valla admires the copiousness of Aquinas’s writings in sincere terms of praise but he also marvels, he says, at something else Aquinas is supposed to have said: “that he never read a book that he did not fully understand.”23 What is the audience to think? That Valla offers sincere praise? Or that he is instead subtly mocking Aquinas for vaunting an omni-comprehensive intelligence no human being could achieve? Or could audience members believe either of the two opinions, depending on their predilections, receptivity to possible irony, or even depending on Valla’s delivery, some- thing about which we cannot know anything definitively? Valla goes on immediately to touch on one of the two themes mentioned: But those things which they call metaphysics and modes of signifying and the like, which modern theologians regard with wonder like a newly discov- ered sphere or like the epicycles of the planets, I regard with no great won- der at all.24 Valla indicts what he sees as an overemphasis on metaphysics and dialec- tic at the expense of more important concerns. This move leads him to the other concern, the Church Fathers: This I will make clear not with my own arguments (although I could) but by citing the authority of the ancient theologians – Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine – who were so far from treating such matters in their works that they did not even mention them. The Fathers do not devote themselves to detailed discussions of meta- physics and logic for two reasons. First, they do not “seem to lead to the knowledge of divine truths.”25 Second, both of these areas operate with crucial terminology that has roots in Greek philosophical discussion and,
23 Ibid., 15. 24 Ibid., 16. “Modes of signifying” = “modi significandi.” Valla is referring to philosophers of the thirteenth and fourteenth century who studied the specialized ways that different words acquired meaning in propositions and sentences. Martin of Dacia and Boethius of Dacia are most commonly named when studying this tendency, though they profited from the earlier work of twelfth-century “speculative grammarians” like William of Conches (the term “speculative grammarians” is often used to refer to both groups). See Costantino Marmo, Semiotica e linguaggio nella scolastica: Parigi, Bologna, Erfurt, 1270–1330 (Roma: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1994); Jan Pinborg, “Speculative Grammar,” in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, ed. Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 254–69; idem, Die Entwicklung der Sprachtheorie im Mittelalter (Münster: Aschendorff, 1967); and Irène Rosier, La grammaire spéculative des Modistes (Lille: Presse universitaires de Lille, 1983). 25 Valla, Encomium of Saint Thomas (tr. Baker), 18.
26 Ibid., 19. 27 For Valla’s part in the story of the interpretation of ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite, see John Monfasani, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in mid-Quattrocento Rome,” in Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of Paul Oskar Kristeller, ed. James Hankins, John Monfasani, and Frederick Purnell, Jr. (Binghamton: MRTS, 1987), 189–219, reprinted with the same pagination as essay IX in John Monfasani, Language and Learning in Renaissance Italy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1994). 28 Valla, Encomium of Saint Thomas (tr. Baker), 23.
“always make music in the sight of God,” and each pair has its part to play in the musical group Valla outlines: “The first pair is Basil and Ambrose, playing the lyre; the second, Nazianzen and Jerome, playing the cithara; the third, Chrysostom and Augustine, playing the psaltery; the fourth, Dionysius and Gregory, playing the flute …” The fifth? “John Damascene and Thomas, playing the cymbals,” which are, Valla says, an “instrument emitting happy, cheerful, and pleasing music.”29 What sort of praise is this? “Happy,” “cheerful,” and “pleasing” are positive attributes. But do they imply the requisite gravity, holiness, and depth due on the occasion of Thomas’s feast day? Valla does not address these questions and closes his oration piously. These and other moments in Valla’s oeuvre demand interpretation, and there was no finer interpreter of Valla than Salvatore Camporeale. To understand Camporeale’s scholarship, two aspects come to the fore: Camporeale’s work with his mentor, Eugenio Garin, and his attention to language. Eugenio Garin (1909–2004), twentieth-century Italy’s leading historian of Italian philosophy, had a powerful imprint on the many schol- ars who studied with him.30 After a period teaching in Italian secondary schools Garin was Professor at the University of Florence from 1949 onward, and then from 1974–84 at the Scuola normale superiore di Pisa, Italy’s equiv- alent to France’s École normale. Garin was also a generous correspondent and, both through his letters and through his tenure as President of Italy’s National Institute for the Study of the Renaissance (1980–88), advised a wide array of “informal” students. Camporeale was proud to have had Garin as his mentor for his “laurea” (then Italy’s highest academic degree), and it was Garin who encouraged Camporeale to publish his thesis, even writing a preface to Camporeale’s Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e teologia.31 Garin believed that the Italian Renaissance gave birth to a distinct type of philosophy, rooted in detailed attention to history, that had not been given its due in the historiography of philosophy.32 Heir to the work of
29 Ibid., 24. 30 On Garin, see Michele Ciliberto, Eugenio Garin: Un intellettuale nel Novecento (Roma: Laterza, 2011); Rocco Rubini, “The Last Italian Philosopher: Eugenio Garin (with an Appendix of Documents),” Intellectual History Review 21 (2011), 209–230; Luciano Mecacci, “Contributo alla bibliografia degli scritti su Eugenio Garin,” Il Protagora 38 (2011), 519–526; Christopher S. Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 16–57; and Garin’s autobiograph- ical statement in Eugenio Garin, La filosofia come sapere storico (Roma: Laterza, 1990). 31 (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1972). 32 See Eugenio Garin, History of Italian Philosophy, ed. and tr. Giorgio Pinton, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008).
Italy’s two leading early twentieth-century philosophers, Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce, Garin took their original insight that there was a large gap in the historiography of philosophy and, in the 1920s and 1930s, began doing detailed investigations into sources. These manifested them- selves in Garin’s early editions of and studies on the work of Pico della Mirandola. Garin went on to write copiously on numerous topics in the history of philosophy with a particular emphasis on Italian humanism. For Garin, “umanesimo” represented both a chronological designation (covering Italy’s late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) but also a way of looking at the world that was tied not to metaphysical abstraction but rather to the place of human beings in the flow of historical events.33 As such it was a variety of philosophy and deserved to be studied with the same level of seriousness and engagement that the more traditional histo- riography of philosophy had commanded. Garin believed one of the Italian humanists’ key contributions to have been a different attitude toward authorities, one that manifested itself first and foremost in the need to situate the ancient authority in question in a proper historical context, to have shown that “the logic of Aristotle is not the word of God, but a product of history.”34 By extension, this histori- cizing also meant that philosophy, the search for wisdom, could not give timeless answers to the most important questions (those related to human conduct), but rather had itself to be continually renewed and re-examined without (what could be seen as) the straitjacket of metaphysics. Campo reale inherited from Garin, and indeed tenaciously defended, this notion regarding Renaissance humanism’s importance and core message. For Camporeale, this appreciation manifested itself in a life-long passion for the work of Lorenzo Valla, whom Camporeale believed exemplified all that was most important about Italian humanism, especially when that movement was viewed along the lines that Garin had outlined.
33 The fullest statement of these views can be found in Eugenio Garin, L’umanesimo italiano: filosofia e vita civile nel Rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1957), which originally appeared in German as Der italienische Humanismus (Bern: Francke, 1947) at the behest of Ernesto Grassi; there is an English translation by Peter Munz: Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965). See Ciliberto, Eugenio Garin, 3–4; Rocco Rubini, “Humanism as Philosophia (Perennis): Grassi’s Platonic rhetoric between Gadamer and Kristeller,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 42 (2009), 242–78; idem, “Philology as Philosophy: the Sources of Ernesto Grassi’s Postmodern Humanism,” in Humanisms, Posthumanisms, and Neohumanisms, a special issue of Annali d’italianistica 26 (2008), 223–48; Celenza, Lost Italian Renaissance, 30–36; and Stéphane Toussaint, Humanismes / Antihumanismes: De Ficin à Heidegger (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2008). 34 Garin, Italian Humanism (tr. Munz), 4.
Camporeale’s attention to language predominates in his scholarship, for he prized it in Valla and cultivated it in his own work. On the one hand, there is no denying that Camporeale can be a dense and at times difficult writer. He presumes specialized knowledge on the part of the reader, and his prose can sometimes seem a commentary on a text, assuming that the reader has before him or her the text under discussion. Yet it is worth the trouble to follow him in his detailed and incisive readings, because one finds there a laboratory for the kind of philological analysis that yields important insights. Readers will notice an extensive use of what Camporeale often terms “antinomies,” by which he means mutually opposed, even mutually exclu- sive, ideas, each of which exerts a powerful sway. For instance, in his treat- ment of Valla’s treatise on the Donation of Constantine, readers will encounter Camporeale’s use of the antinomy imperium/evangelium. Imperium (“empire”) denotes the institutional drive toward power, con- trolled and from the top. Evangelium (“the good news” or “gospel”), on the contrary, reflects the notional core message of Christianity. More broadly, it connotes the values that Valla, in Camporeale’s view, assigned to the pre-Constantinian “Church,” or ecclesia, where the institution and its prac- tices reflected the original meaning of that word in Greek: “assembly.” For Camporeale, this antinomy serves a twofold purpose: first, it allows him to identify a form of criticism present in Valla’s work, whereby Valla can be read as using this binary opposition as a critical instrument; Camporeale reads Valla reading the document, as it were. Second, it serves as an instrument for Camporeale himself. Camporeale’s position is that Valla saw and acted on this and other irreconcilable oppositions that he saw embedded in the Constitutum Constantini and hence in the very idea of the Donation of Constantine as such. The crucial opposition, then, existed between a religion that was turning away from its evangelical, believer-centered mission towards an imperial identity, and an empire that voluntarily ceded power to the very entity it was supposed to protect and foster: the “assembly” of believers. In Valla’s view (or in Camporeale’s reading thereof), the Church’s imperial turn had actually occurred in a post-Constantinian context and needed critical examination in his own day; the empire’s ceding its prerogatives quite simply could not have occurred, given the workings of power. It was a fiction and thus could not and should not be used by the Church as the basis for any claims on secu- lar power. This example from Valla’s treatise on the Donation of Constantine is one among many in which Camporeale’s concern for precise analysis of
35 See e.g., Albert Soboul, A Short History of the French Revolution, 1789–1799, tr. Geoffrey Symcox (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977); and for the most trenchant critique of this approach, François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, tr. Elborg Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 36 For a general account of Marxist historiography, with bibliography, see Matt Perry, Marxism and History (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 37 This theory ran throughout Gramsci’s prison notebooks, which enjoyed wide circula- tion among many who came of age in Camporeale’s generation; see Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere, ed. Valentino Gerratana, 4 vols. (Torino: Einaudi, 1975); see also his Il materialismo storico e la filosofia di Benedetto Croce (Torino: Einaudi, 1966); and Thomas R. Bates, “Gramsci and the Theory of Hegemony,” Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975), 351–66.
on Valla’s Encomium. Camporeale stops well short of saying that Valla’s goals were Luther’s, yet one notices a sense of tantalizing possibility, as if a genie were being let out of a bottle. The idea that Valla was implicitly propounding a “new ecclesiology” also recurs frequently in Camporeale’s work; and while it is certainly true that Valla’s vision of the Church in his day included dissatisfaction, it must be said that it is easier to discern moments when Valla is critiquing the Church, rather than explicitly out- lining a positive program for reform. Yet there is no denying that Luther knew and admired Valla’s work, at least in part.38 To conclude, Camporeale left behind challenging work that deserves attention, reflection, and debate. It is hoped that presenting two of Camporeale’s most astute studies in English will allow a broader group of scholarly readers interested in Lorenzo Valla to have access to Camporeale’s fertile and interesting scholarship.
38 For one example of Luther on Valla (after reading Valla’s treatise on the Donation of Constantine), see Martin Luther, Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, part 4: Briefwechsel, vol. 2, ed. J. Ficker (Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1931), 28.
LORENZO VALLA AND THE DE FALSO CREDITA DONATIONE: RHETORIC, FREEDOM, AND ECCLESIOLOGY IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Salvatore I. Camporeale (translated by Patrick Baker)
“No one will ever get to the very bottom of Valla’s arguments, which were most certainly not ignorant, without first grasping canon law and arriving at a true understanding of theology.” — Felino Sandei1
In 1433 Lorenzo Valla presented his De voluptate (On Pleasure) to promi- nent members of the humanist circle in Florence: Leonardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, and Ambrogio Traversari. From these three readers he knew to expect a rather critical response, or at least one not without reserva- tions. Nevertheless, his respect for the Florentine humanists and for their special competence in both Greek and Latin literature moved Valla to offer up his De voluptate to their reading and judgment. Contrary to what would be said of him later, and above all in the wake of Poggio Bracciolini’s invectives against him, Valla always submitted his own writings, especially the most demanding, to the judgment of those he esteemed and admired. He had already done so with his first essay, De comparatione Ciceronis Quintilianique (A Comparison of Cicero and Quintilian). This he sent by way of his friend Antonio Beccadelli to Marsuppini, whom he (Valla) considered the greatest connoisseur of the classical tradition among all his contemporaries. In the specific case of De voluptate, Valla nurtured the desire for a posi- tive, even if critical, reaction from the Florentines. With this his most demanding work since the Comparatio, he even hoped for the affirmation
1 Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung, De falsa credita et ementita Constantini donatione: Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte. (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1975), 123: “Rationes autem, quibus Valla non certe omnino indocte motus est, … nemo unquam medulitus evacuabit, nisi pontificium ius et veram theologie cognitionem adeptus fuerit.”
2 Lorenzo Valla, Epistole. Ed. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padova: Antenore, 1984), 125f., 215f. Poggio Bracciolini, Lettere. Ed. Helene Harth. 3 vols. (Firenze: Olschki, 1984–1987), 2:178ff.: it is the first letter (to Guarino Veronese, Roma 17 October 1433) in which Bracciolini sets forth in strongly polemical terms his critique of Valla and his early writings (denouncing his “loquendi arrogantia,” 178.9); in fact, the letter contains in nuce what Poggio will explain more fully, both in form and in content, in his Orationes in L. Vallam, at the height of his controversy in the 1450s with Valla and his “school.” Cfr. Salvatore I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia (Firenze: Istituto nazio- nale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1972), passim and especially 31–146; idem, “Poggio Bracciolini contro Valla. Le Orationes in L. Vallam,” in Poggio Bracciolini: 1380–1980: nel VI centenario della nascita (Firenze: Sansoni, 1982), 137–161. 3 The text of Traversari’s letter to Valla is in Luciano Barozzi and Remigio Sabbadini, Studi sul Panormita e sul Valla (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1891), 64ff.: “Liberum [est] semper cuique et tueri et constanter asserere opiniones suas; non itaque improbo si quid contra philosopho- rum sentiamus inventa, si modo nostra probabilibus verisque rationibus muniamus.”
that he uses these extraneous duties as an excuse to hide some kind of uncertainty, or at least to suspend his judgment of Valla’s specific propos- als. He had to have read De voluptate with great attention to have so fully understood its roots, or better, its fundamental premises. In this, the first of the young humanist’s major works and among his most important theo- retically, these premises distinguish themselves in two ways. First, they display a critical originality – with respect to both method and content – in the face of classical philosophy and contemporary scholasticism. Second, Valla’s critical originality consists in an attitude of radical free- dom in rethinking the past and in reflecting on contemporary ethics. All this, let us repeat, was not only a question of method, but also, and above all, of content. At stake were the essential theses of De voluptate.
1. Introduction to a Reinterpretation of the De falso credita donatione
I have referred to Traversari’s epistolary response (and its pertinent con- text) to De voluptate because it suggests interpretive keys for understand- ing Valla’s famous Oration on the Falsely Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine (De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione). The criti- cal originality and radical freedom that Traversari identified in Valla’s early dialogue will allow us to penetrate Valla’s later oration against the Constitutum Constantini.4 In this essay we shall proceed in the following manner. As a prelude we shall first enunciate in three points the fundamental themes that consti- tute the fabric of the Oration. Then we shall sketch a cultural outline of
4 [The Constitutum Constantini is the legal privilege supposedly stipulating the Emperor Constantine’s grant of the Western Empire to Pope Sylvester I, i.e. the document com- monly known as the Donation of Constantine. Eds.] The reinterpretation of Valla’s Oration proposed in this essay assumes familiarity with the following fundamental works: Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift; and Setz’s critical edition of the Oration: Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz (Weimar: Böhlau, 1976) (hereafter cited as Valla, De falso, page and line number [with the corresponding paragraph numbers of the edition and English translation in the I Tatti Renaissance Library in parentheses: Lorenzo Valla, On the Donation of Constantine, tr. G.W. Bowersock (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007); all English transla- tions of the Oration are Bowersock’s]), together with Valla, Epistole, 176, n. 2; also important are Vincenzo De Caprio, “Retorica e ideologia nella Declamatio di Lorenzo Valla sulla donazione di Costantino,” Paragone-Letteratura 29, n. 338 (1978): 36–56; Riccardo Fubini, “Papato e storiografia nel Quattrocento. Storia, biografia e propaganda in un recente stu- dio,” Studi medievali, III s., 18, fasc. I (1977): 321–351; Joachim W. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, the Council of Basel, and the Secular and Ecclesiastical Authorities in the Empire. The Conflict over Supreme Authority and Power in the Church (Leiden: Brill, 1978).
Valla the humanist, from both a theoretical and a biographical point of view, with the intention of identifying the immediate and decisive context from which his treatment of the Constitutum emerged. In this way we hope to provide an introduction that will equip the reader to grasp the detailed and intricate analysis of Valla’s Oration that follows. First: with his Oration on the Constitutum Valla elaborates an alterna- tive to the medieval and scholastic ecclesiology of the “Constantinian Church.” Valla’s ecclesiology follows specifically and directly from the christiana libertas (Christian freedom) of the New Testament and is invested, by analogy, with the political semantics of the classical (Athenian) ecclesia.5 The foundation of Valla’s new ecclesiology is Christian freedom, understood in the Pauline sense as a specific dimen- sion of the christianus homo (Christian man) and deriving from the dic- tates of the Gospel and the advent of saving grace. His discourse on the Christian church has an extra-theological – but nonetheless fundamental – element: the civil and strictly human community (civitas), i.e. the com- munity as founded on political liberty (polis). It is in fact the polis, the politically free community, that is specific and peculiar to man as such, whom Valla defines as an animal liberum (free animal). According to Valla, this notion of civil community and political freedom achieved its greatest historical actualization in the respublica romana (Roman republic) and in romana libertas (Roman freedom). Both were set in motion, or better, were founded and instituted, by the senatus popu- lusque romanus (the Senate and the People of Rome). At first Valla merely outlines this ethico-political perspective, namely the conceptions of man as an animal liberum and of the Roman civitas. He then deepens his analysis through historical critique, first with regard to communities and peoples that subjected others and deprived them of freedom, and then considering communities who of their own will submitted themselves to the authority or servitude of an absolute power. One such absolute power was the empire established by Caesar and the Augustan emperors. Valla repeatedly affirms that these emperors were the usurpers of the respublica, i.e., of the freedom and powers of the Senate and the People of Rome. Eventually, Constantine the Great would embody that imperial power when absolutism had achieved its apex in the history of the Roman republic. In summary, the chain of reasoning of Valla’s ecclesiological discourse seems to develop along the lines of various aspects of freedom: from the freedom of man as such – the animal liberum – to the freedom of man as
5 [I.e., the assembly of free citizens. Eds.]
redeemed by saving grace – christianus homo – both of which are deter- mined by the freedom of man as an essentially political animal. Freedom, although it is a specific property of human nature, can necessarily only achieve actualization in the civitas or polis. This is Valla’s romana libertas. Both natural and civil liberty receive their fullest explication and actual- ization within the sphere of the evangelical6 ecclesia and according to its economics of salvation (“in the age of grace”), and together they constitute for Valla christiana libertas. Therefore, if the community of believers should ever cease to be the home of Christian freedom, the ecclesia would find itself in antithesis with the message of the Gospel. More precisely, it would constitute a negation of both civil and natural freedom, both of which pertain to the (defining) essence of man.7 Second: Valla’s reflection on the Constitutum Constantini is at once his- torical and philological. Consequently he chose for the method and con- tent of its written form, in accordance with his humanist conception of the art of rhetoric, the literary genre of the oration. With this argumentative method Valla attempts to identify contradictions in scholastic, ecclesio- logical, and political language as well as juridical and theological antino- mies, all based on the language historically derived from the Constitutum. For the tradition of the “Constantinian Church” had in fact been founded on the pseudo-Constantinian Pagina Privilegii.8 The “Constantinian” eccle- siological tradition was elaborated in various ways, actualized by the Roman Church, theorized by theologians and canon lawyers, raised almost to the level of dogma by Innocent III and Boniface VIII, and was still being perpetuated in the time of Eugenius IV.9 Therefore Valla’s rhetorical strategy – instead of being an apodictic demonstration or the proposal of a new ecclesiological and/or political theory – is an historical and philo- logical analysis that reduces the tradition to its ideological foundations. In this way Valla intends to demonstrate how the Constitutum Constantini, as well as the practices resulting from it and the very language of the Roman Church, are falsifiable by means of the internal contradictions found in the text itself and in its successive re-elaborations.
6 [In the sense of deriving from the Evangelium, i.e., the Gospel. Eds.] 7 Valla, De falso, 147.16 (76), 162.10ff. (86), 163.17ff. (87), 65f. (9), 73–75 (17–18), 78.12, 163–167 (87–89), with Setz’s notes and commentary. 8 [The formal “Document of Privilege” supposedly authorizing the Donation of Constantine. Eds.] 9 Valla, De falso, 90f. (33), 158f. (83), 160f. (84); cf. as well Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 18–24.
This method is no different – in fact it is exactly the same except for variations necessitated by the particular text under consideration – from that used by Valla in other works, for example: in the Adnotationes, in which he collated the Vulgate Bible with the “veritas graeca”10 of the New Testament; in the Repastinatio,11 in which he analyzed the basic terms of Aristotelian scholasticism (transcendentals, predicaments, and predica- bles) with the aim of showing that philosophical vocabulary to be non- sense; and in De voluptate, which subjected terms and categories such as bonum (good), virtus (virtue), and voluptas (pleasure) to a philological and anti-ideological investigation.12 Third: the Oration on the Constitutum is a speech declaimed to the entire Christian community, i.e., the whole Church, understood to include both its religious and political components – “as if in an assembly of kings and princes,” writes Valla.13 The orator demonstrates his awareness of the antinomies on which the Constantinian Church had been founded in the past and with which – or better, on account of which – it survives into his own time. With such a demonstration – really a denunciation – Valla pro- poses to bring the Church, both its head and its members, to this very
10 [Literally “the Greek truth,” i.e., the original Greek text. In the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum (Annotations on the New Testament) Valla compared the Latin of the Vulgate with the Greek found in the manuscripts at his disposal in order to show problems in the traditionally accepted text and thus to arrive at a more “truthful” understanding of the New Testament, i.e. one based on a more solid philological foundation. Eds.] 11 [Repastinatio dialecticae et philosophiae (The Rentrenching of Dialectic and Philosophy). The work was revised by Valla several times and subsequently became known under the title Dialecticae disputationes (Dialectical Disputations). Eds.] 12 For an overall look at Valla’s “method” both in theory and in practice, see Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 31–208; idem, “Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento. Encomion s. Thomae – 1457,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 7 (1976): 11–194 (reprinted in idem, Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Studi e testi [Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002], 121–330, and translated in the present volume, 145–296); idem, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio, liber primus: retorica e linguaggio,” in Lorenzo Valla e l’umanesimo italiano. Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi umanistici (Parma, 18–19 otto- bre 1984), ed. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padova: Antenore, 1986), 217–239 (along with other important contributions in the same volume concerning the relation- ship between philology and methodology in Valla). More recent studies include: Maristella De Panizza Lorch, A Defense of Life: Lorenzo Valla’s Theory of Pleasure (München: Fink, 1985); Brian Vickers, “Valla’s Ambivalent Praise of Pleasure: Rhetoric in the Service of Christianity,” Viator 17 (1986): 271–319; Riccardo Fubini, “Richerche sul De voluptate di Lorenzo Valla,” Medioevo e Rinascimento 1 (1987): 189–239; Lorenzo Valla, De professione religiosorum, ed. Mariarosa Cortesi (Padova: Antenore, 1986) (in addition to the critical edition itself, Cortesi’s ample introduction and full and accurate commentary are funda- mental); Richard Waswo, Language and Meaning in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 88–113 and passim. 13 Valla, De falso, 62.9 (6): “quasi in contione regum et principum.”
awareness for the purpose of overcoming the antinomies in question: “My intention is to eradicate error from people’s minds.”14 Valla identifies three major historical and theological contradictions of the Roman Church (along with others in both the political and spiritual realms): imperium/evangelium (empire/Gospel), vicarius Christi/vicarius Caesaris (vicar of Christ/vicar of Caesar), and servitudo/libertas (slavery/ freedom). These contradictories, he believes, can be resolved through a renewal of evangelical freedom, which flows from saving grace, and of political freedom, which is demanded by our very nature inasmuch as “human beings are born for freedom.”15 Valla is aware, and he says so many times, that by proposing such solutions publicly he is exposing himself to charges of “recklessness and impiety.”16 Nevertheless, and precisely because he is an orator and an imitator of the apostle Paul, Valla feels obliged to pit himself and his radical criticism against tradition: “I overturn the combined wisdom of the ancients with my works.”17 Valla’s procedure gives further evidence that the very rhetorical structure of the Oration is determined by its fun- damental theme (elaborated in the first point): freedom, which here must be understood specifically as “freedom of speech,” a concept which Valla borrows from Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria (The Orator’s Education). Indeed, we read in the first pages of the Oration: “no one who knows how to speak well can be considered a true orator unless he also dares to speak out.”18 So much for the fundamental themes of Valla’s Oration. Now we shall attempt to outline the intellectual and biographical context that deter- mined these themes and thus gave the Oration its shape. In the Repastinatio dialecticae et philosophiae (from the same period as the Oration), Valla insistently pursued his linguistic analysis as a semantic investigation. He was fully aware – and often says so – that by putting pressure, so to speak, on the vis verborum, or the “force (meaning) of words,” one could cause to emerge, as if by a self-revelation of the words themselves, what he calls the
14 Ibid., 59.5f. (3): “id ago … ut errorem a mentibus hominum convellam.” 15 Ibid., 166.19 (89): “homines libertati natos” [translation modified]. 16 Ibid., 55.6ff. (1): “inasmuch as there are those who feel ill treated and accuse me of recklessness and impiety” (“cum sint, qui indigne ferant meque ut temerarium sacrile- gumque criminentur”). 17 Ibid., 58.7ff. (2); idem, Epistole, 215.8ff.: “omnem veterum sapientiam meis operibus everto.” 18 Valla, De falso, 57.1f. (1): “loquendi libertas”; 57.18ff. (2): “neque enim is verus est habendus orator qui bene scit dicere, nisi et dicere audeat” (emphasis added) [translation modified]; Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 48–51.
19 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 219. 20 Valla, De falso, 148.6 (76): “patrocinium falsitas”; 110.2 (46): “adornare mendacium”; 155.2 (81): “fallaciam”; 148.5f. (76): “sinceritas christiana”; 66.21 (10): “sacramentum verita- tis”; 99.17–19 (39): “Bone Jesu, quanta vis, quanta divinitas est veritatis, que per sese sine magno conatu ab omnibus dolis ac fallaciis se ipsa defendit” [translation modified]. 21 For Valla’s biographico-cultural development (beyond the citations in notes 4 and 12), see Mario Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla nel quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente (Roma: Libreria editrice dell’Università Gregoriana, 1969); and Mariangela Regoliosi’s chronological commentary in Valla, Epistole (with further and more recent con- tributions by Ottavio Besomi, Mariangela Regoliosi, and Martin Davies in Besomi and Regoliosi (eds.), Lorenzo Valla e l’umanesimo italiano, 77–109).
conflict between the Roman curia, papal government, and his status as a citizen of Rome. This conflict slowly intensified, and it expanded not only in the arena of Valla’s own intellectual work and the circle of the best-known curial humanists, but also in that of the dominant culture of scholasticism. His inquisitorial trial at the hands of the scholastics in Naples in the 1440s, and the polemics of Poggio Bracciolini and his sup- porters in the 1450s, ultimately constituted the furthest – and thus the most evident – extremes of this clash of opposed positions. This constant and forced wandering, this intellectual journey, this frus- trating relationship with Eugenius IV, for whom Valla would not only nur- ture a sense of friendship and esteem but to whom he would also direct (as did other humanists like Bruni and Flavio Biondo) his appeals for an effective promotion of the new cultural renaissance – all these form, it would seem, the biographical background and the rather personal ratio- nale, perhaps the true motivation, for Valla’s consideration of and dis- course on the Donation of Constantine.22 This is the source of Valla’s determination to investigate what he him- self calls “a matter of canon law and theology,” and he therefore directs his attack “against all canonists and theologians.”23 Hence his exordium, which is dominated by that “I dissent” with which the Oration begins.24 This “dissent” is an ecclesiological awareness contrary to tradition and a manifest expression, within the very context of Christendom, of a new paradigm of criticism that is at once theological and political. It is differ- ent from the classic paradigm of “heresy,” which is a stance contrary to dogma.25 In line with this dissent Valla rejects and denounces what he calls the “new tyranny of the Pope,” the “hypocrisy” (in the strong, original sense of the word) by which the “vicar of Christ” behaves as a despot in the persona of Caesar instead of acting in the persona of Christ. Such rule is characterized as “tyranny” because the Roman pope presents himself as the historical heir of the very “imperial” power which had violated the political and civil freedom of the Roman Republic. Now it reveals itself as
22 Cf. Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 59–75; and Eugenio Marino, “Eugenio IV e la storiogra- fia di Flavio Biondo,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973): 240–287. 23 Valla, Epistole, 192f.: “res canonici iuris et theologie”; “contra omnes canonistas atque omnes theologos”; Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 51–59. 24 Valla, De falso, 55.6 (1): “dissentio” [translation modified]. 25 Salvatore I. Camporeale, “Giovanmaria dei Tolosani O.P.: 1530–1546. Umanesimo, Riforma e teologia controversista,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 17 (1986): 145–252, passim (reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 331–461), on Valla and “heresy” as a stance contrary to tradition; John M. Headley, “The Reformation as Crisis in the Understanding of Tradition,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 78 (1987): 5–22.
26 Valla, De falso, 78.11–14 (21): “vicarius Christi”; 134f. (65): “hypocritam”; 166f. (89): “novam pape tyrannidem” [translation modified]. For the expression christiana respublica, cf. idem, Dialogue sur le libre-arbitre, ed. Jacques Chomarat (Paris: Vrin, 1983), 27.9. 27 Valla, Epistole, 145–149. The Apologia ad papam Eugenium IV (Apology to Pope Eugenius IV) is in idem, Scritti filosofici e religiosi, ed. Giorgio Radetti (Firenze: Sansoni, 1953). See in particular Gianni Zippel, “La Defensio quaestionum in philosophia di L. Valla e un noto processo dell’Inquisizione napoletana,” Bullettino dell’Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo e Archivio Muratoriano 69 (1957): 319–347; idem, “L’autodifesa di Lorenzo Valla per il processo dell’Inquisizione napoletana (1444),” Italia medievale e umanistica 13 (1970): 59–94. 28 Valla, De falso, 172–176.
truth or non-truth, the authenticity or inauthenticity, of a given thing can be proven simply by demonstrating the falsifiability of the specific lan- guage that expresses or intends to express that thing. In fact, in Valla’s use of the syntagma res-verba (things-words), the understanding or correla- tive evaluation of a res (thing) is provided by the verification or “falsifica- tion” of the verba (words) that have that res as a referent. But such a procedure is properly speaking a rhetorical mode of argument – in both Quintilian’s and Valla’s understanding of rhetoric, as described by Quintilian (Institutio oratoria, books II and III) and fully elaborated by Valla (Repastinatio, book I) as the science (scientia/episteme) of lan- guage. In this sense rhetoric rises – first in Quintilian and then above all in Valla – to the level of a critical and interpretive discipline that consists in the philological and historical analysis of a specific language (logos/ sermo); it places particular emphasis on how that language signifies and makes references with respect to a distinct reality made up of “res, i.e., deeds, things that have been done (pragmata).”29 Consequently, Valla uses the rhetorical analysis of the Constitutum Constantini to establish the vis verborum of the text, in order then to arrive at an historical and definitive evaluation of the vis rerum from which that very text was derived and of which it became at the same time a transmit- ter. Continuing along these coordinates, Valla passes (inductively) from the analysis of an ideological document (the Constitutum) to the falsifica- tion of the “praxis” (praxis/actum) of which that document is supposed to be a theoretical foundation and historical manifestation (in this case, both politically and ecclesiastically). Therefore, Valla’s Oration must be understood within the coordinates vis verborum/vis rerum of this kind of inductive, rhetorical analysis. Only on the basis of this kind of interpretation can we understand the full meaning of what Valla wrote to Giovanni Aurispa with regard to the Oration: “I have written nothing more rhetorical.”30 As for the second consideration, specifically concerning the Oration’s proper and thematic subject, we should first of all stress what has already been mentioned about its content and purpose. Both, and thus the work’s central message, are to be identified in the novel political and religious
29 Lorenzo Valla, Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, ed. Gianni Zippel, 2 vols. (Padova, Antenore, 1982), 1:18.1–4: “res, idest pragmata”; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, III.6.28. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 160f.; idem, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 233–237. 30 Valla, Epistole, 249–252, at 252.9: “nihil magis oratorium scripsi” (cf. Valla’s letter to Guarino Veronese in ibid., 244ff.). Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 46–51.
2. Causa veritatis: From the Exordium to the Peroration
So far we have provided a general overview of the meaning and immedi- ate context of Valla’s Oration. Now follows an interpretation of the whole text according to the division of its arguments, which Valla himself explic- itly divided into discrete sections.32
31 Valla, Epistole, 246–248: “Hoc tantum consideres velim, non odio pape adductum, sed veritatis, sed religionis, sed cuiusdam etiam fame gratia motum, ut quod nemo sciret, id ego scisse solus viderer” (cf. ibid., 227ff.). For the term religio in Valla, see the index verbo- rum and Cortesi’s corresponding notes in idem, De professione religiosorum. 32 Valla, De falso, 61f. (5) (emphasis added): “But before I come to refuting the Donation document, which is the sole authority those people have, something that is not only false but even rude, structure demands that I go back farther. First, I shall assert that Constantine and Sylvester were not such men as, with the former, to want to make a donation, to be in a legal position to do so, and to have in his power the ability to hand over these territories to someone else, and, with the latter, to want to receive them and be in a legal position to do so. Second, even if these points were other than absolutely true and very clear, I shall assert that the one did not accept and the other did not hand over the possession of the things that are said to have been donated, but that they remained forever under the juris- diction and authority of the Caesars. Third, I shall assert that nothing was given by Constantine to Sylvester, but rather to the previous pontiff before he received baptism,
Conceived as a procedure of rhetorical argumentation, Valla’s Oration begins (exordium) and ends (peroration) with assertions about the causa veritatis, or “cause of truth,” which he intends to investigate historically and defend theoretically.33 The investigation and defense of the “truth” have a double purpose in the Oration. First, they are to demonstrate the falseness of the Constitutum Constantini and make the papacy aware of that falseness. These are explicit assertions in the exordium. Second, they are to bring about the effective abrogation of the Constitutum on the part of the papacy and therewith the elimination of the theoretical and practical consequences deriving from the Constantinian ecclesiological tradition. These are the concluding affirmations of the peroration. The establishment of this double purpose allows us to connect the exordium directly to the peroration: the point of departure coincides with the point of arrival in the circular path of this rhetorical discourse. In the first pages of the Oration Valla writes: Many, many books have issued from my pen in almost every area of learn- ing, and in these … I dissent from some great authors of long established
and that these were modest gifts of places where the Pope could spend his life. Fourth, I shall assert that it is falsely claimed a copy of the Donation was found among the emper- or’s decrees or was extracted from the Story of Sylvester, because it is neither found in that story nor in any other, and because in it are contained various contradictions, impossibili- ties, stupidities, barbarisms, and absurdities. Furthermore I shall speak about donations of certain other emperors – whether fictitious or worthless – and there I shall add from abun- dant evidence that if Sylvester ever had taken possession, once he or some other pontiff had been deprived of it, after so great an interval of time it could not be recovered by any legal claim, human or divine. Lastly, I shall assert that the supreme pontiff’s current possessions could not, in the course of time, have been administered under his authority.” (“Verum ante- quam ad confutandam donationis paginam venio … ordo postulat, ut altius repetam. Et primum dicam non tales fuisse Constantinum Silvestrumque: illum quidem, qui donare vellet, qui iure donare posset, qui, ut in manum alteri ea traderet, in sua haberet potestate; hunc autem, qui vellet accipere quique iure accepturus foret. Secundo loco: si hec non essent, que verissima atque clarissima sunt, neque hunc acceptasse neque illum tradidisse possessionem rerum, que dicuntur donate, sed eas semper in arbitrio et imperio Cesarum permansisse. Tertio: nihil datum Silvestro a Constantino, sed priori pontifici, antequam etiam baptismum acceperat, donaque illa mediocria fuisse, quibus papa degere vitam pos- set. Quarto: falso dici donationis exemplum aut apud decreta reperiri aut ex historia Silvestri esse sumptum, quod neque in illa neque ulla in historia invenitur, in eoque quedam con- traria, impossibilia, stulta, barbara, ridicula contineri. Preterea loquar de quorundam alio- rum Cesarum vel simulata vel frivola donatione, ubi ex abundanti adiiciam: si Silvester possedisset, tamen – sive illo sive quovis alio pontifice a possessione deiecto – post tantam temporis intercapedinem nec divino nec humano iure posse repeti. Postremo: ea, que a summo pontifice tenentur, nullius temporis longitudine potuisse prescribi.”) In the B manu- scripts, this section is glossed (at the first line) “Divisio” (i.e. “Plan of the work”): ibid., 61.30. 33 On the expression “causa veritatis,” see Gregorio Tifernate’s letter to Valla regarding the Oration, in Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 84. On the technical use of the term causa in the Oration, cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria: III.3.15; III.4.1ff.; III.6.27; III.10.1–3; III.11.5; IV.1.40.
reputation …. I know that for a long time people have been waiting to hear the accusation I would bring against the Roman pontiffs: a massive accusa- tion assuredly, of either supine ignorance or monstrous avarice, which is ‘enslavement to idols’ [Eph. 5:5], or pride of rule, which is always accompa- nied by cruelty. Already for several centuries they either did not realize that Constantine’s Donation was a lie and a fabrication, or else they invented it themselves. Their descendants, following the deceitful path of earlier gen- erations, defended as true what they knew to be false – dishonoring the maj- esty of the pontificate, dishonoring the memory of the pontiffs of old, dishonoring the Christian religion …. For, as I shall show, that Donation, from which the supreme pontiffs want to derive their legal right, was unknown to Sylvester and Constantine alike.34 The dissent put forward in the Oration is aimed at the papacy and its authority in the realm of Christendom. More precisely, Valla’s criticism is directed against the historical ecclesiology surrounding the Roman papacy and the exercise of papal authority, as well as how both have been jointly theorized and put into practice on the foundation of the Donation of Constantine. The course of the argument proceeds as follows. The validity of a doc- trine, as well as of any political, juridical, or spiritual authority, depends on the (historically and/or theoretically verifiable) origin and premises to which it is reducible. But the Donation (“from which the supreme pontiffs want to derive their legal right”) is an historical and ideological forgery. Therefore the basis of Constantinian ecclesiology and the consequent his- torical development of the Roman papacy is invalid. In reality, both con- stitute a perverse heterogeneity of ends in the history of the papacy, the “vicariate of Christ,” and of the “Christian religion” (“dishonoring the Christian religion”). Again, by expressing the purpose of his dissent in these terms, Valla also affirms – and it is made quite explicit in the Oration – that tradition in itself alone can guarantee neither theological orthodoxy nor canonical
34 Valla, De falso, 55.1ff/59.17–60.10/60.20–61.2 (1–4): “Plures a me libri compluresque emissi sunt in omni fere doctrinarum genere, in quibus … a nonnullis magnisque et longo iam evo probatis auctoribus dissentio …. Scio iandudum expectare aures hominum, quod- nam pontificibus Romanis crimen impingam: profecto ingens sive supine ignorantie sive immanis avaritie, que est ‘idolorum servitus,’ sive imperandi vanitatis, cuius crudelitas semper est comes. Nam aliquot iam seculis aut non intellexerunt donationem Constantini commenticiam fictamque esse aut ipsi finxerunt sive posteriores in maiorum suorum dolis vestigia imprimentes pro vera, quam falsam cognoscerent, defenderunt, dedecorantes pontificatus maiestatem, dedecorantes veterum pontificum memoriam, dedecorantes religionem christianam …. Nam – ut ostendam – donatio illa, unde natum esse suum ius summi pontifices volunt, Silvestro pariter et Constantino fuit incognita” [translation modified].
legitimacy for the papacy’s exercise of political and spiritual power. Tradition, even the internal tradition of Christianity, is in and of itself powerless to constitute the authenticity and juridical validity of ministe- rial power in general, and of the papacy in particular. In this case tradition is based on the historical duration, on the praxis, and on the doctrine of the Constantinian Church. Valla identifies it historically not only as a deterioration of the primeval Christian commu- nity, but also – and this is a much more radical position – as the overturn- ing of the evangelical church. Since the nature of the Constitutum is anti-evangelical – i.e., contrary to the Gospel – the church whose founda- tion and continued existence are based on it cannot be properly Christian, i.e., has no connection to Christ and his message. Consequently, there can be no valid tradition justifying a Church derived from the Constitutum, which stands in fundamental antithesis to the very being of the Christian community. Furthermore, within the spectrum of the Oration’s specific objective, an equal focus is put on the Church’s historical fallibility. Through the identi- fication of its actual imperfections, the Constantinian Church is portrayed as a deterioration of the evangelical origins of Christianity. It is a deterio- ration, in other words, of that which constitutes the necessary essence of the Church. But there is more to Valla’s historical retrospective. The Church has not only shown itself in its earthly existence to be at odds with its own origins in its practice and behavior. It has also arrived, at least in certain respects, at the exact opposite of itself, at a profound historical col- lapse, at the negation of its own nature. Implicit in Valla’s retrospective is the historical law of the heterogeneity of ends, which is intrinsic to every human institution and every political or religious movement. For Valla, even the Church is subject to this law during its earthly existence. This applies as well to its theological nature, beyond its practices or possible modes of behavior. With similar premises – indeed, remaining within the same retrospec- tive account of the Church’s fallibility – Valla argues (in the peroration) for the possibility of a renewal and authentic rebirth of the contempo- rary Church’s evangelical origins. In fact, “the Christian religion” could be radically different if the Constitutum were abrogated and thereby the Constantinian past of the Roman church definitively repudiated. Valla writes in the concluding section of the Oration: But in this first speech of mine I do not wish to encourage rulers and peoples to restrain the Pope as he surges ahead in his unbridled course and to force him to stay within his own borders, but only to counsel him, when perhaps
he has already recognized the truth, to move back voluntarily from a house that is not his own into the one where he belongs and into a haven from irrational tides and cruel storms …. I wish, how I wish that one day I might see – indeed, I can scarcely wait to see, particularly if it is carried out on my initiative – that the Pope is the vicar of Christ alone and not of Caesar as well …. At that time to come the Pope will be called, and really will be, Holy Father, father of all, father of the church. He will not provoke wars among Christians but, through apostolic censure and papal majesty, bring an end to the wars provoked by others.35 The abrogation of the Constitutum, together with the evangelical renewal of the “church of God” (ecclesia Dei) – to which the Oration, declaimed in the forensic space of all Christendom, specifically aspires – would no doubt result primarily and immediately in a different historical and spiri- tual role for the papacy. Valla repeatedly maintains that the Roman papacy’s practice of politi- cal power has made it the de facto political model for Christians. And since the politics of the papacy has been one of dominion, of conquest, and of subjection – even of Christian peoples and communities – such has become the standard politics of Christian nations and their rulers: “wicked men find an excuse in the Pope. For he and his companions furnish an example of every kind of misdeed.”36 This would certainly not be the case if the papacy’s politics had been of a different character, i.e. evangelical and properly Christian. The only proper political practice for the pope as vicar of Christ is “administering” Christ and the Gospels, there in the place where Christ took bodily form, among the poor and the weak: “as Christ lies dying of starvation and exposure among so many thousands of poor.”37 This means, moreover, that the papacy’s (spiritual and ecclesiastical) power and rule should be executed through the communication of the message and through the administrative practice that are proper to it: the reconciliation of peoples, especially of Christian peoples with one another
35 Ibid., 175.18f.-176ff. (97): “Verum ego in hac prima nostra oratione nolo exhortare prin- cipes ac populos, ut papam effrenato cursu volitantem inhibeant eumque intra suos fines consistere compellant, sed tantum admoneant, qui forsitan iam edoctus veritatem sua sponte ab aliena domo in suam et ab insanis fluctibus sevisque tempestatibus in portum se recipiet …. Utinam, utinam aliquando videam – nec enim mihi quicquam est longius quam hoc videre, et presertim meo consilio effectum – ut papa tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Cesaris …. Tunc papa et dicetur et erit pater sanctus, pater omnium, pater ecclesie, nec bella inter christianos excitabit, sed ab aliis excitata censura apostolica et papali maiestate sedabit” [translation modified]. 36 Ibid., 174.14–16 (96): “impii homines a papa sumunt excusationem, in illo enim comi- tibusque eius esse omnis facinoris exemplum.” 37 Ibid., 174.7f. (96): “cum Christus in tot milibus pauperum fame ac nuditate moriatur.”
(“He will not provoke wars among Christians but … bring an end to the wars provoked by others”). This is the politics that behooves the pope and to which he is bound by duty. Only thus will he be the “Holy Father,” the one destined by vocation to evangelize. Only thus will he be the “father of all,” the shepherd of all believers. Only thus will he be the “father of the church,” the bringer of peace to Christendom – if necessary even by means of the “apostolic censure” that is his due, invested as he is with “papal maj- esty” as the Bishop of Rome, the successor to St. Peter. These are the objective dimensions of Valla’s “dissent” as outlined in the exordium and peroration of the Oration. But the subjective dimen- sions of that “dissent” are also made explicit in these very same sections. This is another aspect of Valla’s initial motive that helps to explain better, as if from within, the complexity of the goal towards which he strives in this composition. As a text, the Oration brings historical and ecclesiological criticism to bear on the jurisdictional, political, and spiritual rule assumed and exer- cised by the Roman papacy over the course of centuries. This exercise of power was taken up in accord with the Constitutum, “from which,” accord- ing to the exordium, “the supreme pontiffs want to derive their legal right,” and which in the peroration is called “the principle of papal power.”38 The position that Valla adopts as the ultimate justification for his criti- cism of the pope – his dissent towards the Bishop of Rome, the successor to Peter – is that he (Valla) “is imitating Paul.”39 After having made refer- ence to the conflict between Peter and the Apostle of the Gentiles in Galatians 2:11 – a reference that he will use again in his “letter of defense” to Serra regarding the Oration – Valla writes: But I am not a Paul who can reproach a Peter: I am rather a Paul who imi- tates Paul in such a way – which is something much greater – as to become one spirit with God, since I scrupulously obey his mandates. Personal status does not make anyone safe from attacks. It did not do so for Peter and for many others endowed with the same rank ….40
38 Ibid., 60.20–61.1 (4): “unde natum esse suum ius summi pontifices volunt”; 173.1f. (96): “principium potentie papalis.” 39 Ibid., 58.4ff. (2), and Setz’s notes. 40 Ibid., 58.7ff. (2): “At non sum Paulus, qui Petrum possim reprehendere: immo Paulus sum, qui Paulum imitor, quemadmodum, quod multo plus est, unus cum Deo spiritus effi- cior, cum studiose mandatis illius optempero. Neque aliquem sua dignitas ab increpationi- bus tutum reddit, que Petrum non reddidit multosque alios eodem preditos gradu ….” [The letter to Giovanni Serra is available in idem, Epistole, 193–209 and in English translation in idem, Dialectical Disputations, ed. and tr. Brian P. Copenhaver and Lodi Nauta, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012), 2:436–447; the reference to Gal. 2:11 is found in idem, Epistole, 204.241–243 and Dialectical Disputations, 2:444 (par. 26). Eds.]
As Paul clashed with Peter over the necessity of circumcising the Gentiles converted to the new faith, thus Valla clashes with the Roman papacy over the assumption of the Constitutum as the political and spiritual norm for the government of the Christian community. The opposition to Peter in the first case, and the criticism of his successor in the second, are both raised in the name of evangelical freedom, which is the sole foundation of the community of believers in Christ. It is precisely in this similarity of intentions between the apostle’s action and his own Oration that Valla sees himself as an “imitator of Paul.” In the exordium, where this compari- son is made, Valla elaborates upon his Pauline imitation. To the citation of Galatians 2:11, Valla adds Paul’s confession (Acts 23:1ff.) to the high priest Ananias and his ensuing punishment: “to be struck on the mouth.” Valla cites another similar instance from the Bible, this time from Jeremiah 20:1ff., when the priest Phasur has Jeremiah imprisoned “for his outspo- kenness.”41 Therefore Valla – despite the certainty of a political and spiri- tual “anathema” from the papacy – will openly take up the part of opposition to the new priesthood of the Law in the name of evangelical liberation from the Law. By thus obeying the Gospel’s mandates, by giving evidence and an open declaration (with the Oration) of his “dissent,” he will become similar to the apostle Paul and to the prophet Jeremiah. The imitation of Paul – which Valla adopts as both a justification and a the- matic motivation for his “dissent” towards the papacy – thus becomes a normative criterion for his argument in the Oration. Having followed in the footsteps of the Apostle in the defense of evan- gelical liberation from the Law, Valla wants to continue along the same path in his method of argumentation. This procedure consists in using demonstrative rhetoric, in the realms of both preaching and theology. This, according to Valla, was Paul’s method of “theologizing,” as he would eventually argue in more explicit terms in his later Encomion s. Thomae (Encomium of St. Thomas).42 Valla’s Pauline “imitation” advances on several levels in the Oration. First, as Paul argued against Peter by revealing the (implicit and explicit) contradictions in the latter’s behavior (on the one hand liberation from the Law, on the other making a distinction between Jews and Gentiles),
41 Valla, De falso, 56–57 (1): “os eius verberari”; “ob libertatem loquendi.” 42 On Valla’s imitation of Paul, whom he describes as “by far the prince of all theologians and the master of theologizing” (“omnium theologorum longe princeps ac theologandi magister”), see Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento,” 47 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 169 and translated in the present volume, 194).
thus Valla lays bare the papacy’s theoretical and operative contradictions with respect to its necessary role as “vicariate of Christ” for an evangelical church. Second, Valla explicitly reaffirms (in the exordium) that his ora- tion should not be understood as a “Philippic,” that is as a speech of a persecutory juridical character whose aim is to convict the pope.43 He has no intention of appealing to the Christian community, nor to any member of it, to employ the force of “violence” or of right against the pope or to deprive him of the rule usurped on the basis of the pseudo-Constitutum. Indeed, no one, neither a community nor a single member of a commu- nity, could have such authority or juridical competency. Valla is an anti- conciliarist, as can be seen clearly by this section of the Oration (and as Wolfram Setz has emphasized with great perspicacity).44 To Valla’s mind the Oration is, let us repeat, a demonstrative mode of argumentation, not a judicial one. He wants to persuade the papacy and induce it to dismiss the “donation,” not by force but by dint of its own awareness of the ecclesiological and historical contradictions in which the Constitutum has placed the Roman church: I am not acting to satisfy a desire to harass anyone and to write Philippics against him – may I not be guilty of such a heinous deed –, but to eradicate error from people’s minds, to remove persons from vices and crimes by admonition and reproof. I would not dare say that others, instructed by me, should prune with steel the papal seat – vineyard of Christ – which is teem- ing with undergrowth, and force it to bear plump grapes instead of emaci- ated berries.45 In this passage Valla makes it clear that the protest included in his “dis- sent” is no different in intention or in form from Paul’s “confession,” which is manifestly critical towards Peter. Finally, although aware that his Oration also undermines the spiritual power employed by the papacy to condemn transgressors to proscription from the Christian community,46 Valla refuses to behave politically and
43 Valla, De falso, 59.3ff. (3). 44 Ibid., 58.15–59.1f. (2) and Setz’s n. 21. 45 Ibid., 59 (3): “Neque vero id ago, ut quenquam cupiam insectari et in eum quasi Philippicas scribere – hoc enim a me facinus procul absit –, sed ut errorem a mentibus hominum convellam, ut eos a vitiis sceleribusque vel admonendo vel increpando sum- moveam. Non ausim dicere, ut alii per me edocti luxuriantem nimiis sarmentis papalem sedem, que Christi vinea est, ferro coerceant et plenas uvas, non graciles labruscas ferre compellant.” But to understand Valla’s passage correctly, it is necessary to relate it directly to the definition of rhetoric fully discussed and established by Quintilian, Institutio orato- ria, II.15–21. 46 [I.e., through excommunication, anathema, or execration, as explained in Valla, De falso, 56.5f. (1). Eds.]
47 On Gaius Asinius Pollio, see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VI.3.110ff. (“… a man for all seasons” [“… esse eum omnium horarum”]; Erasmus will use this expression in the prefa- tory letter to Thomas More in his Praise of Folly, and he will also dedicate one of his Adages to it: Desiderius Erasmus, Opera omnia (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1969-), ord. 2, tom. 1 (1993), 286 (= pp. 389–390). Cf. Wolfgang Buchwald, Armin Hohlweg, and Otto Prinz (eds.), Tusculum-Lexicon griechischer und lateinischer Autoren des Altertums und des Mittelalters (München: Artemis, 1982), sub voce, 659. [Valla’s allusion to Pollio (Valla, De falso, 56.9f. [1]: “nolo scribere in eos, qui possunt proscribere”) is adapted from Macrobius, Saturnalia, II.4.21. Eds.] 48 Valla, De falso, 57.8–12/15–20 (2): “Verum non est causa, cur me duplex hic periculi terror conturbet arceatque a proposito. Nam neque contra ius fasque summo pontifici licet aut ligare quempiam aut solvere, et in defendenda vertitate atque iustitia profundere ani- mam summe virtutis, summe laudis summi premii est …. Facessat igitur trepidatio, procul abeant metus, timores excidant. Forti animo, magna fiducia, bona spe defendenda est causa veritatis, causa iustitie, causa Dei. Neque enim is verus est habendus orator, qui bene scit dicere, nisi et dicere audeat.” 49 [A revised version of De voluptate. Eds.] 50 Valla, Repastinatio, 408–422, 73–98. Cf. Lorch, A Defense of Life, 119–130; Fois, Il pen- siero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 476–481.
christianus). All this is similar to Paul, writes Valla, who made his confes- sion to Ananias in line with his own “good conscience” (bona conscientia). Later, in a letter to Cardinal Landriani in defense of the Oration, Valla will confirm that he had been “directed by his conscience” to write what he did.51 These words confirm the comprehensive sense, both objective and subjective, of that “I dissent” that is asserted programmatically in the very first lines of the Oration and fully elaborated from the exordium to the peroration.
3. The Antinomy of imperium and evangelium
The first section of the Oration deals with the relationship between impe- rium (rule or empire) and evangelium (the Gospel). This relationship is characterized by radical conflict and extreme opposition and is resolvable only through the reciprocal negation of the two terms. This theme is a constant that runs throughout the Oration. In section I – and also in sec- tion II, which is actually an extension of the first – this theme is treated specifically and is taken up as an historical and theoretical premise to the overall argument against the Constitutum Constantini. Section I is composed of four parts made up of speeches given by the dramatis personae involved in Constantine’s supposed donation of the empire to the papacy. In the manuscript tradition of the Oration, each part is glossed with a heading. These are indicated in Setz’s critical apparatus and in all likelihood are attributable to Valla himself. The first part of the section begins with a question posed by the Oration’s author himself to “kings and princes,” those seasoned in the wielding of “power,” regarding the Donation’s supposed historical possibility: “would Constantine have ever given the empire to another?”52 The question posed to the wielders of power constitutes the author’s own direct dis- course; it is the oration of the orator Valla himself. How could the Donation of Constantine ever have occurred, when all of history teaches that he who conquers and exercises rule can never cede his own power without falling into an absurd repudiation of himself? I speak to you, kings and princes. Since it is hard for a private person to form any idea of a royal disposition, I probe your mind, I examine your con- science, I ask for your testimony: Would any one of you, had he been in
51 Valla, Epistole, 256.2: “contentus animi conscientia.” 52 Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 62.5): “nunquam Constantinum fuisse facturum ut alteri daret imperium.”
Constantine’s place, have thought he should act to bestow upon another person, by gracious liberality, the city of Rome – his own fatherland, the center of the world, the queen of cities, the most powerful, noblest, richest of peoples, which triumphed over nations and was sacred to behold …? As far as I have heard or read, not one of you was ever deterred from the effort to increase his empire …. On the contrary, this blazing passion for extensive rule most of all goads and drives one who is already supremely powerful …. I forebear to mention how many crimes, how many abominations have been committed in the cause of gaining or increasing empire …. In no other endeavor does human recklessness normally assert itself so much and so fiercely …. But if dominion is apt to be sought by so great an effort, how much greater must be the effort to keep it! Not enlarging an empire is not so wretched as reducing it. Even more grotesque than not adding another’s realm to yours is allowing yours to be added to another’s.53 The second part of the section contains the “speech of Constantine’s sons and kinsmen to him.”54 They urge the emperor not to disinherit them, giv- ing to others (the Roman pope) that rule which is their due in virtue of dynastic succession and of their service in capturing the imperial crown and the government of the empire. Father, do you really deprive, disinherit, and cast off your sons, you who loved your sons very much until now? We do not so much bemoan as won- der at your desire to strip yourself of the best and greatest part of your empire. But bemoan it we do, because you are transferring it to others at our expense and to our disgrace. What reason is there for you to cheat your chil- dren from the anticipated succession to your empire, when you yourself ruled together with your father? What have we done against you? In what way do we appear guilty of disrespect towards our fatherland, the name of Rome, and the majesty of her empire? … If only, Caesar, we had fallen in battle with your reputation intact and victory secure rather than look upon
53 Valla, De falso, 62.12–63.1/63.15–20/64.11–22 (7–8): “Vos appello, reges ac principes, difficile est enim privatum hominem animi regii concipere imaginem, vestram mente inquiro, conscientiam scrutor, testimonium postulo: nunquid vestrum quispiam, si fuisset Constantini loco, faciendum sibi putasset, ut urbem Romam, patriam suam, caput orbis terrarum, reginam civitatum, potentissimam, nobilissimam, ditissimam populorum, tri- umphatricem nationum et ipso aspectu sacram, liberalitatis gratia donaret alteri …? Siquidem neminem vestrum aut audivi aut legi a conatu ampliandi imperii fuisse deterri- tum …: quin ipse hic ardor atque hec late dominandi cupiditas, ut quisque maxime potens est, ita eum maxime angit atque agitat …. Taceo quanta scelera, quot abominanda propter imperium assequendum ampliandum ve admissa sunt …. Adeo nusquam magis, nusquam atrocius grassari solet humana temeritas …. Quod si tanto conatu peti dominatus solet, quanto maiore necesse est conservetur? Neque enim tantopere miserum est non ampliare imperium quam imminuere, neque tam deforme tibi alterius regnum non accedere tuo quam tuum accedere alieno ….” 54 Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 68.17): “oratio filiorum ac necessario- rum Constantini ad illum.”
this! You can indeed do what you want with your empire and even with us, with one exception, which we will fiercely uphold unto death – we shall not desist from the worship of the immortal gods and shall serve as a great example to others, so that you may know what your vaunted largesse does for the Christian religion ….55 The third part of the section is the “speech of the Roman people to Constantine.”56 The Senatus Populusque Romanus claim for themselves the right of directing the affairs of the respublica and the imperial govern- ment of the city. They beg Constantine in the name of romana libertas not to subject Rome and its empire to a “barbarian,” a worshiper of a religion foreign and adverse to the cult of the household gods. Caesar, if you are unmindful of your own family and even of yourself …, nev- ertheless the Senate and the People of Rome cannot be unmindful of its right and its reputation. For how can you arrogate to yourself so much of the Roman empire, which was brought forth from our blood, not yours? … You, Caesar, will look after yourself, but this matter concerns us just as much as you. You are mortal. The empire of the Roman people must be immortal and, insofar as lies with us, it will be – not only the empire but our sense of honor as well. But shall we accept an empire of those whose religion we scorn? And shall we, as princes of the world, be subservient to this most contemptible creature? … And, since you force us to speak rather candidly in support of our right, you need to realize that you have no legal claim on the empire of the Roman people: Julius Caesar seized rule by force, Augustus took over the crime and made himself the ruler by wiping out the opposing factions. Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasianus and all the rest plundered our freedom by the same or a similar route. You too became ruler after expelling or exterminating others, and I forbear to mention that you were an illegitimate child. Therefore, to make our mind known to you, Caesar, if you do not care to keep the government of Rome, you have sons, one of whom you may put in your place with our permission, and on our proposal, in accordance with the law of nature. Otherwise it is
55 Valla, De falso, 68.17–69.7/69.25–70.2 (14): “Ita ne, pater antehac filiorum amantis- sime, filios privas, exheredas, abdicas? Nam, quod te optima maximaque imperii parte exuere vis, non tam querimur quam miramur. Querimur autem, quod eam ad alios defers cum nostra et iactura et turpitudine. Quid enim cause est, quod liberos tuos expectata suc- cesione imperii fraudas, qui ipse una cum patre regnasti? Quid in te commisimus? qua in te, qua in patriam, qua in nomen Romanum ac maiestatem imperii impietate digni vide- mur? … Utinam nos, Cesar, salva tua dignitate atque victoria in bello contigisset occum- bere potius quam ista cernamus. Et tu quidem de imperio tuo ad tuum arbitratum agere potes atque etiam de nobis uno duntaxat excepto, in quo ad mortem usque erimus contu- maces: ne a cultu deorum immortalium desistamus magno etiam aliis exemplo, ut scias tua ista largitas quid mereatur de religione christiana ….” 56 Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 70.17): “oratio populi romani ad Constantinum.”
our intention to defend the public interest together with our own personal reputation. For this is no less an affront to the descendants of Romulus than was the rape of Lucretia, nor will a Brutus be wanting to offer himself as a leader to this people against Tarquinius in the restoration of our freedom.57 The final part of the section contains “Sylvester’s speech to Constantine.”58 Pope Sylvester’s discourse is entirely made up of quotations, and corre- sponding interpretations, from New Testament passages, mostly taken from the Gospel of Matthew and the Letters of Paul. Caesar, my excellent liege and son, … I am a priest and a pontiff, who has to determine what I may allow as an offering at the altar, to protect against the offering of an animal that is not just impure but a viper or a snake. So con- sider this. Suppose you had the right to hand over to someone other than your sons a part of your empire containing Rome, the reigning capital of the world – something I do not at all believe – ; suppose this people, suppose Italy, suppose all the other nations, seduced as they are by worldly attrac- tions, would agree, against all plausibility, that they preferred to be subject to those whom they hate and whose religion they have hitherto spat upon. Even so, my most loving son – if you think you owe me some credence – I could still not be induced by any argument to agree with you unless I wished to be untrue to myself, forget my station, and almost deny my Lord Jesus. Your gifts, or, as you prefer, your remunerations would stain and imme- diately wipe out the glory, innocence, and sanctity of myself and of all those who will come after me, and they would block the way for those who will come ‘to know the truth’ [1 Tim. 2:4] …. Should I be for others, Caesar, both an example and a cause of wrongdoing? I who am a Christian man, priest of God, Roman pontiff, vicar of Christ? … I know that when Peter was asked by the Lord from whom the kings of the earth received tribute or tax, whether
57 Valla, De falso, 70.17–71.1/73.3–9/74.12–75.11 (16–18) “Cesar, si tu tuorum immemor es atque etiam tui …, non tamen senatus populusque Romanus immemor potest esse sui iuris sueque dignitatis. Etenim quomodo tibi tantum permittis de imperio Romano, quod non tuo, sed nostro sanguine partum est? … Tu, Cesar, quid ad te spectet, ipse videris, nobis autem hec res non minus quam tibi cure esse debet. Tu mortalis es, imperium populi Romani decet esse immortale et, quantum in nobis est, erit, neque imperium modo, verum etiam pudor: scilicet, quorum religionem contemnimus, eorum accipiemus imperium? et principes orbis terrarum huic contemptissimo homini serviemus? … Atque ut intelligas – quandoquidem nos pro iure nostro cogis asperius loqui – nullum tibi in populi Romani imperio ius esse: Cesar vi dominatum occupavit, Augustus et in vitium successit et adver- sariorum partium profligatione se dominum fecit, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasianus ceterique aut eadem aut simili via libertatem nostram predati sunt, tu quoque aliis expulsis aut interemptis dominus effectus es …. Quare, ut tibi nostram mentem testificemur, Cesar …, nobis in animo est publicam amplitudinem cum privata dignitate defendere. Neque enim minor hec iniuria Quiritum quam olim fuit violata Lucretia, neque nobis deerit Brutus, qui contra Tarquinum se ad libertatem recuperandam huic populo prebeat ducem ….” 58 Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 76.12): “oratio Silvestri ad Con- stantinum.”
from their sons or from foreigners, He declared, when Peter answered ‘from foreigners,’ ‘Therefore their sons are free’ [Matt. 17:24–27]. But if all people are my sons, Caesar, as they surely are, all of them will be free, no one will pay anything …. Our power is the power of the keys, as the Lord says: ‘I shall give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven’ [Matt. 16:19] …. Nothing can be added to this power, nothing to this rank, nothing to this kingdom. Whoever is not content with this is demanding something else for himself from the devil, who dared to say even to the Lord: ‘I shall give you all the kingdoms of the world, if you fall on the ground and worship me’ [Matt. 4:9]. Therefore, Caesar – allow me to say this without offense – do not play the devil for me, you who tell Christ, namely me, to accept kingdoms of the world that are given by you. I prefer to repudiate them than to possess them; and – to speak of unbelievers but, I hope, future believers – do not turn me from an angel of light into an angel of darkness for those whose hearts I want to draw into piety, whose necks I do not want to bring under the yoke. I want to subject them to myself ‘with the sword that is the word of God’ [Eph. 6:17], not with a sword of iron, so that they may not become worse, kick back, gore me, and, vexed by my error, blaspheme the name of God …. Finally, to come to an end, on this matter hear that remark which He uttered as if directed to you and me: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’ [Matt. 22:21]. Wherefore it turns out that neither you, Caesar, should give up what is yours nor should I accept what is Caesar’s. Even if you should offer it a thousand times, I would never accept.59
59 Valla, De falso, 76.12–77.15/78.11–13/83.4–9/84.4–23/84.28–85.4 (21, 25–26): “Princeps optime ac fili, Cesar, … ego sacerdos sum ac pontifex, qui dispicere debeo, quid ad altare patiar offerri, ne forte non dico immundum animal offeratur, sed vipera aut serpens. Itaque sic habeas: si foret tui iuris partem imperii cum regina orbis, Roma, alteri tradere quam filiis – quod minime sentio –, si populus hic, si Italia, si cetere nationes sustinerent, ut, quos oderunt et quorum religionem adhuc respuunt, capti illecebris seculi eorum imperio obnoxii esse vellent – quod impossibile est –, tamen, si quid mihi credendum putas, fili amantissime, ut tibi assentirer ulla adduci ratione non possem, nisi vellem mihi ipsi esse dissimilis et condicionem meam oblivisci ac propemodum dominum Iesum abnegare. Tua enim munera sive, ut tu vis, tue remunerationes et gloriam et innocentiam et sanctimo- niam meam atque omnium, qui mihi successuri sunt, polluerent ac prorsus everterent viamque iis, qui ‘ad cognitionem veritatis’ venturi sunt, intercluderent …. Ego, Cesar, aliis quoque sim et exemplum et causa delinquendi? christianus homo, sacerdos Dei, pontifex Romanus, vicarius Christi … qui scio a Domino interrogatum Petrum a quibusnam reges terre acciperent tributum censumve, a filiis an ab alienis? et, cum hic respondisset ‘ab alienis,’ ab eodem dictum: ‘ergo liberi sunt filii.’ Quod si omnes filii mei sunt, Cesar, – ut certe sunt – omnes liberi erunt, nihil quisquam solvet …. Nostra potestas est potestas cla- vium, dicente Domino: ‘Tibi dabo claves regni celorum’ …. Nihil ad hanc potestatem, nihil ad hanc dignitatem, nihil ad hoc regnum adiici potest. Quo qui contentus non est, aliud sibi quoddam a diabolo postulat, qui etiam Domino dicere ausus est: ‘Tibi dabo omnia regna mundi, si cadens in terrram adoraveris me.’ Quare, Cesar, – cum pace tua dictum sit –, noli mihi diabolus effici, qui Christum, idest me regna mundi a te data accipere iubeas, malo enim illa spernere quam possidere; et – ut aliquid de infidelibus, sed ut spero futuris fidelibus loquar – noli me de angelo lucis reddere illis angelum tenebrarum, quorum corda ad pietatem inducere volo, non ipsorum cervici iugum imponere, et ‘gladio, quod est verbum Dei,’ non gladio ferreo mihi subiicere, ne deteriores efficiantur,
The orations addressed to Constantine regarding the supposed transfer of the empire to the papacy serve to define the historical dimensions of the Donation. These historical dimensions in turn constitute the forensic space of the speeches: the temporal and ideological space both of imperial Rome (from the beginning of the fourth century on, after the “Christian” emperor’s victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312) and of the Roman-Catholic church (Roman-Catholic in the sense that Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire; it was in the curial and Lateran tradition as a state religion that it arrived at the Constitutum). Furthermore, within this forensic space the orations have the function of highlighting the comparison between Constantine, who offers the empire to the papacy, and Sylvester, who in the name of the Gospel rejects the donation. In this comparison between Constantine and Sylvester – animated by the speeches that express the contrasting positions of the respective personages – is revealed, in its various dimensions, the antin- omy between imperium and evangelium.60 Having explained the formal composition of section I of the Oration, it remains now to analyze this central theme as debated by Valla and to examine the method of argumentation employed: the demonstration of the irresolvable antinomy, and thus of the radical contradiction, between imperium and evangelium. As was highlighted in the introduction, Valla’s Oration proceeds with arguments aimed at identifying the explicit and implicit contradictions in ne recalcitrent, ne cornu me feriant, ne nomen Dei meo irritati errore blasphement …. Cuius ad extremum, ut iam finem faciam, illam de hac re sententiam accipe, quam quasi inter me et te tulit: ‘Reddite, que sunt Cesaris, Cesari, et que sunt Dei, Deo,’ quo fit, ut nec tu, Cesar, tua relinquere neque ego, que Cesaris sunt, accipere debeam, que, vel si millies offeras, nunquam accipiam.” 60 In addition to what has been said here about the speeches constituting temporal and ideological historical spaces, it should be added that Valla employed in section I of the Oration (and perhaps for the first time in the context of early humanism) the historio- graphico-rhetorical genre developed and used by Thucydides in his Histories, which Valla would be the first to translate into Latin. On Valla’s proemium to his Latin version of the Histories, see Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento,” 126–131 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 250–255 and translated in the present volume, 281–286); and above all Giacomo Ferraù, “La concezione storiografica del Valla: i Gesta Ferdinandi Regis Aragonum, in Besomi and Regoliosi (eds.), Lorenzo Valla e l’umanesimo italiano, 265–310. On Valla’s translation of the Histories, see Giovan Battista Alberti, “Tucidide nella traduzione latina di Lorenzo Valla,” Studi italiani di filologia classica, n.s., 29 (1957): 224–249; idem (ed.), introduction to Thucydidis Historiae, 3 vols. (Roma: Typis publicae offi- cinae polygraphicae, 1972–2000), vol. 1 (1972) [idem, “Lorenzo Valla tradutore di Tucidide,” in Tradizione classica e letteratura umanistica per Alessandro Perosa, ed. Roberto Cardini et al. (Roma: Bulzoni, 1985), 243–253]; and Filippo Ferlauto, Il testo di Tucidide e la traduzione latina di Lorenzo Valla (Palermo: Università di Palermo, Istituto di filologia greca, 1979).
the “document of donation” (donationis pagina) as well as at exposing its historical inconsistencies. Within this perspective, the attempt to “falsify” the “document,” i.e. the text providing the “principle of papal power,” begins with a political and theological observation aimed at demonstrat- ing the historical unreality of the Constitutum and its supposed Christian authenticity. This is the point of the entire first section (and, as we shall see, of the second as well). More clearly: if the “document of donation” indeed possessed the historical reality attributed to it, then that reality is in clear contradiction with the Christian Gospel, on the one hand, and with the contemporary politics of imperial power, on the other. The Constitutum in and of itself is placed primarily outside of, if not at the extreme opposite pole from, the Christian, evangelical world. In fact it could not be countenanced with regard to a church (ecclesia) that is within the boundaries of the Gospel, but only in view of a Church characterized by enormous political and religious power. The Constitutum lies to one side or the other of a Christendom based on saving grace and the evangeli- cal dictates of the Sermon on the Mount, to which Valla’s composition continually refers. In other words, Valla shows how the Constitutum is entirely dislocated and self-contradictory with respect to both chronological and geographi- cal parameters. By its very nature, it is unthinkable unless outside the space and time, i.e., outside the contextual circle, of the early Christian church, which was profoundly evangelical and completely consistent with itself. (This last point is an historical presupposition about early Christianity that underlies the Oration and other of Valla’s major works.) Similarly, Valla demonstrates that the Constitutum is placed outside the proper political context of Roman rule and the Roman Empire. He repeats in various ways and according to diverse points of view that the Donation would have been an absurd event given the historical nature and the internal logic of Roman, and especially Constantine’s, imperial power. It would have been an event, therefore, entirely foreign and inconceivable within the historical reality of the Roman Empire, which had achieved the apex of its military might and internal political cohesion precisely with the advent of the emperor Constantine.61
61 Cf. Giulio Giannelli and Santo Mazzarino, Trattato di storia romana, 2 vols. (Roma: Tumminelli, 1962), vol. 2: L’Impero Romano, in particular part V: Il basso impero e la ‘pros- pettiva carismatica,’ I. Dal Milvio al Frigido (312–394), (pp. 421–490); Andreas Alföldi, Costantino tra paganesimo e cristianesimo, tr. Augusto Fraschetti (Bari: Laterza, 1976) (English edition: The Conversion of Constantine and Pagan Rome, tr. Harold Mattingly [Oxford: Clarendon, 1948]); Arnaldo Momigliano, Il conflitto tra paganesimo e cristianesimo
The “document of donation,” therefore, is placed by Valla within the coordinates of a double contradiction. The “document” contradicts both the evangelical character of early Christianity (until the first decades of the fourth century) and the nature of the Roman Empire at the time. In light of this collocation/dislocation, the “document of donation” – understood both as a possible event and as an actual document – loses all sense. Language and reality, signifier and referent, lack all historical and ideological authenticity. The falseness of the Constitutum, therefore – its non-truth both historically and ecclesiologically – derives from the fact that it places itself of its own accord outside of every context. Indeed, it is configured in opposition to the very times and spaces that are assumed as its immediate referent as a text. That these are the conclusions reached by Valla will become clearer with an in-depth reading of section I. The speeches of which it is com- posed are directed towards the historical presentation of the following phenomena. Of first importance is the nature and historical manifestation of the Roman Empire, with special attention to the form of imperial power generally and to the degree and mode in which it was taken up and exer- cised by Constantine specifically. Second is the Gospel, as a message of “servitude” (servitium) placed at the foundation of the Christian commu- nity, and specifically as it must be (and was in fact) put into practice by one particular member of that community (the evangelical polis), i.e. the “vicar of Christ.” Third and finally, the opposition between imperium and evangelium is brought to the fore. The first point is elaborated in the first three speeches: the discourse of the orator (i.e. the author of the Oration) on Constantine and the sup- posed donation; that of Constantine’s kinsmen, who claim for themselves the dynastic succession to the government of the empire; and that of the Senate and the People of Rome, who urge Constantine not to abuse his imperial power, a military and political despotism that in itself already constitutes a usurpation of the respublica as a res privata.62 The second point is treated in Pope Sylvester’s statement on the nature of the “servi- tude” of the Church’s authority as it is exercised ministerially, i.e. in the name of Christ. Servitude is a defining quality of evangelium, which is the foundation of Christianity. All together, finally, the speeches are nel secolo IV: saggi, tr. Anna Davies Morpurgo (Torino: Einaudi, 1968) [English edition = The Conflict between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century: Essays (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963)]. 62 [A “private affair,” as opposed to the republic (respublica), which is the “public affair” par excellence. Eds.]
declaimed – and put in a position to be compared – to stress the falseness of the Constitutum, inasmuch as the “document of donation” is disfigured by the antinomy of imperium/evangelium. And since the terms of this antinomy are radically irreconcilable, it follows that the Constitutum rests on one massive contradiction that comprehends all the other contradic- tions underlying the “document of donation” – like the one Valla has already brought to the fore, and like others that will be revealed in the sequel. With incisive strokes and a dense succession of abridged formulas, Valla seems in the first three speeches to want to explain the origins, the self-manifestation, and the very nature of power in and of itself. He sketches what amounts to an historical phenomenology of power, with particular attention to the form and event of imperial power.63 Imperial power has its birth with the coming of Alexander the Great, who, accord- ing to Valla, establishes imperial rule and puts an end to the Greek polis. It is then broadened and developed by the Roman Caesars during the decline of the Roman respublica. Finally, it reaches its apex with Constantine. He (and his successors down to Theodosius) then, exercising absolute rule, decides the fate of Rome, “capital of the world,” by depriving the civitas of its foundation: the senatus populusque romanus. As Setz has noted, Alexander is for Valla the prototype of empire. The humanist draws a sketch of him as the first incarnation of imperial power; then he engraves the image with the person and power of Constantine. [Alexander] seemed to himself to have accomplished nothing at all without the subjugation of the West and all its nations either by force or by the authority of his name. Indeed, he had already planned to explore and bring under his control the Ocean as well as any other world there might be ….64 Constantine is no different: This was a man who launched wars on nations out of lust for rule; who had deprived allies and relatives of their empire after pursuing them in civil war …; who remembered, just like the other Caesars, that he had taken his rule not through senatorial election and consent of the plebs, but through an army, weapons, and war.65
63 Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 59ff.; Valla, De falso, 64, n. 43; 74, n. 70. 64 Valla, De falso, 64.4–8 (7) and Setz’s n. 43: “Ipse sibi nihil effecisse videbatur, nisi et occidentem et omnes nationes aut vi aut nominis sui auctoritate sibi tributarias reddidis- set. Parum dico: iam Oceanum transire et, si quis alius orbis esset, explorare ac suo subi- cere arbitrio destinaverat …” [translation modified]. 65 Ibid., 65.9–11/19–21 (9): “… hominem, qui cupiditate dominandi nationibus bella intulisset, socios affinesque bello civili persecutus imperio privasset …; qui se meminisset more aliorum Cesarum non electione patrum consensuque plebis, sed exercitu, armis, bello dominatum occupasse ….”
Therefore, Valla argues, power is nothing other than the human “lust for rule” far and wide. Such was its origin, and such is thus its nature. The advent of power and its self-manifestation throughout history are deter- mined by the constants of its own internal logic, by the requirements nec- essary for its subsistence and survival. Power can perpetuate itself only by reaffirming itself, which is possible only to the degree that it expands itself in depth and in breadth in the direction of absolute and total rule. Since power is by its nature identified with rule, it had to rise to the forms and strategies of imperial rule: expanding to the greatest extent possible by means of the force of arms and territorial conquest. Its very survival was necessarily determined by its own increase and by the destruction of every other competing power. It was first the use of force against the civitas – founded on the senatus populusque romanus – with the resulting rule over the Roman Republic, and then the subjection of other peoples outside of Rome and Italy, that established Caesar and Caesarism, the emperor and the Roman Empire. Through their conquest of power, those “who suppressed the Republic” gained full control over civil and political liberties: “the Roman people … lost its true Romanness.” That conquest went on to be gradually consoli- dated through the mass of power that flowed to the Caesars from the politi- cal subjugation of other peoples and the territorial extension of the empire, which was executed by the military force the emperor himself had created. Here Valla reinterprets Jerome’s statement that “it is the army that makes the emperor,” making it so that its truth is understood adequately only if the terms of the proposition are taken as reciprocally convertible. That is to say that it is true that the army makes the emperor, but it is equally true, and perhaps historically more precise, that it is the emperor who creates the army and establishes his rule, the emperor who executes the conquest of power and the destruction of civil and political liberties.66 Valla’s argument is continuously unfolded along lines of historical induction – the specific method of composition in section I, as should now be evident from what has been said. If power is essentially “the effort to increase empire,” and such turns out to be historically true, then the Donation can be nothing other than an historical absurdity. It would be an event in no way in agreement with the nature and existence of Roman
66 Ibid., 74, n. 70 (the quotation “who suppressed the Republic” [“qui … oppressere Rempublicam”] is from the Elegantie, IV.70 suffragia, in Lorenzo Valla, Opera omnia, ed. Eugenio Garin, 2 vols. [Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962], 1:145) and 165.14f. (88); 174.22 (96): “populus Romanus … veram illam Romanitatem perdidit”; 65, n. 46.
power, which with the advent of Constantine had risen to the apex of imperial power. The Donation would have brought about the very nega- tion and self-destruction of the power that Constantine had established for himself and greatly reinforced with conquests on the borders of the empire and victories over his rivals. Hence – according to Valla – the attempt of the Constitutum and the Legenda Silvestri (Legend of Sylvester) to posit the strictest of ties between Constantine’s abdication of the Western Empire in favor of the papacy and his conversion to Christianity. “Because he had become a Christian” is the response to whoever objects to the Donation and considers impos- sible such an imperial gesture towards the papacy.67 But the evidence of the “document of donation,” counters Valla, testifies against itself; indeed, it would stress with greater force the falseness of the Donation. The irrec- oncilable relationship between imperium and evangelium would sink the imperial gesture deeper into the void of inexplicability. If Constantine’s conversion to Christianity had indeed been authentic, he should not have abdicated his imperial power but rather put it in the service of Christians: In fact, if you wish to show yourself a Christian, to demonstrate your piety, to provide for – I do not say the Roman church, but the church of God – you should now, now above all, play the prince, to fight for those who cannot and must not fight, to keep safe through your authority those who are sub- ject to plots and injuries.68 Valla proceeds insistently, with greater urgency and still in accordance with his historical criticism of the imperial regime. If Constantine had become a Christian, then in conformity with his evangelical faith he should have restored civil and political liberty to the people of Rome and to all the other peoples subject to the empire. In direct contrast to what the Constitutum purports, Constantine, if he had remained faithful to his Christian duty, should have “restored freedom to the cities, not replaced their lord” with the “vicar of Christ”!69 What is more, it was in such an actual liberation from imperial domina- tion that the “sacrament of truth” could have been revealed, the sacrament
67 Ibid., 66.3ff. (10): “quia affectus erat Christianus.” 68 Ibid., 66.15–20 (10): Tu vero, si christianum te ostendere, si pietatem indicare tuam, si consultum non dico Romane ecclesie vis, sed ecclesie Dei, nunc, precipue nunc principem agas, ut pugnes pro iis, qui pugnare non possunt nec debent, ut eos tua auctoritate tutos reddas, qui insidiis iniuriisque obnoxii sunt.” 69 Ibid., 66.9f. (10): “restituere urbibus libertatem, non mutare dominum” [translation modified].
70 Ibid., 66.20–67.3 (10): “Nabuchodonosor, Cyro, Assuero multisque aliis principibus sacramentum veritatis Deus aperiri voluit, a nullo tamen eorum exegit, ut imperio cederet, ut partem regni donaret, sed tantum libertatem Hebreis redderet eosque ab infestantibus finitimis protegeret. Hoc satis fuit Iudeis, hoc sat erit et Christianis. Factus es, Costantine, christianus? at indignissima res est christianum te nunc imperatorem minori esse princi- patu, quam fueras infidelis. Est enim principatus precipuum quoddam Dei munus, ad quem gentiles etiam principes a Deo eligi existimantur” [translation modified]. 71 Ibid., 73.7–9/74.7f. (17): “… quorum religionem contemnimus, eorum accipiemus imperium? et principes orbis terrarum huic contemptissimo homini serviemus? … ipsum regni caput peregrino atque humillimo homini addicere?”
that was technically still its legitimate right under Roman law, although at this point only partially and formally. The Senate had to act resolutely towards Constantine in defense of its power – as a last attempt to recover its strength on its deathbed, which would in fact happen during the fourth century – and claim its former republican freedom to the extent still possible. In other words, for Valla – particularly in this first section – if Constan tine had actually instituted the Constitutum, he would have acted in con- tradiction with the very nature of his imperial power. Similarly, if the Senate had quietly suffered the transfer of the empire, it would have repu- diated itself. It alone would have deprived itself of its authority and ancient republican liberty, soiled by Caesar and gradually usurped by his succes- sors. Therefore Valla has the Senate’s speech to the emperor end with the lapidary assertion: “you have no legal claim on the empire of the Roman people.” With the first three speeches (of the “orator,” of Constantine’s kinsmen, and of the Senate), Valla aimed to expose the Donation’s historical unreal- ity by demonstrating its irreconcilability with the historical reality of Roman power generally and especially of Constantine’s imperial power. The nature and logic of imperium – brought forth by Valla through his analysis of the historical phenomenology of power – cannot lead to an act like the Donation without slipping into the self-negation both of imperium and of whoever enjoys its power. With the final speech, of pope Sylvester, the humanist goes on to treat the other – and not dissimilar – historical and ideological irreconcilability of the donation and its acceptance: the irreconcilability of imperium with the evangelium of the “vicar of Christ.” Sylvester’s assent to the transfer of the (Western) Empire to the papacy would have entailed the negation of his own position as the “vicar of Christ,” as head of the Church (caput ecclesiae) in the apostolic adminis- tration of the pontifical office (munus pontificale). Just as Constantine would have repudiated his own status as the supreme wielder of Roman power if he had ceded the empire – an absurdity – thus Pope Sylvester would have committed the greatest possible betrayal of his evangelical faith – also an absurdity in the context of Christianity in its first few cen- turies. But, Valla reaffirms, Pope Sylvester was fully aware of being at the head of that “Christian army” – an army in stark contrast to the Roman legions – in which the convert Constantine, general of the Roman mili- tary, was a mere “recruit.”72
72 Ibid., 78.12f. (21); 83.16 (26); 76.16 (21): “in christiana militia tiro.”
A patchwork of passages from the Old and New Testaments (citations typical for those with an evangelical bent), Sylvester’s speech hinges on two points. First, the Gospel’s significance as bringer of “salvation” and “redemption” comes to the fore, words whose semantics Valla analyzes in terms of “liberation.” Second, the Gospel is essentially understood as a message against power and against rule. For Valla, the message of the christianus homo is essentially a direct and radical antithesis to the “lust for domination,” where power and rule have their origin and on which they constantly nourish themselves in historical reality.73 Therefore Pope Sylvester must refuse the imperial gift. Otherwise he would have “to deny the lord Jesus,” and he would be untrue to himself as the one who represents Christ (personam Christi gerens). If he had accepted the donation, Sylvester would have failed to overcome the temp- tation that Satan offered to Christ in the desert. And he, the vicar of Christ, would have been transformed from an “angel of light” into an “angel of darkness.” Sylvester would have turned the pope’s succession from Peter into its opposite, i.e. a succession from Judas, which (Valla has Sylvester say), “would stain and immediately wipe out … my successors and block the way for those who will come to know the truth.”74 Moreover, Sylvester’s “acceptance” of the Donation would have brought with it (as in fact it did after the establishment of the Constitutum) the distortion of the “power of the keys.” Apostolic power, whose nature and whose foundation are described in the Scriptures, would have undergone (as actually happened in the history of the papacy) an illicit enlargement, in truth a perverse disjunction with regard to rule and the earthly kingdom with which Satan had tempted Christ: “I shall give you all the kingdoms of the world.” But Christ refused Satan, and he forbid Peter (and his vicar “in the person of Peter”) from wounding (and from defending himself) with the sword, from resorting to force and to the power of worldly rule.75 The papacy, therefore, has only a spiritual function, the “power” (potes- tas) flowing from the “sword that is the word of God.” This “sword-word” is not only irreconcilable with worldly power, but it is also understood as the exact opposite of rule deriving from the “sword of iron.” It will never be permissible to use such a weapon to govern the Christian community or subject the world to the “faith” (fides). The “power of the keys,” an
73 Ibid., 83.20 (26) and n. 110. 74 Ibid., 77.11–15 (21): “qui mihi successuri sunt, polluerent ac prorsus everterent viamque iis, qui ad agnitionem veritatis venturi sunt, intercluderent.” 75 Ibid., 83.21–84.8 (26): “potestas clavium”; “in persona Petri.”
evangelical ministry of openness and liberation, comes virtually to be defined in direct contrast to the “power of the two swords” and thus in contrast to the ecclesiological politics attached to it from the Decree of Gelasius to Boniface VIII’s Unam sanctam. The “power of the two swords,” in fact, not only constitutes an impos- sible marriage (desired in Unam sanctam), but it cannot even be justified by the Gelasian distinction (of powers and the respective wielders of power) between spiritual and temporal rule. This is because rule and power only exist in worldly form. The spiritual and apostolic function can be neither one nor the other. Rather it is an evangelical alternative that consists solely in the “servitude” of its ministry, the “servitude” of the “pon- tifical office” that is by nature and design the exact opposite of any tempo- ral government whatsoever. The “sword that is the word of God” is the negation of the “iron sword” that establishes and violently imposes power and rule. It is the substantial reversal, in the context of the spiritual realm, of every political government in the world. Sylvester’s speech thus arrives at the height of the contradiction implicit in the Donation and in its supposed historical possibility: the conflict between the “kingdom of God” and the “kingdom of Caesar.”76 Within the proper dimensions of the original Christian message, the two “kingdoms” are placed on opposite slopes on account of their mutual exclusivity and the correlation of their antitheses. Sylvester’s concluding words – and the defining passage for the entire speech – come from the classic text of Matthew, here reinterpreted (compared with the traditional reading of the text) to stress as much as possible the diversity and incompatibility between the two “kingdoms”: Finally, to come to an end, on this matter hear that remark which He uttered as if directed to you and me: ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’ [Matt. 22:21]. Wherefore it turns out that neither you, Caesar, should give up what is yours nor should I accept what is Caesar’s. Even if you should offer it a thousand times, I would never accept.77 This biblical text specifically highlights the contrast between the “Roman emperor” and the “vicar of Christ.” The former wields the power of
76 Ibid., 82.1ff. (24): “regnum celi”; “regnum seculare.” 77 Ibid., 84.28–85.4 (26): “Cuius ad extremum, ut iam finem faciam, illam de hac re sen- tentiam accipe, quam quasi inter me et te tulit: ‘Reddite, que sunt Cesaris, Cesari, et que sunt Dei, Deo,’ quo fit, ut nec tu, Cesar, tua relinquere neque ego, que Cesaris sunt, accipere debeam, que vel si millies offeras, nunquam accipiam.”
the gift than that Constantine wanted to make it. ‘A benefaction cannot be bestowed upon someone who does not want it.’ [Digest 50, 17, 69]78 Valla’s argument here – as in the whole of the Oration – is rather complex and variously elaborated, even with a view to its form. It will suffice to emphasize one particular aspect of it: the rhetorical and forensic strategy of irony. Valla uses irony, which will play an important role throughout the Oration, from the very beginning of his discourse both to reveal the internal contradictions of the opponent’s case and to unmask the latter’s ignorance and guilty conscience with regard to the case at hand. Consider the following witticisms and their immediate context, all taken from this section: ‘we do not know anything about this,’ you answer [i.e., about the signs and practices judicially required in a transaction of delivery and possession]. So I imagine that everything was accomplished in the dead of night, and that is why no one saw anything. All right, Sylvester had possession: Who deprived him of it? For neither he nor any of his successors remained in possession in perpetuity, at least down to Gregory the Great … What an amazing episode! The Roman empire, acquired with so much effort and with so much blood, was acquired or lost by Christian priests so calmly and so quietly … and … no one at all knows by whom this was done, when, how, and for how long. You would think that Sylvester ruled in the woods among trees, not in Rome among men, and was expelled by winter rains and chills, not by people.79 No greater evidence is needed for section II. It will suffice to quote from its concluding passage, as illustrative as any of Valla’s rhetorical use of irony: You do not perceive that, if the Donation of Constantine is true, the emperor – I am speaking of the one in the Latin West – has nothing left. What sort of Roman emperor or king will he be, if any holder of his kingdom
78 Ibid., 85.20–86.6 (28): “Age porro, ut credamus istam donationem, de qua facit pagina vestra mentionem, debet constare etiam de acceptatione Silvestri. Nunc de illa non con- stat …. Nec quia in pagina privilegii de donatione fit mentio, putandum est fuisse accepta- tum, sed e contrario, quia non fit mentio de acceptatione, dicendum est non fuisse donatum. Ita plus contra vos facit hunc donum respuisse quam illum dare voluisse, et ‘ben- eficium in invitum non confertur.’” 79 Ibid., 87.24ff. (30–31); 88.1–89.2 (31): “‘nihil horum scimus,’ respondetis; ita puto noc- turno termpore hec omnia gesta sunt et ideo nemo vidit. Age, fuit in possessione Silvester. Quis eum de possessione deiecit? Nam perpetuo in possessione non fuit neque successo- rum aliquis, saltem usque ad Gregorium Magnum … O admirabilem casum! Imperium Romanum tantis laboribus, tanto cruore partum tam placide, tam quiete a christianis sac- erdotibus vel partum est vel amissum … et … per quos hoc gestum sit, quo tempore, quo- modo, quandiu prorsus ignotum. Putes in silvis inter arbores regnasse Silvestrum, non Rome et inter homines, et ab hibernis imbribus frigoribusque, non ab hominibus eiectum.”
who lacks another kingdom has absolutely nothing at all? But if therefore it is plain that Sylvester did not have possession, in other words that Constantine did not hand over possession, there will be no doubt that, as I have said, he did not even give the right to possess, unless you assert that the right was given but that for some reason possession was not assigned. Thus did he clearly give what he realized would not at all come into being? Did he give what he could not assign? Did he give what could not pass into the hands of the recipients before it ceased to exist? Did he give a gift that would not be valid until five hundred years later or never? To talk or think like this is lunacy.80
4. Section I of the Oration and Parallel Passages in Valla’s Works
The interpretation proposed thus far of section I of the Oration is con- firmed by other writings in Valla’s corpus, especially in certain passages that to my mind run parallel to it. We shall limit our references to the prologue of De libero arbitrio (On the Freedom of the Will) and to the first book of the Repastinatio. The comparative reading of these texts will not be informed by considerations of compositional chronology – although chronological correlations in themselves would contribute to what will be said later – but rather by a more detailed study of the gnoseological and epistemological modalities of Valla’s rhetorical argument. Valla develops this argument along constant themes, themes that in the context of early humanism are decisive and original. It has already been seen how Valla depicts the conflict between the “two kingdoms” (the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar) and reduces it in the final analysis to a relationship of reciprocal negation: the antinomy between imperium and evangelium. In the prologue to De libero arbitrio and in the first book of the Repastinatio, Valla describes, with simi- lar concepts although in different terms, another conflict: that between the “pagan language” (sermo gentilis) of “philosophy” (philosophia) – the language of classical philosophy – and the respublica christiana. Here the
80 Ibid., 92.8–21 (33): “Non cernitis, si donatio Constantini vera est, Cesari – de Latino loquor – nihil relinqui? en qualis imperator, qualis rex Romanus erit, cuius regnum si quis habeat nec aliud habeat, omnino nil habeat? Quod si itaque palam est Silvestrum non pos- sedisse, hoc est Constantinum non tradidisse possessionem, haud dubium erit ne ius qui- dem, ut dixi, dedisse possidendi, nisi dicitis ius quidem datum, sed aliqua causa possessionem non traditam. Ita plane dabat, quod minime profuturum intelligebat? dabat, quod tradere non poterat? dabat, quod non prius venire in manus eius, cui dabatur, pos- sibile erat, quam esset extinctum? dabat donum, quod ante quingentos annos aut nun- quam valiturum foret? Verum hoc loqui aut sentire insanum est.”
Gospel bars, indeed proscribes, all alien terms, every “foreign tongue” (lin- gua peregrina). Indeed, the language of the Christian city would deterio- rate in specificity and meaning if philosophical discourse were made use of in the theological language of Christianity. In such a case theological language would be forced into an impossible marriage; it would be unable to discourse in evangelical speech, but rather would have to make due in a “barbarian tongue” (lingua barbara) that is devoid of sense and in itself “false” (falsa) in the context of the Gospel. Such is the case in the text of the Constitutum. It is an ideological statute that has been utilized to intro- duce the political language of the “kingdom of Caesar” into the Christian polis. As a result the Christian message is expressed there in a “foreign language,” i.e. in a language alien to the Gospel. Setting aside metaphors, the situation can also be described historically. If the “vicar of Christ” had “also” become the “vicar of Caesar,” the papacy would have introduced into the community of believers – and right from the first centuries of the diffusion of the new religion – the will to power of the “kingdom of Caesar” in place of the Christian message. Thus the evan- gelical praxis of Christendom would have transformed into its opposite, into the praxis of the power of rule – the power of the Roman Empire. Thus Valla identifies an historical and ideological convergence between the Constitutum and the advent of scholastic theology. Let us now see how he describes that convergence in the first section of the Oration and in parallel passages in other works. The assumption of “philosophy” into theological discourse (according to De libero arbitrio) had acted as the “seedbed” (seminarium) for heresy within Christendom, and the reception of the “precepts of philosophy” (praecepta philosophiae), or rather the “doctrines of the philosophers” (dogmata philosophorum), had distorted evangelical wisdom (“folly”). Similarly, the Constitutum had moved the foundation of the Church away from Christ and apostolic praxis and toward worldly power and the politics of rule, corrupting the pastoral duty of the “vicar of Christ” and of the community of believers. In this way the praxis of charity and evangelical freedom was perverted into a rule of imperial power that was both political and spiritual. Valla sees the Constantinian ecclesiology that emerges from the Constitutum, both for its ideological meaning and for the chronology of its origins, as an integral part of medieval scholasticism. For Valla, the scho- lasticism which began with Boethius flourished in his own day in the form of the absolute cultural hegemony of metaphysical and theological thought. He considered this thought at length and quite incisively in the first book of his Repastinatio.
There the “falsifiability” of philosophical language and its illicit assump- tion into theological discourse are treated in a particularly rhetorical way. This approach consists in a critical (morphological and semantic) analysis of the language of “philosophy” for the purpose of demonstrating that the logical and ontological categories of Aristotelianism are devoid of any real referent, and particularly of the referent which those categories had pre- sumed as a given in itself and “substantial.” Those categories, Valla con- cludes in the most incisive statements of the first book of the Repastinatio, are devoid of meaning in the strongest sense of the word. The same criti- cism is repeated, even amplified, with respect to philosophical language subsumed into theological discourse. In this case, in fact, Valla not only demonstrates that the philosophical categories do not comprehend the res (things) that they presume to express, but also, and a fortiori, that these same categories cannot comprehend the mystery-res of biblical revela- tion, of faith, or of saving grace – of supernatural realities, as the scholas- tics would have called them. Hence the conflict between philosophy and theology on the one hand and the proposal of a functional convergence between rhetoric and theo- logical study on the other. Valla expresses this conflict and convergence in different ways, but both are based on the same fundamental epistemo- logical premises. He consistently sees philosophy as an absurd hand- maiden (in the scholastic expression) to theology and as a mistaken adhesion to theological discourse. Rhetoric, on the other hand, becomes for Valla a tool for analyzing both secular and sacred literature. It is the only epistemological methodology compatible with theology, because rhetoric is a purely formal instrument (without contents of its own irrec- oncilable with biblical faith) and at the same time one abounding in crite- ria for the critical analysis of philosophical and theological language.81 In the specific case of the Constitutum, Valla stresses how the language and political praxis of empire fail to comprehend the fundamental reali- ties of civil life; indeed, they destroy the freedom of the respublica as such. More importantly, this language and praxis lie at the polar extremes of the respublica christiana, a spiritual and religious community based on the message of the Gospel. Therefore, neither imperial language nor any other civil and political strategy deriving from it can be used by the individual
81 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla tra Medievo e Rinascimento,” 63–82 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 185–204 and translated in the present volume, pp. 212–233); idem, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” passim; idem, “Da Lorenzo Valla a Tommaso Moro. Lo statuto umanistico della teologia,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973): 9–102 (reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 19–119).
destined to govern the evangelical Church. The Roman pontiff can be the “vicar” of Christ and of him alone, but not “also of the Roman emperor.” As a result of his critical analysis of the political and anti-evangelical lan- guage of the Constitutum, Valla concludes first the ideological and second the historical falseness of the “document of donation.” Its (pseudo)-origins simply cannot be found in a time when Christendom was still expanding along evangelical lines. Its Christian inauthenticity and the anachronism of its origins thus lead Valla to state – and this is the central theme of the Oration – that the Constitutum is an ideological and historical imposter (falso creditum), flimsily attributed to early Christianity, and a juridico- canonical forgery (ementitum). It is a legal counterfeit tailored to the papal theocracy of the “Constantinian Church” of medieval Christendom.
5. The Body of the Oration: From Section III to Section VI
With the first section of the Oration – together with the second, which is an extension of Pope Sylvester’s speech – we have seen how Valla “falsi- fies” the Constitutum by demonstrating it to be unsuitable to, indeed incompatible with, its ostensible immediate context. Covering the entire range of the imperial donation’s supposed context, Valla’s argument reveals Constantine’s act to be an inauthentic event in light of the histori- cal and ideological dimensions of imperium and evangelium, dimensions which are personified in the Oration by Constantine and Pope Sylvester. In other words, Valla falsifies the Constitutum by falsifying its referents. The imperial power (Constantine) and the papacy (Sylvester) – the refer- ents assumed as the real agents of the Constitutum – would have contra- dicted (or negated) themselves if the donation had actually occurred. And this means that the reference of the “document of donation” is in and of itself absurd, and thus not true. Therefore, as the title of the Oration claims, the Constitutum is “falsely believed and forged.”82 The continuation of Valla’s analysis in sections III, IV, and V is respec- tively dedicated to the early church, to the true and proper text of the Constitutum, and to the Pactum Hludovicianum (Pact of Louis the Pious). These sections seem, in the context of the Oration’s overall structure, to constitute its body of the text. This is the part of his discourse in which Valla fully elaborates the philological procedure that he pioneered and
82 On falsification of reference and textuality, see the essential analysis on language in Ennio Floris, Sous le Christ, Jésus: méthode d’analyse référentielle appliquée aux évangiles (Paris: Flammarion, 1987), especially 41–219.
from the text of the “document of donation,” de-falsified by philological analysis, to its authentic context. That authentic context is the historical and ideological reality from which the “document of donation” was truly born and derived, and to which it thus necessarily belongs. More explic- itly, Valla begins the body of the Oration by de-falsifying the text of the Constitutum in order to reveal the “Constantinianism” of medieval Christendom, that is of the theocratic and imperial ideology of the papacy, variously formulated across the centuries from the Decree of Gelasius to Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam. The effectual context of the Constitutum, and thus its more authentic truth, turns out to be the Lateran (latera- nense) ecclesiology of the papal court in Rome.83 It is precisely this more authentic truth – both of Constantine’s dona- tion and of the “document of donation” – that Valla subjects to historical and theological criticism. His intention is to expose the perverted and anti-evangelical falseness of both. Therefore he continually emphasizes how the Constitutum and the ideology of which it was a product (and of which it was also the greatest theoretical expression) both constitute an historical collapse of the Gospel and, at the same time, a continuation of Roman imperialism, the ultimate example of absolute rule. The Constitutum and its ideology instituted the most complete, and also the most paradoxical, union of political and religious empire in the world of Western Christendom.
83 The following works should be added to Setz’s ample bibliography: Pietro De Leo, Ricerche sui falsi medievali, I. Il Constitutum Constantini. Note e documenti per una nuova lettura (Reggio Calabria: Meridionali Riuniti, 1974); Giuseppe Martini, “Traslazione dell’Impero e Donazione di Costantino nel pensiero e nella politica d’Innocenzo III,” Nuova Rivista Storica 65 (Jan.-Apr., 1981), fasc. I-II (Scritti di Giuseppe Martini): 3–72; idem, “Regale Sacerdotium,” ibid.: 73–156; idem, “Per la storia dei pontificati di Niccolò IV e Bonifacio VIII,” ibid.: 157–190; idem, “Alcune considerazioni sulla dottrina gelasiana,” ibid.: 282–292, at 291; Walter Ullmann, Il papato nel medioevo (Bari: Laterza, 1975), esp. 84ff., 121, 124, 142 [English ed. = A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1972)]; Gerhart B. Ladner, “The Concepts of ‘Ecclesia’ and ‘Christianitas,’ and their Relation to the Idea of ‘Plenitudo Potestatis’ from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII,” in idem, Images and Ideas in the Middle Ages. Selected Studies in History and Art, 2 vols. (Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1983), 487–515; Stanley Chodorow, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Century. The Ecclesiology of Gratian’s Decretum (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); Michele Maccarrone, “Il Papa ‘Vicarius Christi’. Testi e dottrina dal sec. XII al principio del XIV,” in Miscellanea Pio Paschini: Studi di Storia Ecclesiastica, 2 vols. (Roma: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1958), 1:427–500; Arsenio Frugoni, Incontri nel Medioevo (Bologna: Il mulino, 1979), 73–177; and finally, Pietro De Leo, Gioacchino da Fiore. Aspetti inediti della vita e delle opere (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino Editore, 1988), 25–50; Giovanni Farris and Benedetto Tino Delfino (eds.), Jacopo da Varagine, Atti del I Convegno di Studi (Varazze, 13–14 aprile, 1985) (Cogoleto: Edizioni SMA, 1987).
Having specified the modalities and variations of Valla’s procedure from sections III to V, we may now take an overall look at the succession of these sections that constitute the body of the Oration. It will thus be possible to identify and locate Valla’s transitions in argumentation from one section to another, to note their connections, and to grasp the partic- ular themes of each. The major questions of the body of the Oration will then be treated in the following sections of this essay, including Valla’s analysis of the Legenda Silvestri (Legend of Sylvester) and of the Pactum Hludovicianum (Pact of Louis the Pious). Valla conducts his linguistic-semantic analysis of the Constitutum on the basis of the distinction between historia (history) and fabula (legend, fiction, or myth). In line with this criterion, he attempts to “falsify” the donation by means of textual criticism, the intention being to identify how much of the Constitutum and its (traditionally) presumed sources is historically true and how much fictional. This is the place of section III in the course of Valla’s text. There Valla indicates which documentary sources he believes to be authentic and properly historical. Such sources are almost entirely reduced to Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History (continued by Rufinus), which covers the first four centuries of Christianity (from its beginning to the post-Nicene period). Valla also accepts as a legitimate historical source the De primitiva ecclesia (On the Early Church) of Pope Melchiades. From this work he cites the passage reported in Gratian’s Decretum (C. XII q. 1 c. 15) concerning Constantine’s donation of the Lateran Palace (the imperial seat) to Melchiades and his successors. On the basis of these historical documents, and excluding all others, Valla defines and appraises the ecclesiastical and institutional dimensions of the pre-Constantinian Church. Thus section III is decisive for the body, indeed for the entirety, of his Oration. Let us therefore consider this sec- tion, here reproduced nearly in full: But now it is time … to administer a mortal blow to my opponents’ case, already battered and mangled, and to slice its throat with a single stroke. Virtually all history that is worthy of the name reports that Constantine was a Christian from childhood together with his father Constantius even well before the papacy of Sylvester. So Eusebius, author of an ecclesiastical his- tory which Rufinus, a man of considerable erudition, translated into Latin, adding two books devoted to his own time. Both of these men were near contemporaries of Constantine. Add to this the testimony of a Roman pon- tiff who did not merely participate in the course of these events but was in charge of them, not as a passive witness but as an active instigator, a narra- tor not of someone else’s affairs but of his own. He is Pope Melchiades, who
immediately preceded Sylvester, and this is what he says: ‘The Church has reached the point when not only peoples but even Roman emperors, who held sway over the whole world, might join together in the faith of Christ and its sacraments. Of these emperors, Constantine, a highly religious man, first openly espoused faith in the truth and made it permissible for those who lived anywhere in the world under his rule not only to become Christians but to build churches, and he arranged for the assignment of properties. Finally the aforementioned emperor provided immense largesse and started the construction of the first basilica of the see of St. Peter, so that he gave up his own imperial residence and granted it to St. Peter and his suc- cessors for their future use’ [Decretum C. XII q. 1 c. 15]. You see that Melchiades says Constantine gave nothing except the Lateran palace and the properties that Gregory very often mentions in his register. Where are those who do not allow us to question the validity of the Donation of Constantine, when the actual donation took place before Sylvester and con- sisted solely of private properties?84 Section IV is entirely dedicated to a linguistic, morphological, and seman- tic analysis of the Constitutum. It is the longest section of the Oration. Here are laid down, indeed laid bare, the foundational materials for Valla’s treatment of the historical and ecclesiological question of the Donation of Constantine. His critical epistemology, together with his philological and historical methodology, reveal here the full measure of the original argu- mentation that he pioneered. Valla proceeds concentrically from a direct and indirect analysis of the Constitutum – considering its implicit and explicit sources along with the
84 Valla, De falso, 93f. (34) and Setz’s notes: “Sed iam tempus est … cause adversario- rum iam concise atque lacerate letale vulnus imprimere et uno eam iugulare ictu. Omnis fere historia, que nomen historie meretur, Constantinum a puero cum patre Constantio christianum refert multo etiam ante pontificatum Silvestri, ut Eusebius, ecclesiastice scriptor historie, quem Rufinus, non in postremis doctus, in Latinum interpretatus duo volumina de evo suo adiecit, quorum uterque pene Constantini temporibus fuit. Adde huc testimonium etiam Romani pontificis, qui his rebus gerendis non interfuit, sed pre- fuit, non testis, sed auctor, non alieni negotii, sed sui narrator. Is est Melchiades papa, qui proximus fuit ante Silvestrum, qui ait, ‘Ecclesia ad hoc usque pervenit, ut non solum gentes, sed etiam Romani principes, qui totius orbis monarchiam tenebant, ad fidem Christi et fidei sacramenta concurrerent. E quibus vir religiosissimus Constantinus pri- mus fidem veritatis patenter adeptus licentiam dedit per universum orbem suo degenti- bus imperio non solum fieri christianos, sed etiam fabricandi ecclesias, et predia constituit tribuenda. Denique idem prefatus princeps donaria immensa contulit et fabri- cam templi prime sedis beati Petri instituit, adeo ut sedem imperialem relinqueret et beato Petro suisque successoribus profuturam concederet.’ En nihil Melchiades a Constantino datum ait, nisi palatium Lateranense et predia, de quibus Gregorius in reg- istro facit sepissime mentionem. Ubi sunt, qui nos in dubium vocare non sinunt, donatio Constantini valeat nec ne, cum illa donatio fuerit et ante Silvestrum et rerum tantum- modo privatarum?”
85 Ibid., 95.1–7 (35): “Que res quanquam plana et aperta sit, tamen de ipso, quod isti stolidi proferre solent, privilegio disserendum est. Et ante omnia non modo ille, qui Gratianus videri voluit, qui nonnulla ad opus Gratiani adiecit, improbitatis arguendus est, verum etiam inscitie, qui opinantur paginam privilegi apud Gratianum contineri ….” 86 Ibid., 95.8f. (35): “in vetustissimis quibusque editionibus”; 13 (“Gratianus, doctus in iure civili” is quoted from the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, Rom. 15:29); 96.2–5 (35): “… indignissimum est credere, que ab hoc adiecta sunt, ea decretorum collectorem aut ignorasse aut magnifecisse habuisseque pro veris.”
cap. 13), two references are made to it and its tradition: one from the Decree of Gelasius, and the other from the Gesta Silvestri (Acts of Sylvester). This double reference is supposed to sustain: (1) that the Constitutum comes directly from the Gesta Silvestri; (2) that the Gesta Silvestri is respected as authentic by the Decree of Gelasius; and (3) that consequently the Constitutum must also be respected as an authentic text, since it is said (by the Decretum) to be an integral part of the Gesta Silvestri.87 But, Valla objects, this double reference, brought forth to prove the authenticity of the original source (the Gesta Silvestri) from which the “text of the grant” is supposed to derive, is belied by its ambiguity. Indeed, the Gesta Silvestri to which Gelasius’ Decree refers and to whose existence it testifies – together with its liturgical reading current in the Roman Church and in others as well – is not to be identified with the Legenda Silvestri. The two hagiographic texts are different. While the Gesta does not contain the Constitutum, the Legenda does. Valla writes: Gelasius testifies that it [the Gesta Silvestri] was read by many Catholics, and Voragine mentions it. We too have seen thousands of copies written long ago, and they are read out in almost every cathedral on Sylvester’s birthday. Yet no one says that he has read there what [i.e., the Constitutum] you put in it. No one says he has heard of it, or dreamt of it.88 So far Valla has made the following points. First, the insertion of the Constitutum into Gratian’s Decretum is inauthentic, since it was actually added later by a fellow canonist, Paucupalea. Not only is it an editorial addition, it is in conflict (almost dysfunctionally so) with the original ordering and juridico-canonical systematics of the Concordance as they were established and understood by its author. Second, the Constitutum does not come from the Gesta Silvestri but from another source or text. Valla identifies this other source as the homonymous Legenda. As a result of these conclusions and of the Constitutum’s being an integral part – indeed the most significant and prominent part – of the Legenda Silvestri, Valla is ready to proceed to his own reading and evalua- tion of the Legenda. At the same time, he is able to conduct his philologi- cal and historical analysis of the Constitutum within the investigation of the Legenda. Therefore, ascending and descending along an analytical
87 Ibid., 95.15ff. (35) and n. 156. 88 Ibid., 98.12–17 (38): “Testatur Gelatius a multis catholicis legi, Voraginensis de eo meminit, nos quoque mille et antique scripta exemplaria vidimus, et in omni fere cathedrali ecclesia, cum adest Silvestri natalis dies, lectitantur, et tamen nemo se illic legisse istud ait, quod tu affingis, nemo audisse, nemo somniasse” (emphasis added).
89 Ibid., 97.21–98.5 (37): “At videte, quantum inter meum intersit vestrumque iudicium: ego ne si hoc quidem apud gesta Silvestri privilegium contineretur pro vero habendum
Valla concludes that the Legenda Silvestri and the Constitutum share a relationship of what can certainly be called infratextuality. With this term we clarify that, for Valla, the Constitutum is not only an integral part of the Legenda in the sense that the latter contains the former and is thus its original source, but also that the Constitutum gives structure to the text and (literary and ideological) meaning of the Legenda. This infratextual relationship of the Legenda to the Constitutum, and the corresponding structural relationship of the Constitutum to the Legenda, necessarily result in the following conclusion: the fictional aspect of the hagiography of Sylvester – its evangelical inauthenticity and historical falseness – makes the Constitutum equally fictional. The “Roman nationalists” of Arnold of Brescia’s revolution had called the Constitutum “a lie and an heretical fabula” (mendacium et fabula heret- ica, as Wezel reported to Frederick Barbarossa in a letter of 1152). Now Valla uses the same phrase to characterize the Constitutum, on the grounds that the perverted Legenda Silvestri itself is a “very brazen fabula.”90 Thus the humanist proceeds from a consideration of the whole literary composition of the Legenda to its structural component, the Constitutum. Then he continues in the opposite direction from the Constitutum to the Legenda, since the latter stands in infratextual relation to the former. For Valla, then, the Legenda is the true and specific infratext that governs the entire (formal and semantic) textuality of the Constitutum; in the same way, the inauthentic text of the Constitutum is the buttress stabilizing the historical falseness of the pseudo-Donation of Constantine. Following on what has just been said, it is necessary to highlight two of Valla’s observations on the Constitutum. Here is the first: But this Donation of Constantine, so splendid and so unexampled, can be proven by no document at all, whether of gold or on silver or on bronze or on marble, or finally, in books, but only, if we believe that man, on paper or parchment.91
putarem, cum historia illa non historia sit, sed poetica et impudentissima fabula – ut pos- terius ostendam – nec quisquam alius alicuius duntaxat auctoritatis de hoc privilegio habeat mentionem. Et Iacobus Voraginensis, propensus in amorem clericorum ut archi- episcopus, tamen in gestis sanctorum de donatione Constantini ut fabulosa nec digna, que inter gesta Silvestri poneretur, silentium egit, lata quodammodo sententia contra eos, si qui hec litteris mandavissent” [translation modified]. 90 Martini, Traslazione dell’Impero e Donazione di Costantino, 65f. 91 Valla, De falso, 100.3–7 (39): “Ista vero tam magnifica Constantini et tam inaudita donatio nullis, neque in auro neque in argento neque in ere neque in marmore neque postremo in libris, probari documentis potest, sed tantum, si isti credimus, in charta sive membrana.”
The Donation, since it was a fabula, could not be entrusted to a perma- nent written form that would withstand time, as had been the practice (and still was) with the great documents of the past concerning the his- torical, and not “fictitious,” origins of peoples, for example the Mosaic tab- lets of the Ten Commandments or the Twelve Tables of Roman law. From antiquity on, Valla observes, the statutory provisions of peoples assumed a monumental written form in order to provide an everlasting and indeli- ble witness to historical reality against the ravages of the elements, “the length of time and the violence of fortune.”92 Such was not the case with the Donation. The entire history of Sylvester is demoted to the status of a “myth” (fabula) and the Constitutum to a “charter” (chartula). These most fragile and inconsistent witnesses are supposed to testify to the transfer of the “Roman Empire” to the papacy! For its part, Valla continues, the Constitutum accrued the most absurd title possible: “text of the grant” (pagina privilegii). As a mere “grant” we are to understand the “gift of the whole world” (donatio orbis terrarum). And a puny “text” is supposed for centuries to have constituted, in the tradition of the Roman curia, the statutory basis for the “Constantinian Church”!93 Valla’s second observation, also made in the course of the fourth sec- tion, is as follows: Some who have been overcome by all arguments are apt to answer me: “Why have so many supreme pontiffs believed that this was true?” You are my witnesses that you urge me where I would not go, and you force me unwillingly to speak ill of supreme pontiffs over whose mistakes I would rather draw a veil. But let us continue to speak frankly – since this case cannot be conducted in any other way – so that I may admit that they held that belief and did so without malice.94 This passage seems to have been inserted by Valla almost by chance into his discourse on the Constitutum, but it is actually essential to the general flow of his argument. Indeed, it occurs in the context of his discussion – according to the headings glossed in the margin – “on the ignorance of the
92 Ibid., 101.2 (39): “diuturnitatem temporis et fortune violentiam.” 93 Ibid., 100.7; 101.12–16 (39): “chartula”; “imperium Romanum”; 17–21 (39): “Paginam privilegii”; “privilegium”; 136.11–137.4 (67); 137.13–15 (68). 94 Ibid., 140.17–141ff. (71–72): “Quidam omnibus defecti rationibus solent mihi respond- ere: ‘cur tot summi pontifices donationem hanc veram esse crediderunt?’ Testificor vos, me vocatis quo nolo, et invitum me maledicere summis pontificibus cogitis, quos magis in delictis suis operire vellem. Sed pergamus ingenue loqui – quandoquidem aliter agi nequit hec causa – ut fatear eos ita credidisse et non malitia fecisse” (emphasis added) [transla- tion modified].
supreme pontiffs / why the popes believed the donation to be true, if indeed they did believe it.”95 With this passage Valla declares that he cannot continue further in his discussion of the “case” in question without respecting or accepting the limitations constraining him to “speak frankly,” i.e. constraining him to narrow the dimensions of his ecclesiological and historical criticism of the “Constantinian Church.” But does such a declaration not actually force the reader, for his part, to understand Valla’s criticism in a perspective that transcends the direct and explicit attack on the Constitutum? Must the reader not hear precisely that which is not said in Valla’s Oration, that which is left unexpressed but nevertheless subtly delivered, as if it had been made crystal clear? It seems to us that we should respond without a doubt in the affirmative. Valla was intimately acquainted (let us remember his reference to the Historia ecclesiastica) with the historical character that Christianity and the “Catholicism” of the Late Empire assumed as a result of the religious and political revolution against the official Roman cults (religio). This pro- cess developed across the fourth century, from Constantine’s Edict of Milan (312) to the assembling of the Codex Theodosianus, begun towards the end of the century and completed in the first decades of the following one.96 Let us rehearse some of the more significant events between Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge in 312 and the death of the emperor Theodosius I in 395. The secta catholica (Catholic sect) rises to the status of state religion and the Roman cults (religio) are banned. Constantine presides over the Council of Nicea in 325 and employs his combined imperial authority to halt the trend towards schism and pre- serve the unity and uniformity of Christendom. Finally, the “Roman” army is defeated at the River Frigidus by the Emperor Theodosius in 394, which results in the complete suppression of the Roman Senate. A consequence of enormous historical importance is the overthrow of the Roman intelli- gentsia and of its leader, the Prefect of the City Symmachus. Roman reli- gion and ancestral traditions (mos maiorum) of worship are repressed in favor of the absolute hegemony of Catholic Christianity. Most of this was the work of Constantine’s successors.
95 Marginal manuscript headings (Valla, De falso, 141.5/140.19): “de inscitia summorum pontificum / cur Pape donationem veram crediderunt, si tamen crediderunt.” 96 Lidia Storoni Mazzolani, Sant’Agostino e i pagani (Palermo: Sellerio, 1987), with texts from the Codex Theodosianus in the appendix.
Valla’s criticism in the Oration (beyond the “falsification” of the Legenda Silvestri and of the Constitutum) casts suspicion simultaneously on Constantine’s anti-republican Caesarism and on the anti-evangelical, ecclesiological Caesarism of the papacy. The intention is then to stake the claim for political and Christian freedom from and against any kind of imperium whatsoever, be it temporal or spiritual. All this is then inscribed within a retrospective look at (and connected to a precise historical judg- ment of) the reality and historical development of the fourth century. This reality and historical truth consist in a break or deviation in the Christian tradition involving the stance of the religion and the community of believers towards the Gospel. Its salient events are the coming to power of Constantine and his successors in Constantinople and the radical trans- formation of Christianity from a message of redemption and freedom into a religious instrument of power. In this light, Valla’s Oration also becomes an historical treatment of the fourth century, critically executed by means of philologico-historical analysis. Its extremely negative historical assess- ment rejects the coming of the Constantinian and Theodosian Catholic Church as the Christian empire of the papacy, born and raised to maturity in the fourth century. For Valla, the fourth century represents Christianity’s most radical period of crisis, marked by a grand anti-evangelical and anti-Christian collapse of the Community of Believers in Christ. The Oration as a whole, then, should be seen as an anti-Constitutum. It is the complete reversal not only of the ecclesiological ideology molded by the Constitutum but also of the histori- cal retrospective in which the text of the Donation came to be written. Valla knew full well that the Constitutum was no simple fake but rather a direct and mature consequence of an historical fact. Its ideological roots and Constantinian retrospective are to be found in the transformation of the Christian religion that actually occurred over the course of the fourth century. Thus Valla’s argumentation necessarily had to shift from the scriptural and “diplomatic” inauthenticity of the Constitutum to its more radical Christian and evangelical inauthenticity.97 But this further neces- sitated arguing against the theoretical basis of the Constitutum, i.e. arriv- ing at an historical judgment and criticism of Constantine’s actions and of the positive assessment – indeed, the “providential” exaltation – of the political and religious revolution effected by the emperor of “Christian victory.” Indeed, that positive assessment and religious exaltation first
97 R.-J. Loenertz, “En marge du Constitutum Constantini. Contribution à l’histoire du texte,” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 59 (1975): 289–294.
created and then buttressed the entire theocratic ideology of the papacy, formulated over time and eventually canonized by the Constitutum. Valla intends with his Oration, then, to overturn the Constitutum by means of the most radical historical criticism of it ever dared. He hopes therewith to spark a renaissance of pre-Constantinian Christianity and a renewal of the Christian and patristic evangelism that preceded the Edict of Milan and the Codex Theodosianus. More generally, the Oration aims to restore Christianity to the state it was in before the rise of the Christian- Roman Empire of the fourth century. Let us now turn to sections V and VI, the sections that conclude the body of the Oratio. After having identified (in section III) the texts of Eusebius and Rufinus, Pope Melchiades, and Gratian as the documents that are historically valid for a critical-philological analysis of the Legenda Silvestri and the Constitutum (carried out in section IV), Valla turns in sec- tion V to a consideration of the so-called Pactum Hludovicianum, a pact drawn up in 817 between the emperor Louis the Pious (814–840) and Pope Paschal I (817–824). Valla uses the text of the Pactum as it appears in Gratian’s Decretum, Dist. LXIII cap. 30. The Pactum Hludovicianum was the first explicit historical confirma- tion of the Constitutum, illustrating for the first time the Roman Church’s effective use of the document. On account of its historical and canonical, ecclesiastical and jurisdictional importance, Gratian included the text of the agreement between pope and emperor in his Concordantia discordan- tium canonum. And it was as such, on account of its juridical and ecclesio- logical significance, that Valla read the Pactum Hludovicianum. The Pactum provided a juridical norm and theoretical basis for policy as well as for diplomatic relations between the Empire and the papacy. Such was the case as much for the papacy’s political and ecclesiological praxis in the past as for the canonistic and scholastic ecclesiology contemporary with Valla. It is precisely in consideration of these political and ecclesio- logical premises, brought to light by the Pactum, that Valla conducts his critical analysis in section V. And again, in accordance with the modes and objectives of his peculiar argumentative procedure, he attempts to iden- tify and highlight the internal contradictions that invalidate both the Pactum’s juridical validity in civil and canon law and its use in governing relations between pope and emperor. The section’s opening passage is indicative of Valla’s argumentative cri- teria, as well as of his tone (sharp irony), in this section of the Oration: Louis, are you really making an agreement with Paschal? If all this belongs to you, in other words the Roman empire, why are you granting it to someone
else? If it belongs to Paschal and is his possession, what is the point of the confirmation? How much Roman empire will you have left, if you lose the capital itself? The Roman emperor is so called from the name of Rome. Tell me, is everything else you possess yours or Paschal’s? Yours, I suppose you will say: therefore the Donation of Constantine is invalid if you are the owner of what he gave the pontiff. If it is valid, by what right does Paschal turn all the rest over to you after retaining for himself only what he already possesses? What is the sense of such largesse involving the Roman empire, either yours to him or his to you? You therefore rightly speak of an agree- ment as if it were a kind of collusion.98 In section V – together with section VI, its continuation – Valla does not change his style of argumentation, at least in the sense that he sticks to the fundamental modality of his critical analysis. Nevertheless, in these two final sections of the body he seems to turn his discourse – with a direct comparison and extremely explicit language – more towards the canonis- tic and scholastic ecclesiology of his own day. Valla aims his criticism spe- cifically at the “Constantinian” rule and corresponding praxis (based on the Constitutum) of the contemporary papacy, still in full force in the fif- teenth century with Pope Eugenius IV, the actual addressee of the Oration. Hence, again, Valla’s fully articulated response in section VI (the last before the peroration) to the final objection of those who would defend the Constitutum on the basis of the right of prescription:99 Our adversaries, who have been kept from defending a donation that never was and, even if it had been, would have collapsed over the course of time, resort to another form of defense, and, as if they had retreated from their city, gather themselves into the citadel, which they are compelled to surren- der just as soon as the food runs out. “The Roman church,” they say, “has exercised its authority in those territories it possesses.”100
98 Valla, De falso, 156.16–157.7 (82): “Tu ne, Ludovice, cum Pascale pacisceris? Si tua, idest imperii Romani sunt ista, cur alteri concedis? si ipsius et ab eo possidentur, quid attinet te illa confirmare? Quantulum etiam ex imperio Romano tuum erit, si caput ipsum imperii amisisti? A Roma dicitur Romanus imperator. Quid, cetera que possides, tua ne an Pascalis sunt? Credo, tua dices: nihil ergo valet donatio Constantini, si ab eo pontifici donata tu possides. Si valet, quo iure Pascalis tibi cetera remittit retentis tantum sibi que possidet? Quid sibi vult tanta aut tua in illum aut illius in te de imperio Romano largitio? Merito igitur pactum appellas quasi quandam collusionem.” 99 [In Roman law, the right of prescription (longe possessionis prescriptio) is a right to property that one does not technically own based on authority over that property over a long and established period of time. Eds.] 100 Valla, De falso, 167.5ff. (90): “Exclusi a defendenda donatione adversarii – quod nec unquam fuit et, si qua fuisset, iam temporum condicione intercidisset – confugiunt ad alterum genus defensionis, et velut relicta urbe in arcem se recipiunt, quam statim deficientibus cibariis dedere cogerunt: ‘prescriptsit,’ inquiunt, ‘Romana ecclesia in iis que possidet’ ….”
Thus section VI concludes the body of the Oration by denying the papacy’s ability, on the basis of the Constitutum, to appeal to the right of prescrip- tion in defense of powers supposedly devolving to the Roman Church from the pseudo-Donation of Constantine. This last consideration on section VI still concerns only its formal aspect and structural placement in the Oration’s literary composition. Let us remember, however, that Valla’s writing has its motivations and origin in an assault, against the papacy in general and Eugenius IV in particular, in defense of the Aragonese succession to the Kingdom of Naples, and that it is thus an issue of Alfonso the Great’s chancery. From this point of view, section VI enjoys a nearly absolute preeminence, whether it is considered in and of itself or viewed within the scope of a decidedly relativistic inter- pretation of the Oration (a type of interpretation, by the way, that would be more than legitimate). Indeed, the Oration was born, drafted, and developed in a complex articulation of theoretical and historical arguments. It is a political, juridi- cal, and canonistic discourse aimed at radically criticizing contemporary papal power (potestas papalis), especially as that power was manifested in the political and ecclesiological praxis of Pope Eugenius IV. Valla is quite explicit about all this right in section VI, which constitutes the final and definitive conclusion of his whole discourse. Therefore, this section becomes a paradigmatic and formal expression of his chief intention, and thus of the primary and determining purpose of the Oration as a whole. Here are Valla’s most significant and prominent statements:
‘The Roman church has exercised its authority’ [Codex 7, 33–35]: Why, there- fore, is it so often concerned that this right be confirmed by the emperors? Why does it boast of the donation and the imperial confirmation, if just one of these would suffice? … How can it have done this, when it is based on no title but only on possession in bad faith? If you deny possession in bad faith, you certainly cannot deny in stupid faith. Or, in a matter so great and so conspicuous, ought ignorance of fact and law to be excused? Fact – because Constantine did not give Rome and the provinces: an ordinary person might be unaware of this but not the supreme pontiff. Law – because those places could not have been given or accepted: one could scarcely be a Christian and not know this. Will stupid credulity give you a right to what would never have been yours, had you been more prudent? Now at least, after I have demonstrated that you had possession through ignorance and stupidity, will you not forfeit that right, if you ever had it? … But if you persist in keeping possession, your ignorance is straightaway transformed into malice and deceit, and you plainly become a possessor in bad faith. ‘The Roman church has exercised its authority’: You transfer to man an authority that is exercised over mute and mindless objects. The longer a
man is kept in slavery, the more detestable it is. Birds and wild animals do not want to be subject to authority, but however long they have been con- fined, as soon as the occasion presents itself, they escape as they like. Will a man, when possessed by a man, not be free to escape? … But the Pope, as may be observed, assiduously plots against the liberty of peoples. Therefore, as the occasion arises, they rebel in turn every day – look at Bologna recently. If any of them ever voluntarily consented to papal rule – which can happen when some danger is threatening from another quarter, it must not be imag- ined that they consented to make themselves slaves, that they could never pull their necks out from under the yoke, that afterwards they and their off- spring would have no jurisdiction over themselves. This would be foully unjust. Voluntarily, supreme pontiff, we came to you to govern us: volun- tarily we now go away from you, lest you govern us any longer …. As for you, look after your sacral duties. Do not enthrone yourself in the North and thunder from there as you hurl bolts of lightning against [the Roman] peo- ple and all others.101 The preceding excursus has served as an overview of sections III, IV, V, and VI of the Oration. The following pages will be dedicated to highlighting certain aspects and nodal points that are essential for fully comprehend- ing Valla’s investigation into and meditation on the Constitutum’s pseudo- donation. The following essential aspects and themes will be treated: (1) Valla’s philological study of the Constitutum within the context of
101 Ibid., 167.14–16 (91); 167.20–168.15 (92); 169.7–13 (94); 170.18–171.9 (94); 172.11ff. (95): “‘Prescripsit Romana ecclesia’: cur ergo ab imperatoribus totiens curat sibi ius confirman- dum? cur donationem confirmationemque Cesarum iactat, si hoc unum satis est? … Et quomodo potest prescripsisse, ubi de nullo titulo, sed de male fidei possessione constat? Aut si male fidei possessionem neges, profecto stulte fidei negare non possis. An in tanta re tamque aperta excusata debet esse et facti et iuris ignorantia? facti quidem, quod Romam provinciasque non dedit Constantinus – quod ignorare idiote hominis est, non summi pontificis –, iuris autem, quod illa nec donari potuere nec accipi – quod nescire vix chris- tiani est. Ita ne stulta credulitas dabit tibi ius in iis, que, si prudentior fores, tua nunquam fuissent? Quid, nonne nunc saltem, postquam te per ignorantiam atque stultitiam posse- disse docui, ius istud, si quod erat, amittes? … Quod si adhuc possidere pergis, iam inscitia in malitiam fraudemque conversa est planeque effectus es male fidei possessor. ‘Prescripsit Romana ecclesia’: … Prescriptionem, que fit de rebus mutis atque irratio- nabilibus, ad hominem transfers, cuius quo diuturnior in servitute possessio eo est detest- abilior. Aves ac fere in se prescribi nolunt, sed quantolibet tempore possesse, cum libuerit et oblata fuerit occasio, abeunt: homini ab homine possesso abire non licebit? … At papa, ut videre licet, insidiatur sedulo libertati populorum. Ideoque vicissim illi quotidie oblata facultate – ad Bononiam modo respice – rebellant. Qui si quando sponte – quod evenire potest aliquo aliunde periculo urgente – in papale imperium consenserunt, non ita accipi- endum est consensisse, ut servos se facerent, ut nunquam subtrahere a iugo colla possent, ut postea nati non et ipsi arbitrium sui habeant, nam hoc iniquissimum foret. Sponte ad te, summe pontifex, ut nos gubernares, venimus: sponte nunc rursus abs te, ne gubernes diu- tius, recedimus …. Tu vero, que sacerdotii operis sunt, cura, et noli tibi ponere sedem ad aquilonem et illinc tonantem fulgurantia fulmina in hunc populum ceterosque vibrare” [translation modified].
the Legenda Silvestri; (2) Valla’s anti-Caesarism/radical republicanism and his historical and theological criticism of Augustine’s City of God; and (3) Valla’s defense of the Oration to the Roman curia.
6. Section IV: From the Constitutum Constantini to the Legenda Silvestri
From a formal point of view, the method adopted by Valla in section IV is an enarratio: a study of the Constitutum’s textuality and infratextuality by means of morphological, syntactic, and semantic analysis. Valla uses the interpretive procedure of the enarratio, however, in his own particular fashion, arriving at the study of the Constitutum’s grammar by way of the document’s literary textuality/infratextuality. In a similar way, Valla con- cludes the non-correspondence between the “text of the grant” and the language which that “text” presumes as contemporaneous with itself. The language of the “text” is considered in two different ways: on the one hand as language in the sense of a spoken tongue (lingua), i.e. as a system of verbal signs, and on the other as language in the sense of linguistic usage (linguaggio), i.e. as a system of meanings and conceptual categories. The Constitutum, in other words, is shown not only to be meaningless in itself, but clearly also, on a deeper level of analysis, to bear witness to its own falseness, once it is examined by methods aimed at identifying the reference it presumes as contemporaneous with itself. Ultimately, the Constitutum is betrayed as the work of a forger – no matter how it is ana- lyzed and compared – by the language and linguistic usage of the Latinity and/or Christianity in which it contextualizes itself. Thus Valla highlights the linguistic and semantic inconsistencies of the “text of the grant.” Similarly, and as always in virtue of his historical and philological criti- cism, he also unmasks its ideological contradictions, on both a political and a theological (particularly an ecclesiological) level. The Constitutum’s anachronism and falseness – betrayed by its own “text” (the diplomatic edition) and “wording” – thus lead Valla to relocate it within historical and doctrinal dimensions that are, actually and legally, entirely different from the ones presumed by the “document of donation.” Indeed, these dimensions are far removed and distinct from the times and spaces of the original, evangelical Christianity of the earliest centuries. More particularly, to Valla’s retrospective view the wide divergence between verba (words, i.e. the elements composing the text of the Constitutum) and res (things, i.e. the definitely anachronistic referents
102 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento,” 36–37 [= Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 157–159, and translated in the present volume, 182–184]. 103 Maccarrone, “Il Papa ‘Vicarius Christi,’” passim, together with his Vicarius Christi. Storia del titolo papale (Roma: Facultas Theologica Pontificii Athenaei Lateranensis, 1952). For this passage, quoted from the De regimine principum, I.15 (“summus sacerdos, successor Petri, Romanus pontifex, cui omnes reges populi Christiani oportet esse subditos, sicut ipsi Domino Iesu Christo …. Propter quod mirabiliter ex divina providentia factum est ut in Romana urbe, quam Deus praeviderat Christiani populi principalem sedem futuram, hic mos paulatim inolesceret ut civitatum rectores sacerdotibus subiacerent.”), see Kurt Flasch, Das philosophische Denken im Mittelalter. Von Augustin zu Machiavelli (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1986), 333; Charles Till Davis, Dante’s Italy and other Essays (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1984), 254–289: “Ptolemy of Lucca and the Roman Republic,” esp. 273– 278. See also idem, Dante and the Idea of Rome (Oxford: Clarendon, 1957), 1–39 and passim.
completely valid. But, one step at a time, he ends up arguing against the whole of scholastic ecclesiology, which is based on the same premise. The papacy’s ecclesiological attributes are said to be inconsistent with the premise (“the pope is the vicar of Christ”) from which they were derived. Some are even judged to be in clear contradiction – from a strictly evan- gelical point of view – with the very nature of the papacy, insofar as it is the primary apostolic see of the “other Christ” (alter Christus) on earth. It might be noted, by way of digression, that Valla’s writings often show affinities with the evangelical ecclesiology of Wycliffe and Hus. Valla reaches his ecclesiological conclusions in the following way. First he reduces every religious title (“high priest, successor of Peter, Bishop of Rome, to whom all kings …”) that with the passage of time was tacked onto the syntagma “the pope is the vicar of Christ,” or which was devel- oped on the basis of that syntagma, to the one authentic attribute of the bishopric of Rome, the one on account of which the papacy exists, always and only, as the “vicariate of Christ.” Then he reinterprets and reconfirms the statement “the pope is the vicar of Christ” in a strictly evangelical sense: the pope, since he has the preeminent claim to apostolic succes- sion, is the perfect personification of the christianus homo, and thus he is always (and only) the “vicar of Christ” par excellence. Once again, it may be observed that in the Oration Valla follows the very same argumentative procedures with respect to the ecclesiological language of scholasticism as he does in the Repastinatio with respect to scholasticism’s philosophical and theological language. In the first book of the Repastinatio, Valla uses philological, morphological, and semantic analysis in a two-step operation. First, he reduces the transcendentals (for example) to the single concept of res (thing), or the predicaments (another example) to the category of qualitas-actio (quality-act). Then he reinter- prets those basic terms to which the theoretical language had been reduced by charging them with new meanings.104 Here, in the Oration, Valla follows the same procedure and repeats the same operation. First he reduces the multiple ecclesiological attributes of the papacy developed by scholastics and canonists to one fundamental affirmation: “the pope is the vicar of Christ.” Then he reinterprets that affirmation according to a mean- ing that it could have in the light either of the New Testament scriptures (restricted to the evangelical books) or of a spiritual and reforming tradi- tion, which had often emerged in Christianity’s history in the form of radical evangelism.
104 Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 153–171.
Let us now see exactly how and in what sense Valla executes in section IV his critique of the ecclesiological language of medieval and con- temporary scholasticism and canon law. He begins his philological and his- torical critique with the Constitutum – the “text of the grant” or “document of donation” – and finishes with the Legenda Silvestri taken as a whole, that is as the comprehensive whole of the Constitutum. It should be added that Valla develops his analysis, both of the Constitutum and of the Legenda, at various levels. These are pursued distinctly one after another, but they are always correlated within the individual texts under consideration.
6.1. The Constitutum Valla first uses his grammatical study to reveal the “barbarity of language” (loquendi or sermonis barbaries) typical of the “document of donation.” He conducts this study on the text of the Constitutum by subjecting it to a linguistic analysis based on fourth-century Latin, the language that the “document” has as a referent and in which it most often presumes to express itself.105 According to Valla, the linguistic analysis of the Constitutum reveals inelegant and often inexact syntactical structures: He is so enchanted by the sound of turgid vocabulary that he repeats the same things and regurgitates what he has already said …. A fine reason to speak like a barbarian, to make your utterance go more prettily, as if any- thing pretty could be found in such coarseness.106 The composer (or forger) of the Constitutum is revealed as “endowed with no literary taste.” He is unworthy of being the “scribe of the Caesars,” and he is far, far from the eloquence of a Lactantius, whom he pretends to have as both his contemporary and his model.107 There is therefore a difference between the Latinity of the Constitutum and the neo-classical Latinity of the fourth century, the Latin used by Constantine and Lactantius:
105 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 230ff.; Vincenzo De Caprio, “La rinascita della cultura a Roma: la tradizione latina nelle Eleganze di Lorenzo Valla,” in Umanesimo a Roma nel Quattrocento, ed. Paolo Brezzi and Maristella De Panizza Lorch (Roma: Istituto di Studi Romani, 1984), 163–194; idem, “Appunti sul classicismo delle Eleganze di Lorenzo Valla,” Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Istituto di filologia moderna, Università di Roma 1:2 (1981): 59–80. 106 Valla, De falso, 106.1–3, 7–9 (43): “… ita verborum turgentium strepitu delectatur, ut eadem repetat et inculcet, que modo dixerat; … honesta ratio barbare loqui, ut venustius currat oratio, si modo quid in tanta scabritia venustum esse potest.” 107 Ibid., 112.8 (48): “nulla litteratura preditus”; 106.5 (43): “Cesarum scribe”; 107.4 (43); 117.15 (51).
Who ever heard of a ‘Phrygian tiara’ in Latin? Although you talk like a bar- barian, you apparently want me to think this is the language of Constantine or Lactantius. In his play Menaechmi [426], Plautus used the word phrygio for a clothesmaker, and Pliny [Nat. hist. VIII 106] calls embroidered gar- ments ‘phrygions’ because the Phrygians invented them. But what would a ‘Phrygian tiara’ signify?108 And again, A style worthy of Constantine, an eloquence worthy of Lactantius, not only in other places but also in that phrase ‘be mounted on mounts’! … May God destroy you, wickedest of mortals, for ascribing barbarous speech to an age of learning.109 Still using the criterion of Latinity (and with particular reference to fourth- century Latinity), Valla continues on to the morphological, semantic, and pragmatic analysis of the lemmas and syntagmas of the whole Constitutum: Should I attack the foolishness of ideas more than words? You have heard about the ideas. Here is the foolishness of words.110 He devotes the rest of section IV to this analysis in order to leave no doubt that the Constitutum lies outside of Constantine’s historical context.111 As linguistic analysis shows the Constitutum to be contrary to proper Latinity, thus an analysis of the Christian religion based on the New Testament shows it to be contrary to the evangelical ecclesia. The Constitutum makes the claim, which it even reaffirms in several ways, that as a result of the Donation of Constantine the Romans became “a people subject to the rule of the Church of Rome.”112 But this is “unheard-of,” pro- tests Valla. How could an imperial decree, in only “three days,” obliterate that Romanitas (Romanness) – consisting of civil and political autonomy and the governance of other peoples on the basis of law – which was under- stood as the special historical destiny of Rome and of the Roman people?
108 Ibid., 117.13–118.4 (51): “… quis unquam ‘phrygium’ latine dici audivit? Tu mihi, dum barbare loqueris, videri vis Constantini aut Lactantii esse sermonem? Plautus in Menechmis ‘phrygionem’ pro concinnatore vestium posuit, Plinius ‘phrygionas’ appellat vestes acu pictas, quod earum Phryges fuerint inventores: ‘phrygium’ vero quid significet?” 109 Ibid., 124.16f. (56), 120.20ff. (53): “… dignus Constantino sermo, digna Lactantio fac- undia cum in ceteris tum vero in illo ‘equos equitent’ …. Deus te perdat, improbissime mortalium, qui sermonem barbarum attribuis seculo erudito.” 110 Ibid., 123.12ff. (55): “utrum magis insequar sententiarum an verborum stoliditatem? Sententiarum audistis, verborum hec est” (emphasis added). 111 The most important passages are ibid., 123–125 (55–56), 126f. (57), 129–133 (61–64), 138f. (70), 143 (73). 112 Ibid., 102.13ff. (42): “populo imperio Romane ecclesie subiacenti.”
What people is this? The Roman people? Why not say ‘Roman people’ rather than ‘subject people’? What is this new insult to the Quirites, whom the best of poets eulogized: ‘You, Roman, take care to rule over peoples with your imperial power’ [Virgil, Aeneid 6.851]. So the people that rules over other peoples is itself called a subject people. This is unheard of. For, as Gregory attests in many of his letters, the Roman emperor differs from all other rulers in this particular point: he alone is the leader of a free people. But even if what you claim be granted, are not other peoples also subject? Or do you also have other people in mind? How could it happen in three days that all peoples subject to the rule of the Church of Rome were on hand for that decree?113 As a result of the donation – Valla notes again – the papacy would have risen to the absolute and total imperium of the Roman Empire. The Roman pope would have been invested by Constantine with its power and abso- lute rule, which would now have a “priestly” nature to boot. What is more, the neo-Christian emperor – whom Valla deprecates as “made to take over epithets of God and to effect an imitation of the language of Sacred Scripture, which he had never read”114 – would have converted the pope from the “successor of Peter” to the “vicar of Peter.” Pope Sylvester would thus appear to have been called to the primacy of the Roman see by the will and deliberation of the emperor Constantine: He calls the Roman pontiffs ‘vicars of Peter,’ as if Peter is still alive or all the others are of lesser eminence than Peter was…. Although the Roman see received its primacy from Christ, and the Eighth Synod [Constantinople, 869/70] declared it, according to Gratian and many of the Greeks, it is said [in the Constitutum] to have received this from Constantine, who was barely a Christian, as if from Christ …. ‘In honor of blessed Peter,’ as if Christ were not the most important cornerstone on which the temple of the Church has been built, but Peter …. He not only makes Constantine similar in office to Moses, who adorned the High Priest on the order of God, but he makes him an expounder of secret mysteries – something extremely difficult even for those who have long been immersed in sacred texts. Why did you not also make Constantine the chief pontiff, as indeed many emperors were, so that
113 Ibid., 104.19–105.5 (42) (and Setz’s note 191): “Et quis iste est populus, Romanus ne? At cur non dicitur ‘populus Romanus’ potius quam ‘populus subiacens’? Que nova ista contu- melia est in Quirites? de quibus optimi poete elogium est: ‘Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, memento.’ Qui regit alios populos, ipse vocatur ‘populus subiacens,’ quod inaudi- tum est. Nam in hoc, ut in multis epistolis Gregorius testatur, differt Romanus princeps a ceteris, quod solus est princeps liberi populi. Ceterum ita sit ut tu vis: nonne et alii populi subiacent? an alios quoque significas? Quomodo fieri istud triduo poterat, ut omnes populi subiacentes imperio Romane ecclesie illi decreto adessent?” 114 Ibid., 107.12–14 (43): “titulos Dei sibi arrogare fingitur … et imitari velle sermonem sacre scripture, quem nunquam legerat.”
his decorations might be more conveniently transferred to another supreme pontiff? But you knew no history.115 According to the Constitutum, Constantine had also given to the pope the imperial insignia and vestments belonging to the Caesars. Thus, Constantine’s investiture of the pope with Roman imperium over the church of believers is described by the Constitutum as a ritual transmis- sion of signa and vestimenta from the emperor to the vicar of Christ. Valla dwells thoughtfully on this extensive passage of the Constitutum (which he quotes in its entirety) describing the emperor’s investiture of the pope. Among other things he observes: You Roman pontiffs, … will the vestments, the appurtenances, the pomp, the horses, in short the lifestyle of an emperor thus befit the vicar of Christ? What does a priest have to do with an emperor? … The wickedest of men fail to understand that Sylvester ought rather to have put on the garments of Aaron, who was God’s highest priest, than the vestments of a pagan ruler.116 Then, with a subtle interlacing of linguistic criticism, biblical exegesis, irony, and bitter sarcasm towards the imperial investiture of the vicar of Him who had suffered a similar ritual as the joke of a Roman cohort, Valla considers the Constitutum’s statement, “To the blessed Sylvester, his [Peter’s] vicar … we hand over … as well ‘the purple cloak’ and ‘the scarlet tunic’ and all imperial vestments.”117 He points out first of all – together with other glosses on morphology and semantics – that the forger of the “document of donation” is unaware that the two expressions (in italics
115 Ibid., 106.12ff (43), 108.11–14 (44), 126.18–20 (57), 128.15–129.3 (60): “Et pontifices Romanos appellat ‘vicarios Petri,’ quasi vel vivat Petrus vel minori dignitate sint ceteri, quam Petrus fuit …. quod cum a Christo primatum acceperit Romana sedes et id Gratiano testante multisque Grecorum octava synodus declararit, accepisse dicatur a Constantino vixdum christiano tanquam a Christo …. ‘Pro honore beati Petri,’ quasi Christus non sit summus angularis lapis, in quo templum ecclesie constructum est, sed Petrus …. Constantinum non tantum officio similem Moysi, qui summum sacerdotem iussu Dei ornavit, sed secreta mysteria facit exponentem, quod difficillimum est iis, qui diu in sacris litteris sunt versati. Cur non fecisti etiam Constantinum pontificem maximum – ut multi imperatores fuerunt –, ut commodius ipsius ornamenta in alterum summum pontificem transferrentur? Sed nescisti historias.” 116 Ibid., 115.15–116.1, 116.3–5 (49): “O Romani pontifices … ita ne vestimenta, apparatus, pompa, equitatus, omnis denique vita Cesaris vicarium Christi decebit? Que communica- tio sacerdotis ad Cesarem! … Sceleratissimi homines non intelligunt Silvestro magis vestes Aaron, qui summus Dei sacerdos fuerat, quam gentilis principis fuisse sumendas.” 117 Ibid., 114.4–9 (49): “beato Silvestro, eius vicario … tradimus … verum etiam ‘chlamy- dem purpuream’ atque ‘tunicam coccineam’ et omnia imperialia indumenta …” (emphasis added).
118 Ibid., 118–20 (52). 119 Ibid., 108.14f. (44); 119.15–120.1 (52); 121.10f. (53): “Hoc ille modestissimus princeps dicere, hoc piissimus pontifex audire voluisset? … Quid stultius quam omnia Cesaris indu- menta dicere convenire pontifici? … Nihil est vanius nihilque a pontifice Romano alienius.” 120 Ibid., 121.17f. (54): “verum quanta est munificentia tua, imperator, qui non satis habes ornasse pontificem, nisi ornes et omnem clerum.”
of the universal Church and to the equally supreme rule of the Western Empire.121 Further glosses on the many and dire inconsistencies of such an absurd text lead Valla to reaffirm sarcastically, yet again, the Constitutum’s false- ness on every level: Will servants in the employ of the Roman church be assigned the rank of general? … Who fails to see that this fiction was concocted by persons who wanted complete license for themselves to dress up? I would imagine that if somewhere various games took place among the demons who live in the air, those creatures would be engaged in copying the ritual of clerics, their pag- eantry, and their luxury, and they would derive their greatest pleasure from this kind of theatrical competition.122 Beyond the list of imperial insignia and vestments (the Constitutum’s repeated insistence on which, notes Valla, is highly inappropriate), Constantine sees to the luxurious furnishing of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s basilicas, the churches (ecclesiae) built on the “confession”-tombs of the two Apostles. But at the time of the Constitutum those basilicas did not yet exist. Valla must gloss these blatant anachronisms before going deeper into a more relevant ecclesiological critique. He does so by bringing into relief the term ecclesiae, used in the text of the Constitutum to indicate the Roman basilicas of St. Peter and St. Paul. But the Roman basilicas, Valla observes, are templa – sacred places designated for worship – while the Greek word ecclesia signifies a gathering place for people, or an “assembly of human beings” (coetus hominum) who are “fellow-citizens” (concives). Such citizens are constituted in the polis, i.e., endowed with civil and nat- ural freedom, and at the same time are constitutive of the polis, since they possess the capacity to deliberate on it effectively. Hence the adoption and the transposition of the term ecclesia – with all its proper and specific semantic pregnancy – to indicate the evangelical “gathering of the faith- ful” (congregatio fidelium). Hence the use in a religious context – by Paul and the Koine Greek of the New Testament – of a classical term with polit- ical and civil connotations.
121 Ibid., 122–23 (54): “‘imperialia vestimenta’ universis clericis”; “effici patricios con- sules”; “culmen singularis potentie et precellentie.” 122 Ibid., 123.1f./6–11 (54): “Ministri, qui Romane ecclesie servient, dignitate afficientur imperatoria? … Et quis non videt hanc fabulam ab iis excogitatam esse, qui sibi omnem vestiendi licentiam esse voluerunt? ut existimem, si qua inter demones, qui aerem incol- unt, ludorum genera exercentur, eos exprimendo clericorum cultu, fastu, luxu exerceri et hoc scenici lusus genere maxime delectari.”
Valla outlines a path from the political ecclesia of Athens (and of the Roman respublica) to the religious ecclesia of the Gospel. It is a develop- ment, at once semantic, political, and theological, to which he will often refer in his writings, from the Elegantiae to the Adnotationes on the New Testament.123 Here in the “document of donation,” he seems to hope to secure the most authoritative testimony to the perversion of that term, which was established by apostolic and New Testament linguistic usage to mean above all evangelical communion and the community made up (in the various cities) of the first Christians. Valla makes the parallel clear: as the evangelium had been institutionalized as an imperium divided among secular and religious, juridical and cultural hierarchies of power, thus the evangelical ecclesia had mutated from a communion of believers into a construction of walls and arches (“stones” that were in no way “living”). From a “community of the faithful” it was changed into a templum (in no way “built on the foundation” of apostolic faith). According to Valla, the Constitutum was responsible for this utterly profound historical and semantic degradation of ecclesiology. It provided the essential testimony, as it was the original act of canonical institution and standardization. Hence the tone of sarcasm in Valla’s comment: You miserable dog, did Rome have ecclesiae, or rather templa, dedicated to Peter and Paul? Who built them? Who would have dared to build them? After all, as history tells us, nowhere was there any place for Christians apart from secret places and hidden dens. If there had been any templa at Rome dedicated to those apostles, they would not have required great lamps to be lit inside them. They were little shrines, not buildings; chapels, not templa, places of prayer in private dwellings, not public places of worship. No one therefore had to worry about temple lamps before there were the templa themselves. What are you talking about when you make Constantine speak of Peter and Paul as ‘blessed,’ but Sylvester, when he is still alive, as ‘most blessed,’ and his own ordinance as ‘sacred’ when he had been a pagan shortly before? Does so much have to be provided for keeping up the lamps that the whole world is worn down?124
123 On the semantics of ecclesia, see Lorenzo Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, redazione inedita a cura di Alessandro Perosa (Firenze: Sansoni, 1970), 169 (Acts 19:39); idem, Elegantiae, IV, 47 (cited in Valla, De falso, 111, n. 218); Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum (Acts 19:39) in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 297. 124 Valla, De falso, 111.4–17 (47): “O furcifer, ecclesie ne, idest templa Rome erant Petro et Paulo dicate? Quis eas extruxerat? quis edificare ausus fuisset? cum nusquam foret, ut his- toria ait, christianis locus, nisi secreta et latebre. Aut si qua templa Rome fuissent illis dicata apostolis, non erant digna, in quibus tanta luminaria accenderentur, edicule sacre, non edes; sacella, non templa; oratoria intra privatos parietes, non publica delubra: non ergo ante cura gerenda erat de luminaribus templorum quam de ipsis templis. Quid ais tu, qui facis Constantinum dicentem Petrum et Paulum ‘beatos,’ Silvestrum vero, cum adhuc
Valla penetrates ever deeper with his critico-philological analysis into the dense textual thicket of the Constitutum. He clearly perceives that it is impossible to offer an adequately comprehensive exegetical reading of the heap of contradictions rising up from the “document of donation.” Thus he observes: But why do I attack one individual point after another? I should run out of time if I try to mention, to say nothing of discuss, all of them.125 Nor will it be possible for us to follow Valla’s whole discourse in its particu- lars. It is far too complex, even if we were just to consider the details of its philological analysis. Let us then limit ourselves to a consideration of a final, insightful annotation, with which it seems Valla hopes to underline the fundamental contradiction of the whole Constitutum and of its corre- sponding Constantinian ecclesiology. First Valla cites from the text of the Constitutum: Before all else, however, we assign to the blessed Sylvester and to his succes- sors, according to our indiction [sc. the Constitutum], the right to name any- one he wishes to the clergy at his pleasure and by his own decision and to include that person in the pious ranks of the pious clergy, and that no one whatsoever should consider that he is acting arrogantly. And later, at the very end of the Constitutum: If, moreover, anyone – which we believe likely – emerges as a falsifier in this context, let him be condemned and subjected to eternal damnation. Let him know that his enemies are the holy apostles of God, Peter and Paul, in the present and in the life to come, and let him be burned in the lower reaches of hell and waste away together with the devil and all who are wicked.126 Valla immediately points out the dreadful inelegance of the Latin. In a few sentences the text piles up a heap of absurdities that are not only graceless but also – and this is much more injurious – heterodox. Constantine,
vivit, ‘beatissimum’ et suam, qui paulo ante fuisset ethnicus, iussionem ‘sacram’? Tanta ne conferenda sunt pro luminaribus continuandis, ut totus orbis fatigetur?” [translation modified]. 125 Ibid., 125.10–12 (56): “Verum quid ego in singula impetum facio? Dies me deficiat, si universa non dico amplificare, sed attingere velim” (emphasis added). 126 Ibid., 125.13–17 (57); 134.7–11 (65): “Pre omnibus autem licentiam tribuimus beato Silvestro et successoribus eius ex nostro indictu, ut, quem placatus proprio consilio cleri- care voluerit et in religioso numero religiosorum clericorum connumerare, nullus ex omnibus presumat superbe agere …. Si quis autem, quod credimus, in hoc temerator exti- terit, eternis condemnationibus subiaceat condemnatus, et sanctos Dei apostolos Petrum et Paulum sibi in presenti et in futura vita sentiat contrarios, atque in inferno inferiori concrematus cum diabolo et omnibus deficiat impiis” [translation modified].
6.2. The Legenda Silvestri Valla now brings his analysis, begun on the text of the Constitutum, to bear on the Legenda Silvestri. His motivations for doing so were given above, but we will do well to rehearse them before proceeding further with our interpretation. The Constitutum seems to Valla to be an integral part of the Legenda Silvestri, such that the literary structure of the Legenda (taken in the entirety of its composition) specifies and gives meaning to the
127 Ibid., 125.18–22 (57); 134.12–15 (65); 134.25–135.3 (65): “Quis est hic Melchisedech, qui patriarcham Abraam benedicit? Constantinus ne vix christianus facultatem ei, a quo bap- tizatus est et quem beatum appellat, tribuit clericandi, quasi prius nec fecisset hoc Silvester nec facere potuisset? … Hic terror atque hec comminatio non secularis principis solet esse, sed priscorum sacerdotum ac flaminum et nunc ecclesiasticorum: itaque non est Constantini oratio hec, sed alicuius clericuli stolidi …. Quod si mine he execrationesque Constantini forent, invicem execrarer ut tyrannum et profligatorem rei publice mee et illi me Romano ingenio minarer ultorem” (emphasis added) [translation modified].
Constitutum as a part of that entirety. In line with this premise, Valla con- ducts his analysis as if by expansion and contraction: from the Constitutum to the Legenda and then back again. That is, the analysis proceeds in oppo- site directions along lines of infratextuality. These link, on the one hand, the pseudo-Donation of Constantine as it appears in the text under con- sideration in Valla’s Oration, with the Legend of Sylvester on the other, which, since it contains the Constitutum as part of its structure, underlies it at the same time as an infratext. Valla writes: I shall say something … about the fabula of Sylvester, because the entire issue turns on this, and for me it will be fitting to speak above all about the Roman pontiff, since my discourse is concerned with Roman pontiffs, with a view to facilitating inferences about the others from this one example. Of the many absurdities that are told, I touch only upon the one about the dragon, in order to show that Constantine never had leprosy. For the acts of Sylvester were written down by a certain Eusebius, a Greek man according to the tes- timony of the translator. That nation is always highly inclined to mendacity, as Juvenal says in a satirical assessment [Sat. X 174f.]: ‘whatever the lying Greeks make bold to claim as history.’128 In this passage we must note the reappearance of the distinction (first made in section III) between fabula (legend) and historia (history) as different narrative genres, and then we must turn our attention to the explanation of this distinction that is provided here and further on in section IV. The distinction between “legendary narrative” and “historical narrative” comes from book II, chapter 4 of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria. Valla reinterprets this text by rather cogently modifying the meanings of its terms, as can be seen from his glosses of it contained in the autograph manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (Lat. 7723, f. 19 and ff.).129
128 Ibid., 144.4–14 (74) and Setz’s notes: “Disputabo … de fabula Silvestri, quia et omnis in hoc questio versatur et mihi, cum sermo sit cum pontificibus Romanis, de pontifice Romano potissimum loqui decebit, ut ex uno exemplo facile aliorum coniectura capiatur. Et ex multis ineptiis, que ibi narrantur, unam tantum de dracone attingam, ut doceam Constantinum non fuisse leprosum. Etenim gesta Silvestri ab Eusebio quodam Greco homine, ut interpres testatur, composita sunt, que natio ad mendacia semper promptissima est, ut Iuvenalis satyrica censura ait: ‘quidquid Grecia mendax audet in historia’” (emphasis added) [trans- lation modified]. 129 On the autograph glosses on the Institutio in the Parisian manuscript, see: Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 8f., 120; Alessandro Perosa, “L’edizione veneta di Quintiliano coi commenti del Valla, di Pomponio Leto e di Sulpizio da Veroli,” in Miscellanea Augusto Campana, 2 vols. (Padova: Antenore, 1981), 575–610; Lucia Cesarini Martinelli, “Le postille di Lorenzo Valla all’Institutio Oratoria di Quintiliano,” in Besomi and Regliosi (eds.), Lorenzo Valla e l’umanesimo italiano, 21–50. The text of Valla’s glosses on Institutio oratoria, II.4.2: “[Quintilian] did not agree with Cicero that fabula is that in
For Valla, fabula takes on a double meaning. The first is that of a fic- tional narrative that is in and of itself false, being an account or discourse totally devoid of factual events (res gestae) either present and contempo- rary or handed down in memory from the past. It stands in contrast to historical narration, which, being an authentic account or discourse reporting factual events, is in and of itself true. The second meaning of fabula is that of a narrative (narratio) that is in itself false but nevertheless still capable of taking on, and indeed of bearing in itself, a certain verisi- militude towards accounts or discourses reporting factual events. In this way it is portrayed or offered to the reader as a true and authentic history. The typical kind of “verisimilar fiction” narratio is for Valla the hagio- graphic legend, which developed as a sacred fictionalization in the sphere of Christianity’s origins, spanning from the apocryphal Gospels to the Legenda Silvestri. The defining characteristic of this type of sacred fiction- alization or hagiographic legend is the constant interweaving of the miraculous (the thaumaturgical) into the narrative, or rather of divine intervention in events and worldly reality as the object (as if they were factual events) of narration. The verisimilitude of such fictional narratives comes, in this case, from the (supposed) similarity and even intended (at least implicitly) assimilation of the miraculous and the thaumaturgical to the apparently similar canonical scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Hence Valla’s attempt in section IV to demonstrate the falsities contained in the Legenda Silvestri, the hagiographic legend that contains and deter- mines the documentary act of the Constitutum and thus the whole event of the Donation of Constantine. Valla takes two aspects in particular of the Legenda into consideration. The first is the healing of Constantine’s leprosy, which occurs at the which there is neither truth nor anything resembling truth [De inventione, I.27 and Rhetorica ad Herennium, I.13], since, to give only one example, comedies are fabulae but nevertheless resemble the truth. As Terence says, ‘[the poet] should compose the kind of fabulae that would please the public [Andria, prol. 3]. Likewise, [Quintilian] did not say that historia is comprised of events remote from our own time, since – again to name only one example of many – Sallust refers to the works he himself composed as histories [cf. Cat. 1–4]. Nor did [Quintilian] say that argumentum is a fiction that nevertheless could have happened, since only in comedies is argumentum a fiction.” (“Non dixit quemadmo- dum Cicero, fabula est in qua nec vere nec verisimiles res continentur, quia, ne alia dicam, comediarum fabule sunt, et tamen verisimiles. Ut apud Terentium: ‘populo ut placerent quas fecisset fabulas.’ Item, non dixit: historia est gesta res ab etatis nostre remota, cum hic quoque plura non dicam, ipse Sallustius historias de se compositas dicat. Nec dixit: argu- mentum est ficta res, que tamen fieri poterit, quia non nisi in comediis argumentum est ficta res”) [f.19r]. On Quintilian’s text (lib. II.iv.2), cf. Wesley Trimpi, “The Quality of Fiction: the Rhetorical Transmission of Literary Theory,” Traditio 30 (1974): 1–118, at 47 and passim.
moment of his conversion to Christianity and baptism by Sylvester. The second is Sylvester’s miraculous freeing of the sacred virgins from the vile slavery of the diabolical dragon (a thaumaturgical element). Of the first Valla makes quick work, referring back briefly to what he had said earlier in sections II and III. The testimony of the Legend of Sylvester is undoubtedly false, he repeats, because it is in clear contradic- tion with Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History. That is to say, the former is fabula, the latter historia. The verisimilitude of the hagiographic fictionalization results from the fact that the healing of Constantine’s lep- rosy (paganism) by means of his conversion (to Christianity) and baptism by Sylvester is an implicit scriptural citation, assimilating Constantine’s conversion to the New Testament story of Jesus’ healing of the leprosy of those who convert to the faith of the divine messiah.130 But, Valla objects, the miraculous in this sacred fiction is not in line with the origins of the Christian people (because belied by the historia ecclesiastica, the actual history of the Church) nor even with God’s inter- vention in the world, which was manifested to mankind with the Incarnation of the Word. Only the evangelical miraculousness of the mes- sianic signs, in line with faith in Christ, is an essential part of the history of salvation (historia salutis). Hagiographic legends of any type, then, and specifically that of Sylvester, are always and only “fake history” – the term used in the glossed heading of this section of the Oration.131 Valla dedicates more time to the second thaumaturgical aspect of the Legenda Silvestri: concerning Sylvester, the virgins, and the dragon. Indeed, he concentrates his arguments entirely on these miracles, thus demonstrating the Legenda’s utter inauthenticity. He shows it to be an extravagant hagiographic fabula composed of events and things that are “contradictory, impossible, stupid, barbarous, absurd …”; it is utterly “fake history” (falsa historia). Valla poses a series of questions to determine the veracity of the Legend: Where had that dragon come from? No dragons are born in Rome. Where too had his poison come from? … Besides, where had so much poison come from so as to infect such a big city …? Why then did Sylvester not kill it as Daniel is said to have done, by binding it with a cord of hemp and wiping out its progeny forever? The fabricator of the legend did not want the dragon to be killed for fear that the derivation from the story of Daniel would seem obvious [Dan. 14:22–24]. Yet if Jerome [Commentary on Daniel], a most
130 Valla, De falso, 67 (11) and 152 (79). 131 Marginal manuscript heading (Valla, De falso, 144.8): “de falsa historia Silvestri.”
learned and reliable translator, Apollinaris, Origen, Eusebius, and others maintain that the story of Bel is a fiction, if even the Jews do not know it in the original of the Old Testament, in other words if the most learned of the Latin writers, most of the Greeks, and certain Hebrews condemn it as a fab- ula, shall I not condemn this story [the Legenda Silvestri], which is inspired by it, when it is supported by the authority of no writer and greatly surpasses its model in idiocy?132 We ought to take notice here of Valla’s procedure. First he strongly empha- sizes both the Legenda’s implicit allusion to the Book of Daniel and the former text’s verisimilitude, through intentional assimilation, to the latter. Then he resolutely extends his criticism to the inauthenticity of the Book of Daniel itself, for the purpose of demonstrating, almost as an argument a fortiori, the unquestionable non-veracity of the Legend of Sylvester. Valla reminds the reader that the Book of Daniel was thrown out of the Hebrew scriptural canon and was never included in the Christian one, either in the Greek or the Latin patristic traditions. Although technically within the sphere of the Christian scriptural canon, it will always be num- bered among the so-called deuterocanonical books. What is more, Valla continues, the reasons for the book’s elimination from the canon nearly all stem from the peculiar nature of its narrative. It is a tale full of extraor- dinary events and purported miracles, just like the Legend about Pope Sylvester, the virgins, and the dragon. Considerations of this type recur throughout Valla’s writings, not only in the Oration but also in other works of commentary and annotation. One can thus say that it is Valla’s standard operating procedure to reduce all apocryphal writings, in a most radical way, completely to the status of fabula. This is the case both for biblical pretenders to a place in the Old or New Testaments – the deuterocanonical books and the apocryphal Gospels of early Christianity – and for the mass of medieval hagiography,
132 Valla, De falso, 144.14–146.15 (74–75): “Unde draco ille venerat? Rome dracones non gignuntur. Unde etiam illi venenum? … Unde preterea tantum veneni, ut tam spatiosam civitatem peste corrumperet …? Cur ergo, ut Daniel illum dicitur occidisse, non et Silvester hunc potius occidisset, quem canabaceo filo alligasset, et domum illam in eternum per- didisset? Ideo commentor fabule noluit draconem interimi, ne plane Danielis narratio referri videretur. Quod si Hieronymus, vir doctissimus ac fidelissimus interpres, Apollinarisque et Origenes atque Eusebius et nonnulli alii narrationem Beli fictam esse affirmant, si eam Iudei in veteris instrumenti archetypo non agnoscunt, idest si doctissimi quique Latinorum, plerique Grecorum, singuli Hebreorum illam ut fabulam damnant, ego non hanc adumbratam ex illa damnabo, que nullius scriptoris auctoritate fulcitur et que magistram multo superat stultitia?” [translation modified]. The reference to Jerome is found in Commentariorum in Danielem libri III, ed. Franciscus Glorie (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 773, 774.
collected by the Dominican Jacopo da Voragine as the Golden Legend (Legenda aurea). This summa of Christian hagiography enjoyed incredible popularity, as is attested, among other things, by the omnipresent iconog- raphy of the Legenda Silvestri. In a gloss on Quintilian (on the same sec- tion of the Institutio oratoria referred to above: II.4.18), Valla writes about historia and fabula: “This can be found even in sacred things, like with regard to Susanna, to Tobias, to Judith; likewise in more recent accounts, like those of St. George and of others still, where there are many reasons for rejecting them.”133 To Valla, completely dedicated to falsifying the Constitutum and to demystifying the Donation of Constantine, the legend of Sylvester had to seem a sacred fiction, and one whose apocryphal elements had provided the founding paradigm for a Constantinian ecclesiology opposed to the Gospel. In fact, the legend’s infratextual relationship to the “document of donation” ends up establishing and defining the falseness of that “docu- ment.” That is to say, as the sacred fiction of the Legenda attacked the evangelical truth of the history of salvation (historia salutis) at its core, thus the Constitutum’s falseness threatened the foundation of the history of the church (historia ecclesiastica), understood as the historical develop- ment of the Christian community, sprung from and built on the Gospel. At this point, Valla expands his reflections to include the production of Christian literature and hagiography. It is obvious to him that the mytho- logical fiction used by pagan peoples to establish their own heroic and divine origins would also be taken up by Christians and applied, with an almost sacrilegious transposition, to their own origins. But, Valla asserts, the origins of the Christian people have their roots solely and exclusively in the revelation of the Gospel, which is the authentic “history of salva- tion.” There the heroic and the miraculous are God’s worldly presence in Christ and the Holy Spirit; hence the historical presence of the divine, in temporal affairs, which is only and always perceptible through “faith” (fides) in the mystery of the Incarnation. Thus Valla writes: We should be ashamed, we should be ashamed of this silliness and frivolity beyond anything in theatrical shows. A Christian, who calls himself a child of the truth and light [John 12:36], should blush to utter things that are not
133 Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7723, f.19v: “Hoc queri potest etiam in rebus sacris, ut de Susanna, de Tobia, de Iudit, item de historiis recentioribus, ut Sancti Georgii, ut aliorum multorum, ubi plura sunt argumenta ad improbandum.” [Camporeale’s reading of the manuscript differs slightly from that found in Lorenzo Valla, Le postille all’Institutio orato- ria di Quintiliano, eds. Lucia Cesarini Martinelli and Alessandro Perosa (Padova: Antenore, 1996). Eds.]
only not true, but not even plausible [see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, II.4]. ‘But,’ they say, ‘demons gained this power among the pagans to mock those who served the gods.’ Be quiet, you utterly ignorant people, not to say crimi- nals, who invariably draw a veil like this over your fabulae. Christian candor has no need to shelter under falsehood. It is defended enough and more than enough on its own through its light and truth without those lying and flashy tales that are profoundly insulting to God, to Christ, and to the Holy Spirit. Had God so turned over the human race to the will of demons that they would be seduced by such obvious, such imperious miracles, to such an extent that he could almost be accused of injustice for having entrusted sheep to wolves, and men would have a signal excuse for their errors? But if the demons had so much license before, they would have even more now among the infidels. We see that this is not at all the case, and no fabulae of this kind are advanced by them. I shall say nothing of other peoples: I shall speak about the Romans, among whom very few miracles are reported, and these both ancient and uncertain.134 It need arouse no wonder, Valla continues, that pre-Christian peoples cre- ated various myths about their origins and told their prehistory in epic language, where human actions are muddled with heroic and divine inter- vention. He reminds us of Livy’s statement that the traditions of extraordi- nary events concerning Rome’s origins, diversely found in ancient recorders of Roman affairs, must be used by historians to construct fables that will establish an epic version (epos) of the people’s roots. Historians must create a poetic (mythic) fiction of a past that has been lost in prehis- tory. Valla quotes two passages of Livy’s text: ‘This allowance is granted to antiquity, that by commingling the human with the divine it may make the origins of cities more grandiose,’ and else- where: ‘But in such ancient history I would be satisfied if whatever is like the truth be accepted as truth. All this is more suited to theatrical spectacle,
134 Valla, De falso, 147.15–148.18 (76): “Pudeat nos, pudeat harum neniarum et levitatis plus quam mimice, erubescat christianus homo, qui veritatis se ac lucis filium nominat, proloqui, que non modo vera non sunt, sed nec verisimilia. ‘At enim,’ inquiunt, ‘hanc demones potestatem in gentibus optinebant, ut eas diis servientes illuderent.’ Silete, imperitissimi homines, ne dicam sceleratissimos, qui fabulis vestris tale semper velamen- tum optenditis. Non desiderat sinceritas christiana patrocinium falsitatis, satis per se superque sua ipsius luce ac veritate defenditur sine istis commenticiis ac prestigiosis fabel- lis in Deum, in Christum, in Spiritum sanctum contumeliosissimis. Siccine Deus arbitrio demonum tradiderat genus humanum, ut tam manifestis, tam imperiosis miraculis sedu- cerentur? ut propemodum posset iniustitie, accusari, qui oves lupis commisisset, et homi- nes magnam errorum suorum haberent excusationem? Quod si tantum olim licebat demonibus et nunc apud infideles vel magis liceret, quod minime videmus, nec ulle ab eis huiusmodi fabule proferuntur. Tacebo de aliis populis, dicam de Romanis, apud quos pau- cissima miracula feruntur eaque vetusta atque incerta” (emphasis added) [translation modified].
which loves miraculous events, than to reliability, and it is not worthwhile either to affirm or refute it.’135 Valla approves of Livy’s “learning” (doctrina) and “weightiness” (gravitas) – as he does of that of Valerius Maximus and Varro – regarding the ancient fables that record the origins and prehistory of the Roman people. On the other hand, he feels the need to reject categorically the introduction of this kind of mythical and sacred fictionalization from the sphere of the pagan world into that of Christianity’s origins: But our own fabula-spinners indiscriminately bring in talking statues, about which pagans themselves and idolators say nothing. They repudiate such stories more strenuously than the Christians affirm them. Among pagans the very small number of miracles does not depend upon the trustworthi- ness of the authors but, as it were, upon a certain holy and venerable claim of antiquity. Among Christians relatively recent miracles are recounted, even though those who lived at that time knew nothing about them. I do not impugn admiration of the saints nor deny their divine works, since I know that as much faith as a mustard seed can move even mountains [Matt. 17:20]. On the contrary, I defend and protect those works, but I refuse to let them be con- fused with made-up stories. I cannot be persuaded that those writers were anything other than infidels, who did this in mockery of the Christians – to see if these fictions would be conveyed by treacherous men into the hands of the ignorant and accepted as true –, or believers aspiring to imitate God but without knowledge, men who were bold enough not only to write about deeds of the saints but to compose irresponsible pseudepigrapha on the Mother of God and Christ himself. The supreme pontiff calls these books Apocrypha, as if there were nothing wrong with an unknown author – as if the stories told were believable – as if they were sacred and served to strengthen religion, so that now whoever approves something bad is no less culpable than the person who made it up.136
135 Ibid., 149.14–20 (77): “‘Datur hec venia antiquitati, ut miscendo humana divinis pri- mordia urbium augustiora faciat,’ et alibi: ‘Sed in rebus tam antiquis, si qua similia veri sunt, pro veris accipiantur, satis habeam, hec ad ostentationem scene gaudentis miraculis aptiora quam ad fidem, neque affirmare neque refellere est opere pretium.’” [The passages of Livy are Pref. 7 and 5.21.9.] 136 Valla, De falso, 151.3–26 (78): “At vero nostri fabulatores passim inducunt idola loquentia, quod ipsi gentiles et idolorum cultores non dicunt et sincerius negant quam christiani affirmant. Apud illos paucissima miracula non fide auctorum, sed veluti sacra quadam ac religiosa vetustatis commendatione nituntur; apud istos recentiora quedam narrantur, que illorum homines temporum nescierunt. Neque ego admirationi sanctorum derogo nec ipsorum divina opera abnuo, cum sciam tantum fidei, quantum est granum sina- pis, montes etiam posse transferre. Immo defendo illa et tueor, sed misceri cum fabulis non sino. Nec persuaderi possum hos scriptores alios fuisse quam aut infideles, qui hoc agerent in derisum christianorum, si hec figmenta per dolosos homines in manus imperitorum delata acciperentur pro veris, aut fideles habentes quidem emulationem Dei, sed non secundum scientiam, qui non modo de gestis sanctorum, verum etiam Dei genitricis atque
The section of this passage in italics is one of extreme importance for Valla’s argument, which is aimed at determining the “truth of faith” (veri- tas fidei). Valla makes a crystal clear distinction between the “miracles” (miracula) or thaumaturgical events of the “pagans and idol worshipers” on the one hand, and the “divine works” (opera divina) or thaumaturgical events of the “saints” (sancti) on the other. The former belong without a doubt to a people’s heroic prehistory, to its mythical origins and epic nar- rative. The latter, on the other hand, are “works of faith” (opera fidei). They are events that occur in the context of the secular and spiritual history of the “church” (ecclesia) of the religious faithful, in formal and real continu- ity with the extraordinary interventions of the divine in the human and worldly sphere as they are reported in the Scriptures. The Scriptures report these thaumaturgical events as, and precisely because they are, “messianic signs” of the Incarnation of the divine (semeia-signa, according to the New Testament conception and linguistic usage of John). Or rather, the Scriptures report them as, and because they are, “extraordinary events” in the context of the history of salvation (terata-miracula, according to the conceptions and linguistic usage of the Synoptic Gospels). In this sense, Valla had already had occasion – in his Collatio137 of the New Testament (Matt. 7:22) – to define the thaumaturgi- cal events of the Scriptures as “miracles and works of divine power, which without love do no good.”138 Valla denies any intention whatsoever of detracting from the “admira- tion of the saints” with his criticism of traditional hagiography. Nor has he any desire to deny the saints’ admirable lives, inasmuch as they are held to be “divine works” (divina opera). He knows well, he affirms, that with even a mere mustard seed of evangelical “faith” (fides) everything is possible in the sphere of divine action and saving grace. Furthermore, precisely because he proposes to defend (tueri) this proposition, he can permit nei- ther himself nor others to transpose the “acts” (gesta) of the saints – and especially not those of Christ and Mary – from their authentic historical context to the unmerited one of hagiographic fabula and “apocryphal” adeo Christi improba quedam et pseudoevangelia scribere non reformidarunt. Et summus pontifex hos libros appellat apocryphos, quasi nihil vitii sit, nisi quod eorum ignoratur auc- tor; quasi credibilia sint, que narrantur; quasi sancta et ad confirmationem religionis perti- nentia, ut iam non minus culpe sit penes hunc, qui mala probat, quam penes illum, qui mala excogitavit” (emphasis added) [translation modified]. 137 [The Collatio Novi Testamenti (Collation of the New Testament) was an early version of the Adnotationes. Eds.] 138 Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, 38.11–12: “miracula et opera potentie divine, que sine caritate nil prosunt.”
writing. Moreover, such a transposition is motivated, in Valla’s view, either by anti-Christian “treachery” (dolus) or by the aspiration “to imitate God but without knowledge.” That is to say it would lack the kind of knowing that is proper to the believer, i.e. the scientia fidei (the “knowledge of faith,” or theology) promoted by Paul. Indeed, it was precisely this kind of igno- rance and perversion of evangelical faith, dating from the Middle Ages all the way back to ancient Christianity, that brought about both Jacopo da Voragine’s Legend of the Saints (Legenda sanctorum) and the apocryphal scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (the deuterocanonical books of the Old and the pseudoevangelia, or “pseudo-Gospels,” as Valla calls them, of the New). Valla writes all this – and we refer in particular to the last passage quoted above – for the express purpose of reviving a more authentic evan- gelism. He does so by criticizing on the one hand the promise of miracles found in the (strongly ideological) hagiography produced by ancient and medieval Christianity, and on the other hand the (specifically theologico- scholastic) conception of biblical and extra-biblical miracles as events or actions whose possibility is defined and measured in relation to their proximity to the laws of nature. In the admittedly wide and variegated sphere of scholasticism, miracles are understood as events beyond the laws of nature, and thus they are essentially (out-of-the-ordinary) supernatural occurrences. With his criti- cism of this conception of miracles, Valla seems to want to restore the “acts of the saints” and, first and foremost, the “divine works” of the Scriptures, to the biblical perspective of such events and actions as essen- tially divine and messianic signs. This can be formulated differently but still in line with what is, I believe, a correct interpretation of Valla’s dis- tinction between pagan heroic narrative and the scriptural narrative of the Judeo-Christian tradition. For Valla, once all is said and done, myth- epic is and always will be historia within the biblical and evangelical his- tory of salvation. In the context of paganism and the non-Christian religions, however, it was and remains essentially fabula. Thus we understand Valla’s deeper motive for censuring the papacy: it allowed the tradition of Christian hagiography to be replaced by the read- ing of texts outside the tradition of the Bible, such as the deuterocanonical books and the apocryphal Gospels. Valla acutely observes that the attribu- tion of apocryphal texts is purely mechanical and thus without any doctri- nal value – a point which in any case, he stresses, ought to have been expressed and defined somehow. In other words, the Magisterium ought to have clarified the nature of the difference, if not the conflict, between
139 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, lib. II, cap. 8 (PL 34: 40–41): “aequalis auctoritatis,” “in auctoritatem recipi meruerunt”; Jerome, Praefatio in libros Salomonis, PL 28:1241–1244, at 1243: “ad edificationem plebis, non ad authoritatem ecclesiasticorum dogmatum confir- mandam” (emphasis added). Cf. Camporeale, “Giovanmaria dei Tolosani,” 170–174 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 363–367).
He continues: We detect spurious coins, we separate them out and throw them away: shall we not detect spurious teaching, but rather hold on to it? Shall we mix it up with good teaching and defend it as good?140 Therefore the acceptance of apocryphal hagiographic literature into the religious tradition and into Christian piety corresponds, in Valla’s meta- phor, to putting counterfeit currency (nummos reprobos) into circulation. The creation of that literature, then, is to be compared to the act of coun- terfeiting money, which constitutes an almost fatal attack on the civil life of the community, since it corrodes the structure of commercial, eco- nomic, and social transactions. The sacred and hagiographic fictionaliza- tion of the apocryphal Gospels, of the Legenda Silvestri (including the Constitutum), and of the entire Golden Legend – together with their respec- tive author-forgers – is thus the coining of a linguistic usage that is, con- trary to its common appearance, illegal and false. Indeed, it is by its very nature a non-“scriptural” and “false” language, because it does not say the revealed truth. Worse still, it is the sheer reversal of the truth of the Scriptures and evangelical faith. The metaphor of language (and literature) as money is taken directly from Quintilian, who in his Institutio oratoria writes, “authoritative cus- tomary usage is the sure guide for speaking, and language is clearly to be used like money: as common currency.”141 Now, both Quintilian’s concep- tion of language as “authoritative customary usage” and his related meta- phor of “language as money” were first used explicitly by Valla, and at the same time revised by him, in the first version of the Repastinatio. There Valla quotes Quintilian’s text directly and modifies it by clarifying further the nature and function of language. Indeed, one could say – and we have argued as much elsewhere – that this passage from the Institutio provided the origin and foundation, chronologically as well as analytically and the- oretically, for the whole gnoseological and epistemological spectrum developed throughout the Repastinatio. Here we refer to Valla’s
140 Valla, De falso, 151.26–152.2 (78): “… et summus pontifex hos libros appellat apocry- phos, quasi nihil vitii sit, nisi quod eorum ignoratur auctor; quasi credibilia sint, que nar- rantur; quasi sancta et ad confirmationem religionis pertinentia, ut iam non minus culpe sit minus penes hunc [sc. pontificem], qui mala probat, quam penes illum [sc. auctorem], qui mala excogitavit. Nummos reprobos discernimus, separamus, abiicimus: doctrinam rep- robam non discernemus, sed retinebimus? sed cum bona miscebimus? sed pro bona defen- demus?” (emphasis added). 141 Institutio oratoria, I.6.3: “Consuetudo certissima est loquendi magistra, utendumque plane sermone ut nummo, cui publica forma est.”
nations and peoples, thus there are various languages, and among each their own is sacred and inviolate. This language is therefore sanctioned by the usage of the most reputable authors and by a kind of public approval of the people. It is treated like law and right. Later, in the second version of the Repastinatio (bk. 2, ch. 4), he would add: Nor should we accord any mercy to the jurists and theologians of our time, the dialecticians and philosophers who do not obey the words of their own discipline. Rather, with their debased manner of speaking they seem to have conspired and, like a group of daughter cities, to have sworn an oath against their own metropolis.142 In section IV of the Oration, Valla borrows Quintilian’s language-money metaphor in a similar way. Nevertheless, he deploys its terms for a differ- ent, specific end. In the Repastinatio, Valla has his eye on the counterfeit- ing of philosophical language in the realm of Aristotelian-scholastic speculation. Here in the Oration, he deploys the metaphor against a differ- ent kind of linguistic counterfeiting, one that is more properly ecclesiologi- cal and which took the form of sacred and hagiographic fictionalizations like the deuterocanonical books, the apocryphal Gospels, the legends of the saints, and thus also the Legenda Silvestri. An integral part of the Legenda is of course the Constitutum, the sacred fiction par excellence. For Valla, then, all parabiblical literature (of the New and Old Testaments) and all of medieval hagiography is “false money” that has been treacherously introduced into the civitas christiana. It constitutes the coining of a “vile and false” linguistic usage that is fatal to the church (ecclesia), which is founded on faith (fides) and pervaded by the language (sermo) of the Gospel. Such literature is the fruit of sacred, pseudo- evangelical story-telling and is thus of necessity a pseudo-ecclesiological language. Its most outstanding exemplar is the Constantinian language of the Constitutum. Thus Valla’s argument continues: For my part, to speak candidly, I deny that the Gesta Silvestri is apocryphal, because, as I have said, a certain Eusebius is alleged as author, but I consider
142 Valla, Repastinatio, 475 and 198: “[A consuetudine loquendi] siquis desciverit, non secus a choro litteratorum repellendus, quam legum morumque contemptor a civitate expellendus est. Et ut sunt varii mores varieque leges nationum ac populorum, ita varie linguarum, apud suos unaqueque intemerata et sancta. Hec itaque usu clarissimorum auc- torum et publico quasi populi consensu sancita, inter leges ac iura reponuntur”; “Quominus danda venia est iurisperitis ac theologis recentibus, dialecticisque ac philosophis nostris qui verba scientie sue non audiunt, sed in prave loquendo nescio quomodo conspiraver- unt et quasi diverse civitates in suam metropolim coniurarunt.”; Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 228ff.
it false and not worth reading, not only in other points but particularly in what is related about the dragon, the bull, and the leprosy, which I have done so much to refute. If Naaman was a leper, we shall not say straightaway that Constantine was too. Many authors have mentioned the former case, but about the latter, involving the ruler of the world, no one, not even one of his own citizens, has written, unless some foreigner did.143 Writings like the Actus beati Silvestri (whether including the “document of donation” or not), and even more so those which subsequently, according to Valla, make up the Legenda Silvestri, are without a doubt “false litera- ture.” As texts they are unfit for reading in the context of a Christian litur- gical assembly, especially (as attested by Pope Gelasius) in the liturgical assemblies of the Roman church. The hagiographies of Pope Sylvester are singularly false and unworthy, both – and above all – for what is said about Sylvester’s miraculous healing of Constantine’s leprosy, and for the con- nection they posit between the miracle, the emperor’s conversion to Christianity, and the donation. Here is the core of the fabula of Pope Sylvester and Constantine. Here is the foundation and the origin of the donation’s status as a legend. Here is the source from which springs Valla’s Oration, the source “which I have done so much to refute.” This sentence contains the key both to understanding Valla’s procedure and to reading his text. All in all, Valla’s thesis can be summed up as follows. The Donation of Constantine is a legend because it can be distilled to the legendary status or inauthentic account of Pope Sylvester’s miraculous healing and conver- sion of the emperor. And it was the sacred and hagiographic fictionaliza- tion about Pope Sylvester (the Legenda Silvestri) that simultaneously forged and contained the pseudo-Donation of Constantine. Let us now conclude by returning to our reading of this section of Valla’s discourse. It continues: But why should I be surprised that the pontiffs did not understand these things, when they are ignorant about their own name? They claim that Peter was called Cephas because he was the ‘head’ of the apostles, as if this word were Greek from kephalē, and not Hebrew or rather Syriac. The Greeks write Kēphas, ‘which’ among them ‘is translated as Petros’ [John 1:42] not ‘head.’
143 Valla, De falso, 152.3–12 (79): “Ego vero, ut ingenue feram sententiam, gesta Silvestri nego esse apocrypha, quia, ut dixi, Eusebius quidam fertur auctor, sed falsa atque indigna que legantur existimo, cum in aliis tum vero in eo, quod narratur de dracone, de tauro, de lepra, propter quam refutandam tanta repetii. Neque enim, si Naaman leprosus fuit, con- tinuo et Constantinum leprosus fuisse dicemus. De illo multi auctores meminerunt, de hoc principe orbis terrarum nemo ne suorum quidem civium scripsit, nisi nescio quis alien- igena” (emphasis added) [translation modified].
‘Petrus/Petra’ is a Greek word, and Petra is stupidly explained by a Latin ety- mology [of Balbi of Genoa] as meaning ‘trodden underfoot.’ The pontiffs distinguish a metropolitan from an archbishop and want [according to the etymology of Isidore] the former to be derived from the size of the city, although in Greek it is not ‘metropolis’ but mētropolis, that is – mother state or city. They [e.g., Isidore] explain patriarch as if ‘father of father,’ … and many other similar errors that I omit, lest I seem to be charging all the supreme pontiffs with the mistakes of some.144 In this final part of section IV, Valla shifts the focus of his critical analysis from the text of the Constitutum and its wider context in the Legenda Silvestri to the medieval grammarians and their etymology. Using a philo- logical procedure similar to that deployed in his Adnotationes on Livy and on the New Testament, Valla brings morphological and semantic analysis to bear on the grammar of medieval etymologies spanning from the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville (“the first and the most arrogant among the unlearned”) to the Catholicon of Balbi of Genoa (“the rather unlearned teachers Eberhard, Huguccio, the Catholicon, and Aymo, who profess to know nothing for a high fee”).145 As the hagiography of the Legenda established Constantinian ecclesiol- ogy for the purposes of the papacy’s imperial theocracy, thus medieval grammar later helped to nourish that same ecclesiology for the purposes of that very theocracy. As hagiography was a false coinage with the power to de-evangelize original ecclesiological language, thus that counterfeit currency was later recoined and defused by the “ideological etymology” of
144 Ibid., 153.3–154.6 (80) and Setz’s notes: “Sed quid mirer hec non intelligere ponti- fices, cum nomen ignorent suum: Cephas enim dicunt vocari Petrum, quia ‘caput’ apos- tolorum esset, tanquam hoc vocabulum sit Grecum apo tou kephalē et non Hebraicum seu potius Syriacum, quod Greci Kēphas scribunt, ‘quod apud eos interpretatur Petrus,’ non ‘caput’. Est enim ‘Petrus’ et ‘petra’ Grecum vocabulum stulteque per etymologiam Latinam exponitur ‘petra quasi pede trita.’ Et metropolitanum ab archiepiscopo distinguunt vol- untque illum a mensura civitatis dictum, cum Grece dicatur non ‘metropolis’, sed mētropolis, idest mater civitas sive urbs; et patriarcham quasi ‘patrem patrum,’ … et multa alia similia, que transeo, ne culpa aliquorum omnes summos pontifices videar insectari.” [Valla does not himself identify the etymologists he attacks in his text; their names have been supplied here in square brackets from Setz’s apparatus. Eds.] See also Francisco Rico, Nebrija frente a los bárbaros. El canon de gramáticos nefastos en la polémica del humanismo (Salamanca: Universidad, 1978), 22–27. 145 [Valla, Elegantiae, book II, preface: “primus … indoctorum arrogantissimus”; “indoc- tiores Hebrardus, Hugutio, Catholicon, Aymo … magna mercede docentes nihil scire.” Eugenio Garin, Prosatori latini del quattrocento (Milano: R. Ricciardi, 1952), 602, n. 1, identi- fies three of the teachers and texts as Ebehrard of Bethune, Graecismsus, Huguccio of Pisa, Magnae derivationes, and Giovanni Balbi of Genoa, Catholicon. Aymo might refer to Nicola de Aymo, whose Interrogatorio (1444) was a Latin-vernacular grammar; see La grammatica latino-volgare di Nicola de Aymo (Lecce, 1444), ed. Maria d’Enghien (Galatino: Congedo, 2008). Eds.]
146 Nancy Struever, “Fables of Power,” Representations 4 (1983): 108–127.
enormous proportions that it results in an almost total subversion of the Gospel and of original Christianity. The final lines of section IV thus serve as both a concise summation of the section and an opening strike for the next (section V): Let these points be made, so that no one may wonder why many popes were unable to grasp that the Donation of Constantine was a forgery, even though in my opinion this deception originated with one of them.147
7. Section V: From the Pactum Hludovicianum to the respublica romana; Valla’s Anti-Caesarism in Opposition to Augustine
In section V Valla deals with the Pactum Hludovicianum. Although admit- ting its historical authenticity, he gradually scrapes away the layers of its juridical and canonical validity until it flakes off into a flurrying mass of contradictions. Once again, Valla employs his usual method: he focuses his historico-critical analysis on the internal antinomies which make up the textual structure of the Hludovicianum. Then he turns to the historical and pseudo-juridical consequences resulting from the ratification of the so-called Pactum. Let us consider, for example, Valla’s analysis of its formulas for the oaths sworn by the emperors upon their coronation at the hands of the Roman popes, a practice still alive and well in his own day. This reference to imperial oaths provides the point of departure for Valla’s argument across the whole of section V: ‘But,’ you say, ‘why do the emperors not deny the Donation of Constantine, since it worked to their detriment, instead of acknowledging, affirming, and preserving it?’ Substantial point – marvelous defense! But which emperor are you talking about? If you mean the Greek, who was the true emperor, I shall deny the admission, but if you mean the Latin, I shall gladly admit it. For who is unaware that the Latin emperor was gratuitously installed by a supreme pontiff, Stephen [Stephen II, 752–757] (I believe)? He stripped the power of the Greek emperor because he would not come to the aid of Italy, and he named a Latin one, with the result that the emperor received more from the Pope than the Pope from the emperor. To be sure, Achilles and Patroclus divided up the treasures of Troy according to certain arrange- ments among themselves alone. The words of Louis [Louis the Pious, 814–840] seem to me to point to this sort of thing, when he says …
147 Valla, De falso, 154.7–155.2 (81): “Hec dicta sint, ut nemo miretur, si donationem Constantini commenticiam fuisse pape multi non potuerunt deprehendere, tam et si ab aliquo eorum ortam esse hanc fallaciam reor.”
Hereupon follows the text of the Hludovicianum (as found in Gratian’s Decretum, Dist. LXIII, cap. 30), which is glossed in the margin of the Oration as “The text of Emperor Louis’ pact with Pope Paschal [Paschal I, 817–824].”148 Valla’s reply to the arguments of his imaginary interlocutor, who defends the Constantinian right of the papacy, develops against the back- ground of what we could call the praxis of the pseudo-Constitutum’s his- torical use and the curial theorization of that praxis. Let it suffice to recall here the writings of a pope like Innocent III, to whom Valla refers explic- itly and implicitly throughout the Oration: specifically the bull Per venera- bilem of 1202, in which the papacy, acting on its own authority, transfers the “Roman Empire” from the Greeks to the Germans in the person of Charlemagne, and his Sermo de sancto Silvestro, a peculiarly Innocentian interpretation of how the pseudo-donation occurred.149
7.1. The Hludovicianum and the “Transfer of the Empire” (translatio imperii) The pope transfers the empire to the Latin emperor on the authority of the pseudo-Donation. In exchange the neo-Latin emperor swears “to confess and reconfirm him by perpetuating” the pseudo-Constantinian imperial act. Behold, Valla comments, underlining the historical and juridical absurdity, how the pope and emperor “divide up” the Roman empire (like Achilles and Patroclus with the spoils of Troy). It is a vicious circle: the pope creates the emperor, and the emperor repays him by reproposing the Constantinian act of donation, by virtue of which the pope then actualizes the “transfer of the empire”! This means, according to Valla, that
148 Ibid., 155.4–156.5 (82) and Setz’s notes: “‘At,’ dicitis, ‘cur imperatores, quorum detri- mento res ista cedebat, donationem Constantini non negant, sed fatentur, affirmant, con- servant?’ Ingens argumentum, mirifica defensio! Nam de quo tu loqueris imperatore? Si de Greco, qui verus fuit imperator, negabo confessionem, sin de Latino, libenter etiam con- fitebor: etenim quis nescit imperatorem Latinum gratis factum esse a summo pontifice, ut opinor, Stephano? qui Grecum imperatorem, quod auxilium non ferret Italie, privavit Latinumque fecit, ita ut plura imperator a papa quam papa ab imperatore acciperet. Sane Troianas opes quibusdam pactionibus soli Achilles et Patroclus inter se partiti sunt. Quod etiam mihi videntur indicare Ludovici verba, cum ait ….” Valla’s marginal manuscript heading (156.6.): “Verba pactionis Lodoici imperatoris cum Papa Paschale.” 149 The Sermo de sancto Silvestro can be found in PL 217:481–484 (= Sermo VII. In festo d. Silvestri pontificis maximi); it is referred to by Martini, “Regale Sacerdotium,” 141. It is difficult to prove that Valla knew Innocent’s text, but a comparative reading of section IV of the Oration and the Sermo shows that the same nodal points of the Constitutum/Legenda Silvestri are highlighted in each, and that from them the pope and Valla reach diametrically opposed conclusions. It seems as if Valla intends his critical and historico-philological analysis as a direct, point-for-point response to Innocent III’s Sermo.
the negotiation between pope and neo-emperor is rather a pact of “collu- sion” meant to appropriate the Roman empire for themselves. What is more, this “pact” was agreed upon in contempt of every norm of civil (Justinianic) law. Thus what we have is a legal absurdity contracted by parties who ought to have been the guarantors of civil law. The parties (the pope and emperor) to this negotiation-collusion, therefore, which was effected against all civil and natural law, ought to have paid the pen- alty stipulated by Roman law for “forgers”: capital punishment.150 Similar to section I, where Valla made use of characters arguing diverse points of view, here he has the emperor Louis the Pious argue his own case and defend his behavior towards the pope. ‘But what am I going to do?’ you say, ‘Shall I recover by armed force what the Pope is holding? But he has now become more powerful than I am. Shall I recover it by legal action? But my legal right is no more than he wants it to be. I did not come to the empire by inheritance, but by an agreement that if I wanted to be emperor I should make various promises to the Pope in return. Shall I say that Constantine gave away nothing of his empire? In that way I would be making a case for the Greek emperor and would be cheating myself of all imperial rank. The Pope’s rationale in making me emperor is that I am, as it were, his vicar, and if I fail to make promises he will not do this, and if I fail to obey he will depose me. As long as he gives to me, I shall admit to anything, I will agree to anything. Only believe me – if I actually owned Rome and Tuscany, I would not be acting as I am now. Paschal would be chanting in vain the tune of the Donation, since I consider it a forgery. It is not my business to look into the legal rights of the Pope, but it is the business of the emperor of Constantinople.’ You are altogether forgiven in my eyes, Louis, and every other ruler in your position.151 This is the tone of the emperor’s self-defense in justification of the Pactum Hludovicianum. And Valla’s reference to the pseudo-Constitutum’s
150 Valla, De falso, 156.16–157.7 (82), with Setz’s commentary and notes. 151 Ibid., 157.7–158.6 (82–83): “‘Sed quid faciam,’ inquies, ‘repetam armis, que papa occu- pat? At ipse iam factus est me potentior. Repetam iure? At ius meum tantum est quantum ille esse voluit. Non enim hereditario nomine ad imperium veni, sed pacto, ut si imperator esse volo hec et hec invicem pape promittam. Dicam nihil donasse ex imperio Constantinum? At isto modo causam agerem Greci imperatoris et me omni fraudarem imperii dignitate. Hac enim ratione papa se dicit facere imperatorem me quasi quendam vicarium suum et, nisi promittam, non facturum et, nisi paream, me abdicaturum. Dummodo mihi det, omnia fatebor, omnia paciscar. Mihi tamen crede, si Romam ego ac Tusciam possiderem, tantum abest, ut facerem que facio, ut etiam frustra mihi Pascalis donationis – sicut reor false – caneret cantilenam. Nunc concedo, que nec teneo nec habiturum esse me spero. De iure pape inquirere non ad me pertinet, sed ad Constantinopolitanum illum Augustum.’ Iam apud me excusatus es Ludovice, et quisquis alius princeps es Ludovici similis” (emphasis added).
exactly the same juridical pretensions that underpinned the papacy, it had always been constitutionally invalid and juridically contradictory. Such was still the case in Valla’s own time: What must we suspect about the agreements that other emperors have made with supreme pontiffs, when we know what Sigismund [1410–1437] did, an otherwise excellent and very courageous man, and yet less coura- geous under the impact of his age? We saw him [keep in mind Valla’s sojourn during that period in Milan152] in Italy encompassed by just a few retainers and living from day to day, about to die of starvation in Rome if Eugenius had not given him food – but at the price of extorting the Donation. When he had come to Rome to be crowned emperor of the Romans, he could not have been crowned by the Pope [Eugenius IV, 1431–1447] without acknowledging the validity of the Donation of Constantine and making a donation of every- thing all over again.153 After placing the Pactum Hludovicianum in its effective historical context, Valla penetrates further to its specifically juridical meaning in relation- ship to the pseudo-donation. He focuses ever more closely on its juridical aspect in order to bring to light the mass of contradictions of which the Pactum had been the bearer. Ultimately he lays bare a dense synchronicity of historical factors and juridical elements in conflict with one other, thus exposing the document’s intrinsic contradictoriness and therefore its structural non-validity and juridical falsity. If indeed, Valla says, the donation of the empire to the papacy were historically true, there would have been nothing left for Constantine’s eventual successor in the West. The resulting paradox is that the newly (papally) elected (German) emperor of the West is bound to reconfirm, and even to reiterate, Constantine’s act of donating the empire to the papacy. He must donate something that he does not yet possess but that he will obtain by means of his late election by the pope! Even more para- doxical, the very newly (papally) elected (German) emperor must reiter- ate Constantine’s act in order to reconfirm and reconstitute the papacy’s
152 [Sigismund received the iron crown of Lombardy in Milan on 25 November 1431, after which he entered into negotiations with Eugenius IV to be crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Eds.] 153 Valla, De falso, 158.6–16 (83), and Setz’s notes: “Quid de aliorum imperatorum cum summis pontificibus pactione suspicandum est, cum sciamus quid Sigismundus fecerit, princeps alioquin optimus ac fortissimus, sed iam affecta etate minus fortis? quem per Italiam paucis stipatoribus septum in diem vivere vidimus, Rome etiam fame periturum, nisi eum – sed non gratis, extorsit enim donationem – Eugenius pavisset. Is enim cum Romam venisset, ut pro imperatore Romanorum coronaretur, non aliter a papa coronari potuit, quam Constantini donationem ratam haberet eademque omnia de integro donaret” (empha- sis added).
154 Ibid., 158.16–160.7 (83–84), and Setz’s notes: “Quid magis contrarium quam pro imperatore Romano coronari, qui Rome ipsi renuntiasset? et coronari ab illo, quem et con- fiteatur et, quantum in se est, dominum Romani imperii faciat? ac ratam habere donatio- nem, que vera si sit nihil imperatori de imperio reliqui fiat? Quod, ut arbitror, nec pueri fecissent. Quo minus mirum, si papa sibi arrogat Cesaris coronationem, que populi Romani esse deberet. Si tu, papa, et potes Grecum imperatorem privare Italia provinciisque occi- dentis et Latinum imperatorem facis, cur pactionibus uteris? cur bona Cesaris partiris? cur in te imperium transfers? Quare sciat, quisquis est, qui dicitur imperator Romanorum, me iudice se non esse nec Augustum nec Cesarem nec imperatorem, nisi Rome imperium teneat, et, nisi operam det, ut urbem Romam recuperet, plane esse periurum. Nam Cesares illi priores, quorum fuit primus Constantinus, non adigebantur iusiurandum interponere, quo nunc Cesares obstringuntur: se quantum humana ope prestari protest, nihil imminu- turos esse de amplitudine imperii Romani eamque sedulo adaucturos. Non ea re tamen
As pointed out by Setz in his magisterial commentary to Valla’s text, the italicized section of this passage is Valla’s explicit reference to the formula (ordo) of the oath that the new Western “Augustus” was bound to swear at his crowning by the pope. That formula for the emperor’s oath to the papacy, already in force in the thirteenth century and still in use at the time of Valla’s writing in the fifteenth, was in reality supposed to be the reiterated, historical reconfirmation of the Pactum Hludovicianum’s pre- sumed legitimacy and validity. The papacy thus considered the Pactum in its turn as the witness to the pseudo-Constitutum’s historical truth and juridical validity. And thus we arrive back at the specific foundation of the ecclesiology and related political (civil, ecclesiastical, and territorial) praxis of the Constantinian tradition. Following Valla’s line of thought, it was this Constantinian ecclesiology and praxis that, thanks to the scholasticism and canon law of the time, had nearly achieved the status of dogma in Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam of 1302: So you see that the worse the supreme pontiff, the more he insists on defend- ing this donation. Such was Boniface the Eighth …. He writes about the Donation of Constantine and despoiled the king of France, whose very king- dom he decreed to have been and to be subject to the Roman church, just as if he had wanted to implement the Donation of Constantine.155 The formula for the emperor’s oath, which he was bound to swear in obe- dience to the pope as his candidate, did not just have its (pseudo-)juridical foundation in the Constitutum. It first and foremost took from that docu- ment the notion and the politics of the imperialism that was created by the Roman Caesars and brought to perfection by Constantine in the fourth century. Valla makes this point with an aside on classical syntagmas, which seems to be a mere erudite digression but actually serves as a prem- ise to what is argued later in the final pages of section V. At stake is the etymology of the word augustus as either coming “from augmenting tem- poral resources” (ab augendo temporalia) or as meaning “sacred, so to
vocati Augusti, quod imperium augere deberent – ut aliqui sentiunt Latine lingue imperiti – est enim Augustus quasi ‘sacer’ ab avium gustu dictus, que in auspiciis adhiberi solebant …. Melius summus pontifex ab augendo Augustus diceretur, nisi quod, dum tem- poralia auget, spiritualia minuit” (emphasis added). 155 Ibid., 160.7–161.4 (84), and Setz’s notes and commentary: “Itaque videas, ut quisquis pessimus est summorum pontificum, ita maxime defendende huic donationi incumbere, qualis Bonifacius octavus …. Hic et de donatione Constantini scribit et regem Francie pri- vavit regnumque ipsum, quasi donationem Constantini exequi vellet, ecclesie Romane fuisse et esse subiectum iudicavit ….”
156 In addition to Setz’s note 438, see: Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900-), vol. 2, augustus, 1379–1413, at 1379–1392; ibid., vol. 2, augur, 1363–1367; Alois Walde, Lateinisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1910), augeo, 73, augur, 73f.; Giannelli Mazzarino, Trattato di storia romana, 49.
extension – all to the detriment of its particular (evangelical) spiritual dimension. This was only made possible because the donation rewarded the papacy with imperial Rome. So the papacy could not effect the transfer of an empire that did not belong to it, since the donation of Constantine never occurred. And the German emperor could not swear to renew the donation, since nothing can be “reconfirmed” that never actually happened to begin with. Finally, both the Roman pope and the German emperor end up having been “deceived by the example of Constantine,” who with his gift of the empire to the papacy would have conferred something that did not belong to him. For he, just like the other Caesars before him, had come upon imperium illicitly. But, Roman pontiffs, what is the meaning of that anxiety of yours in demand- ing that the Donation of Constantine be confirmed by one emperor after another, unless you mistrust your own legal authority? But, as the saying goes, you are washing a brick. For that donation never existed, and what does not exist cannot be confirmed. Whatever the Caesars give, they do because they are deceived by the example of Constantine. They are unable to give the empire.157
7.2. From imperium to respublica: The “Second Part” of Section V Up to this point in section V, Valla has discussed the Pactum Hludovicianum with special reference to its juridical non-validity. This non-validity, he argues, was derived from the historical inauthenticity of the Constitutum – itself demonstrated on historico-philological grounds in section IV, and on historico-theoretical grounds in section I. Furthermore, the Pactum’s non- validity highlighted how the papacy’s “transfer of the empire” to the German West had no foundation, either historically or juridically. Now Valla’s argumentation indicates a further and definitive turn in his spiral-shaped discourse. It can be best understood by recalling briefly the conclusions reached in section I. Throughout that section, Valla had con- centrated his argument on the impossibility of the fact of the donation. If it had actually occurred, it would have necessarily brought about a contra- diction between both the nature and the historical reality of (Roman and
157 Valla, De falso, 161.6–12 (85): “Verum quid sibi vult ista vestra, pontifices Romani, sol- licitudo, quod a singulis imperatoribus donationem Constantini exigitis confirmari, nisi quod iuri diffiditis vestro? Sed laterem lavatis, ut dicitur, nam neque illa unquam fuit, et quod non est, confirmari non potest, et quicquid donant Cesares, decepti exemplo Constantini faciunt, et donare imperium nequeunt” (emphasis added).
Constantinian) imperium, and the nature and the historical reality of evangelium (understood as the faith and practice of the early Christian community and Pope Sylvester’s evangelical vicariate of Christ). Therefore, the (real and ideological) historical dimensions of both Roman imperium and Christian evangelium demand that the Donation of Constantine be considered a factual impossibility. This assumption about the donation’s factual impossibility is now taken up again in what we can call the “second part” of section V. But here it is used to change, if not to invert, both what the donation signifies (its segno) and what it means (its senso) in Valla’s argument. What the donation sig- nifies is inverted, because its factual impossibility here becomes its real, historical possibility. What the donation means is inverted, because its referent is no longer the forger of the Constitutum (the Legend of Sylvester) but the shift to “Christian empire” that took place in the fourth century – the shift initiated by Constantine and completed by Theodosius I. Valla manages to change what the donation signifies – transforming its factual impossibility into its real, historical possibility – by hypothesizing for the sake of argument that Constantine’s donation to Pope Sylvester actually did occur. All right, let us suppose that Constantine gave and Sylvester was … in pos- session …. What more can I grant you than to concede that what never existed and could not have existed, did exist?158 But, Valla proceeds, if the donation was effectively actuated, it becomes an historical transaction against “divine” and “human law,” both for the emperor and for the pope. By divine law (ius divinum) Valla understands the Sacred Scriptures, the Torah, and the Gospel, as we shall see further on in his own terms. By human law (ius humanum) he understands the natu- ral law deriving from the distinguishing quality (in the animal world) of humanitas (humanity), as well as the law of nations, which also descends from the peculiar nature of humanitas. More precisely, the law of nations is a norm of inter-human relations that corresponds to the essence of humanitas and emerges in the historical process whereby human beings create the civitas. In that moment, man, who is an animal liberum (free animal), reaches his potential and achieves the status of an animal politi- cum (political animal).
158 Ibid., 162.1–6 (86): “Age vero, demus Constantinum donasse Silvestrumque … pos- sedisse …. Quid possum vobis magis dare, quam ut ea, que nec fuerunt nec esse potuerunt, fuisse concedam?”
To get the measure of divine law, Valla scans the Scriptures and runs through the history of salvation as found in the Old and New Testaments. To understand natural law and the law of nations, he reconsiders Roman history, from the republic to the empire. Valla does not argue by means of theoretical and philosophical analysis. That is, he does not use the analyti- cal methods of “philosophy,” as he defines the term. Rather, and in confor- mity with the procedure of rhetorical discourse, he unfolds his argument along the lines of explicitly historical considerations. His method is to rethink the history of salvation and the history of Rome as a unified whole.159 Valla’s discourse proceeds in short stints and makes direct reference to – indeed it mirrors – Augustine’s historical reflections in books IV and V of his City of God. This reference to Augustine was, incidentally, as unavoid- able for Valla as it is unmistakable for his readers. Indeed, Valla explicitly cites a particular passage of Augustine’s text. We shall have more to say about this later. For now let us consider the following. In books IV and V of the City of God, Augustine reflects on Roman his- tory from a Christian perspective. He is especially interested in the origins of the Republic and the formation of the Roman Empire. Augustine con- siders the following issues in particular: the evolution and/or fall of the republic in the context of its own ethical and political dimensions and also of diverse historical situations; the expansion of Roman rule and the transformation of the republic into an empire as a result of the military, territorial, and political conquest of other peoples; the Roman empire’s move towards Christianity with the coming of Constantine. His treat- ment, which comes from an historico-Christian standpoint, is highly origi- nal and critical, and it was just as formative for medieval ecclesiology. For Augustine, the territorial and political expansion of Rome, as well as the perverted imposition of its rule across the centuries up to the point of becoming an empire, are the result of a double order of factors. And although they are dissimilar – indeed they stand on opposite sides of good and evil – they nevertheless remain strictly complementary in the (both teleologically and theologically) “providential” economics of history. According to one way of seeing things, Augustine attributes the expan- sion of Roman rule to the “pride” (superbia) and the “will to power” of the Roman people, which were sustained by military heroism and the desire
159 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 222; idem, “Lorenzo Valla tra Medioevo e Rinascimento,” passim (reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controri- forma, 121–330 and translated in the present volume, 145–296).
7.3. From Valla to Augustine: The Critique of the City of God Valla contrasts his own reflection on Roman history with that of Augustine by means of a point-by-point critique. He begins with the fundamental premises of the City of God and continues through Augustine’s entire discourse.
160 [I.e., the “Catholic religion,” but with the the understanding that catholicus connotes universality and orthodoxy. Eds.] 161 Cf. Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo. A Biography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 287–328.
Before continuing further, it is necessary to clarify more precisely this observation on the comparison between Valla and Augustine. First of all, the comparison is here made within the context of Valla’s reading of Augustine (in this specific case, of the City of God) and thus according to the interpretation given by Valla to Augustine’s works (both in the Oration and in other writings, such as, for example, De libero arbitrio). Second, we cannot ignore the more or less evident fact that Valla’s critique of Augustine takes place on two levels. If on the one hand Valla calls into question the “providential” premise of Augustine’s historical vision, on the other he adopts Augustine’s trenchant criticism of Rome and of Roman imperial expansion. Thus Valla’s reading of the City of God is at once one of consent and of dissent, but on different levels. On the historiographic level, the condemnation of Roman rule and power is accepted in nearly the same terms as in Augustine’s formulation. On the theological level, however, Augustine’s “providential” resolution of Roman imperialism is rejected and substantially attacked. This resolution had subsequently been adopted and unduly expanded by scholastic theoreticians of so-called “just war,” and Valla’s critique of Augustine is aimed equally at them. In Valla’s historiographic retrospective, there is no justification for the military and territorial expansion undertaken by Rome during its transfor- mation from republic to empire. This applies both to the political realm, in the domain of human law, and to the historical one, in its teleological and “providential” dimensions. Valla supports his position in the follow- ing ways. First, he argues that only a war for the defense of a community or a state has the possibility of being justified. If, however, a defensive war should turn into a war of conquest, and thus result in the rule (imperium) of another community or state, it would be transformed into an “injustice.” It would become unjust with regard to natural law and the law of nations as well as in relation to man as an animal liberum and animal politicum. Second, the origins of the empire and its expansion – from Caesar to Augustus, and thence to their successors down to Constantine – lie in the “oppression” and then definitive extinction of the Roman respublica, the civitas founded on the Senatus Populusque Romanus, the Senate and the Roman People. For Valla, when Rome became an empire, the original and authentic sense of what it meant to be Roman – Romanitas, the life of “free” men and “citizens” in a political community – disappeared forever. Finally, Augustine sees the coming of Constantine as the acme of Roman history. The Roman world achieves its “providential” destiny and becomes the civilizational seedbed for the historical planting of the
Christian religion. For Valla, however, the Constantinian “revolution” takes on a meaning of equal historical importance—but one that is diametri- cally opposed to that assumed by Augustine. His reasoning is as follows. In the fourth century, from Constantine to Theodosius and his immediate successors, the religio catholica takes on a particularly imperial aspect. There is one state and one universal juridical system in the Roman world, through which, on the one hand, Christianity becomes the supreme and statutory religion for the whole Roman Empire. On the other hand, the cult of the gods of Rome decays into a pagan superstition (superstitio gen- tilium) practiced by those “who,” according to the Theodosian Code, “impi- ously defile themselves with the error or the crime of a pagan rite.”162 The result of all this, however, in Valla’s historical retrospective, was the rup- ture, if not the historical fall, of the Gospel and of the Community of Believers in Christ. Let us rephrase this in Valla’s own terms. As the rise of the empire was made possible by the Caesars’ suppression of the Roman respublica, thus the fourth-century construction of the Christian empire was enabled by the fall, or at least the demotion, of the evangelical ecclesia, i.e. of the respublica christiana. This historical fall brought with it the repudiation of primeval Christianity, which had been in accordance with its evangelical origins. Evangelium is the direct antithesis of any kind of imperium. And the Christian faith (fides), by its nature (just like every other religious or secular faith) cannot be imposed by legislative decree or by violating the human freedom of consent. Nor can it be sucked into the juridical and political quagmire of ruling by the use of force (imperare ac vim afferre), in whatever way that occurs. As stated earlier, Valla gives a further turn to his discourse in the second part (the final pages) of section V. He hypothetically accepts that the donation actually occurred, and he takes advantage of this hypothesis to proceed from the donation’s absolute (historical and theoretical) impos- sibility, as argued in section I, to its factual (real, historical) possibility in section V. The “cause” of Valla’s argument comes to signify something dif- ferent in the transition from section I to section V: it shifts from the abso- lute impossibility of the donation to its hypothetical possibility. It also changes its meaning, for the referent of the Constitutum is no longer the forger of the “document of donation,” the fantastic and ahistorical Legenda Silvestri, but the fourth century of the Christian era.
162 Codex Theodosianus XVI.x.21 – 20 August 399: “qui profano pagani ritus errore seu crimine polluntur.” Cf. Storoni Mazzolani, Sant’Agostino e i pagani, 112ff.
Acutely grasping this new referential meaning of the Constitutum, Valla uses the tools of critical philology to tease out the more historical and authentic dimensions of the “document of donation.” Going well beyond the forging of the Constitutum, Valla rediscovers the real, historical roots of the “document.” That is, he finally penetrates to a context that is truer and more authentic, more properly befitting the Constitutum: he identifies the place where the ideological text was first composed and thus the his- torical moment of the founding of its ecclesiology. But now the “Donation of Constantine” – understood as the Constantinian revolution of the fourth century – is no longer a fabula, like the forger’s Legenda Silvestri or like the Lateran’s curial ideology. On the contrary, the “forged Donation of Constantine” is a proper historia: the Historia Ecclesiastica as recorded by Eusebius of Caesarea and Rufinus. Thus, in the final pages of the fifth section, as if rounding the last switch- back on the winding road of his argument, Valla’s Oration reaches its des- tination at the radical critique – at once philological and ecclesiological – of the conversion of the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity. The Oration ends as a criticism and an outright rejection of the Constantinian shift, understood on the one hand as the historical fall of the Gospel and primeval Christianity, and on the other as the origin and foundation of Western Christianity by means of the “transfer of the empire” to the pope in Rome. Thus, moreover, the hypothesis about the Constitutum, which was assumed but never formally conceded, is trans- formed in the course of the argument into a statement regarding the real, historical effectuality of the fourth-century rise of the Constantinian Church. It is also transformed into an effective criticism of Constantinian ecclesiology, portrayed with its origins in the City of God and then as fully theorized and re-elaborated, in a more or less systematic and partially dis- tinct way, by scholastic theology and canon law. For the purposes of substantiating what has been said so far, let us carry out as precise an exegesis as possible of this part of the Oration, the final pages of section V. All right, let us suppose that Constantine gave and Sylvester was at one time in possession, but that later either he himself or one of his successors was removed from possession … – thus Valla introduces his hypothesis about the donation’s factual possi- bility – Even so, I say that neither divine nor human law enables you to effect a recovery.
[1] In the Old Testament a Hebrew was forbidden to be a slave to a Hebrew for more than six years [Deut. 15:12], and also every fifty years everything returned to its original owner [Lev. 25:10ff.]; [2] In the age of grace shall a Christian be oppressed in eternal slavery by the vicar of Christ, who redeemed us from slavery? What should I say: will he be recalled to slavery [Gal. 2:4] after he has been made free and long enjoyed his freedom?163 The final phrase (in italics) contains Valla’s most explicit statement on christiana libertas, which for him is the pivot on which the entire structure of the Oration hinges. It is from this point that it gains its force against the Donation of Constantine and the related ecclesial ideology developed by the papacy and scholasticism. Valla uses human and divine law to sub- stantiate this notion of freedom and to show its deepest foundations. As for divine law, he first cites the orders of the Torah: personal servitude of whatever kind had to be dissolved every sixth year, and every fiftieth year all property (in whatever way acquired) had to be returned to its origi- nal owner. The consequence is implicit but clear: even the “acceptance” of the Donation – whose authenticity was assumed for the sake of argument in section II – had to be subject to these Old Testament ordinances. Moving on to the divine law of the New Testament, which is fundamen- tally an economics of saving grace, Valla depicts the Donation in all its absurdity. The Donation is revealed to be the absolute negation of christi- ana libertas and to stand in extreme antithesis to Paul’s teaching in the Letter to the Galatians. By accepting the Donation of Constantine, the “vicar of Christ” ends up claiming a (spiritual and political) “slavery” for Christians “in the age of grace.” That is, in the age of the economics of sal- vation he would reduce Christians to the (spiritual and political) subjec- tion of a slave – after they had been redeemed and returned to freedom by Christ himself: “he has been made free and long enjoyed his freedom.” Whence flow the historical consequences of the papal and Roman “priesthood’s” “barbaric” exercise of power and rule: I keep quiet about how savage, how violent, how barbarous the domination of priests often is. If this was unknown previously, it has recently been
163 Valla, De falso, 162.1–14 (86): “Age vero, demus Constantinum donasse Silvestrumque aliquando possedisse, sed postea vel ipsum vel aliquem successorum a possessione deiec- tum …. Tamen dico vos nec iure divino nec iure humano ad recuperationem agere posse. [1] In lege veteri Hebreus supra sextum annum Hebreo servire vetabatur, et quinquag- esimo quoque anno omnia redibant ad pristinum dominum; [2] tempore gratie Christianus a vicario Christi, redemptoris nostre servitutis, premetur servitio eterno? quid dicam, revocabitur ad servitutem, postquam liber factus est diuque potitus libertate?” (empasis added) [translation modified].
recognized from that depraved monster, Giovanni Vitelleschi, cardinal and patriarch, who wearied the sword, by which Peter had cut off the ear from Malchus, with the blood of Christians. This is the sword by which he too died.164 This “domination of priests” then deteriorated into an absolute “tyranny” over the Christian community. As a result the priesthood lost all the apos- tolic authority and the status as vicariate of Christ to which it had been ordained. It follows that such a priesthood could be deposed or repudi- ated by the Christian community in the name of the Gospel: Did the people of Israel truly have permission to revolt from the house of David and Solomon, whom prophets sent by God had anointed, because their burdens were overwhelming? Did God approve what they did [cf. 1 Kings, 12:24], while we in the face of such tyranny will not have permission to revolt, especially from those who are not kings and cannot be, and from those who were shepherds of sheep – that is, of souls – and have become thieves and robbers [cf. John 10:1f.]?165 Having completed his critique of the Donation and of Constantinian ecclesiology in the light of divine law (the Torah and the Gospel), Valla turns to discussing the Donation and its corresponding ecclesiastical ide- ology on the basis of human law: To turn to human law, who is unaware that there is no legal right conferred by war, or, if there is, it has force only so long as you are in possession of what you gained by war? For when you lose possession, you have lost your legal claim. That is why no one customarily goes to court to recover captive prisoners if they have escaped. The same is true of booty, if the former owners have recov- ered it. Bees and certain other kinds of flying creatures cannot be recovered if they have flown away a considerable distance from my private property and settled in someone else’s [cf. Dig. 43,1,3]. When it comes to human beings – not only free creatures but masters over others – will you try to reclaim through legal action those who have asserted their freedom by force and weapons, just as a person would do to reclaim his cattle, and not by force and weapons?166
164 Ibid., 162.14–163.2 (86) and Setz’s note 448: “Sileo, quam sevus, quam vehemens, quam barbarus dominatus frequenter est sacerdotum. Quod si antea ignorabatur, nuper est cognitum ex monstro illo atque portento Ioanne Vitellesco cardinale et patriarcha, qui gladium Petri, quo auriculam Malcho abscidit, in christianorum sanguine lassavit, quo gla- dio et ipse periit” (emphasis added). With his reference to John 18:10, Valla seems to portray Vitelleschi’s death as the fulfillment of Christ’s words to Peter. 165 Ibid., 163.3–9 (86): “An vero populis Israel a domo David et Salomonis, quos proph- ete a Deo missi unxerant, tamen propter graviora onera desciscere licuit factumque eorum Deus probavit: nobis ob tantam tyrannidem desciscere non licebit? ab iis presertim, qui nec sunt reges nec esse possunt et qui de pastoribus ovium, id est animarum, facti sunt fures et latrones” (emphasis added). 166 Ibid., 163.10–20 (87): “Et ut ad ius humanum veniam, quis ignorat nullum ius esse bel- lorum aut, si quod est, tam diu valere quandiu possideas, que bello parasti? Nam cum
First, Valla maintains that no right of possession or rule, either territorial or political, can be legitimately derived from a “war of conquest.” Second, assuming – but not conceding (a point he will take up later) – that such a right could obtain, no one can claim, for the purposes of restoring to himself, a possession or rule at one time acquired by force (“what you gained by war”) and now lost. Indeed, if the right of emancipation and re- acquisition of personal autonomy is valid for brute animals, it will be all the more valid for human beings. Now, the papacy’s claims to the restora- tion of its long-lost rule over the peoples of the Western empire (“human beings – not only free creatures but masters over others – who have asserted their freedom by force and weapons”) entail the utter subversion of the right of emancipation, especially since that restoration is claimed precisely “as a right” as provided by Constantine’s donation (“just as a per- son [the Pope] would do to reclaim his cattle [human beings]”). Valla continues: Nor can you say to me: “The Romans justly waged war upon nations, and they justly deprived them of liberty.” Do not bring me into that debate, lest I be compelled to speak against my fellow Romans. Yet no crime could have been so serious as to warrant peoples’ everlasting slavery, since they have often waged wars through the fault of a leading man or some great citizen in the respublica and then, after being defeated, were undeservedly penalized with slavery. The world is full of exam- ples of this sort of thing.167 At this point the Oration takes the form of a series of conflicting arguments enunciated by the principle interlocutors, who again act in the guise of dra- matis personae. One part is played by the pope, who appeals to the Donation of Constantine to claim his territorial and political rule as a right; the other by the “orator” – Valla himself – who as a “citizen of Rome” contests the pope’s pseudo-right as baseless. Indeed, he denounces it as a usurpation in possessionem perdis, et ius perdidisti. Ideoque captivos, si fugerint, nemo ad iudicem repetere solet, etiam nec predas, si eas priores domini receperint. Apes et quedam alia volucrum genera, si e privato meo longius evolaverint et in alieno desederint, repeti non queunt: tu homines, non modo liberum animal, sed dominum ceterorum, si se in libertatem manu et armis asserant, non manu et armis repetes, sed iure, quasi tu homo sis, illi pecudes?” (emphasis added). 167 Ibid., 163.20–164.8 (87) and Setz’s commentary: “Neque est quod dicas: ‘Romani iuste bella nationibus intulerunt iusteque libertate illas exuerunt.’ Noli me ad istam vocare questionem, nequid in Romanos meos cogar dicere, quanquam nullum crimen tam grave esse potuit, ut eternam mererentur populi servitutem, cum eo, quod sepe culpa principis magni ve alicuius in re publica civis bella gesserunt et victi immerita servitutis pena affecti sunt. Quorum exemplis plena sunt omnia” (emphasis added) [trans- lation modified].
violation of the right, guaranteed by natural law and the law of nations (and first and foremost of “Roman citizens”), to natural and civil liberty. To the orator’s denial of legitimacy, in the name of human law, to any “war of conquest,” the pope, as heir to the empire, responds with Augustine’s “justification” of Rome’s subjection of peoples: “the Romans justly waged war upon nations, and they justly deprived them of liberty.” As Setz has noted, this is a reference to book IV, chapter 15 of Augustine’s City of God (Setz has also noted that this passage is used by Gratian in the Decretum, C. XXII q. 2.).168 It seems worthwhile to dig deeper into the meaning and the implications of this reference to Augustine, a reference introduced as the objection of Valla’s dramatic antagonist, the pope. We should first observe that the phrase, “the Romans justly waged war upon nations …”), is not a precise quotation but rather an abbreviated formulation of what Augustine said in book IV (chapters 1–15) of the City of God. What is more, although the phrase is a deduction based on what Augustine wrote, it should have been precluded by Augustine’s state- ments to the contrary in chapter 14 of the very same book. For Augustine offers no defense whatsoever for the theoretical or actual lawfulness of the “war of conquest.” In point of fact, he writes eloquently and profoundly against it. He condemns all types of war in favor of the most peaceful cohabitation possible among peoples and cities (for example, in chapter 7 of book XIX of the City of God). On the contrary, Augustine considers the “justification” of the wars of conquest of the Romans in particular, who were forced to conquer and rule other peoples on account of those peo- ples’ injustice. Indeed, the Romans could not otherwise have defended their own respublica founded on law and freedom, nor would it have been possible to extend to the barbarian peoples Roman “justice” and “law,” the bases of civil and political freedom and thus of romana libertas. Thus the Roman empire sprang from the will to justice and freedom. Its expansion was the inevitable product of its victories, of “good fortune,” and of the destiny of the city of Rome. For into the Roman empire’s progressive jour- ney Augustine inscribes the “providential,” divine plan for the coming of Christianity. Augustine concedes, however, that it would have been better had the empire never existed. He would have preferred for concord among peo- ples to have permitted a multiplicity, even of various forms, of autono- mous and free kingdoms and cities, communities and states, none subject to another. But such was not permitted by the goddess “Injustice,” who
168 Ibid., 164, n. 455.
Valla now elevates his discourse on the history of Rome to the theoreti- cal level in order to incorporate further support for his personal judgment of the city’s military and political expansion: Nor in truth is it assured by the law of nature that one people subjugate another. We can instruct others and persuade them. We cannot rule over them using force, unless, abandoning our humanity, we want to imitate the wilder beasts which impose their bloody imperium upon the weaker, as the lion upon quadrupeds, the eagle upon birds, and the dolphin upon fish. But even these creatures do not make claims upon their own kind, but upon lesser breeds. We ought to do this all the more, and a man should scrupulously respect another man, since as Quintilian said, “no creature on earth is so fierce that it does not revere the likes of itself” [ps.-Quintilian, Declamatio XII.27].169 Valla had written above that there is no baser crime than the subjection of a community or a people. In the passage cited here, he reaffirms that it is a crime against nature to subject a people to one’s own rule and power, depriving it of political independence and civil liberty. It violates the spe- cific nature of humanitas. Valla’s discourse now takes the form of a clarification of the vast seman- tic range he finds in the term humanitas. Here he continues a point made in section I, where he quotes a relevant passage from Cicero’s De amicitia (13,48). For Valla, the meaning of humanitas can be understood by reflect- ing on the binary opposition between praecipere/exhortari (instructing/ persuading) and imperare/vim afferre (ruling/using force). This binary opposition evinces a contradiction between terms and correlative func- tions concerning the essence of humanitas: the first element (praecipere/ exhortari) is a requirement of humanity, while the second (imperare/vim afferre) is a negation and an annihilation of it. The two sides are utterly and mutually exclusive. It should be noted that persuasion, or exhortari (when practiced with fellow humans), is understood as an integral component of instructing, or praecipere. Thus Valla considers the art of rhetoric, as the technique or strategy of persuasion, to be the supreme art of human communication and learning. It is the (one and only) preferred instrument for transactions
169 Ibid., 164.9–19 (88): “Neque vero lege nature comparatum est, ut populus sibi popu- lum subigat. Precipere aliis eosque exhortari possumus, imperare illis ac vim afferre non pos- sumus, nisi relicta humanitate velimus ferociores beluas imitari, que sanguinarium in infirmiores imperium exercent, ut leo in quadrupedes, aquila in volucres, delphinus in pisces. Veruntamen he belue non in suum genus sibi ius vindicant, sed in inferius. Quod quanto magis faciendum nobis est et homo homini religioni habendus, cum, ut M. Fabius inquit, ‘nulla supra terras adeo rabiosa belua, cui non imago sua sancta sit’” (emphasis added) [translation modified].
170 Cf. Pierio Valeriano, Hieroglyphica, (Lugduni [Lyon]: Sumptibus Pauli Frelon, 1602) (reprint = New York: Garland, 1976); and Percy Ernst Schramm, Herrschaftszeichen und Staatssymbolik, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1954–1956), sub vocibus. 171 [The phrase “man is a wolf to man” (homo homini lupus) is a Roman commonplace first attested in Plautus, Asinaria, 495. Eds.]
Valla offered a similar treatment of the nature of man in relation to that of brute animals in the first book of his Repastinatio, which can be consid- ered a parallel passage to the Oration. There he defined that relationship according to cognitive and rational capacities, making the following points. A brute animal is a living being endowed with cognitive capacities; however, it is “mute and without speech.” Man is a living creature capable of cognition that exists as a rational being and is distinguished by the peculiar quality of being the “creator of language.” Man, then, exists and differentiates himself in the animal kingdom not so much as an animal rationale (a “rational animal,” according to the Aristotelian and scholastic conception) but properly and essentially as an animal loquens, a speaking animal.172 At the end of his treatment in the Repastinatio, and as a final proof for his definition of man, Valla cited the first chapter of the book of Genesis, where the Scripture says that man and woman were created by the divine word “in the image and likeness of God.” In section V of the Oration, when treating man as an animal liberum and, as such, as distinguished from brute animals, Valla cites not Genesis but his favorite Quintilian (for us, in this case, known to be pseudo-Quintilian). He takes his ethical and politi- cal concepts from the author of the Declamationes: “no creature on earth is so fierce that it does not revere the likes of itself.” As if compelled by his own method and the context of his argument, Valla seems to draw on the rhetorical literature of the Romano-Hellenistic world in order to further bolster and more clearly define his conception of humanitas. It is precisely within this conception of humanitas that Valla goes well beyond Augustine’s position (in favor of the Romans) and absolutely undermines any and all possible justification for wars of conquest aimed at rule. He denies and repudiates such a justification both on the ethical and political level and in the retrospective of historical events. His judg- ment on the historical processes of Roman expansionism in all time periods – from republican Rome to the empire of the Caesars to the con- temporary papacy – ends up being aimed against the polar opposite posi- tions of Augustine and his scholastic and medieval successors. In this sense Valla writes, following his citation of pseudo-Quintilian: There are therefore four reasons for making war: (1) to avenge a wrong and defend friends, (2) fear of incurring a disaster in the future if the strength of others is allowed to grow, (3) the expectation of booty, (4) a desire for glory. Of
172 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 225ff.
these the first is, to some extent, honorable, the second less so, and the last two in no way at all.173 Beyond stating an ethical and political position, expressed here so clearly and firmly by Valla – and almost a prelude to Erasmus’ Dulce bellum inex- pertis (Adagia)174 – this passage is meant to continue the critique of books IV and V of Augustine’s City of God. Valla begins by barely admitting the theoretical and political justifiability of wars for individual and collective defense, and then extending it, although with less authority, to similar defensive wars. Then he unleashes a firm condemnation on wars of con- quest of any kind, whether directed by strategies for expanding territorial and/or political rule, or motivated by the acquisition of riches and/or the ambition for power and glory. Hence Valla’s discourse proceeds: In fact wars were frequently launched against the Romans, but after they had defended themselves they waged wars against their enemies and others too, and no nation has come under their domination without being con- quered and subjected in war – how rightly or for what reason is theirs to know. I would not wish to condemn them for having fought unjustly, nor to acquit them for acting justly. I would only say that the Romans made war on others for the same reason as most peoples and kings, and that those who were attacked and conquered in war had the same license to defect from the Romans as they had from other masters, so that all authority not be assigned – something no one would accept – to the most ancient peoples, who were the first masters, in other words to those who first took away the property of others.175 Here, too, Valla observes his formal dictum: to suspend all value judg- ments regarding Rome’s wars on other peoples. And he repeats here what was said above in nearly the same exact terms. Valla does not want to speak about the “justice” or “injustice” of Roman wars of conquest.
173 Valla, De falso, 164.19–165.2 (88): “Itaque quattuor fere cause sunt, ob quas bella infer- untur. [1] aut ob ulciscendam iniuriam defendendosque amicos, [2] aut timore accipiende postea calamitatis, si vires aliorum augeri sinantur, [3] aut spe prede, [4] aut glorie cupidi- tate. Quarum prima nonnihil honesta, secunda parum, due posteriores nequaquam honeste sunt” (emphasis added). 174 See Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia. Sei saggi politici in forma di proverbi, ed. Silvana Seidel Menchi (Torino: Einaudi, 1980), 195–295 (Latin text with facing Italian translation), with the introduction and commentary by Seidel Menchi. 175 Valla, De falso, 165.3–14 (88): “Et Romanis quidem illata fuere frequenter bella, sed, postquam se defenderant, et illis et aliis ipsi intulerunt, nec ulla gens est, que dicioni eorum cesserit nisi bello victa et domita, quam recte aut qua causa ipsi viderint. Eos ego nolim nec damnare tanquam iniuste pugnaverint, nec absolvere tanquam iuste. Tantum dicam eadem ratione Romanos ceteris bella intulisse qua reliqui populi regesque, atque ipsis, qui bello lacessiti victique sunt, licuisse deficere a Romanis, ut ab aliis dominis defecerunt, ne forte, quod nemo diceret, imperia omnia ad vetustissimos illos, qui primi domini fuere, idest qui primi preripuere aliena, referantur” (emphasis added).
It will be useful to recall what this suspension of judgment actually means. On the one hand it underlies Valla’s critique of Augustine regard- ing the historical and “providential” justification of Rome’s destiny. On the other it operates as a rhetorical figure that actually emphasizes Valla’s historico-political criticism of Roman military expansionism. And this is the point to which he leads his discourse. Rome’s military and political expansionism had to result in its own defeat, which is exactly what happened. The very will to “justice” that had brought Rome, often in a self-serving way, to conquer and subject other peoples to its own rule eventually determined the revolt of the conquered against this subjection. Indeed, these peoples separated from Rome or rebelled against its rule in order to recover their original autonomy and civil and political freedom. They acted in accord with their right to free- dom as guaranteed by natural law and the law of nations – the freedom, in fact, of romana libertas, from which the republic itself had sprung. This is Valla’s historico-political assessment of the fall of the empire. Flavio Biondo – a humanist very close to Valla, who shared both his friend- ship and his study of ancient and modern Roman history – had pointed to the end of Rome’s universal rule as the definitive “decline of the Roman Empire” (inclinatio Romani imperii).176 Valla turns Biondo’s vision of his- tory around, approaching the issue from the other side. The fall of the empire began with the political and military renewal and reemergence of its subject peoples and neighbors. The “Gothic” and “barbarian” peoples, once subjected to the rule of Rome, rise against Roman imperialism to claim and recover their lost autonomy and freedom, to impose – in place of the Roman versions – their own right and their own “justice.” But there is more, proceeds Valla, bringing his argument to a crescendo of fabulous effect: if the peoples’ claim to autonomy was fully legitimate with regard to the republic, even more so was the claim to liberty with regard to the empire of the Caesars and the Caesarism of Constantine, and, a fortiori, so is that against the Constantinian Caesarism adopted and embodied by the Roman papacy:
176 [The title of Biondo’s history of medieval Italy and Europe was Historiarum ab incli- natione romani imperii decades (finished 1453), on which see Angelo Mazzocco, “Decline and Rebirth in Bruni and Biondo,” in Paolo Brezzi and Maristella de Panizza Lorch (eds.), Umanesimo a Roma nel Quattrocento (Roma: Istituto di Studi Romani, 1984), 249–266; Denys Hay, “Flavio Biondo and the Middle Ages,” Proceedings of the British Academy 45 (1960): 97–128, reprinted in idem, Renaissance Essays (London: Hambledon, 1988), 32–66; and Riccardo Fubini, “Biondo Flavio,” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 10 (1968): 536–539. Eds.]
And yet the Roman people had a stronger claim over nations conquered in war than the emperors who demolished the Republic. Accordingly, if it was right for nations to revolt from Constantine and, even more, from the Roman people, it will certainly be right to revolt from the man to whom Constantine surrendered his authority. To speak too boldly, if the Romans were free to expel Constantine as they did Tarquin or to kill him as they did Julius Caesar, all the more will the Romans and the provinces be free to kill that man, whoever he may be, who has taken Constantine’s place. True as this is, it goes beyond my subject, and therefore I want to restrain myself and not exploit anything that I have said except this: it is foolish to apply a verbal claim where there is armed force, because anything acquired by force is lost by force.177 Valla’s text, always extremely dense, here has particular need of explica- tion, above all to highlight the shifts that shape the course of the Oration. The Caesars, in Valla’s view, were responsible for subduing the respublica to their command and then suppressing it altogether. Now, if the people subject to Rome had full right to claim their territorial and political auton- omy from the republic, all the more so, Valla continues, could they exer- cise that right to freedom by rising against the empire, based as it was on the Caesars’ innovations in political and civil structures. Indeed, the Caesars had appropriated for themselves the republic’s conquests (in themselves already illicit) after stripping the autonomy and freedom from the Senate and the People of Rome, the civil and institutional foundations of the republic. But these subject peoples, formerly in revolt against the empire, would now have even greater reason to rebel against the papacy, to which the last and most imperial of the Caesars (Constantine with his monarchism) decided to bequeath, as if his own inheritance, the right to rule over Rome and the Western Empire. And as it would have been fully licit for the Romans to banish Constantine from their City for betraying the respublica (as happened with Tarquinius Superbus) or rather to kill him (as hap- pened with Julius Caesar, the founder of the Augustan clan), thus now it would be licit and legitimate for the citizens of Rome and the Roman “provinces” to banish or kill Constantine’s direct successor, the Roman
177 Valla, De falso, 165.14–27 (88–89): “Et tamen melius in victis bello nationibus populo Romano quam Cesaribus rem publicam opprimentibus ius est. Quocirca si fas erat gentibus a Constantino et, quod multo plus est, a populo Romano desciscere, profecto et ab eo fas erit, cuicunque cesserit ille ius suum. Atque ut audacius agam, si Romanis licebat Constantinum aut exigere ut Tarquinum aut occidere ut Iulium Cesarem, multo magis eum vel Romanis vel provinciis licebit occidere, qui in locum Constantini utcunque successit. Hoc et si verum, tamen ultra causam meam est, et iccirco me reprimere volo nec aliud ex his colligere que dixi, nisi ineptum esse, ubi armorum vis est, ibi ius quenquam afferre verborum, quia quod armis acquiritur, idem rursus armis amittitur” (emphasis added) [translation modified].
pope: “all the more will the Romans and the provinces be free to kill that man, whoever he may be, who has taken Constantine’s place.” It should also be noted that this trenchant observation is introduced by a qualifying “to speak too boldly” (ut audacius agam), with which Valla emphasizes (and he will insist on it again in the peroration), that he in no way intends to solicit violence from anyone against the pope. This is not only because the force of violence does not establish (nor is it capable of establishing) any right, but also, and above all, “because anything acquired by force is lost by force.” With this last declaration (“because anything acquired by force is lost by force”), Valla has reused almost verbatim (from section I of the Oration) the final words of the Senate’s speech dissuading Constantine from effect- ing the Donation. He does so to make definitively explicit that the hypoth- esis of the donation has by now become its thesis as a real event. It is a reality brought about by history, and it took place in the fourth-century shift – also an historical occurrence – marked by the political and religious convergence between Christianity, the pope, and the empire. Valla has thus called into question the very foundations, and more pre- cisely the Christian premises themselves, of Augustine’s historical assess- ment. Thus he has also radically de-theologized the Bishop of Hippo’s historical retrospective. Augustine had posited an “evangelical prepara- tion” (praeparatio evangelica) in Rome’s shift from republic to empire, thus rendering it the “providential” juncture for the rise of Christianity, constituted by the foundation of a Romano-Christian empire and the vic- tory over paganism announced by Constantine and his successors. Valla denies this is the case and in so doing arrives at the following conclusions. First, the gospel can give rise only to a church of believers founded on christiana libertas (saving grace) and thus a community of believers in Christ that is constituted as a respublica christiana. Second, Constantine’s conversion of the Roman empire into a Christian empire was in reality the definitive historical fall both of the civil and political libertas of the Roman republic and of the evangelical libertas of the new respublica christiana. Third, the Bishop of Rome, from the “succession from Christ” (the apos- tolic and evangelical “vicariate of Christ”) lapses into the “succession from Caesar,” so that the pope is the new “High Priest” of imperial Rome and the Augustus of the Western Empire. These developments, in Valla’s description, created a new historical reality: the Roman papacy with its primacy and “imperial” hegemony, both juridico-political and spiritual, over the West. But the papacy’s inheritance, Valla goes on to reflect critically, was the inheritance of imperial Rome,
to have his “imperial” hegemony accepted as well, and perhaps most of all, by the Germanic peoples. He will also have to adduce the same reasons to have his universal power recognized by all those cities and nations that, in the process of the empire’s crumbling, had arrived at their own civil and political freedom, their own autonomy and self-government, with the installation of urban seignories or national monarchies. The West had become a map of juridical and political autonomies, of communes, of cit- ies and nations after the fall of the Roman Empire. They had set them- selves up as sovereign states precisely for the purpose of defense from the barbarian invasions that followed the collapse of the empire and of cen- tral government at Rome. Now, if the Germanic peoples who had inherited the empire, along with the cities, nations, and states that had emerged from the wreck of imperial government, had affirmed with a fresh will and energy – and also often with arms – their personal autonomy and identity against the univer- sal empire and absolute rule of the Caesars, then these same cities, nations, and states were spurred to reaffirm, perhaps more steadfastly and willfully, their freedom and sovereignty against the papacy’s imperial- Christian rule, “the new tyranny of the pope.” Thus Valla writes: It is foolish to apply a verbal claim [i.e. the Constitutum and its derivatives] where there is armed force …. All the more since other new nations (as we have learned about the Goths), nations never subject to Roman rule, have occupied Italy and many provinces after driving out the original inhabitants: what is the justice in making them slaves, which they never were, particu- larly since they are victors and would perhaps be slaves of the people they conquered? At the same time, if any cities and nations which were deserted by the emperor, as we know happened, considered it necessary, as the barbarians were approaching, to choose a king under whose leadership they won a victory, should they depose this man from his position? Should they order his sons, esteemed as much for their father’s advocacy as for their own virtue, to be reduced to private status? So that they might be once again subject to a Roman emperor, particularly when they were in great need of the sons’ sup- port and hoped for help from no other source? If that emperor or Constantine were to come back to life or the Senate and the Roman People were to summon them to a general tribunal, such as the Amphictyons had in Greece, he would be immediately rebuffed on his first plea, because he was calling back into dependence and slavery those who had been formerly deserted by him as their protector, those who had been living for a long time under another ruler, those who had never been subject to a foreign king, those who were, in short, born to freedom and laid claim to their freedom by the strength of their minds and bodies. Hence it is clear that if the emperor and the Roman people are excluded from reclaiming their control, the Pope is excluded much more decisively, and if other nations that were under Rome are free either
to create their king or maintain a republic, the Roman people is much more free, especially in opposition to the new tyranny of the Pope.178 This incisive passage constitutes the final part of section V, which should, as I have already hinted, be considered the effective conclusion of Valla’s entire discourse on the Donation. The closing of section V encapsulates the whole meaning of the Oration. It highlights (1) Valla’s “dissent” (his personal ethical stance) towards Constantinian ecclesiology, and (2) the fundamental premise (his objective understanding of that ecclesiology) underlying both his philologico-historical considerations and the course of his rhetorical argumentation. It must be added immediately, however, that Valla’s personal “dissent” comes to coincide, if not to be identified with, that fundamental premise of the Oration. Indeed, this dissent is the very freedom posed by Valla the ora- tor, the “Roman citizen” who stands up to contest the papal rule of Rome; and the fundamental premise underlying the whole critical discourse on the pseudo-Donation is itself also freedom: the romana libertas of the respublica, destroyed by the empire of the Caesars, and the christiana libertas of the Gospel (Evangelium), suppressed by the papacy’s Constantinian primacy. In the final analysis, Valla’s speech is revealed as a study of historical retrospection and reflection – with unquestionably critical aspects – on the fourth century and the major events that constituted its historical significance: the coming of Constantine and his “conversion,” and the resulting Constantinian foundation of the Christian empire in connection
178 Ibid., 165.25–167.3 (89): “… ineptum esse, ubi armorum vis est, ibi ius quenquam afferre verborum …. Eo quidem magis, quod alie nove gentes – ut de Gothis accepimus – que nunquam sub imperio Romano fuerunt, fugatis veteribus incolis Italiam et multas pro- vincias occuparunt, quas in servitutem revocari, in qua nunquam fuerunt, que tandem equitas est, presertim victrices et fortasse a victis? Quo tempore si que urbes ac nationes, ut factum fuisse scimus, ab imperatore deserte ad barbarorum adventum necesse habuerunt deligere sibi regem, sub cuius auspiciis victoriam reportarunt: nunquid hunc postea a princi- patu deponerent? aut eius filios tum commendatione patris tum propria virtute favorabiles iuberent esse privatos? ut iterum sub Romano principe essent, maxime cum eorum opera assidue indigerent et nullum aliunde auxilium sperarent? Hos si Cesar ipse aut Constantinus ad vitam reversus aut etiam Senatus Populusque Romanus ad commune iudicium, quale in Grecia Amphictyonum fuit, vocaret, prima statim actione repelleretur, quod a se olim custode desertos, quod tam diu sub alio principe degentes, quod nunquam alienigene regi subditos, quod denique homines libertati natos et in liberta- tem robore animi corporisque assertos ad famulatum servitiumque reposceret, ut appareat, si Cesar, si populus Romanus a repetendo exclusus est, multo vehementius papam esse exclu- sum, et si licet aliis nationibus, que sub Roma fuerunt, aut regem sibi creare aut rem publicam tenere, multo magis id licere populo Romano, precipue adversus novam pape tyrannidem” (emphasis added) [translation modified]. I would like to thank Charles Till Davis (cited above in n. 103) for his attentive, pointed, and critical reading of my manuscript, which has given me greater insight into the comparison between Augustine and Valla.
with the religio catholica and the Roman papacy. Valla’s historical judgment of these events comes, therefore, to stand in opposition to the one expressed variously by the Christian writers and rhetoricians of that age and the next. Specifically, Valla has his eye on the range of authors from Eusebius of Caesarea and Rufinus (Ecclesiastical History), along with Lactantius (On the Deaths of the Persecutors), down to Augustine (City of God). Valla reaches his own historical and critical assessment of the fourth century by means of a rhetorical argumentative strategy supplemented by critical techniques. With his initial historico-philological reinterpreta- tion of the Constitutum – its immediate contextual and infratextual dimensions – Valla establishes the temporal dimension of the “document of donation” down to the remote past, to the outer margins of its origins. Panofsky assimilated Alberti’s geometric perspective (as the rediscovery of the third dimension of space) to Valla’s philological retrospective of his- tory (as the rediscovery of the third dimension of time), which the human- ist created through the morphological and semantic analysis of classical literature (humanae litterae).179 And in fact, in his Oration on the Donation of Constantine Valla does identify the Constitutum’s most proper histori- cal place, and he reveals its origins openly in the most adequate and true temporal dimension possible. By retracing the complex and multiform tradition of Constantinian ecclesiology in canon law and theology, Valla arrives at the impulse for that tradition: the fourth-century appropriation of Christianity by Constantine and his successors. The multiple aspects of the Oration’s overall meaning, which we have tried to explain here, as well as the importance of its historico-philological critique of the Constitutum, were fully understood by the canon lawyers and scholastic theologians of Valla’s time. Those of them who were strongly critical of Valla, in addition to humanist writers and other atten- tive readers of the text, reacted to specific sections of the Oration with arguments that were often as insightful as they were erudite. The text’s greatest historical impact, however, was felt in the following century, in the first decades of the Cinquecento with the coming of the Reformation. The Oration was first printed and popularized by Ulrich von Hutten in 1518/19.180 Luther knew the text, profoundly absorbed it, and was busy reworking it for his written manifestos already in 1520/21. Its presence can
179 Cf. Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (London: Paladin, 1970), 108. 180 [Actually, the first printed edition was issued in 1506. It was, however, “little noticed” and is “now very rare” (G.W. Bowersock, “Introduction,” in Valla, On the Donation of
Constantine, vi–xv, at ix). For all intents and purposes, it was von Hutten’s edition that secured the Oration’s fame. Eds.] 181 Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift, 151–176.
Cochlaeus was undoubtedly right when he noted that Luther’s interpre- tation of the Oration did not adhere to Valla’s specific arguments in criti- cism of the papacy or to the (explicit and/or implicit) intentions of Valla’s text. No different from Cochlaeus, in this respect, were certain preeminent theorists of controversialist (and still pre-Tridentine) anti-Reformation theology such as Augustino Steuco and Giovanmaria dei Tolosani. Although Valla’s humanism (together with that of Erasmus) was in their view linked in many ways to Luther’s ecclesiological criticism, they never claimed an operative, fully continuous connection between Valla’s Oration and Luther’s writings against the papacy.182 What is more, the judg- ment shared by Steuco and Tolosani reveals an awareness on the part of contemporaries – critical of both Luther and of humanism, and especially of Valla – that seems the most authoritative verification of what Coch laeus had discerned. Indeed, as far as these critics were concerned, Valla’s Oration was not, nor could it be, the premise leading to Luther’s conclusion that the pope was the incarnation of the “Antichrist,” as Luther would write (for example) in the Vorrede to the Apocalypse of his Biblia deudsch – for the Oration was founded completely on the presumption that the Bishop of Rome is the “vicar of Christ.”183 Moreover, Cochlaeus’s point of view, like that of the controversialist theologians Steuco and Tolosani, constitutes further exemplary evidence of humanist culture’s “autonomy,” as Charles Trinkaus has written, with regard first to the Reformation and then to the Counter-Reformation. Renaissance humanism – both in Italy and north of the Alps in the early sixteenth century – was a literary, philosophical, and theological culture with its own distinct features. It came into its own, above all in the camps of theology and politics, rather as what Delio Cantimori has called the “heresy of the sixteenth century” and what Friedrich Heer identifies as the “third power” of ideas and practices in the “Confessional Age” (between the pluralist Reformation and the unitary Counter-Reformation).184
182 Camporeale, “Giovanni Tolosani, O.P., e la teologia antiumanistica agli inizi della Riforma,” 809–831; Ronald Keith Delph, “Italian Humanism in the Early Reformation: Agostino Steuco (1497–1548)” (Ph.D. dissertation in History, University of Michigan), 1987, esp. ch. 3: “Humanist Scholarship in Defence of Papal Supremacy” (pp. 218–326). 183 Camporeale, “Giovanmaria dei Tolosani O.P.: 1530–1546. Umanesimo, Riforma e teo- logia controversista,” 216–227 (= idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 416–428). 184 Delio Cantimori, Eretici italiani del Cinquecento (Firenze: Sansoni, 1939); Friedrich Heer, Die Dritte Kraft. Der europäische Humanismus zwischen den Fronten des Konfessionellen Zeitalters (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1959); Charles Trinkaus, The Scope of Renaissance Humanism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1983).
Valla’s philological and historical humanism must be seen within these historico-cultural parameters. The Oration on the pseudo-Donation thus becomes an emblematic case. Valla’s text, among the most important of Italian humanism generally, proposes the most radical criticism of the papal politics and ecclesiology of the first half of the fifteenth century. And yet it cannot be understood as the necessary premise to, even if it is quite suggestive of, the corresponding politics and ecclesiology of Martin Luther. On the contrary, Valla’s Oration, despite its warm reception among the reformers, would always remain an autonomous proposal and a dis- tinct position (albeit the losing alternative) with respect to the opposite poles of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the ruling horizons of Christendom in the first half of the sixteenth century.185
8. Epilogue: Valla’s Defense of the Oration in his Letters to Cardinals Trevisan and Landriani
This essay began with a letter sent by Ambrogio Traversari to Valla in 1433, in which the Camaldolese monk responded to his reading of De voluptate, which Valla had submitted to his judgment. There he expressed his admi- ration for the young humanist and assented both to his freedom in criti- cizing the philosophers of the past and to his willingness to take up an equally critical consideration of contemporary ethics. I would like now to conclude this study with the reinterpretation of two letters, both written by Valla himself in defense of the Oration on the Donation of Constantine. These pages from Valla’s correspondence are of particular importance. There we find his justification for refusing to recant even in the least degree what he had written regarding the “document of donation.” We read of the personal and cultural motivations that lie at the origin of his text. And finally, we learn the profound and pregnant meaning that Valla accorded to the work that he addressed with such frankness to the papacy and Christendom of his age. These two letters – briefly mentioned in the opening pages of this essay – have a particular context that determines their importance for Valla’s personal and intellectual autobiography as it was written across the whole of his correspondence. After years of exile from Rome, Valla
185 See Paolo Prodi, Il sovrano pontefice. Un corpo e due anime: la monarchia papale nella prima età moderna (Bolonga: Il Mulino, 1982) [English translation = The Papal Prince: One Body and Two Souls. The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe, tr. Susan Haskins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)].
requested permission from Eugenius IV and his court once again to enter the city – the place of his birth, which gave him the privilege of calling himself a “Roman citizen.” His objective was to visit his mother, who at that point was in difficult circumstances (not precisely identifiable from the text of the letter, but probably related to her health). To this, Valla’s umpteenth request to enter Rome came a response naming the condition: he must retract his writing on the Donation of Constantine, which he had com- posed to aid King Alfonso of Aragon in his dispute with Pope Eugenius IV. In the letters to Trevisan and Landriani – both influential personages in the Roman curia – we are thus able to trace the issues and characteristics of Valla’s personal and emotional life, which intersect in his cultural devel- opment and give shape to his biography. The letters provide us with the clearest view of the most distinctive and original ideal of this humanist of the early fifteenth century: critical intellectual study and radical freedom of spirit. Valla’s letters are dated between the end of 1443 and the beginning of 1444. The first was written from Naples to Cardinal Trevisan on 19 November (1443), the second, again from Naples, to Cardinal Landriani on 21 January (1444).186 The central theme of both letters is the demand, made by Eugenius IV and by several members of his curia, that Valla defin- itively retract the Oration in its entirety. Valla pointedly refuses, and the reasons he gives for doing so are quite illuminating for the composition and contents of the Oration. Indeed, what Valla says here in his private correspondence is as valuable for understanding that text as his Apologia, published in response to his imminent inquisitorial trial in Naples (April, 1444), would be for his Repastinatio. In both his public apology and private pleas, Valla refuses to retract any part of any of his works. He justifies such action on the one hand with arguments exonerating himself from the charge of heresy. On the other, he provides further evidence confirming the validity of his writings, both on a strictly doctrinal level and on a broader cultural and political plane. In the sections of the letters that interest us, Valla highlights the funda- mental dimensions, at once objective and subjective, of his writing on the Constitutum. These can be summarized as human and Christian freedom. This freedom must be understood on the one hand as the specific domain of the intellectual in his critical and historical studies. On the other hand it is the freedom to publicly proclaim one’s insight and “dissent” regarding
186 Valla, Epistole, 246–248, n. 22; 254–256, n. 25.
187 Ibid., 255f.22–39: “Causam meam, ut opinor, nosti: de opere, inquam, Constantiniane donationis, ob quod multis sancte apostolice sedis senatoribus invisum sum et reus agor, immo peragor ab inimicis meis atque invidis. Nam, cum ipse de me fatear ac me quoque accusem nec hominibus nec diis pepercisse videar – quod de Luciano Lactantius ait – non deest volentibus carpendi materia. Accessit huc novissimum onus, quo vivos, non modo defunctos exagitasse reprehendor et a quibusdam ob id terror mihi proponitur; quam ego reprehensionem terroremque, nisi matris causa, que istic est, pro meo more nihili facerem nec ad te propterea scriberem aut cuiquam supplicarem, contentus animi conscientia inventionibusque felix ac generosa quod sentiam dicendi libertate me pascens. Sed pietas matris me ad se revocat et quasi ventus quidam adversus alio vela flectere ac pene retror- sum cogit; eam nunc visendi et amor et ratio mihi necessitatem imponit ut amborum, et ipsius et meo, desiderio satisfaciam, fortasse emendaturus presens quod absenti emendare difficile est” (emphasis added).
We can also clearly see the contents of the Oration’s exordium and perora- tion. Let us remember that in the Oration Valla had given dramatic expres- sion to his dissent from the reigning cultural tradition in general and from Constantinian ecclesiology in particular. And he had affirmed his stance contesting the pseudo-Donation and the papacy, attacking the roots of their juridical and ecclesial premises. In his letter to Landriani he uses nearly exactly the same terms as in the Oration’s exordium. In their new context, however, these arguments serve most of all to defend the Oration’s validity, as well as its original motivations and fundamental themes. Valla protests his right of conscience (“directed by my conscience …”): it is from this principle, operating on the planes of morality and of religion/Christianity, that Valla derives the right to communicate, pub- licly and for the benefit of the community of believers, the historical and ecclesial truth he has discovered (“… blessed with discoveries”). Above all, however, Valla is sure to guarantee Landriani that the Oration was born and bred of that “noble freedom of speech” with and in which the orator, and in the first place the Christian orator, fulfills his task – in “imitation of the Apostle Paul,” as he had written the Oration’s prologue. In accordance with the original motivations for and results of his study, as well as the freedom of speech he claimed within the Christian church, Valla has absolutely no intention of justifying (so as to excuse) what he had written in the Oration. His insight had never been invalidated, nor would it ever be, by the jurisdictional and spiritual terror and power exer- cised by hierarchical authority in the Church and in Christendom. Indeed, once the papacy was declared to have usurped an illicit imperium over the civil and political society of the community of believers, what sense could it have to make retractions or to supplicate for absolution from heresy? And what sense could such retractions and supplications have in the light of that freedom of dissent by which Valla had charted his course? After all, he had come to identify the Oration’s very historical study and critical reflection with the freedom of conscience and of speech guaranteed within Christendom. Thus Valla insistently informs Landriani that his request (“supplication”) to reenter Rome after long exile is not spontane- ous but rather forced upon him by his love for his mother (“filial piety”). Valla seems to perceive at this moment in his life that his personal exis- tence hangs, as if stretched between opposing forces, at the intersection of the tensions that had stirred him most: the freedom of the orator and of the intellectual, and the love of family and of his own origins. He feels like a ship surprised by adverse winds and forced to strike the sails, a meta- phor that he had previously employed in the proem to the second book of
188 Valla, Repastinatio, 448.21–26 and 176.28–177.2: “rhetoric is arduous and by far the most difficult, nor should it be engaged in by all. For it enjoys sailing amidst the waves over the open sea, its sails billowing full, not giving way to the currents but ruling them: this is the nature of the highest and perfect eloquence. Dialectic, on the other hand, is the friend of safety, the ally of the coast; preferring to behold land rather than waters, it rows within sight of shores and cliffs” (“… longe difficillima rhetorica est et ardua, nec omnibus capes- senda. Nanque lato mari mediisque in undis vagari et tumidis ac sonantibus velis volitare gaudet, nec fluctibus cedit, sed imperat: de summa et perfecta loquor eloquentia. Dialectica vero amica securitatis, socia litorum, terras potius quam maria intuens, prope oras et scopulos remigat”) (emphasis added).
that you be yourself, that you behave as you always have. I want your true feelings about how I stand with you and the supreme pontiff, even if it means hearing that I am hateful to you and that I am not permitted [to return] to my fatherland …. Or does it seem to you too little that I suffer exile on account of such a petty annoyance? Or are you determined to punish me further?189 With this passage – together with what precedes it in the letter – Valla reaffirms first and in no uncertain terms what was already implicit in the Oration, namely that his criticism of the pseudo-Donation’s tradition and of the papacy’s “Constantinian” primacy throughout the ages was the product of an historico-philological analysis and no mere personal attack on Pope Eugenius IV. Valla is able to support these declarations by recalling the familiarity and friendship that he had enjoyed with Condulmer. Accordingly he reminds Trevisan of the esteem the future pope had expressed for his De comparatione Ciceronis Quintilianique, the first work he wrote as a young man on classical literature. And he calls to mind how, many years earlier, when he was barely a youth, he had attended the private lessons in Greek that Condulmer had received from Giovanni Aurispa: When still just a boy I felt great respect and love for Eugenius. This was before he became pope, when we studied Greek with the same teacher …, when he accorded high praise to my treatise.190
189 Valla, Epistole, 247f.40–73: “Cur de Constantini donatione composui? Hoc est quod pur- gare habeam, ut quod nonnulli optrectent mihi et quasi crimen intendant. Id ego tantum abest ut malivolentia fecerim, ut summopere optassem sub alio pontifice necesse mihi fuisse id facere, non sub Eugenio. Neque vero attinet hoc tempore libelli mei causam defen- dere, nisi Gamalielis verbis: ‘Si est ex hominibus consilium hoc aut opus, dissolvetur; sin autem ex deo, non poteritis dissolvere.’ Opus meum conditum editumque est, quod emendare aut supprimere nec possem si deberem, nec deberem si possem. Ipsa rei veritas se tuebitur aut ipsa falsitas se coarguet. Alii de illo iudices arbitrique iam sunt, non ego. Si male locutus sum, testimonium perhibebunt de malo; sin bene, non cedent me virgis equi iudices. Sed opus illud in sua, queso, causa quiescere sinamus. Hoc tantum consideres velim, non odio pape adductum, sed veritatis, sed religionis, sed cuiusdam etiam fame gratia motum, ut quod nemo sciret, id ego scisse solus viderer. Multum etiam nocere potuissem, si alieno animo fuissem in rebus que mentem animumque magis solicitant. Nam quod feci, hoc non modo ad pudorem presentium, sed mortuorum etiam ac futurorom pertinet: qui enim nemini parcit, nullum ledit. Verum cum non minus prodesse in posterum possim quam uno libello offendi, ego te per superiorum temporum meam in summum pontificem benivolentiam pie- tatemque obsecro id (quod, cum per se facile, tum vero tue virtuti facillimum): non benefi- cum, non munus, non gratiam, non veniam, sed ut similis tibi sis, ut quod semper fecisti facias, ne aliter ac sentis de animo erga me tuo summique pontificis rescribas, etiamsi me tibi odio esse nec licere mihi in patriam [redire] dicas …. An parum tibi videtur ob tantulam noxam me exilium pati? an ulterior tibi ultio querenda est?” (emphasis added). 190 Ibid., 246f.20–24: “Ego Eugenium ante papatum dilexi atque amavi adhuc adoles- centulus, cum eidem preceptori grecarum litterarum uterque operam daret … cum opusculum meum magnopere laudasset” (emphasis added).
After these allusions to his personal history with Eugenius IV, Valla sets forth his arguments in defense of the Oration. They are of two kinds. The first line of defense is to stress his clear opposition to contemporary con- ciliarism and the conflict raging between Eugenius IV and the conciliarists of Basel. Here again he refers to what he had said, at least implicitly, in the Oration, even though his fundamental ecclesiological ideas were perhaps more radical than those of the conciliarists. Indeed, his ideas attacked the very foundations of the papacy and of traditional ecclesiology, and thus he did not emphasize them in the letter to Trevisan. As for conciliarism, it is noteworthy that Valla seems to have been impervious to the influence even of Tudeschi, one of the greatest canon lawyers of conciliarism. And this despite their close personal ties and the fact that Tudeschi repre- sented Alfonso of Aragon’s interests at Basel.191 It is his theoretical and political autonomy from the conciliarist struggle against Eugenius IV that allows Valla to boast to Cardinal Trevisan – obviously with the intention of addressing the pope himself – of never having written against the pope like the conciliarists, in spite of their explicit solicitation: I never went to Basel, although many people promised me great rewards; nor did I write against the pope, although with respect to writing and every kind of learning I was as capable, if I do say so myself, as anyone there past or present.192 These declarations shed light on Valla’s other line of defense, which is based on his own person as the author of the Oration. He clearly places the blame on the situation and the conditions within whose courtly and polit- ical context the Oration had been prompted, written, and diffused. If he had not been coerced by these circumstances, he never would have writ- ten against Eugenius IV: “I would have wished most of all to have had to write under another pope, not under Eugenius.” But what precisely does this last statement mean? In what way should the hypothetical desire and the necessity be understood? One place to search for and grasp the mean- ing of this necessity is in the immediate context of the letter to Trevisan.
191 On Niccolò de’ Tudeschi (the “Abbot of Palermo” [“Abbas Panormitanus”] in Valla’s Antidota, in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 271, 427), cf. Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV, 401–402, 512–513. On the ecclesiology/conciliarism question, see also Ulrich Horst, Zwischen Konziliarismus und Reformation. Studien zur Ekklesiologie in Dominikanerorden (Roma: Istituto Storico Domenicano, 1985), passim. 192 Valla, Epistole, 247.35–39: “Ego neque illuc me contuli, cum multi non parva mihi policerentur; neque adversus papam scripsi, cum in scribendo atque in omni doctrina tan- tum possem quantum, ut apertissime dicam, quivis unus potuit illorum qui Basilee aut sunt aut fuerunt.”
The other is against the background of what Valla had written in the Oration’s exordium, about the orator’s autonomy and freedom when men- aced with “proscription” by censors and men of power. There is no doubt that Valla was commissioned to defend the Crown of the Kingdom of Naples from the feudal power of the papacy. Nevertheless, the exact methods and contents, and above all what we can call the rhe- torical strategy of the work were fully of Valla’s own independent will and choosing. Therefore, his composition of the Oration ends up being config- ured against an ample background, in which the defense of Alfonso is situated according to relationships of continuity and discontinuity with the political and ideological struggle that had always existed between the Empire and the papacy. Indeed, in writing the Oration Valla was on the one hand aligning himself with the tradition of the imperial chanceries and jurists, employing their tried and true practice of claiming the Constitutum’s inauthenticity. On the other hand he was taking up a novel line, discontinuous with the past at least on an ideological level, and thus his philological exegesis of the Constitutum and his rhetorical strategy constitute something new and all his own. In this context of tradition and originality, Valla’s claim to necessity in writing the Oration (“to have had to write”) cannot simply be reduced to the necessity of courtly service and the fealty owed to a prince. Instead it must be expanded and understood as “conditions of necessity” that imposed themselves on his conscience and dignity as an intellectual. In this sense he could not remain silent. In the name of truth he had to pub- licize political and ecclesial ideas that put the “Constantinian” papacy in crisis and dictated the emancipation of the nations of Christendom from its feudal rule. The necessity, then, that gave rise to the Oration was the singular challenge of high political and theological value that Valla could not resist. Alfonso of Aragon’s commission coincided with the ecclesio- logical and historical notions that Valla had been developing for some time, both regarding the “Constantinian Church,” as lacking in evangelical authenticity, and concerning the “decline of the empire,” as occasioned by the emancipation of the subject peoples from Rome’s rule. With his critique of the empire’s Caesarism and his exaltation of the Roman respublica as a form of radical evangelism in the face of the “Constantinian” pope, Valla gave an alternative (historical and ideologi- cal) meaning to the insurrection of peoples against the rule of the Roman empire as well as to their will to emancipation from the feudal and spiri- tual rule of the Roman papacy. At stake in the first case was the conquered barbarians’ recovery and reappropriation of their civil and political
Valla, then, composes the Oration by developing the complex theme of “truth” and “faith” on various registers and in multiple keys. He aspires to the “glory” accorded to the intellectual who shows that he “knows” and who bestows his “knowledge” in its pure form upon the society in which he lives and works. The Oration thus fulfills the authentic dictate of the “orator,” as understood and defined by Quintilian as “the true wise man,”193 and as personified by Valla in civil society and in the domain of the Church – both as a humanist “grammarian” of classical and biblical litera- ture, and as an engaged intellectual and a philologist specialized in history and theology. The Oration is truly how Valla had described it in his letter to Aurispa: “I have written nothing more rhetorical.”194
193 Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla. Repastinatio,” 238. 194 Valla, Epistole, 252.91f.: “Orationem meam De donatione Constantini, qua nihil magis oratorium scripsi, sane longam ….”
LORENZO VALLA BETWEEN THE MIDDLE AGES AND THE RENAISSANCE: THE ENCOMIUM OF ST. THOMAS – 1457
Salvatore I. Camporeale (translated by Patrick Baker)
1. At the Origins of Neo-Thomism in the Fifteenth Century
The sum of research on Thomas Aquinas, especially in the wake of Kristeller’s work on Thomism and the Italian Renaissance, shows quite clearly that the Dominican’s life and teaching were continuously cele- brated in literature and iconography, and in various contexts (hagio- graphic, liturgical, and academic), from the mid-fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth.1
1.1. The Literary Encomium and the Iconographic “Triumph” of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Dominican Tradition The encomium of Aquinas has its origins in the “canonization literature” mentioned by Fra Giovanni di Napoli during the official celebrations in his city (July, 1323) for Thomas’s canonization by Pope John XXII. Fra Giovanni was the most renowned master of theology and promoter of Thomism in the Neapolitan Studio, and his sermons for the canonization initiated the liturgical tradition of panegyric surrounding Aquinas’s teach- ing. At the same time they took up the defense of that teaching, a defense which Giovanni had begun in Paris in 1316, when he was “dismissed” for his disputation on “whether it is permitted to teach the full doctrine and all the conclusions of brother Thomas in Paris” – an obvious polemic on the condemnation of 1277.2
1 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Medieval Aspects of Renaissance Learning, ed. and tr. Edward P. Mahoney (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1974); John W. O’Malley, “Some Renaissance Panegyrics of Aquinas,” Renaissance Quarterly 27 (1974): 174–192. See also: Angelus Walz, Saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. Paul Novarina (Louvain: Publications universi- taires, 1962); Cornelio Fabro, Breve introduzione al tomismo (Roma: Desclee, 1960); Daniel Ols, “Tommaso d’Aquino,” in Enciclopedia delle Religioni, vol. V, (Florence: Vallecchi, 1973), 1809–25. For the immediate context of Valla’s Encomium, see O’Malley’s decisive and inno- vative study, “The Feast of Thomas Aquinas in Renaissance Rome: A Neglected Document and its Import,” Rivista di storia della chiesa in Italia 35 (1981): 1–27. 2 Innocenzo Taurisano, Discepoli e biografi di S. Tommaso. Note storico-critiche (Roma: Società Tipografica A. Manuzio, 1924), 45: “licteratura canonizationis”; an extract of Fra
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The literary encomium has an equivalent in the iconographic “triumph.” This is especially the case in panegyric and apologetic painting, whose themes and subjects were almost always chosen with an eye to increasing the greater glory of the Dominican Order. Thus the symmetric correspon- dence between the encomium and the “triumph” turns out to be histori- cally indissoluble, fully illustrative and indicative of the strict parallelisms and convergences that exist between sermons and frescoes whose theme is the exaltation of Thomas. One thinks of the multiple historical and doc- trinal references repeated in literary texts and pictorial works; of the com- parisons and combinations, variously arranged, of Aquinas with the Greek and Latin patristic tradition; and of the complex and rich symbology of Thomist teaching as a synthesis and transcendence of Hellenic specula- tion, and as a definitive refutation of philosophical error (Averroes) and theological heresy (Arian). Beyond hagiographic and apologetic motives, the literary encomium and the pictorial triumph served an immediate and incisive purpose: they commemorated Aquinas’s works, which were read and commentated in the Dominican schools before a learned and devout audience (that could be either favorable or averse to the Order’s doctrinal tradition). The Order of Preachers had nourished itself on Thomas’s corpus to the point of its becoming an integral part, and eventually the dominant part, of the Dominicans’ own cultural history. Aquinas’s “solar splendor” had been assumed into the personal identity and glory of the Preachers, such that Thomas and the Dominican Order would ultimately converge in an indis- soluble nexus. Such was the case not only in more solemn and official moments like an ecumenical council – the Council of Florence and above all the Council of Trent come to mind – but also in seemingly marginal or peripheral places and occasions that would end up being defining and, to say the least, extremely significant for the construction and reaffirmation of its tradition.
Giovanni’s disputation, “utrum licite possit doceri Parisiis doctrina fratris Thomae quoad omnes conclusiones suas,” is given on p. 68. See also Fabro, Breve introduzione al tomismo, 54–55. For the general context, see: Martin Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3 vols. (München: Hueber, 1926–1956), 3:370–410; idem, “La scuola tomista italiana nel sec. XIII e principio del XIV sec.,” Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica 15 (1923): 97–155; P. Glorieux, Les premières polémiques thomistes. Vol. 1: Le Correctorium corruptorii “Quare” (Kain: Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 1927); idem, “La première pénétration thomiste et son problème,” Revue d’Apologétique 53 (1931): 257–275, 385–510. See also Eugenio Marino, “La ‘questione tomista’ nelle fonti giuridico-encomiastiche dell’Ordine Domenicano, 1244–1974” [Camporeale indicated in 2002 that this essay by Marino was forthcoming in Memorie Domenicane, but it does not appear to have been published there, nor has it been possible to locate it elsewhere. Eds.].
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Let us consider, to take an example from the first decades of the four- teenth century, the sensational case of Fra Uberto Guidi di Nepozzano, the Dominican bachelor in the Studio Generale of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. On the solemn and official occasion of a “quodlibetal” disputa- tion in cathedra, Guidi impugned Aquinas’s teaching, “arguing against his lector’s position” (determinando contra determinationem sui lectoris). The disputation was held in 1315, right at the time when efforts for Thomas’s canonization were underway. It seems that “his lector” on that occasion was Fra Remigio de’ Girolami (d. 1319), the authoritative promoter of the most orthodox form of Thomism in the Florentine school. Guidi himself appears to have been a person of some account in the Studio, thanks to both his theological training and his reputation in the Tuscan city. The death registry of Santa Maria Novella sings his praises, noting the course of his studies (begun in Paris, where he was sent by the same Fra Remigio de’ Girolami, then Provincial of the Roman Province) and his teaching in various monastic Studi (Viterbo, Arezzo, Siena, Perugia, and especially Florence). We also know that Bishop Francesco Silvestri commissioned him in 1330 to redact the Statutes of the Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence. The “case” of Guidi’s anti-Thomist thesis must catch our eye for its noteworthy repercussions. The Provincial Chapter of the Dominicans, held in Arezzo in that year, ordered the “contradictor” of the Florentine Studio to retract his thesis, barred him from teaching for two years, and transferred him to the monastery in Pistoia. The rehabilitation of this leading Dominican exponent of dissent to Thomism would come only years later. In the meantime the disputation of 1315 established a rigid con- tinuity and fidelity to the Thomist tradition in the Roman Province of the Order.3 Such conflicts, of which the case of the Florentine scholar is only one example, are set on a larger stage where the debate over Thomism was played out in various guises and scenes; their most intense period was between the end of the thirteenth century and the first half of the four- teenth. But beyond the scholastic controversy, the canonization of 1323 signals a decisive turn towards the consummation of the indissoluble union between the Dominican Order’s historico-ecclesial identity and the cultural tradition of Thomism. The solemn declaration of 1323 materi- alized in the Order’s defining appropriation of Thomas as its doctrinal
3 In addition to the bibliography in the previous note, see also Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 1:361–369, 2:530–547; Stefano Orlandi (ed.), Necrologio di S. Maria Novella, 2 vols. (Firenze: Olschki, 1955), 1:276–307, 502–503, 522–523.
200034 200034 148 salvatore i. camporeale luminary, as well as in the church community’s conscious acceptance of his “sainthood,” which broadened its liturgico-devotional horizon and deepened its own evangelical and theological awareness. This explains the fact that, in the first half of the fifteenth century, we can see its impact even in a learned audience situated on the periphery of, if not outright removed from, theological and academic disputations. Similarly, we find hints or explicit statements about the glory of Aquinas’s wisdom, the very wisdom that the Order of Preachers came to provide to the Church. It is certainly not without significance that the exaltation of Aquinas, the “glory” of the Dominican Order, becomes a basis for resolving major disputes between monastic communities and the secular clergy over issues of pastoral activity and civic harmony. This is what we find in a let- ter to Carlo dei Federici, the Florentine ambassador to the papal Curia (of Eugenius IV), which was issued from the Chancery of Carlo Marsuppini on 10 June 1447: Since there is an open dispute between Santa Reparata and Santa Maria Novella over the solemnity of Corpus Christi, we want you to request of the pontiff that he issue a bull declaring the forenamed feast to be celebrated in Santa Maria Novella. Say that this has heretofore been customary and has been provided for by many of our laws; that this is also the place where the Signoria and all the Guilds go; and finally, that several pontiffs have lived in that most noble church, and that it has no other solemn feast. This should also be done out of respect for the many most noble citizens that frequent it, as well as in observance of Saint Thomas and many other friars, the out- standing theologians of [the Dominican] Order.4 Such praise of Thomas will crop up often in the correspondence of human- ists. Even though they would seem to be at a greater distance from the philosophical and theological disputations of the contemporary Schools, they, too, are capable of appreciating Thomas’s precise literary place in the history of culture. And indeed, this is what we find when they speak of Thomas, such as in a letter Poggio Bracciolini sent to Niccolò Niccoli from London in 1420:
4 Firenze, Archivio di Stato, Signori, Carteggi, Legazioni e Commissarie, Reg. 12, f. 16r-v: “Perché fra quelli di santa Reparata e di santa Maria Novella è certa discordia per la solen- nità del Corpo di Christo, voglamo che in nostro nome supplichiate al prefato pontefice degni provedere per sua bolla decta festa si celebri a santa Maria Novella, assegnando che sempre quivi fu usitato farla, et factone provedimento per più nostre leggi. Et che sempre va là, la Signoria et tucte l’Arti. Et finalmente come nobilissima chiesa nella quale sono habitati più pontefici. Et non ha altra festa solenne. Et etiandio per rispecto di molti nobil- issimi citadini populari di decta chiesa. Et ancora per contemplatione di Santo Thomaso et molti frati singularissimi theologi di quello Ordine.”
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For I have already been able to devote three months to Aristotle, not so much for the sake of learning at present as of reading and seeing what is contained in each work. But this reading of mine is not altogether fruitless. I learn a lit- tle something every day, even if only superficially, and this is the reason why my love of Greek literature has come back so strong: I am becoming acquainted, in his own language, with an author who is practically speech- less and ridiculous in translation. For a commentator I have Thomas Aquinas, a great man and a good scholar, as the seriousness of the subject demands. The inventory of books in Bracciolini’s possession confirms what is said in this passage from the letter to Niccoli. The Florentine humanist’s per- sonal library contained two of Aquinas’s most important commentaries (expositiones) on Aristotle’s works: on the Metaphysics (In XII libros Metaphysicorum) and on the Physics (In VII libros Physicorum).5
1.2. The History of Thomism and the Centrality of the Summa Theologiae in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Capreolo (d. 1444) and Gaetano (d. 1534): The Two Poles of Thomism’s Cultural Evolution in the Period Cornelio Fabro’s observation still holds true today: we lack a “complete, critical history of Thomism that reaps and sorts through the abundant harvest of available materials, organizing them critically and historically according to their polemical and doctrinal aspects.” Indeed, the need for a scholarly synthesis is even more pressing today in view of the growing number of contributions in recent years, particularly in the wake of the last centenary of Aquinas’s death (1274–1974).6
5 Poggio Bracciolini, Epistolae, ed. Tommaso Tonelli, 3 vols. (Firenze: L. Marchini, 1832– 61), 1:8 (p. 39) (also avaialble in Bracciolini, Lettere, ed. Helene Harth, 3 vols. (Firenze: Olschki, 1984–1987), 1:15–16) [English translation = idem, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, tr. Phyllis Walter Goodhart Gordon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 43]: “Ego jam tribus mensibus vaco Aristoteli, non tam discendi causa ad praesens, quam legendi ac videndi quid in quoque opere con- tineatur: nec est tamen omnino inutilis haec lectio, disco aliquid in diem, saltem superficie tenus, et haec est causa potissime, cur amor graecarum litterarum redierit, ut hunc virum quasi elinguem, et absurdum aliena lingua, cognoscam sua. Expositorem habeo Thomam de Aquino, virum egregium et facundum, prout patitur pondus rerum” (tr. Gordon). Ernst Walser, Poggius Florentinus. Leben und Werke (Leipzig: Teubner, 1914), 422: doc. 141, n. 71 and 72. Bracciolini often rebukes Valla for having dared to criticize Aquinas; see, e.g., his Invectiva in L. Vallam V, where he writes, “among our own, he criticizes Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas for ignorance of philosophy” (“e nostris Albertum Magnum et Thomam Aquinatem ut ignaros philosophiae reprehendit”), in Poggio Bracciolini, Opera omnia, ed. Riccardo Fubini, 4 vols. (Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1964–1969), 1:246. 6 Fabro, Breve intoduzione al tomismo, 139. For a general view of the state of Thomist historiography, see the Atti del Congresso internazionale (Roma-Napoli, 17–24 aprile 1974): Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo settimo centenario, 9 vols. (Napoli: Edizioni domenicane ital- iane, 1975–1978).
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This gaping lacuna leaves the historiographical problem of Thomism open to many possible solutions. It would also, however, seem to allow us in good conscience to continue making use of the periodization com- monly applied to Thomism. Although its phases do not exactly coincide and are a bit too imprecise, it furnishes a working hypothesis for histori- cally situating individual pieces of information and studies regarding gen- eral and specific questions. The Thomist tradition is generally divided into the following periods, marked by significant variables and defining moments in the historical evolution of Aquinas’s thought: primitive Thomism, until about 1350; the establishment of Thomist theology’s authority, from 1400 to 1550; the development of post-Tridentine Thomism, across the broad period from 1550 to 1800; and finally, contemporary neo-Thomism. Within this chronology of the history of Thomism and its various phases, let us focus our attention on the second period, from 1400 to 1550, in order to discern its particular character. We find there a determining factor that seems to characterize the fifteenth century in particular and that constitutes a significant shift in the tradition of Aquinas’s thought. On the basis of Grabmann’s research, Kristeller formulated and contextual- ized the phenomenon in the study to which we referred at the beginning of this essay: “What may be called the second period of the history of Thomism is marked by the tendency to adopt the Summa theologiae instead of the Sentences as the basic text in theology.”7 The Summa’s rise over the course of the fifteenth century, first in Germany and then in Italy, to the status of an academic text – as a substi- tute, or at least as a competitor, to the work of Peter Lombard (the basic textbook in traditional theological instruction) – involved a precise reap- praisal of Aquinas’s doctrinal preeminence. This fact requires emphasis, as it becomes a unique and extremely illuminating point of reference for understanding the intended objective of Valla’s Encomium of St. Thomas, delivered in March of 1457 in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. It is therefore necessary to establish the contours within which the cultural conflict incited by Valla took place. These were, on the one hand, the precise connotations and contextual dimensions of contemporary Thomism, which were represented by the very assembly and official
7 Kristeller, Medieval Aspects, 40, who in n. 32 cites: Pierre Mandonnet, “Frères Prêcheurs (la théologie dans l’ordre des),” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1923–1972), 6:863–924, at 906–907; Ricardo G. Villoslada, La Universidad de Paris durante los estudios de Francisco de Vitorio (Roma: Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1938), 279–307; and Grabmann, Mittelalterliches Geistesleben, 3:411–448.
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setting to which the Encomium was addressed, and, on the other hand, the perspectives and breadth of the “anti-Thomism” underlying the humanist problematic and polemic that emerged on the occasion of Valla’s solemn “disputation.” The preeminence acquired by the Summa theologiae in the course of the fifteenth century is a reliable indicator of the progressive expansion of Aquinas’s doctrinal influence and of the Thomist tradition’s growing autonomy in academic teaching. Eventually the Summa achieved cultural hegemony over the theological tradition of writing commentaries to the Sentences. In this process, Aquinas transcended his place within the his- tory of medieval thought and became an autonomous norm of theological and philosophical doctrine, a doctrine whose synthesis was inscribed in exemplary fashion in the textbook of the Summa. What is more, the Summa’s shift in theologico-cultural status seems to have occurred as a movement that straddled Dominican Schools and academic institutions independent of the Order, feeding on and motivated by the study of theol- ogy (and philosophy) itself. Indeed, it is telling – if we have not overlooked anything in our direct consultation of the sources – that the acts of the Capitula Generalia of the fifteenth century lack even one explicit declara- tion, imperative or exhortative, for the adoption of the Summa as a basic text for theological instruction. And this despite the fact that it was up to the general chapters, in practice at least, to assign and transfer the lectors in the Order’s major Studi throughout Europe. At this point we can trace the boundaries that mark the clear beginning and end of the Summa’s cultural shift in the fifteenth century, orienting ourselves chronologically and qualitatively by the major writings of Giovanni Capreolo (d. 1444) and Cardinal De Vio, commonly known as Gaetano (d. 1534).8 Capreolo’s Defensiones theologiae Thomae Aquinatis (Defenses of the Theology of Thomas Aquinas), which dates to around 1432, is generally seen as concluding the grand controversy between Thomism
8 On Capreolo, see Umberto Degl’Innocenti, “Capreolo, Giovanni,” in Enciclopedia Cattolica, 12 vols. (Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia cattolica e per il Libro cattolico, 1948–1954), 3:719–22; Martin Grabmann, “Joannes Capreolus, der ‘Princeps Thomistarum’ und seine Stellung in der Geschichte der Thomistenschule,” Divus Thomas (Freiburg) 22 (1944): 85–109, 145–170; Kristeller, Medieval Aspects, 38–39; Fabro, Breve intro- duzione al tomismo, 61 and 104–105. On Gaetano, see Umberto Degl’Innocenti, “De Vio, Tommaso detto il Gaetano,” in Enciclopedia Cattolica, 4:1506–09; Il cardinale Tomaso de Vio Gaetano nel IV centenario della sua morte (Milano: Vita e pensiero, 1935; special issue of Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica); Martin Grabmann, “Die Stellung des Kardinals Cajetan in der Geschichte des Thomismus,” Angelicum 11 (1934): 547–560; Pierre Mandonnet, “Il car- dinal Gaetano (1468–1534),” Memorie Domenicane 48 (1931): 38–102.
200034 200034 152 salvatore i. camporeale and anti-Thomism that raged in the fourteenth century. Nevertheless it should be mentioned that Capreolo, princeps Thomistarum (“prince of the Thomists”), also authored what is perhaps the last great commentary on Peter Lombard. This text is not only apologetic in nature but also delves deep into content. Furthermore, it is fully elaborated in strict adherence to Aquinas’s Scriptum in libros Sententarium (Commentary on the Books of the Sentences), and thus it privileged the “Thomism” of the commentary on the Sentences more than that of the Summa theologiae. The outer boundary of Thomism’s historical development in the fif- teenth century is marked by Gaetano’s magnum opus: his commentaries on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae, written between 1507 and 1522. This clas- sic work of Cardinal De Vio stands at the opposite pole from that of Capreolo and concludes the decisive shift that occurred in the second period of Thomism’s history. With the Council of Trent and the post-Tri- dentine period, it will be the Summa, as the normative text of Aquinas’s theological and philosophical doctrines, that determines the preeminence and precise value of the Thomist tradition, particularly in the sphere of dogmatic opposition to the Reformation. The so-called “Piana” edition of Thomas’s corpus, promoted by Pius V, acts as a kind of bookend. We are now quite far indeed from the Dominican Chapter’s 1308 order to the members of the Roman Province regarding the teaching of theology in cathedral schools: “that lectors and bachelors teach from the Sentences and not from Thomas’s Summa.”9 Bartolomeo Spina, the Dominican Master of the Sacred Palace and a tenacious defender of anti-Lutheran orthodoxy, showed a clear under- standing of this change in the retrospective appraisal of Thomism’s his- tory and Gaetano’s work that he issued a few years after De Vio’s death, in his preface to the posthumous edition of Gaetano’s commentary on the Secunda-secundae (first published in Lyon in 1540–41):10
9 Thomas Kaeppeli and Antonio Dondaine (eds.), Acta Capitulorum Provincialium Provinciae Romanae (Roma: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1941), 169: “quod lectores et baccellarii legant de Sententiis et non de Summa Thomae.” Cf. Angelus Walz, “Ordinationes Capitulorum Generalium de Sancto Thoma eiusque cultu et doc- trina,” Analecta Sacri Ordinis Praedicatorum 31 (1923): 168–173. 10 Caietanus, Commentarii in ImIIae Summae Theologiae S. Thomae Aquinatis, finished by Gaetano in February, 1517 and dedicated to Leo X. Reference is to the Lyon edition of 1558 [= Cajetan, Prima Secundae Partis Summae Sacrae Theologiae Sancti Thomae], III, f. a2v-a3v, where Spina’s praefatio is found. For the bibliography on Spina, who died towards the end of 1546 or at the beginning of 1547, see Innocenzo Taurisano, Hierarchia Ordinis Praedicatorum (Roma: Manuzio, 1916), 52; Angelus Walz, I domenicani al Concilio di Trento (Roma: Herder, 1961), passim.
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Among all the doctors of the church who have been declared saints, [Thomas Aquinas] is called on as an authority even by those who oppose his teaching in certain areas (which opposition reveals their ignorance). When disputing or teaching the doctors were wont to say, “such is the opinion of the holy doctor,” or, “the holy doctor thought thus” …. Whoever does not admire or praise the wisdom of this man is destitute of wisdom, or he is without a doubt jealous and wicked. For with the rising of his sun, every mere shadow of error and heresy was immediately chased away from the aspect of holy mother church. Whatever doubt, whatever anxiety sprouts forth in the church from the devil’s seed dissolves and vanishes at once when Thomas is appointed judge. Through Thomas all of ecclesiastical dogma is strength- ened, and its decrees receive confirmation. Who in our time, indeed who since the rising of this sun, has become a logician, philosopher, or theolo- gian of the highest caliber without seeking the support of divine Thomas’s most constant wisdom? What learned and eloquent speaker ascends the pulpit without borrowing from Thomas what instructs and moves the peo- ple? What venerable doctor in cathedra (if, that is, he should teach the truth) does Thomas not furnish with the certitude of his wisdom? Finally, who braves a scholastic competition without first girding himself with the arms of Thomas? … Nor has any of the glory of this holiest doctor been lost to the disturbances of any detractors whatsoever in our lifetime. On the contrary, like gold tempered by fire, his wisdom prevails untarnished over the unwise, shining forth from a distance. And the fame amassed everywhere by the most holy doctor, being defended by the many with all vigor, has grown beyond all proportion. Spina sees the timelessness of Thomism – with the Summa’s rise to pre- eminence during the fifteenth century – as the long route of the Dominican theological tradition connecting the first Thomas, Aquinas, to the second, Gaetano: Thomas Gaetanus, coming much later, whose wisdom and exemplary life were just about second to none in these days, like a living image of Aquinas was inspired by the Lord to proceed with the work of this most incredible man. His merits compel, and his perpetual monument induces, posterity to imitate him …. The doctrine which the divine Thomas had diffused through- out the whole world was given a brighter sheen by this second Thomas’s interpretations …. Thus everyone can rightly recite these verses when burst- ing into the praise of both princes: ‘as the morning star in the midst of a cloud, and as the moon at the full, and as the shining sun’ [Ecclus. 50:6–7], thus they shine on the temple of God.11
11 Bartolomeo Spina, preface to Cajetan, Prima Secundae Partis Summae, III, f. a2v-a3v: “[Thomas Aquinas] inter omnes ecclesiae doctores, sancti denominatione, ab his etiam, qui doctrinae eius in aliquibus (ex hoc imperiti) adversantur, antonomasice vocitetur, dum inter disputandum legendumve doctores dicere consueverunt: Haec est sancti docto- ris sententia; vel, sic tenuit sanctus doctor …. Sapientiam quoque illius qui non admiratur
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The diptych sketched by Spina aims to demonstrate the timelessness and the (wholly Dominican) continuity of the Thomist theological tradition on the verge of the Council of Trent. Yet it is richer in parallelisms and connections than these passages might lead us to suppose.
1.3. Valla’s Encomium: Its Place in History and Cultural Significance Valla’s 1457 Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas (Encomion sancti Thomae Aquinatis) must be read within the cultural and ideological context of the teaching of theology in the fifteenth century. And at the same time it must be situated in the camp of critical opposition to Thomism’s rise to hege- mony in the study of theology in the same period. Taking Capreolo’s work and Gaetano’s commentaries as the polar extremes (from Peter Lombard’s Sentences to Aquinas’s Summa) of Thomism’s development in the fif- teenth century, we see the beginning and the end of the theological arc in which Valla’s discourse was situated; it was an attempt to break this linear continuity. Indeed, the Encomium is nothing other than the resulting cri- tique of the extremes of Thomism’s theological development in the cen- tury of humanism. It stands forth as a lucid and incisive call to arms to block and interrupt the (to Valla’s mind decidedly regressive) course of Thomism’s doctrinal development in particular and of theological study in general. Every sentence of the work is informed by this call to arms and aut extollit, non nisi sapientia ieiunus est, vel certe invidens ac malignus. Sole nanque isto suborto, omnes errorum ac haeresum umbrae, a sanctae matris ecclesiae facie protinus effugatae sunt. Quicquid dubietatis, quicquid scrupuli satore diabolo pullulat in ecclesia, Thoma iudice constituto, confestim dissolvitur ac vanescit. Omne per Thomam ecclesiasti- cum dogma firmatur roborataeque sanctiones persistunt. Quis aevo nostro, imo quis post solis huius ortum optimus logicus, philosophus, theologus evasit, qui non divi Thomae firmissimae sapientiae auxilium imploraverit? Quisnam doctus ac facundus concionator ambonem ascendit, qui non a Thoma mutuet, quae populum erudiant ac inflamment? Quis cathedram venerandus doctor insedit, cui non Thomas (si tamen vera doceat) sapientiae certitudinem subministret? Quis denique scholasticum certamen adoritur, qui non se prius Thomae armis accinxerit? … Neque tamen sanctissimi huius doctoris aliquid suae gloriae deperit in hoc etiam nostrae peregrinationis tempore, ob quorumlibet etiam adversantium infestationem. Quinimo veluti per ignem probatum aurum sapientia illius ab insipientibus ex hoc impugnata praevalens, eminus fulget eiusdemque doctoris sanctissimi omnifariam cumulata celebritas, dum a multis validissime defensatur, crevit in immensum. Thomas Caietanus, postremus quidem tempore, sapientia vero ac vitae splendore his diebus nulli forte secundus, a Domino quasi vivens Aquinatis imago suscitatus est Viri huius singularissimi praeconia prosequi, eius compellunt merita, inducit monumentum perpetuum, quo ad imitandum trahantur posteri …. Doctrinam per divum Thomam in mundo effusam, alter hic Thomas fulgidiorem reddit explanationibus suis … ut merito quisque in utriusque principis laudem prorumpens decantare possit: ‘Quasi stella matu- tina in medio nebulae, et quasi luna plena in diebus suis lucent, et quasi sol refulgens sic’ hi refulgent in templo dei.”
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by the determination to make a frontal assault on the timelessness of Thomism and the specific direction that it was taking, as is clear from the circumstances of time and place (and not only these) in which Valla declaimed his panegyric. This oration at Santa Maria sopra Minerva – which Valla clearly saw as the densest abridged form for encapsulating the essential aspects of his own thought – should be considered in the direct light of his most mature literary efforts, namely those from the last decade of his life, the years 1448–1457 of his second Roman period. These are the unpublished third edition of the Dialecticae disputationes (Dialectical Disputations), the 1455 inaugural lecture “in principio sui studii,” which should be read in tandem with the proem to the translation of Thucydides’ History, and the second redaction of the Adnotationes in Novum Testa mentum (Annotations on the New Testament). These are, in short, the premises and limits, and above all the context and particular approach that inform our interpretive and comparative reading of the Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas (in the context of Valla’s oeuvre).12
12 The text of the Encomion sancti Thomae was first printed by J. Vahlen, in Vierteljahrsschrift für Kultur und Litteratur der Renaissance 1 (1886): 384–396 (facsimile reprint in Lorenzo Valla, Opera omnia, ed. Eugenio Garin, 2 vols. [Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962], 2:339–352). To the two manuscripts (Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7811 A and Rome, Bibl. Angelica, 1500) mentioned and transcribed respectively by Vahlen and by G. Bertocci (Roma, 1888) must be added Modena, Bibl. Estense alpha T 6, 15, which contains several variants; this ms. was listed by Kristeller in Iter Italicum, 1:396b. A Spanish translation of the Encomium with the Latin text, re-edited on the basis of the Parisian and Roman manu- scripts, is available in Lorenzo Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, ed. Francesco Adorno (Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1955), with introduction and notes, 290–321. It is on the basis of this edition that we shall conduct our analysis of Valla’s text. An Italian translation of the Encomium is also readily available in Lorenzo Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi, ed. Giorgio Radetti (Firenze: Sansoni, 1953), 455ff., with introduction and notes. [A critical edition of the Latin text is now available: Lorenzo Valla, Encomion sancti Thome Aquinatis, ed. Stefano Cartei (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008); Cartei’s edition is the basis for the text and translation of the Encomium in the present volume, pp. 297–315, which is the source for all citations of the Encomium throughout this essay (cited according to paragraph and, for the Latin text, line number.] For bibliography on the Encomium, in addition to the indications in Kristeller, Medieval Aspects, 63–65 and notes, and in O’Malley, Some Renaissance Panegyrics of Aquinas, n. 1 and passim, we add Mario Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla nel quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente (Roma: Libreria editrice dell’Università Gregoriana, 1969), 456–469. Emblematic of a skewed reading of the Encomium is the article by Michele Schiavone, “Intorno all’Encomion Thomae Aquinatis di Lorenzo Valla,” Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 47 (1955): 73–79, where Valla is seen in a perspective quite different from the more recent historiography, which considers him the “theologian of the Renaissance”; thus Ekkehard Mühlenberg, “Laurentius Valla als Renaissancetheologe,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66 (1969): 466–480. On the celebration in honor of St. Thomas in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, see the documentation referred to by Kristeller, Medieval Aspects, 61, n. 114. The liturgical feast of St. Thomas was solemnly cele- brated as a cappella cardinalizia until recent times (1967), just as it had been, with all prob- ability, since Valla’s day and earlier than the period indicated by Johannes Burckardus in
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1.4. The Cappellone degli Spagnoli in Florence (Second Half of the Fourteenth Century) and the Cappella Carafa in Rome (End of the Fifteenth Century): Iconographic Themes at the Poles of the Thomist Tradition The object of what has been said so far is to differentiate the neo- Thomism of the fifteenth century into two contrasting interpretive nodes that simultaneously act as highly meaningful historical delimitations: Capreolo’s Defensiones and the Commentarii on the Summa Theologiae. Indeed, the works of Capreolo and Gaetano constitute the polar extremes of a development – the Thomistic revival of the fifteenth century – that underlies the organic partition of Thomas’s systematic theology. Let us now turn from the “panegyric” of the commentators to the iconographic “triumph,” and thus to the symmetrical correspondence between theo- logical literature and pictorial visualization which we mentioned at the beginning of this essay. In this way we shall find artistic confirmation of the contrast, in terms of cultural distance and thematic variation, between the two poles of the Thomist tradition in the century of Italian humanism. As is known, Thomist encomiastic iconology was born around the middle of the fourteenth century with Traini’s “triumph” (Pisa, ca. 1340). Using narrative cycles and ecclesiological and dogmatic elements, the painting elaborates an increasingly detailed and pregnant historico- doctrinal canonization of Aquinas. The Dominicans, who in Pisa, Florence, Rome, and elsewhere summoned well-known artists to fresco the walls of their city churches, were the ones who superintended the harmonic and systematic orchestration of the “triumph.” They were the ones who sug- gested to the painter the symbolic figures, the historical and allegorical personages, the doctrinal references and connotations. The “triumph,” the Liber notarum and in the Diarium, as cited by Kristeller, ibid., p. 61 [= Johann Burchard, Liber notarum: ab anno 1483 usque ad annum 1506, ed. Enrico Celani, 14 fasc. in 4 vols. (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1907–1942); idem, Diarium, sive, Rerum urbanarum commentarii (1483–1506), ed. L. Thuasne, 3 vols. (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1883–1885); precise references in Kristeller]. An historical profile of this celebration at Santa Maria sopra Minerva is found in A. Zucchi (d. 1956), “Il Collegio di S. Tommaso d’Aquino alla Minerva,” unpublished work held in the church’s archives (Arch. Conv.), ch. IX: “La festa di S. Tommaso e il Collegio della Minerva,” ff. 61–71. I owe my photocopies of this unpublished work to Father Benedetto Carderi, whom I thank cordially. Cf. also Marie- Hyacinthe Laurent, “Autour de la fête de saint Thomas; Revue Thomiste 40 (1935): 257–263; see also B. Carderi, “I Registri del ‘Collegio S. Tommaso d’Aquino’ in Roma, conservati nell’archivio del convento di S. Maria sopra Minerva,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 7 (1976): 346–358.
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in short, was the defense and the reaffirmation of the timelessness of Thomas’s philosophical and theological “summa,” of his Christian specula- tion and dogmatic orthodoxy; it portrayed Thomism as a paradigmatic form in the ecclesiastical tradition, a genuine source for reanimating and corroborating a revival of theological thought in the dynamic equilib- rium where Christianity and culture meet. And the grand frescos, such as those (exemplary ones) by Andrea di Bonaiuto, in the chapterhouse of the Chiostro Verde in S. Maria Novella (second half of the fourteenth century), or by Filippino Lippi, in the Cappella Carafa of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome (in the last decade of the fifteenth century), serve to encapsulate the various rebirths of Thomism and the pictorializations related to them.13
13 George Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in Central and South Italian Schools of Painting (Florence: Sansoni, 1965), 1088–1096, n. 395, figs. 1268–1277; idem, Iconography of the Saints in Tuscan Painting (Florence: Sansoni, 1952), 977–988, n. 217, figs. 1099–1113; Stefano Orlandi, “I libri corali di s. Maria Novella con miniature dei sec. XIII e XIV,” Memorie Domenicane 83 (1966): 55–57. On the Cappellone degli Spagnoli: Richard Fremantle, Florentine Gothic Painters. From Giotto to Masaccio (London: Secker & Warburg, 1975), 203–204, esp. figs. 416 and 418 (with bibliography); Millard Meiss, Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death: The Arts, Religion and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (London: Harper & Rowe, 1973), ch. 4: “The Spanish Chapel,” 94–104; Pierre Francastel, Studi di sociologia dell’arte, tr. Andrea Zanzotto (Milan: Rizzoli, 1976), 116 (original French ed. = Études de sociologie d’art [Paris: Denoël/Gonthier, 1970]); but above all, for our theme, Julius von Schlosser, “Giusto’s Fresken in Padua und die Vorläufer der Stanza della Segnatura,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 17 (1896): 13–100 (the interpretive scheme of the series of the artes and scientiae and the cor- responding auctoritates is found on p. 47). Schlosser’s proposed identification of the alle- gorical figures of the scientiae and their corresponding personages (for the artes there are no interpretive uncertainties) is partially dubious but seems at this point the most con- vincing. Nevertheless, we believe that the iconographic series of the scientiae (and thus of the related historical personages) must be reinterpreted in light of a long text of the Council of Constance regarding the condemnation of Wycliffe’s 29th “proposition” (Giovan Domenico Mansi [ed.], Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, 53 vols. [Paris: H. Welter, 1901–1927], 28:131–137). In that text (of 1415, but actually a synthesis of the aca- demic tradition of the late fourteenth century) we find the programmatic statute of the medieval university for the “artistic” and “scientific” education of clerics. The “scientific” one is given in tripartite form: law (civil and canon law), philosophy (natural philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics), and theology (scriptural and dogmatic). But what must be par- ticularly emphasized here is its “reduction” of the artes and the scientiae to the direct and immediate service of the “science of faith” (scientia fidei). From this connection between the text of the Council of Constance and the wall of the Cappellone we would conclude the following: in Andrea di Bonaiuto’s “triumph,” Thomas is exalted for having effected the greatest and most perfect synthesis (almost the incarnation of the medieval universitas studiorum) of all the artes and scientiae, none excluded but with each one still retaining its own specific function in relation to theoretical and practical “sacra doctrina” (cf. Eugenio Marino, “Umanesimo e teologia. A proposito della recente storiografia su Lorenzo Valla,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 3 (1972): 198–218, at 209–210). Also on the Cappellone del Chiostro Verde, see J.-J. Berthier, Le triomphe de Saint Thomas, patron et protecteur des
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The two endpoints of the progressive exaltation of Thomism that takes place during the period of Italian humanism are perfectly contemporane- ous with and strictly related to the mural cycles in the Florentine chapter- house (or “Cappellone degli Spagnoli”) and the Minervan Cappella (commissioned by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa). The “triumph” of Thomas executed by Andrea di Bonaiuto – who on 30 December 1365 was commis- sioned by the prior of S. Maria Novella to paint the entire chapterhouse – is
écoles catholiques peint par Taddeo Gaddi dans la Chapelle des Espagnoles à Florence. Étude d’histoire et d’art (Fribourg [Switzerland]: Saint Paul, 1897). In that work, however, it is not only necessary to correct the attribution of the pictorial cycle to Taddeo Gaddi, but also to note the unlikelihood (apart from civil and canon law, represented by the first two sym- bolic figures starting from the left) of the successive division of the scientiae into: “moral,” “dogmatic,” “scholastic,” “mystic,” and “apologetic,” as well as the identification of the his- torical personages alligned with the same division. Unfortunately, Berthier’s iconographic interpretation has found its way into popular works, e.g., Maria Baciocchi de Péon, Il Chiostro Verde e la Cappella degli Spagnoli (Firenze: Lumacchi, 1900) and Stefano Orlandi and Isnardo Grossi, Santa Maria Novella e suoi chiostri monumentali. Guida storico-artisica (Firenze: Edizioni S. Becocci, 1974), 43–77. Among the many works on the Cappella Carafa in the Minerva in Rome, see in particu- lar: Mary Pittaluga, “Filippino Lippi,” in Enciclopedia universale dell’arte, vol. 8:623–631, at 627–631; Urbain Mengin, Les deux Lippi (Paris: Plon, 1932), 153–171; Alfred Scharf, Filippino Lippi (Vienna: A. Schroll, 1935), 39–45, pls. 45–55; Valerio Mariani, “L’arte di Filippino Lippi,” in Saggi su Filippino Lippi (Firenze: Arnaud, 1957), 71–84; J.-J. Berthier, L’église de la Minerve à Rome (Roma: Cooperativa tipografica Manuzio, 1910), 148–196; Carlo Bertelli, “Appunti sugli affreschi nella Cappella Carafa alla Minerva,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 35 (1965): 115–130. For what will be said later about the Minervan Cappella, it is worth remembering that Gaetano dedicated his Commentarium on the prima pars of the Summa Theologiae, finished in May, 1507 (cf. n. 10 above) and published in Venice in 1508, to cardinal Oliviero Carafa. Gaetano’s dedicatory “praefatio” ends with the following passage: “Now I come to myself, who have always been loved by you with fatherly affec- tion, increased with benefices, and decorated with high offices. I would rightly have to be censured for the vice of ingratitude if I should offer these fruits of my studies to another rather than to you, to whom I have also dedicated lesser works, especially since you most of all encouraged me to hammer out this intepretation, and, when it was nearly well fin- ished, you not only requested often but even violently demanded that it be published. Receive now this gift of ours favorably, and accept it as a pledge and a monument to my faith and regard for you. For all time, be well.” (Commentarii in ImIIae Summae Theologiae S. Thomae Aquinatis, p. *2v: “Venio nunc ad meipsum, qui paterna charitate semper abs te dilectus, beneficiis auctus, dignitatibusque ornatus, ingrati animi vitio iure damnandus sim, si alii quam tibi hos quoque studiorum meorum fructus detulerim, cui minora etiam dedicavi. Praesertim cum tu me ad hanc cudendam expositionem adhortatus maxime fueris, vixque bene absolutam, publicari non solum saepe petieris, verum etiam flagi- taveris. Cape igitur munus hoc nostrum benigna fronte, meaeque fidei atque observantiae erga te pignus hoc monumentumque agnosce. In aevum, vale.”) Finally, let us add that the “triumph” of Thomas would later find a Counter-Reformation iconographic expression in its figurative assimilation of ancient Roman heroes. For this aspect, see the design of Giuseppe Passeri (1654–1714) in Anthony Blunt and Hereward Lester Cooke, The Roman Drawings of the XVII and XVIII Centuries in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle (London: Phaidon, 1960), 73 and 75, pl. 62. I would like to thank Prof. Nicholas Turner for calling my attention to Passeri’s design.
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an integral part of the larger, differentiated (yet uninterrupted) theme of the event of salvation and its extension into the “time” of the Church Militant and Triumphant. The Church (ecclesia) is depicted in its secular historicity – its hegemonic scope notwithstanding – within the political realm of culture and the city. Portrayed along the lines of the Florentine communal polis and the Holy Roman Empire, it is simultaneously the space of the civic community and of universal Christendom. The Order of the “Hounds of the Lord” (Domini canes) serves a well- defined apologetic function against the heretical movements – the refer- ences to Peter Martyr and Aquinas’s Contra gentes are explicit – and discharges a specific ministry of the Word within the Church’s apostolic and pastoral mission. Aquinas, then, in an historic and privileged moment of the Order, in a sense recomposed and incarnated in himself the prac- tice and the speculation of the Christian community. Hence the pictorial and architectural passage, from the right wall around to the opposite side, which ascends from the narration of the journey (through various times and places) of the hierarchical and communitarian Church (ecclesia) to the “triumph” of Thomas. Inevitably, the central wall represents the event of salvation. In the “triumph,” Aquinas is exalted as the one who, “in the saintliness of his life,” possessed the theological and the cardinal virtues (winged per- sonifications in a circle above the doctoral chair) to an exemplary degree and who “magisterially illustrated them in his writings” (Orlandi);14 at the same time he is the one who achieved victory over dogmatic heresy (Arian and Nestorius) and philosophical error (Averroes). Situated between the apostle Paul and the New Testament Evangelists on the one hand, and the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament on the other, he is the doctor Ecclesiae (Doctor of the Church) par excellence, the theologian organic to the Christian community, as is indicated by the sage liturgical verse (Wisd. of Sol. 7:7) inscribed on the open book held to his chest. But Aquinas’s theological doctrine is at the same time a global synthesis, a place of con- vergence (also in the pictorial display) for the sacred and profane sciences (from civil and canon law to the various disciplines constitutive of theol- ogy, the scientia fidei, or science of faith), as well as for the liberal arts of the quadrivium and the trivium. Aquinas’s is a vast and systematic work of theological investigation. It is situated in the (Greek and Latin) patristic tradition and at the summit of scholasticism (from Boethius to Peter
14 [It has not been possible to identify the precise source of this quotation from Stefano Orlandi. Eds.]
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Lombard). It makes use of civil and canon law and ecclesiology, takes up the ancient Greek and Latin authorities (auctoritates), and comes to be expressed, at the same time, in the divine rhythms of the Holy Spirit, which breathes its gifts into the theologian. Corresponding in number and pictorial space to the allegorical figures of the seven planets, which are placed above the arts of the quadrivium and trivium, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are represented by an equal number of allegorical figures, lined up with the symbolic series of the sciences and a procession of the histori- cal personages related to them. It seems obvious that the synchrony of Thomas’s “triumph” is inserted into an architectural and semantic arrangement with a specifically medi- eval perspective: it is an integral part of a space and time that is structur- ally Gothic and ideologically scholastic. The Cappellone’s vast mural cycle is laid out and tied together in concentric circles: the “triumph” of Thomas is set within the kerygmatic and apologetic function of the Dominican
Figure 1. Andrea di Bonaiuto (fl. 1343–1377), Triumph of the Catholic Doctrine Embodied by St. Thomas Aquinas, fresco, 1365–1367. Cappellone degli Spagnoli, Santa Maria Novella, Florence (courtesy of Scala Archives).
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Order; the Order’s apostolic mission is inscribed in the dimensions of the Church (ecclesia), which is hierarchically ordered and understood as a continuum from the time of its militancy to the “final days” of its glorifica- tion; finally, the event of salvation appears as omni-comprehensive of Christianity, endowing it with form from its apostolic origins to recent times and bringing it to completion. Thomas’s doctrine and works are therefore projected, within the pictorial cycle, as the recapitulation of Christian teaching and ancient culture, but also as a theological moment of Christianity immediately related to the ecclesial time of an historical epoch. At the close of the fifteenth century, the exaltation of Thomism is cele- brated in the Cappella Carafa in a perspective largely different from that of the Florentine Cappellone. The overall composition of the whole mural cycle, finished in September 1492 and dedicated to the “Divine Thomas,” canonizes Thomist theology as a doctrinal system of timeless contempo- rary applicability. Executed “according to theological and cultural princi- ples” and with the “illustrative character of the whole, envisioned as a giant illuminated page,” Lippi’s pictorial cycle takes on the aspect of an “ideal frontispiece” – not so much to Aquinas’s opera omnia, as Mariani believes, but rather, and above all, to his Summa theologiae.15 It is enno- bled by a Renaissance architectural structure, taking on dimensions of Roman continuity and normativity. Lippi’s pictorial narrative is executed along the walls of the Minervan Cappella in a tripartite scheme, progressing naturally around a thematic nucleus from the right wall (the “triumph” of Thomas, or “disputation,” as Vasari calls it) to the opposite left wall (destroyed in 1566 to insert a monu- ment to Paul IV, designed by Ligorio). Here, according to Vasari, “Faith has taken Infidelity captive …. Hope has likewise overcome Despair and … there are many other Virtues that have subjugated the Vice that is their opposite.”16 The cycle finishes on the central wall with the Assumption and the great Annunciation altarpiece. Lippi’s iconographic text is informed by a thematic continuity and organic connectivity, and it seems rather obvious (although this has been ignored by historians, even by the likes of Berthier) that the pictorial cycle follows the same tripartite scheme as the Summa theologiae. “In our endeavor to expound this science (sacra doctrina),” Aquinas writes in the prologue to quaestio 2, pars 1 of the Summa, “we shall treat: (1) of God; (2) of the rational creature’s advance
15 [Mariani, “L’arte di Filippino Lippi,” 80.] 16 [Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, tr. Gaston du C. de Vere (New York: Knopf, 1996), 567.]
200034 200034 162 salvatore i. camporeale towards God; (3) of Christ, who, as a man, is our way to God.”17 The Summa’s tripartite scheme is manifested in the Minervan Chapel’s walls as follows: the dogmatic and philosophical disputation (with the sequence of historical personages form the ranks of theological heresy and philo- sophical error) corresponds to pars 1 of the Summa (the unity and trinity of God, and the nature of man); the portrayal of Christian theological and moral practice corresponds to pars 2 (the theological and cardinal virtues, and their contrary vices); and the Annunciation, the initium Incarnationis (“beginning of the Incarnation”) corresponds to pars 3 (dedicated to the mystery of the God-man who is the way to salvation). The pictorial cycle, which takes us back to the right wall from which it began, is nothing other than the doctrinal illustration of the large Book, open in all its fullness, in the large rose window inscribed at the apex of the Renaissance arch. Above the “Disputation” scene, the arch majesti- cally outlines the throne where Thomas is seated; gathered at the feet of the throne – in a grouping that is significantly reduced in comparison with the “triumph” of the Florentine Cappellone – are the allegorical figures of Grammar and Dialectic on one side, Philosophy and Theology on the other. The large book of the Summa theologiae (as identified by Berthier), decorated with lilies and illuminated by a sun above it, is held up by two putti: the work of the Angelic Doctor hovers in an almost divine and time- less glorification that transcends its very author.18 Finally, the fresco runs to the end of the high wall and continues through the entire curve of the lunette. Here is depicted, in an uninterrupted sequence (as Bertelli has noted), an event in Thomas’s life – mocked by Valla in a long passage of the Adnotationes – that is directly related to the doctrine of his theological work.19 Thomas deposits his Book at the feet of the Cross, and Christ gives him the divine seal of dogmatic orthodoxy, saying: “you have written well of me, Thomas” (bene scripsisti de me, Thoma). If the “triumph” of Thomas in the Cappellone degli Spagnoli celebrates Thomas as the greatest theologian of the universal church and as a thinker profoundly organic to medieval Christianity, the “triumph” in the Cappella Carafa is undoubtedly dedicated to the glorification of the Summa theologiae. Is it not perhaps within this perspective – which, incidentally,
17 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, prol. quae. 2, pars 1: “Ad huius sacrae doctrinae expositionem intendentes primo, tractabimus de Deo; secundo, de motu rationalis in Deum; tertio, de Christo, qui, secundum hominem, via est nobis tendendi in Deum.” Translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1948). 18 [Berthier, L’Église de la Minerve, 167, 180.] 19 [Bertelli, “Appunti sugli affreschi nella cappella Carafa alla Minerva,” 117, n. 11.]
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Figure 2. Filippino Lippi (ca. 1457–1504), Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas over the Heretics, fresco, 1489–1492. Cappella Carafa, Santa Maria sopra Minerva, Rome (courtesy of Scala Archives).
does much to explain the location of Pius V’s monument to Paul IV – that the Summa’s systematic theology will define the specific “Thomism” of the Council of Trent and the period of the Counter-Reformation, to say noth- ing of earlier anti-Lutheran controversialism? Aquinas’s Summa, and more precisely its recovery, seem to be at the root of this doctrinal and ecclesiological restoration – a restoration which was often reiterated, albeit with different elements, but which was initiated and raised to the status of an ideological paradigm in the fifteenth century. The polar extremes of the theological controversy of the fifteenth cen- tury thus came to converge in the former temple of Minerva: the humanist critique found in the Encomium of 1457, arguing for a science of faith alter- native to that of traditional scholasticism, and the counter-reaffirmation of the 1492 pictorial cycle, illustrating the timeless contemporary applica- bility of Thomist theology. Emerging in all their fullness and profundity, then, at the end of the fifteenth century, are on the one hand Valla’s insight into the ideological direction which would be taken by the theological
200034 200034 164 salvatore i. camporeale speculation of the Schools, and on the other hand the complex and sys- tematic anti-humanist response of neo-Thomism. Valla’s Encomium was a programmatic call for a humanist theology, and in the early sixteenth cen- tury it would yield Erasmus’s “theory or method of true theology” (ratio seu methodus verae theologiae). In the mid-fifteenth century, however, it functioned as a critique of scholasticism, which saw in Thomism the ori- gins of a timeless and normative theology. Timelessness is semantically a very rich category of iconography. Zeri based his Pittura e Controriforma on it, thereby reconstructing the “origins of ‘timeless art.’” By transferring this concept to theology – and we are prompted to do so on account of analogical correlations – we could describe the critical objective of Valla’s 1457 speech as identifying, in the fifteenth-century scholastic-Thomist shift, the beginning of a zeitlose Theologie, a timeless theology, that would remain a constant in Christian culture.20 Indeed, precisely this seems to be the essential, contextual nucleus of the Encomium of St. Thomas. We now offer as close a reading of the text as possible in order to substantiate this position, which has been stated here as a mere hypothesis in a purely formal way.
2. Encomium of St. Thomas
The Encomium’s composition is dense, full of literary and extra-literary interrelations, contextual combinations and contrasts, and different
20 We owe the phrase zeitlose Theologie (timeless theology) to Federico Zeri, Pittura e Controriforma. Alle origini dell’“arte senza tempo” (Torino: Einaudi, 1957). Our coinage zeit- lose Theologie is based on his zeitlose Kunst (timeless art) (p. 84), which he defines as “the escape of a work (of art) from the fleeting frailty of taste and of style.” His work also sug- gested the subtitle to our introduction: “at the origins of neo-Thomism in the fifteenth- century,” as it also effects a conceptual transfer from iconography (the iconography of “timeless art”) to the history of theology. But we owe not only this to Zeri; indeed our debt to him involves something much more important. Beyond the intentions of the author him- self, our reading of Pittura e Controriforma leads us to conclude the existence of a strict parallelism between the vicissitudes of “timeless art” and the multiform course of theologi- cal study between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries – although the relative periods and corresponding chronological rhythms do not match up exactly. This proposition has undoubtedly been stated too briefly for the observation that we would like to make in this regard and that would require a fuller and more in-depth discussion. The reader, however, will easily be able to comprehend it by rereading Zeri’s monograph from the point of view of the history of theology and of the Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What Zeri wrote on p. 113 finds clear confirmation here: “the artistic thermometer … is the most precise indicator of society’s values and meanings.” This is what the Renaissance art historian Georg Weise demonstrated and repeated on many occasions (also with regard to other, more com- plex, aspects), in his L’ideale eroico del Rinascimento e le sue premesse umanistiche (Napoli: Edizioni scientifiche italiane, 1961), ch. 1: “Il duplice concetto di Rinascimento,” 1–78.
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levels and types of argument. Its complex structure – typically humanistic, as will be argued later – is not immediately clear. It will therefore be nec- essary to analyze it as a whole in order to understand its contents and to discover the solutions proposed by Valla in relation to the question of Thomism’s theological validity in the fifteenth century. The following observations, although derived or arrived at from different perspectives, are all made with a view to the theme of timelessness just mentioned, a theme which seems to us central to Valla’s oration.21
2.1. Exordium and Divine Invocation The very opening of the Encomium, with its references to and historico- literary considerations on the divine invocation (“invocatio coelestis numinis”), endows Valla’s discourse right from the beginning with the humanistic ambivalence between pagan cultural custom and Christian liturgical revival. Indeed, the extremely short exordium (directly preced- ing the recitation of the Ave Maria) focuses on the transfer – from the idolatrous worship of “false gods” to that of “the true God,” Christ – of this beseeching prayer for the encomiastic celebration of the saint. Valla obvi- ously has in mind the specific literary genre of the encomium, or laudati- vum genus (genre of praise), exemplified in Hellenic oratory (Isocrates, Demosthenes) and thoroughly described first by Aristotle and then by
21 For the relationship between Valla and Quintilian, of which much will be said here in the first section of the present essay, see Salvatore I. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1972), where “Valla’s Quintilianism” is amply treated and demonstrated with pertinent texts. See also Hanna- Barbara Gerl, Rhetorik als Philosophie. Lorenzo Valla (München: Fink, 1974). References to other sources in Valla’s writings are discussed in two very important essays (made avail- able by the generous courtesy of their author, although after our work was already com- pleted) by Riccardo Fubini, “Intendimenti umanistici e riferimenti patristici dal Petrarca al Valla,” Giornale Storico della Letteratura Italiana 151 (1974): 520–578; and idem, “Note su Lorenzo Valla e la composizione del De voluptate,” in I classici nel Medioevo e nell’Umanesimo. Miscellanea filologica (Genova: Università di Genova, Istituto di Filologia Classica e Medioevale, 1975), 11–57. Valla’s autograph glosses to the Institutio oratoria are found in the ms. of Quintilian’s work in Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7723 (see Quintilian, L’istituzione oratoria, ed. and tr. Rino Faranda, 2 vols. [Torino: UTET, 1968], 1:30–33). Valla’s glosses have also been collected in a ms. in Naples, Bibl. dei Gerolamini, M. XXVVII.2.15. For these two mss., see Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 119–120. In this earlier work I made an error which I would now like to correct: the ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 6174 does not con- tain glosses on Quintilian by Valla but only the autograph version of the Gesta Ferdinandi regis Aragonum, now magisterially edited in a critical edition, with a full introduction, based on this very codex, by Ottavio Besomi (Padova: Antenore, 1973). [For a critical edi- tion of Valla’s glosses on Quintilian, see Lorenzo Valla, Le postille all’Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano, eds. Lucia Cesarini Martinelli and Alessandro Perosa (Padova: Antenore, 1996).]
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Quintilian (Institutio oratoria, III.4.12ff.). The exordium’s collocation and content, therefore – as Valla himself mentions – were dictated by norma- tive literary exigencies and by classical models. Hence the direct although not explicit reference to book IV, 4–6 of the Institutio oratoria (Orator’s Education) and to the prologue of Pliny’s Panegyric of Trajan. These refer- ences, incidentally, are suggested not only by textual parallelisms, but even more by Valla’s glosses on the passages just cited of the Institutio.22 We have said that the opening of Valla’s celebrative oration is charac- terized by a humanist ambivalence towards the transfer, and even more towards the justification given for that transfer, of the “divine invocation” from pagan worship to Christian liturgy. We must now specify that it is precisely this transfer that provides the immediate occasion for resolving this ambivalence, unambiguously, in a Christian version of the genus lau- dativum, based on the model of ancient rhetoric. After the prologue, which introduces the recitation of the Ave Maria and thus in this specific case takes on a ritual force, Valla’s Encomium embarks upon a theological criti- cism of medieval and contemporary scholasticism, an historical rethink- ing of the Greek and Latin patristic tradition, and the search for a new principle of humanistic theology.
2.2. The narratio and the Liturgical Celebration of the Saint: The Testimony of the Martyr/Confessor in the Army of Christ After the exordium, or prologue (cf. Institutio oratoria, IV.1), the narratio (cf. ibid., IV.2) begins with the words, “although all who die in the Lord ….” The theological nature of the oration’s opening is immediately felt. Indeed, the celebrative-liturgical narration of the deeds accomplished by the Christian hero, the saint, cannot be confined within the limits that cir- cumscribe the encomium – that genre of demonstrative rhetoric whose aim is the exaltation of excellence (aretē) within the realm of the polis. This is the definition given by Aristotle (and used by Quintilian) in the
22 Valla’s gloss on Institutio oratoria, III.4.13–14 is in ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 7723, f. 32r, right margin: “as of Isocrates and of many others; and after Quintilian: Pliny’s de laudibus Traiani, Latinus Pacatus’ de [sc. laudibus] Theodosii, Mamertinus’ de Juliani, Nazarius’ de Constantini (“ut Isocratis et aliorum nonnullorum; et post Quintilianum: Plinii de laudibus Traiani, Latini Pacati de Theodosii, Mamertini de Juliani, Nazarii De Constantini”). See the (rare) Panegyrici veteres, ed. Jacobus De La Baune (Venice: Javarina: 1728), “ad usum Serenissimi Delphini,” with notes by Christian Schwarz, where the “panegyrics” of the Latin authors named in Valla’s gloss are collected. For Pliny’s text, see Pliny the Younger, Letters and Panegyricus, trans. Betty Radice, 2 vols. (London: Heinemann, 1969), 2:322–324 (Panegyricus, I.1–6).
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Rhetoric, book I, chapter 9, 1367b-1368a. Among other things, we read there that, while praise is language that sets forth greatness of virtue …, encomium deals with achievements …. Hence we pronounce an encomium upon those who have achieved something.23 It is even specified that the man’s praiseworthy actions must be rooted in the sphere of the family and in the paideia connected to it, in the social and civil dimensions where that action is carried out and made manifest in a conspicuous way. The Christian hero transcends the boundaries of the polis. His deeds extend into, or at least make themselves felt in, the space and time of the universal Church (ecclesia). This is why – and here we see the theological plane that the Encomium must reach – Valla’s narratio had to frame those deeds in the historical dimensions of the religious community. At the same time it had to exalt their doer as predestined by his “heroic virtues” for the eternal orders of the (Dionysian) “celestial hierarchy.” With his Encomium of St. Thomas, then, Valla was given the chance to treat themes dear to him: the “Christian army,” a constant and privileged motif across his entire corpus from the Dialecticae disputationes to De libero arbitrio (On Free Will), and the glorification of paradise, described in the finale of book III of De vero falsoque bono (On the True and False Good).24 What is more, we should keep in mind that these two themes had been directly suggested to Valla by the Breviarium romanum, and precisely by the Communion of the martyrs and confessors recited for the feast of the saints.25 Thus we see that the further course of Valla’s oration is neither without foundation nor bereft of (liturgical) contextual nodes. And it is again the same liturgical context that presents Valla with the opportunity to dwell on the hagiographic distinction, observed in the
23 [Aristotle, The “Art” of Rhetoric, tr. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1926), 101.] 24 In his Antidota to Poggio Bracciolini’s Invectivae, Valla describes the end of De vero falsoque bono as the place “where I defend the Christian cause, where I attack all pagans, where I depict the joys of paradise.” [Lorenzo Valla, Antidotum in Pogium IV, in idem, Opera omnia, 1:343: “ubi causam christianam ago, ubi gentiles cunctos impugno, ubi gaudia depingo paradisi.”] 25 On the theme of the “Christian army” and book III of De vero … bono, see respectively Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 476–481; and Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 340–341. On the “Communion of the martyrs and the confessors,” cf. Herman A.P. Schmidt, Introductio in Liturgiam Occidentalem (Roma: Herder, 1960), 519– 528; Aimé Georges Martimort, La Chiesa in preghiera. Introduzione alla liturgia (Roma: Descleé, 1966), 900–937.
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Latin Church, between “martyrs” and “confessors,” thus incorporating themes into his oration that only on their surface appear to be bits of phil- ological pedantry. Although all who die in the Lord are blessed and saints, nevertheless the Church expressly designates as blessed and saints those whom it recognizes either as having met death for religion, for truth, for justice, or as having achieved fame for leading a chaste and spotless life accompanied by divine signs and miracles. It uses the Greek word ‘martyrs’ (martyres) for the for- mer and the Latin one ‘confessors’ (confessores) for the latter, although both terms have approximately the same meaning. For what else have martyrs done in enduring torture and meeting death than confess themselves unwilling to deny Christ? …. On the other hand, what else have confessors done in living piously and writing piously than bear witness (testimonium) to the truth?26 The liturgico-hagiographic distinction is resolved, so to speak, in a series of linguistic annotations regarding the semantic unity or the “meaning” (vis nominis) of the two terms (testimonium), the analogic relationship of their meaning (testimony of “life” and/or of “death”), the diversity of their referents (the testimony of those “killed” for Christ or of those who “lived” for Christ), and the variation in lexeme (Greek “martyr,” Latin “confes- sor”). But beyond these annotations, which are typical of his philological writing, Valla brings up the disjunctive pair martyr/confessor in order to frame the regulations and various duties that give form and order to the “Christian army”: The Church, as I have said – at least the Latin one – has decided that only the former are to be called martyrs and honored with the privilege of that rank, because, as vigorous and brave soldiers, they are recognized by their com- mander for their military service and especially for their deeds in battle. The martyrs, then, who were soldiers of Christ, stood in the battle line for their commander and poured out their blood and life. The confessors were them- selves also soldiers of Christ, but they merely performed military labors (albeit great and lasting ones); and although they were prepared to undergo death for their commander, God, they did not actually undergo it or stand in the battle line.27 In the specific case of Aquinas, the liturgical and hagiographic distinction is overcome, as it were, by the dimension and importance of the “army of Christ” (militia Christi) that he commanded as Doctor of the Church. His “confession” (confessio), Valla continues, was certainly not without, or less
26 Valla, Encomion, 2.30–40. 27 Ibid., 3.45–53.
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marked by, the “witness” (testimonium) to theological truth and ecclesial fidelity of sublime martyrs like Peter of Verona (1206–1252) and Thomas Becket (1118–1170). We should observe that the hagiographical connec- tions suggested here by Valla do not merely refer to Jacopo da Voragine’s ubiquitous Golden Legend, as Radetti has correctly pointed out.28 They must also be seen in the light of the iconographic depictions of the “triumph,” discussed above, in which (from Traini and Andrea di Bonaiuto to Beato Angelico) the thematic diptych of Thomas Aquinas/Peter of Verona often recurs. The one as Doctor of the Church, the other as Martyr for the faith, together they constitute the duo par excellence fulfilling the ecclesial calling of the Order of Preachers. From Aquinas’s historical task of commanding the “army of Christ,” the oration continues on to the saint’s place in the “celestial hierarchy.” Thomas’s dance with the angels in the gardens of paradise, painted by Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (Fra Angelico), has its literary echo in Valla’s text, which is aligned closely with the poetic tradition of Dante with regard to Aquinas’s celestial glory: Thomas Aquinas was … like a kind of sun, shining forth in the dazzling splen- dor of his learning and burning bright with the ardor of his virtues. He is to be placed among the Cherubim for the splendor of his learning, among the Seraphim for the ardor of his virtues.29 It might be objected, Valla continues, that in glorifying Thomas in this way he has ceded to the fanatical language of “hyperbole,” which ancient rhetoric vilified as a “friend of the foolish, enemy of the prudent.”30 He counters, Let me respond that I do indeed think that all who are imbued with the knowledge (scientia) of divine truths have something in common with the Cherubim, just as all who are infused with the love (caritas) of God are the fellows of the Seraphim – to say nothing of Thomas, so incredibly full of knowledge and love.31 In a quick gloss on Valla’s discourse, let us note that Dante’s theological poetics comes to be joined here with the mystic theology characteristic of Aquinas, although the indications of this are slight indeed (the symmetri- cal dyads of “imbued with knowledge/infused with love” and “shining forth in the dazzling splendor of his learning/burning with the bright
28 [In Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi, 460–463 (notes).] 29 Valla, Encomion, 4.68–73 (emphasis added). 30 Ibid., 5.75–76. 31 Ibid., 6.84–87 (emphasis added).
200034 200034 170 salvatore i. camporeale ardor of his virtues”). Furthermore, it is precisely this second dyad that provides the structure for Valla’s panegyric, dividing it between the two interrelated thematic units of virtue (virtus) and knowledge (scientia).32
2.3. Probatio and refutatio, the Central Section of the Encomium: Virtue, the First Thematic Unit, Elaborated Along the Hagiographic Topoi of Birth, Life, and Death and through a comparatio between Thomas and Dominic The narratio is followed by the probatio and refutatio (cf. Institutio orato- ria, V.1). This is the demonstrative section of the Encomium, and it is actu- ally the central and fullest part of Valla’s speech.33 It is linked to the previous narrative section by an introductory transitional passage indicat- ing its main argumentative themes: Justly, therefore, such a man – let me speak first about his virtues and later about his knowledge – justly was he destined to be foretold to the world before he was born, his birth prophesied, his life predicted, even his death announced.34 The thematic unit of virtue is developed within a rhetorical grid system. The horizontal axis is syntagmatic and relational and is composed of the hagiographic, charismatic, and prophetic topoi of birth (ortus), life (vita), and death (mors). The vertical axis, on the other hand, is systematic and correlational and is articulated by means of typological biblical figures representative of the kind of life to which God manifestly calls his elect. The theology of the messianic calling replicates for the humanist Valla,
32 On the iconographic theme under discussion, cf. Stefano Orlandi, Beato Angelico (Firenze: Olschki, 1964), pl. VII and p. 24, pl. XLIII and p. 97, pl. LIII and pp. 104–105; L. Ferreti, “Un ‘trionfo’ di S. Tommaso nella chiesa dei Domenicani in Tivoli,” in San Tommaso d’Aquino O.P. Miscellanea storico-artistica, ed. Innocenzo Taurisano (Roma: A. Manuzio, 1924), 299–301. On hyperbole: Aristotle, Rhetoric, 3,11, 1413b; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII.6.73–76; cf. A.D. Leeman, Orationis ratio. Teoria e pratica stilistica degli oratori, storici e filosofi latini, ed. Elio Pasoli, tr. Gian Carlo Giardina and Rita Cuccioli Melloni (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 1974), 413–414 [English ed. = Orationis ratio: The Stylistic Theories and Practices of the Roman Orators, Historians, and Philosophers (Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert, 1963); unless otherwise noted, all references to precise page numbers are to the Italian edition]. For the encomiastic attributes regarding Thomas’s virtus and scientia, Valla certainly has in mind the liturgical texts of the “divine office” recited for the saint’s feast: Breviarium iuxta ritum Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. Michael Browne, 2 vols. (Roma: Sabina, 1962), in die, 1:947ff. 33 For the argumentative structure of the probatio-refutatio, keep in mind chs. 8–11 of book V of Institutio oratoria, which Valla follows to the letter in the final section of book 20 of his Dialecticae disputationes. 34 Valla, Encomion, 7.94–96.
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albeit in a qualitatively different way, the telos of the theios anēr (divine man). But in this he was merely following medieval scholasticism, in which the Christian saint had been repeatedly and at times systematically theorized on the typology of the Hellenic hero. Thomas’s birth is foretold – to his mother – according to the typology of the messianic prophet, reference to which is expressly made: God, whenever he has resolved to give something extraordinary and new to the world, is wont to announce it with signs or prophecies. There are very many examples of this ….35 The typological model is here reflected in Dominic de Guzmán (St. Dominic), “the founder of this family [of brothers],”36 to whom Thomas is then compared. The text claims to pass over “many examples” for the sake of brevity; it is “content with one from the family.”37 And yet the asym- metrical pair of father and son (pater/filius) need not entail a subordina- tion in value either concerning the foretelling of the birth of one or the other, or regarding their respective lives. And so much is expressly confirmed: Let the prophecies about each man be equal, equal the merits of both their lives. Let neither be placed before the other …. We must honor them with equal veneration, both of them renowned for all the virtues, both for mira- cles without number.38 Then Valla introduces another, typically literary or humanist, pairing that sees the two saints “like two consuls, the highest of magistracies.”39 Nonetheless, it is the asymmetric pair of father and son that underlies the parallelism of the lives and works of the two men, of Dominic and Thomas. The biographical sketch is thus executed, rapidly and concisely, by way of the convergences of parallel lives but always in a series of asymmetrical relations. Here they are set off against one another in the order of the text, so as to make Valla’s comparatio immediately clear: Dominic founded the house of the Preachers Thomas covered its floors with marble. Dominic built its walls Thomas decorated them with the finest paintings.
35 Ibid., 7.99–101. 36 Ibid., 8.103. 37 Ibid., 7.101–102. 38 Ibid., 8.106–109. 39 Ibid., 8.107–108.
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Dominic was the pillar of the brothers Thomas their shining example. Dominic planted Thomas gave water. The one shunned … honors and episcopacies the other fled nobility, wealth, kinsmen, and parents. The one imitated the chastity and continence of Paul the other the virginity of John the Evangelist. Of the one nothing was more admirable than his humility the other had so much humility that he was even astonished at the boasting and bragging of others.40 From the “praises of their virtues,” the comparison continues to the cor- responding “testimonies of their virtues” – including the prediction of their deaths: Both men saw and heard the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, the most holy mother of God, the Lord our Savior. Both men were told about their imminent deaths. The one wrote the brothers’ most excellent Rule the other the most outstanding and the greatest number of books. Thomas devotes himself to writings Dominic rules the provinces …, Certainly Thomas sends no more men to heaven with his writings than Dominic does with his Rule. Hence the closing, which follows the sequence of binary oppositions: Therefore let it be granted that virtue, glory, and miracles are equal in Dominic and Thomas, who are no more different and distinct from one another than the morning from the evening star.41 Thus, by making use of the stylistic device of the comparatio, or comparison – to which he himself makes explicit reference – Valla succeeds in compressing the traditional and most relevant hagiographic facts (derived from biographical sources on Aquinas, especially Guglielmo da Tocco) into the briefest of outlines. He has rejected other stylistic techniques, like the embellishment of ornatus and the exaggeration of amplificatio, which in this specific case would have dressed up an oration
40 Ibid., 9.114–123. 41 Ibid., 10–11.128–138.
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that was supposed to be “simple and almost unadorned” (in accord with the “simple and plain brevity” called for by Cicero).42 So much is confirmed by Valla himself before he moves on to the discussion of Thomas’s knowl- edge (scientia), the Encomium’s other thematic unit: I have spoken of Thomas’s virtues and miracles briefly and simply, having made no use of exaggeration (amplificatio) and embellishment (exornatio) …. I believe you would now like me to say something about this saint’s knowledge, which I proposed to treat second, saying whom I would set him above and whom I would call his equal.43
2.4. Knowledge, the Second Thematic Unit: Aquinas as the Historical Model of Speculative Theology, and the refutatio of Thomism's Timelessness as a “Theological System” The passage cited just above ushers in the second part of the probatio, or demonstrative section, of Valla’s panegyric. Let us first emphasize the fol- lowing. It is here in the discourse on Aquinas’s knowledge (scientia) – the opposite pole from virtue (virtus) on the structural axis around which the whole text revolves – that the probatio turns into its opposite: a refutatio, or refutation. That is, the encomiastic probatio of Thomas, as the historical model of virtue and knowledge, becomes the refutatio of Thomism’s time- lessness and perennity as a theological system.
42 On comparatio, see Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, II.4.21; on ornatus and amplificatio, see ibid., VIII.3 and 4; “simple and almost unadorned”: ibid, VIII.6.41 (“nuda … et velut incompta”); “simple and plain brevity”: Cicero, De oratore, 2.84.341 (“brevitatem … nudam atque inornatam”). 43 Valla, Encomion, 12.142–146. (emphasis added). The use of comparatio in the praise of illustrious men can take the form of describing “the respective merits of two characters. This is of course a very similar theme to the preceding, but involves a duplication of the subject matter and deals not merely with the nature of virtues and vices, but with their degree as well,” Institutio oratoria, II.4.20–21, tr. E.H. Butler, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1920–1922). Moreover, contraries (contraria), examples (exem- pla), and comparisons (similitudines) (Institutio oratoria, V.10 and 11; VIII.3.72ff.) are the three types of arguments (rationes: “a ratio … is that by which whatever has clearly hap- pened is defended,” ibid., III.11.4) made use of in argumentative rhetoric. [On this point, see also p. 249 below. Eds.] The phrase with which the Encomium begins its comparison of Thomas and Dominic – “because the rule of the Preachers is that the brothers go in twos” – is a reference to the Rule of St. Augustine, which as is known was adopted by the Dominicans: cf. Humbertus De Romanis, De vita regulari, ed. J.J. Berthier, 2 vols. (Torino: Marietti, 1956), 1:244–248. For all the biographical and hagiographic references, the Encomium’s principal source (although not direct) is Guglielmo da Tocco (d. 1323), Vita S. Thomae Aquinatis, fasc. 2 of Fontes vitae S. Thomae Aquinatis, ed. D. Prümmer (Saint Maximin, Var: Libr. Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin, 1924); for a more recent edition, see S. Thomae Aquinatis vitae fontes praecipuae, ed. Angelico Ferrua (Alba: Edizioni domeni- cane, 1968).
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In fact, it is precisely these final arguments that made Valla’s Encomium famous and unique (both for his contemporaries and for the history of humanist and theological culture). They are what give the panegyric a pre- cise historical significance in the tradition of anti-Thomism. Indeed, on account of these final arguments the Encomium should be seen as a defin- ing point of reference for the shift in Thomism and theological culture in the fifteenth century. They constitute the pivotal point for all of Valla’s anti-scholastic theological writing. The last words of the passage quoted above (“whom I would set him [Thomas] above and whom I would call his equal”) indicate that the stylis- tic device of the comparatio will continue to be used in this part of the speech to elaborate the theme of knowledge (as it was previously for vir- tue) – but with a decisive variation: the use of this literary device takes on a theological valence for the critical argumentation that follows. The transposition of the comparatio from virtue to knowledge, then, is any- thing but formal. It will take Valla’s oration to the center of the theological debate surrounding neo-Thomism in the fifteenth century. It was Valla himself who, in the commemorative debate held in the temple of Minerva on 7 March 1457 for the feast of St. Thomas, identified the essential nucleus of the theological controversy surrounding contem- porary Thomism. Accordingly, he gave his speech the specific character of a response (and such is exactly how the very short Encomium was received) in opposition to the opinions expressed by those who had preceded him in the course of that debate. The fifteenth-century scholastic revival of Thomism was in fact a quaestio disputata, and it was as such – in accor- dance with an ancient custom and a traditional form – that it was treated on the feast of Aquinas, before a devout and learned audience that watched from under the gothic naves of the Roman church, the official temple of the Order of Preachers. The information provided by Valla on this point, which is quite noteworthy and valuable in and of itself, receives confirmation from other sources.44 It can easily be seen from the text of the Encomium that the positions argued by the participants in the debate (preceding Valla’s oration) on the revival of contemporary Thomism tended to affirm, at least implicitly, Aquinas’s historical primacy as Doctor of the universal Church and,
44 Uberto Guidi also expressed his opposition to the Thomist current during a disputa- tion held in the church of S. Maria Novella, in 1315, “in the presence of religious clerics and learned laymen”: Taurisano, Discepoli e biografi, 29. Cf. Kristeller, Medieval Aspects, 62 and nn. 117 and 118. [See also p. 147 above. Eds.]
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consequently, to exalt the Summa’s theological system as normative for all further theological study. In his speech Valla attempted to reveal the foun- dation and highlight the premises, both explicit and implicit, on which these positions were based. In point of fact, Renaissance neo-Thomism encapsulated the triple iconographic theme of the “triumph,” where Aquinas had become a symbol for the theoretical convergence of Greek and Latin patristics, the Christian transcendence of Hellenic and Arabic culture, and the definitive refutation of philosophical, religious, and dog- matic heresy. In Valla’s eyes, the apologetics of that neo-Thomism obvi- ously converged in the organization, by then considered complete and definitive, of argumentative and methodological formulations normative for any and all kinds of speculative theology. A neo-Thomism already rig- orously systematized and formalized for philosophical and theological speculation – thus it had to appear to Valla. Here are his words: It has not escaped me that certain people who held an oration here today on the same subject not only made Thomas second to none of the doctors of the Church but also placed him above them all …. The reason they gave for being able to put him above everyone is that for proof in theology he used logic, metaphysics, and all philosophy, which the earlier doctors are sup- posed to have barely tasted with the tips of their tongues.45
2.5. Valla’s Critique of Scholasticism and the Controversy between Thomism and Anti-Thomism in the Fifteenth Century The passage immediately following the one just cited is of extreme impor- tance, as it suggests references and observations for reconstructing, from within the spare, yet extremely dense Encomium, a retrospective view of Valla’s entire literary production. The text does not merely contain the premises for the subsequent argumentation of Valla’s clearly enunciated anti-Thomist thesis. It is at the same time a pointed reference to the spe- cific and constant theme – ubiquitous in Valla’s corpus – of the crisis of contemporary theology and, on the positive side, of the methodological renewal of theological study. What is more, this passage of the Encomium also provides confirmation that Valla was well aware of what was at stake in the fifteenth-century controversy between Thomism and anti-Thomism; his is a sufficiently full and sophisticated vision of the theoretical implica- tions (of method, even more so than of content) for the study of theology strictly speaking. This passage also shows, on the subjective plane of
45 Valla, Encomion, 13.147–156 (emphasis added).
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Valla’s role as an intellectual, the secure grasp which he had by then reached of the historico-cultural import of his own critique of scholasticism. It should thus not surprise us to find, here at this point in the Encomium, a recapitulation of what Valla had previously written in his Elegantiae (Elegances of the Latin Language), in De libero arbitrio, in the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, and above all in the Antidota (Remedies), a series of invectives against Poggio Bracciolini that functions as an apologia pro vita sua, a programmatic defense of his life. Let us now turn to the text of the Encomium: This is a slippery and perilous place for me, not only on account of the dig- nity of the saint we are praising, but also because of the deep-set opinion, held by so many, that no one can become a theologian without the precepts of the dialecticians, metaphysicians, and the other philosophers. What am I to do then? Shrink in fear, make an about-face, disguise what I think, and have my tongue contradict my heart? Since it was not of my own accord but at the entreaty of the brothers that I rose to speak, and since it is not my way to remain silent, I shall not give anyone cause to think that I have not spoken my mind.46 Valla, then, has ascended the pulpit of the Minervan temple at the press- ing request of the Dominican brothers. The historic Roman monastery hosts a religious community that is both numerous and diverse, with many different nationalities converging there from the various countries of Europe. What is more, it is also the seat of the Provincial Prior (of the “Roman Province”), the Master General of the Order, and the General Curia. The commemorative debate for the feast of St. Thomas, therefore, was planned and organized by the Dominicans of the Minerva themselves, and put on for a cultivated Roman public of both clerics and laymen. The decision to invite Valla to participate in the debate was by no means random. He was by then a well-known personage: professor of rhetoric at the Roman Studio, known and fiercely discussed in the liveliest cultural centers across the entire peninsula, recognized by opposite camps as the head of a “new school” of Italian humanism, opposed and accused of heresy for his radical criticism of contemporary scholasticism and his interpretive stance on the Vulgate Bible and the Donation of Constantine. In spite of his notorious theological and ecclesiological ideas, Valla had been taken into the service of Nicholas V. A translator of Greek classics for the Vatican Library (directed by Giovanni Tortelli, the person closest to
46 Ibid., 14.157–164.
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him culturally and a most loyal friend), he was considered by all (even by his adversaries) to be a qualified member of the papal curia. And what is most important to stress here, he enjoyed close friendships (partly on account of common philological interests) with Dominicans then living in Rome. The invitation extended to Valla by the Minervan friars had to mean that they were taking a contrary position in the celebrative debate on the life and works of Thomas Aquinas. Now, if Valla’s teaching in Rome and his constant polemic against scho- lasticism, which was gaining force in the 1450s (under the pontificates of Nicholas V and Callixtus III), had reached the dimensions and the intel- lectual importance that we believe should be attributed to them, and if Valla’s work and extremely eccentric personality provoked reactions, albeit of all different kinds, at the highest levels of political culture, it must be concluded that the author of the Encomium had by then acquired a position of prestige that could no longer be underestimated, particularly within the context of the controversy between Thomism and anti- Thomism. Nor could this fact have escaped the interests of a cultural cen- ter like the Dominican monastery of the Minerva. In Rome, in March of 1457, the opposite occurred of what had happened in Naples in April 1444. In Naples Valla had been subjected to an inquisitorial trial by influential Dominicans of the “Aragonese Province.” In Callixtus III’s Rome, he was personally invited by the Dominicans of the Minervan congregation to participate in a public debate as an authoritative critic of the Thomist renewal. At the conclusion of Valla’s oration, they would not have been surprised. Nor would they have reacted – this we can only suppose, but with a high degree of probability – like Cardinal d’Estouteville, who, as Gaspare da Verona reports, “after hearing Lorenzo Valla speak in praise of the most saintly Thomas Aquinas here, in the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, believed the orator to be insane.”47
47 Gaspare da Verona, De gestis tempore Pauli II, in idem, Le vite di Paolo II di Gaspare da Verona e Michele Canensi, ed. Giuseppe Zippel (Città di Castello: S. Lapi, 1904), 33: “quum audivisset L. Vallam de laudibus sanctissimi Thomae Aquinatis oratorem hic, in templo sanctae Mariae supra Minervam, illum insanire iudicavit” (emphasis added). For the inquis- itorial trial in Naples, see: Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 373–382; Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 201–202; and above all Giovanni Di Napoli, Lorenzo Valla. Filosofia e religione nell’Umanesimo italiano (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1971), 279–312. On the Dominican bishop Giovanni García, whom Valla mentions in rela- tion to his trial (beyond the indications in Fois, Il pensiero cristiano, passim), see Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, in Monumenta Ordinis fratrum Praedicatorum historia, t. VIII, vol. III (1380–1498), ed. Benedictus Maria Reichert (Roma: In domo generalitia, 1900), 195. Concerning the composition of the Dominican community in the Minervan convent, an important notarial document of 1449 was discovered and
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2.6. The Stylistic Qualities of Thomas’s Writings and the Canons of Latin Rhetoric Let us now turn from the historico-cultural context of the Encomium to the textual analysis of its final pages. Here, still within the frame of a pan- egyric, Valla’s discourse ascends to the highest level of clarification and argumentative rigor. Its aim is to formulate a humanist principle of theol- ogy to act as an alternative to fifteenth-century scholasticism. Decisively and with a full dose of irony, Valla contrasts the decadent theology of his contemporaries with the intellectual stature of Thomas. He exalts him as the historical model of the theologian and judges the value of his work by its literary style, vastness of erudition, and doctrinal profundity and com- pleteness. Valla’s parameters clearly follow the criteria outlined in Institutio oratoria, books X and XI (and parallel passages). Valla attributes the style (elocutio) of Thomas’s writing, thus distinguishing it from that of his own contemporaries sitting in the audience, with specific qualities (and under the double aspect of res et verba) aimed at highlighting its Attic character and doctrinal erudition. An analysis of these rhetorical qualities (standard categories from the Ad Herennium to Cicero and Quintilian), which are here correlated with the various levels of style, will reveal what historico-literary place the Encomium attributes to Thomas’s corpus. Valla writes: I highly praise the exceptional simplicity (subtilitas) of St. Thomas’s writing; I admire his carefulness (diligentia); I am amazed at the fullness (copia), the variety (varietas), the completeness (absolutio) of his teachings. I add another thing, with which many people would not credit him but which he himself is supposed to have said: that he never read (legere) any book that he did not fully understand. This is something that no one of our time can claim: no jurist in civil law, no doctor in medicine, no philosopher in phi- losophy, no humanist in the reading (lectio) of ancient texts, nor anyone else in the remaining arts and sciences, much less one man in all fields.48 “I praise the simplicity (subtilitas) of his writing”: subtilitas properly con- cerns argumentative prose, or better, linkage in probative discourse. It consists in the absence of ornatus (adornment), which would obscure the essential lines or somehow unravel the fabric of its demonstrative published by Innocenzo Taurisano, Beato Angelico (Roma: Fratelli Palombi, 1955), 148–149; but cf. also Gilles Meersseman, “La bibliothèque des Fréres Prêcheurs de la Minerve à la fin du XVe siècle,” in Mélanges Auguste Pelzer (Louvain: Bibliothèque de l’Université, Bureaux du “Recueil,” 1947), 605–631. 48 Valla, Encomion, 15.165–172.
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procedure. Indeed, subtilitas is the property – exalted in Attic literature, which was known for its studied purity and plainness of style – that char- acterized the last of the three kinds of rhetoric (genera dicendi): high, or elevated (grandis or sublimis), middle (mediocris or modicus), and simple, or humble (subtilis or humilis). Cicero, in the tripartite distribution of the orator’s various tasks (to persuade the audience with the “high” style, which appeals to emotions or sentiments; to evoke the sense of taste or beauty with the “middle” style; to educate and teach with the “simple” style, which appeals to the listener’s rational faculty) always points out that the genus subtile is proper to pedagogical (in docendo) and demon- strative (in probando) discourse. Quintilian gives a similar definition when speaking of the rhetorical style of the Greek Lysias: simple and elegant, nothing more perfect can be found if the orator seeks only to teach. For there is nothing in it that is empty, nothing far-fetched; it is more like a clear spring than a great river.49 Would it exceed the limits of this passage of the Encomium if, within this context of rhetorical critique, we were to note that Valla seems to be applying Quintilian’s description of Lysias’ literary style to the quaestiones of the Summa theologiae? At any rate, a more than superficial reading of the Encomium cannot fail to notice that Valla, by exalting the subtilitas of their prose, situated Aquinas’s works in the literary tradition of the Latin Fathers. As Marrou and Auerbach in particular have shown, the patristic tradition, especially from Augustine on, had theorized and developed the sermo humilis (humble style) of Christian language, in which the lowest of the classical genres of rhetoric was deployed for theology. Indeed, the Christian orator and writer, conforming to the stylistic forms of Sacred Scripture in order to achieve the utmost accessibility and comprehension on the part of the faithful, had to assimilate his own language to the Word made flesh, where the “sublimity” of the divine mystery was embodied in the “humility of the passion.” “I admire his carefulness (diligentia)”: diligentia, which is closely con- nected to subtilitas, is another quality typical of Attic style. But here the focus is on the accurate choice of words and terms, and thus of precision and exactness of language, in argumentative discourse. Quintilian, follow- ing in the tradition of the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Cicero’s rhetorical works, speaks of the “utmost carefulness in words” and names C. Asinius
49 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, X.1.78: “subtilis atque elegans et quo nihil, si oratori satis sit docere, quaeras perfectius; nihil enim est inane, nihil arcessitum, puro tamen fonti quam magno flumini propior.”
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Pollio as an instance of such linguistic precision.50 Need it be said that, in calling attention to this pair of stylistic properties (subtilitas/diligentia), Valla could not have described Aquinas’s writing more precisely? Without a doubt Valla has in mind above all the prose of the Summa and the scrip- tural Expositiones (Commentaries), works of Thomas on which he draws directly for the purposes of his anti-scholastic polemic. “I am amazed at the fullness (copia), the variety (varietas), the com- pleteness (absolutio) of his teachings”: here we turn from the literary form of Thomas’s writings to their doctrinal content. The absolutio of which Valla speaks refers specifically to the completeness of Aquinas’s philo- sophical and theological thought, with particular reference – as seems likely from the context – to the Christian interpretation of Hellenic thought (especially along the lines of Thomas’s polemics and apologetics against Averroes). Quintilian’s terminology is illuminating for understanding what Valla means by the expression, “completeness of his doctrines” (abso- lutio doctrinarum). A component of Cicero’s vocabulary of preceptive rhet- oric (De inventione I. 22.32), the word (as an adjective, absolutus) had been defined and made extremely technical by Quintilian (Institutio oratoria, VII.4.3–9). He recasts it as the Latin term for a particular type of forensic argumentation (called kat’antilēpsin) that, in the school of Hermagoras, consisted in the transformation of an accusation into its opposite: by means of a contrary and skillfully elaborated interpretation, the incrimi- nated action is turned into an element in defense of the accused. If absolutio defines the doctrinal scope of Thomas’s works, the pair copia/varietas (fullness/variety) emphasizes the depth and the cultural and intellectual dimensions of Aquinas’s theological speculation. More precisely, the double attribution should be understood as copia rerum et verborum (fullness of things and words) and varietas figurarum (variety of rhetorical figures), but with regard to both language and thought. Thus it should not be limited to the purely formal and literary aspect (in the Ciceronian meaning: “a fullness of words and a variety of rhetorical figures must be employed”51), but rather must be understood as extended to and including the conceptual and thematic richness of Thomas’s theological system. The reference, then, that determines the meaning and semantic range of the pair copia/varietas again comes from chapters one and two of book X of Quintilian’s Institutio.
50 Ibid., IV.2.116–18: “summa diligentia in verbis”; for Asinius Pollio, see ibid., X.2.113; 2.25. 51 Cicero, De finibus, II.3.10: “verborum sumenda copia est et varietas figurarum.”
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Confirmation of what has been said about the stylistic and doctrinal descriptions of Thomas’s works is found in Valla’s significant mention of lectio as a tool and as a source of learning and methodology in Aquinas’s theological study. Lectio, or close, detailed reading, is the engine of philo- logical study, the analytical foundation for the examination and compre- hension of the auctoritates (authorities). It is therefore the methodological basis and the guiding principle for the acquisition of knowledge, both for the orator, according to Quintilian (Institutio oratoria, I.8), and for the theologian, according to the humanist Valla (cf. the prefaces to the Elegantiae and the Disputationes). But there is more – and this observation comes much closer to the idea undergirding the passage in question of Valla’s Encomium. Lectio deter- mines and defines the cultural education, the paideia, proper to the ora- tor. Through lectio, conducted along the didactic lines traced by Quintilian, the orator recovers, assimilates, and appropriates for himself the entire cultural tradition (literary, historiographical, philosophical, and rhetori- cal) of Greek and Roman classical antiquity. The whole of book X of the Institutio is dedicated precisely to this program of reading indispensable to the future orator. For Valla (who in this respect follows in the footsteps of the best tradition of early Italian humanism), the erudition of Quintilian’s rhetoric is constitutive of culture in general and of theology in particular. According to Valla, without the proper erudition the theolo- gian falls into formalism and exhausts himself in the course of his own speculation. Following the example of Aquinas, the theologian ought instead to effect an almost ancillary integration of all the arts and sciences in support of the theological disciplines. It should be noted that Valla con- stantly insisted on this cultural foundation for the scientia rerum divina- rum (the science of divine truths, i.e. theology) as part of his polemic against contemporary scholasticism’s conceptualism and strict reliance on logic. This point will receive greater clarity and definition in the follow- ing section of the Encomium.52
52 Subtilitas and sermo humilis: cf. Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 23–30 (Rhetorica ad Herennium), 126–128 and 188–193 (Cicero), 431ff. (Quintilian); W. Peterson (ed.), Quintiliani Institutionis oratoriae liber X (Oxford: Clarendon, 1903), 55–56 (notes to ch. 1.78); Erich Auerbach, Lingua letteraria e pubblico nella tarda antichità e nel Medioevo (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1974), 31–79 [English ed. = Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965)]; Henri-Irénée Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1958), 505–545. Diligentia: Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 207–212, 251, 40–48; Peterson (ed.), Quintiliani Institutionis, 74 (ch. 1.113). Copia: Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 123, 138, 158, 172–174, 432–434. Doctrina: Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 57, 271–73, 426–30 and 499ff. In the liturgical texts for the
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2.7. The Critique of Scholastic Speculation and the Humanist Refounding of Theological Study From the almost emblematic exaltation of Aquinas as the historical model of theological thought in the medieval scholastic tradition, Valla’s panegyric now turns to the systematic and theoretical plane of Thomism. It is precisely at this point of the Encomium that the laudatory probatio is inverted, becoming a refutatio of the metaphysical speculation that underlies the categorical and epistemological structure of Thomist theol- ogy. This refutation obliquely concerns the method of the Summa theolo- giae, but its central and explicit object is to criticize and directly oppose the revival of neo-Thomism taking place in Valla’s time. And it is pre- cisely this shift in perspective (from medieval to contemporary scholasti- cism, from past to present) that gives the Encomium its specific historical and theoretical importance. Here is the pivotal moment of Valla’s dis- course, the center-point around which it revolves, the thing that makes it a watershed cultural document and above all an essential source for the relationship between humanism and scholasticism in the fifteenth cen- tury. Is it not here, in the extremely dense and synthetic form of the Encomium, that Valla’s life-long polemic against scholasticism achieved its highest, most complete elaboration? But let us now analyze the vari- ous arguments and aspects of the work, tracing its basic literary progres- sion and noting its allusions and textual references. In the second part of this essay we will then be able to reconstruct a full picture of its ideas and context. Valla enunciates his own view of the “science of divine truths” – a view that entails the critique of scholastic theological speculation and a human- ist refounding of theological study – by way of a theoretical and historical saint’s feast, Thomas’s writing is described thus: “his style is concise, his eloquence pleas- ing: his thought is lofty, intelligible, and powerful” (stilus brevis, grata facundia; celsa clara firma sententia”), Breviarium … Ordinis Praedicatorum, in die. Erasmus will take up the same line: “Moreover, Thomas Aquinas was a great man not only for his times. For to my mind none of the modern theologians possesses equal carefulness, a greater soundness of mind, or a firmer erudition: and he clearly would have been capable of mastering lan- guages and the other aspects of the good arts, since he was so well acquainted with the ones available in his time” (Desiderius Erasmus, Annotationes in Novum Testamentum, Rom. 1:5, in idem, Opera omnia, ed. Joannes Clericus [Jean LeClerc], 10 vols. (Lugduni Batavorum [Leiden]: cura et impensis Petri Vander Aa, 1703–1706) [facsimile reprint = Hildesheim: Olds, 1962], VI, col. 554: “Thomas Aquinas, vir alioqui non suo tantum seculo magnus. Nam meo quidem animo nullus est recentium theologorum, cui par sit diligentia, cui sanius ingenium, cui solidior eruditio: planeque dignus erat, cui linguarum quoque peritia, reliquaque bonarum litterarum supellex contingeret, qui iis que per eam tempes- tatem dabantur tam dextre sit usus”).
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comparison between “ancient” and “modern” phases of Christian thought. Articulating his discourse by means of comparative references to scholas- ticism and to the Greek and Latin Fathers – and making use of themes and formulations he had already fully elaborated in parallel passages of other works – Valla executes his comparison between the two theologies on both an epistemological and an historiographical level. The contrary distinctions in epistemological foundation and historico- cultural periodization of the two theologies indubitably remains, in Valla’s work, on the level of generalization and essential features. Not until Erasmus and his theological and scriptural controversy (with Martin Dorp and the “Louvainists”) will the respective scientific principles of scholastic and patristic theology be precisely defined and compared on an historical and historiographical level. Nevertheless, it is Valla’s ideas and formulations that will be borrowed and transformed (directly and with full cognizance on the part of early-sixteenth-century theologians) in the later understanding of scholasticism and patristic theology. Here, obviously, we shall limit ourselves to describing the theoretical and histo- riographical distinction between ancient (veteres or antiqui) and modern (recentes or novi) theologians as understood and described by Valla.53 After dealing with Thomas’s style and thought, Valla continues: Those things which they call metaphysics and modes of signifying and the like, which modern theologians regard with wonder like a newly discovered sphere or like the epicycles of the planets, I regard with no great wonder at all. Nor do I think, therefore, that it matters much whether one knows them or not. And perhaps it is preferable not to know them, as they are like impediments to better things. This I will make clear not with my own argu- ments (although I could) but by citing the authority of the ancient theolo- gians – Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine – who were so far from treating such matters in their works that they did not even men- tion them.54 According to Valla, scholastic theologians professed to explain the dog- matics of revelation by making use, for speculative purposes, of concep- tual and argumentative tools like metaphysics, logic, the modes of
53 Salvatore I. Camporeale, “Da Lorenzo Valla a Tommaso Moro. Lo statuto umanistico della teologia,” Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 4 (1973): 9–102 [reprinted in idem, Lorenzo valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma. Studi e testi (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2002), 19–119]; Heinz Holeczek, Humanistische Bibelphilologie als Reformproblem bei Erasmus von Rotterdam, Thomas More und William Tyndale (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 138–165. See also Marie-Dominique Chenu, “‘Antiqui,’ ‘moderni.’ Notes de lexicographie médiévale,” Revues des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques 17 (1928): 82–94. 54 Valla, Encomion, 16.173–181 (emphasis added).
200034 200034 184 salvatore i. camporeale signifying (modi significandi), “and the like.”55 But in doing so they trans- gressed the specific and irreducible boundaries of the things and the lan- guage that constitute the proper object of Christian faith; their endeavor was just as useless – for this seems to be the meaning of Valla’s compari- son – as the attempt to correct the internal incoherence of geocentric cos- mology by theorizing the ninth sphere and planetary epicycles. It might be mentioned that Valla’s words curiously echo the polemics found in the Byzantine Cosmas Indicopleustes’s Topographia christiana, a work (prob- ably written between 547 and 549) that was similarly critical of Aristotelianism (that of John Philoponus) and that sharply rejected any kind of synthesis between Greek science and Christian revelation. The immediate source for Valla’s scientific and astronomical knowledge, how- ever, was certainly Johannes de Sacrobosco’s treatise De sphaera mundi (On the Sphere of the World), an elementary text of the quadrivium.56
2.8. Philosophy as an “Impediment” to Authentic Christian Thought and the Distinction/Opposition between Patristic Theology and Scholasticism In the practice of the scholastics, philosophy functioned as a handmaiden to theology. Here it is described in a contrary way, as an “impediment” (impedimentum) to Christian thought, an obstacle blocking its most genuine and coherent development. Valla insists that the Latin Fathers, together with their Greek counterparts, had in some fashion foreseen the destination at which such a theoretical co-optation of Hellenic specula- tion would arrive, and that therefore they had rejected classical philoso- phy. He then goes on to inquire into the ancient (veteres) theologians’ primary motivation for having rejected this kind of philosophical specula- tion, after which he gives his own incisive reply. It should be emphasized that this reply accords with Valla’s standard interpretation of the episte- mological basis that, in his mind, underlies the theology of the Greek and Latin Fathers of the Church.
55 Cf. the parallel passages of the Dialecticae disputationes cited in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 178 and 229; and Alfonso Maierù, Terminologia logica della tarda Scolastica (Roma: Ateneo, 1972), passim (index sub voce “modi significandi”). For a general view of the question: Eugenio Garin, L’educazione in Europa 1400/1600. Problemi e programmi (Bari: Laterza, 1976), 3–29. 56 On Cosmas Indicopleustes: Salvatore Impellizzeri, La letteratura bizantina (Firenze: Sansoni, 1975), 186–189. For the scholastic use of De sphaera mundi and De modis significandi seu grammatica speculativa, cf. Armando F. Verde, Lo Studio Fiorentino 1473–1503. Ricerche e documenti, 6 vols. in 9 (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, 1973), 2:641.
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The Fathers of the first centuries of Christianity rejected not only the categories of classical philosophy but also philosophical language itself, despite the excellent quality of their Latin (they were latinissimi) and their close acquaintance with Greek. They stand in contrast to modern (recentes) theologians, who, regarding classical languages, “do not know Greek” and in Latin are “nearly all barbarians.”57 But how to explain, how to understand the Fathers’ rejection of philosophical theory and language? Why, then, should they not have treated these subjects? Because they were not supposed to be treated, and perhaps they were not even supposed to be known – and this for two reasons: one having to do with their contents (res), the other with their words (verba).58 We immediately note that Valla’s argument runs along the axis of the rhe- torical relationship between res (contents) and verba (words). The polar- ization of the two terms is by no means merely formal; on the contrary, it underlies a precise line of argument, in which a particular historiographi- cal interpretation of the Church Fathers is offered and then infused into a humanist principle of theology, which is presented as an alternative to scholasticism. Let us first consider the formulation of Valla’s critique of scholasticism in relation to divine truths, the object of theological “science”: Regarding their contents: because these subjects did not seem to lead to the knowledge of divine truths. Such also seemed to be the case to the Greek theologians Basil, Gregory, John Chrysostom, and the others of that age. They did not think that the sophisms of dialectics, the obscurities of meta- physics, or the trifles of the modes of signifying should be mixed in with sacred questions. Nor did they even lay the foundations of their disputa- tions in philosophy, for they heeded Paul’s exclamation: “not through phi- losophy and vain deceit” [Col. 2:8]. This we know from experience as well.59 Philosophy, then, is defined once again on the basis of dialectics, meta- physics, and the modes of signifying. And it is as such, according to Valla, that it was rejected not only by the Latin Fathers named earlier but also by the greatest figures in the Greek patristic tradition: “Basil, Gregory, and John Chrysostom” (the same trio of Greek Fathers that recurs in identical thematic contexts in other passages in Valla’s corpus). Let us note in
57 Valla, Encomion, 17.183–184. 58 Ibid., 17.184–186 (emphasis added). 59 Ibid., 18.187–195.
200034 200034 186 salvatore i. camporeale passing that the Gregory mentioned is Gregory Nazianzen, whose Oration against Julian, to which Valla is implicitly referring here, is echoed in cer- tain statements of De vero falsoque bono.60 It is clear, then, that Valla identifies philosophy with the conceptualiza- tion and speculation of logic, ontology, and grammar, i.e. with the scien- tific and methodological theoretics of the Aristotelian-Boethian tradition and of scholasticism in general. And it is also in this sense that he under- stands the term “philosophy” as used by Paul in Colossians 2:8. Paul is not only the orator par excellence, as will be said later, but also the rhetorician who carries forward, into the realm of theology, the polemic against phi- losophy that had been articulated earlier by Isocrates and would later be taken up by Quintilian. For Valla, Paul is the Christian rhetorician who lays the new theoretical foundations of theology (institutio theologica), which were grasped and consciously assimilated by the greatest Latin and Greek Fathers of the Church. The citation of Colossians 2:8 (which can also be found elsewhere, and with the same connotations, in Valla’s corpus) should thus not be thought of as a mere appeal to authority. Rather, it must be understood as the foundation, or better, as the scriptural premise to a line of argument whose aim is normatively to identify the guiding principle of the scientia rerum divinarum. The hollow abstraction and argumentation of philoso- phy – this is the sense suggested by the allusion to the New Testament passage – impedes theological reflection on divine truths, just as, accord- ing to Paul’s warning, it once hindered the Christians of Colosse from understanding the divine mysteries.61
2.9. The Reduction of Philosophy to Rhetoric and Valla’s Quintilianism: Institutio oratoria, Book XII, Chapter 2.7–20 Up to now, Valla’s critique of philosophy – concerning the specific object, the res, of theological discourse – has been inspired by a particular phase (patristics) of Christian thought, and it has been founded on Paul’s scrip- tural testimony (Col. 2:8). Later on, these two foundational elements will be taken up again and refined. But now, Valla’s argument shifts decisively
60 Bk. III, ch. 9: Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi, 197; cf. Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 166 and n. 272. 61 De vero falsoque bono, bk. III, ch. 12: Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi, 204; Fois, Il pen- siero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 188–192 and 511. On Col. 2:8: O. Michel, “Philosophia, phi- losophos,” in Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, 10 vols. (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1931–1979), 9:169–185; Heinrich Schlier, Il tempo della Chiesa. Saggi esegetici (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1968), 330–372.
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from historical demonstration (the recovery of patristic theology) to normative argumentation. The latter is based on the very nature of the res of theology, and it is articulated along the lines of Quintilian’s rhetoric, following the epistemological scheme of the second chapter of book XII of the Institutio. In passing we might note that chapter 2, book XII of the Institutio, along with chapter 1, book X, have already been identified as the two most significant passages of Quintilian’s corpus for understanding the methodological problem and solutions that give the Encomium its historical and theoretical significance. In his panegyric of 1457, Valla revisits and draws to a close his “discourse on method,” which had been the object of intense reflection and intellectual effort ever since his Comparatio Ciceronis Quintilianique (Comparison of Cicero and Quintilian). These two writings, the earlier one programmatic, the later one recapitulating and reassembling his entire intellectual development, mark the beginning and the end, theoretically as well as chronologically, of his literary production.62 In the expository economy of the Institutio, the second chapter of book XII summarizes the didactic articulation of the rhetorical paedeia pro- posed in the course of the work. It unites the diverse aspects and various levels of all of book XII (the final book of the Institutio), and thus together with the rest of the book it makes explicit the critique of philosophy underlying Quintilian’s whole work. Indeed, the chapter explains why the break between philosophy and rhetoric should be repaired and proposes a solution for doing so, namely through the assumption of the former into the latter, with rhetoric understood as the omni-comprehensive science of language. Since the orator is the “good man skilled in speaking” (vir bonus dicendi peritus), according to the ancient definition of Cato, he must excel all oth- ers in his knowledge of the natural world, civil and political institutions, moral values, and the linguistic and cultural structures related to them – in short, he must be intimately acquainted with the whole realm of human conduct and action. To this end, Quintilian puts the acquisition of this kind of knowledge into a perspective aimed at transcending the limits within which Cicero (in De oratore III) had divided the tasks of philosophy and rhetoric. That break between the two cultures, which Cicero had sought in vain (if not with equivocation) to repair, had little by little
62 Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 31–33; Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 89–100.
200034 200034 188 salvatore i. camporeale worsened, such that for Quintilian it remained only to propose rhetoric as the lone, valid “science” comprehending the entire encyclopedia of knowledge, and the rhetorician as the only kind of intellectual living in an organic relation to the civil and political society of his time. Since the path of philosophy leads far from civil and political action, from moral and institutional affairs, the rhetorician must decisively effect the definitive transcendence of philosophical wisdom. Quintilian’s text must be cited here, although we are forced to omit cer- tain sections that nevertheless should be read in loco (XII, 2.7–20) in order for its full significance and context to be comprehended. This passage is crucial for understanding Valla’s corpus, as well as for grasping his origi- nality in critically adopting – for he expands its power and application – the operative principle of reducing (reductio) all the disciplines, even theology, to rhetoric. Quintilian writes: I desire that he whose character I am seeking to mould should be a “wise man” in the Roman sense, that is, one who reveals himself as a true states- man, not in the discussions of the study, but in the actual practice and expe- rience of life. But inasmuch as the study of philosophy has been deserted by those who have turned to the pursuit of eloquence, and since philosophy no longer moves in its true sphere of action and in the broad daylight of the forum, but has retired first to porches and gymnasia and finally to the gath- erings of the schools, all that is essential for an orator, and yet is not taught by the professors of eloquence, must undoubtedly be sought from those per- sons in whose possession it has remained. The authors who have discoursed on the nature of virtue must be read through and through, that the life of the orator may be wedded to the knowledge of things human and divine …. O that the day may dawn when the perfect orator of our heart’s desire shall claim for his own possession that science that has lost the affection of mankind through the arrogance of its claims and the vices of some that have brought disgrace upon its virtues, and shall restore it to its place in the domain of eloquence, as though he had been victorious in a trial for the restoration of stolen goods! And since philosophy falls into three divisions, physics, ethics and dialectic, which, I ask you, of these departments is not closely connected with the task of the orator? Let us reverse the order just given and deal first with the third department which is entirely concerned with words. If it be true that to know the properties of each word, to clear away ambiguities, to unravel perplexities, to distinguish between truth and falsehood, to prove or to refute as may be desired, all form part of the functions of an orator, who is there that can doubt the truth of my contention? … Proceeding to moral philosophy or ethics, we may note that it at any rate is entirely suited to the orator …. Physics or natural philosophy on the other hand is far richer than the other branches of philosophy, if viewed from the standpoint of provid- ing exercise in speaking, in proportion as a loftier inspiration is required to speak of things divine than of things human; and further it includes within
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its scope the whole of ethics, which as we have shown are essential to the very existence of oratory ….63 The reduction of philosophy to rhetoric, as the omni-comprehensive sci- ence of res et verba, is thus absolute and radical in Quintilian. In the sec- tions omitted from the passage cited, Quintilian’s discourse descends into the particulars of the various branches and disciplines of philosophy in order to demonstrate rhetoric’s epistemological and methodological primacy.64
63 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, XII.2.7–20: “Ego illum, quem instituo, Romanum quen- dam velim esse sapientem, qui non secretis disputationibus, sed rerum experimentis atque operibus vere civilem virum exhibeat. Sed quia deserta ab his, qui se ad eloquentiam con- tulerunt, studia sapientiae non iam in actu suo atque in hac fori luce versantur, sed in porticus et in gymnasia primum, mox in conventus scholarum recesserunt: id, quod est oratori necessarium nec a dicendi praeceptoribus traditur, ab iis petere nimirum necesse est, apud quos remansit, evolvendi penitus auctores, qui de virtute praecipiunt, ut oratoris vita cum scientia divinarum rerum sit humanarumque coniuncta …. Utinamque sit tempus unquam, quo perfectus aliquis, qualem optamus, orator hanc artem superbo nomine et vitiis quorundam bona eius corrumpentium invisam vindicet sibi ac, velut rebus repetitis, in corpus eloquentiae adducat. Quae quidem cum sit in tris divisa partes, naturalem, moralem, rationalem, qua tandem non est cum oratoris opere coniuncta? Nam ut ordinem retro agamus, de ultima illa, quae tota versatur in verbis, nemo dubitaverit, si et proprie- tates vocis cuiusque nosse et ambigua aperire et perplexa discernere et de falsis iudicare et colligere ac resolvere quae velis oratorum est …. Jam quidem pars illa moralis, quae dicitur Ethice, certe tota oratori est accommodata …. Pars vero naturalis, cum est ad exercitatio- nem dicendi tanto ceteris uberior, quanto maiore spiritu de divinis rebus quam humanis eloquendum est, tum illam etiam moralem, sine qua nulla esse, ut docuimus, oratio potest, totam complectitur …” (tr. E.H. Butler) (emphasis added). 64 Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 395–424; Gerl, Rhetorik als Philosophie, 84–97. Here we cite Valla’s glosses to ch. 2, book XII of the Institutio oratoria contained in ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 7723, ff. 142v.-144r. [N.B. Not all the glosses transcribed by Camporeale are reported in Valla, Le postille all’Institutio oratoria, and sometimes Camporeale’s readings differ from those in the edition.] On the basis of clear graphic evidence it seems obvious that the glosses were written at different times. Among other things, they constitute a series of statements and references that are illuminating for a comparative reading of the preface to book I of the first redaction of the Dialecticae disputationes. (We have printed the text of the preface from ms. Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Urb. lat. 1207 in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 405–408). Valla’s glosses are transcribed here with the incipits of Quintilian’s text in italics and the standard paragraph numbers in brackets. “Quando igitur orator est vir bonus … si forte accedamus iis [XII.2.1–2]: nature alone does not establish mores (non constare sola natura mores). // Ad illud sequens [4]: the orator must learn wisdom through and through (penitus perdiscendam oratori sapientiam). // Ac philosophos cum ea [5]: this must be sought or obtained from the philosophers (hanc esse petendam seu reperiendam a philosophis). // Quod Cicero pluribus libris [6]: as in the pref- ace to the first book of the Tusculans and On Fate (ut in proemio primi libri Tusculanarum et De fato). // Quapropter hec exhortatio [6]: the orator should not be a philosopher but a truly civic wise man of the Roman type. Lactantius, Book III [Div. inst., ch. 14: PL 6:389–90] writes against Cicero: ‘But how you confessed the truth about philosophy when instructing your son, advising that he should know the precepts of philosophy, but that he should live
200034 200034 190 salvatore i. camporeale as a citizen (non philosophum sed romanum quendam sapientem ac vere civilem esse oratorem debere. Lactantius Li III in Ciceronem: ‘At quam fessus fueris philosophie verita- tem docens ad filium composita precepta, quibus mones philosophie quidem precepta noscenda, vivendum autem esse civiliter’). // Quis denique in ipsa [7]: Macrobius, from the Somnium Scipionis [II.17,8]: ‘Greece was as full of men wholly given to wisdom as Rome was bereft of them’ (Macrobius de Somnio Scipionis: ‘soli enim sapientie [otio] deditos ut abunde Grecia tulit, ita Roma nescivit’). // Atque ego illum, quem instituto [7]: this means that the philosophers did not treat of the republic completely, since they lacked experi- ence of it (hoc significat non perfecte philosophos de re publica tradidisse, quam experti non fuissent). // Evolvendi penitus [8]: the orator should read the philosophers (evolvendi oratori philosophos). // Que ipse quanto maiores [9]: the same material can be treated bet- ter by orators than by philosophers, and if only it were treated such that it not be so hateful on account of the vices of the philosophers and their reputation for pride. From this it is clear that neither Aristotle nor Plato were eloquent enough (eandem materiam tractari posse ab oratoribus melius quam a philosophis, et utinam tractetur ne tantopere sit invisa propter vitia philosophorum et superbum illorum nomen. Ex hoc constat nec Aristotelem nec Platonem satis eloquentes esse). // Superbo nomine et vitiis [9]: because philosophers want to be the only lovers of wisdom, as their name indicates (quia philosophi solos se sapientie volunt esse amatores, ut ipsorum nomen indicat). // De ultima illa, que tota ver- satur in verbis [10]: on dialectics (de dialectica). // Quanquam ea non tam [11]: how the orator uses it (quomodo ea utatur orator). // Ita, si totum sibi vindicaverit [13]: pure dialectic is inconsistent with the forum (abhorret a foro mera dialectica [N.B. Camporeale’s text reads: meram dialecticam; this gloss is not reported in Valla, Le postille all’Institutio orato- ria; the editors of the present volume have not consulted ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7723. Eds.]). // Iam pars illa moralis [15]: on moral philosophy [ethics] (de morali). // Sed ille vir bonus [17]: orators speak more easily and better about moral philosophy than philosophers (oratorum facilius ac melius moralem loqui quam philosophorum). // Profecto nemo dubi- tabit [18]: regarding general questions in philosophy (de generalibus questionibus in phi- losophia). // Pars vero naturalis [20]: on natural philosophy [physics] (de naturali). // Siquidem, ut nobis placet [21]: this is clear, for example, from the experience of the greatest orators (hoc constare vel experimento summorum oratorum). // Vim tamen quandam [22]: Aristophanes and Eupolis, Plato in the Phaedrus, Thucydides book I, in the letters of Demosthenes (Aristophanes Eupolisque, Plato in Phedro, Thucydides libro 1o, in epistolis Demosthenis). // Nam M. Tullius [23]: in The Orator, in Partitiones oratoriae (in Oratore, in Partitionibus). // Pyrron quidem [24]: Aulus Gellius, book 11: ‘Those philosophers whom we call Pyrronists are called skeptētai in Greek, which means something like searchers and considerers: for they decide nothing, determine nothing, but they are always busy search- ing and considering what of all things in the world it is possible to decide or determine. Nor do they think that they see or hear anything clearly, but rather that they sense or are affected only as if they saw and heard, etc.’ Although the Pyrronists and the Academics say very similar things about this, they were thought to differ amongst themselves for several reasons but mostly on this account: that the Academics determine as it were that nothing itself can be determined, while the Pyrronists say that not even this seems to be at all true, since nothing seems to be true. (A. Gellius libro XIo: ‘Quos pyrrones philosophos vocamus ii greco cognomine skeptētai appellantur, id ferme significat quasi quesitores et considera- tores: nihil enim decernunt, nihil enim constituunt, sed in querendo semper consideran- doque sunt, quidnam sit omnium rerum de quo decerni constituique possit ac ne videre quoque quidem plane quicquam, neque audire sese putant, sed id pati afficique quasi videant vel audiant, etc.’ Cum hec autem ita consimiliter tam Pyrronei dicant quam Academici, differe tamen inter sese et propter alia quedam et vel maxime propterea exis- timati sunt, quod Academici quidem ipsum illud nihil posse decerni quasi decernunt, Pyrronei ne id quidem ullo pacto verum videri dicunt quod nihil esse verum videtur.) // Sed hec inter ipsos [26]: the task of the orator is greater than that of the philosopher, and
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This passage is the source (as is also clear from textual similarities, as noted in italics) for the Encomium’s statement: For what is there in philosophy? I do not mean dialectics, the whole of which lies in words; I have already spoken about it and will do so again. No, I mean moral and natural philosophy. What is there in them that is indubitable and settled except the things discovered in natural philosophy through the observations (experimenta) of physicians and others?65 Clearly, this criticism of contemporary scholasticism must be understood along Quintilian’s lines, and in the direct light of the Institutio’s book XII, chapter 2. Nevertheless, Valla does not simply follow Quintilian, and we would not understand the originality and the essence of his thought should we fail to specify its relationship to Quintilian’s text and to differ- entiate it from the ancient rhetorician’s theme. For here Valla goes far beyond – indeed, he proceeds in a divergent (if not a contrary) direction from – Quintilian’s classical theory of rhetoric. Quintilian wholly reduced the philosophical disciplines to rhetoric essentially on the basis of the omni-comprehensiveness of language, on account of which the totality of res and verba is the proper sphere of eloquence. Valla, on the other hand, although accepting this principle for dialectics, invokes a different one for moral and natural philosophy: the absolute (extra-philosophical) princi- ple of observation, or experience (experimentum). Indeed, it is empiricism and praxis on which the humanist Valla will base his critique of the Aristotelian-scholastic Physics and Ethics in his Dialecticae disputationes. Thus in Valla’s work rhetoric receives a new significance and equipage: the ars rhetorica comes to be defined as the method of philological criti- cism, a new episteme articulated and distinguished by its own principles and instruments of study.
thus he should not cleave to any one sect of philosophy (maius esse opus oratoris quam philosophi, ideoque non debere se ad sectam aliquam philosophie astringere). // Quare in exemplum [27]: which philosophers he should especially read (quos precipue philosophos legat). // Exercitatione quidem [28]: in which parts of philosophy he should train himself (in quibus se partibus philosophie exerceat). // Neque ea solum que [29]: even more than the teachings of the philosophers he should read the famous words and deeds of the ancients (magis etiam quam precepta philosophorum, legenda dicta et facta veterum pre- clara). // Quantum enim greci [30]: this is in no way the same opinion as the one found in book III [ch. 34:137] of Cicero’s De oratore: ‘For as examples of virtue are to be sought in our own people, thus examples of learning are to be sought in them’ (non est hec eadem omnino sententia que apud Ciceronem in IIIo De Oratore: ‘Nam ut virtutis a nostris sic doctrine sunt ab illis exempla repetenda’).” 65 Valla, Encomion, 18.195–198 (emphasis added).
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2.10. The Linguistic-Semantic Critique of Scholasticism and the Interrelation between Greek and Latin: Paul’s “Genuine Mode of Theologizing” and Valla’s Paulinism The critique of scholastic theology, as was said above, operates on two axes: the one categorical and semantic, the other linguistic and formal. The first concerns divine truths, the object of theology insofar as theology is the “science” of those things. The second properly regards the concep- tual body of lexemes used in theological discourse. Valla had said there were two reasons for his opposition to scholasticism and his call for a rebirth of patristic theology, which he went on to express with the correla- tive pair, essential to rhetoric, of signified and signifier: “one having to do with their contents (res), the other with their words (verba).” And so Valla’s argument, having dealt with the subject of theology’s object and contents, now turns to examining the linguistic issue of Aristotelian- scholastic terminology, which it identifies as the (historical and theoreti- cal) break between ancient and modern theologians. Regarding their words: because the nature of Greek is different from that of Latin. This would be a rather tedious subject to discuss, and it is a question for another time. Let it suffice to have said that the Latin doctors of the Church dreaded words which the great Latin authors (who were their teach- ers in the language), although experts in Greek, never used, words that are continually pressed into service by modern theologians: ens, entitas, quid- ditas, identitas, reale, essentiale, suum esse, as well as those terms which are given names like ampliari, dividi, componi, and other such things. Thus these largely worthless trifles were either not to be treated, or else they were to be disregarded, lest they lead to greater ignorance.66 This passage of the Encomium, once again synthetically dense and expressed in concentric abbreviations, provides a retrospective summary of Valla’s essential ideas. An integral part of Valla’s work as a humanist was the lin- guistic-semantic critique of the philosophical and theological terminology of scholasticism and, more precisely, of the creation and formulation of Aristotelian-scholastic language as begun by Boethius. Indeed, it is impor- tant to note how Valla’s critique, simultaneously philological and theoreti- cal – in accord with a particularly humanist mode of analysis that sees the two aspects as inseparable – takes shape in the specific question of the rela- tionship between the Greek and Latin languages and the issue of translat- ing between them. Valla then goes on to treat this problem in greater depth
66 Ibid., 19.199–207 (emphasis added). [On the scholastic terminology in this passage, see n. 9 on p. 311 below. Eds.]
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with regard to its various manifestations in scholasticism, from biblical exegesis to formal logic. Ultimately, he comes to consider it within the broader context of the relationship between language and culture in gen- eral, the one intimately connected to and historically defined in the other: that is, in the relationship between formal expression and content, of signi- fier and signified, on converging synchronic and diachronic planes. To my mind, this variegated and complex theme underlies all Valla’s works from the Elegantiae to the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum. The reference to a fuller treatment of the “nature of Latin” and the “nature of Greek,” which the Encomium’s author makes a point of emphasizing, has greater meaning than it might at first seem. We shall confine ourselves here to explaining this reference with writings Valla composed around the same time as the Encomium, writings in which this theme can be seen most clearly: the preface to the Latin translation of Thucydides’ History (1452) and the inaugural lecture “in principio sui studii” (of 1455).67 The problem of the relationship between Greek and Latin and the issue of translating between them is without a doubt one of the central themes that Valla derives directly from Quintilian. The latter, as Leeman has writ- ten and as we would confirm without any hesitation, “seems to have been the first fully to realize the fundamental differences between the two lan- guages.”68 They key passage is chapter 10 of book XII of the Institutio (and parallel passages, such as book VIII, chapter 3). Valla, however, delved deeper into the problem, attacking the entire categorical terminology that was derived from Aristotelianism and that, from Boethius on, had been transferred to scholasticism. This linguistic transfer, or transition, particu- larly interested Valla insofar as it concerned theological language, espe- cially in the translation of the New Testament from Greek into the Latin of the Vulgate. According to Valla, the scholastic importation of philosophical and theo- logical language from the Greek writings of Aristotle to medieval Latin cul- ture was carried out by means of a mechanical transposition and not through a process guided by analogical correlations. The latter procedure
67 The “preface” to Thucydides’ History will be treated in part III, section 5 below. For the Oratio in principio sui studii, cf. Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 441–448; Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 103–104; Gerl, Rhetorik als Philosophie, 235–250. A critical edition of the Oratio is available in: Lorenzo Valla, Orazione per l’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico 1455–1456. Atti di un seminario di filologia umanistica, ed. S. Rizzo (Roma: Roma nel Rinascimento, 1994), 192–200. [Camporeale does not actually discuss the Oratio in principio sui studii in this essay; instead, he treats the preface to the fourth book of Valla’s Elegantiae as a third important parallel text for the Encomium. Eds.] 68 [Leeman, Orationis ratio (1963), 296.]
200034 200034 194 salvatore i. camporeale would have permitted the creation of a new terminology, an original form of expression suited to the marriage between classical Latin and Christian cul- ture. The mechanical continuity of terms, however, was unbound from the morphological and semantic structures of the two languages as well as from their respective historical contexts. This entailed – obliquely, as it were – the transposition of a verbal-conceptual system, that of Aristotelianism in general and metaphysics in particular, into the realm of theology, to whose contents (i.e. Christian revelation) it was by its nature semantically unsuited if not utterly antithetical. But what happened with the coming of scholasti- cism did not occur in early patristic theology. The Fathers, although con- noisseurs of classical literature and Greek thought, refused to adopt the metaphysical language of Aristotle or to employ its philosophical method- ology. On the contrary, Valla insistently stresses, they completely embraced the “mode of theologizing” exemplified in Paul’s Epistles. Valla does not limit himself to reminding his contemporaries of the prestige and worthiness patristic texts had as foundational sources and authorities of the theological tradition; in doing so he would only have followed in the footsteps of high scholastic theology. Nor does he intend to conduct his apology for ancient theologians against the moderns solely by revaluating patristics vis-à-vis scholasticism. He has more in mind than defending the former from the criticism of the latter, which charged the theological speculation of the first Christian centuries with not having attempted a synthesis between revelation and Aristotelian philosophy. The originality of Valla’s proposition, and thus of “humanist theology” as an alternative to medieval and contemporary scholasticism, consists in something more. Valla effects his recovery of patristics by exalting the essential trait of ancient theology – its rhetorical mode, or method (modus rhetoricus), which was anti-philosophical and thus a-logical and a-meta- physical – and contrasting it directly with Aristotelianism. In this sense, patristic theology is considered and adopted not only as a source of tradi- tion, but above all and specifically as a methodology. It is the foundational guideline for theological study, derived directly from the lone valid model of Christian speculation – that of Paul: I … defend the ancients, who are unjustly blamed and abused [by “modern theologians”] for not having theologized according to this method [that is, the “method” of the scholastics]. Instead they devoted themselves wholly to imitat- ing the apostle Paul, by far the prince of all theologians and the master of theologizing.69
69 Valla, Encomion, 20.209–212 (emphasis added).
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For Valla, then, patristic theology constitutes the historical renewal – the “imitation” – of the rhetorical method that is characteristic of Paul’s theol- ogy and that originates with it. He is the founder, the “prince” and “mas- ter,” of the Fathers’ speculation and theological discourse in the first centuries of Christianity. The apostle Paul is the model of style and method for theological writ- ing. He is the greatest rhetorician of Christian culture, just as Demosthenes was for classical Greece (according to a parallel formulated by Valla him- self in his Adnotationes). Indeed, his “manner of speaking” (modus disse- randi) – and Paul was of all the apostles the most “expert at speaking” (dicendi peritus) – sublimely embodied the “word of God” that he desired to announce to the Hellenistic world. In addition to evangelic preaching, the Apostle of the Gentiles also established the specific and distinctive methodology of Christian speculation, i.e. the theology of the word (logos- sermo), to which every later development in theology thus ought to adhere. But whereas the ancient theologians had remained faithful to Paul’s speculative principle and rejected even the theoretical possibility of a synthesis between theology and philosophy, modern theologians behaved in exactly the opposite way. They saw patristic theology, at least on the level of method, as an immature phase of Christian thought. Valla’s text, which will now be cited, possesses a surprising lucidity. We have here the measure and precise meaning of what has been called (but in the past in a rather restrictive, if not misleading, sense) Valla’s “Paulinism.” It is in this Paulinism – in the precise sense just now explained – along with the radical Quintilianism of the Dialecticae disputationes (i.e. the other methodological axis of his thought) that the uniqueness and origi- nality of Lorenzo Valla’s humanist theology lies. This [i.e. Paul’s] is the true and, so to speak, the genuine mode of theologiz- ing. This is the true law of speaking and writing, and those who pursue it doubtless pursue the very best manner of speaking and theologizing. Therefore the ancients, the true disciples of Paul, should not be criticized by modern theologians or placed second to our Thomas on account of not hav- ing mixed theology with philosophy.70
70 Ibid., 20.216–221. For the general context of Valla’s Paulinism and the renewal of patristic theology, one should keep in mind Fois’s whole book and particularly the passages cited in his index under the entry Padri della Chiesa; but see also the other recent studies on Valla, and above all those of Di Napoli and of the present writer, as well as Franco Gaeta, Lorenzo Valla. Filologia e storia nell’Umanesimo italiano. (Napoli: Istituto italiano per gli studi storici, 1955), with the earlier bibliography indicated there.
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2.11. Peroration and Closing of the Encomium: Thomas’s Systematic Philosophy and Theology between the Patristic and Scholastic Traditions Let us now move on to the peroration, the closing section of the Encomium. Here Valla assembles the panegyric’s various motifs and elements, casting them in dimensions and relationships reminiscent of iconography, in order to create his own triumph of Thomas. In Quintilian, the peroration (peroratio) has two functions: “either to refresh the memory or to move the mind.”71 That is, it can conclude the oration with a recapitulation (for mnemonic purposes), and it can provide a concentrated dose of emotive energy (to create a lasting impact on the mind of the listener). Moreover, throughout book VI – where Quintilian speaks expressly about the peroration – he indicates that it is possible either for only one of its functions to be employed (one could, for exam- ple, depending on the case at hand, use it simply as a recapitulation) or for a summary of the argument to be combined with the persuasive thrust of the whole speech. In Valla’s case, the rhetorical peroration appears as the conclusion to a panegyric whose recapitulation is situated in a hagiographic and liturgical context. That is, the objective reference of its elements and dimensions is the Church (ecclesia), considered on the one hand historically, i.e. in its theological tradition, and on the other hand at the eschatological moment of the glorification of the “Lamb of God” in the triumphant vision of the Apocalypse. Valla, therefore, makes full use of the double function of Quintilian’s peroration. First, it acts as a summary of Thomas’s place in the history of the theological tradition of the Christian Church, defining Aquinas’s status vis-à-vis the great “ancient” and “modern” figures of Christian thought. Second, it functions as a powerful exhortative and per- suasive closing, describing the glorification of Thomas, before the Lamb, in the choral presence of the Doctors of the Church. Thus the Encomium ends with the vision of the “glory of paradise” in reference to Thomas; with the same vision, but in reference to the “just Christian” in general, the humanist had concluded the third and final book of De vero falsoque bono. But let us take a closer look at this iconographic peroration, which Valla arrayed copiously and symmetrically with figures in the manner of early fifteenth-century painting. The characteristics or judgments of the indi- viduals featured in this literary fresco, which resemble iconographic cap- tions (and are often of a traditional or standard nature), take on the status
71 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, VIII, pr. 11: “aut memoriam refici aut animos moveri.”
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of historical assessments, especially when they are read in the light of par- allel passages from Valla’s oeuvre in which the cultural and theological contributions of the same individuals are discussed and critiqued.72 Aquinas is given a position of privilege (“I place him before”) within the monastic tradition of theology and biblical exegesis. He is placed before John Cassian (“whom St. Dominic is said to have been in the habit of read- ing as if the best doctor”), Anselm (“the sharpest and most refined”), Bernard (“a learned, sweet, eloquent, and sublime doctor”), Remigius (“the most learned man of his age”), Bede (“more learned than all of them”), and Isidore (“whom his admirers deny is second to anyone”). Thomas is also preferred to Peter Lombard and Gratian, who “deserve more to be called assiduous compilers than true authors.”73 No differently is Thomas judged within the sphere of high scholasti- cism: he is given absolute primacy among modern theologians, both those who preceded and those who followed him. Thus the great figures of the main mendicant orders are named, from the Dominicans to the Franciscans to the Augustinians: Albert the Great, Giles of Rome, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, and still others of the same orders, whose members exalt their own theological giants to the point of denying their “equivalence” with the “ancients,” who in their minds had by then been decisively surpassed. Once again, in a third comparison, Aquinas is placed above others on a level of superiority, at least from the point of view of the theological tradi- tion. Thus he is accorded preeminence over Lactantius and Boethius, although only “in theology, for in other areas [i.e. erudition and literary culture] there is no comparison.”74 The same theological primacy is granted over Cyprian, as well as over Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, but with qualification: “I add, albeit unwillingly, Hilary as well; for what, finally, is holier, more learned, more eloquent than his writings?”75 In the triple comparison delineated above, the status of Thomas and his theological corpus is determined on the basis of elements that are of indu- bitable significance in the Christian cultural tradition. Nevertheless, they are not original, essential elements of that literary and theological tradi- tion but rather constitute later, secondary developments. The decisive
72 On this point, see the observations of Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, 464–467. 73 Ibid., 21.224–231. 74 Ibid., 21.235–236. 75 Ibid., 21.236–238.
200034 200034 198 salvatore i. camporeale and defining comparison for determining Aquinas’s importance remains that with the great Fathers and Doctors of the Greek and Latin Church. It is here that Valla seems to frame the validity and the dimensions, simul- taneously historiographical and theoretical, of the perspective within which not only Thomas but also the hegemonic development of Thomism are to be situated in the ecclesial community. Then again, Valla had already stated the premises and announced the terms of this perspective through- out the Encomium. Indeed, the entire panegyric revolves around the prob- lem of the relationship between scholasticism, with Thomas as its greatest representative, and the Fathers, with the ultimate aim of militating for a revival of the theological methodology of the “ancient” Doctors of the Church – a methodology adopted as an alternative for the radical renewal of the “science of divine truths.” This is Valla’s proposal to his contempo- raries, trenchantly formulated in the Encomium and submitted on a sol- emn occasion to a Christian gathering. It had been constantly elaborated across his oeuvre, above all in the Adnotationes, in a continual comparison between Thomas’s writings and patristic texts. By comparing Aquinas to the Greek and Latin Fathers, Valla was pulling together the threads of his extensive study of theology, and thus summarizing his thought in a deci- sive climax. Valla lists the most eminent Greek and Latin Fathers and symmetrically distributes them into two groups of four, which he envisions as four-horse teams (quadrigae) drawing the metaphorical chariots of the Western and Eastern Church, composed of the foremost Doctors of ancient Christianity: the “greatest of all, like a second team of Evangelists.”76 In so doing he takes up a traditional theme that recurs in conciliar and magisterial texts, in literary and theological writing in general (ancient and medieval, monastic and scholastic) and, finally, in sacred and religious iconography. But Valla modifies this traditional theme by introducing into it historio- graphical and theoretical variations that reassert the distinctively human- ist perspective on theology. This emerges from the hierarchical order in which the Greek and Latin Fathers are listed, symmetrically compared to one another, and situated according to their respective contributions to the development and formation of theological thought. The “team” of the Latin Fathers, made up of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory [Pope St. Gregory I (“the Great”)] (in the order assigned them by Valla), is presented thus:
76 Ibid., 22.240–241.
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I barely know which of them to prefer to whom, as each one had his own extraordinary gift. For although Augustine is commonly preferred to all, because he treated more theological questions and is in many respects indu- bitably to be preferred, nevertheless, if Ambrose’s writings were compared with an equal number of Augustine’s, I do not think they would be ranked second. Nor does Jerome yield in any way to Augustine’s intellect; he is so much the greater in all areas of learning that Augustine seems to me like the Mediterranean, Jerome the ocean, upon which few of our contemporaries set sail. Gregory lags far behind all in erudition, but he equals them in care- fulness and diligence and is possessed of such great sweetness and holiness that he seems to speak like an angel.77 Valla then undertakes an analogous comparison with the greatest Doctors of Greek (Eastern) Christianity: I would compare them [the Latin Fathers] with the same number of Greeks: Ambrose with Basil, whose rival I see he was; Jerome with Gregory Nazianzen, whose pupil and disciple he claimed to have been; Augustine with John Chrysostom, whom he often followed in his writings and rivaled in the number of his books; Gregory with Dionysius the Areopagite, because he is the first of the Latins, as far as I know, to mention him (for the works of Dionysius were unknown to the others I named, not only the Latins but the Greeks as well).78 In what relation, then, does Valla see Aquinas’s philosophical and theo- logical works (and those of his school) with respect to the patristic thought represented by the greatest Greek and Latin Doctors of the Church? Turning once again to traditional themes and reasoning, he introduces a final pairing: Thomas, the Latin, with John Damascene, the Greek. Closest to these comes John Damascene, a most famous author among the Greeks, as Thomas is amongst us. It will therefore be perfectly right for John and Thomas to be paired together, and all the more so because John wrote many logical and well-nigh metaphysical works.79 The heavenly choir “before the throne of God and the Lamb,”80 according to the celestial vision of the Apocalypse of John (Apoc. 4–5), is now fully described. The “five pairs of princes of theology” accompany the twenty- four elders of the Apocalypse in their eternal choral praise: “for the writers of holy things always make music in the sight of God.”81 And to complete
77 Ibid., 22.243–252. 78 Ibid., 23.254–261. 79 Ibid., 23.261–264. 80 Ibid., 24.265–266. 81 Ibid., 24.266–267.
200034 200034 200 salvatore i. camporeale his fresco of the triumph of Thomas, Valla describes, using medieval and Renaissance iconographic references, the orchestral and “hierarchical” distribution of musical instruments among the five pairs: the lyre is assigned to Basil and Ambrose, the cithara to Gregory Nazianzen and Jerome, the psaltery to John Chrysostom and Augustine, the flute to Dionysius and Gregory the Great, and the cymbals to John Damascene and Thomas. Valla then adds immediately: And it will not be unharmonious for their number to be five now instead of four – since for musicians there are five tetrachords, not four – nor to have Thomas playing the cymbals. For as the name Thomas means ‘twin,’ and as he enjoyed playing equally in the twin tones of theology and philosophy, thus the cymbals are a double instrument emitting happy, cheerful, and pleasing music.82 Valla forcefully reaffirms the Encomium’s central thesis of the difference between the theology of Aquinas (and scholasticism) and that of the Church Fathers. To this end, and in line with Quintilian’s rhetorical pre- cepts (Institutio oratoria, bk. I, ch. 10), Valla adorns his speech with norma- tive references to music theory and musical instruments. Such references were easily accessible to his listeners, who were certainly familiar (having learned them in their study of the quadrivium) with the theoretical and practical fundamentals of the harmonic relationships (from the octave to the tetrachord) of the Greek Pythagorean musical system, as well as with the three categories of musical instruments (wind, stringed, and percus- sion). Furthermore, reference to works like Boethius’s De institutione musica (On Musical Education) (which Valla certainly has in mind, espe- cially book I) and Isidore’s De musica (On Music) (cf. book III in particular) is implicit in Valla’s discourse. We might also note that the combination of polyphonic choir and contrapuntal or supporting instrumentation, to which Valla alludes here, echoes the musical (and liturgical) shift brought about by the Florentine ars nova. The theoretical and instrumental notions of music stressed here, however, are the traditional ones derived from clas- sical Greece.83
82 Ibid., 24.271–276. 83 Important for this point, and also for what will be said below, are Valla’s glosses on Quintilian in ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 7723, cited in n. 21 above. In particular, see the annota- tions to Institutio oratoria, bk. I, ch. 10, 5–33: ff. 14v-15v, and bk. XII, ch. 10, 68: ff. 150v-151r. They give significant information on Valla’s kowledge of music theory and his reading of related ancient (Greek and Latin) and medieval texts. Here we confine ourselves to quoting the gloss on I.10.5 (f. 14v): “Quintilian associates these arts [sc. music and geometry] with the orator better than Plato does with defenders of the fatherland, or Columella with
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Now what did Valla mean by attributing the melodic function of the “fifth tetrachord” to the pair Damascene-Aquinas, and, in his distribution of instruments, by assigning the cymbals – the percussion instrument – to Thomas? The tetrachord, the core from which all Greek music theory developed, consisted of four successive sounds descending in a diatonic line and composed, therefore, of a series of two tones and a semitone, in an interval of a “perfect fourth”: la, sol, fa, mi. An octave resulted from the duplication in ascendant succession (mi, re, do, ti) of the diatonic tetrachord (let us confine ourselves here to the Dorian or Hellenic tetrachord, omitting the variations in the Lydian and the Phrygian). With the addition, finally, of two further tetrachords, one above and one below the octave already composed, a series of two octave scales resulted, a melodic whole com- posed of four diatonic tetrachords. Thus was constructed the general scale of the Greek musical system, known as the “Greater Perfect System.” The “fifth tetrachord” of which Valla speaks (with the quite technically precise statement, “for musicians there are five tetrachords, not four”) did not consist in yet another numerical addition to the general scale of the “Perfect System,” but in a modulational variation (the ti natural became ti flat in the higher octave) within the numerically unchanged structure of the series of four tetrachords. Without going further into the technical aspects of the “Perfect System” of the Greek musical scale, we can use the few elements described here to understand the meaning of Valla’s text. Greek patristic theology,
farmers, or Vitruvius with architects” (“Melius has artes oratori Quintilianus attribuit quam aut Plato propugnatoribus patrie, aut Columella agricolis, aut Vitruvius architectis”). Of authors who treated music theory and musical instrumentation, Valla cites and quotes the texts of, among others, (ibid., f. 150v) Boethius, De musica, bk. I (PL 63:1183–92) and Vitruvius, De architectura, bk. V (ch. 4, 6–8). These passages of Boethius and Vitruvius are the direct sources for the Encomium’s statement, “for musicians there are five tetrachords, not four” (“apud musicos quinque sunt tetrachorda non quattuor”). Cf. Franco Abbiati, Storia della musica, 4 vols. (Milano: Garzanti, 1967–1974), 1:86–93, 151–161, 316–327; Andrew Hughes, Music: the Sixth Liberal Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974); Nan Cooke Carpenter, Music in the Medieval and Renaissance Universities (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1958), chs. 1 and 2; Emanuel Winternitz, “On Angel Concerts in the 15th Century: A Critical Approach to Realism and Symbolism in Sacred Painting,” in idem, Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art, New York: W. W. Norton, 1967, 137–149; idem, “Secular musical practice in sacred art,” Early Music 3 (1975): 221–226; Edmund Addison Bowles, “La Hiérarchie des instruments dans l’Europe féodale,” Revue de Musicologie 42 (1958): 155–169; D.P. Walker, “Musical Humanism in the 16th and early 17th centuries,” Music Review 2 (1941): 1–13, 111–121, 220–227, 228–308; 3 (1942): 55–71. I would like to thank Profs. Carla Nolledi Martini and William Prizer for these bibliographical references.
200034 200034 202 salvatore i. camporeale according to Valla, had already achieved the “Perfect System” of theologi- cal methodology and speculation. This system was complete in itself and had long become a common element of traditional Christian culture. In comparison to patristic theology, then, the achievement of scholastic theology and its greatest representative, Aquinas (together with John Damascene) – i.e., the assumption of classical philosophy within the realm of Christian thought and doctrinal language – amounted to nothing more than a thematic and formal variation. Valla reiterates this point by assigning the cymbals to Thomas and John, a musical instrument com- posed of two small discs beaten together, similar to the “twin tones of the- ology and philosophy.” For Valla, they resound with the musical whole, already complete and perfect in itself, of the four other instruments, one wind (the pipe or flute) and three stringed (the psaltery, the cithara, and the lyre). It is with these theoretical references to music and instruments that Valla ends the Encomium, doubtless in imitation of medieval and contem- porary iconographic representations of the “glory of paradise.” Let it suf- fice to think of the paintings finished only a few years earlier by Beato Angelico, during his first and second stays in Rome, on the invitations of Nicholas V and Cardinal Juan de Torquemada. And Valla could very well have known the works of the Florentine Dominican master, who died in Rome in 1455 and was buried in the same temple of Minerva where in 1457 the humanist declaimed his Encomium. Even if the attribution to Valla of the Latin couplets on Beato Angelico’s tomb has still found no confirma- tion in any source or document, nevertheless the final lines of the Encomium remain fully within the iconographic context of the Dominican painter, completing the triumph of Thomas in heavenly glory: Such is the tune of Thomas’s books. With this harmony Saint Thomas delights both the pious men who read him and the holy angels who now hear him. For he is always singing and playing before God with the other holy doctors, perpetually either praising the Lamb of God, or entreating Him that we mortals may reach the same place he has.84
84 Valla, Encomion, 25.277–281. In ms. Rome, Bibl. Angelica, 1500 (see n. 12 above), the closing (“… nobis concedat qui vivit et regnat in saecula benedictus. Amen”) is followed by this addition (printed in Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, 321): “Oration of Lorenzo Valla, a most learned and eloquent man, which he held in praise of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in the city of Rome, a.d. 1457, the seventh day of March. He died in the same year on the first day of August” (“Doctissimi viri ac eloquentissimi Laurentii e Valle Oratio, quam habuit in laudem Sancti Thomae Aquinatis in Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae Minervae, in urbe romana a.d. 1457, VII die Martii, obiitque eodem anno die primo Augusti”).
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3. The Aporias of Scholasticism
3.1. Philosophy/Theology
“The mode employed in treating the Trinity is twofold, … namely, through truths known on the basis of authority and through those known by reason …. Some of the holy Fathers … employed but one mode of explanation: namely, by setting forth those truths founded upon authority. But Boethius chose to proceed according to the other mode: namely, according to reasoned arguments.” — Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Boethius’s De trinitate, prologue85 “Boethius, for no other reason than that he loved philosophy excessively, argued incorrectly about free will in the fifth book of his Consolation of Philosophy.” — Lorenzo Valla, De libero arbitrio, preface86
The Encomium of 1457 will have found its proper historical and theoretical place if it is understood as the organic summary and the definitive state- ment of Valla’s critique of scholasticism. Indeed, it contains the two essen- tial features of that critique: the rejection of the fundamental premise of scholasticism, which had informed the renewal of Thomism in the second half of the fifteenth century; and the proposal of an alternative to Thomism, a humanist principle for the epistemic refounding of theology. Within the cultural and historiographical space of Valla’s oration, these two features have theoretical and normative value. On the one hand, the Encomium identifies the epistemic principle underlying the restoration of Thomism: “that no one can become a theologian without the teachings of the dialec- ticians, metaphysicians, and the other philosophers.” On the other hand, it reproposes the “mode of theologizing” that had been fully elaborated by Greek and Latin patristics and that was derived from the apostle Paul, the normative model for Christian speculation. Since these appear to be the two poles between which the Encomium runs, it would seem worthwhile to deepen the analysis of them beyond
85 Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate: “Modus de Trinitate tractandi duplex est, … sc. per auctoritates et per rationes …. Quidam vero sanctorum Patrum … alterum tantum modum prosecuti sunt, sc. per auctoritates. Boethius vero elegit prosequi per alium modum, scilicet per rationes” (tr. Brennan, as cited below in n. 100). 86 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 526: “Boethius nulla alia causa, nisi quod nimis philosophiae amator fuit, non eo modo quo debuit, disputavit de libero arbitrio in V libro De Consolatione” (tr. Trinkaus, modified, as cited below in n. 87).
200034 200034 204 salvatore i. camporeale what was said in the first part of the present essay. Comparing the Encomium with certain parallel and otherwise essential texts of Valla’s corpus will aid in understanding its deeper significance, as well as in situ- ating its most original aspects within the context of the most important moments and phases in Valla’s intellectual development. We shall confine ourselves to carefully chosen parallel passages, namely the opening pages of De libero arbitrio, chapter 12 of book III of De vero falsoque bono, and the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae.87
3.1.1. Boethius as the Starting Point for Scholasticism and Valla’s Anti- Boethian Critique: The “Christian Religion” and the “Protection of Philosophy” Valla consistently identifies Boethius with the starting point of scholasti- cism (increasingly so, and with greater significance, with each subsequent redaction of the Dialecticae disputationes). It is in Boethius, he affirms repeatedly and variously, that the essential epistemological dimension of scholasticism – the use of classical philosophy for theological study – emerges for the first time, immediately rife with consequences for the Latin culture of the West and already charged with its full historical and theoretical significance. And it is in this context, as far as Valla is con- cerned, that The Consolation of Philosophy – throughout the Middle Ages a renowned pedagogical and scholastic literary text – takes on emblem- atic meaning, with respect both to its contents and to its methodology.
87 These texts are available in the following editions: De libero arbitrio, in Prosatori latini del Quattrocento, Latin text and Italian translation, ed. Eugenio Garin (Milano: R. Ricciardi, 1952), 523–565; De vero falsoque bono, ed. Maristella De Panizza Lorch (Bari: Adriatica, 1970), 111–113; Elegantiae, Book IV, Preface in Garin (ed.), Prosatori latini, 612–622, and in Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, 228–246, with Latin text and Spanish translation. [An English translation of De libero arbitrio by Charles Trinkaus, which has been used here, appears in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 155–182. De vero falsoque bono has also been translated into English: Lorenzo Valla, On Pleasure, De voluptate, tr. Kent Hieatt and Maristella Lorch (New York: Abaris Books, 1977).] An Italian translation of De libero arbitrio and De vero falsoque bono is available in Valla, Scritti filosofici, 253–282, and 3ff. (ch. 12, bk. III is found on 202–205). For the text of the preface to bk. IV of the Elegantiae, the following mss. (sec. XV) have also been consulted: Florence, Bibl. Laur., Conv. soppr. 187 (ff. 58v-60r); Vatican City, Bibl. Apost. Vat., Pal. lat. 1759 (ff. 89v-92r). See Jozef Ijsewijn and Gilbert Tournoy, “Un primo censimento dei manoscritti e delle edizioni a stampa degli Elegantiarum linguae latinae libri sex di Lorenzo Valla,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 18 (1969): 25–41; idem, “Nuovi contributi per l’elenco dei manoscritti e delle edizioni a stampa delle Elegantiae di Lorenzo Valla,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 20 (1971): 1–3; [and Francesco Lo Monaco and Mariangela Regoliosi, “I manoscritti con opere autentiche di Lorenzo Valla,” in Pubblicare il Valla, ed. M. Regoliosi (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008), 67–97, at 94].
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For in this work Valla sees the functional use of philosophy as actually displacing theological discourse proper, and this with regard to a singular and deeply significant issue: the problem of the praxis and freedom of a Christian. Hence the fact that Valla’s (very) first attack on philosophy takes the form of a critical examination of the Consolation. De voluptate (like the successive redactions that will converge in De vero falsoque bono) and De libero arbitrio are directed against the series of arguments that underlies Boethius’s text. Valla himself says as much, openly and programmatically, in the opening pages of De libero arbitrio: Here we want to show that Boethius, for no other reason than that he loved philosophy excessively (nimis philosophiae amator), argued incorrectly about free will in the fifth book of his Consolation of Philosophy. We have replied to the first four books in our De vero bono. Now I shall exert myself as far as possible in the discussion and solution of this problem, and, so that it will not seem purposeless after so many other writers have held forth on this subject, I shall add something of my own.88 It would go beyond the boundaries of the present study to consider the multiple aspects of Valla’s critique of Boethius, which, it should be noted, was an original and defining aspect of the humanist’s polemic against scholasticism and Aristotelianism.89 Here our object is rather to clarify the terms and implications of Valla’s critique of Boethius as a critique of philosophy, undertaken in the service of a humanist alternative to the the- ology of medieval and Renaissance scholasticism. In De libero arbitrio, Valla defines the fundamental premise of scholasti- cism that will be the focus of his examination and critique of philosophy. In fact, the definition that he gives of that premise has close textual paral- lels with what he will say in the Encomium of 1457. In De libero arbitrio, when treating human freedom and divine predestination, his goal is to demonstrate the falsity of scholastic theology’s methodological assump- tion “that no one can become a theologian unless he knows the precepts of philosophy and has learned them most diligently and thoroughly,” and thus to refute the position “that those of former times who either did not
88 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 526: “In praesentiarum vero ostendere volumus Boethium nulla alia causa, nisi quod nimis philosophiae amator fuit, non eo modo quo debuit dis- putasse de libero arbitrio in quinto libro De consolatione. Nam primis quattuor libris respondimus in opere nostro De vero bono; atque hanc omnem materiam quam diligentis- sime potero discutere et resolvere conabor, ut de ea non frustra post omnes ego scriptores videar disseruisse: aliquid enim de nostro ac praeter ceteros afferemus” (tr. Trinkaus). 89 Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 142–145 and passim.
200034 200034 206 salvatore i. camporeale know or did not want to know them [the teachings of philosophy] were stupid.”90 Roman law, Valla continues, prohibited the speaking of foreign languages (lingua peregrina) in senatorial assemblies, even in the official reception of embassies, and stipulated that only the language of Rome (vernacula Urbis) could be used. Scholastic theologians, in violation of the laws of the evangelical church (ecclesia), introduced the language of paganism (sermo gentilis) into the community of believers (respublica christiana). By attacking what has been called the methodological premise of scho- lastic theology in this way, Valla’s critique actually rejected an entire tradi- tion of theological thought. Although that tradition achieved its greatest and most comprehensive systematization in Thomas Aquinas, it had its origins in Augustine, who employed it not only for basic apologetic pur- poses but also, in a methodologically more sophisticated form, in his De doctrina christiana (On Christian Doctrine). It is no accident that Valla’s critique of Boethius’s theology also involves Augustine and Thomas and groups them all into the same historical perspective, both in De libero arbi- trio and, especially and quite explicitly, in the Adnotationes.91 For Valla, the “Christian religion” (christiana religio) – unlike the theo- logical tradition that converged in scholasticism, from Boethius to Abelard and then to Thomas and Thomism – has no need of the “protection of philosophy” (praesidium philosophiae). It is therefore necessary to con- demn scholasticism absolutely, for it is a systematic theology contrary to the preaching of the Apostles and thus to the normative model of theo- logical study. The Apostles, although (or perhaps because) they were “ignorant and weaponless,” preached the Gospel so effectively that “they reduced so much of the world to their authority.” Hence the fact – Valla says with the Church Fathers in mind – that men emerged at the origins of Christianity’s theological tradition who were “truly pillars in the temple of God” and whose writings “have now been extant many centuries.” The Fathers are at the head of the whole ecclesial community precisely because they were in every way “imitators of the Apostles.” These men, who were the first to proceed into theological study, took the “imitation” of apostolic preaching, in contradistinction to “philosophical doctrines,” as a premise and a methodological principle for that study. For they were
90 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 524: “neminem posse theologum evadere nisi qui praecepta philosophiae teneat eaque diligentissime perdidicerit, stultosque eos … qui antehac vel nescierunt haec vel nescire voluerunt” (tr. Trinkaus, modified). 91 See, e.g., Valla, Opera omnia, 1:808a: Adnotationes in Matthew 4:10.
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convinced that “not only does philosophy not aid the holiest religion, but she also does it great violence.”92 That the Greek and Latin Fathers’ prejudice against philosophy was fully justified, Valla argues (again in the opening pages of De libero arbi- trio), is clear from the fact that “heresies,” beginning in the first centuries of Christianity, had their “origins” in “philosophy.” This is the exact oppo- site of what scholastic theologians think: But they of whom I speak consider [philosophy] a tool for weeding out her- esies, when actually it is a seedbed of heresy. They do not realize that the most pious antiquity, which lacked the arm of philosophy in combating her- esies, and which often fought bitterly against philosophy itself – driving it forth like Tarquin into exile, never to allow its return – is thus accused of ignorance.”93 Scholasticism, on the contrary, rejected this inheritance handed down from the Fathers. It refused to recognize in it any “authority,” preferring “to enter upon a new path” and behaving like a sailor who “prefers to hold an uncharted course.”94 The ancients’ “imitation of the Apostles” was as if turned on its head by the modern theologians of scholasticism, in their constant, enormous effort to pursue the study of all dogmatic philosophy.
3.1.2. The Insoluble Antinomy between God’s Omnipotence/Absolute Foreknowledge and Human Freedom/Predestination: The Polemic against Boethius from Peter Damian to Lorenzo Valla These are the terms in which Valla formulates his critique of philosophy in the opening pages of De libero arbitrio. This critique had already been
92 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 524: “Male enim sentire mihi videntur de nostra religione, quam putant philosophiae praesidio indigere; quod minime illi fecerunt quorum iam mul- tis saeculis opera exstant, apostolorum imitatores et vere in templo Dei columnae. Ac qui- dem, si probe animadvertamus, quidquid illis temporibus haeresum fuit, quas non parum multas fuisse accepimus, id omne fere ex philosophicorum dogmatum fontibus nasceba- tur, un non modo non prodesset philosophia sanctissimae religioni, sed etiam vehementis- sime obesset …. Itane imperiti fuerunt illi et inermes? Et quomodo tantum orbis terrarum in ditionem suam redegerunt?” (tr. Trinkaus, modified). 93 Ibid., 524: “eam [sc. philosophiam] isti, de quibus loquor, natam esse ad extirpandas haereses iactant, quarum potius seminarium est, nec intelligunt se imperitiae accusare piissimam antiquitatem, quae in expugnandis haeresibus philosophiae arma non habuit, et saepe contra ipsam philosophiam depugnavit acerrime et tamquam Tarquinium in exilium eiecit, neque redire passa est” (tr. Trinkaus). 94 Ibid., 524: “Si minus ratio, certe auctoritas illorum effectusque inducere debuit, ut se imitaremini potius quam novam viam ingrederemini .… Et nautam qui mavult insuetum iter tenere, quam id per quod ceteri salva navi ac mercibus navigarunt” (tr. Trinkaus, modified).
200034 200034 208 salvatore i. camporeale developed more elaborately and at greater length in the Disputationes and in De vero falsoque bono. But in De libero arbitrio Valla reproposes it as the premise to a theme that, for the traditional opposition to philosophy, had been standard in – indeed was the age-old argument underlying – the final and irrefutable proof demonstrating the radical incompossibility between philosophy and theology: the insoluble antinomy between God’s omnipotence and absolute foreknowledge, on the one hand, and human freedom and predestination, on the other. As Jean Isaac has demonstrated, it was the wide and penetrating diffu- sion of Boethius’s translation and interpretation of Aristotle’s On Interpretation (Peri hermeneias) that brought the problematic of philoso- phy/theology to the fore in all its theoretical and historical dimensions, and precisely with regard to the aporia surrounding the relationship between human freedom/predestination and saving grace.95 The his- torico-cultural controversy over classical philosophy’s functionality in, or incompossibility with, theology perhaps ought to be traced (in early scho- lasticism) to Peter Damian’s reaction against philosophy in the first decades of the eleventh century. Emblematic of the problem, in his mind, was the attempt to resolve the antinomy between free will and predesti- nation by means of Aristotelian logic, and precisely with chapter 9 of On Interpretation, which discusses modal propositions and the contrary pairs “possible/impossible” and “necessary/contingent.” The proof that that antinomy could not be circumscribed, much less resolved, within Aristotle’s propositional analysis and logical categories was the best evidence against any compatibility whatsoever between phi- losophy and theology, even in the sense of an analogical functionality of the former within the latter. Boethius’s attempt in his (second) commen- tary to On Interpretation and his reading of chapter 9 in relation to the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom thus had to be con- sidered a failure. What is more, according to Peter Damian it was neces- sary to radically reverse the perspective clearly delineated in Boethius’s procedure: his use, that is, of logical, metaphysical, and grammatical cat- egories at every level of theological study. Damian’s reaction against phi- losophy consequently entailed a wholesale rejection of an even partial accommodation of Christian thought to Greek culture: from logic to meta- physics, and from grammar to rhetoric. The irreducibility of the Christian
95 Jean Isaac, Le Peri hermeneias en Occident de Boèce à saint Thomas. Histoire litteraire d’un traité d’Aristote (Paris: Vrin, 1953), 44–49.
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“mystery” to classical thought was not only conceptual and semantic; it also undermined categories and procedures, such as rhetorical discourse, on a meta-linguistic level: Notice, therefore, how the blind foolhardiness of these pseudo-intellectuals who investigate non-problems, by boldly attributing to God those things that refer to the art of rhetoric …. These men, indeed, because they have not yet learned the elements of style, lose their grasp of the fundamentals of simple faith as a result of the obscurity produced by their dull tricks; and, still ignorant of those things boys study in school, they heap the abuse of their contentious spirit on the mysteries of God. Moreover, because they have acquired so little skill in the rudiments of learning or of the liberal arts, they obscure the study of pure ecclesiastical doctrine by the cloud of their curiosity. Clearly, conclusions drawn from the arguments of dialecticians and rhetoricians should not be thoughtlessly addressed to the mysteries of divine power.96 Thus wrote Peter Damian, the “bitterest enemy of the liberal arts in the history of medieval theology,” in his De divina omnipotentia (On Divine Omnipotence), in direct opposition to Boethius and scholasticism. Nevertheless, and “by a wonderful irony of fate,” as Isaac says, it was pre- cisely as a result of this attack against the theological use of chapter 9 of On Interpretation that this renowned passage of Aristotle on modal logic and future contingents would become an essential source for the philo- sophical and theological treatment of and solution to the question of free will and predestination.97 In his De concordia praescientiae et praedestina- tionis et gratiae Dei cum libero arbitrio (On the Concord of Foreknowledge, Predestination, and God’s Grace with Free Will), Anselm of Canterbury, one of the greatest figures in scholasticism’s formative period, used the same passage of Aristotle, but in a positive way, to open the way for philo- sophico-theological argumentation of a kind diametrically opposed to that of Peter Damian. And it is precisely this issue that would become
96 Peter Damian, On Divine Omnipotence, in Peter Damian: Letters 91–120, tr. Owen J. Blum (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 356: “Videat ergo imperitia sapientium et vana quaerentium caeca temeritas, quasi haec, quae ad artem per- tinent disserendi, ad Deum procaciter referant …. Qui nimirum, quia necdum didicerunt elementa verborum, per obscuras argumentorum suorum caligines amittunt clarae fidei fundamentum, et, ignorantes adhuc quod a pueris tractatur in scholis, querelae suae calumnias divinis ingerunt sacramentis! Et, quia inter rudimenta discentium, vel artis humanae, nullam apprehendere periciam, curiositatis suae nubilo perturbant puritatis ecclesiasticae disciplinam! Haec, plane, quae ex dialecticorum vel rhetorum prodeunt argu- mentis, non facile divinae virtutis sunt aptanda mysteriis” (emphasis added). 97 [Isaac, Le Peri Hermeneias, 47: “par une charmante ironie du sort, entre sous la plume de l’ennemi le plus virulent des artes libéraux dans l’histoire de la théologie médiévale.”]
200034 200034 210 salvatore i. camporeale emblematic and extremely significant for reasserting Aristotelian philoso- phy’s function, especially in its logical and ontological categories, as the handmaiden to theological investigation. Thus Valla took up Peter Damian’s radical critique of philosophy, but he placed it within the specific viewpoint of early humanism. The opposi- tion to the introduction of philosophy into theology had continued, as is well known, beyond Peter Damian. An entire cultural current of medieval theology constantly maintained a contrary and antithetical stance to the Boethian origins of scholasticism, from Bernard to the Victorines to the Masters of theology at the University of Paris in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Two of these Masters were Jean de Saint-Gilles (the first to hold the second chair of the Dominicans), who polemicized against the “barbarization” of “theological language” through Aristotelian “metaphysics,” and Odo of Châteauroux (chancellor of the church of Paris), who rebuked theologians who “sell themselves to the sons of the Greeks, that is to the philosophers.”98 And yet, to understand the full import and the true sense of this com- parison between the various anti-Boethian stances, which span from the eleventh century to the thirteenth (but that continue thereafter as well), and the introductory pages to De libero arbitrio, it must be added immedi- ately that Valla profoundly modified Peter Damian’s critique of philoso- phy. Valla rejected any and every union of theology with philosophy, but he did so within a perspective inverse to that of the Bishop of Ravenna. For his rejection had a different aim, namely that of formulating a new principle of theology: the use of rhetoric, as described in Quintilian’s Institutio, as a new instrument of philological and categorical criticism, both for the study of scripture and for theological argumentation. Thus Valla’s polemic inhabited a specific and unique historico-cultural context. On the one hand, it stood in antithesis to the neo-Thomism of his time. It was the critique of a theological methodology that Valla judged unsuitable to the new exigencies arising from contemporary Christian praxis and from the shift taking place in the first half of the fifteenth century. On the other hand, it stood in opposition to Boethius’s theological Aristotelianism, which had reached its culmination in Thomas and in the special role he had given to philosophy, namely that of handmaiden to theology.99
98 [For the full quotations, see pp. 229–230 below.] 99 Pierre Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’Averroisme latin au XIIIme siècle, 2 vols. (Louvain: Institut supérieur de philosophie de l’Université), 1908–1911, 1:1–63; but see also
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3.1.3. A Comparative Reading of Valla’s Texts with Thomas’s Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate The Summa theologiae, which the Thomist restoration of the fifteenth century held up as a normative model for theological study, was for Valla’s contemporaries (as well as for others) the most significant work in Aquinas’s literary corpus. For the Summa embodied the perfect form, and was in a certain sense the fullest and most mature expression, of philoso- phy’s role as handmaiden to theology in the tradition of medieval scholas- ticism. But there is another work, in the same scholastic tradition, in which Thomas systematically and quite incisively identified the prole- gomena to the epistemological principle of his own theological study. In the Commentary on Boethius’s De Trinitate (Expositio super librum Boethii De Trinitate, 1255–59), Aquinas had explained the theoretical foundations of his own Wissenschaftslehre, not only in its historico-cultural and specu- lative aspects but also from an apologetic standpoint. In direct and imme- diate reference to contemporary methodological debates, he posited the necessity of – and gave the criteria for – systematically using the rhetorical and philosophical disciplines (as elaborated in Aristotelianism) for theo- logical argumentation. Considering this, let us undertake a comparison between Valla’s anti- philosophical texts and the third article of Question II of Aquinas’s Commentary on Boethius. This comparison will bring into relief the full meaning of the historical dimension separating the humanist from the great scholastic, showing them to be two poles marking the different directions taken in a double shift in the history of theology. It will also reveal the full historico-cultural significance of the critique of scholasti- cism contained in Valla’s Encomium, whose aim was the radical renewal of theology in the face of the investigative methodology of Thomism – a methodology that in its founder had been richly endowed with cognitive possibilities and original ideas but that, in the fifteenth century, was being reproposed as the restoration of a fully perfected and delineated system. A comparative reading of Thomas’s text with Valla’s oration is of great interest: for although the same patristic references and the same problem- atic (the relationship between Christianity and Greco-Hellenistic culture) recur, Thomas and Valla reach contrary solutions. Even more so, though, reading Thomas in light of Valla is surprising, on account of how acutely
Marie-Dominique Chenu, La Théologie comme science au XIIIme siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1943), 25–32.
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Valla yet again identifies moments of cultural rupture and assaults the theoretical foundations of his contemporaries (in this specific case, the neo-Thomists of the fifteenth century). He achieves this complex opera- tion by working on two levels. On one, he revaluates Thomas’s work per se in an historiographic retrospective. On the other, he illustrates its unique character, thus showing that its revival under wholly different circum- stances is not valid. To Valla’s mind, Thomas’s thought was organically related to the historical circumstances of the thirteenth century. Lacking new investigatory tools, it was unsuitable for resolving new problematics. In this sense, the cultural break on which Valla insists appears as the clear reversal of the theoretical arguments underlying the restoration of Thomism in the fifteenth century.
3.1.4. The Epistemological Correlation between Philosophy and Theology in Question II, Article 3 of the Commentary on Boethius, and the References to Jerome’s Letters to Eustochium, to the Orator Magnus, and to Pammachius Question II of the Commentary on Boethius is entirely devoted to the theme of the epistemological relationship between philosophy and theol- ogy.100 In Aquinas’s terminology (as announced in the Question’s very title), the problem concerns the possibility of, and the analytical and argu- mentative instruments proper to, the “manifestation of divine knowledge” (manifestatio divinae cognitionis). Article 3 constitutes the problematic nucleus as well as the resolution of Thomas’s treatment. Since he desired to demonstrate the reducibility of the “knowledge of divine truths” (cogni- tio divinorum) to a “science” (scientia), i.e. to demonstrate the very possi- bility of theology, he had to describe its method both on a formal level of investigation and language (Article 1: “treating divine truths … by means of inquiry”; Article 4: “concealing divine truths … by new and obscure words”)101 and on the plane of its specific contents (Article 2: “the exis- tence of a science of divine truths”; Article 3: “whether in the science of
100 For the text, we follow the critical edition: Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, ed. Bruno Decker (Leiden: Brill, 1965). For the dating of the work, cf. ibid., p. 44. [English translations are based on those of Rose Emmanuella Brennan in Thomas Aquinas, The Trinity and the Unicity of the Intellect, tr. R.E. Brennan (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1946), from the on-line text (accessed 03.09.2013): http://dhspriory.org/thomas/ BoethiusDeTr.htm#23.] 101 Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, quae. II, art. 1: “divina … investigando tractare”; art. 4: “divina … velanda novis et obscuris verbis” (tr. Brennan, modified).
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faith, which is concerning God, it is permissible to use the arguments of the … philosophers”).102 The essential elements of the sic et non problematic regarding whether there was a radical dichotomy between philosophy and theology or rather a possibility of union had already been theoretically formulated and his- torically defined before Aquinas. Indeed, they emerged over centuries of Christian thought and had become attached to a standard set of scriptural and patristic references as obligatory as they were familiar. It is as such, i.e. as premises to subsequent solutions, that these scriptural and patristic texts are taken up by Thomas and dutifully listed and annotated. Indispensable references in favor of a radical dichotomy – see the series of objections in Article 3 – were to Paul (1 Cor. 1:17) and Jerome (Letter to Eustochium), along with formulations based on the antinomy between secular and divine wisdom (sapientia saecularis/sapientia divina). On the opposite side (in the sed contra section), in support of the possibility of union, the obligatory references were to other letters of Jerome (Letter to the Orator Magnus, Letter to Pammachius), to Augustine’s “discourse on theological method,” found in his De doctrina christiana, and to the same author’s scientific deployment of theological speculation, in his De Trinitate (On the Trinity). Let us take a closer look at the arguments found in Article 3, first those in objection and then the respective responses in the sed contra. Thereafter an interpretive and contextual reading of the third article will be pro- posed, and finally a few observations will be put forth regarding the coun- ter-arguments that conclude Aquinas’s text. The reasons adduced for rejecting a possible union between philoso- phy and theology had been derived from the kerygmatic praxis of the Apostle of the Gentiles, particularly from texts like 1 Corinthians 1:17 (and parallel passages). Paul’s statements – directly related to the failure of his speech at the Areopagus – were interpreted as an urgent admonition that the Gospel could not be circumscribed within the dimensions of the “wisdom of the word” (sapientia verbi): Christian logos could neither be subsumed nor constrained within the linguistic and semantic structures of the Greek logos. And the interpretive Gloss – dutifully attached by Aquinas in support and confirmation of the objector – translated Paul’s
102 Ibid., quae. II, art. 2: “de divinis … esse aliqua scientia”; art. 3: “utrum in scientia fidei, quae est de Deo, liceat rationibus philosophicis … uti” (tr. Brennan, modified).
200034 200034 214 salvatore i. camporeale formulation “wisdom of the word” as “learning of the philosophers” (doctrina philosophorum). This constant of Christian culture came to be corroborated by the patristic reference to Jerome’s Letter to Eustochium.103 For the dream of Jerome that it describes, which condemned the Latin “wisdom of the word” as incarnated in Ciceronian rhetoric, had taken on emblematic sig- nificance. The conflict in the Christian conscience driven by the opposi- tion between the Gospel and classical Greco-Roman culture emerged in Jerome and in his works, taking the form of a profound disturbance that, despite the scope and development of contemporary patristic literature, could be dismissed but not resolved. The pseudo-ideological compromise between “divine wisdom” and “secular wisdom” (the sophia tou kosmou of the Greeks mentioned by Paul in 1 Cor. 1:20) resembled the discount sale of adulterated wine – thus the ironic argument of another objection, whose source can be traced to the anti-Thomist critique of Bonaventure’s Hexaemeron. No different are barkeeps (caupones) who secretly mix and degrade “fine wine with water,” to whom the prophet Isaiah (1:22) com- pared Jerusalem, the once “faithful and righteous city” that had become a “harlot” for betraying the Ancient Alliance with Yahweh. In plain lan- guage: if the canons prohibited reading in the books of the Gentiles in order to ensure the purity of “Theo-logy” as the “Word of God” and to secure the theologian’s faith to that Word, all the more so did the study of these books have to be prohibited, lest their contents be transferred to the investigation of divine truths. In the sed contra, on the other hand, we find the scriptural and patristic references that substantiate the possibility of a synthesis between philos- ophy and theology. The arguments adduced here are aimed against the supporters of a theological fundamentalism that rejected classical culture and posited the absolute autonomy of the Judeo-Christian tradition. They are admittedly of an ad hominem nature, but they gain objective validity by the fact that they are drawn from other passages of Jerome’s own let- ters. In particular, reference is made to the Letter to Magnus and to the Letter to Pammachius.104 In the Letter to Magnus, Jerome recalled how the apostle Paul, although warning the Christians of Corinth about the abso- lute antithesis between the “folly of the Cross” and “secular wisdom,” did not intend therewith to condemn Greek culture. Like all orators of his age,
103 Jerome, Epistola ad Eustochium (ep. 22) in PL 22:394–425. 104 Jerome, Epistola ad Magnum oratorem (ep. 70), in PL 22:664–68; idem, Epistola ad Pammachium (ep. 66), in PL 22:639–47.
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the Apostle, too, often made use of Greek poetry in his preaching (Epimenides in Tit. 1:22; Menander in 1 Cor. 15:22; Aratus in Acts 17:28). What is more, in the same letter Jerome reviewed the major representa- tives of (Greek and Latin) Christian culture from the first centuries of the Church, including his own contemporaries, to emphasize the universal and explicit use of ancient philosophy and rhetoric on the part of the Fathers and doctors of Christianity. Cyprian and Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Gregory Nazianzen – as Jerome says – fill their books so full with the teachings and judgments of the philosophers that you would not know what is more amazing, their secular erudition or their knowledge of the Scriptures.105 There was an uninterrupted tradition of using Greek and Latin culture for Christian apologetics and theology, constantly pursued even by those closest in time to Jerome’s cultural context. Thus, with a view to their liter- ary style, Jerome characterizes Lactantius as “Ciceronian” and Hilary of Poitiers as “Quintilianesque.” To those who took a stand against pagan culture, Jerome was therefore able to respond in defense of his own works: What is so amazing if I, too, desire to turn secular wisdom, on account of the charm of its eloquence and the beauty of its aspect, from a slave and pris- oner into an Israelite?106 Here Jerome makes metaphorical use of the precept found in Deuteronomy (21:10–14) regarding the “beautiful prisoner,” the woman captured in war and made a bride, but only after having been stripped of her “foreign orna- ments” and returned, “liberating her,” to Israelite beauty. Jerome’s inter- pretation of this scriptural passage would become a classic of Latin ecclesiastical literature, a slogan in defense of the re-appropriation of Greco-Hellenistic wisdom on the part of a Christianity that reigns victori- ous over the pagan world. In practice, however, this re-appropriation would take many various forms, assuming modalities often opposed to one another and covering the most variegated positions. Even a thinker like Peter Damian would believe that he respected the validity of Jerome’s criterion for cultural mediation within Christianity. In any case, the Letter to Magnus and other parallel texts of Jerome (like his Letter to Pammachius,
105 Jerome, Epistola ad Magnum oratorem, 667–668: “in tantum philosophorum doctri- nis atque sententiis suos resarciunt libros, ut nescias quid in illis primum admirari debeas, eruditionem saeculi an scientiam Scripturarum.” 106 Ibid., 666: “quid ergo mirum, si et ego sapientiam saecularem propter eloquii venus- tatem et membrorum pulchritudinem, de ancilla atque captiva Israelitidem facere cupio?”
200034 200034 216 salvatore i. camporeale where once again the adoption of “secular wisdom” in the sphere of “divine wisdom” is considered a liberation of the “prisoner woman,” such that “from a Moabite she will be made an Israelite”107), would be con- stantly utilized to defend the compatibility between philosophy and theology.
3.1.5. Thomas’s Reference to Book II, Chapter 40 of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana in the sed contra and the Corpus of Article 3 of the Commentary on Boethius Comparing Jerome and Augustine on the problem of the epistemological mediation between philosophy and theology was de rigueur, especially considering the diversity of their respective approaches. Hence Aquinas’s reference, in the sed contra and in the corpus of Article 3, to Augustine’s De Trinitate (On the Trinity) and De doctrina christiana. De Trinitate was a unique and emblematic model for the mediation between “divine” and “secular wisdom.” It treated the theme fully in order to provide a founda- tion for a Trinitarian theology that would remain – and this is how it was always seen in the Latin tradition – a highly original and significant work of theoretical inquiry in the Christian West. But let us pass over Aquinas’s reference to Augustine’s De Trinitate, as it is of only marginal importance for our purposes. Thomas’s other reference to Augustine, also found in the sed contra but much more specific and precise, is to De doctrina christiana. In Sadous’s terms, this was the classic “disquisition on rhetoric for Christians.” For Marrou, it was situated in a precise place in a time of cul- tural decline, namely at the twilight of the ancient world.108 De doctrina christiana was an obvious reference for Thomas. He well knew that, throughout history, Augustine’s “discourse on method” had always been considered the theoretical foundation for theological inquiry and the exegetical analysis of Scripture; it outlined the principles for study within the sphere of Christian thought. The context from which Aquinas drew his citation of De doctrina christiana, namely from chapter 40
107 [Jerome, Epistola ad Pammachium (ep. 66), 644 “Sin autem adamaveris captivam mulierem, id est, sapientiam saecularem, et ejus pulchritudine captus fueris, decalva eam, et illecebras crinium atque ornamenta verborum cum emortuis unguibus seca. Lava eam Prophetali nitro, et tunc requiescens cum illa, dicito: ‘Sinistra ejus sub capite meo, et dex- tra illius amplexabitur me’ [Cant. 2:6], et multo tibi foetus captiva dabit, ac de Moabitide efficietur Israelitis.”] 108 [Alfred L. de Sadous, Sancti Augustini de doctrina Christiana libri exponuntur, seu de rhetorica apud Christianos disquisitio (Paris: apud Joubert Bibliopolam, 1847); Marrou, Saint Augustin et la fin de la culture antique.]
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of book II, gives prominence and specific meaning to the Augustinian passage adduced in the sed contra. For it is precisely in book II that Augustine systematically treats of signs (signa), i.e. the linguistic and argu- mentative instruments, the various forms of knowledge and of inquiry that made up the classical culture institutionalized in the curriculum of the liberal arts (artes liberales). Augustine’s treatment is both semiological and methodological. Its aim is to identify the possible uses of antiquity’s cognitive instruments with a view to the Christian faith and its contents – the res, the divine truths about which Augustine had spoken at length in the first book of De doctrina. This is the context in which Augustine, in the final pages of book II (chs. 40–42), considers the relationship between philosophy and theology. There he identifies the reasons and adduces the justifications for allowing even the most eminent branch of ancient knowledge to undergo a conversion (conversio) for Christian use. Augustine writes: If anything true or suitable to our faith has ever been said by those called philosophers, especially the Platonists, not only should it not be feared, but it ought to be claimed for our own use from them as if from unlawful possessors.109 This is the passage cited by Aquinas in the sed contra, but with a variant and an omission that show his own peculiar take on it. Thomas leaves out the phrase “especially the Platonists” and changes “ought to be claimed” (vindicanda) to “ought to be taken up” (assumenda). As for the missing “Platonists,” might Aquinas have had an interest (in the context of the sed contra, and above all in the corpus of his solution to the problem at hand) in enlarging and extending Augustine’s statement to all of pre-Christian philosophy, and perhaps even in insisting (“especially”) on the peripatetic strain (“Aristotelians”), thus diverging from Augustine’s view on Greco- Hellenistic culture? Regarding the expression “ought to be claimed” (vindicanda), it is immediately connected in Augustine’s text to the discourse that follows, and its meaning is illustrated allegorically with a scriptural reference to Exodus 3:22, 11:2, and 12:35. In contrast, Thomas’s substitution of assumenda for vindicanda removes the statement from its immediate context and
109 Augustine, De doctrina christiana, II.40.1–4: “Philosophi autem qui vocantur si qua forte vera et fidei nostrae accommodata dixerunt, maxime Platonici, non solum formi- danda non sunt, sed ab eis etiam tamquam ab iniustis possessoribus in usum nostrum vindicanda.”
200034 200034 218 salvatore i. camporeale obscures Augustine’s specific solution for reducing Greek and pagan phil- osophical knowledge to Christian preaching. Augustine’s text continues: For just as the Egyptians had not only idols … but also vases and ornaments of gold and silver and clothing which that people [sc. the Israelites], when leaving Egypt, secretly claimed as its own so as to put them to better use …, thus the combined teachings of the pagans not only include false and super- stitious images and heavy burdens of superfluous toil, which each of us, departing the community of pagans with Christ as our guide, ought to despise and avoid; but they also contain liberal disciplines that are quite suited to the service of the truth as well as certain very useful moral teach- ings …. What is perversely and unjustly abused in obedience to demons, a Christian ought to carry away and apply to the just employment of preach- ing the Gospel.110 In the same ecclesial tradition as Jerome in his Letter to Magnus, Augustine also validates the historical possibility of harnessing philosophy to evan- gelical preaching and thus to theological knowledge. As doctrinal models he adduces the greatest figures of Christian literature and evangelical pas- toral practice, making reference to the early Church Fathers both Greek (“innumerable Greeks”) and Latin (Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, and oth- ers). But what is distinctive in Augustine’s proposition – the “claim,” or redemption (in the strong sense of the term in Roman law), of aspects of culture, such as ethical and social forms as well as civil institutions, for use within Christianity – was derived from a doctrinal premise that had origi- nally been elaborated by the Judeo-Alexandrian school and was widely diffused in the West (as restated, for example, by Ambrose). It consisted in the belief that pagan philosophy, and in particular Greek philosophy (especially Platonism), was derived from the most ancient Old Testament Scriptures and subsequently misappropriated for a use contrary to Judeo- Christian revelation. Thus it is both legitimate and necessary – Augustine argues in book II, chapters 41–42 of De doctrina christiana – to claim for Christianity that which had belonged to it by ancient right: to redeem what had been carried away into slavery in “foreign” lands, to lead
110 Ibid., II.40.4–23: “Sicut enim Aegyptii non tantum idola habebant … sed etiam vasa atque ornamenta de auro et argento et vestem, quae ille populus exiens de Aegypto sibi potius tamquam ad usum meliorem clanculo vindicavit …, sic doctrinae omnes gentilium non solum simulata et superstitiosa figmenta gravesque sarcinas supervacanei laboris habent, quae unusquisque nostrum duce Christo de societate gentilium exiens debet abominari atque vitare, sed etiam liberales disciplinas usui veritatis aptiores et quaedam morum praecepta utilissima continent … et, quo perverse atque iniuriose ad obsequia dae- monum abutuntur …, debet ab eis auferre christianus ad usum iustum praedicandi Evangelii.”
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doctrines and institutions that had been deformed and abused back to their country of origin, purifying them and restoring them “to freedom.” All this follows the example of Christ, who had redeemed man and the world from the rule of evil and had restored the spirit and the cosmos to the freedom of the Gospel.111
111 On the traditional double reference to Jerome and Augustine and related texts, cf.: Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), 39–42, 72–74, 446–450; R.R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 45–58; Henri de Lubac, Exégèse Médiévale. Les quatre sens de l’Ecriture, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1959), 1:290–304. In the appa- ratus to the text of the Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, Decker did not note the missing “especially the Platonists” (maxime Platonici) in the text of Augustine cited by Thomas in “Sed contra … 5. Praeterea” (p. 93.15). For a critical text of De doctrina christiana, see the edition of Josef Martin in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962) (p. 73: bk. II, ch. 40 = PL 34: 63). Augustine’s “especially the Platonists” is not missing from Aquinas’s quotation of the same passage in his Contra impugnantes Dei cul- tum et religionem (1255/56): Thomas Aquinas, Opera omnia, Leonine ed., vol. 41 (Roma: St. Thomas Aquinas Foundation, 1970), ch. 11.135–140, p. A133; on the opuscule’s origin and polemical aims, see H.-F. Dondaine’s introduction in ibid., pp. A5–13. But it is necessary to say more on this topic. Ch. 11 (“de hoc quod religiosi studio vacant”) and the successive ch. 12 (“de hoc quod religiosi verbum Dei ornate et gratiose proponunt”) of Contra impugn- antes (pp. A131–34, A134–37) constitute an extremely pregnant correlative passage to Article 3, Question II of the Commentary on Boethius. These two chapters of Contra impug- nantes prove to be, in the very structure of their argumentative procedure – to say nothing of their contents – the literary precedent (regardless of the precise order of composition) of Article 3, Question II of the Commentary on Boethius. If in the Commentary Augustine and Jerome are introduced as authorities to determine the theoretical foundations of the- ology, in Contra impugnantes the same patristic citations (including the quotation of whole passages, used more fully than in the Commentary) are adduced to provide a foun- dation and defense, in opposition to the anti-mendicant criticisms of the Paris university world, of the very practice of theological study and teaching and of the kerygmatic praedi- catio. Hence Aquinas’s insistence in affirming “that it is suitable for doctors of sacred Scripture to use secular eloquence and wisdom” (ch. 12.144–46, p. A136: “quod doctoribus sacrae Scripturae convenit eloquentia et sapientia saeculari uti”). He further insists, reveal- ing its full historical meaning, on both the compossibility and the necessity of synthesizing the “study of secular literature” (“studium litterarum saecularium”) with “the study of sacred literature” (“studium litterarum sacrarum”); he subscribes to the dictates of Jerome’s Letter to Pammachius and recommends continually “making time” (“vacatio”) for the study of classical and Judeo-Christian texts (ch. 11.119ff., p. A133). Nevertheless, from the overall context it seems clear not only that “secular wisdom and eloquence” are understood as providing immediate and direct service to theology (“sacra doctrina”), but also, and more importantly – we highlight this in relation to our subject – that the following points of theological methodology are put forward. The first consists in the fact that the primacy of “wisdom” (as the handmaiden to theological science) over “eloquence,” that is of phi- losophy over rhetoric, remains absolute and clear. The second is that “eloquence” is con- ceived and viewed along the lines (and within the limits) of ornamentation (ornatus) (“for the ornamentation of words, after the manner of the rhetoricians,” ch. 12.204f., p. A136: “ad ornatum verborum ut rhetores faciunt”). Now, both the first and the second points, or bet- ter both together, characterize and describe what Seigel has called the “Ciceronian model”; indeed, they are the constants of the rhetorical tradition of “Ciceronianism.” See Jerrold
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E. Seigel, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Renaissance Humanism. The Union of Eloquence and Wisdom, Petrarch to Valla (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 3–30; and Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 76–87. It has not been possible to con- sult Edward Kennard Rand, Cicero in the Courtroom of St. Thomas (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1946). This means that also from the perspective of the use of secular literature (litterae saeculares) within the realm of the study and the teaching of theology (academic and pastoral), a profound difference distinguishes Valla from Thomas: rheto- ric, as it is employed by Valla in the service of theological science, is placed outside of “Ciceronianism” and, differently from Thomas’s conception, is essentially inscribed in the “Quintilianesque model.” But this topic will be fully treated in the fourth part of the present essay. Here it is important to cite a passage from ch. 12 of Contra impugnantes, significant for its theoretical denseness and synthesis, which must be kept in mind during the discussion of Valla’s Quintilianesque rhetoric and theological investigations. Thomas’s text reads: “It should be known … that the use of secular wisdom and eloquence in theology is in a certain way to be approved, in another to be blamed. It is to be blamed when someone uses them for boastful ostentation or when he is chiefly interested in secular wisdom and eloquence: for then he thinks it necessary either to be silent about or to reject what is not approved by secular knowledge, such as articles of faith that are above human reason. And likewise whoever is chiefly interested in eloquence has as his object to lead his listeners to admiration not of the subject of his speech, but of the speaker himself; this is the way that worldly wisdom and eloquence were used by the pseudo-apostles, against whom the Apostle spoke in his letter to the Corinthians …. It is, however, to be approved when someone uses secular wisdom and eloquence not for the display of his own vanity but for the utility of his audience, who are thus at any moment more easily and more effectively taught or, if adversaries, convinced; and likewise when someone does not treat them chiefly as ends but uses them as means in the service of sacred doctrine, which is his chief interest, just as he takes up all other things in its service …; it was thus that the apostles, too, used eloquence. Hence Augustine in bk. IV [ch. 7] of De doctrina christiana says that in the words of the Apostle wisdom was the guide with eloquence following as its fellow, and wisdom in the lead did not cast off eloquence fol- lowing behind. But nevertheless later doctors have since made greater use of secular wis- dom and eloquence, and this is the reason why earlier it was not philosophers and rhetoricians who were chosen to preach but common folk and fishermen, who then con- verted the philosophers and orators: the reason is so that our faith would not consist in human wisdom but in the power of God” (ibid., ch. 12.147–87, p. A136: “Sciendum … est quod uti sapientia et eloquentia saeculari in sacra doctrina quodammodo commendatur et quodammodo reprehenditur. Reprehenditur quidem quando aliquis ad iactantiam eis utitur et quando eloquentiae et sapientiae saeculari principaliter studet: tunc enim opor- tet quod illa vel taceat vel neget quae saecularis scientia non approbat, sicut articulos fidei qui sunt supra rationem humanam. Et similiter qui eloquentiae principaliter studet, homines non intendit ducere in admirationem eorum quae dicit sed dicentis; et hoc modo mundana sapientia et eloquentia pseudoapostoli utebantur contra quos Apostolus loquitur in epistola ad Corinthios …. Commendatur autem quando non ad se ostentan- dum sed ad utilitatem audientium, qui sic quandoque facilius et efficacius instruuntur vel convincuntur adversarii, utitur aliquis sapientia et eloquentia saeculari; et iterum quando aliquis non principaliter eis intendit sed eis utitur in obsequium sacrae doctrinae cui principaliter inhaeret, ut sic omnia alia in obsequium eius assumat … et ita etiam apostoli eloquentia utebantur. Unde Augustinus in IV De doctrina christiana dicit quod in verbis Apostli erat dux sapientia et sequens comes eloquentia, et sapientia praecedens eloquentiam sequentem non respuebat. Sed tamen posteriores doctores adhuc magis usi sunt sapientia et eloquentia saeculari propter eandem rationem qua non prius philoso- phi et rhetores sunt electi ad praedicandum, sed plebei et piscatores qui postmodum philosophos et oratores converterunt: ut scilicet fides nostra non consistat in sapientia hominum sed in virtute Dei”).
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3.1.6. The Propositions of Jerome and Augustine: “Appropriation” of Ancient Rhetoric (Jerome), “Re-Appropriation” of Greek Philosophy (Augustine), and the Corpus of Article 3 in Thomas’s Commentary on Boethius Both Jerome’s and Augustine’s propositions – which lay out the guiding parameters for overcoming the antinomy between classical culture and theological knowledge – began from the possibility of reducing philoso- phy in some way to an epistemological instrument of the “science of divine things.” Nevertheless, the two propositions ultimately took differ- ent directions that, in typical patristic fashion, were expressed through the (allegorical) reference to different scriptural passages. Jerome cited the prescriptions of Deuteronomy 21:10–14; Augustine referred to the events of Exodus 3:22, 11:2, and 12:35. Hence their divergent solutions to the antinomy between Greco-Hellenistic culture and Christian theologi- cal knowledge – a divergence that not only affected the modalities and issues immediately at hand but also had far-reaching consequences and implications. Jerome was concerned with converting the cultural instru- ments of the classical world to the service of the Word of God and the Sacred Scriptures, i.e. with appropriating the philological techniques and categorical schemes of ancient rhetoric. These were to be employed as instruments of Christian knowledge – of that alternative culture that was emerging from the community of believers in the Gospel. For Augustine (especially as seen in the later development of his theological speculation and in the influence of Augustinianism on the tradition of the Latin Church), at issue was instead a reconversion of Greek philosophy (espe- cially Platonism), and thus a re-appropriation of classical metaphysical speculation. To his mind, it could and should provide theology with theo- retical parameters for investigating Christian revelation and understand- ing the relationship between the City of God and that of men. At this point we might preview in passing what we shall see in our upcoming analysis: on the one hand, Valla takes up Quintilian’s rhetoric, along Jerome’s lines of appropriation, in the service of a humanist theology; on the other, Thomas Aquinas seeks ontological foundations for reducing Greek phi- losophy to theological knowledge, and, in line with Augustine’s directive of re-appropriation, he makes the natural truths of the pre-Christian world flow into the science of faith (scientia fidei). Before turning to Valla’s texts, however, let us first examine the solution proposed by Thomas (to the question “whether in the science of faith … it is permissible to use the arguments of the philosophers”) in the corpus of Article 3. Here is the central passage:
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Now, as sacred doctrine is founded upon the light of faith, so philosophy depends upon the light of natural reason; wherefore it is impossible that philosophical truths are contrary to those that are of faith; but they are defi- cient as compared to them. Nevertheless they incorporate some similitudes of those higher truths, and some things that are preparatory for them, just as nature is the preamble to grace. If, however, anything is found in the teach- ings of the philosophers contrary to faith, this error does not properly belong to philosophy, but is due to an abuse of philosophy owing to the insuffi- ciency of reason. Therefore also it is possible from the principles of philoso- phy to refute an error of this kind, either by showing it to be altogether impossible, or not to be necessary. For just as those things which are of faith cannot be demonstratively proved, so certain things contrary to them can- not be demonstratively shown to be false, but they can be shown not to be necessary. Thus, in sacred doctrine we are able to make a threefold use of philosophy ….112 Aquinas continues with the various concrete ways in which philosophy, in different contexts and on different levels, aids in the science of faith. First, it provides “preambles of faith” (concerning God and his creatures). Second, there are analogical relationships that connect philosophical to theological knowledge, the role of which is to give a clearer notion, by certain similitudes, of the truths of faith, as Augustine in his book, De Trinitate, employed many comparisons taken from the teachings of the philosophers to aid understanding of the Trinity. Finally, philosophical doctrines, or better their apologetic force, can be used to resist those things that are said against the faith, either by showing that such statements are false, or by showing that they are not necessarily true.113
112 Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, quae. 2, art. 3: “Sicut autem sacra doctrina fundatur supra lumen fidei, ita philosophia fundatur supra lumen naturale ratio- nis; unde impossibile est quod ea, quae sunt philosophiae, sint contraria his quae sunt fidei, sed deficiunt ab eis. Continent autem aliquas eorum similitudines et quaedam ad ea praeambula, sicut natura praeambula est ad gratiam. Si quid autem in dictis philosopho- rum invenitur contrarium fidei, hoc non est philosophia, sed magis philosophiae abusus ex defectu rationis. Et ideo possibile est ex principiis philosophiae huiusmodi errorem refell- ere vel ostendendo omnino esse impossibile vel ostendendo non esse necessarium. Sicut enim ea quae sunt fidei non possunt demonstrative probari, ita quaedam contraria eis non possunt demonstrative ostendi esse falsa, sed potest ostendi ea non esse necessaria. Sic ergo in sacra doctrina philosophia possumus tripliciter uti …” (tr. Brennan). 113 Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: “preambula fidei … ad notificandum per aliquas similitudines quae sunt fidei, sicut Augustinus in libro de Trinitate utitur multis similitudinibus ex
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Augustine’s position on the possibility of reconverting philosophy to theological knowledge, of re-appropriating philosophy within the sci- ence of faith, appears distinctly in Aquinas’s text. Thus Thomas reaf- firms the possibility of reversing the negative aspects, or “abuses,” that constituted the limits within which philosophy had been confined by pre-Christian culture, just as the Hebrew people culturally “plundered” the religion of the Egyptians, who had made an abuse of precious vases and sacred ornaments and attire for idolatrous rites in honor of a false divinity. Moreover, towards the end of the corpus Aquinas affirms, retrac- ing the argument of De doctrina christiana (book II, chs. 41 and 42), that Augustine’s proposition remains valid despite the fact that a renewed abuse of philosophy could always crop up within theological study and scriptural exegesis. Aquinas even notes that this eventuality had already come to pass and could come about again in several apparently contrast- ing but actually identical ways – for all would amount to an undue exalta- tion of philosophy over faith and Christian knowledge. Thomas points to Origen as an historical example of such an exaltation of classical philosophical culture: “by using doctrines contrary to faith, which are not truths of philosophy, but rather error, or abuse of philosophy, as Origen did.”114 The other possible abuse of philosophy is more complex in its conse- quences and takes two fundamentally contrary forms. It consists either in rationalistically reducing faith to culture, or in positing relationships or parallels between the two that make them seem indistinct from one another. Either way, the union of faith and culture is pushed in a highly attractive and suggestive direction, tending on the one hand towards rationalism, on the other towards syncretism. In the first case, the result is that “the truths of faith are subject to the yardstick of philosophy, as if one should be willing to believe nothing except what could be held by philosophic reasoning” (as is said in the final lines of the corpus).115 In the second case, however – which is the exact opposite of the preceding error – culture is used as a “primary” (quasi principalis) rather than an
doctrinis philosophicis sumptis ad manifestandam Trinitatem … ad resistendum his quae contra fidem dicuntur, sive ostendendo ea esse falsa sive ostendendo ea non esse neces- saria” (tr. Brennan). 114 Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: “utendo his quae sunt contra fidem, quae non sunt philosophiae sed corruptio vel abusus eius, sicut Origines fecit” (tr. Brennan, emphasis added). 115 Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: “ea quae sunt fidei includantur sub metis philosophiae, ut scili- cet si aliquis credere nolit nisi quod per philosophiam haberi potest” (tr. Brennan, modified).
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“ancillary” (quasi secundaria) tool in the contextual support and defense of faith, “as if the truth of faith were believed on account of [philosophical doctrine]” (as is said in the ad primum).116 That Aquinas’s argumentation moves along the lines of Augustine’s proposition becomes even more explicit from the series of rebuttals to the objections. For Thomas those objections are without real basis, since the secular wisdom of which Paul speaks can in itself (“insofar as it is true”) be neither the source of theological or dogmatic error nor the origin of heresy (ad secundum). This is especially the case insofar as philosophy is placed in “subordination” to theological knowledge (ad septimum) and philo- sophical proofs (documenta philosophica) are ordained (“on account of the reasonableness of the doctrine”) for use as instruments of scriptural analysis “in the service of faith” (ad quintum and ad octavum). Classical culture, therefore, despite its manipulation by heretical movements, is not something that must be considered as “having to be avoided” (vitandum); indeed, only the abuse of philosophical doctrines “leads to error” (ad sex- tum).117 Aquinas must also rebut the objection that the development of theological thought had in some way betrayed the primitive “artlessness” (simplicitas) and original “fragility” (infirmitas) of apostolic preaching, which rested entirely on the intrinsic potentiality of faith and on the wis- dom of the Gospel. With a significant emphasis on the historical develop- ment of Christianity, he argues that, since the hegemony of the Christian faith had by now been established in the world, it was also necessary to re-subject power and worldly wisdom to the God of revelation (ad primum).118
116 Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: “ut scilicet propter eam [sc. doctrinam philosophorum] veritas fidei credatur.” 117 Ibid., quae. 2, art. 3: “quantum ad eius veritatem” (ad secundum), “propter rationem dictorum” (ad octavum), “in obsequium fidei” (ad quintum), “solum in errorem ducit” (ad sextum) (tr. Brennan, modified). 118 The fundamental study, also because it uses the earlier work of Mandonnet, Congar, Chenu and others, is Martin Grabmann’s ample analytical and historical work, Die theolo- gische Erkenntnis- und Einleitungslehre des hl. Thomas von Aquin, auf Grund seiner Schrift In Boethium de Trinitate, in Zusammenhang der Scholastik des 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhunderts dargestellt (Freiburg, Switzerland: Paulus, 1948). In particular see ch. 1 (pp. 1–32) and ch. 4 (pp. 101–186), for the contemporary cultural context and the analysis of Question II, Article 3. Important are the references to the doctrinal theses against which Aquinas argues, and the study of the developments given rise to by the “discourse on theo- logical method” elaborated by Thomas in his Expositio. A direct reading of Chenu, La Théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle, is still useful.
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3.1.7. Thomas’s Solution to the Antinomy between Philosophy and Theology and His Transcendence of Jerome’s “Capture” and Augustine’s “Claim” The preceding observations on the above-cited passage of the corpus of Article 3 and on the related rebuttals to the objections (pro and contra, which preface the article) must now be delimited and in some way tran- scended. The goal is to arrive at Thomas’s specific solution regarding the relationship between philosophy and theology, to identify the determin- ing and defining element that constitutes his original contribution to the question “whether in the science of faith it is permissible to use the argu- ments of the philosophers.” From what has been said so far, it would be reductive and misleading to conclude that Thomas remained tied to what has been called, by way of simplification, the Augustinian line. It is there- fore necessary to return to the passage cited from the corpus, as it contains the essential core of the whole article’s argumentation and of Thomas’s response to the antinomy between philosophy and theology – the central problem of this section of the Commentary on Boethius. It has been shown how Aquinas’s argumentation on this point is located within the patristic context of Augustine’s “claim” or “redemption” (vindi- catio, in De doctrina christiana), on the one hand, and Jerome’s “capture” (reductio in captivitatem, in his letters), on the other. In other words, both notions – the “claiming” of an idolatrous ritual patrimony, to be put to the (culturally alternative) service of the God of Israel, as well as the “capture” of the “beautiful Moabite” – are used by Thomas as patristic citations and normative premises for his solution to the antinomy between secular and divine wisdom. But the emphasis placed on Augustine’s proposition leads Thomas to take a further step, one that only seems to continue the same line of thought. Actually, there is a qualitative difference in both the for- mulation and the foundation of his solution to the problem. Both Augustine’s proposition and, even more explicitly and pointedly, Jerome’s remained within a sphere that could be characterized as juridical (“claim”) and historical (“capture”). Thomas transcends Augustine and Jerome pre- cisely by crossing that juridical and historical horizon, by founding his solution to the whole problematic on an ontological plain and by sketch- ing out, on that basis, a new principle for theological study. The central point of Thomas’s argument, which constitutes the criterial basis for transcending the antinomy in question, is formulated thus: “nature is the preamble to grace” (natura preambula est ad gratiam). This guideline, although compressed into an abbreviated formula, is the Thomist principle of theology as the science of faith. The immediate
200034 200034 226 salvatore i. camporeale application of this principle determines the criteria and parameters for theological study in its essential dimensions and in its constitutive aspects, from the level of gnoseology to that of epistemology and, above all, methodology. The specific gnoseological place of philosophy vis-à-vis theology is illustrated in the following analogical (but not univocal) relationship: phi- losophy is to the light of reason as theology is to the light of faith (philoso- phia : lumen rationis :: sacra doctrina : lumen fidei). This gnoseological analogy is undergirded by the ontological relationship between nature and grace (natura : gratia), as a relationship of the objective possibility (in Thomist terms, of potentia oboedientialis, or obediential potency) of nature acting as an infinite gateway to saving grace. This is the true mean- ing of the statement, “nature is the preamble to grace.” But this entails, as an immediate consequence, the possibility of episte- mological transfer between the two poles of nature and grace. In fact, the ontological relationship between them implies that they are linked to one another by certain likenesses, denoted by Thomas as quaedam similitudi- nes. This formulation is indicative of the contrary pair of similarity and dissimilarity (between nature and grace) that underlies Aquinas’s whole theological discourse, especially – and almost systematically – as it appears in the Summa theologiae. The phrase quaedam similitudines expresses both the multiple similarities between the two poles of nature and grace (through the variable of similitudo) and the permanent, infinite difference between them (through the constant of the qualifier quoddam or quodammodo – “certain” – which recurs so often throughout the Summa). In this sense, Thomas’s theological argumentation arrives at logical structures and consequential nexuses first and foremost on the basis of the principle of analogy: secundum quid idem, simpliciter diversum (“the same in some respects, different in itself”). Ultimately this kind of argu- mentative procedure becomes a defining characteristic, in the intensity and extent of its use, of Thomas’s writing. By constantly adhering to the principle of analogy, Aquinas succeeds in supplying his theological dis- course with the aid of classical philosophy while at the same time avoid- ing the two abuses of philosophy: subjecting the truths of faith “to the yardstick of philosophy,” on the one hand, and forcing philosophical argu- mentation into the space reserved for theology, on the other. Let us digress a moment and make use of concepts and terms from the language and operations of mathematical analysis to help us better configure the dimensions and perspectives of Aquinas’s solution to the
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epistemological problem of the relationship between philosophy and theology. Let nature and grace be thought of as two functions, expres- sions corresponding to two geometric curves. We could then think of secundum quid idem as the “limit” of convergence, and simpliciter diver- sum as the divergence “to infinity.” We could then compare the theological study of the analogical relationship between nature and grace to the mathematical analysis of the “limit” by means of approximation to an “infinitesimal.” Analogy is thus the foundation on which the whole epistemological principle of the science of faith rests. Nevertheless, on account of the dif- ferent gnoseological statuses accorded to philosophy and theology as well as of the specific epistemological connection between the two “sciences,” Aquinas is ultimately induced to establish – in order to better define his own response to the question at hand – the methodological lines (both divergent and approximately convergent) of the argumentative proce- dures proper to philosophy and to theology. Philosophical argumentation should by its nature exclude error. Still, it can easily result in error on account of what Aquinas calls “abuse” and identifies, from the point of view of deductive logic, as “an insufficiency of reason” (ex defectu rationis). Nonetheless – and this is said explicitly in the text of the corpus – once philosophical error is discovered to be such from the point of view of faith and thus in the theological dimension, it can be corrected and overcome by a further application of philosophical argu- mentation. By means of a more penetrating analysis, but still remaining within the realm of rational investigation, philosophical argumentation can reach the following conclusions about a philosophical proposition that is contrary to the truths of faith: either its non-truth or, at the least, its non-necessity (since contrary to what is known through revelation). The corpus reads:
Therefore also it is possible from the principles of philosophy to refute an error of this kind [i.e., one that is contrary to faith], either by showing it to be altogether impossible, or not to be necessary.
Theology, on the other hand, lacks demonstrative argumentation with regard to its own specific object (the truth of revelation). Nor, as a result of its epistemological status, does it even possess the logico-deductive tools for demonstrating the non-truth of philosophical error contrary to the truth of faith. It can only indicate or identify, by means of indirect argu- ment, the non-necessity of such a philosophical proposition. To return once again to Thomas’s text:
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For just as those things which are of faith cannot be demonstratively proved, so certain things contrary to them cannot be demonstratively shown to be false, but they can be shown not to be necessary. (emphasis added) Thus the distinctions already underlined on the gnoseological and episte- mological level are repeated on the methodological level as well. From a logico-argumentative point of view, the two “sciences” diverge without a continuous solution, and thus neither interference nor immediate trans- fer between them is possible. Such an argumentative procedure – as has already been seen with Aquinas’s responses to the objections prefacing the article in question – would lead either to a type of philosophical ratio- nalism (the reduction of theology to philosophy) or to its contrary (the reduction of philosophy to theology): a theological syncretism that, only when used ideologically, can succeed in establishing immediate implica- tions and univocally apodictic (“demonstrative”) connections between qualitatively different levels. But beyond these procedures of reduction, which in one direction favor theology and in the other philosophy – a most disagreeable “mixture of water and wine” (ad quintum) – Aquinas sees a deeper, intrinsic relationship between classical philosophy and Christian theology: a “subordinate” relationship (in subordinatione), in which the principle of analogy directs the use of philosophical categories within the language that is specific and proper to faith. The ontological foundation for such a logical and cognitive transfer – and not only on the theoretical level, as Augustine noted in De doctrina christiana – is expressed in the formula “nature is the preamble to grace.” Thomas thus takes up and expands Augustine’s proposition for resolving the antinomy between Christian faith and classical culture, but at the same time he moves it onto a theoretical plain informed by ontological and theological principles.119
3.1.8. Thomas’s Commentary and the Controversy over Philosophy in the Parisian Faculty in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century Aquinas’s reformulation of Augustine’s proposition in his extremely lucid Commentary on Boethius (1255/59) actually constituted a position diamet- rically opposed to the conservative views of his contemporaries, which prevailed not only in the Parisian theology faculty but also within the
119 On Aquinas’s responses to the obiectiones, which represent various contemporary and traditional doctrinal positions, cf. Grabmann, Die theologische, esp. 179–186. It must be added, though, that we interpret Thomas’s text differently from Grabmann.
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Dominican Order itself in the first decades of the thirteenth century. Opposition to and condemnation of Aristotle had ultimately – and inevi- tably – resulted in the radicalization of the dichotomy between philoso- phy and theology, especially in light of the introduction of a conspicuous part of the Aristotelian corpus (above all the Physics) into various cultural centers. This went well beyond a simple defensive stance proclaiming the impossibility of the co-existence of the “kingdom of the spirit of Christ” (regnum spiritus Christi) with the “lordship of the spirit of Aristotle” (domi- nium spiritus Aristotelis). It had by then been forcefully asserted and argued, on the basis of epistemological and methodological principles, that the “materialism” of Aristotle’s Physics and De anima were in conflict with the dictates of faith, that philosophical culture and the special ana- lytical tools of Aristotelianism were incompatible with – indeed, could not co-exist with – theological study and the scriptural investigation of the Divine Word. What is more, strict ideological warnings had been issued regarding the dangers of the secularization of the sacred study of theology. Was it not perhaps in these terms that the Dominican Jean de Saint-Gilles expressed himself, when in 1230 he reprimanded those who claimed to apply themselves to theology with all the baggage of their Aristotelianism and of other disciplines unrelated to theological knowl- edge? Jean, then the titulary of the Dominican Order’s chair of theology in Paris, chastised this error openly, even, and perhaps especially, to those who ought to have been aware of the special nature of the science of theology: There are some people who have learned the spiritual language, i.e., theol- ogy, well but nevertheless introduce barbarisms into it, corrupting it with philosophy. For whoever has learned metaphysics always wants to proceed metaphysically in sacred Scripture, just as whoever has learned geometry always speaks of points and lines in theology. Such men dress the king in dirty and tattered robes; likewise they sprinkle dust into light, thus giving birth to stinging insects.120 Odo of Châteauroux, chancellor of the church of Paris, speaks in the same terms:
120 Mandonnet, Siger de Brabant et l’Averroisme latin au XIIIme siècle, 1:33, n.1: “Sunt aliqui qui bene linguam spiritualem didicerunt, id est theologiam, sed tamen in ea barba- rizant, eam per philosophiam corrumpentes; qui enim metaphysicam didicit semper vult in sacra Scriptura metaphysice procedere: similiter qui geometriam didicit semper loqui- tur de punctis et lineis in theologia. Tales induunt regem vestibus sordidis et laceratis; item spargunt pulverem in lucem et inde nascuntur cyniphes.”
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It is reprehensible for the theological faculty, which is and is called the city of the sun of truth and understanding, to strive to speak in the language of the philosophers. That is, those who study and teach in the theological fac- ulty try to furnish it with authority from the sayings of the philosophers, as if such had not been handed down by the highest wisdom, which is the font of all other wisdom …. Many almost despise the words of theology and of the saints but think those of philosophy and of the pagans to be the best, and they sell themselves to the sons of the Greeks, that is to the philosophers.121 The passages by these two figures (who were mentioned before the exami- nation of Thomas’s text) have been reproduced here almost in their entirety, as they are exemplary and indicative of the polemic against phi- losophy that was waged by Parisian theologians in the first half of the thir- teenth century. Above all they are emblematic of the context in which Aquinas outspokenly proffered his response to such sentiments. For Thomas, philosophy is the indispensable instrument (organon) for creat- ing a new theoretical foundation for theology. And philosophy, precisely as secular wisdom – and despite the (Pauline) antinomy between it, on the one hand, and the “folly” of the Cross and divine wisdom, on the other – remained the noblest and historically the most fully developed cultural fruit, the most scientifically structured episteme, the most perfect model of rationality that Christendom could derive or receive from Greek and Hellenistic antiquity. Furthermore, this philosophy came to be identified precisely with Aristotelianism, which was taken up and reassessed in Thomas’s time as the synthesis of Greek culture and the richest source of analytical tools for the study of the material world. Nature (natura), hav- ing been rediscovered, was now studied and understood by way of the Aristotelian concept of physis.122
3.1.9. The Prologue to De libero arbitrio and Valla’s Renewal of the Anti- Philosophical Tradition The passages cited above of the two eminent Parisians, polemicizing against philosophy and for the purity of “spiritual language,” lead us, on
121 Ibid., 1:32, n. 3: “Reprehensibile est quod facultas theologiae, quae est et vocatur civitas solis veritatis et intelligentiae, nititur loqui lingua philosophorum, id est illi qui in facultate theologiae student et docent conantur ei praebere auctoritatem e dictis philos- ophorum, ac si non fuerit tradita a summa sapientia, a qua est omnis alia sapientia …. Multi, verba theologica et verba sanctorum quasi nihil habentes, verba philosophica, verba ethnicorum optima arbitrantur, et seipsos vendunt filiis Graecorum, id est philosophis.” 122 Cf. Grabmann, Die theologische, 147–149.
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the basis of literary similarities and common anti-philosophical elements, back to the opening pages of Valla’s De libero arbitrio. Valla’s discourse coincides with that of the Parisian theologians in defending the autonomy of theological “science” and excluding philosophy from the “Christian republic” (respublica christiana). For Valla, philosophy is a “pagan lan- guage” (sermo gentilis), which as a “foreign tongue” (lingua peregrina) pol- lutes “the language of Rome” (lingua vernacula Urbis). It is responsible for the corruption of the ecclesial community. It is fertile ground, a “seedbed” (seminarium), for “heresy.”123 In its immediate context, Valla’s text makes a specific reference that connects it to the whole anti-philosophical tradition and inserts it directly into the quarrel between Boethius and Peter Damian. Namely, it makes reference to the introduction of the propositional analysis of Aristotle’s On Interpretation into the theological treatment of the relationship between free will and predestination. This was a classic locus, then – on account of its philosophico-theological content and textual references (i.e., Boethius’s commentary on and use of ch. 9 of On Interpretation) – for Valla to use to introduce his basic theme: the polemic against philosophy, and the alternative proposal of rhetoric as a humanist guideline for theology. This becomes clear from an attentive reading of the argumentative development of De libero arbitrio, and especially from an analysis of the solutions proposed by the dialogue in its attempt to respond to the prob- lematic of divine predestination and human freedom. Here it suffices to point out that the reference (in the opening pages of De libero arbitrio) to “philosophical doctrines” takes on a specific meaning in the dialogue, in that Valla’s critique of philosophy is given a theological valence in order to resolve the antinomy between redemptive predestination and free will.124 In this particular case, the incompossibility between philosophy and the- ology is highlighted and made explicit in the contrast between the logical and ontological analysis of future contingents on the one hand (contained in ch. 9 of On Interpretation and developed variously by “modern” scholas- tic theologians from Boethius to Petrus Aureolus) and the scriptural dogma of redemptive predestination on the other.125
123 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 524–526. 124 Ibid., 524: “philosophicorum dogmatum.” 125 Philotheus Boehner, The Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientiae Dei et de futuris contingentibus of William Ockham (New York: Franciscan Institute, 1945). But for an overview see also E.J. Ashworth, Language and Logic in the Post-Medieval Period (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974).
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If the theoretical nucleus of De libero arbitrio consists essentially in what has been said here, then it follows that Valla’s dialogue has an origi- nal and unique place in the history of theology. It represents a turning point between the crisis of the relationship between Aristotelianism and Christian dogma (which had already emerged, with Ockham and Ockhamism, within scholastic theology itself) and the renewal, at the beginning of the sixteenth century and especially with the Reformation, of the question of the “insoluble” antinomy between freedom and predesti- nation (then taken up on exegetico-scriptural grounds). That such is the meaning and the theoretical valence of Valla’s dialogue (with regard to the relationship between humanism and theology in the fifteenth century) will have to be demonstrated at greater length and with fuller documenta- tion elsewhere; here such an analysis would amount to an undue and excessive digression. Nevertheless we would like to conclude these con- siderations by mentioning the “silence” which the humanist theologian imposes – like an inviolable boundary – on the investigator of the mystery of redemption, lest the latter feel the need to choose between divine pre- destination and human freedom. In a context full of classical and scrip- tural (Pauline) references, Valla exhorts: Let us therefore shun greedy knowledge of high things, condescending rather to those of low estate. For nothing is of greater avail for Christian men than to feel humble …. I will no longer be anxious about this question lest by investigating the majesty of God I might be blinded by His light.126 But Valla’s exhortation for a theological understanding of the “mystery of salvation” (in the language of Paul) as an unfathomable limit – was this not after all a commonplace in the scholastic tradition? And did Thomas himself not perhaps dedicate the whole of Question II of his Commentary on Boethius to the “manifestation” (manifestatio) of the “secrets of faith” (secreta fidei) precisely in the hope of establishing the limits and the potentialities of theological understanding and knowledge (from the gnoseological plane to the linguistic one) with respect to this mystery? The answer to this double question is that the problem is undoubtedly the same in Aquinas and in Valla. But this does not change the fact that their respective solutions to the problem distinctly highlight the difference
126 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 562: “Fugiamus igitur cupiditatem alta sapiendi, humilibus potius consentientes; christiani namque hominis nihil magis interest quam sentire humi- liter; … de ista quaestione, quod ad me attinet, amplius curiosus non ero, ne maiestatem Dei vestigans, obscurer a lumine” (tr. Trinkaus).
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between them. Here we see the profound cultural divide between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as a characteristic expression of how the circumstances have changed – and not only with respect to the exigencies of the Christian faith. In Article 1 of Thomas’s Question, the objector maintains the position that “it is not permissible to investigate divine things by the arguments of reason”127 by citing the well-known text of Dionysius (the end of De coelesti hierarchia, PG 3, 340B), where a final limit to theological discourse is imposed in the form of absolute “silence” before the arcanum of the “mys- tery,” the unutterable secret of God. Aquinas’s response (ad sextum) – with a distinction (distinguo) that is actually made in stark opposition to the absolute mysticism of Dionysian “silence” – is equally clear insofar as it coheres perfectly with the overall theological epistemology of the Commentary: God “is honored by silence,” but not in such a way that we may say nothing of Him or make no inquiries about Him, but, inasmuch as we understand that we lack the ability to comprehend Him.128 Here, however, let us note immediately that whatever seems common to both Thomas’s statement and Valla’s exhortation is merely apparent. Their respective positions are actually undergirded by wholly divergent argumentative methodologies regarding the “secrets of faith,” methodolo- gies that derive from, or better are based on, vastly different epistemologi- cal guidelines for the study of theology. Thomas’s position presupposes the use of philosophy (its ethical, metaphysical, psychological, and other categories – Aristotelian or Neoplatonic – unfailingly articulated and indeed constrained and delimited by the analogical constants of quod- dams and quodammodos). Valla’s position, on the other hand, depends on the models and procedures of (Quintilian’s) rhetoric. This is what Valla defends and argues most explicitly in the preface to the fourth book of the Elegantiae, which will be the focus of analysis in the fourth part of this essay.129
127 Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, quae. 2, art. 1: “divina investigare non licet argumentando” (tr. Brennan). 128 Ibid., quae. 2, art. 1, ad sextum: “Deus ‘honoratur silentio,’ non quod nihil de ipso dicatur vel inquiratur, sed quia quidquid de ipso dicamus vel inquiramus, intelligimus nos ab eius comprehensione deficisse” (tr. Brennan). 129 On the theme of Dionysian “mystic silence,” see Salvatore I. Camporeale, Amore e conoscenza nell’esperienza mistica secondo l’Aquinate (Viterbo: Agnesotti, 1961), originally published in Sapienza 12 (1959): 237–271 and 13 (1960): 360–381.
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3.2. Dialectic/Rhetoric
“If only Boethius had preferred to devote the effort he expended in writing dialectical texts to reading Quintilian! He would thus not have made mistakes in rhetorical matters, and he would have become a weightier and more religious philosopher.” —L. Valla, De vero falsoque bono, III. 12.15–18 (var. β)130
With De libero arbitrio (1438), Valla definitively completed his anti-philo- sophical critique of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. This critique was begun in De voluptate (the alpha redaction of 1431), was developed gradu- ally and elaborated into several individual themes, and was finally con- centrated, the whole being nearly recapitulated in the classic problematic of “freedom vs. predestination,” in the writing and immediate diffusion of De libero arbitrio. To be sure, Valla would continue working on this topic, slowly moving beyond the negative phase and towards the positive elabo- ration of a new guideline for theology alternative to that of Boethius. At any rate, by 1438 he had definitively completed his critique of philosophy and had made his consequent demand for an alternative theology, therewith signaling a break with the philosophical and theological culture of scholas- ticism from Boethius to Thomas to the neo-Thomists of his own time. It is on the basis of these radical positions that Valla made his name among his contemporaries. He enjoyed the support of many humanists, who often tenaciously agreed with his new propositions. Nevertheless he was attacked and denounced as a “heretic” in the Invectivae (Invectives) of Poggio Bracciolini, an accusation leveled at him earlier in his inquisitorial trial in Naples in 1444 (and even by scholastics outside the Aragonese realm).
3.2.1. Chapter 12, Book III of De vero falsoque bono: Text and Context Following in the scriptural footsteps of Paul (Col. 2:8), as he repeatedly states throughout his oeuvre (from the Epistola apologetica [Letter of Defense] to De professione religiosorum [On the Profession of the Religious] all the way to the Encomium), Valla dedicated his De voluptate and De libero arbitrio to a kind of damnatio philosophiae. On the one hand he con- demns classical philosophy in almost courtroom fashion, definitively
130 Valla, De vero fasloque bono, 202 (Apparatus I to p. 113.15–18): “Boethius … qui utinam operam quam scribendis dialecticis libris impendit, Quintiliano legendo maluisset impen- dere! Nam nec ita in rhetoricis errasset, et gravior et religiosior philosophus evasisset.”
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judging it “a poisoner and murderer” (venefica et homicida). On the other hand, with the “praise of Quintilian” (laus Quintiliani) which he began declaiming in the first redaction of the Disputationes (1438/39), he turns his critique of philosophy into an exaltation of rhetoric.131 Indeed, it is possible to pinpoint the shift from the condemnation of philosophy to the exaltation of rhetoric in a highly significant passage of De vero falsoque bono. Precious testimony of Valla’s thought, it is also a fundamental text if considered with a view to its variants (from one redaction to the next) and its references to Valla’s other writings and scholarly endeavors. The passage in question is a long section from chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono: Thus blessedness and virtue are called ‘good,’ nevertheless the good are ulti- mately those who are graced with virtue, not with blessedness and happi- ness; here Boethius, who had a greater fondness for dialecticians than for rhetoricians, was deceived. But how much more suitable would it have been to speak rhetorically than dialectically! For what is more foolish than the manner of the philosophers, in which the whole case is jeopardized if an error is made with one word? But the orator uses many and various argu- ments: he adduces contraries, brings forth examples, makes comparisons, and forces even hidden truth to reveal itself. How wretched and poor is the mili- tary commander who places the whole outcome of a war in the life of one soldier! One must fight with all available resources, and if one soldier falls or if a platoon is destroyed, then now this one, now that one should immedi- ately be called in. This is how Boethius should have acted, who like so many others was ensnared by an excessive love for dialectic. But how much error was in dialectic, and that no one has written circumspectly about it, and that it is a part of rhetoric, our Lorenzo here, in my opinion, has begun to write most truly. But to return to our subject, hear how much better and how much more briefly I, relying on the authority of faith, would respond than the philoso- phy of Boethius. I will fear neither to dismiss nor to condemn philosophy, since Paul accuses her and Jerome and certain others call philosophers her- esiarchs. So begone! Begone, philosophy! May she, as though a common whore, remove her foot from the sacrosanct temple! May she cease singing or chattering sweetly until the point of ruin like a siren! Suffering from foul illnesses and multiple wounds herself, may she leave it to another doctor to heal and cleanse the sick! Which doctor? Me. How exactly? Like this: “Why are you crying? Why are you groaning, sufferer? Why do you accuse God? If you hope for eternal goods, why do you desire earthly ones? But if you prefer these earthly goods (although it is sinful), why don’t you pray to God rather than accusing him, he who says that he does not love lovers of earthly things? Thus although you deserve his punishment, you deserter, do you
131 Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 36.
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also damn him for not furnishing you with a reward? And will you dictate to him which favors he should especially grant you, as if you were wiser or greater than he? And although he, knowing what is to your advantage, has done you a favor, will you reject it and most ungratefully call his kindness an injury?” This is the rebuke with which those who complained about fortune and God ought to have been scourged. But boastful philosophy was never able to do this, because it did not love and worship God, despite knowing him or having the capacity to know him. It preferred instead to fornicate with the lovers of the earth.132 The long passage cited here is an important part of a section of De vero falsoque bono that received some of the most extensive revision (namely chapter 12 of book III). Indeed, we seem to find concentrated here the methodological core of Valla’s critique of “Boethian philosophy.” From an epistemological point of view, this critique is the objective underlying the entire dialogue, and it takes on clear significance within a specifically theological perspective, especially in book III (the long speech entrusted to the Franciscan Antonio da Rho). Valla shows Boethius’s argumentative procedure to be erroneous by demonstrating that the apodosis does not
132 Valla, De vero falsoque bono, 113.4–38: “Ita cum ‘bonum’ beatitudo dicatur et virtus boni tamen ii demum sunt qui virtute affecti sunt non qui felicitate et beatitudine, in quo Boethius dialecticorum quam rhetoricorum amantior deceptus est. At quanto satius erat oratorie quam dialectice loqui! Quid enim ineptius philosophorum more ut si uno verbo sit erratum tota causa periclitetur? At orator multis et variis rationibus utitur, affert contraria, exempla repetit, similitudines comparat et cogit etiam latitantem prodire veritatem. Quam miser ac pauper imperator est qui omnem fortunam belli in anima unius militis ponit! Universitate pugnandum est et si quis miles concidit aut si qua turma profligata est, alia subinde atque alia sufficienda. Hoc modo agendum Boethio erat, qui ut plurimi alii nimio amore dialectice deceptus est. At quantus in ea error fuerit et quod nemo de illa sobrie scrip- serit et eadem rhetorice pars sit hic noster Laurentius scribere instituit meo iudicio verissime. Sed ut ad rem redeam, audite quanto melius quantoque brevius ipse quam boethiana phi- losophia respondeam nixus fidei auctoritate. Non verebor philosophiam aut contemnere aut damnare, cum Paulus eam arguat et Hieronymus cum quibusdam aliis philosophos heresiarchas appellent. Valeat igitur, valeat philosophia et a sacrosancta ede velut scenica meretricula pedem effereat et sirena usque in exitium dulcis cantare seu garrire desinat et morbis ipsa fedis ac plurimis affecta vulneribus egros alii curandos sanandosque medico relinquat! Cui medico? Mihi. Quonam modo? Certe ita: ‘Quid fles? Quid gemis eger? Quid Deum incusas? Si expectas bona eterna, quid terrena desideras? Sin hec terrena malles, licet prave, quin Deum potius deprecaris quam incusas, qui se dicit amatores non amare terrenos? Itane cum a domino supplicium meritus sis, fugitive, etiam illi quod te non afficit premio maledicis? Etiam illi prescribes que in te beneficia potissimum conferat, tanquam tu sis illo aut sapientior aut maior? Etiam cum tibi beneficium prestiterit, sciens quid tibi sit conducibile, non agnosces, sed benignitatem ingratissime iniuriam appellabis?’ Hac omnes qui de fortuna ac Deo querebantur erant increpatione verberandi; quod nunquam philosophia vaniloqua facere potuit quia Deum non dilexit ac coluit, cum vel cognosceret illum vel posset cognoscere, malens fornicari cum amatoribus terre” (emphasis added; the translation of Hieatt and Lorch in Valla, On Pleasure has been consulted).
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follow, as there is a rupture between the unicity of the deductions’ formal correctness and the natural polysemy of language (ambiguitas verbi). This rupture can be mended if and only if the argumentative procedure con- joins within itself formal dialectical correctness with a rhetorical analysis of language. This indissoluble nexus between procedure and analysis in argumentative discourse would be one of the central themes of the Dialecticae disputationes; there Valla fully treats the relationship between logical formalization and the semantic analysis of language, from collo- quial and discursive language to the scientific and apodictic.133 The immediate consequence of Valla’s critique of “Boethian philoso- phy” is for dialectic to be reduced to an integral part of rhetoric. Thus on the one hand Valla places the logical formalization of argumentation within the rhetorical analysis (methodological and historical) of language. On the other he takes up the rhetoric of Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria as an epistemological guideline. The second consequence, specific to the context, is that explicit emphasis is placed on the insoluble antinomy, the insurmountable antithesis, between Boethian philosophy and moral theology. Hence the decisive methodological decision: the theological argument on Christian virtue (virtus) and blessedness, or happiness (beatitudo) – pronounced in book III by Antonio da Rho as the solution to the ethico-theological problem of pleasure (voluptas) posed by the dia- logue – is conducted by Valla on the epistemological foundation of Quintilian’s rhetoric. It can therefore be concluded that chapter 12 of book III, since it expresses the methodological premise of the entire work, provides the principle for interpreting De vero falsoque bono and for understanding its meaning and contents. This applies both to its scrutiny of the grand ethi- cal systems of Greco-Hellenistic antiquity (Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Aristotelianism) and to its explicit recourse to the foundational character- istics of early Christian praxis in the service of creating an alternative to the Boethian, scholastic basis of theology. The preceding observations on chapter 12, book III of De vero … bono must now be circumscribed and brought into greater relief by focusing on one of the most significant variants that entered the above-cited passage in the process of revision from the dialogue’s second to its third version. It will first be necessary, however, to prefix an excursus collecting a series of (in our opinion) essential observations on the chronology of Valla’s famous
133 Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 146–192; Gerl, Rhetorik als Philosophie, 191–231.
200034 200034 238 salvatore i. camporeale work that indicate the stages of its transformation from one revision to the next. Unfortunately, this issue is extremely complicated and has not, as far as we are concerned, been definitively resolved by Lorch’s critical edition of 1970 – and this despite her insightful introduction to the text. It will therefore be necessary to pass over issues marginal to the chronological sequence of the dialogue’s various drafts and revisions and to reduce Lorch’s complex solution, for use as a working hypothesis, to a rather sim- plified outline.
3.2.2. The Editorial Evolution of the alpha, beta, and gamma Versions of De vero falsoque bono and De Panizza Lorch’s Edition: Chronological Correlations between the gamma Redaction and the First Version of the Dialecticae disputationes, and the Impact of Valla’s Inquisitorial Trial (1444) on His Work Lorch established the following stages in the editorial evolution of Valla’s dialogue. There are ultimately four versions of De vero falsoque bono, with variant titles and continual expansion of the text: de voluptate (on plea- sure), de vero bono (on the true good), de vero falsoque bono (on the true and false good). The first two are: the alpha redaction of 1431 (often called the “Rome-Piacenza” version, referring to Valla’s geographical location at the time of writing) and the beta redaction of 1433 (a revision of alpha, finished during Valla’s incomplete two-year teaching stint at Pavia, edited at Milan, and known as the “Pavia-Milan” version). Valla’s work undergoes a clean temporal and qualitative break in its third redaction, gamma. A profound and complex revision of beta, it is to be placed in the period of Valla’s residence at the court of Alfonso the Magnanimous, from 1435 to 1448. More precisely, Lorch hypothesizes that the gamma revision belongs to ca. 1444 or, at the latest, 1449. Finally, the fourth and last version of the work is delta. This is the definitive redaction, consisting in a further revi- sion of the gamma text that is purely formal and stylistic. From what Lorch writes, and according to the dating established for gamma (1444 or 1449), it seems possible to infer that Valla completed the delta redaction in the final years of his Neapolitan period, ca. 1447–1448, or at a time (immedi- ately?) succeeding his move to Rome (the end of 1448), where he joined the curia of the newly elected Nicholas V. Valla would serve the papal court until his death in 1457, first under Nicholas V and then Callixtus III. Since the revision of gamma to delta was, as has been said, mostly stylistic and did not affect the central contents, Lorch combines both versions of Valla’s dialogue into one single redaction, thus taking the Neapolitan (or
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Roman) gamma-delta phase as constitutive of a final and definitive text on which to base a critical edition of De vero falsoque bono. In Lorch’s own words: The text of the present edition is the text of the last version of the dialogue delta. However, since the version delta is a slight revision of gamma and since it is represented by one manuscript only, V [BAV, Ott. lat. 2075], and this manuscript has numerous errors and omissions, we have proceeded to correct the errors and fill the omissions with the help of the manuscript P [Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 6471], authoritative representative of the third version of the dialogue gamma. Stylistic variants between gamma and delta are, generally speaking, insignificant.134 This is a summary of the chronological succession of the various redac- tions of Valla’s dialogue as amply reconstructed by Lorch in her critical edition. It must nevertheless be noted that, although the broad outline is valid, the chronological relationship between the Neapolitan revision of De vero falsoque bono and Valla’s overall literary production during his years at the Aragonese court (1435–48) remains unclear. This prob- lem must be confronted when trying to achieve precision with regard to the various phases of revision of De vero falsoque bono, both from a chronological point of view and for understanding the dialogue’s con- tents in the context of Valla’s broader humanistic and theological work. In particular – and at issue here is the passage cited above from chapter 12, book III of the dialogue – Lorch seems to fall into contradiction concern- ing the chronological nexus between the dating of the gamma revision of De vero falsoque bono and the composition (first version) of the Dialecticae disputationes. She retains 1438/39 as the date of the Dialecticae disputatio- nes (first version), which is generally accepted and which, we believe, ought to be considered approximately correct. Then, she maintains that the gamma revision of De vero falsoque bono was “completed by 1444 or by 1449 at the latest.” Finally, and despite what has been said so far, she explicitly states that the gamma version of the dialogue “was composed by Valla while he was working at the Dialectica.”135 This last statement is based on what is said in the long passage cited above from chapter 12, book III of the dialogue, where the interlocutor Antonio da Rho emphatically refers to Valla’s Dialecticae disputationes. Indeed, the reference is explicit and leaves no room for doubt:
134 In Valla, De vero falsoque bono, lxxv. 135 For the three issues of dating traced here, see ibid., lxx, li, and xlix, respectively.
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This is how Boethius should have acted, who like so many others was ensnared by an excessive love for dialectic. But how much error was in dialec- tic, and that no one has written circumspectly about it, and that it is a part of rhetoric, our Lorenzo here, in my opinion, has begun to write most truly. (emphasis added) A basic reading of this passage and the context in which it occurs would certainly suggest that the gamma redaction of De vero falsoque bono was composed at the same time as (the first version of) the Dialecticae disputa- tiones – the very conclusion reached by Lorch. Nevertheless, the force and the significance of the mention made of the Disputationes in the dialogue transcend that of a simple chronological ref- erence. Indeed, only by considering the larger theoretical import of the statement made by Antonio da Rho (the main speaker in book III) can its meaning be understood for the interpretation of the text. Thus while accepting Lorch’s sketch of the evolution of Valla’s dialogue as the most likely hypothesis, we would be inclined to move the chronological con- fines of the gamma redaction to the period (immediately) following 1444. The general reasons and the particular textual analysis that induce us to correct, or better, to refine the editorial phase of the gamma (and then the delta) version can be encapsulated in the following points. First, it seems necessary to repeat here something we have had occa- sion to note elsewhere: 1444 – the year of the inquisitorial trial held in Naples against Valla – must not be considered solely as one biographical fact or incident, important as it may be, among the various affairs and complex situations that dot the humanist’s life. Instead it marks a turn, or at the least it was a decisive moment, in Valla’s cultural development, which was starkly characterized by tenacious dissent and by a radical crit- icism of both the scholastic tradition and of contemporary Ciceronianism. The inquisitorial trial had defining repercussions for and notable impacts on Valla’s successive literary production. It gives us the opportunity to mark a biographico-cultural caesura in his residence at Alfonso of Aragon’s court: between an early period (from 1435 to 1444) and a late one (com- prising the final years of service to Alfonso, until Valla’s return to Rome in 1448/49 and his definitive transfer to Nicholas V’s curia). This distinction between the two periods, split by the year of the inquisitorial trial, is made with a view to the following two objectives: on the one hand, to under- stand more adequately, even if only approximately, the fluctuations that occurred in Valla’s personal position in the Neapolitan chancery between the years before 1444 and the period following the trial; on the other hand, to establish a basis for grasping more precisely the developments and
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relative meanings of Valla’s work and writings between an early phase of original composition (from 1435 to 1444) and a later one (from 1444 on) in which he revised and reworked his major writings. This later, more reflec- tive phase is both longer and more profound, above all on account of the greater and more direct access Valla had to ancient and modern sources in his final decade at the papal curia in Rome. Now, it emerges clearly from the list of writings composed during the early Neapolitan period (1435–1444) that those years constitute the most intense decade of Valla’s literary production, not only in a quantitative sense but also, and above all, in that they witnessed the full and systematic literary formulation of his early intuition of Quintilian’s importance (the discovery of the Institutio oratoria, which led to the Comparatio Ciceronis Quintilianique in 1428). In fact, Valla’s radical Quintilianism (i.e., his con- ception of rhetoric as a critical theory of language and an epistemological guideline for scholarship) takes on systematic form – beyond that of the minor dialogues De libero arbitrio and De professione religiosorum – par- ticularly in the major writings of a prevailingly (although not exclusively) methodological character, especially the Dialecticae disputationes (1438/39), the Declamatio on the Donation of Constantine (1440), the Collatio Novi Testamenti (Collation of the New Testament) (1443), and the Elegantiae (ca. 1441–1448), Valla’s longest and one of his most laborious works. This list is not complete, but it certainly demonstrates the fact that between 1435 and 1444 Valla deployed the full range of complex philologi- cal and categorical tools derived from Quintilian’s Institutio – and in all different kinds of scholarship, including linguistic, philosophical, biblical, theological, juridical, and ecclesiological. Informed by this analytical principle and situated within this perspective, the first redactions of the Disputationes, the Elegantiae, and the New-Testament Adnotationes emerge as systematic compositions with all the pregnancy, only recently apprehended but fully conscious, of the rediscovery of new horizons and unexpected potentialities. From the trial of 1444 to his death in 1457, Valla would continually revise and amplify the initial versions of these writings, supplementing them with greater evidence and heightened precision. Even now we lack comprehensive, i.e. analytical and comparative, stud- ies of the contents of these various versions, of the theoretical and chrono- logical differences that arose among them due to textual changes and the influence of historico-cultural factors. Thus it is impossible at this point to trace a complete and sufficiently detailed outline of the editorial revisions that began with the late Neapolitan period and ended with the Roman years at Nicholas V’s curia. And yet the significance of the textual changes
200034 200034 242 salvatore i. camporeale and the critical aims represented by those editorial revisions has already proved revealing and incisive in the one particular case where successive versions have been studied, namely with the Dialecticae disputationes. Indeed, the comparison of the first redaction of the Disputationes (1438/39) with the second and the third, to be placed respectively at the close of the late Neapolitan period and the final years of the Roman decade, has led to two conclusions of great importance for understanding the historico-cul- tural place of Valla’s humanism. The first conclusion concerns the significance of the inquisitorial trial of 1444 and the dimensions that it eventually took on. It was not only a specific reaction on the part of current scholasticism to Valla’s theses, namely his critique of logical and metaphysical Aristotelianism, and his patristic renewal of rhetorical theology by means of a systematic deploy- ment of philology and Quintilian’s categorical schematics. Actually, the trial (to which Valla reacted with his Apologia ad papam Eugenium IV [Apology to Pope Eugenius IV] of 1445) turned out to be the reactionary counterpart of a simultaneous conservative counter-critique, more com- plex and thus more significant, hailing from humanist circles with Ciceronian leanings. This other, humanist “trial” was geographically much more diffuse and ideologically much more profound. Also begun within the Aragonese chancery itself, by Bartolomeo Facio and Panormita, it was prosecuted to the full as a veritable Kulturkampf by Poggio Bracciolini in his Invectivae against Valla (1452–1454) and in related letters. Poggio had fully understood from the very beginning the nature of the shift that Valla and his followers were effecting within humanist culture. In his Invectivae, he took up and sharpened nearly all of the essential elements of the polemic against Valla that had already converged in Facio’s writings in Naples and that had thenceforth ricocheted in humanist circles through- out central and northern Italy. Valla was gradually induced, indeed con- strained, to undertake and devote increasing energy to a systematic self-defense (going well beyond the appeal to Eugenius IV). This he pro- duced in his Invectivae in Facium (Invectives against Facio) of 1447 and his Antidota in Pogium of 1452/53. Here we might observe, with reference to the general theme of this essay, that in the Encomium of 1457 Valla would ultimately take what had initially been two lines of defense against his accusers, gradually developed and elaborated in the Apologia to Eugenius (against the scholastic tradition) and the Antidota in Pogium (in opposi- tion to the “old school” of early humanism), and fuse them into a single proposition for theological renewal (renovatio).
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The other conclusion evinced from a comparative and contextual anal- ysis of the editorial stages of the Dialecticae disputationes brings us to a precise understanding of the work’s purpose. A comprehensive epistemo- logical criticism of scholastic dialectic and philosophy, the Disputationes is the fullest and most systematic attempt to refound the arts and sciences in rhetoric. On the one hand, it proceeds organically to a philological and gnoseological analysis of the linguistic and conceptual foundations of scholastic metaphysics and logic (a critical examination of the predica- ments and the predicables, of propositional and syllogistic structures). On the other hand, it effects a radical reduction of all language-based issues in philosophy and theology to the epistemological guideline of Quintilian’s rhetoric. The Disputationes would ultimately act in three ways: as a syn- thesis of all of Valla’s work to date (from the methodological plane in gen- eral to that of individual problems at various levels); as a mature literary formulation of principles and models for use in ulterior investigation in the most diverse areas (in syntactics and semantics, for example, with the Elegantiae, or in biblical exegesis, as in the Collatio/Adnotationes); and finally as a theoretical innovation that necessitated the review and revi- sion of youthful writings (the case of De vero falsoque bono). Once again, the most telling evidence that such was the import of the Disputationes’ theoretical and functional premise is found in Valla’s trial itself, at which the inquisitorial reaction of contemporary scholasticism converged with criticism from the distant camp of contemporary Ciceronian humanism. What is more, this concentration of opposition to Valla helps to locate more precisely the time frame in which the theoretical proposition encap- sulated in the Disputationes emerged. It seems clear – both from the rea- sons behind the inquisitorial condemnation of 1444 and from the polemics of Facio and Bracciolini – that the origin of the opposition to Valla’s cri- tique coincided in time and substance with the diffusion of the Disputationes, i.e. in 1439/40. We therefore believe it possible to conclude (although further and more precise documentation must still be adduced) that the first version (1438/39) of the Disputationes actually constitutes a turn in the trajectory of scholastic and humanist culture in early fifteenth- century Italy. Furthermore, within Valla’s oeuvre, this same first version acts almost as a dividing line between the work he did before the early Neapolitan period and that following the inquisitorial trial of 1444. The preceding considerations on the context of the chronological and biographical nexuses of the period spanning 1435–1444, as well as on the significance of this decade’s theoretical innovations and literary
200034 200034 244 salvatore i. camporeale output, enable a more precise evaluation of Valla’s cultural activity in his early Neapolitan phase. In particular, we can now better approach the question whether – as Lorch believes – the gamma revision of De vero falsoque bono (third redaction) was composed at the same time as the Dialecticae disputationes (first version). This is the problem to which this excursus has been devoted, in the hope that its solution will aid in prop- erly interpreting the long passage cited from chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono. To circumscribe with greater precision the realm of possible solutions, it should be noted straightaway that there is no reason not to believe that the gamma revision of the dialogue was begun even before the inquisito- rial trial (April, 1444), and thus that it coincided with the definitive draft (of the first version) of the Disputationes. This would resolve some of the inconsistency in the ambiguous contemporaneity that Lorch posits between the two writings. For on the one hand she retains as certain (and justly so) the date of 1438/39 for the (finished) draft of the Disputationes, and on the other she argues for “1444 or at the latest 1449” as the date for the gamma redaction of the dialogue. Still, in order to resolve this incon- sistency fully, a new view must be proposed of the chronological succes- sion of Valla’s two works and of the relationship between them. We do so in the following terms. Conceding that the gamma redaction of the dialogue was begun before 1444 (as in fact seems quite likely), in terms of strict chronology and in the sense of a completed and polished revision of all its parts, this version of the work must nevertheless be placed after the trial, in the late Neapolitan period, from 1445/46 to 1448. These are the years in which the insurgent humanist criticisms and the inquisitorial judgment of April, 1444 had profound repercussions for Valla’s cultural activity and heavily impacted his literary production. But a more important and decisive fact must be highlighted, one that closes and, we believe, resolves the matter at hand. Beyond the editorial evolution of De vero falsoque bono and the Dispu tationes and the chronological interrelations between the two writings, the most important and essential element for adequately understanding the timeline and the development of Valla’s work consists in the profound impact that the Disputationes would have on the gamma revision of De vero falsoque bono itself. The precise timing and the extent of the textual interrelations between the gamma revision of the dialogue and the com- position of the Disputationes will have to be the subject of a future study. For now, the essential point is to place the Disputationes (of 1438/39) at the (theoretical and editorial) origins of Valla’s entire production from the
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1440s onward, and especially of the gamma revision of De vero falsoque bono.136
3.2.3. The beta-gamma Variant in Chapter 12, Book III of De vero falsoque bono, the “Quintilianism” of the Dialecticae disputationes, and the Critique of Boethius: Speaking Dialectically vs. Speaking Rhetorically Having completed our excursus through the complicated interweaving of positive and negative influences in the broadening of scope, the drafts and revisions, and the critical reactions and condemnations that make up the context in which the Dialecticae disputationes and the gamma version of De vero falsoque bono were composed, we can now return to the interpre- tation of the long passage cited above, from chapter 12, book III of Valla’s dialogue. The reference it contains to the writing of the Disputationes (“that [dialectic] is a part of rhetoric, our Lorenzo here has begun to write”) now takes on broader and undoubtedly more significant dimen- sions. Actually, this passage is an editorial variant of gamma differing from the preceding beta redaction of the dialogue, and it provides us with a retrospective look at the distance separating the gamma version, poste- rior to the trial of 1444, from the beta (“Pavia”) version of 1433 – a shift in time and context whose discontinuity is strongly marked by the Disputationes of 1438/39. Let us now compare the texts in order to re- evaluate the editorial variant in question:
De vero falsoque bono ch. 12, bk. III gamma beta This is how Boethius should have This is how Boethius should have acted, who like so many others was acted. If only he had preferred to ensnared by an excessive love for devote the effort he expended in dialectic. But how much error was in writing dialectical texts to reading dialectic, and that no one has written Quintilian! He would thus not circumspectly about it, and that it have made mistakes in rhetorical is a part of rhetoric, our Lorenzo matters, and he would have become here, in my opinion, has begun to a weightier and more religious
136 This is the thesis that underlies the whole of ch. 1 of Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, esp. 33–87, and is treated explicitly in other parts of the same work. But see also Di Napoli, Lorenzo Valla, 57–99.
200034 200034 246 salvatore i. camporeale write most truly. But to return to our philosopher. But to return to our subject ….137 subject ….138
Let us first consider the initial part of chapter 12, book III of the dialogue, which directly precedes the long passage (including the editorial variant in question) cited above. In this way we will be able to reconstruct in full the extensive critique of Boethius that Valla elaborates in this important chapter, clarifying its rationale and identifying the alternative solutions proposed in its final sentences. According to Valla, Boethius argued in book IV of The Consolation of Philosophy that good men always possess the true good (verum bonum) while evil ones lack it utterly, thus identifying the true good with upright behavior and the integrity of moral virtue (honestas). Now, “to say what I think of him,” Valla continues in the guise of Antonio da Rho, begging the pardon of a man so learned in every area of study, he called in philosophy as his patroness and bestowed upon her almost greater honor than on our religion, and thus he did not resolve the question, nor did he demonstrate what the true good is.139 Thereupon follow Valla’s counter-arguments to Boethius’s thesis: “virtue is not actually the ‘highest good,’ nor are the evil always wretched or the good always happy.”140 On the contrary, the good often find themselves surrounded by misery while the evil enjoy well-being and happiness: “the evil are not necessarily wretched in this life, but in the next; and the just are not blessed in the present time, but they will be in the future.”141 Then Boethius’s error is revealed, namely a linguistic ambiguity hidden in the parasyllogistic reasoning of his dialectic:
137 Valla, De vero falsoque bono, 113.15–18: “Hoc modo agendum Boethio erat, qui ut plu- rimi alii nimio amore dialectice deceptus est. At quantus in ea error fuerit et quod nemo de illa sobrie scripserit et eadem rhetorice pars sit hic noster Laurentius scribere instituit meo iudicio verissime. Sed ut ad rem redeam …” (emphasis added). 138 Ibid., 202, App. I to p. 113: “Hoc modo agendum Boethio erat, qui utinam operam quam scribendis dialecticis libris impendit, Quintiliano legendo maluisset impendere! Nam nec ita in rhetoricis errasset et gravior et religiosior philosophus evasisset. Sed ut ad rem redeam …” (emphasis added). 139 Ibid., 112.6–9: “De quo ut dicam quod sentio, pace viri in omni doctrina peritissimi, quia patronam philosophiam advocavit et ei propemodum maiorem honorem quam nos- tre religioni tribuit, illi cause non satisfecit nec quid sit verum bonum probavit.” 140 Ibid., 112.9–10: “Non enim virtus est summum bonum, nec malos semper miseros nec bonos semper felices.” 141 Ibid., 112.12–14: “Iniqui nanque non in hac utique vita miseri sunt sed in futura, et iusti non nunc beati sed postea erunt.”
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who would believe that so careful and sharp, not to say elegant, a man fell into this kind of error out of ignorance of one word, and such an easy one at that? For good (bonum) is said … both of virtue and of happiness, just as evil (malum) is said of their opposites. But virtue and vice are actions (actiones), whereas happiness and unhappiness are qualities (qualitates) – things very different from one another in the effect that they produce.142 Boethius’s reasoning is thus reducible to the following form: Whoever is good has the good, the good is blessedness therefore every good man is blessed.143 But this reasoning, Valla observes, can be easily refuted. In the syllogism’s major premise, what is meant by “the good” (bonum)? Does it mean the good of happiness (bonum felicitatis)? Then the statement must be denied, for no one is called good because he is happy but because he is virtuous (virtute praeditus). Does it mean the good of virtue (bonum virtutis)? Then the reasoning remains completely valid, but it will be necessary to refor- mulate the argument in the following way: Whoever is good has the good, the good is virtue, therefore every good man is virtuous.144 Valla notes that where Boethius errs, Cicero did not, namely in the Tusculan Disputations (I 5,9), where he treated exactly the same question using the same terminology: “this linguistic ambiguity did not dupe Cicero.”145 Valla concludes: although ‘blessedness’ and ‘virtue’ are called good, nevertheless the good are ultimately those who are graced with ‘virtue,’ not with ‘happiness’ and ‘blessedness’; here Boethius, who had a greater fondness for dialecticians than for rhetoricians, was deceived.146
142 Ibid., 112.17–23: “Quis crederet virum ita diligentem et acutum, taceo elegantem, in huiusmodi errorem propter ignorationem unius verbi, et quidem facillimi devenisse? Nam ‘bonum’ … tum ‘virtutum’ tum ‘felicitatem’ dicimus, sicut e contrario ‘malum.’ At virtus quidem et vitium actiones sunt, felicitas vero atque infelicitas qualitates, res etiam effectu ipso inter se longissime distantes.” 143 Ibid., 112.32–33: “quicunque est bonus is habet bonum, bonum autem est beatitudo, ergo omnis bonus beatus.” 144 Ibid., 112.37–38: “quicunque est bonus is habet bonum, bonum autem est virtus, ergo omnis bonus, virtute praeditus.” 145 Ibid., 112.38–39: “non Ciceronem fefellit ista verbi ambiguitas.” 146 Ibid., 113.4–7: “Ita cum ‘bonum’ beatitudo dicatur et virtus, boni tamen ii demum sunt qui virtute affecti sunt non qui felicitate et beatitudine; in quo Boethius dialecticorum quam rhetoricorum amantior deceptus est.”
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Let us not be fooled by the apparent simplicity of Valla’s refutation (regardless of the validity of his proposed interpretation of Boethius). A comparison of the various editorial phases from alpha to delta, whose variants are collected by Lorch in the introduction to her critical edition, shows that this was one of the sections of book III that Valla tin- kered with most each time he revised the dialogue. Furthermore, here Valla applies a principle which was fundamental to his attack on philoso- phy and on which he insists in his analysis of syllogistic procedure and metaphysical language. Valla’s principle, which represented a paradigmatic turning point for the humanism of his time, is given in nuce in the following definition: the semantic polyvalence of certain words (transcendentals, predicaments, and predicables) must be subjected to a linguistic hermeneutics that (1) effects a reduction of philosophical categories, and (2) shows the invalid- ity of argumentative procedures that are correct from the formal point of view of syllogism but inexact in the morphological and signifying struc- ture specific to the language being used. To the latter aspect of the prob- lem Valla would dedicate important pages (these, too, gradually reworked) in book III of the Disputationes, a section that is more than explicit in the very form of its title: “certain words yield a manifold and multiple syllo- gism.”147 Moreover, one of the cases considered there is precisely the syl- logism of Boethius examined in chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono – the very text currently under consideration. Valla himself directs the reader from the pages of the Disputationes to this passage of the dia- logue (obviously in the beta version, not gamma). And his interweaving of the critique of Boethius, from a purely formal analysis (in the Disputationes) to a specifically textual one (in De vero falsoque bono), is certainly worthy of especial emphasis; indeed, it reveals the organic nature of Valla’s work. Boethius, then, “had a greater fondness for dialecticians than for rheto- ricians.” But the opposition between dialectic and rhetoric is made even more explicit as Valla’s critique proceeds. The antinomy between the two disciplines is taken up generally, beyond the specific case in question, in the interest of displacing philosophy and formulating an alternative argu- mentative procedure. Therefore, the apparatus and the epistemological foundation, the hermeneutical hinge, of inquiry ends up being no longer logic, the scholastic art of arts (ars artium), but rhetoric, humanism’s art of
147 [The title of book III, chapter 11. See Lorenzo Valla, Repastinatio dialectice et philoso- phie, ed. Gianni Zippel, 2 vols. (Padova: Antenore, 1982), 1:304:] “Quaedam verba reddere numerosum ac multiplicem sillogismum” (emphasis added).
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arts. Boethius, Valla continues, was fooled because he preferred to “speak dialectically (loqui dialectice) rather than rhetorically (loqui oratorie).” But, the humanist adds, the “manner of the philosophers” easily leads into error. For words crop up now and then like rocks to dash the most con- vincing and sturdiest argumentative structures, such that “the whole case is jeopardized if an error is made with one word.”148 The contrast, or rather the difference, between speaking dialectically and speaking rhetorically is specified even further when the argumenta- tive principles proper to rhetoric are identified: “the orator uses many and various arguments: he adduces contraries, brings forth examples, makes comparisons” (emphasis added). Rhetorical discourse, in other words, comprehends broader and more highly differentiated structures than log- ical or dialectical discourse does. It is not restricted but rather operates with more complex and articulated reasoning procedures, such as enthy- memic demonstration (e.g., ex repugnantibus) and paradigmatic argu- ment. This will be treated in Valla’s Disputationes, especially in books II and III, whose final chapters, it might be added, contain some of his dens- est writing, taken verbatim from Quintilian’s Institutio (bk. V, chs. 8–11). Valla continues: by means of procedures like adducing contraries (afferre contraria), bringing forth examples (repetere exempla), and mak- ing comparisons (comparare similitudines) – articulated and differenti- ated variously but directed towards the same objective – rhetorical argumentation investigates reality “and forces even hidden truth to reveal itself.” Hence the comparison, which recurs in Valla’s writings when he deals with argumentative method, between demonstrative procedure and forms of military operation. For the conquest of truth is achieved with a strategy no less complex than that deployed by a military commander (imperator) and his army to bend the will of the enemy and definitively conquer him. It was therefore this kind of logistics that Boethius should have taken up and investigated further for his own use: “this is how Boethius should have acted.” It is at this point that the comparative reading of the beta and gamma versions of the text aids in clarifying Valla’s critique of Boethius. The tex- tual variant between beta and gamma – quoted en face above (pp. 245– 246) – opens a passageway right into the interior of the critique, giving insight into its various phases and developments. In the beta redaction,
148 [For these and subsequent quotations of chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono, consult n. 132 above.]
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Valla rebukes Boethius above all for devoting himself excessively to dialec- tic and neglecting rhetoric. This first criticism of Boethius’s work must be traced to Valla’s peculiar vision of scholasticism. For he was struck by how forcefully Boethius’s logical writings influenced medieval culture and scholastic theology itself. But there is something more important in his critique of Boethius. Valla was certainly aware that Boethius had read and studied Cicero’s rhetorical works; he therefore had to substantiate his crit- icism in such a way as to implicate all of Boethius’s rhetorical and philo- sophical writings in the criticism of his dialectics. Hence the fact that the ultimate cause of the polemic against Boethius must be sought in Valla’s anti-Ciceronianism, or better, in the absolute primacy he accorded to Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria. This is what Valla underlines here in no uncertain terms: “If only he had preferred to devote the effort … to reading Quintilian.” What follows is even more explicit: “He would thus not have made mistakes in rhetorical matters, and he would have become a weightier and more religious philosopher.” Thus Boethius not only subordinated rhetoric to dialectic, but he also failed to grasp the dimen- sion Quintilian added to rhetoric. That is to say, he remained within a tra- dition that left ample room for the dichotomy between rhetoric and dialectic and accorded the latter a primacy and autonomy that it did not deserve. Furthermore, by admitting that dichotomy and rejecting rhetoric in the sense conceived by Quintilian – as a universal and organic “science of language” – Boethian philosophy exhausted itself in the for- malism of dialectic (and in the logicism of scholasticism). At the same time, it kept itself from being used in a way that was more valid and more consonant with the Christian religion than the Aristotelian Organon (and the Aristotelianism of scholasticism) had been. In short, we have here in nuce the motive force behind the full range of the critique of Boethius, to which Valla devoted the three books of De vero falsoque bono and De libero arbitrio. With the gamma redaction, Valla switched to a new (and definitive) formulation of his critique of Boethius. The purely negative assessment and rejection of Boethian dialectic was replaced by the positive and the- matic statement on the nature and validity of Quintilian’s rhetoric. Boethius erred – as Valla continues in the gamma redaction – by letting himself be seduced, “like so many others,” by the procedures of peripatetic logic: “he was ensnared by an excessive love for dialectic.” That was the source of formal and substantive errors which it was necessary to oppose with a new conception of rhetoric, one that at the same time would assign the art of dialectic a more precise and valid place.
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But at this point Valla inserts another element into the variant. He had already completed the literary work in which he overcame the antinomy between rhetoric and dialectic. Therefore, he no longer needed to make explicit and direct reference to Quintilian’s classic work and could instead mention his own brand-new Dialecticae disputationes, his “retrenching of all dialectic and philosophy” (repastinatio totius dialecticae et philoso- phiae). The aim of that work was (in addition to a constant, continuous critique of Boethius’s writings) to re-assign logic a place within rhetorical discourse and to effect a radical reduction of philosophy to rhetoric, all in accord with the formal and categorical principles of the Institutio oratoria. With the Disputationes, then, the new treatment (retractatio) of scholas- tic, Boethian, and contemporary logic reaches its final and definitive form. What is more, Quintilian’s thesis, which constitutes the central theme of the work, is clearly enunciated: that dialectic is a part of rhetoric.149
3.2.4. The damnatio philosophiae and the Reference to Jerome’s Letter to Ctesiphon The variant reading between gamma and beta marks, in a most incisive and explicit way, the distance in time and substance separating the two editions of De vero falsoque bono. As for the question of whether the refer- ence to the Disputationes contained in the gamma variant – “But how much error was in dialectic, and that no one has written circumspectly about it, and that it is a part of rhetoric, our Lorenzo here, in my opinion, has begun to write most truly” – should be seen as a reference to an unfin- ished composition or to one that was final and definitive in all its parts, this remains a marginal problem, especially as concerns the essential lines of our interpretation of Valla. On the basis of syntactic construction and a strictly textual analysis of the gamma variant – “but how much … and that no one … and that dialectic is … our Lorenzo has begun to write …” – the former possibility would, it is true, seem more likely. That is, the reference to the Disputationes would indicate that the work was not yet finished, if not still in the planning stages. As noted above, this is the sense in which the gamma variant was understood by Lorch. No differently – we should add – was the passage in question interpreted by Radetti in his translation
149 See the references in note 136 above. The meaning of the related terms “dialectic” and “logic,” as used by Valla, can be deduced from a comparative reading of the three dif- ferent versions of chapter 1, book III of the Disputationes, entitled, “Whence dialectic and logic are thus-called …” (“Unde dicatur dialectica logicaque …”; [cf. Valla, Repastinatio dia- lectice et philosophie, 1:278]); cf. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 117–119.
200034 200034 252 salvatore i. camporeale of De vero falsoque bono. Nevertheless, on account of the arguments adduced above and the significance that the gamma variant seems to take on in the general context of Valla’s work, we are inclined to think that the reference to the Disputationes indicates a literary composition in its final and definitive form. This is how it is understood by Valla; and it is, in fact, the case. For otherwise – and this is the clinching argument, a kind of counterproof and definitive confirmation – it would be impossible to explain why the text of the gamma variant remains unaltered in the suc- cessive delta revision of De vero falsoque bono. For by then the Disputationes had not only been completed and diffused but had undergone further revision in a second and a third redaction. For the general subject of our essay, however, it seems instead more important to complete the interpretation of Valla’s text currently under examination. Such would help us both to understand better the import and the contextual significance of the variant in the gamma redac- tion, and, at the same time, to clarify more precisely Valla’s critique of Boethius and the conclusions it reaches. For it is at this point that Valla declares his rejection (contemnere) and condemnation (damnare) of Boethian philosophy, appealing – seemingly as a final argument but actu- ally as a foundational one – to the very fonts of theology and the faith: Scripture and the Church Fathers. Valla’s rejection of Boethian philosophy, then, is not only based on his rediscovery of Quintilian’s Institutio, but first and foremost on his invocation, “resting on the authority of faith,” of Paul and Jerome. According to Valla, Paul rejected philosophy, the “wisdom” of the Greeks, while Jerome (“and certain others”) denounced philosophers as heresiarchs. The textual references here are traditional topoi, easy to locate: Colossians 2:8 and Jerome’s Letter to Ctesiphon (ep. 133), in which he quotes Tertulian’s statement (Against Hermogenes, ch. 9): “philoso- phers are the patriarchs of the heretics.”150 It suffices for the reference to Paul to mention that it would be taken up again, and more explicitly, in the Encomium. The reference to Jerome’s Letter to Ctesiphon, however, requires further clarification.
150 Jerome, Epistola ad Ctesiphontem (ep. 133), in PL 22:1147–1161, at 1148 (tr. W.H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W.G. Martley, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, eds. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, 14 vols. (New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1890–1900), vol. 6: St. Jerome: Letters and Select Works (1893), from the on-line text (accessed 03.09.2012): http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001133.htm).
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Jerome’s Letter to Ctesiphon is used as a contextual backdrop for the antinomy between philosophy and theology. It is both brought up here and emphasized again in the concluding section of chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono. Jerome adduces certain philosophical categories and teachings (in this specific case, from the sphere of Stoicism) for the purpose of demonstrating their incompossibility and general incompati- bility with the categories and teachings of New Testament Scripture. It is in this regard – that is, with regard to these specific philosophical ideas opposed to the Christian faith – that Jerome writes, Can there be greater presumption than to claim not likeness to God but equality with Him, and so to compress into a few words the poisonous doc- trines of all the heretics which in their turn flow from the statements of the philosophers, particularly of Pythagoras and Zeno the founder of the Stoic school? Later he adds, “well does one of our own writers say, ‘the philosophers are the patriarchs of the heretics.’ It is they who have stained with their per- verse doctrine the spotlessness of the Church.”151 Valla echoes Jerome’s words, transferring them to the immediate con- text of his critique of Boethius. What is more, this same letter of Jerome causes Valla to connect the theoretical antinomy (philosophy vs. theol- ogy) closely with the actual theological life of a Christian. Hence the final words of Valla’s passage, which once again echo well-known texts of Paul: “boastful philosophy … did not love and worship God, despite its knowing him or capacity for doing so. It preferred to fornicate with the lovers of the earth.”152
151 Ibid., 1148: “Quae enim potest alia maior esse temeritas, quam Dei sibi non dicam similitudinem, sed aequalitatem, vindicare, et brevi sententia omnium haereticorum venena complecti, quae de philosophorum et maxime Pythagorae et Zenonis principis Stoicorum fonte manarunt? … pulchre quidam nostrorum ait: philosophi, patriarchae hae- reticorum, Ecclesiae puritatem perversa maculavere doctrina” (tr. Fremantle, Lewis, and Martley, in Schaff and Wace (eds.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers). 152 In Valla, De vero falsoque bono (ed. Lorch), 203 (apparatus II), Lorch cites as sources for this passage Jerome, In Isaiam V 23,2 and In epistulam ad Galatas III 5, respectively in PL 24:206–207 and PL 26:416–419. These same references are provided by Radetti in Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi, 204, n. 3, but to our mind they are insufficient and should be sub- stituted with those we have spoken about here. Valla’s critique of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is not considered at all by Pierre Paul Courcelle, La Consolation de Philosophie dans la tradition littéraire. Antécédents et postérité de Boèce (Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1967), 317–332; but how to explain “the new spirit developed by the Renaissance” and that “this new spirit caused the Consolation to be read much less”? It seems to us rather reduc- tive to assign the reason to a change in literary taste: ibid., 332.
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4. Rhetoric as a Mode of Theologizing: The Humanist Solution to the Problem
“Literature is the light of the intellect” —L. Valla, gloss to Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria, book I, proem, 6153
In his book on Lorenzo Valla, Mario Fois writes compactly and sugges- tively, and with the full support of precise references to primary and sec- ondary sources, on the “problem of conscience” in the realm of humanist culture. The problem of conscience is the antinomy with which the reli- gious believer has had to grapple, ever since the beginning of Christianity, between “the love of literature and the desire for God.” This phrase is the well-known title of a book by Jean Leclercq, who treated the theme throughout the medieval period. Fois, who can be thought of as continu- ing Leclercq’s work, followed the question of the antagonistic relationship between the Christian faith and the study of ancient pagan literature (humanae litterae) into the Renaissance, to see how it was recast in the context of humanism. Moreover, Fois sought to identify the many and var- ied solutions offered to this problem across the whole arc of early human- ism, beginning with the polemic between Albertino Mussato and Giovannino da Mantova in the early fourteenth century and ending with Valla’s position, especially as it appears in the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae. Fois concludes that, for Valla, ‘eloquence’ is both the forum and the definitive means for resolving the ‘matter of conscience,’ such that “Valla’s solution is the triumph of rhetoric in humanism.”154 Fois’s reference to the Elegantiae and his related conclusion are dead on; they perfectly highlight Valla’s original and unique contribution to overcoming the problem of conscience (in the first half of the fifteenth century). The preface, or proemium, to book IV of the Elegantiae is perhaps the text that gives most explicit and complete voice to the humanist attempt to establish the proper relationship between rhetoric and theo- logical study. What would be declared programmatically in the Encomium of 1457 regarding the “proper mode of theologizing” is developed compactly
153 Ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., Lat. 7723, f. 2v: “Lumen ingenii sunt litterae.” 154 See Fois, Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla, above all ch. 5: “Il problema di cosci- enza dell’Umanesimo e la soluzione valliana” (pp. 195–260), esp. 249–258. The other reference is to Jean Leclercq, Cultura umanistica e desiderio di Dio (Firenze: Sansoni, 1965) (from the original French: L’amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu [Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1957]) [English translation = The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, tr. Catharine Masrahi (New York: Fordham University Press, 1961)].
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in the preface from the 1440s. Beginning with a formulation of the prob- lem, put in the mouth of an anonymous objector, Valla elaborates his own particular solution to the antinomy between theology and pagan litera- ture. We therefore think it opportune to offer a close textual analysis of the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae, and then to compare it with the theological epistemology sketched by Thomas in Article 3, Question II of his Commentary on Boethius. The purpose of this comparison is to arrive at a substantive verification of the difference between the methodology of Valla’s humanist theology and that of Thomist theology and scholasticism in general.
4.1. The proemium to Book IV of the Elegantiae: The Place of the ‘Problem of Conscience’ and the Topos of Jerome’s Dream in the Letter to Eustochium
I know well that some people, especially among those who think themselves holier and more religious, will dare to criticize my purpose and my work as unworthy of a Christian, because I recommend the reading of secular books.155 These are the first lines of the preface, the first blows of the objection to which Valla intends to respond with an apology both for his work in gen- eral and for the Elegantiae in particular. Actually, it was the same objection that, ever since the beginning of Christianity, had continuously cropped up across the centuries in the learned and devout tradition of the religious community. Raised and sustained by those “who think themselves holier and more religious,” it insisted on the radical antinomy between “the read- ing of the secular books” of the pagans and a specifically Christian culture, i.e. the insuperable antagonism between the study of ancient pagan litera- ture (humanae litterae) and being a Christian. According to this view, the love of literature ought to stay on the fringes of the Gospel, if not be extin- guished altogether in theological faith and repudiated as “unworthy of a Christian,” since it stands in antithesis to the desire for God. Thus we once again encounter, clearly enunciated in the first lines of the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae, the same problematic that Thomas recast in Question II of his Commentary on Boethius. If visualized
155 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 612: “Scio ego nonnullos, eorum prae- sertim qui sibi sanctiores et religiosiores videntur, ausuros meum institutum hoc laboremque reprehendere, ut indignum christiano homine, ubi adhortor ceteros ad libro- rum saecularium lectionem.” [All translations of the proemium are based on Garin’s Italian version in ibid., which Camporeale follows.]
200034 200034 256 salvatore i. camporeale graphically, the coordinates of the problem would be plotted symmetri- cally: along the axis of the constant (being a Christian) they would overlap or perhaps be identical, while in the quadrants of the variable (the various aspects and heuristic tools of classical culture) they would diverge, per- haps radically. Therefore, their respective solutions, reached or devised in different historical periods of Christianity, actually end up being positions whose adoption and particular significance lie in systems with utterly dis- parate points of reference. In Thomas, the terms of the antinomy were: philosophy, or “secular wisdom” (sapientia saecularis), on the one hand, and theology (sacra doctrina), or the “science of faith” (scientia fidei), on the other; in Valla, they are: eloquence, or “knowledge of literature” (doctrina litterarum), on the one hand, and the Christian religion (chris tiana religio), or being a “Christian” (christianus homo), on the other. Nevertheless, both Thomas’s Commentary and Valla’s text are founded on the same patristic authority: Jerome’s Letter to Eustochium. Thus Valla’s objector takes up the traditional topos of Jerome’s dream along with the unappealable and inescapable judgment handed down in it by God’s tribunal: “a Ciceronian, not a Christian.” To Jerome’s mind, so the objection goes, every believer in the Gospel should aim to be the latter: “the same man cannot be both religious and a Tullian.” But if Jerome’s reading of Cicero caused him to be sentenced to flogging and to repudiat- ing his Ciceronianism both practically and theoretically, should not the lovers and promoters of humanae litterae be prosecuted and punished in like manner? Writings and undertakings like the Elegantiae, and more generally the new literary culture of its time, should suffer the same judg- ment and be convicted of the same crime as Jerome, a crime perpetrated against Christian tradition and thought: this charge does not pertain so much to the present work [the Elegantiae] as to me in particular and to other literati whose erudition and study of secular literature is condemned. The conclusion: lovers of literature ought therefore to be forced to repudi- ate pagan antiquity and to repeat Jerome’s pledge that “he would not read secular books.”156 Valla’s ample response – as if forced into methodological alignment with the issues at hand – had to be developed along argumentative lines of
156 Ibid., 612: “ciceronianus …, non christianus, quasi non potest fidelis esse et idem tul- lianus. Eoque spopondisse … libros saeculares se non esse lecturum. Hoc crimen non magis ad praesens opus pertinet, quam ad me ipsum ac ceteros litteratos, quorum studium ac doctrina litterarum saecularium reprehenditur.”
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a wholly rhetorical nature. It is thus natural for his refutation (refutatio) of the anti-humanist thesis to begin with a counter-response in enthymemic form, i.e. with an argument ex contrariis or ex repugnantibus (cf. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, V.14.1–4). This argument would ultimately be resolved with the invocation of another traditional, authoritative topos from Jerome – this one in favor of the study of classical literature: the Letter to Magnus (PL 22:664–668). It is between these two passages from Jerome’s letters to Eustochium and to Magnus – which had long been the extremes of the enduring polarization underlying the debate over the love of litera- ture and the desire for God – that Valla now situates his own defense of rhetoric as the handmaiden of theology. The essential traits of Valla’s argu- ment make the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae one of the most origi- nal expressions, in the fifteenth century, of the grand controversy previously debated by Aquinas (on other grounds) in his Commentary on Boethius. Valla’s consideration and humanistic revision of both the prob- lem and the solutions would directly inspire Erasmus’s Life of Jerome (Vita Hieronymi) of 1516.157
4.2. The Letter to Eustochium and Jerome’s Dream: The Common Plato- Plautus Variant in Jerome’s Text and Philosophy–Eloquence, Ornamentation, and Quintilian’s Rhetoric as a Science The enthymeme used by Valla to counter the critique of humanism tran- scends the purely formal limits of an apologetic argument. Indeed, it is turned around into a critique of scholasticism, and it attacks the very theological praxis which gave rise to both the polemic against the study of classical literature and the attendant alternative proposal for theological study. Valla flings the ambiguity, or rather the contradictoriness, of their position right back at the sustainers of the anti-humanist thesis, whom he brands as responsible for the contemporary decline of letters (“who are in large part responsible for making a ruin and a shipwreck of Latin litera- ture”158). From his point of view, they cannot appeal to the authority of Jerome’s Letter to Eustochium. For if the study of classical literature is indeed contrary to the Christian name, then the study of pagan philoso- phy is equally unworthy of evangelic faith, since it, too, is repudiated in
157 On “Jerome’s dream” and its use in humanism from Salutati to Erasmus, cf. the refer- ence to Fois in note 154 above, and Émile V. Telle, L’Erasmianus sive Ciceronianus d’Etienne Dolet (1535) (Genéve: Droz, 1974), 389–390 and 422–423. 158 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 612: “quorum culpa non ex minima parta latinae litterae iacturam naufragiumque fecerunt.”
200034 200034 258 salvatore i. camporeale the same letter. Consistency demands that, if the divine condemnation of Jerome is accepted as conforming with the Christian spirit, then it must be extended to all the historical and literary expressions of secular wisdom: “all the orators, all the historians, all the poets, all the philosophers, all the jurisconsults, and all the other writers” of the pagan world, Greek and Latin.159 Having been shown to be in contradiction with himself, the objector is forced to repropose the thesis of Jerome’s condemnation and its norma- tive implications in a more circumscribed form. Specifically, he is forced to reduce the opposition between Christianity (religio christiana) and secular wisdom (sapientia saecularis) to the incompossibility between Christian faith and classical eloquence (eloquentia): When Jerome is rebuked for being a Ciceronian, it is actually for being an enthusiast of eloquence. Therefore, whoever reads eagerly in order to become eloquent knows that he will be condemned and rejected.160 But it is precisely this restriction of the antinomy between Christian and classical culture that gives Valla the possibility of setting the problem and its solution within a specific frame. The objector’s extremely reductive conception of eloquence (eloquentia) as ornamentation (ornatus), derived from a decadent kind of Ciceronianism, is opposed with another, fuller and more comprehensive conception: eloquence (eloquentia) as the disci- pline of rhetoric (rhetorica), a critico-stylistic analysis of language and of systematic knowledge: Is there really nothing in those [secular] books except eloquence? Do we find no account of former times nor histories of the pagans, ignorance of which befits only boys? Aren’t there many things pertaining to morals? Isn’t there a treatment of all the disciplines?161 Valla does not immediately pursue the contrast between rhetoric and ornamentation, by which he might have resolved the antinomy in ques- tion. Instead, the differentiation, based on an organic and holistic concep- tion of rhetoric (in the tradition of Isocrates and Quintilian), is taken up
159 Ibid., 612: “omnes oratores, omnes historici, omnes poetae, omnes philosophi, omnes iurisconsulti, ceteri quoque scriptores.” 160 Ibid., 614: “Cum Hieronymus quod ciceronianus est, reprehenditur, id reprehenditur quod studiosus eloquentiae esset. Ideoque damnati et repulsi intelliguntur, qui comparan- dae eloquentiae gratia lectitantur.” 161 Ibid., 614: “Nihil ne in illis libris [saecularibus] nisi eloquentia est? non memoria temporum gentiumque historiae, sine quibus nemo non puer est? non multa ad mores pertinentia? non omnium disciplinarum tractatio?”
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later, slowly, as the enthymemic discourse develops and focuses on the alternative proposal of a humanist theology. For the time being, Valla’s argument remains entirely within the ambiguity of the restrictive defini- tion according to which eloquence is stylistic technique and a discipline for regulating the formal aspects of rhetorical expression. The Jerominian objector is thus forced into self-contradiction, while the premises of his critique of humanism vis-à-vis theology are themselves invalidated. “Therefore, either we shall read eloquent books or we shall not read them at all,” Valla reasons, pursuing the ambiguity of the rhetorical for- malism maintained by his adversary.162 But Jerome, he adds immediately, was condemned in the dream described in the Letter to Eustochium on account not only of his love of Cicero but also of his reading of Plato. The reference to Greek philosophy was actually a variant in the manu- script tradition of the text available to Valla, standing in place of the original “Plautus.” The contraction of Plautus into Plato, owed to easily deducible mechanisms of transmission, was in fact ancient and wide- spread; the authentic reading has only been restored in modern editions of Jerome’s letters.163 Be that as it may, this variant had the force to deter- mine the development and the substance of Valla’s argument, which con- tinues: “in both – Plato and Cicero – you don’t know if the philosopher or the rhetorician is greater.” So then: if the books of the ancients are all so eloquent that when they teach wisdom they are possessed of the highest eloquence, and when they teach eloquence the highest wisdom, which ones will we condemn for eloquence?164 In this way, the enthymeme of the counter-objection is simplified, brought back to the immediacy of the terms in contradiction, and thus restored through reduction to its basic contrary unit, namely the incompossibility of philosophy and theology. The variant of Plato for Plautus, as has been said, in large part deter- mines the route along which Valla’s discourse unfolds. And indeed, the
162 Ibid., 614: “Ita aut eloquentes, aut nulli libri legendi erunt.” 163 [See Eugene Rice, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 231, n. 7: “Several of the early manuscripts …, all the medieval lives of St. Jerome, and all commentators on this passage before Erasmus read Plato instead of Plautus.” See also the apparatus criticus to Jerome, Epistulae, ed. Isidorus Hilberg, 3 vols. (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1910–1918), vol. 1 (Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, 54), 189, line 16. Eds.] 164 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 614: “quorum uterque nescias praes- tantior sit philosophus an orator. Quod si omnes libri veterum ita sunt eloquentes, ut vel plurimum sapientiae, ita tradentes sapientiam, ut vel plurimum eloquentiae habeant, qui- nam isti erunt quos ob eloquentiam damnandos putemus?”
200034 200034 260 salvatore i. camporeale inclusion of the “reading of Plato” as grounds for the judgment of Jerome causes Valla to interpret the condemnation, “a Ciceronian, not a Christian,” as an incrimination specifically of philosophy. It is the philosophy (phi- losophia) of Plato and Cicero that stands in opposition to the reading of sacred scripture (lectio sacrae scripturae), not the forensic eloquence (elo- quentia) of the Latin orator or the elegance (facundia) of the Greek philosopher. Since Jerome confesses to having eagerly read those two [sc. Plato and Cicero], take care lest you ought to think it was said not so much about Cicero’s rhetorical works than about his philosophical ones. I have no doubt that it was said about his philosophical works, since only philosophers are named. As for the fact that no objection was made to his Platonism, as if by reading Plato he were doing something holy, but only to his Ciceronianism, it is because, as a Latin, he had a greater desire to imitate the style of Cicero – a style, I say, which he used in questions of philosophy, not in foren- sic cases or speeches or in the Senate. For Jerome strove to become a writer of holy disputations, not a civil lawyer.165 Hence the counter-question Valla poses to his anti-humanist adversary, who had brought up the traditional Jerominian topos in the first place: Why shouldn’t we then believe that Plato hurt him no less than Cicero? Why not the philosophers more than the orators?166 The response to this question actually takes the form of a reiteration of the anti-humanist stance. But once again, Valla brings the objector’s insis- tence on combating the study of literature back around to the initial ambi- guity between eloquence and ornamentation. Thus the renewal of the objection is now turned on its head, transformed into the definitive and precise clarification of the fundamental ambiguity. Valla’s adversary responds to the counter-question by repeating his own interpretation of Jerome’s text – “but the ornamentation, not the knowledge, of speaking is what was rebuked”167 – and so Valla puts his case as explicitly as possible:
165 Ibid., 614–16: “Cum eos duos lectitasse se Hieronymus fateatur, vide ne non tam de oratoriis potius Ciceronis operibus quam de philosophicis dictum existimare debeas. Ego certe de philosophicis dictum accipio, ubi soli philosophi nominantur; quodque platoni- cus esset ideo non obiectum, quasi sancte faceret Platonem legens, sed tantum ciceronia- nus, quod homo latinus magis Ciceronis stylum cupiebat exprimere, stylum, inquam, quo ille utebatur in quaestionibus philosphiae, non quali in forensibus causis concionibusve aut in senatu. Non enim orator causarum civilium Hieronymus, sed scriptor sanctarum disputationum studebat evadere.” 166 Ibid., 616: “Cur non ergo credamus non minus Platonem nocuisse ei quam Ciceronem? Cur non magis philosophos quam oratores?” 167 Ibid., 616: “at ornatus ipse dicendi reprehensus est, non scientia.”
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since eloquence (eloquentia) is an integral part of rhetoric, it is not possi- ble to have authentic eloquence without knowledge (scientia), and vice versa. The condemnation of eloquence would thus necessitate the rejec- tion of all knowledge (scientia); and the accusation, “a Ciceronian, not a Christian,” would then require, as its immediate consequence, that Christians reject all culture, including both Ciceronian doctrines and, in this particular case, Platonic philosophy:
Is there only ornamentation in Cicero? Is there not also philosophy? … Is there not, as I have said, elegance in Plato? … Why shouldn’t Cicero’s philosophy be thought to have hurt Jerome more than his art of speaking?168
It is at this point that Valla raises the central issue, the one which the entire preface is aimed at expressing and providing with argumentative coherence: the distinction, or better, the contrast between philosophy and eloquence vis-à-vis theology, stated here, finally, in its full range of meaning. The ambiguity between eloquence and ornamentation – the foundation of the objection to humanism – disappears, and the art of speaking (ars dicendi) takes on the organic and holistic significance of rhetoric (rhetorica). Valla’s text thus ends up being directly connected (even the same expressions and patristic references are encountered) with chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono and with the open- ing pages of De libero arbitrio. The conclusions are identical: (1) philoso- phy is the origin and (historical) manifestation of heresy; (2) the negative judgment of philosophy is a constant in the Christian tradition; (3) the incompossibility between philosophy and the Christian religion is radical. Now we come to the most significant passage of Valla’s text, which fol- lows immediately upon the last quotation:
Here I do not want to compare philosophy and eloquence by saying which one is able to do more harm. Many people have spoken on this matter, show- ing that philosophy is barely consonant with the Christian religion and that all heresies flow forth from the fonts of philosophy, whereas rhetoric has nothing that is not praiseworthy: it teaches to invent and to arrange, as if giving bones and sinews to speech; to ornament, that is, to endow speech
168 Ibid., 616: “numquid tantum in Cicerone ornatus? non et philosophia? … non, ut dixi, in Platone facundia? …. Cur non potius Ciceronis philosophia nocuisse putanda Hieronymo est quam ars dicendi?”
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with flesh and color; and finally to memorize and deliver properly, that is, to give speech life and action.169 Against the concept of eloquence as ornamentation, Valla enunciates the definition of rhetoric in all its fullness. Thus all the parts of speech (oratio) – understood as an expression crafted by the art of rhetoric (ars rhetorica) – are described, albeit with abbreviated formulations: invention (inventio), arrangement (dispositio), elocution (elocutio), memory (memo- ria), and delivery (actio or pronuntiatio). There is an implicit reference to Quintilian’s Institutio oratoria here, in which the five parts of speech (ora- tio) constitute the vast and complex structure along which the whole work unfolds (cf. book III, chapter 3). Having provided this definition of rhetoric, Valla moves on. How, he asks, thus posing anew the whole question at hand, could rhetoric – the science of language, the technique and methodology of speaking – hurt the study of divine things and thus be incompossible with Christian dis- course? There will be an insuperable contrast, an insoluble aporia in the relationship between rhetoric and Christian speech if and only if the con- tent and the praxis of the latter, namely “true wisdom and the virtues” (veram sapientiam atque virtutes), are rejected. And it is precisely this rejection of the Gospel – may it be noted in passing, in support of what Valla says here – that Jerome actually confesses to when narrating his own “story of unhappiness” in the Letter to Eustochium. “Lord,” Jerome cries, in recognition of his sinful attachment to pagan wisdom, “if ever again I pos- sess secular books, if ever again I read them, I have denied You.”170 But Valla continues beyond this point, further clarifying and enriching his argument, as will be clear from the sequel to our exposition.171
169 Ibid., 616: “Nolo hoc in loco comparationem facere inter philosophiam et eloquen- tiam, utra magis obesse possit, de quo multi dixerunt ostendentes philosophiam cum reli- gione christiana vix cohaerere omnesque haereses ex philosophiae fontibus profluxisse, rhetoricam vero nihil habere nisi laudabile, ut invenias, ut disponas, quasi ossa et nervos orationi des, ut ornes, hoc est, ut carnem coloremque inducas, postremo ut memoriae mandes decenterque pronunties, hoc est, ut illi spiritum actionemque tribuas” (emphasis added). 170 Jerome, Epistola ad Eustochium (ep. 22), PL 22:394–425, at 416: “infelicitatis historia”; ibid., 417: “Domine, si unquam habuero codices saeculares, si legero, te negavi” (tr. Fremantle, Lewis, and Martley in Schaff and Wace (eds.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, modified). 171 For fifteenth-century discussions on the conception and practice of rhetoric, see the important and rich contibution of John Monfasani, George of Trebisond. A Biography and a Study of his Rhetoric and Logic (Leiden: Brill, 1976), esp. 241–299.
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4.3. The Mechanical Arts, the Liberal Arts, and the Christian Religion: Temple of God/Word of God and the Recovery of the Original Text of Sacred Scripture–Quintilian’s Definition: “Oratory, Queen of the World” (Institutio oratoria, I.12.17–29), and Valla’s Conception of Rhetoric (Jerome’s Letter to Magnus) Rhetoric’s innate usefulness as a “science” in the service of Christianity, Valla continues, is not inferior to that expressed by and embodied in the other arts (artes), both liberal and technical. In other words, the liturgical use of painting and sculpture, engraving and music – to mention only the artistic activities expressly indicated by Valla – suggests that rhetoric, as the science of language, should be used in theology to the same extent and according to the same principles. Here it must be noted, and with a cer- tain emphasis, that a close relationship is posited between the two kinds of aesthetic and creative activity, despite the fact that they were generally placed on disparate levels of value and differentiated according to kind. Obviously, we intend to call attention here to the distinction between the mechanical arts (artes mechanicae), like painting, sculpture, etc., and the liberal arts (disciplinae liberales) of the trivium and the quadrivium. Among the latter, in Valla’s view, rhetoric enjoys hegemonic and educa- tional primacy. Valla, then, inscribes the whole arc of the expressive faculties within the cycle of creative, artistic activities, all the while maintaining the tradi- tional distinction between the two kinds of arts and the related subdivi- sions specific to each single art. He includes each and every one, focusing the entire spectrum of creative activity through the lens of service to Christianity. Thus, on the one hand, following Quintilian (Institutio orato- ria, XII.10), Valla rhetorically effects the greatest possible connection between the two kinds of arts (as has already been underscored by Panofsky and recently confirmed by Baxandall).172 On the other hand, he mirrors the actual artistic praxis of a society that is still culturally Christian. And this artistic praxis was emerging, right at the time when Valla was drafting the Elegantiae (between the 1430s and 1440s), in the form of the most original and extraordinary renaissance in history. Valla himself observes as much, and with a certain emphasis, right from the very begin- ning of the Elegantiae (preface to book I).
172 Erwin Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art (London: Paladin, 1970), 16; Michael Baxandall, Giotto and the Orators. Humanist Observers of Painting in Italy and the Discovery of Pictorial Composition: 1350–1450 (Oxford; Clarendon, 1971), 117–120.
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Here it should also be noted that Valla’s tightening of the connection between the two kinds of arts is not only found in the preface to the first book of the Elegantiae and in the Oration of 1455. Rather, it is a theme that runs throughout his writings, which consistently posit a close rela- tionship between the cycle of the arts (artes) and the order of the various sciences (scientiae), both of them impressed into the cultural service of Christian society. In the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae, this theme even recurs twice: first after the passage cited above, and then at the end. This second passage would be reused, and with more precise force, in the dedicatory letter to Nicholas V prefacing the Collatio Novi Testamenti (1453). Furthermore, it must be noted that in the three passages just now mentioned (the first two in the proemium to bk. IV of the Elegantiae, and the third in the dedicatory letter to the Collatio) Valla makes use of the highly significant distinction between the temple (templum) and the city (civitas). And although in doing so he respects the traditional form of the spatial, religious, and civic dimensions of the respublica christiana (arising from scriptural sources), he defines them in a way that detaches them from their past state, linking them instead to the very artistic and intellectual advances then being made in the early-fifteenth-century Renaissance. Let us review the passages mentioned above and undertake a compara- tive reading of them: Could I conceive of this art [rhetoric] having a harmful function? Certainly no more than the art of painting, of sculpture, of engraving, or, to mention the liberal arts, of music. And if much use and ornament derives for divine things from those who sing well, paint well, and sculpt well, and also from the other arts – such that they seem to have been born for this very purpose – all the more so will such be derived from those who are eloquent. (Elegantiae, book IV, proemium)173 The other sciences and arts occupy a middle ground, to be used for good or for evil …. You see what wondrous decoration adorned Aaron’s raiment, the Ark of the Covenant, and Solomon’s temple. Thus eloquence seems to me to have the meaning of what the noble tragedian calls the queen of the world and perfect wisdom. And so others decorate their private dwellings, like those who study civil law, canon law, medicine, or philosophy, making no
173 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 616: “Hanc ego artem obfuturam par- tem putem? Profecto non magis quam pingendi, fingendi, caelandi et, ut de liberalibus dicam, quam musices artem. Et si ex his qui bene canunt, bene pingunt, bene fingunt, ceterisque ex artibus multum usus atque ornamenti divinis rebus accedit, ut prope ad hanc rem natae esse videantur, profecto multo plus accedet ex eloquentibus.”
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contribution to the divine. Let us decorate the house of God, so that those entering it are not roused by its neglect to contempt, but by its majestic con- dition to religion. (Elegantiae, bk. IV, proemium)174 Each word of holy scripture is like a gem or precious stone from which the heavenly Jerusalem is constructed. For the cities of other disciplines, so to speak, were constructed partly of bricks, like civil law, partly of tufa, like medicine, partly of marble, like astronomy, and the rest in like fashion. But the city of the Gospel is of nothing but gems; it is nobler to be the humblest builder there than to be an architect in the others. What then? Am I myself an architect of this city? If only I were one of its builders! Yet it has fewer architects and builders than is generally believed. Those who dare to con- struct works of stone in that city, to say nothing of wood, plaster, or straw, are in no way worthy of the name of builder or architect, since they mix certain vain and empty sciences with divine ones. For my part I am not building a new work [referring to the Collatio] but have tried, as it were, to the best of my abilities to keep the roof of this city’s temple in good repair. Because if it is not maintained, the temple itself must of necessity leak, and it will not be able to accommodate the divine fittingly. (Collatio Novi Testamenti, dedica- tory letter)175 Let us now consider these three passages, in order of last to first, with regard to the theme in question, namely the relationship between rheto- ric and theology. In the passage cited from the introduction to the Collatio, rhetoric is taken up as the unique and necessary tool for biblical
174 Ibid., 622: “Ceterae autem scientiae atque artes in medio sunt positae, quibus et bene uti possis et male …. Vides quam mirabili ornamento vestes Aaron distinguantur, quam arca foederis, quam templum Salomonis. Per hoc mihi significari eloquentia videtur, quae, ut ait nobilis tragicus, regina rerum est et perfecta sapientia. Itaque alii ornant domos priva- tas: hi sunt qui student iuri civili, canonico, medicinae, philosophiae, nihil ad rem divinam conferentes. Nos ornemus domum Dei, ut in eam ingredientes non ex situ ad contemptum, sed ex maiestate loci ad religionem concitentur” (emphasis added). 175 Lorenzo Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, redazione inedita a cura di Alessandro Perosa (Firenze: Sansoni, 1970), 6.25ff.-7.1ff.: “Singula enim verba divine scripture sunt tan- quam singule gemme lapidesque pretiosi, ex quibus Hierusalem celestis extruitur. Nam aliarum doctrinarum, ut ita loquar, urbes partim e lateribus, ut ius civile, partim e topho, ut medicina, partim e marmore, ut astronomia, et item cetere extructe sunt; evangelica vero nonnisi e gemmis, in qua vel minimum structorem esse preclarius, est quam in ceteris architectum. Quid igitur? Sum ne ego eius architectus? Utinam essem vel structor! Cuius tamen non tot architecti sunt atque structores, quot vulgo creduntur, nequaquam digni hoc nomine qui lapidea, ne dicam lignea, cretacea, stramentitia opera in ea edificare audent, vanas quasdam ineptasque scientias divinis admiscentes. Equidem ipse nihil ope- ris novi condo sed velut huius urbis templi sarcta tecta prestare pro mea virili conatus sum, quod nisi prestetur templum ipsum perpluat necesse est, nec in eo res divina fieri com- mode possit.” [The translation of Christopher S. Celenza has been consulted: Celenza, “Lorenzo Valla’s Radical Philology: The “Preface” to the Annotations to the New Testament in Context,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 42:2 (2012), 365–394, at 380–383.]
200034 200034 266 salvatore i. camporeale exegesis, which for Valla consists in the collation of the Vulgate Bible with the Greek truth (veritas graeca) of the original text of the New Testament. Valla’s statement, it might be noted, is the finale to a series of historico- philological premises considered and discussed in the long dedicatory let- ter to the Collatio. Valla concludes that no “science” or “art” can substitute for rhetoric. It is the sole art capable of supplying the proper tools for restoring the tem- ple that is Sacred Scripture. For it is only in rhetoric that the divine (res divina), i.e., the Word of God, can be recovered and unfurled in all its solemnity and hieratic dignity. In plain language, rhetoric is the only sci- entific discipline that can offer an analytical and organic principle capable of fully restoring the authentic, original text of the Bible. Despite their great effectiveness, the other arts and sciences, from law to medicine to astronomy, are unable to assist adequately in restoring this Temple of the Word, this worldly reflection of the heavenly Jerusalem. Unlike the “cities” constructed by the other arts and sciences, this temple has no architects or builders but only, so to speak, restorators. It would certainly be a sin to aim for more, to attempt a sacrilegious renovation of the Temple of the Word, or at least to claim to repair and reinforce walls and roofs and every other supporting element, but with an unsuitable and ruinous mixture of divine truths and human arts.176 The relationship between the temple (templum) and the city (civitas), as spaces for the arts and sciences to be put to use, takes on grander dimensions (although still with specific reference to theology) in the sec- ond passage, cited from the preface to the fourth book of the Elegantiae. With a statement as explicit as it is rare for his writings, Valla affirms that the deployment of cultural tools involves, or better, is determined by an ethico-political choice. The arts and sciences in general, he specifies fur- ther, are intended and often used for the purpose of decorating and adorn- ing “private dwellings” (domus private). This example concerns not only sciences like medicine and civil law, but also disciplines like canon law
176 Valla, Collatio Novi Testamenti, 3–7. [For the full Latin text and English translation of the preface, see Celenza, “Lorenzo Valla’s Radical Philology.” Eds.] Valla’s analogy is obvi- ous, as are its implications, which are the result of a corresponding operational parallelism between the “restoration” of the authentic text of the Bible and that of the sacred monu- ment of the “temple.” In both cases the same attempt at reconstruction is put in motion, a restoration to an original editorial (of the text) or architectural (of the building) state. We are not able to ascertain the level of originality in Valla’s comparison between operations and techniques that continue to be expressed in terms of “restoration.” Let us only say that here the analogy is used by Valla within the particular sphere of the historico-religious world: Word of God/Temple of God (Verbum Dei/Templum Dei).
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and philosophy – a fact whose deep significance can only be fully under- stood by attentively noting its context in Valla’s discourse. These are the sciences and disciplines intended for the urban construction of the civitas, or city, and yet they are to no avail in theology: “[they make] no contribu- tion to the divine.” With this original and extremely radical exclusion of canon law and philosophy from the catalogue of auxiliary disciplines to theology, Valla paved the way to concluding that rhetoric is the true hand- maiden of theology. Only rhetoric can provide organic mediation, on the level of culture, between “the divine” (res divina) and a man-made “adorn- ment” (ornamentum) consonant with and worthy of the house of God (domus Dei). Indeed, this house must be as hieratic and solemn, in its architectural and ornamental lines, as were Solomon’s temple, Aaron’s priestly raiment, and the Ark of the Covenant, which contained the ancient tablets of the Law.177 Rhetoric possesses this capacity for organic mediation on account of its very nature as the omni-comprehensive science, preeminent above every other art or discipline. It is dominion over all things, and at the same time it is wisdom about life and knowledge: “it is the queen of the world and perfect wisdom.” This definition of rhetoric, which Valla attributes to an unnamed tragedian, actually derives from a standard passage (standard even for the tradition of medieval rhetoric) of the Institutio oratoria – one, however, that Valla has changed and abridged in a significant way. In the last section of chapter 12, the final, concluding part of book I of the Institutio, Quintilian writes: And I trust that there is not one even among my readers who would think of calculating the monetary value of such studies. But he that has enough of the divine spark to conceive the ideal eloquence, he who, as the great tragic poet says, regards “oratory” as “the queen of all the world” and seeks not the transitory gains of advocacy, but those stable and lasting rewards which his own soul and knowledge and contemplation can give, he will easily per- suade himself to spend his time not, like so many, in the theatre or in the Campus Martius, in dicing or in idle talk, to say naught of the hours that are wasted in sleep or long drawn banqueting, but in listening rather to the geometrician and the teacher of music. For by this he will win a richer
177 Valla’s text increases in meaning if understood within the more general humanist discourse on the city. On this point cf. Eugenio Garin, Rinascite e Rivoluzioni. Movimenti culturali dal XIV al XVIII secolo (Bari: Laterza, 1975), 235–254; and idem, Scienza e vita civile nel Rinascimento italiano (Bari: Laterza, 1965), 33–56. But see also what Alberti says in De re aedificatoria, book VII, chapter 1 and book IX, chapter 1: Leon Battista Alberti, L’Architettura, Latin text and Italian translation by Giovanni Orlandi (Milano: Edizioni Il Polifilo, 1966), 529–537 and 779–788.
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harvest of delight than can ever be gathered from the pleasures of the ignorant.178 The unnamed “tragedian” – apparently Valla’s “noble” (nobilis) source agrees with his “great” (non ignobilis) counterpart in Quintilian – is the Latin writer Pacuvius, who lived between about 220 and about 130 b.c. Quintilian, in his historical review of Greek and Roman literature (Institutio oratoria, ch. 1, bk. X), counts him as one of the earliest excellent Roman tragedians: Among writers of tragedy Accius and Pacuvius are most remarkable for the force of their general reflections (gravitatem sententiarum), the weight of their words (verborum pondere), and the dignity of their characters (auctori- tate personarum).179 In his tragedy Hermiona, Pacuvius echoes a verse from Euripides’ Hecuba – “persuasion, sole queen of mankind” – and with an expression not unworthy of the original calls eloquence the highest and most effec- tive art of persuasion: “the persuader and queen of all the world.”180 Pacuvius’ translation of Euripides had already inspired Cicero in De oratore. And it is probably through the medium of Cicero’s dialogue, if not directly from it, that Quintilian takes up the description of eloquence as “queen of the world.” In De oratore we read: But so potent is that Eloquence, rightly styled, by an excellent poet, “per- suader and queen of all the world,” that she can not only support the sinking and bend the upstanding, but, like a good and brave commander, can even make prisoner a resisting antagonist.181
178 Quintilian, Istitutio oratoria, I.12.17–19: “nec velim quidem lectorem dari mihi quid studia referant computaturum. qui vero imaginem ipsam eloquentiae divina quadam mente conceperit quique illam (ut ait non ignobilis tragicus) reginam rerum orationem, ponet ante oculos fructumque non ex stipe advocationum sed ex animo suo et contempla- tione ac scientia petet perpetuum illum nec fortunate subiectum, facile persuadebit sibi, ut tempora, quae spectaculis, campo, tesseris, otiosis denique sermonibus, ne dicam somno et conviviorum mora conteruntur, geometrae potius ac musico impendat, quanto plus delectationis habiturus quam ex illis ineruditis voluptatibus” (tr. E.H. Butler; emphasis added). 179 Ibid., X.1.97: “tragoediae scriptores veterum Accius atque Pacuvius clarissimi gravi- tatem sententiarum, verborum pondere, auctoritate personarum” (tr. E.H. Butler). 180 Euripides, Hecuba, v. 816: “peithō de tēn tyrannon anthrōpois monēn”; Pacuvius, Hermiona, fr. 187: “flexanima atque omnium regina rerum.” Euripides’ passage should be read in its fuller context (Hecuba, vv. 814–819) as confirmation of the imitation of him that underlies all of Pacuvius’ work. 181 Cicero, De oratore, tr. E.W. Sutton and H. Rackham, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), II. 44.187: “tantam vim habet illa, quae recte a bono poeta dicta est flexanima atque omnium regina rerum, oratio, ut non modo inclinantem
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But the art of persuasion’s sophistic ascendance to primacy does not keep the conception of rhetoric from undergoing a radical transformation in the Institutio oratoria. Indeed, in Quintilian’s text rhetoric takes on much fuller dimensions and, as a consequence, acquires specific characteristics that differentiate it from the conception of Euripides and Pacuvius as well as from the one found in Cicero’s De oratore. At the end of chapter 12, book I of the Institutio (text quoted on p. 267 above), Quintilian does not stop merely at extending the art of eloquence beyond the realm of forensic per- formance. On the one hand he elevates rhetoric to the primary and hege- monic function of governing ethical and civil conduct in society (“queen of all the world”). On the other he considers it an instrument of knowledge (scientia) and a context for contemplation (contemplatio), for the interior formation of the individual. Thus rhetoric is simultaneously knowledge and language (practical and theoretical), dealing both with contingent events and with the social and personal world not subject to ‘fortune,’ i.e. the civic community and the individual’s interior mind. Since the text and the context of Quintilian’s work converge in substan- tiating this definition and conception of rhetoric, Valla could not have found a better passage in the tradition of classical rhetoric to which to refer for resolving the antinomy between rhetoric and theology. It was still necessary, however, to make the reference to Quintilian act as more than a mere citation in support of the counter-response to the objector and his anti-humanist thesis. With a decisive and most effective act of linguistic- semantic dislocation, in which specific concepts are adopted but their content and meaning simultaneously modified, Valla takes up Quintilian’s precise conception of rhetoric and at the same time transcends its dimen- sions, attributing to it a definite theological function. In Valla’s hands rhetoric undergoes a true transformation in kind. This becomes clear if the particular linguistic-semantic modality is highlighted by which Valla draws on Quintilian’s text and incorporates it into the context of his own argument. While repeating Pacuvius’ phrase,
excipere aut stantem inclinare, sed etiam adversantem ac repugnantem, ut ‘imperator’ bonus ac fortis capere possit” (translation modified). See Leeman, Orationis ratio (1974), 425–427. Important and suggestive, also for a thematic study of the relationship between “humanism” and “crisis” in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, are Vernant’s observations on the relationship between tragedy and rhetoric: Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal- Naquet, Mito e tragedia nell’antica Grecia (Torino: Einaudi, 1976), 8–28 and esp. n. 1 [origi- nal French ed. = Mythe e tragédie en Grèce ancienne (Paris: F. Maspero, 1972); English translation = Tragedy and Myth in Ancient Greece, tr. Janet Lloyd (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1981)].
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“eloquence, queen of the world” (eloquentia, regina rerum), he encloses and synthesizes Quintilian’s entire passage in the compact formula, “rhet- oric, perfect wisdom” (rhetorica, perfecta sapientia). Since for Quintilian rhetoric is both knowledge (scientia) and contemplation (contemplatio), in Valla’s terms it rightfully rises to the level of wisdom (sapientia), insofar as it comprehends and governs the totality of human knowledge. It includes not only theoretical knowledge but also the ethical and civic knowledge peculiar to the collective and individual actions of human beings. Thus Valla attributes to rhetoric the practical function of pru- dence, and he applies to it the definition that had been the exclusive domain of Aristotle’s “first philosophy” (philosophia prima), metaphysics. And thus Valla once again puts forth the thesis that had already been indicted at his inquisitorial trial in Naples in 1444, although this time with greater depth, precision, and meaning: “the orator is more than a lover of wisdom (philosophos); he is wise (sophos).”182 Through the medium of Quintilian’s Institutio, then, Valla transforms rhetoric into a concept that is incommensurate with the sophistic context of Euripides and Pacuvius. For he transfers it, imparting it with qualita- tively different characteristics, into the realm of Christian culture and of that culture’s foundation, the science of faith (scientia fidei). Indeed, it must be stressed that in defining rhetoric as “perfect wisdom,” Valla employed a terminology whose deeper significance could not escape those familiar with the lexicon of the medieval, scholastic tradition. Therefore, by using the name “perfect wisdom,” Valla enunciated rheto- ric’s inherent power as forcefully as possible to the holder of the anti- humanist thesis: he portrayed it as knowledge in the sense of both (practical) prudence and (theoretical) wisdom, and thus as being of the greatest organic use to theology. This last conclusion brings us back to the other passage from the pref- ace to book IV of the Elegantiae, the first of the three passages quoted above. To paraphrase Valla: if all the ‘arts,’ including painting, sculpture, engraving, and (among the “liberal” arts) music, contribute together or singly to the worship and the dignity of “divine things” (“much use and ornament derives for divine things”), such that they seem to have been
182 Cf. Camporeale, “Da Lorenzo Valla a Tommaso Moro,” 24–25 (reprinted in idem, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 38–39). [See Valla’s Pro se et contra calumniatores ad Eugenium IV. Pont. Max. Apologia, in idem, Opera omnia, 1:799: “oratorem esse virum sapientem, quantum in hominem cadit: hoc est, plus esse quam philosophum et sophon.”]
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designed for such an end by nature (“such that they seem to have been born for this very purpose”), how much more beneficial will the art of rhetoric be, how much greater profit will it bring, as an organic instrument in the service of those same divine truths (“all the more so will such be derived from those who are eloquent”)? Once again it is Valla’s very own formulations that call to mind parallels with and departures from Aquinas. While Thomas bases the analogic relationship between philosophy and theology on the ontological princi- ple “nature is the preamble to grace,” Valla argues for the reduction of rhetoric to theology on the basis of a certain historical connaturality of artistic praxis, employed consistently throughout Christian tradition and civilization – ancient, medieval, and contemporary – in liturgical and aes- thetic service to the divine: “such that they seem to have been born for this very purpose.” In other words, the principle of Thomas’s analogy seems to be taken up by Valla and, so to speak, historicized; it is projected along the dimensions of a Christian civilization that had reorganized the arts for the service primarily not of the profane city (civitas) but of the temple of God (templum Dei). Hence the further consequence deduced by Valla: once rhetoric’s pri- macy among the other arts, as “perfect wisdom,” is rediscovered, and thus also its status as the supreme art governing all the others, it becomes a tool of direct and immediate use to theology, transcending the purely decora- tive function in the temple of God to which the other arts are limited. By their very nature, the other arts can only operate on a level inferior to the highest one, which is “perfect wisdom.” Valla’s conclusion, reached by continuing the line of his own counter-argument to the objection based on the topos of Jerome’s dream, appears to follow extremely well from the initial premises: Therefore Jerome was accused not of being a Ciceronian, but of not being a Christian, as he wrongly proclaimed had been the case when he scorned sacred literature. It was not the study of this art [rhetoric] but the dispropor- tionate study of this or any other art, such that no place was left for better ones, that was rebuked. Only Jerome was accused, not others; otherwise oth- ers would have been censured in a similar way.183
183 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 616–618: “Quare non fuit illa accusatio quod ciceronianus esset Hieronymus, sed quod non christianus, qualem se falso esse praedicaverat, cum litteras sacras despiceret. Non studium huius artis sed nimium studium, sive huius artis sive alterius, ita ut locus melioribus non relinquatur, reprehensum. Non ceteri sed solus Hieronymus accusatus est, alioqui ceteri simili castigatione correpti fuissent.”
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All that can actually be gathered from the Letter to Eustochium, Valla argues, is the indication, or better, the declaration of a phase or moment of cultural and religious crisis at this point along Jerome’s development as a Christian thinker. Jerome the “Ciceronian,” the worshipper of classical rhetoric, is no longer a thinker organic to Christianity; and Jerome the “Christian,” disgusted by the style of Scripture, is not yet able to under- stand rhetoric in its dimension as “perfect wisdom.” Jerome had arrived at the dramatic impasse, experiencing it with deep personal suffering, of the theoretical and practical opposition between pagan culture and biblical revelation, manifested in the dilemma of the antinomy between human and sacred literature (humanae litterae and sacrae litterae). Thus the Jerominian topos, as invoked by the anti-humanist, is in its essence an exemplary referent, emblematic both of and in the history of the Christian tradition. But equally emblematic, Valla immediately adds, is the solution pro- vided to that specific antinomy by Jerome’s own works – a solution embodied fully and profoundly in the interpretive task of translation and the exegetical task of commentary to which the Latin Father would dedi- cate the rest of his life. For this he becomes the greatest exponent and the exemplary figure in the Latin Christian tradition (much more so than the other Church Fathers, who had not undergone the same punishment): Nor did Jerome dare to prohibit others from engaging in it [the study of lit- erature]; on the contrary he praised the eloquence of many, from both ear- lier times and his own. But why talk of others? Who is more eloquent than Jerome himself? Who is more rhetorical? Who, although he is wont to hide it, is more prepared, more eager, or more careful to speak well?184 The sense in which Valla interpreted Jerome’s solution to the humanist antinomy (the problem of conscience) and the organic use of rhetoric as philological criticism can be highlighted by circumscribing it within a suf- ficiently clear frame, i.e. by connecting this passage, quoted from the pref- ace to the Elegantiae, to a letter sent to Giovanni Aurispa in December of 1441. Referring to his brand-new Declamatio (1440) on the Donation of Constantine, Valla praises his work in terms of literary composition: “I have written nothing more rhetorical.”185 Here, in a piece of private
184 Ibid., 618: “Neque ille hoc aliis vetare ausus est ne facerent; contraque plurimos lau- davit tum superiorum tum suorum temporum eloquentes. Verum quid multis agimus? quid Hieronymo ipso eloquentius? quid magis oratorium? quid, licet ille saepe dissimulare velit, bene dicendi sollicitius, studiosius, observantius?” (emphasis added). 185 Lorenzo Valla, Epistole, ed. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padova: Antenore, 1984), 252.91–92: “qua nihil magis oratorium scripsi” (emphasis added).
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correspondence coeval with the writing of the Elegantiae, we find the same expression with which Valla describes the sum of Jerome’s exegetical work on the Old and New Testaments. We need not repeat what we have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere (and amply so, we believe) in order to interpret the description “rhetori- cal” (oratorium), in the letter to Aurispa, as anything other than an expres- sion of the very methodological principle and analytical basis on which the entire Declamatio was constructed. Furthermore, the term “rhetorical” also takes on prescriptive significance and a particular meaning within the system of Quintilian’s rhetoric. Specifically, it is used to describe the application of philological and historical analysis to a literary or diplo- matic text, e.g. the pseudo-Donation of Constantine.186 In the passage of the Elegantiae cited above, the term “rhetorical” undoubtedly has greater meaning, albeit still falling within Valla’s view of Quintilian’s rhetoric, understood as the science of philological and historical criticism. Hence the description of Jerome’s work as rhetorical, meaning that it is emi- nently a work of rhetoric in a way that far transcends the boundaries of formal Ciceronian eloquence. What is more, Valla incorporates into the flow of his own reasoning the arguments that Jerome himself had used in his Contra Rufinum (Apology against Rufinus) when reflecting on the subject of his “censure” as recounted in the Letter to Eustochium. “When Rufinus reminds him of the dream,” Valla recalls, [Jerome] ridicules him and openly acknowledges eagerly reading the works of the pagans and says that they ought to be read eagerly; and yet this is clear in many other passages, even without his confession, and especially in the Letter to the Orator Magnus.187 It must first of all be noted that Valla’s argumentative line regarding “the censure of Jerome,” a reference that had been cited throughout history by those opposed to philosophy and literature, actually follows a traditional
186 Cf. Salvatore I. Camporeale, “Giovanni Tolosani, O.P. e la teologia antiumanistica agl’inizi della Riforma. L’Opusculum antivalliano De Constantini Donatione,” in Xenia Medii Aevi historiam illustrantia oblata Thomae Kaeppeli, eds. Raymundus Creytens and Pius Künzle (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1978), 809–831. [See also the discussion of the term oratorium in idem, “Lorenzo Valla and the De falso credita donatione: Rhetoric, Freedom, and Ecclesiology in the Fifteenth Century,” on pp. 27 and 143 of this volume. Eds.] 187 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 618: “Obiciente sibi hoc somnium Rufino hominem deridet planeque fatetur se lectitare opera gentilium et lectitare debere, idque cum in aliis multis locis, quamquam etiam sine confessione palam est, tum vero epistola illa Ad Magnum oratorem.”
200034 200034 274 salvatore i. camporeale interpretation. The parallelism with Thomas’s own procedure in the Commentary on Boethius is obvious enough, although Valla exhibits pecu- liarities that we have already had occasion to point out. For example, his references to the individual passages in Jerome are undergirded by a more precisely philological interpretation. And of course, the two men aim their arguments at different objectives: Thomas at the defense of philosophy, Valla at the critique and overcoming of philosophy in favor of rhetoric. But to move from general considerations to more detailed observations, close attention must be given to Valla’s reference to the controversy between Jerome and Rufinus. As is clear not only from the Contra Rufinum but also from parallel passages in Jerome’s letters, this reference points directly to the key question of the entire controversy, namely the prob- lematic of the opposition between Christian language and literature, which underlies Jerome’s work on scriptural exegesis. Nor does Valla omit to mention Jerome’s ironic response to Rufinus’ admonitions: You require of me in my sleep what you have never done in your waking hours. Am I guilty of a great crime if I said that girls and virgins of Christ should not read secular books and, when warned in a dream, promised not to read them myself?188 Valla connects the reference from the Contra Rufinum to the pertinent passage in the Letter to Magnus, which was the other traditional topos for combating those who maintained the absolute incompatibility between the love of Sacred Scripture and the study of literature. As mentioned above, the Letter to Magnus was the counter-citation to the Letter to Eustochium, i.e. to the topos of the dream in which Jerome was condemned for Ciceronianism.189 At this point, Valla is in a good position to reject all reductive interpreta- tions of Jerome’s corpus. The utilization of Greek and Roman literature in Jerome’s hermeneutical work is so abundant and consistent that it cannot be traced to any sort of sedimentation from his early school days. All of his
188 Jerome, Contra Rufinum, bk. III, ch. 32: PL 23:481: “te exigere a dormiente quod numquam vigilans praestitisti. Magni criminis reus sum, si puellis et virginibus Christi dixi saeculares libros non legendos et me in somniis commonitum promisisse ne legerem?”; but see also bk. I, chs. 30–31: PL 23:421–424. 189 For an overview of Jerome’s biblical exegesis and the controversies in which he was involved, see Angelo Penna, Principi e caratteri dell’esegesi di S. Girolamo (Roma: Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1950); E.F. Sutcliffe, “Jerome,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, 3 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963–1970), vol. II (ed. G.W.H. Lampe, 1969), 80–101; and ibid., vol. I (eds. P.R. Ackroyd and C.F. Evans, 1970), 510–541; J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975).
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exegetical work on the Old and New Testaments stands as a constant wit- ness to the compossibility between the organic use of pagan culture and the philological interpretation of Sacred Scripture. This fact is of great importance, as it clearly implies a continuous, ever-deepening familiarity with and study of classical literature. Valla emphasizes that Jerome “often adduced pagan books as witnesses.” And he immediately adds, with spe- cial reference to his anti-humanist interlocutor, if it is not permitted to read pagan books, certainly less so is it to show that they must be read; and if he were to dissuade us from reading them – which he does not do – I would think it more necessary to pay attention to what he himself does than to what he says others should do.190 Valla continues: once Jerome decided to devote his efforts to the study of Sacred Scripture (which he had earlier scorned), he began reading pagan authors again with equal seriousness, “either to acquire their eloquence or to condemn their false opinions while approving their correct ones.”191 Actually – Valla goes on – all Jerome did was to continue along a trail already blazed in the past, namely the early tradition of the Eastern and Western Church Fathers. Indeed, Jerome himself testifies to this often, especially in his letters. Valla identifies the particular authors as “Hilary, Ambrose, Augustine, Lactantius, Basil, Gregory, Chrysostom” – the same names that would crop up again in the Encomium. At the end of this list he immediately adds: “and very many others who in every age adorned the precious gems of divine utterance with the gold and silver of eloquence.” To Valla’s mind, Jerome’s exegetical work, as well as the dominant, most significant part of the Greek and Latin patristic tradition, offers definitive and irrefutable proof of the compossibility between classical literature and Sacred Scripture, between Greco-Roman rhetoric and doctrinal study. Indeed, the great Greek and Latin Fathers saw no insoluble antinomy between the scientific disciplines of rhetoric and theology: “they did [not] abandon one science on account of the other.”192
190 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 618: “Quid quod libros gentilium saepe in testimonium assumit? Quod si non licet legere, minus profecto legendos exhi- bere; et si nos dehortaretur a lectione gentilium – quod non facit – magis intuendum puta- rem quid ipse ageret quam quid agendum aliis diceret.” 191 Ibid., 620: “sive ut illinc eloquentiam mutuaretur sive ut illorum, bene dicta probans, male dicta reprehenderet.” 192 Ibid., 620: “Hilarius, Gregorius, Chrysostomus aliique plurimi qui in omni aetate praetiosas illas divini eloquii gemmas auro argentoque eloquentiae vestierunt, neque alteram propter alteram scientiam reliquerunt.”
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4.4. The Opposition between Philosophical Theology and Rhetorical Theology, and the Critical Reduction of the Vulgate to the Greek Truth (veritas graeca) Having answered the objections of his adversary, by means of both ad hominem arguments and appeals to authority (ex auctoritate), Valla can now move on to the enunciation of his own thesis. This is his definitive response – “my view” – to his anti-humanist interlocutor, the crucial and defining premise for the final and most important part of the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae. But in my view, if someone undertakes to write about theology, it matters little whether he brings to it some other study or not, be it canon law or geom- etry or medicine or philosophy. For they contribute more or less nothing. But if he is ignorant of eloquence, I think he is utterly unworthy to talk about theology. And without a doubt only the eloquent, like those I mentioned, are the pillars of the church. And this was the case going all the way back to the apostles, among whom Paul seems to me to stand out for nothing other than his eloquence.193 Valla’s thesis makes a distinction between the disciplines (named in the manuscript variant in italics) that remain marginal to the sacred science (scientia sacra) of theology, on the one hand, and rhetoric, on the other, which is instead a tool and an integral part of theological study. He also bases his thesis on the grand patristic tradition. What is more, he connects this tradition in a direct and continuous line to the preaching of the apos- tolic church (out of which it in fact grew) and, above all, to Paul’s writings. Here it is clear that Valla’s Paulinism, prescribed as a specific mode of the- ologizing in the Encomium of 1457, constitutes the maturation of an essen- tial characteristic dating back to the 1430s and 1440s and is thus rooted in his greatest rhetorical work: the Elegantiae. In contrast to the rather defensive tone that had characterized his argu- ment so far, Valla now wholly inverts the anti-humanist thesis – it, too, a constant element in the development and cultural life of the Church’s his- tory, and one that had nearly run parallel to the dominant tradition of the
193 Ibid., 620 (italicized section is a variant found in ms. Florence, Bibl. Laur., Conv. soppr. 187, f. 60r): “At mea quidem sententia, si quis ad scribendum in theologia accedat parvi refert an aliam aliquam facultatem, sive canonum sive geometriam sive medicinam sive philosophiam afferat an non afferat. Nihil enim fere conferunt. At qui ignarus eloquentiae est, hunc indignum prorsus qui de theologia loquatur existimo. Et certe soli eloquentes, quales ii quos enumeravi, columnae ecclesiae sunt. Etiam ut ab Apostolis usque repetas, inter quos mihi Paulus nulla alia re eminere quam eloquentia videtur.”
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Eastern and Western Church Fathers. On the basis of his earlier references to the Fathers and the New Testament writings of the Apostles, he insists, “So you see how the exact opposite conclusion is reached: it is not study- ing eloquence that must be rebuked, but not studying it.”194 In Valla’s work, and perhaps for the first time ever – as Poggio clearly understood and wrote in his Invectivae in L. Vallam (Invectives against Lorenzo Valla) in the early 1450s – the overcoming of the antinomy between rhetoric and theology becomes the epistemological foundation for a new, specifically humanist perspective on biblical and ecclesiological study. Valla depicts the humanist principle of rhetorical theology as a recovery both of the mode of theologizing underlying the apostolic Scriptures (especially those of Paul) and of the epistemological basis of the whole patristic tradition. Indeed, on this count it should be noted that scholasticism – to which rhetorical theology was radically opposed – was not able (and never tried) to raise consistent arguments for the defense and elaboration of its own philosophical theology on the basis of this kind of New Testament scriptural authority. Even more illuminating is Valla’s clarification, following directly upon the last passage cited: I am acting as if I were offering a defense of eloquence against its detractors, which is more than I intended. For our object is not this but to write about the elegance of the Latin language, which nevertheless acts as a stepping stone to eloquence itself. If someone is not eloquent, he should not be cen- sured if he was unequal to the task and did not shun the work involved. But whoever does not know how to speak elegantly and yet commits his thoughts to writing, especially in theology, is utterly shameless. And if he says that he does so deliberately, he is completely out of his mind.195 Thus Valla defines more precisely the function of “elegance” (elegantia), a theme which here is treated apologetically in the context of the dispute over literature and is derived from a precise theological tradition. But at the same time, Valla also intends to justify the place of this preface (to book IV) in the context of the Elegantiae as a whole.
194 Ibid., 620: “Vides igitur ut in contrarium res ipsa recidit. Non modo non reprehen- dum est studere eloquentiae, verum etiam reprehendum non studere.” 195 Ibid., 620: “Et ego sic ago tamquam eloquentiae contra calumniantes patrocinium praestem, quod est maius proposito meo. Non enim de hac, sed de elegantia linguae lati- nae scribimus, ex qua tamen gradus fit ad ipsam eloquentiam. Verum si quis eloquens non sit, ita demum non erit castigandus: si talis non potuit evadere, non si hunc laborem effu- git. Qui vero eleganter loqui nescit, et cogitationes suas litteris mandat, in theologia prae- sertim, impudentissimus est; et si id consulto facere se ait, insanissimus.”
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Indeed, the object of the linguistic treatment of “elegance” was in no way to consider, much less focus on, the study of classical literature in its various relations with theology. On the contrary, the Elegantiae was aimed directly at the “cultivators of the Roman tongue” (cultores romanae lin- guae) and “those most eager to speak well” (bene loquendi studiosissimi), as Valla often repeats throughout the work. Its intention was to offer an analytical and methodological tool for effecting what Quintilian had called (following Cicero’s terminology) the “embellishment” (exornatio) of speaking and writing: “the wondrous elegance of [Latin] speech.”196 The Elegantiae was thus on the one hand a study of the grammatical and syn- tactical composition of the Latin language (morphology of the partes ora- tionis, or parts of speech), and on the other an analysis of that language’s semantic structure (the investigation of verborum significatio, or the meaning of words). But beyond the immediate substance of the Elegantiae and its complex articulation, which called for its subdivision into six books, Valla’s work aimed directly at recovering the discipline of grammar (litteratura), in both the ‘methodological’ and ‘historical’ dimensions that constitute “grammar according to Quintilian” as opposed to “grammar according to Priscian.” As can also be confirmed on the basis of other texts by Valla (parallel to the Elegantiae), the specific objective was the typically human- ist one of transcending medieval speculative grammar, the function of which was essentially normative and prescriptive. In sum, with the Elegantiae Valla restored to grammar (ars grammaticalis), in a formative turn for post-medieval linguistics, an epistemological principle which can properly be defined as the doctrine of the fundamentals of the science of language.197 By stating that his treatment of the “elegance of the Latin language” was restricted to a level preliminary to the science of rhetoric, one that was “a stepping stone on the way to eloquence itself,” Valla was actually echoing
196 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria X.1.114: “mira sermonis [latini] … elegantia.” 197 Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 101–108. But for the general theme of this fourth part of our essay, see first of all Charles Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness. Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols. (London: Constable, 1970), in particular vol. I, ch. 3: “Lorenzo Valla: voluptas et fruitio, verba et res” (pp. 103–170). This is the source of the expression “rhetorical theology,” (pp. 142f. and pp. 126–128), which we have applied to the context of Valla’s Quintilianism. One should also keep in mind Trinkaus’s observations (pp. 136ff., esp. 150–170) on chapter 12, book III of De vero falsoque bono, which we have already discussed. Finally, on Valla’s use of philology in the service of theology, Trinkaus speaks at length in vol. II, ch. 12: “Italian Humanism and the Scriptures” (pp. 563–614), esp. 571–578.
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Quintilian’s concept of grammar as the foundation of rhetoric. So much is clear from chapter 1, book II of the Institutio, where this conception of grammar is specifically discussed and explained (obviously within the larger context of book II). This section of Quintilian was decisive for Valla’s linguistic analysis and, before that, for his own understanding and defini- tion of rhetoric as philological criticism. On the other hand, it is precisely on the basis of Quintilian’s conception of grammar (as an integral part of and the structural basis for rhetoric) that Valla extends his discourse here from rhetoric’s general function in theology to the relations (even more fundamental and inescapable) between the art of grammar and theologi- cal language. Methodological positions and polemical accents emerge here that Valla would take up again in other places, especially in his exegesis of the Greek and Latin New Testament in the Collatio of 1443 and then in the Adnotationes of the 1450s. Once again he would raise his steady accusation of those who refused to admit that theology, precisely because it is a sci- ence, must “submit to the rules of grammar.”198 But above all he would show by the example of his own scriptural exegesis how elegance should be transposed, or better, extended from secular to sacred literature: that is, he provided a model for critical philology’s decisive turn from classical literature to New Testament scripture. Theological argument based its premises on biblical language. And since it, like every other language, fell within the specific sphere of gram- mar, theology could not escape the problematics dictated by the grammatical art. Specifically, since New Testament revelation had been historically written down in the standard tongues of Greece and Rome, theological study had to confront the same issue with which the analytical study of classical literature had already come to grips and to which Quintilian’s grammar had given a specifically linguistic perspective: the structural difference between the Greek and Latin languages. Hence Valla’s specifically theological problem: the linguistic difference, in the editorial transmission of the Old and New Testament scriptures, between the Latin Vulgate and the “Greek truth” (veritas graeca) of the original text, and consequently the attempt semantically to reduce the former to the latter. For Valla, this problem of biblical exegesis fell within the broader context of the relationship between Greek and Latin
198 [Lorenzo Valla, Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, “In Mattheum 4,” in idem, Opera omnia, 1:808: “quamquam sint qui negent theologiam inservire praeceptis artis grammaticae.”]
200034 200034 280 salvatore i. camporeale literature and culture (both Christian and non-Christian). It would find pointed expression in the opening pages of the Collatio/Adnotationes, but it would be defined, both generally and specifically, in the preface to the Latin translation of Thucydides: What is more useful, more productive, or more necessary than the transla- tion of books? It seems to me to be a kind of commerce in the best arts. I compare it to a great thing when I say it is like commerce. For what is more advantageous for human affairs than that which provides everything per- taining to nourishment, cultivation, defense, decoration, and finally, to the delights of life, such that nothing may ever be lacking and everything may everywhere be in abundance? And what is said to have been the case in the golden age, namely that all things were somehow in common for all people, holds equally for the translation of languages, except that translation is more distinguished, since the goods of the mind are preferable to those of the body. For this traffic in translation supplies us with things that nourish, decorate, strengthen and delight our souls, nearly making them more divine. What is more pleasant, more salutary, more worthy of love – in a word, bet- ter – than the books that are translated into our own language from Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaean, or Punic, whether of historians, orators, poets, philoso- phers, doctors, or theologians? We Latins would not even have commerce with God if the Old Testament had not been translated from Hebrew and the New from Greek. We would need more time than is available here to give a full praise of translation ….199 The particular theme expressed in this passage, to which our analysis of the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae also brought us, is directly echoed in a quotation we encountered earlier in the Encomium: “the nature of Greek is different from that of Latin. This would be a rather tedious subject to discuss, and it is a question for another time.” It thus seems
199 Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, 278–280: “Quid utilius, quid uberius, quid etiam magis necessarium librorum interpretatione? Ut haec mihi mercatura quaedam optimarum artium esse videatur. Magnae rei eam comparo, cum mercaturae comparo: quid enim illa in rebus humanis conducibilius quae omnia ad victum, ad cultum, ad praesidium, ad orna- mentum, ad delitias denique vitae pertinentia comportat, ut nihil usquam desit, omnia ubique abundent? Et quod in aureo saeculo fuisse fertur, sint cunctorum quodammodo cuncta communia. Idem fit in translatione linguarum, sed tanto praeclarius quanto potiora sunt bona mentis corporis bonis; siquidem ex rebus, quas ista transferendi negotiatio nobis apportat, animi aluntur, vestiuntur, roborantur, delectantur ac prope diviniores efficiuntur. Nam quid suavius, salubrius, amabilius et, ut uno complectar verbo melius quam libri qui vel e graeca vel ex hebraea vel e chaldaica punicave lingua in nostram traducuntur, sive historicorum sive oratorum sive poetarum sive philosophorum sive medicorum sive theologorum? Adeo nullum cum Deo nos latini commercium habere- mus, nisi Testamentum Vetus ex hebraeo et Novum e graeco foret traductum. Longiore opus esset oratione quam ut huic tempori conveniret ad omnes laudes interpretationis exsequendas ….”
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appropriate to dedicate the next section of our essay to this subject. This interlude will serve to tie together, by way of a comparative reading, the variations and repetitions of this theme contained in the Encomium of St. Thomas, in the introduction to the Latin translation of Thucydides, and in the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae. Thereupon we will return in the subsequent section to our analysis of the Elegantiae.200
4.5. The Preface to Thucydides’ History, Nicholas V’s Literary Project, and the Question of “Translation”: Translation (translatio linguarum) as Commerce (mercatura rerum) The long passage just cited constitutes the most important part of the praise of translation contained in the preface to Valla’s Latin version of Thucydides’ History, commissioned by Nicholas V and finished in the summer of 1452. The preface praises the humanist pope (to whom it is addressed as a dedicatory letter) for having set aside a whole sector of his planned Vatican Library to Latin translations of Greek classical and patris- tic texts. This is Valla’s cue, which he views as a golden opportunity, to treat the complex question of translation and express his thoughts fully on the subject. Indeed, Valla seeks here to define the philological activity of translation and to praise it, especially with regard to the Greco-Hellenistic and Semitic-Eastern literary patrimonies, as one of the greatest contribu- tions to contemporary Latin culture, in every branch of sacred and pro- fane knowledge. It is known that the subject of translation was variously raised and discussed in the Middle Ages, from Boethius to Albert the Great. Here Valla takes it up – with his mention of Nicholas V’s project – in a specifically humanist way. On the one hand he sees languages and lin- guistic differences as historically different and semantically alternative cultural spaces. On the other he conceives of translation as a kind of “traffic” (transferendi negotiatio): a general exchange and circulation of handmade goods and products. Valla could not have chosen a comparison more meaningful for his con- temporaries, and especially for the adherents to the new humanist cul- ture, than that adduced in this praise of translation. The comparison relates – in an almost analogical way, beyond a simple metaphorical
200 The text of the preface to the translation of Thucydides’ History is available in Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, 278–289, but see also 74–75 of Adorno’s introduction (to the anthol- ogy). Adorno’s entire essay (78 pp. with an invaluable bibliography) is still an excellent piece of scholarship on Valla’s work as a whole.
200034 200034 282 salvatore i. camporeale connection – the philological operation of translation (interpretatio) to the activity of commerce (mercatura). Both are defined as arts (artes) whose similarity to one another stems from their incredibly intense con- temporary flourishing, and as activities aimed at transcending geographic and linguistic borders, at the creation of interrelations between different communities and societies. That is, they operate in spatial and temporal dimensions beyond every impediment and boundary; their aim is to facili- tate civil society and intercourse in human language. Commerce channels and puts into circulation, for the purpose of proper distribution, every sort of good necessitated by civil society and social interaction. By the exigencies and market conditions of supply and demand, and through the mechanism of buying and selling, products enter into commercial circulation according to their multiple and multi- form needs and uses (“everything pertaining to nourishment, cultivation, defense, decoration, and finally, to the delights of life”). Through com- merce an attempt is made to return to complete and universal well-being (“such that nothing may be lacking and everything may everywhere be in abundance”), i.e. to the community of goods, as if with a view to the recov- ery of that mythical “golden age” in which all goods were available to one and all according to need (“all things were somehow in common for all people”). The praise of commerce, which was not foreign (even if tangential) to the mercantile ideology inherent in the humanist view of contemporary civil and political society, merges into the exaltation of literary transla- tion. This, too, consists in “traffic,” although here it concerns a much more noble commodity: “translation is more distinguished, since the goods of the mind are preferable to those of the body.” Undertaken for the satisfac- tion of the mind, this kind of linguistic exchange of writings hailing from every branch of knowledge, from every literary form and cultural context, aids in educating and nourishing the human spirit, “almost making [it] more divine.” And we Latins – Valla now concludes, with a statement in which all the analogical tensions and resonances of liturgical language in his discourse converge – we Christians of the Western Church “would not even have commerce with God” if not for the Latin translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew and of the New Testament form Greek (espe- cially in the form of the Vulgate). Against the background of the analogical relationship between com- merce (mercatura rerum) and translation (translatio linguarum) that underlies the articulation of Valla’s argument, Quintilian’s conception of “language” as a primary function of exchange in social life emerges.
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Language, in Quintilian’s view, as a mechanism and instrument of exchange in human interrelations, as a social institution of communica- tion, is similar to a monetary system in continuous circulation, structured (by custom) according to relationships of relative value. “Language,” Quintilian writes in the fundamental chapter 4, book I of the Institutio, “is to be used like money: as common currency.”201 The Quintilianesque comparison of language to money portrays both, according to a strict analogic parallelism, as institutional instruments of communication and exchange, as social mechanisms of cultural and com- mercial transactions – and not only within one community but also between communities speaking different languages and engaging in dif- ferent kinds of commerce. This extremely dense metaphor leads Valla to the specific angle from which he views the act of translating texts belong- ing to culturally different spaces. The translator’s activity is seen as part of the quest for and the broadening of political rule, as the intellectual dupli- cate of commercial and financial expansion. As a philological praxis, translation is actualized through the collection and “importation” of bib- liographic material from every part of the world. As such, this recovery and reading of the literary, historical, and scientific texts of other peoples presupposes a basic motive: the will to make one’s own language domi- nant. It aims to assimilate the cultures of other civilizations, past and pres- ent, and somehow to bring them within the sphere of one’s own linguistic community. Likewise, the expansion of commercial and financial exchange involves the imposition of one’s own coinage as the dominant one, almost as a standard currency. This is exactly what was happening with Florence’s currency through the development and expansion of the Medici bank under the direction of Cosimo and his collaborators. Especially in the years in which Valla was completing his Latin translation of Thucydides and its accompanying dedicatory letter, the florin was establishing itself on the commercial routes of Europe and in the more important financial centers across the Alps and, before that, in Italy (start- ing right in Nicholas V’s Rome). Valla elaborates his praise of Nicholas V’s literary project – “quite a magnificent undertaking” of high culture, “unique and worthy of the
201 [Institutio oratoria, I.6.3: “Consuetudo certissima est loquendi magistra, uten- dumque plane sermone ut nummo, cui publica forma est.”] Cf. the references to Latin authors (Aulus Gellius, Ulpian, Caesar, etc.) with which Valla glossed Quintilian’s passage in ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat., lat. 7723, f. 10v. [See also the discussion of this metaphor in Camporeale, “Lorenzo Valla and the De falso credita donatione,” on pp. 95–96 in this volume.]
200034 200034 284 salvatore i. camporeale wisdom” of the patron of the humanists202 – along the parallels and con- trasts of a series of significant comparisons and assimilations: commerce/ translation (mercatura rerum/translatio linguarum), language/money (lin- gua/nummus), “traffic in translation/transfer into Latin” (transferendi negotiatio/in latinum traductio), etc. With this project, was the Pope not extending, in breadth and depth, his Roman Empire (imperium romanum), but in such a way that his hegemony would be different from that of the ancient emperors? Certainly he expressed his will to conquer differently from Augustus, Antoninus, and the other Roman emperors.203 He did so in accordance with the specific character of his rule as a Christian Pope: through your own person you see to sacred things, religion, divine and human laws, and the peace, greatness, and welfare of the Latin world. But to others, especially us, you have assigned other tasks, sending us off as your prefects, tribunes, and captains, expert in both languages, to subject as much of Greece as possible to your rule, that is, to translate Greek books into Latin for you.204 In this sense, Valla resolves Nicholas V’s grand project – later described as “ensuring the translation of the Greek books that are left” – in a cultural logistic that is peculiarly humanist and different from the ancient one, which was preeminently military although not dissimilar in its geographic expanse or in the ethno-linguistic space at which it aimed. Its strategy of cultural retaking and reconquest aimed at bringing the Greco-Oriental world of the ancient empire back within the boundaries of Christian Rome: “adding Asia …, Macedonia …, the rest of Greece to the Roman empire.”205 Here it should be emphasized that Valla’s preface – composed in August of 1452, on the eve of the fall of Constantinople (May 29, 1453) – is doubtless informed by an anxious concern, one that was by then felt throughout the humanist world of Europe but that could be sensed ever
202 Valla, Oraciones y prefacios, 278: “Propositum sane magnificum singulare et vere summo pontifice sapiente dignum.” 203 [The precise identity of “Antoninus” is unclear. It could theoretically refer to any of the Antonine emperors, but the most likely candidates are Antoninus Pius (ruled 138–161), who enjoyed a peaceful reign and administered the provinces indirectly from Rome through his governors, and Marcus Aurelius (ruled 161–180), who ruled over an empire of great extent and prosecuted many wars in the provinces. Eds.] 204 Valla, Oraciones y prefacios, 278: “cum sacra, religionem, divina atque humana iura, pacem, amplitudinem, salutem latini orbis per te ipsum cures, mandasti cum alia aliis tum vero nobis, quasi tuis praefectis, tribunis, ducibus, utriusque linguae peritis, ut omnem, quoad possemus, Graeciam tuae dicioni subiceremus, idest ut graecos tibi libros in lati- num traduceremus.” 205 Ibid., 282: “non minus tibi gloriosum est, romane pontifex, libros graecos, qui reliqui sunt, transferendos curare quam aut Asiam aut Macedoniam aut ceteram Graeciam romano adicere imperio.”
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since the Council of Florence (1430s): the desire fully to salvage the remain- ing literary patrimony, both classical and patristic, of ancient, Hellenistic, and Byzantine Greece. From what we have observed, it seems clear that in the preface to Thucydides’ History Valla was revisiting the grammatical problem of the relationship between Greek and Latin in a manner informed by Quintilian’s view of philology. And indeed, the “traffic in translation” planned and organized by Nicholas V caused Valla to reconsider the complex operation of translation as a philological, theoretical, and practical problem of vital importance. This was a most important issue in philology, one that had not only been present in Valla’s writings but that had constituted a nodal and structural point for the convergence of a complex and diverse series of literary, philosophical, and theological problems. Such emerges clearly and on various levels, particularly in the Disputationes and De vero fal- soque bono, on the plane of grammatical analysis, in the terminological and categorical exegesis of Aristotelian and scholastic logic, metaphysics, and ethics, and in linguistic and conceptual questions surrounding Trinitarian terminology. The statement in the Encomium of St. Thomas –
because the nature of Greek is different from that of Latin. This would be a rather tedious subject to discuss, and it is a question for another time
– actually made reference, although only obliquely, to the persistent prob- lematic that is at the heart of Valla’s entire oeuvre. In that simple, allusive formulation, Valla seems to have wanted to compress the long labor nec- essary for an adequate solution, as well as to temper his discontent at the lack of one. But by calling attention, in the same preface to Thucydides, to the prob- lem of Scripture – “We Latins would not even have commerce with God if the Old Testament had not been translated from Hebrew and the New from Greek” – Valla raised the “traffic in translation” to a philological question of theological grammar. Here the “transaction” between the Latin of the Vulgate and the “Greek truth” (veritas graeca) of the New Testament (and the “Hebrew truth” of the Old, to use Jerome’s phrase) involved – by returning it to its beginnings – the theological and dogmatic, ecclesiological and liturgical question of Judeo-Christian revelation. In this way Valla inserted into Nicholas V’s project – exalted throughout the entire introduction to his translation of Thucydides – the scriptural, philological, and theological question on which he himself had concen- trated in his unpublished Collatio Novi Testamenti. Composed in 1443, dur- ing his early Neapolitan period, the Collatio would be publicly circulated
200034 200034 286 salvatore i. camporeale in the same years as the Latin translation of the History, and in 1453 Valla dedicated it, too, to Nicholas V. He would subsequently return to the Collatio, reconsidering and reworking the whole text for a second edition, this time under the title Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum. Scripture, then, was for Valla the original setting for “commerce with God” and the space in which that “commerce” had its specific foundation. Scripture was the literary source from which Valla drew his theological problematic, which turned out to be essentially a hermeneutic investiga- tion. Thus Valla’s theological critique of scholasticism reached its culmi- nation. He redirected his own basic arguments and made them converge on a radical objective, reframing his critique as philological criticism within the biblical space of the Old and New Testaments. He aimed at nothing less than the transcendence of the Vulgate, from which theology took its scriptural premises, and the reconstruction, through the exegesis of the “Greek truth” (veritas graeca), of new, more pristine and authentic premises for an alternative language of theology. Hence also Valla’s other decisive undertaking, chronologically the last but still fundamental to his work: the critico-philological re-examination of Thomist exegesis as the focal point of a more proper critique of scholastic theology. Returning the Vulgate to the “Greek truth” through the linguistic and categorical critique of Thomas’s theologico-scholastic exegesis was the specific operation, both methodological and substantial, of Valla’s humanist theology; and the revision of the Collatio in the 1450s, which would eventually result in the Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum, acted as the pivot for that operation. A reading of the Adnotationes that directly correlates Valla’s philologi- cal analysis of the New Testament with Thomas’s exegetical Commentary permits the reconstruction of the supporting axis of that operation, under- taken by Valla as a direct alternative to scholastic theology. Even if the Adnotationes must indubitably be considered as the end of an incredibly laborious journey that began with De vero falsoque bono and passed through the Disputationes and the Elegantiae, it achieves full meaning on its own. It stands as the greatest and fullest expression of that humanist theology which Valla described in abridged and nearly concentric formu- las in the Encomium of 1457.206
206 See La caduta di Costantinopoli, ed. and tr. Agostino Pertusi, 2 vols. (Verona: Mondadori, 1976). This important collection, fastidiously and perceptively furnished with an introduction and notes by Pertusi, could be supplemented with further witnesses from the correspondence of other contemporary humanists. Concerning the cultural function
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4.6. The Arts and Sciences as a Middle Ground (medietas): Valla’s Solution to the Relationship between Literature and Theology The study of eloquence, from the level of grammar to that of rhetoric proper; the study of morphology and syntax, from the stylistic function of ornamentation (ornatus) to the hermeneutical and linguistic techniques that are most elaborated and raised to the level of a system in Quintilian’s work – these are the elements that make up the supporting arch of human- ist theology. It is this conclusion which Valla reaches with the final pas- sage of the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae, whose terms and formulations seem to leave no room for interpretive doubt. The language of the pagans, Valla affirms, has every possibility of being incorporated into Christian language. It is necessary, however, to respect the integrity, the valences of meaning, and the syntactical relationships that are proper and specific to that language. Through a grammatical cri- teriology and a rhetoric of theology and Scripture, even the language of the pagans can become a preliminary object of study for the theologian.
and theoretical conception of “translation,” it should be noted that Valla discusses them, both here (in the preface to the Thucydides) and elsewhere (e.g., in the Adnotationes), in a manner quite similar to Jerome, Epistola ad Pammachium, ep. 57 (“de optimo genere inter- pretandi”) in PL 22:568–579. On Valla’s “translation” and biblical exegesis, see Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 172–192 and 277ff. For a comparative reading of Aquinas’s exegetical commentary on Scripture with Valla’s Adnotationes, see the appendix to the original Italian version of this essay in Memorie Domenicane, n.s., 7 (1976), 149–194 [reprinted in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo, riforma e controriforma, 266–330]. There we have limited ourselves to a comparison of their exegeses of St. Paul’s letters: Thomas Aquinas, Super Epistolas s. Pauli lectura, 2 vols. (Torino: Marietti, 1953) (cited by page and paragraph number for each Bible passage); Valla, Opera omnia, 1:803b-895b. We have collated the text of the Adnotationes, published by Erasmus in 1505 at the Parisian press of Josse Bade (cf. Ph. Renouard, Bibliographie des impressions et des oeuvres de J. Badius Ascensius imprimeur et humaniste: 1462–1535, 3 vols. [Paris: E. Paul et fils et Guillemin, 1908], 3:344–345) with ms. Brussels, Bibl. Royale, 4031–4033 (cf. J. van den Gheyn, “Nicolas Maniacoria, correcteur de la Bible,” Revue Biblique 8 [1899]: 289–295), which contains the Adnotationes on ff. 37r-122r. Returning to what was said in Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 25, we would now clarify that the variants between the Brussels ms. and the text of Erasmus’s edition are not always of a formal nature. A lacuna, for example, in the Brussels ms. (which is noted in our appendix), in addition to various other consider- ations, might indicate that Erasmus relied on a different manuscript tradition of Valla’s work from the one represented in the Brussels ms. And now one final observation regard- ing the appendix. The comparison between Valla’s (extremely short) commentary and Thomas’s (much fuller) one is not meant exclusively to emphasize the former’s critique of the latter. It intends, rather, to offer a list of biblical passages in which different methodolo- gies, interpretations, and perspectives can be readily compared, and which thus clearly shows (to our point of view) how much distance separates – in both philological technique and theological study – the humanist of the fifteenth century from the great scholastic of the thirteenth.
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To the ancient and contemporary objection, “it is not proper for Christians to speak the way that pagans did,”207 Valla responds: Not the language of the pagans, not the grammar, not the rhetoric, not the dialectic, nor the other arts are to be condemned – since the Apostles wrote in Greek – but the doctrines, the religions, the false opinions regarding the practice of the virtues through which we rise to heaven. The other sciences and arts occupy a middle ground, to be used for good or for evil. Therefore let us please try to reach, or at least approach, the place reached by the luminaries of our religion [i.e., the Greek and Latin Fathers mentioned earlier].208 It is therefore not the classical and Hellenistic science of language (littera- tura) nor its related analytical tools that the Christian must reject as non- transferable to his own cultural studies and creations. On the contrary, since the New Testament and, above all, the letters of Paul occupy an important place among writings in Koine Greek, the message of the Gospel must be studied and deciphered, and in two ways: on the one hand in relation to the contribution it made to the stylistic and semantic devel- opment of Koine, and, on the other hand, as a text whose comprehension is accessible only along the synchronic and diachronic coordinates of that language. These are the two sides, the two points of view, whose conver- gence or referential system defines and clarifies the exegetical method put into practice by Valla in his Adnotationes. Litteratura must therefore not be rejected prejudicially but used freely, though mediated and made commensurable with Sacred Scripture. What the Christian must reject, however – following in the footsteps of the Fathers’ theological and literary practice, and in line with the principles of the methodological theory enunciated by Jerome in his letters – are the doctrines (dogmata) of the philosophers, the religion (religio) underlying the cultural and political praxis of the pagans, and the opinions (opinio- nes) of Greek and Hellenistic ethics. This is precisely what Valla had attempted to put into practice, in order to find solutions on which to base an authentic humanist theology, respectively in the Disputationes
207 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 620: “gentiles hoc modo locutos esse, non decere eodem loqui.” 208 Ibid., 620–622: “Non lingua gentilium, non grammatica, non rhetorica, non dialec- tica, ceteraeque artes damnandae sunt, siquidem Apostoli lingua graeca scripserunt; sed dogmata, sed religiones, sed falsae opiniones de actione virtutum per quas in coelum scan- dimus. Ceterae autem scientiae atque artes in medio sunt positae, quibus et bene uti possis et male. Quapropter conemur obsecro eo pervenire, aut saltem proxime, quo luminaria illa nostrae religionis pervenerunt.”
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and De libero arbitrio (against “philosophical doctrines”), in De falso … Constantini Donatione (with the programmatic call for the pope to be “the vicar of Christ alone and not of Caesar as well”), and in De vero falsoque bono (with its investigation “of the true virtues that lead us to the true good” as compared with Aristotelian, Stoic, and Epicurean ethics).209 In this sense, the Christian must be open to a reappropriation of tradi- tional pagan culture. The sciences and the arts, a “human” artifact of the pagans, “occupy a middle ground” and thus admit of evangelical deploy- ment and transformation. Aquinas would have said that they possess obe- diential capacity (capacitas oboedientialis). Here Thomas’s capacitas and, even more so, Valla’s concept of a middle ground (medietas), indicate that culture, in its many and various historical forms, has an essential and qualitative valence with respect to Christian faith and praxis. Indeed, it must be noted that this essentially ambivalent character of knowledge and, more precisely, the possibility of using literature (humanae litterae) for good or evil in theological epistemology, are here affirmed by Valla not only explicitly and programmatically, but above all in a way that is unique within humanist culture itself. Poggio’s opposition to Valla comes to mind; for him, no theological mediation was possible between literature and the science of faith. Instead he saw a dichotomy that could in no way be sur- mounted or modulated.210 In contrast, Valla’s view of the sciences and the arts as a middle ground requires that they converge with Christianity in forming dynamic units pregnant and rich with theoretical and practical possibilities. On the one hand it affirms the necessity of critical revision each time a particular cul- ture is assumed within theological discourse. On the other it emphasizes that each piece of human knowledge is uniquely autonomous and thus that no one science or art can have a privileged position in relation to Christianity – in order that Christianity not be continually redefined by the very historicity of culture in general and by the combination of its par- ticular forms of expression (even if these are correlated with the temporal limits and rhythms of the Gospel). The historical rhythm of the forms of cultural expression is incongru- ous with the temporo-ecclesiological rhythm of the Gospel. This is what
209 Valla, De libero arbitrio, 524: “philosophicorum dogmatum”; idem, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz (Weimar: Böhlau, 1976), 176.8–9 (97): “ut papa tantum vicarius Christi sit et non etiam Caesaris”; idem, De vero falsoque bono, 1.13–14: “de veris virtutibus quibus ad verum bonum evadimus.” 210 [See, e.g., Poggio Bracciolini, Invectiva in L. Vallam I, in idem, Opera omnia, 1:199–200.]
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Valla gives concrete form to when he exalts rhetoric as “queen of the world and perfect wisdom” in relation to contemporary theological discourse. Hence his identification of patristic theology, which he understands as rhetorical theology (theologia rhetorica), as the source of the humanist alternative to the contemporary decadence of late scholasticism. Valla continues: I can’t hold back from saying what I think. Those ancient theologians seem to me like certain bees that, flying to far-off pastures, have used their marvel- ous art to produce the sweetest honey and wax; modern theologians, how- ever, rather resemble ants who steal off into their hiding places with pieces of grain swiped from their neighbor.211 This is Valla’s contrast between the Fathers and the scholastics, between the theology of the “ancients,” which is critically rigorous but still open to cultural acquisitions and developments, and that of the “moderns,” crawl- ing with disputations and dialectical subtleties, by now encased in its own inaccessible jargon. He programmatically proclaims his choice between the two: For my part, I would not only rather be a bee than an ant, but I would also rather fight in the service of a king bee than captain an army of ants. We are confident that this will be approved by right-minded youths; the old are sim- ply hopeless.212 This last statement finds an echo in the break, already in force while Valla was writing, between the “Laurentians” (laurentiani) and the “Poggians” (pogiani), between the followers of Valla and the “old school” (antiqua schola), as Bracciolini would himself call it in his Invectivae.213 In the Elegantiae Valla intends to limit himself to offering a method- ological and historical (in Quintilian’s terms) investigation of Latin gram- mar to be used by theological discourse in its own argumentative procedure and exegetical study of Scripture. That is, he intends to system- atically elaborate theology’s morphological and semantic premises,
211 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 622: “Non possum me continere quo- minus quod sentio dicam. Veteres illi theologi videntur mihi velut apes quaedam in longin- qua etiam pascua volitantes, dulcissima mella cerasque miro artificio condidisse; recentes vero formicis simillimi quae ex proximo sublata furto grana in latibulis suis abscondunt” (emphasis added). 212 Ibid., 622: “At ego, quod ad me attinet, non modo malim apes quam formica esse, sed etiam sub rege apium militare quam formicarum exercitum ducere. Quae probatum iri bonae mentis iuvenibus, nam senes desperandi sunt, confidimus.” 213 On the controversy between the “Laurentians” and the “Poggians,” cf. Camporeale, Lorenzo Valla. Umanesimo e teologia, 128–129, n. 13 and 374ff.
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namely the “rules of grammar” (praecepta grammaticae) that the “science of faith,” since it is verbalized in human language, must be made to accept. Hence the concluding lines of the preface, the text whose meaning and substance we have sought to interpret in relation to the humanist solution to the dichotomy between literature and theology: Now I return to the work at hand, although what follows differs greatly from what came before. For we shall treat [in the fourth book] the meaning of words – not all words but rather a sampling, as it were, especially of those not treated by others; to treat all words would be a nearly endless endeavor.214
4.7. Erasmus’s Humanism from the Antibarbari to the Life of Jerome: His Solution to the Problem of Theology and Literature, and Valla’s Influence The role played by the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae in Erasmus’s dispute over the relationship between classical literature and theology does not seem to have been adequately described. Valla’s text was more influential and certainly had a greater impact than can be deduced from the mere identification in Erasmus’s corpus of quotations from the vari- ous books of the Elegantiae.215 Instead it must be affirmed that Valla’s arguments and solutions (as traced in the preface) regarding the antin- omy between literature and theology constitute the supporting arch of Erasmus’s response to the anti-humanism he faced at the turn of the sixteenth century. The editorial evolution of the Antibarbarorum liber between 1489 and 1494 – tracked by James Tracy in a 1971 article – shows how Erasmus takes up and reworks Valla’s preface.216 His reliance on the
214 Valla, Elegantiae, book IV, preface (ed. Garin), 622: “Nunc ad inceptum redeo, quam- quam ea quae sequentur nonnihil a superioribus. Tractabimus enim de verborum significa- tione, neque de omnibus vocabulis sed quasi gustum quemdam, et eorum maxime quae ab aliis tractata non sunt; nam de omnibus dicere prope infinitum est” (emphasis added). 215 For what follows, see: Emile V. Telle, Erasme de Rotterdam et le Septième Sacrament, (Genève: Droz, 1954), 71–97; Ernst Wilhelm Kohls, Die Theologie des Erasmus, 2 vols. (Basel: F. Reinhardt, 1966), 1:35–68; Charles Béné, Erasme et saint Augustin, ou Influence de saint Augustin sur l’humanisme d’Erasme (Genève: Droz, 1969), 15–95, 281–333; Albert Rabil, Erasmus and the New Testament: the Mind of a Christian Humanist (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1972), 14–26. For the text of the Life of Jerome (Hieronymi stridonensis vita) we have followed: Desiderius Erasmus, Opuscula, ed. Wallace K. Ferguson (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1933), 125–133 (intr.) and 134–190 (text and notes). Too late for consideration, we became aware of two essays by Silvano Cavazza: “La cronologia degli Antibarbari e le orig- ini del pensiero religioso di Erasmo,” Rinascimento, ser. 2, 15 (1975): 141–179; and “La formazione culturale di Erasmo,” La Cultura 13 (1975): 20–40. We thank the author for bringing these works to our attention and for providing offprints. 216 James D. Tracy, “The 1489 and 1494 versions of Erasmus’ Antibarbarorum Liber,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 20 (1971): 81–120.
200034 200034 292 salvatore i. camporeale preface seems clear in his two thematic foci: first, the formulation of the terms of the aporia as it was reproposed by the anti-humanism of the “bar- barians”; second, the arguments and solutions put forward regarding the supposed dichotomy between theological culture and classical literature. Erasmus consciously takes his own “anti-barbarian” counter-response directly from Valla, proposing a rhetorical theology in the place of the philosophical theology of the contemporary scholastic tradition. It must nevertheless be observed that Erasmus’s reiteration, while expanding Valla’s proposal for a humanist theology to include multiple levels of cul- ture, nevertheless ends up being less convincing, since less radical, than Valla’s proposal. More precisely, if on the one hand Erasmus repeats arguments that are distinctly and originally Valla’s, on the other he revises Valla’s solutions to the problem. Alongside the commonplace of Jerome’s Letter to Magnus in defense of rhetoric, Erasmus invokes with equal insistence the authority of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, book IV, chapter 11, where the refer- ence to classical culture principally concerns philosophy. In his preface, however, Valla had deliberately excluded Augustine and instead focused on Jerome as the authority for his radically unequivocal stance, namely the exclusive exaltation of rhetorical theology in direct opposition to the philosophical theology of the scholastic tradition. In upholding the humanist principle for a theology founded on the sci- ence of rhetoric (along the lines traced in Valla’s preface), Erasmus also seems to want to bring De doctrina christiana into the Jerominian sphere of a specifically philological and scriptural theology. In so doing he attempted to bridge, at least on a theoretical level, the methodological and analytical divide underlying the theological work and thought of the two greatest Fathers of the Latin Church. Here Erasmus in no way agrees with Valla, for whom there subsists an absolute epistemological difference between the writings of Augustine and Jerome. And thus Erasmus and his works – variously conditioned by controversialist concerns, by his choice of literary tools, and by the related periods of his own cultural develop- ment – display an attitude and critical stance towards scholasticism that are actually less radical than what appears in Valla, especially concerning the more important aspect of traditional and contemporary speculative theology. All this appears more clearly with regard to their respective revivals of patristic theology. Erasmus’s stance is much more complex and variegated, developed in different times and in relation to multiple lines of theological inquiry. Valla’s is strongly univocal and unilateral, concen- trated on Jerome and his works of New Testament exegesis.
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The preceding observations, which emerge when the Antibarbari is read in the light of the preface to the Elegantiae, take on precise contours if the same text of Valla is compared to another work of Erasmus, com- pleted in 1515/1516 – the same two-year period that witnessed the publica- tion of the Novum Instrumentum and Jerome’s Letters. We are referring to the Life of Jerome (Hieronymi stridonensis vita), the biography justly con- sidered the leading exemplar of humanist hagiography. It served as an introduction to the Letters, the first volume of Jerome’s corpus, which appeared at the beginning of March, 1516 – at the same time as the Novum Instrumentum. The Life of Jerome, which also from an editorial point of view is closely related to the prefaces to the Novum Instrumentum, provides the best and most decisive evidence for the shift that marks the coming of humanist theology. The guiding principles for such a theology, which as we have seen were outlined completely in the Encomium of St. Thomas of 1457, had their epistemological foundation in the preface to book IV of the Elegantiae. It is Erasmus himself who, with a reference in an important passage of the Life of Jerome (the reference was precisely identified by Ferguson in his critical edition), connects his own work directly to Valla’s Elegantiae.217 But it must be immediately added that this reference under- lies the entire composition of the Life of Jerome. The topos of the caution- ary dream and the aporia regarding eloquence and theology, as drawn from Jerome’s letters and exegetical work on scripture, constitute the cen- tral theme of Erasmus’s biography, just as they did in Valla’s preface. This is said expressly in the passage to which we have just made reference and whose text we now offer: It is painful even to remember the daily growling we hear from some wick- edly religious and stupidly learned men who belittle in Jerome what is the finest thing about him. I refer of course to his extravagant learning, as they term it themselves, and to his eloquence, which to them is somewhat more than befits a theologian. They know nothing at all about Jerome except that he was pronounced a Ciceronian and scourged. But with regard to this, … a full reply was made by the most learned men Lorenzo Valla and Angelo Poliziano, and … I too once in my youth when less than twenty years of age disported myself against the folly of those men in the dialogue entitled Antibarbari.218
217 [Erasmus, Hieronymi stridonensis vita, ll. 1133 and 1463, with notes.] 218 Ibid., ll. 1126ff.: “Audimus quotidie quosdam impie religiosos et inscite doctos nobis ad aurem obgannire, id in Hieronymo calumniantes quod in eo pulcherrimum est, nimi- rum doctrinam, ut ipsi vocant, immodicam, et plusculum eloquentiae quam theologum
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Indeed, as penetratingly traced by Erasmus, the course of Jerome’s biogra- phy followed a cultural evolution and a lifelong ideal directed towards overcoming the antinomy between Christianity and the pagan world. To this end he deployed the theoretical tools of classical literature in his exe- getical work on New and Old Testament Scripture. Jerome’s entire life was characterized by constant and intense study, whose goal was to formulate a rhetorical theology, i.e. a theology that would put the classical science of language (litteratura) to critical use for understanding the sources of Judeo-Christian revelation. Jerome’s “humanistic” education is seen by Erasmus as serving a precise theological goal: “he occupied himself with rhetoric more diligently, … hoping that more would take pleasure in sacred literature if theologians were to match the majesty of their discipline with dignity of style.”219 In other words, Erasmus’s own alternative proposition for theology provides the perspective for Jerome’s biographical and cultural journey, namely his rediscovery, along the arduous and complicated trails of the philological criticism of Scripture, of that philosophy of Christ (Christi philosophia) that flows from the “purest fonts,” i.e. the literary sources of Judeo- Christian revelation.220 It is in this context that Erasmus places the sum of Jerome’s analytical inquiry and writing. Jerome’s corpus is as if focused on a convergence of profane, secular literature with sacred, divine literature, whose combined stream flows towards a theological grammar of the earliest Christian lan- guage and writings. Hence Erasmus’s view of the scriptural controversy in which Jerome engaged with Rufinus and Augustine. Hence also the way Erasmus depicts the peculiar and original theological position that Jerome occupied among the Latin Church Fathers. Finally, it is this originality of thought in Jerome that Erasmus – along the line that connects him to Valla – attempts to demonstrate and somehow to appropriate for himself with the publication of a new edition of Jerome’s works. deceat. Neque quicquam omnino norunt de Hieronymo, nisi quod Ciceronianus dictus vapularit. Verum huius rei, … ab eruditissimis abunde responsum est, Laurentio Valla et Angelo Politiano, et nos olim adulescentuli minores annis viginti lusimus in istorum stulti- tiam Dialogis quos Antibarbaros inscripsimus.” Translation by James F. Brady and John C. Olin, Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 61: The Patristic Scholarship, the Edition of Jerome (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 50. 219 Erasmus, Hieronymi stridonensis vita, ll. 236ff.: “in rhetorica … sese studiosius exer- cuit … sperans futurum ut plures sacris litteris delectarentur, si quis theologiae maiesta- tem dignitate sermonis aequasset” (tr. Brady and Olin, 27, modified). See also Hieronymi stridonensis vita, ll. 195–338 and 489ff. 220 Ibid., ll. 489ff. and 1213.
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The special significance, then, of the Life of Jerome, which Erasmus intended as a programmatic and normative introduction to Jerome’s whole corpus, is as a critique of scholasticism – one no less radical than Valla’s – for the proposition of an alternative, humanist theology. Echoing Valla, Erasmus starkly contrasts the exemplarity of Jerome and his works with scholasticism’s “new breed of theologians.” “Totally ignorant of all the arts … and relying on … a smattering of Aristotelian philosophy, … they rush into the profession of theology with unwashed feet and hands.” And as for the science of the Scriptures, “they turn a sacred discipline into something Sophistic or Thomistic or Scotistic or Ockhamistic.”221 Erasmus adds that none of Jerome’s contemporaries had treated ecclesiological controversies, scriptural inquiries, or dogmatic questions “more theologi- cally” than he.222 Finally, after running through the whole debate over the antinomy between literature and theology, from Valla to the literati of his own day, Erasmus concludes by encouraging the intelligentsia of Christian Europe to take up Jerome’s works and study them in the light of the humanist Renaissance and the decadent speculation of scholasticism: Till now Jerome has labored under a disadvantage – as he was not read by very many, so he was understood by very few …. But henceforth, when throughout the entire Christian world the study of classical literature has revived and not a few men of talent and of great promise have begun to awaken to that old and genuine theology, we all may embrace a Jerome reborn, as it were, in our common studies; and each individual may claim him as his very own …. Let each sex and each age study him, read him, drink him in. There is no kind of teaching which cannot use his support, no way of life which may not be formed by his precepts. Let only the heretics abhor and hate Jerome. They were the only ones he always considered the bitterest of his enemies.223
221 Ibid., l. 1187: “novum theologorum genus”; ll. 795ff.: “omnium bonarum litterarum prorsus rudes … et mala degustata Aristotelis philosophia freti, pedibus ac manibus illotis irruant in theologiae professionem”; 1193ff.: “ex divina faciunt sophisticam, aut thomisti- cam, aut scotisticam, aut occamisticam” (tr. Brady and Olin, 42 and 52). 222 Ibid., ll. 1226ff.: “magis theologice.” 223 Ibid., ll. 1534–1565: “Illud hactenus offecit Hieronymo, quod ut a plerisque non legi- tur, ita a paucissimis intelligitur …. At posthac quando per universum orbem christianum revixerunt bonae litterae et non pauca bonae spei ingenia ad veterem illam ac germanam theologiam exergisci coeperunt, Hieronymum veluti renatum communibus studiis complectamur omnes: hunc singuli sibi ceu peculiarem vindicent …. Hunc omnis sexus, omnis aetas discat, evolvat, imbibat. Nullum doctrinae genus est, quod hinc non queat adiuvari; nullum vitae institutum, quod huius praeceptis non formetur. Soli haeretici Hieronymum horreant et oderint, quos ille solos semper acerrimos hostes habuit” (tr. Brady and Olin, 61–62).
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The Life of Jerome and the prefaces to the Novum Instrumentum provide Erasmus’s perspective on the new theological question of the early six- teenth century, but its center of radiation was fixed in the Encomium of St. Thomas of 1457. In this way Valla’s oration acted as an essential break between two historical moments of Christian philosophical and theologi- cal thought: between medieval scholasticism and the humanist culture of the Renaissance, between Thomas Aquinas and Erasmus of Rotterdam, the two emblematic poles that encompass the trends and structures of the science of faith. Lorenzo Valla and his work thus play a founding role for humanist the- ology and, at the same time, provide a retrospective view that historicizes medieval systematic theology, encasing it within a specific period of Christianity’s development. The Encomium of St. Thomas, which synthe- sizes Valla’s whole corpus, is perhaps the most conscious portrayal of the crisis that came to a head in Christianity between the early fifteenth cen- tury and the beginning of the sixteenth. This crisis was organic to the political and civic crisis of the same period (acutely identified by the his- toriography of civic humanism224), but it culminated as a religious and theological crisis. That is, it was a crisis of Christian existence and categor- ical systematics, of Church (ecclesia) and ecclesiology, of evangelical faith and the science of faith. Valla was the first directly to confront, on a theo- retical and a practical level, this crisis of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Christianity, and he did so by extending the use of the philological criti- cism of humanism into the realm of theological and scriptural study.225
224 [For civic humanism, see at least Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955); and James Hankins (ed.), Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Eds.] 225 For a full discussion of the “crisis” of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Salvatore I. Camporeale, “Umanesimo e teologia tra ‘400 e ‘500,” in Problemi di storia della Chiesa nei secoli XV-XVII (Napoli: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1979), 137–164.
200034 200034 LORENZO VALLA ENCOMIUM OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
Patrick Baker (ed. and tr.)
Note on the Text: The Latin text, which is provided here as a supplement to the English translation and as a source for the quotations in Camporeale’s essay, is substantially that of the critical edition of Stefano Cartei: Lorenzo Valla, Encomion sancti Thome Aquinatis, ed. S. Cartei (Firenze: Polistampa, 2008). Camporeale based his own work on direct consultation of the avail- able manuscripts and the earlier edition of Francesco Adorno (Lorenzo Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios, ed. F. Adorno [Santiago: Universidad de Chile, 1955], 290–321), but it has seemed preferable to adopt Cartei’s more cor- rect text. A deciding factor was that Cartei follows what he demonstrates to be a more reliable manuscript tradition; that is, he argues convincingly that ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Lat. 7811 A (= P) is more trustworthy and closer to the author than both ms. Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, 1500 (= R), on which Adorno primarily relied, and ms. Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, Lat. 151 (alpha T.6.15) (= M). While fol- lowing Cartei’s readings and emendations (none of which represents a significant departure from the version Camporeale used), I have repunc- tuated the text, followed my own judgment regarding capitalization, and preferred classical orthography in the interests of accessibility to a broader audience. I have also reformatted the text in a manner suggested by Camporeale’s interpretation, dividing it, moreover, as he does, into the five sections exordium, narratio, probatio, refutatio, and peroratio. In preparing my own English rendering I have consulted the following existing translations: the Italian version of Giorgio Radetti, in Lorenzo Valla, Scritti filosofici e religiosi (Firenze: Sansoni, 1953), 455–469 (= In lode di S. Tommaso d’Aquino); the Spanish version of Francesco Adorno in Valla, Oraciones y Prefacios (= Encomio de Santo Tomás de Aquino); and the English version of M. Esther Hanley in Leonard A. Kennedy (ed.), Renaissance Philosophy: New Translations (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), 17–27 (= In Praise of Saint Thomas Aquinas).
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[Exordium] [1] Moris fuit vetustissimis temporibus cum apud Graecos tum vero apud Latinos ut qui orationem aliqua de re maiore vel ad iudices vel ad populum esset habiturus, is fere ab invocatione caelestis numinis exordire- tur. Quem ego ritum a veri Dei cultoribus reor introductum, ut sacrificia, ut 5 primitias, ut caerimonias, ut ceteros divinos honores, mox ut illa, ita hunc quoque a vera religione ad falsas fuisse translatum. Nam id profecto exstitit in rebus humanis immanissimum nefas et paene caput malorum omnium, cultum religionis immortali Deo et soli creatori debitum tribuere mortali- bus ac rebus creatis. Haec consuetudo cum per aliquot saecula in utraque 10 natione viguisset, paulatim in desuetudinem versa est, desitumque numina invocare non modo ab iis qui malas sed etiam ab iis qui bonas causas age- bant: ab iis quidem qui malas quod aut nullos esse deos crederent aut eos invocare extimescerent – quisquis enim deos implorat ideo implorat ut veritati atque iustitiae assint, quod mali fieri nolunt; ab iis autem qui bonas 15 agebant, partim quod iuri suo citra deorum praesidium fidere videri vel- lent, partim quod sese praestantiores atque viriliores visum iri putarent, si non protinus tamquam feminae ad implorandos deos confugerent – muli- ebre namque iam videbatur, non virile, numina implorare, unde apud Sallustium Cato inquit: “non votis neque suppliciis muliebribus auxilia 20 deorum parantur.” Verum sicut improbe illi hunc vetustissimum morem summoverant et quasi de possessione deiecerant, ita probe fecerunt qui in integrum restituerunt in possessionemque reduxerunt, non ut gentiles, quod absit, imitarentur, sed ne a gentilibus superari viderentur; nam si illi falsis diis tantum honoris tribuebant ut eos in exordiis invocandos putar- 25 ent, quanto nos magis hunc honorem Deo vero tribuere debemus? Quare istorum ego institutum tam egregium hodie imitari et debeo et volo, laudes sancti Thomae Aquinatis relaturus, et, ut consuetum est, sanctissimam Dei matrem eamdemque semper virginem invocare, salutans eam angelicis verbis: Ave Maria …
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[Exordium] [1] It was customary in ancient times among the Greeks as well as the Latins for whoever was going to give a speech on some important matter, either to judges or to the people, in general to begin with a divine invoca- tion. I think this rite was introduced by the worshipers of the true God, just like sacrifices, the offering of the first-fruits, ceremonies, and the other divine honors; and like them, it too soon passed from the true religion to false ones. Now, to accord to mortals and created things the religious wor- ship due to immortal God, the lone creator, stands out as quite the most monstrous of all human transgressions and perhaps the chief of all evils. After this custom had reigned among both peoples for several centuries, it slowly fell into disuse, and divinities ceased to be invoked not only by those pleading bad causes, but also by those pleading good ones. Those pleading bad ones either believed that there were no gods or were afraid to invoke them – for whoever beseeches the gods beseeches them to attend to truth and justice, something the evil do not want to happen. As for those plead- ing good causes, in part they wanted to seem to put greater trust in their law than in the protection of the gods, in part they thought they would seem more distinguished and manlier by not continually taking refuge like women in prayers to the gods. For then it seemed effeminate and unmanly to invoke deities, wherefore Cato says (in Sallust): “the aid of the gods is not procured with vows and womanish prayers.”1 But just as those men were wrong to cast off this most ancient custom as if banishing it from their pos- session, others did well to take it back into their possession and restore it intact. This they did not do, as some might think, to imitate the pagans, but rather so as not to be seen to be outdone by them. For if the pagans gave such great honor to their false gods that they thought they should invoke them when beginning their speeches, how much more ought we bestow this honor on the true God? Therefore before beginning my praise of St. Thomas Aquinas, it is my duty and my pleasure today to imitate that outstanding institution of theirs. And so, as is our custom, I invoke the most holy mother of God, the eternal virgin, greeting her with the angelic words: Ave Maria …2
1 Sallust, De coniuratione Catilinae, 52, 29. 2 The exordium ends with a recitation of the Ave Maria.
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[Narratio] 30 [2] Etsi omnes qui in Domino moriuntur beati sunt et sancti, tamen eos demum beatos et sanctos promulgat ecclesia quos cognovit vel mortem pro religione, pro veritate, pro iustitia oppetisse, vel vita caste integreque tra- ducta divinis signis ac miraculis claruisse. Horum priores graeco vocabulo martyres, posteriores latino confessores appellat ecclesia, licet utriusque 35 nominis vis eodem fere tendat. Quid enim martyres aliud tolerandis tor- mentis et obeunda morte fecerunt, nisi Christum nolentes abnegare con- fessi sunt? Quorum illa frequentissima in tormentis exstitit vox se non negare Christum sed esse Dei filium confiteri. Ergo idem est martyrem esse quod confessorem. Rursus quid aliud confessores egerunt quam pie 40 vivendo pieque scribendo veritati testimonium perhibuerunt? Siquidem Ioannes Baptista, qui ad perhibendum testimonium de lumine – id est de veritate – missus erat, non minus illud perhibuit praedicando quam mor- tem obeundo. Ergo cum hoc confessores fecerint, nimirum martyres exsti- terunt: martyr enim transfertur latine ‘testis’ et martyrion ‘testimonium.’ 45 [3] Hoc quamquam ita sit, tamen Ecclesia, ut dixi – latina dumtaxat – superiores tantum martyres appellandos censuit et praerogativa ordinis honorandos, quod videlicet milites strenui et fortes cum in ceteris militiae operibus tum praecipue in proeliis imperatori suo probantur. Martyres autem, qui fuere Christi milites, pro imperatore suo in acie steterunt san- 50 guinemque ac vitam profuderunt. Confessores vero, et ipsi milites Christi, solum labores militares, magnos illos quidem atque diutinos, pertulerunt, parati et mortem pro imperatore Deo subire, verum ipsis ut eam subirent aut in acie starent non contigit. Idcirco martyres ampliore honore fuisse afficiendi videntur. Quod etsi iure ac merito factum est, quis tamen 55 negaverit esse quosdam e numero confessorum qui nonnullis martyribus non modo aequari possint verum etiam anteferri? Quod divino quoque tes- timonio declaratur, cum videamus multos confessores fuisse quam quos- dam martyres longe miraculis illustriores. [4] Quorsum autem haec? Ut appareat Thomam nostrum Aquinatem, 60 etsi confessorem, non tamen esse continuo post martyres reponendum, ut mea fert opinio, nihilo inferiorem, ne longius exempla repetam, aut Petro eiusdem ordinis, qui ob tutandam veritatem
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[Narratio] [2] Although all who die in the Lord are blessed and saints, nevertheless the Church expressly designates as blessed and saints those whom it recog- nizes either as having met death for religion, for truth, for justice, or as hav- ing achieved fame for leading a chaste and spotless life accompanied by divine signs and miracles. It uses the Greek word ‘martyrs’ (martyres) for the former and the Latin one ‘confessors’ (confessores) for the latter, although both terms have approximately the same meaning. For what else have mar- tyrs done in enduring torture and meeting death than confess themselves unwilling to deny Christ? Under torture they repeatedly refused to deny Christ but rather confessed that he was the son of God. Therefore a martyr is the same as a confessor. On the other hand, what else have confessors done in living piously and writing piously than bear witness to the truth? John the Baptist was sent to bear witness to the light – that is, to the truth – and he did so no less by preaching than by meeting death.3 Thus by acting in this way, surely confessors have shown themselves to be martyrs. For martyr is trans- lated in Latin as witness (testis), and martyrion testimony (testimonium). [3] Although this is the case, the Church, as I have said – at least the Latin one – has decided that only the former are to be called martyrs and honored with the privilege of that rank, because, as vigorous and brave sol- diers, they are recognized by their commander for their military service and especially for their deeds in battle. The martyrs, then, who were sol- diers of Christ, stood in the battle line for their commander and poured out their blood and life. The confessors were themselves also soldiers of Christ, but they merely performed military labors (albeit great and lasting ones); and although they were prepared to undergo death for their commander, God, they did not actually undergo it or stand in the battle line. For that reason it seems that martyrs ought to have been accorded greater honor. The justice of this view notwithstanding, who could deny that there are certain confessors who not only equal but even surpass some martyrs? Divine testimony makes this clear, as we see that many confessors were much more renowned for miracles than certain martyrs. [4] What is the point of these considerations? To show that our Thomas Aquinas, although a confessor, should not necessarily be placed below the martyrs. In my opinion he is in no way inferior – not to look too far afield for examples – either to Peter the Dominican,4 whose defense of the truth
3 John 1:6–8. 4 St. Peter of Verona (St. Peter Martyr).
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a rustico quodam furioso falce interfectus est, aut Thoma episcopo Cantuariensi, qui tamquam pastor bonus pro grege suo, ne clerus bonis 65 spoliaretur, occubuit. Quod eo quoque probatur argumento quod, cum utrique horum Thomae nomen fuerit, tamen huic nostro non ab homine, sed divinitus illud impositum, cum sua interpretatione Thomas hebraice tum abyssus tum geminus transfertur, qualis vere Thomas Aquinas fuit, vel abyssus quaedam scientiae vel geminus ob scientiam et virtutem, utramque 70 singularem atque incredibilem, veluti quidam sol fulgore doctrinarum lucidissimus et fervore virtutum ardentissimus. Propter fulgorem quidem doctrinarum inter Cherubim, propter fervorem autem virtutum inter Seraphim collocandus, quas nunc referam. [5] Verum enimvero eas referre conanti mihi videntur quidam occurrere 75 et quasi manus obiicere reclamantes: “quid ais? quid tibi cum ista hyper- bole vis, amica stultis, inimica prudentibus? Nullamne tu veritatis, nullam conscientiae tuae, nullam horum tot gravissimorum sapientissimorumque hominum, qui te audiunt, rationem habebis? Non es contentus Thomam Aquinatem aequasse martyribus et permultis eorum praetulisse, nisi eum 80 efferas usque ad Cherubim, super quos Deus sedet, nisi etiam, quo nullus est ordo angelorum altior, ipsis Seraphim aequiperes? Quid plus Thomae apostolo tributurus? Quid plus doctori gentium Paulo, tamquam uni ex Cherubim? Quid plus Ioanni Evangelistae, tamquam uni ex Seraphim?” [6] Huic ego respondeam me quidem sentire omnes qui scientia rerum 85 divinarum imbuti sunt aliquid habere commune cum Cherubim, omnes item qui sunt Dei caritate perfusi socios esse Seraphim, nedum Thomam scientia et caritate plenissimum, tamen me iuste ab eo vel reprehendi vel admoneri. Quapropter huius ordinis fratres exoratos velim ut mihi dent veniam in referendis istius sancti laudibus temperamento potius 90 quam licentia utenti, nec eas omnes sed maximas quasque referenti. Perstringendae enim sunt illae apud hos patres conscriptos, non explican- dae, ne taedium afferant, utique tantae et tam magnae ut si verbis eas coner extollere “ante diem clauso componat Vesper Olympo,” ut poeta inquit.
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roused some mad peasant to kill him with a sickle, or to Thomas, bishop of Canterbury,5 who, like the good shepherd protecting his flock, died to keep the clergy from being despoiled of its goods. That he is not inferior is fur- ther demonstrated by the following argument: although both men had the name of Thomas, our Thomas received it not by human but by divine will, since the meaning of Thomas in Hebrew is both ‘bottomless pit’ (abyssus) and ‘twin’ (geminus). And Thomas Aquinas truly was such a one: a kind of bottomless pit of knowledge, and a twin due to the pairing of knowledge and virtue in him, both of which were without parallel and beyond belief. He was like a kind of sun, shining forth in the dazzling splendor of his learning and burning bright with the ardor of his virtues. He is to be placed among the Cherubim for the splendor of his learning, among the Seraphim for the ardor of his virtues. Of these qualities I shall now speak. [5] But in my attempt to do so, some people seem to me to be objecting and just about throwing up their hands, crying, “What are you saying? What are you aiming at with this hyperbole of yours, which is the friend of the foolish, enemy of the prudent? Will you have no regard for the truth, for your own conscience, or for your audience, which is composed of numer- ous men of the greatest importance and wisdom? Are you not content to make Thomas Aquinas the equal of the martyrs and to prefer him to many of them? Must you raise him up to the level of the Cherubim, above whom God sits? Must you also compare him to the very Seraphim, the highest order of angels? What more will you accord to the apostle Thomas? What more to Paul the teacher of the Gentiles – that he is one of the Cherubim? What more to John the Baptist – that he is one of the Seraphim?” [6] Let me respond that I do indeed think that all who are imbued with the knowledge of divine truths have something in common with the Cherubim, just as all who are infused with the love of God are the fellows of the Seraphim – to say nothing of Thomas, so incredibly full of knowledge and love. Still, I have been justly reproached and warned. Therefore I entreat the brothers of this order to pardon me if I relate the praises of its saint with greater temperance than I otherwise might have done, and if I do not men- tion all of them but focus only on those of the greatest importance. For to this august body they ought to be narrated briefly, not treated at length, lest they grow tiresome. And if I tried to praise such great and powerful virtues with words, “the day would sooner than the tale be done,”6 as the poet says.
5 St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. 6 Virgil, Aeneid, I.374, tr. Dryden.
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[Probatio] [7] Merito igitur talis vir – ut de virtutibus eius prius dicam, dicturus 95 postea de scientiis – merito debuit antequam nasceretur mundo praedici, eius ortus prophetari, vita promitti, mors etiam nuntiari. Etenim matri eius ventrem ferenti anachoreta quidam, vir Dei qui ad hoc ipsum denuntian- dum venerat, gratulabundus dixit genituram esse filium quem Thomam appellaret, in quo excellentia huius nominis impleretur. Solet Deus, quo- 100 tiens aliquid eximium ac novum terris dare destinavit, id signis aut vatici- niis enuntiare. Cuius rei sunt non parum multa exempla, sed brevitatis gratia uno et domestico ero contentus. [8] Sic beati Dominici, huius familiae progenitoris, magnitudo matri suae, cum gravida esset, praedicta est. Non dicam utrum praestantius fuerit 105 vaticinium, ne inter patrem et filium videatur, quantum in nobis est, esse certatio. Sint paria de utroque vaticinia, paria amborum vitae merita. Neuter alteri praeponatur: sint tamquam duo consules, quo nullus erat maior magistratus, pari veneratione nobis honorandi, omnibus uterque vir- tutibus, infinitis uterque miraculis clari. Quorum etsi alterum modo lau- 110 dandum habeo, tamen utrumque coniungam, primum quia, cum pares ambos faciam, sic magis liquebit quousque dignitatis et celsitudinis putem Thomam esse provehendum, deinde quia institutum Praedicatorum est fratres binos ire, non singulos. [9] Dominicus igitur domum Praedicatorum condidit, Thomas eius pavi- 115 menta marmore vestivit. Dominicus parietes struxit, Thomas picturis eos egregiis adornavit. Dominicus fratrum columen exstitit, Thomas specimen. Dominicus plantavit, Thomas irrigavit. Ille dignationes atque episcopatus ultro oblatos refugit atque adversatus est, hic nobilitatem, opes, propin- quos, parentes tamquam sirenes effugit. Ille castitatem et continentiam 120 Pauli, hic virginitatem Ioannis Evangelistae reddidit. Illius humilitate – quam significantius graeci tapeinophrosynen vocant – nihil admirabilius, huius tanta humilitas fuit ut etiam de aliorum tumore atque iactantia miraretur, in se numquam id vitium expertus, ut apud quosdam fratres sim- pliciter confessus est, cum tamen tot et tanta in se agnosceret ornamenta. 125 [10] Hae sunt propriae virtutum laudes. Illa vero testimonia virtutum et praemia et quasi in hac vita paradisus – revelationes, visiones, miracula – quae tanta in his fuerunt, ut cetera taceam,
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[Probatio] [7] Justly, therefore, such a man – let me speak first about his virtues and later about his knowledge – justly was he destined to be foretold to the world before he was born, his birth prophesied, his life predicted, even his death announced. For when his mother was with child, a certain hermit, a man of God who had come precisely to bring her this news, congratulated her and told her that she would bear a son whom she would call Thomas and who would be filled with the excellence of this name. God, whenever he has resolved to give something extraordinary and new to the world, is wont to announce it with signs or prophecies. There are very many examples of this, but, for the sake of brevity, I shall be content with one from the family. [8] In the same way the greatness of the blessed Dominic, the founder of this family, was foretold to his mother when she was pregnant. I will not say which prophecy was more extraordinary, in order to avoid (to the extent possible) the appearance of a contest between father and son. Let the prophecies about each man be equal, equal the merits of both their lives. Let neither be placed before the other. Let them be like two consuls, the highest of magistracies. We must honor them with equal veneration, both of them renowned for all the virtues, both for miracles without number. Although I am only here to praise one of the two, nevertheless I will join them together. First, because by setting them equal it will become all the clearer to what heights of lofty dignity I think Thomas should be raised. Second, because the rule of the Preachers is that the brothers go in twos, not singly. [9] So then, Dominic founded the house of the Preachers; Thomas covered its floors with marble. Dominic built its walls; Thomas decorated them with the finest paintings. Dominic was the pillar of the brothers, Thomas their shining example. Dominic planted; Thomas gave water. The one shunned and resisted the honors and episcopacies bestowed upon him; the other fled nobility, wealth, kinsmen, and parents as if they were sirens. The one imitated the chastity and continence of Paul, the other the virginity of John the Evangelist. Of the one nothing was more admirable than his humility (which the Greeks more meaningfully call tapeinophrosynē). The other had so much humility that he was even aston- ished at the boasting and bragging of others; he never felt this vice in him- self, as he frankly confessed to some brothers, although he still recognized his own great and numerous talents. [10] These are the praises of their virtues. Now for the testimonies of their virtues and their rewards, the revelations, visions, and miracles which are like paradise on earth. They were so great in them that, to speak of nothing else,
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ut uterque sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum sive re vera sive per speciem, uterque sanctissimam Dei matrem, uterque Dominum Salvatorem sive in 130 corpore sive extra corpus et viderit et audierit, deque obitu suo imminenti certior factus sit. Nam adeo ferventes in orationibus erant ut interdum sub- limes a terra, Deo miraculum quibusdam fratribus indicante, cernerentur. [11] Denique, ut finem comparationis faciam, ille optimam fratrum regulam scripsit, hic plurimos ac praestantissimos libros. At plus est, dicas, 135 libros composuisse quam regulam. Cur ita plus esse ais? Dum hic scribun- dis ‹libris› operam dat, ille regundis provinciis incumbit et, ut optimus rec- tor, suis populis bene vivendi regulam ac legem tradit, et certe non plures transmittit in caelum scriptis suis Thomas quam Dominicus sua regula. Concedatur ergo in virtutibus, in miraculis, in gloria pares esse Dominicum 140 et Thomam, non magis inter se differentes atque discretos quam Lucifer est et Hesperus.
[Refutatio] [12] Dixi de virtutibus ac miraculis Thomae breviter et nude, nulla usus amplificatione atque exornatione, ne minus quam pro rei dignitate, ut in hac temporis angustia, dicerem. Credo iam a me expectari ut quid de huius 145 sancti scientia, quod secundo loco proposui, dicam, quibus eum praepo- nam, quibus aequiperem. [13] Non me fugit quosdam, qui de hac re hoc die ex hoc loco orationem habuerunt, non modo nulli doctorum ecclesiae secundum Thomam fecisse sed etiam omnibus anteposuisse. Qui, cur nulli secundum facere debeant, 150 ex eo probabant quod quidam integerrimae vitae frater inter orandum viderit Augustinum, quem summum theologorum statuunt, et una Thomam, mirabili utrumque praeditum maiestate, Augustinumque dicen- tem audierit Thomam esse sibi in gloria parem. Cur autem eumdem pos- sint omnibus praeponere, hinc demonstrabant quod dicerent eum ad 155 probationem theologiae adhibere logicam, metaphysicam atque omnem philosophiam, quam superiores doctores vix primis labiis degustassent. [14] Lubricus hic mihi et anceps locus, non modo propter sancti cuius de laudibus loquimur dignitatem, sed etiam propter inolitam apud plerosque opinionem neminem posse sine dialecticorum, metaphysicorum, cetero- 160 rum philosophorum praeceptis evadere theologum.
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they saw and heard the holy Apostles Peter and Paul (either truly or in a vision), the most holy mother of God, and the Lord our Savior (either in the body or out of the body7). Both men were told about their imminent deaths. What is more, they prayed so heatedly that now and then they were seen levitating, God revealing the miracle to certain brothers. [11] Finally, to complete the comparison: the one wrote the brothers’ most excellent rule, the other the most outstanding and the greatest num- ber of books. But, you might say, it is a greater thing to have written books than a rule. Why do you say this? While Thomas devotes himself to writ- ings, Dominic rules the provinces and, as an excellent leader, gives his peo- ples a Rule and law for living well. Certainly Thomas sends no more men to heaven with his writings than Dominic does with his Rule. Therefore let it be granted that virtue, glory, and miracles are equal in Dominic and Thomas, who are no more different and distinct from one another than the morning from the evening star.
[Refutatio] [12] I have spoken of Thomas’s virtues and miracles briefly and simply, having made no use of exaggeration and embellishment, lest, in the short time available, I say less than the dignity of the subject requires. I believe you would now like me to say something about this saint’s knowledge, which I proposed to treat second, saying whom I would set him above and whom I would call his equal. [13] It has not escaped me that certain people who held an oration here today on the same subject not only made Thomas second to none of the doctors of the Church but also placed him above them all. They claim that they ought to consider him second to none because a certain friar of the utmost purity supposedly saw Augustine, whom they count as the greatest theologian, together with Thomas. Both were endowed with wonderful majesty, and he heard Augustine say that Thomas was his equal in glory. The reason they gave for being able to put him above everyone is that for proof in theology he used logic, metaphysics, and all philosophy, which the earlier doctors are supposed to have barely tasted with the tips of their tongues. [14] This is a slippery and perilous place for me, not only on account of the dignity of the saint we are praising, but also because of the deep-set opinion, held by so many, that no one can become a theologian without the precepts of the dialecticians, metaphysicians, and the other philosophers.
7 2 Cor. 12:2.
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Quid igitur agam? Reformidabone, tergiversabor, dissimulabo quid sen- tiam dicere, et lingua a corde dissentiet? Quoniam huc ascendi non mea sponte sed exoratus a fratribus nec tacere mihi integrum est, non commit- tam ut quisquam putet me scientem esse mentitum. 165 [15] Ego in sancto Thoma eximiam quidem scribendi subtilitatem etiam atque etiam laudo, diligentiam admiror, copiam, varietatem, absolutionem doctrinarum stupeo. Addo – quod plerique tribuere nolint – id quod ab ipso dictum esse memorant, eum omnino nullum legisse librum quem non plane intellexerit, quod haud scio an ulli nostri temporis contigerit, vel 170 iurisperito in iure civili, vel medico in medicina, vel philosopho in philoso- phia, vel oratori in antiquarum rerum lectione, et item in ceteris artibus atque scientiis, nedum uni in omnibus. [16] Ista autem quae vocant metaphysica et modos significandi et alia id genus, quae recentes theologi tamquam novam sphaeram nuper inventam 175 aut planetarum epicyclos admirantur, nequaquam ego tantopere admiror, nec ita multum interesse arbitror an scias an nescias, et quae forte sit satius nescire tamquam meliorum impedimenta. Neque id meis argumentis pla- num faciam, etsi possem facere, sed veterum theologorum auctoritate, qui tantum abest ut haec in libris suis tractaverint ut ne nomina quidem ipsa 180 scripta reliquerint: Cyprianus, Lactantius, Hilarius, Ambrosius, Hieronymus, Augustinus. [17] An scilicet ob ignorationem? Qui fieri potest? Nam sive in nostra lingua fundamentum haec habent, illi latinissimi fuerunt, recentes autem omnes paene barbari; sive in graeca, illi graeca noverunt, isti ignorant. Cur 185 igitur non tractaverint? Quia tractanda non fuerunt, et forte etiam igno- randa. Idque duabus de causis, una rerum, altera verborum. [18] Rerum quidem, quod ista nihil ad scientiam rerum divinarum con- ducere videbantur. Id quod etiam visum est theologis graecis, Basilio, Gregorio, Ioanni Chrysostomo ac ceteris eius aetatis, qui neque dialectico- 190 rum captiunculas neque metaphysicas ambages neque modorum signifi- candi nugas in quaestionibus sacris admiscendas putaverunt, ac ne in philosophia quidem suarum disputationum fundamenta iecerunt, cum Paulum clamantem legerent:
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What am I to do then? Shrink in fear, make an about-face, disguise what I think, and have my tongue contradict my heart? Since it was not of my own accord but at the entreaty of the brothers that I rose to speak, and since it is not my way to remain silent, I shall not give anyone cause to think that I have not spoken my mind. [15] I highly praise the exceptional simplicity of St. Thomas’s writing; I admire his carefulness; I am amazed at the fullness, the variety, the com- pleteness of his teachings. I add another thing, with which many people would not credit him but which he himself is supposed to have said: that he never read any book that he did not fully understand. This is something that I doubt has happened to anyone of our time: no jurist in civil law, no doctor in medicine, no philosopher in philosophy, no humanist in the read- ing of ancient texts, nor anyone else in the remaining arts and sciences, much less one man in all fields. [16] But those things which they call metaphysics and modes of signify- ing and the like, which modern theologians regard with wonder like a newly discovered sphere or like the epicycles of the planets, I regard with no great wonder at all. Nor do I think, therefore, that it matters much whether one knows them or not. And perhaps it would be preferable not to know them, as they are like impediments to better things. This I will make clear not with my own arguments (although I could) but by citing the authority of the ancient theologians – Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine – who were so far from treating such matters in their works that they did not even mention them. [17] Was it because they were ignorant? How could that be possible? For if these things have a basis in our own language, those men were as Latin as can be, whereas modern theologians are nearly all barbarians. And if in Greek, the ancient theologians knew it, but these moderns of yours do not. Why, then, should they not have treated these subjects? Because they were not supposed to be treated, and perhaps they were not even supposed to be known – and this for two reasons: one having to do with their contents, the other with their words. [18] Regarding their contents: because these subjects did not seem to lead to the knowledge of divine truths. Such also seemed to be the case to the Greek theologians Basil, Gregory, John Chrysostom, and the others of that age. They did not think that the sophisms of dialectics, the obscuri- ties of metaphysics, or the trifles of the modes of signifying should be mixed in with sacred questions. Nor did they even lay the foundations of their disputations in philosophy, for they heeded Paul’s exclamation:
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“non per philosophiam et inanem fallaciam.” Quod etiam usu ipsi intelligi- 195 mus. Quid enim in philosophia non dico in rationali, quae tota in verbis est, de qua et dixi et dicam, sed morali et naturali quod sit indubitatum ratumque, nisi quod in naturali aut medicorum aut aliorum experimenta deprehenderunt? [19] Verborum autem, quod alia est condicio linguae graecae alia latinae, 200 quae longior foret ad disputandum materia et quaestio ab hoc tempore ali- ena. Hoc dixisse sit satis, hos doctores ecclesiae latinos reformidasse vocab- ula quae auctores latinos, id est suos in loquendo magistros, graecarum litterarum eruditissimos nunquam viderant usurpasse, quae novi theologi semper inculcant: ens, entitas, quidditas, identitas, reale, essentiale, suum 205 esse, et verba illa quae dicuntur ampliari, dividi, componi, et alia huiusmodi. Ergo haec non minima ex parte nugatoria aut non tractanda fuerunt illis aut ignoranda, ne magis ignorarent. [20] Neque vero hoc dico ut recentibus theologis derogem – cur enim derogare velim praesertim saeculo meo? – sed ut veteres iniuste reprehen- 210 sos sugillatosque defendam, qui non sunt hunc in modum theologati sed se totos ad imitandum Paulum apostolum contulerunt, omnium theologorum longe principem ac theologandi magistrum. Cuius is est dicendi modus, ea vis, ea maiestas ut quae sententiae apud alios etiam apostolos iacent eae sint apud hunc erectae, quae apud alios stant apud hunc proelientur, quae 215 apud alios vix fulgent apud hunc fulgurare et ardere videantur, ut non ab re gladium, quod est verbum Dei, manu tenens figuretur. Hic est verus et, ut dicitur, germanus theologandi modus, haec vera dicendi et scribendi lex, quam qui sectantur ii profecto optimum dicendi genus theologandique sectantur. Quare non est ut illis veteribus, vere Pauli discipulis, hoc nomine, 220 quod ab his philosophia theologiae non admisceatur, aut detrahant novi theologi aut noster Thomas sit praeponendus.
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“not through philosophy and vain deceit.”8 This we know from experience as well. For what is there in philosophy? I do not mean dialectics, the whole of which lies in words; I have already spoken about it and will do so again. No, I mean moral and natural philosophy. What is there in them that is indubitable and settled except the things discovered in natural philosophy through the observations of doctors and others? [19] Regarding their words: because the nature of Greek is different from that of Latin. This would be a rather tedious subject to discuss, and it is a question for another time. Let it suffice to have said that the Latin doctors of the Church dreaded words which the great Latin authors (who were their teachers in the language), although experts in Greek, never used, words that are continually pressed into service by modern theologians: ens, entitas, quidditas, identitas, reale, essentiale, suum esse, as well as those terms which are given names like ampliari, dividi, componi, and other such things.9 Thus these largely worthless trifles were either not to be treated, or else they were to be disregarded, lest they lead to greater ignorance. [20] I am not saying this to detract from modern theologians – why would I want to detract from my very own age? – but to defend the ancients, who are unjustly blamed and abused for not having theologized according to this method. Instead they devoted themselves wholly to imitating the apostle Paul, by far the prince of all theologians and the master of theolo- gizing. His manner of speaking, his power, his majesty were such that what fell flat when spoken by others, even the apostles, he uttered loftily; what in the mouths of others stood its ground, rushed from his into battle; and what from others shone dimly, from him seemed to flash and burn, so that it is not off the mark for him to be represented holding in his hand a sword, i.e. the word of God.10 This is the true and, so to speak, the genuine mode of theologizing. This is the true law of speaking and writing, and those who pursue it doubtless pursue the very best manner of speaking and theologiz- ing. Therefore the ancients, the true disciples of Paul, should not be criti- cized by modern theologians or placed second to our Thomas on account of not having mixed theology with philosophy.
8 Col. 2:8. 9 The first set of words (‘being,’ ‘entity,’ ‘quiddity,’ ‘identity,’ ‘real being,’ ‘essential being,’ ‘its own being’) are terms of scholastic philosophy that in Valla’s view represent incompre- hensible jargon. Ampliari (‘to be ampliated’ or ‘ampliation’) is a term proper to supposition theory, a part of scholastic philosophy that deals with the proper referents and significations of names. Componi (‘to be composed’ or ‘composition’) and dividi (‘to be divided’ or ‘divi- sion’) refer to types of logical fallacies treated by scholastic philosophers. 10 Eph. 6:17.
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[Peroratio] [21] Quid autem? Aequandus? Omnibus eum aequare non ausim, pleris- que tamen etiam facile praetulerim, quos, ne parum id esse videatur, nomi- natim recensebo. Praepono Thomam Ioanni Cassiano, quem tamquam 225 optimum doctorem sanctus Dominicus fertur lectitare solitus. Praepono Anselmo, in primis acuto atque exculto. Praepono Bernardo, doctori eru- dito, suavi, copioso, sublimi. Praepono Remigio, omnium suae aetatis viro doctissimo. Praepono Bedae, his omnibus doctiori. Praepono Isidoro, quem sui amatores negant esse ulli secundum. Quid dicam
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[Peroratio] [21] What then? Should he be their equal? I would not dare to call him the equal of them all. Yet I would prefer him, and willingly, to many whom, lest it seem of little account, I shall list by name. I set Thomas above John Cassian, whom St. Dominic is said to have been in the habit of reading as if the best doctor. I set him above Anselm,11 the sharpest and most refined. I set him above Bernard,12 a learned, sweet, eloquent, and sublime doctor. I set him above Remigius,13 the most learned man of his age. I set him above Bede, more learned than all of them. I set him above Isidore, whom his admirers deny is second to anyone. What should I say about the Master of the Sentences14 and Gratian, who deserve more to be called assiduous com- pilers than true authors? Likewise, I set him above all the brothers of both his order and the others (although here we are talking about modern theo- logians): Albert the Great, Giles,15 Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, John the Scot,16 and the rest, who are so convinced of their own greatness that they are loath to compare themselves to the ancients. Moreover I set him above Lactantius and Boethius, although only in theology, for in other areas there is no comparison. I say the same about Cyprian, and I add, albeit unwillingly, Hilary as well; for what, finally, is holier, more learned, more eloquent than his writings? [22] Or is not even this enough for Thomas? How great and how praise- worthy are these men above whom I have set Thomas! Or shall we also call into question and dispute the four greatest of all, who were like a second team of evangelists? Shall we pull one of them out of that team so as to replace him with Thomas? I barely know which of them to prefer to whom, as each one had his own extraordinary gift. For although Augustine is com- monly preferred to all, because he treated more theological questions and is in many respects indubitably to be preferred, nevertheless, if Ambrose’s writings were compared with an equal number of Augustine’s, I do not think they would be ranked second. Nor does Jerome yield in any way to Augustine’s intellect; he is so much the greater in all areas of learning that Augustine seems to me like the Mediterranean, Jerome the ocean, upon
11 Anselm of Canterbury. 12 Bernard of Clairvaux. 13 Remigius of Auxerre. 14 Peter Lombard. 15 Giles of Rome. 16 John Duns Scotus.
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250 pauci nostrorum navigant, esse videatur. Gregorius his longe impar erudi- tione, sed cura et diligentia par, suavitate autem tanta atque sanctitate ut angelicum paene sermonem repraesentet. [23] Horum alicui parem facere Thomam vereor aut aliquem Latinorum. Potius eos cum totidem Graecis comparaverim: Ambrosium cum Basilio, 255 cuius, ut video, exstitit aemulus; Hieronymum cum Gregorio Nazianzeno, cuius auditorem et discipulum se fuisse profitetur; Augustinum cum Ioanne Chrysostomo, quem multis in locis secutus est et in librorum copia aemula- tus; Gregorium cum Dionysio, quem Areopagitam vocant, quod eius ipse primus Latinorum, quantum invenio, facit mentionem (nam superioribus 260 quos nominavi, non modo Latinis verum etiam Graecis, opera Dionysii fuere ignota). Ad hos proxime accedit Ioannes Damascenus, apud Graecos auctor celeberrimus, ut apud nos Thomas: ergo iure optimo Damascenus et Thomas copulabuntur, eo quidem magis quod Damascenus nonnulla logi- calia et prope metaphysicalia conscripsit. 265 [24] Erunt itaque quinque paria theologiae principum ante thronum Dei et Agnum concinentia cum viginti quattuor illis senioribus. Canunt enim semper apud Deum scriptores rerum sanctarum. Primum par Basilius et Ambrosius, canens lyra; secundum Nazianzenus et Hieronymus, canens cithara; tertium Chrysostomus et Augustinus, canens psalterio; quartum 270 Dionysius et Gregorius, canens tibia; quintum Damascenus et Thomas, canens cymbalis. Nec absurdum fuerit quinarium numerum nunc esse qui erat quaternarius, cum apud musicos quinque sint tetrachorda non quat- tuor, nec Thomam cymbalis fieri canentem. Ut enim Thomas geminus interpretatur, et ipse gemino sono theologiae pariter ac philosophiae 275 canere delectatus est, ita cymbala gemino constant instrumento laetum, hilarem, plausibilem cantum reddentia. [25] Talis est Thomae librorum cantus. Hac harmonia sanctus Thomas et pios homines qui ipsum legunt et sanctos angelos qui nunc eum audiunt oblectat. Semper enim apud Deum cum aliis sanctis doctoribus modulatur 280 et psallit, Agnum Dei assidue aut laudans aut pro nobis mortalibus obse- crans ut eodem perveniamus quo ipse pervenit. Quod nobis concedat qui vivit et regnat in saecula benedictus. Amen.17
17 In R, after “Amen”: “Oration of Lorenzo Valla, a most learned and eloquent man, which he held in praise of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in the city of Rome, a.d. 1457, the seventh day of March. He died in the same year on the first day of August” (“Doctissimi viri ac eloquentissimi Laurentii e Valle oratio quam habuit in lau- dem Sancti Thomae Aquinatis in Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae Minervae, in urbe romana a.d. 1457, VII die Martii; obiitque eodem anno die primo Augusti”). See Valla, Encomion sancti Thome, 55.
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which few of our contemporaries set sail. Gregory18 lags far behind all in erudition, but he equals them in carefulness and diligence and is possessed of such great sweetness and holiness that he seems to speak like an angel. [23] I am afraid to set Thomas or any of the Latins equal to any one of these men. Rather, I would compare them with the same number of Greeks: Ambrose with Basil, whose rival I see he was; Jerome with Gregory Nazianzen, whose pupil and disciple he claimed to have been; Augustine with John Chrysostom, whom he often followed in his writings and emu- lated in the number of his books; Gregory with Dionysius the Areopagite, because he is the first of the Latins, as far as I know, to mention him (for the works of Dionysius were unknown to the others I named, not only the Latins but the Greeks as well). Closest to these comes John Damascene, a most famous author among the Greeks, as Thomas is amongst us. It will therefore be perfectly right for John and Thomas to be paired together, and all the more so because John wrote many logical and well-nigh metaphysi- cal works. [24] So there will be five pairs of princes of theology resounding before the throne of God and the Lamb, in unison with the twenty-four elders. For the writers of holy things always make music in the sight of God. The first pair is Basil and Ambrose, playing the lyre; the second, Nazianzen and Jerome, playing the cithara; the third, Chrysostom and Augustine, playing the psaltery; the fourth, Dionysius and Gregory, playing the flute; the fifth, John Damascene and Thomas, playing the cymbals. And it will not be unharmonious for their number to be five now instead of four – since for musicians there are five tetrachords, not four – nor to have Thomas playing the cymbals. For as the name Thomas means “twin,” and as he enjoyed play- ing equally in the twin tones of theology and philosophy, thus the cymbals are a double instrument emitting happy, cheerful, and pleasing music. [25] Such is the tune of Thomas’s books. With this harmony Saint Thomas delights both the pious men who read him and the holy angels who now hear him. For he is always singing and playing before God with the other holy doctors, perpetually either praising the Lamb of God, or entreating Him that we mortals may reach the same place he has. May it be granted us by Him who lives and reigns, praised unto eternity. Amen.
18 Pope St. Gregory I (“the Great”).
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INDEX
Aaron 79, 264, 267 Bade, Josse 287n Abelard, Peter 206 Balbi of Genoa 99 Abraham 84 Basel, Council of 140 Accius, Lucius 268 Basil of Caesarea (the Great) 10–11, 185, Achilles 101–102 199–200, 275, 309, 315 Accursius 108 Baxandall, Michael 263 Actus beati Silvestri presulis 94, 98 Beccadelli, Antonio 17, 242 Adorno, Francesco 297 Becket, Thomas 169, 303 Ahasuerus 48 Bede 197, 313 Albert the Great 10, 149n5, 197, 281, 313 Bel 88 Alberti, Leon Battista 131, 267n Bernard of Clairvaux 10, 197, 210, 313 Alexander of Hales 197, 313 Bertelli, Carlo 162 Alexander the Great 45 Berthier, J. J. 158n, 161–162 Alfonso of Aragon 3, 7, 24, 71, 135, 140–142, Bible, books of 238, 240 Acts 34, 138, 142, 215 Alighieri, Dante 169 Apocalypse 199 Ambrose, bishop of Milan 9–11, 183, Colossians 185–186, 234, 252, 311 198–200, 218, 275, 309, 313, 315 1 Corinthians 213–215 Ananias 34, 37 2 Corinthians 307 Angelico, Fra 169, 202 Daniel 87–89 Anselm of Canterbury 197, 209, 313 Deuteronomy 116, 215, 221 Antoninus 284 Ecclesiasticus 153 Antoninus Pius 284n203 Ephesians 30, 41, 311 Antonio da Rho 236–237, 239–240, 246 Exodus 217, 221 Apollinaris 88 Galatians 33–34, 116 Aquinas, Thomas, see Thomas Aquinas Genesis 123 Aratus 215 Isaiah 214 Arian 146, 159 Jeremiah 34 Aristophanes 190n John 80, 89, 92, 98, 117n164, 138, 142, 301 Aristotle 7, 10, 12, 149, 165–166, Judith 89 190n, 191, 193–194, 208–209, 229, 231, 1 Kings 117 250, 270 Leviticus 116 Arnold of Brescia 65 Luke 92 Auerbach, Erich 179 Mark 92 Augustine of Hippo 9–11, 94, 101, 179, 183, Matthew 40–41, 43, 51, 80, 91–92 198–200, 219n, 221, 223–225, 275, 294, 1 Timothy 40 307, 309, 313, 315 Titus 215 City of God 73, 111–113, 115, 119–120, Tobias 89 123–125, 127–128, 131–132 Wisdom of Solomon 159 De doctrina christiana 206, 213, 216–220, Biondo, Flavio, see Flavio, Biondo 223, 225, 228, 292 Boethius 55, 159, 192–193, 197, 203–210, 231, De Trinitate 213, 216, 222 234–236, 240, 245–253, 281, 313 Augustus 39, 108, 284 Consolation of Philosophy 203–205, 234, Aureolus, Petrus 231 246, 253n Aurispa, Giovanni 27, 139, 272–274 De institutione musica 200, 201n Averroes 146, 159, 180 see also Thomas Aquinas, Commentary Aymo 99 on Boethius’s De Trinitate Aymo, Nicola de 99 Boethius of Dacia 9n24
Bologna, University of 5 Courcelle, Pierre Paul 253n Bonaventure 197, 214, 313 Croce, Benedetto 12 Boniface VIII, Pope 21, 51, 59, 107 Cyprian, bishop of Carthage 9, 183, 197, Bracciolini, Poggio 17–18, 25, 148–149, 215, 218, 309, 313 167n24, 176, 234, 242–243, 277, 289–290 Cyrus the Great 48 Breviarium Romanum 167 Bruni, Leonardo 17–18, 25 Damian, Peter 207–210, 215, 231 Brutus, Lucius Junius 40 Daniel 87 Bonaiuto, Andrea di 157–158, 160, 169 David 117 Decretum, see Gratian Caesar, Gaius Julius 20, 39, 49, 126, 283n Demosthenes 165, 190n, 195 Cajetan, Thomas (Tommaso de Vio) 149, De Panizza Lorch, Maristella 238–240, 151–154, 156, 158n 244, 248, 251, 253n Caligula 39 Digest, see Corpus Juris Civilis Callixtus III, Pope 177, 238 Di Napoli, Giovanni 145 Camporeale, Salvatore I. 1–2, 11–15 ps.-Dionysius the Areopagite 10–11, 167, Cantimori, Delio 133 199–200, 233, 315 Cappella Carafa (Rome) 156–158, Dominic (de Guzmán) 171–172, 197, 305, 161–163 307, 313 Cappellone degli Spagnoli Donation of Constantine, see Constitutum (Florence) 156–158, 160–162 Constantini Capreolo, Giovanni 149, 151–152, 154, 156 Dorp, Martin 183 Carafa, Oliviero 158 Cartei, Stefano 297 Eberhard of Béthune 99 Cassian, John 197, 313 Ecclesiastical History, see Eusebius of Cato the Elder 187 Caesarea Cato the Younger 299 École Normale Supérieure (Paris) 11 Charlemagne 102 Edict of Milan 67, 69 Chiostro Verde (Florence), see Cappellone Eighth Synod, see Constantinople, Council degli Spagnoli of, Fourth Cicero 85n129, 121, 173, 178–180, 187, Ennius 108 189n64, 191n64, 247, 250, 256, 259–260, Epimenides 215 268–269, 278 Erasmus of Rotterdam 36n47, 133, 164, Claudius 39 182–183, 257, 287n, 291–296 Clement of Alexandria 215 Estouteville, Guillaume d’ 177 Cochlaeus, Johann 132–133 Eugenius IV, Pope 7, 21, 24–26, 28, 70–71, Codex, see Corpus Juris Civilis 105, 135, 138–140, 148, 242 Codex Theodosianus 67, 69, 114 Eupolis 190n see also Theodosius Euripides 268–270 Columella, Lucius Junius Eusebius (author of the Legenda Moderatus 200n83 Silvestri) 85, 97 Concordantia discordantium canonum, see Eusebius of Caesarea 60, 64, 67, 69, 87–88, Gratian 115, 131 Condulmer, Gabriele, see Eugenius IV Constance, Council of 157n Fabro, Cornelio 149 Constantine (the Great) 4, 6, 17–143 Facio, Bartolomeo 242–243 (passim) Federici, Carlo dei 148 Constantinople, Council of, Fourth 78 Ferguson, Wallace K. 293 Constitutum Constantini 4–6, 13, 17–143 Flavio, Biondo 25, 125 (passim), 273 Florence, Council of 146, 285 Corpus Juris Civilis Florence, University of 11 Codex 71 Fois, Mario 254 Digest 53, 117 Frederick Barbarossa 65 Cosmas Indicopleustes 184 Fried, Johannes 4n8
Gaddi, Taddeo 158n Jerome 9–11, 46, 94, 183, 198–200, 216, 219n, Gaetano, see Cajetan 221, 225, 235, 252, 271–275, 288, 291–296, Gaius, see Caligula 309, 313, 315 Galba 39 Commentary on Daniel 87 Gamaliel the Elder 138, 142 Contra Rufinum 273–274 Garin, Eugenio 11–12 Letter to Ctesiphon (ep. 133) 251–253 Gaspare da Verona 177 Letter to Eustochium (ep. 22) 212–214, Gelasius I, Pope 51, 59, 63–64, 94, 98 255–262, 272–274 Gellius, Aulus 190n, 283n Letter to Pammachius, De optimo genere Gentile, Giovanni 12 interpretandi (ep. 57) 287 George, Saint 89 Letter to Pammachius (ep. 66) 212–216, Gesta Sanctorum, see Jacopo da Voragine 219n Gesta Silvestri 63–64, 97 Letter to the Orator Magnus (ep. Giles of Rome 197, 313 70) 212–215, 218, 257, 263, Giovanni da Fiesole, 273–274, 292 see Angelico Jesus Christ 40–41, 50–51, 78–80, 87, 92, Giovanni da Mantova 254 117n164, 142, 162, 172, 218 Giovanni di Napoli, Fra 145 Johannes de Sacrobosco 184 Girolami, Remigio de’ 147 John Chrysostom 10–11, 185, 199–200, 275, Golden Legend, see Jacopo da Voragine 309, 315 Grabmann, Martin 150 John Damascene 10–11, 199–202, 315 Gramsci, Antonio 14 John Duns Scotus 197, 313 Gratian 5, 10, 60–63, 69, 78, 102, 119–120, John of Holywood, see Johannes de 197, 313 Sacrobosco Gregory I (the Great), Pope 10–11, 53, 61, John the Baptist 303 198–200, 275, 315 John the Evangelist 172, 305 Gregory Nazianzen 10–11, 185–186, Johns Hopkins University 1 199–200, 215, 309, 315 John XXII, Pope 145 Guarino Veronese 18 Judas Iscariot 50 Guglielmo da Tocco 172 Judith 89 Guidi di Nepozzano, Uberto 147, 174n Juvenal 85
Heer, Friedrich 133 Kristeller, Paul Oskar 145, 150 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 14 Lactantius, Lucius Caecilius Firmianus 9, Hermagoras 180 76–77, 131, 136, 183, 189n64, 197, 215, 218, Hilary of Poitiers 9, 183, 197, 215, 218, 275, 275, 309, 313 309, 313 Landriani, Gerardo 37, 134–138 Huguccio of Pisa 99 Lateran Palace 60–61 Hus, Jan 75 Leclercq, Jean 254 Hutten, Ulrich von 131–132 Leeman, A. D. 193 Legenda aurea, see Jacopo da Voragine Ibn Rushd, see Averroes Legenda sanctorum, see Jacopo da Voragine Innocent III, Pope 21, 102 Legenda Silvestri 47, 60, 62–65, 68–69, 73, Isaac, Jean 208–209 76, 84–101, 110, 114–115 Isaiah (prophet) 214 Ligorio, Pirro 161 Isidore of Seville 99, 108, 197, 200, 313 Lippi, Filippino 157, 161, 163 Isocrates 165, 166n, 186, 258 Livy 90, 91, 99 Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Lorch, Maristella, see De Panizza Lorch Rinascimento (Florence) 11 Louis the Pious 69, 101–104 Lucian of Samosata 136 Jacopo da Voragine 63–64, 89, 93, Lucretia 40 95, 169 Luther, Martin 14–15, 131–134, 163 Jeremiah (prophet) 34 Lysias 179
Macrobius 36n47, 190n Peter Lombard 10, 150–152, 154, 159–160, Malchus 117 197, 313 Mamertinus, Claudius 166n Peter Martyr, see Peter of Verona Marcus Aurelius 284n203 Peter of Verona 8, 159, 169, 301 Mariani, Valerio 161 Peter, Saint 26, 33–35, 40, 50, 61, 78, 80, 83, Marrou, Henri-Irénée 179, 216 98, 117, 172, 307 Marsuppini, Carlo 17–18, 148 Phasur 34 Martin of Dacia 9n24 Philoponus, John 184 Mary (mother of Jesus) 92, 172, 299 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 12 Medici, Cosimo de’ (il Vecchio) 283 Pius V, Pope 152, 163 Melchiades, Pope 60, 69 Plato 190n, 257, 259–261 Melchizedek 84 Plautus 77, 122n171, 257, 259 Menander 215 Pliny the Elder 77 More, Thomas 36n47 Pliny the Younger 166 Moses 78 Poliziano, Angelo 293 Mussato, Albertino 254 Pollio, Gaius Asinius 36, 179–180 Priscian 278 Naaman 98 Ptolemy of Lucca 74n103 National Institute for the Study of the Pythagoras 253 Renaissance, see Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento Quintilian 27, 35n45, 58, 85, 86n, 89–90, Nazarius 166n 95, 121, 143, 165n, 166, 170, 178–181, Nebuchadnezzar 48 186–189, 191, 193, 196, 200n83, 210, 221, Nero 39 233, 237, 241–243, 249–252, 257–258, 262, Nestorius 159 267–270, 273, 278–279, 283, 285, 290 Niccoli, Niccolò 148–149 see also ps.-Quintilian Nicea, Council of 67 ps.-Quintilian (author of the Nicholas V, Pope 3, 176–177, 202, 238, Declamationes) 121, 123 240–241, 264, 281, 283–286 Radetti, Giorgio 169, 251, 253n Octavian, see Augustus Remigius of Auxerre 197, 313 Odo of Châteauroux 210, 229 Rhetorica ad Herennium 86n, 178–179 Origen 88, 215, 223 Romulus 40 Orlandi, Stefano 159 Rufinus 60, 64, 69, 115, 131, 273, 294 Otho 39 see also Eusebius of Caesarea Otto of Freising 5 Rule of Saint Augustine 173n43
Pacatus Drepanius, Latinus 166n Sadous, Alfred L. de 216 Pactum Hludovicianum 57, 60, 69, 101–112, Saint Albert’s (college) 1 132 Saint-Gilles, Jean de 210, 229 Pacuvius, Marcus 264, 268–270 Saint John Lateran, Archbasilica of Pagina Privilegii 21, 62 (Rome), see Lateran Palace Panofsky, Erwin 131, 263 Saint Paul, Basilica of (Rome) 81–82 Panormita, see Beccadelli, Antonio Saint Peter, Basilica of (Rome) 81–82 Parentucelli, Tommaso, see Nicholas V Sallust 86n, 299 Paris, University of 228 Sandei, Felino 17 Paschal I, Pope 69–70, 102–103 Sanhedrin 142 Passeri, Giuseppe 158n Santa Maria Novella (Florence) 1, 147–148, Patroclus 101–102 158, 174n Paucupalea 62–63 see also Cappellone degli Spagnoli Paul IV, Pope 161, 163 Santa Maria sopra Minerva (Rome) 7–8, Paul, Saint 33–35, 37, 40, 81, 83, 93, 116, 137, 150, 155, 163, 174, 176–177, 202 172, 185–186, 192, 194–195, 203, 213–215, see also Cappella Carafa 220n, 224, 232, 234–235, 252–253, Santa Reparata (Florence) 148 276–277, 287n, 288, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311 Satan 50
Schlosser, Julius von 157n Tudeschi, Niccolò dei 140 Scrivani, Melchior 3 Twelve Tables 66 Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 11 Seigel, Jerrold E. 219 Ulpian 283n Sentences, see Peter Lombard Serra, Giovanni 33 Valerius Maximus 91 Setz, Wolfram 35, 37, 45, 107, 119 Valla, Lorenzo 1–11, passim Sigismund (Holy Roman Emperor) 105 Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum 3, Silvestri, Francesco 147 22, 82, 92, 99, 155, 162, 176, 193, 195, 198, Soboul, Albert 14 206, 241, 243, 264–266, 279–280, Solomon 117, 267 285–288 Spina, Bartolomeo 152–154 Annotations on the New Testament, see Stephen II, Pope 101 Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum Steuco, Agostino 133 Antidota in Pogium 167n24, 176, 242 Suetonius 108 Apologia 135, 234, 242 Susanna 89 Collatio Novi Testamenti, see Sylvester I, Pope 4, 6, 28–29n32, 30, 40, 42, Adnotationes in Novum Testamentum 44, 49–54, 57, 61, 63, 66, 79–80, 82–85, Comparison of Cicero and Quintilian, see 87, 98, 115 De comparatione Ciceronis Symmachus (Prefect of Rome) 67 Quintilianique De comparatione Ciceronis Tarquinius Superbus 40, 126, 207 Quintilianique 17–18, 139, 187, 241 Ten Commandments 66 De falso credita et ementita Constantini Terence 86n donatione 2, 4–7, 17–143 (passim), Tertulian 252 241, 272–273, 289 Theodosian Code, see Codex Theodosianus De libero arbitrio 3, 54–55, 113, 167, 176, Theodosius 45, 67, 110, 114 203–208, 210, 229–232, 234, 241, 250, Thomas (apostle) 303 261, 289 Thomas Aquinas 7–11, 145–315 (passim) De professione religiosorum 3, 234, 241 Commentary on Boethius’s De De vero bono, see De vero Trinitate 203, 211–228, 232–233, falsoque bono 255–257, 274, 286 De vero falsoque bono 3, 17–19, 22, 36, Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et 134, 167, 186, 196, 204–205, 208, religionem 219n–220n 234–240, 243–253, 261, 285–286, 289 Expositiones 180 De voluptate, see De vero falsoque bono Expositio super librum Boethii de Dialecticae disputationes 3, 7, 22–23, 27, Trinitate, see Commentary on 54–56, 75, 95–97, 123, 135, 138, 155, 167, Boethius’s De Trinitate 170n33, 181, 184n55, 189n64, 195, 204, Scriptum in libros Senentiarum 152 208, 235, 237–245, 248, 251–252, Summa contra gentes 159 285–286, 288 Summa theologiae 149–152, 154, 158n, Dialectical Disputations, see Dialecticae 161–163, 175, 180, 182, 211, 226 disputationes Super Epistolas s. Pauli lectura 287n Donation of Constantine, see De falso Thucydides 42n60, 190n credita et ementita Constantini Tiberius 39 donatione Tobias 89 Elegances of the Latin Language, see Tolosani, Giovanmaria dei 133 Elegantiae linguae latinae Torquemada, Juan de 202 Elegantiae linguae latinae 3, 82, 176, 181, Tortelli, Giovanni 176 193, 204, 233, 241, 243, 254–257, Tracy, James 291 263–265, 270, 272–273, 276–278, Traini, Francesco 156, 169 280–281, 286–288, 291, 293 Traversari, Ambrogio 17–19, 134 Encomion sancti Thomae 2, 7–11, 15, 34, Trent, Council of 146, 152, 154, 163 145–297 (passim) Trevisan, Ludovico 28, 134–136, 138–140, 142 Encomium of Saint Thomas, see Trinkaus, Charles 133 Encomion sancti Thomae
Gesta Ferdinandi regis Aragonum 165n Thucydides, History (translation) 42, In principio sui studii, see Oratio in 155, 193, 280–287 principio sui studii Varro, Marcus Terentius 91 Invectivae in Facium 242 Vasari, Giorgio 161 On Free Will, see De libero arbitrio Vespasian 39 On Pleasure, see De vero Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University falsoque bono Center for Renaissance Studies 1 On the Profession of the Religious, see De Vio, Tommaso de, see Cajetan professione religiosorum Virgil 78, 303 Oratio in principio sui studii 155, 193, 264 Vitelleschi, Giovanni 117 Oration on the Falsely Believed and Vitellius 39 Forged Donation of Constantine, see Vitruvius 201n De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione Weise, Georg 164 Pruning of all Dialectic, see Dialecticae Wezel 65 disputationes William of Conches 9n24 Quintilian, Insititutio oratoria William of Ockham 232 (glosses) 85, 89, 165n, 166, 189n64, Wycliffe, John 75, 157n 200n83, 254, 283n Repastinatio dialecticae et philosophiae, Zeno 253 see Dialecticae disputationes Zeri, Federico 164