Humanism and Truth: Valla Writes against the Donation of Constantine

Journal of the History of Ideas

Volumn 57, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 79-86

  Fubini, Riccardo ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 1842482353     PISSN: 00225037     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3653883     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Salvatore I. Camporeale, "Lorenzo Valla e il De falso credita donatione. Retorica, libertà ed ecclesiologia nel '400," Memorie domenicane, n. s. 19 (1988), 221f. More recently, Carlo Ginzburg ("Préface" to Lorenzo Valla, La Donation de Constantin, translation and commentary by Jean-Baptiste Giard [Paris, 1993], x-xxi) has taken Valla's treatise as pretext for discussing the supposed rhetorical character of the "proof " in historical writing.
2. Salvatore I. Camporeale, "Lorenzo Valla e il De falso credita donatione. Retorica, libertà ed ecclesiologia nel '400," Memorie domenicane, n. s. 19 (1988), 221f. More recently, Carlo Ginzburg ("Préface" to Lorenzo Valla, La Donation de Constantin, translation and commentary by Jean-Baptiste Giard [Paris, 1993], x-xxi) has taken Valla's treatise as pretext for discussing the supposed rhetorical character of the "proof " in historical writing.
3. Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung. De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione. Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1975); see my review in Studi medievali, ser. 3, 20 (1979), 221-28.
4. Wolfram Setz, Lorenzo Vallas Schrift gegen die Konstantinische Schenkung. De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione. Zur Interpretation und Wirkungsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1975); see my review in Studi medievali, ser. 3, 20 (1979), 221-28.
5. Wolfram Setz, "Einleitung" to Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, X (Weimar, 1976), 15, cited hereafter as "Setz ed." The English translation and edition by Christopher Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine (1922; rpt. Toronto, 1993), is cited below as "Coleman trans."
6. Wolfram Setz, "Einleitung" to Lorenzo Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. Wolfram Setz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, X (Weimar, 1976), 15, cited hereafter as "Setz ed." The English translation and edition by Christopher Coleman, The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine (1922; rpt. Toronto, 1993), is cited below as "Coleman trans."
7. Riccardo Fubini, "Contestazioni quattrocentesche della Donazione di Costantino: Niccolò Cusano, Lorenzo Valla," in Costantino il grande, dall'antichità all'umanesimo, ed. Giorgio Bonamente and Franca Fusco (Macerata, 1992), I, 385-431.
8. Giovanni Cavalcanti, Nuova opera (Chronique florentine inédite du XV siècle), ed. Antoine Monti (Paris, 1989), 134:
9. "Avegnadio che, se Gostantino avesse a Silvestro consegniato le tante e ricche dote-che se ne dubita, perché non se ne truova nullo brivilegio-no' le potea dare se non vivente lui, avegnadio che lo'mperio è uficio più avaccio che non è signoria ⋯ e però vedete voi perché la Chiesa è priva di ragione civile." Note the distinction between the legal and impersonal government of the "Empire" and the merely personal government of a "signoria." On Cavalcanti cf. Riccardo Fubini, Italia quattrocentesca. Politica e diplomazia nell 'età di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Milan, 1994), 79.
10. r. On the question, compare F. Cusin, "L'impero e la successione degli Sforza ai Visconti," Archivio storico lombardo, 63 (1936), 3-116.
11. 2-1968), cited as "De concordantia."
12. 2-1968), cited as "De concordantia."
13. 2-1968), cited as "De concordantia."
14. Fubini, "Contestazioni," 403-16.
15. CUSANUS: "Unde qui postea addidit, pro palea illam confictam scripturam posuit" (De concordantia, III.2.300). VALLA: "Et ante omnia non modo ille, qui nonnulla ad opus Gratiani adiecit, improbitatis arguendus est, verum etiam inscitiae.... Nonnulli eum, qui hoc capitulum adiecit, aiunt vocatum Paleam" (Setz ed., 95; Coleman trans., 75, slightly altered).
16. Fubini, "Contestazioni quattrocentesche," 411. Among the passages that testify to the dependence of Valla on Cusanus, I should like to note two others that offer the clearest indications. CUSANUS: "Relegi omnes quas potui historias, Augustini, Ambrosii ac aliorum opuscula peritissimorum ⋯ et nullam invenio concordantiam ad ea quae de illa donatione leguntur" (De concordantia, III.2.295); VALLA: "Evolvantur omnes Latinae Greciaeque historiae, cirentur ceteri auctores qui de illis meminere temporibus, ac neminem reperies in hac re ab alio discrepare (Setz ed., 89; Coleman trans. 67)." Leaving aside rhetorical variatio, and looking out for the conceptual shifts I shall be discussing further on, the concepts and terms are in practice the same, and owe much more to Cusanus than to Valla, who adduces only Eutropius. For another case of clear dependence of Valla's treatise on Cusanus's De concordantia catholica that falls outside of Cusanus's specific consideration of the Donation, see CUSANUS (De concordantia, II.34.252): "Nec 'Cephas' est Hebraeum, sed Syriacum, ut quidam dicunt.... Sic videtur quod 'Cephas' sit Graecum, quod Hebraice 'Petrus' eius interpretatio Latina vel Graeca, et non e converso, scilicet quod 'Cephas' sit Graecum, quod Hebraice 'Petrus' interpretetur"; VALLA (Setz ed., 153; Coleman trans. 155), refuting the current etymology ("Cephas dictus est eo quod in capite sit constitutus Apostolorum"), like Cusanus, says it is not a Greek name but "Hebraicum seu potius Syriacum, quod Graeci 'Kephas' scribunt, quod apud eos interpretatur 'Petrus,' non caput" (where in Valla's seu potius there appears the uncertainty already manifest in Cusanus).
17. CUSANUS: "Quis non crederet potius Hieronymo approbato, quam ignoti auctoris scripturis, quae apocryphae dicuntur quando auctor ignoratur?" (De concordantia, III.2.304); VALLA: "⋯ Ego vero, ut ingenue feram sententiam, gesta Silvestri nego esse apocrypha,... sed falsa et indigna quae legantur existimo, cum vero in aliis, turn vero in eo quod narratur de dracone, de tauro, de lepra, propter quae refutanda tanta repetii" (Setz ed.,152; Coleman trans., 153, slightly altered).
18. See Fubini, "Contestazioni," 421, and Valla, De falso credita, ed. Setz, 151: "Et summus pontifex hos libros appellat apochryphos quasi nihil vitii sit nisi quod eorum ignoratur auctor; quasi credibilia sint quae narrantur; quasi sancta et ad confirmationem religionis pertinentia, ut iam non minus culpae sit penes hune qui mala probat, quam penes ilium qui mala excogitavit."
19. See Fubini, "Contestazioni," 421, and Valla, De falso credita, ed. Setz, 151: "Et summus pontifex hos libros appellat apochryphos quasi nihil vitii sit nisi quod eorum ignoratur auctor; quasi credibilia sint quae narrantur; quasi sancta et ad confirmationem religionis pertinentia, ut iam non minus culpae sit penes hune qui mala probat, quam penes ilium qui mala excogitavit."
20. Fubini, "Contestazioni," 408-10, and the bibliography there cited.
21. Compare Marc Fumaroli, L'âge de l'éloquence. Rhétorique et "res literaria" de la Renaissance au seuil de l'époque classique (Paris, 1994), 31. Elsewhere the author notes "la dette de Cicéron envers Aristote, qui le premier s'efforça de reconcilier philosophie et rhétorique séparées par Platon" (52). For important clarifications concerning Valla's notes on Quintilian (but also on the relation between rhetoric and philosophy in the Institutio oratorio) see L. Cesarini Martinelli, "Le postule di Lorenzo Valla all' Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano," in Lorenzo Valla e l'umanesimo italiano, ed. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padua, 1986), 21-50, especially 34f. The author's complete critical edition of Valla's notes on Quintilian will be forthcoming shortly.
22. Compare Marc Fumaroli, L'âge de l'éloquence. Rhétorique et "res literaria" de la Renaissance au seuil de l'époque classique (Paris, 1994), 31. Elsewhere the author notes "la dette de Cicéron envers Aristote, qui le premier s'efforça de reconcilier philosophie et rhétorique séparées par Platon" (52). For important clarifications concerning Valla's notes on Quintilian (but also on the relation between rhetoric and philosophy in the Institutio oratorio) see L. Cesarini Martinelli, "Le postule di Lorenzo Valla all' Institutio oratoria di Quintiliano," in Lorenzo Valla e l'umanesimo italiano, ed. Ottavio Besomi and Mariangela Regoliosi (Padua, 1986), 21-50, especially 34f. The author's complete critical edition of Valla's notes on Quintilian will be forthcoming shortly.
23. Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver (Notre Dame, Ind., 1969), 305-10. Norberto Bobbio, in the preface to the Italian edition (Turin, 1976), defines the position of the authors as follows (xix): "The theory of argumentation refuses straightforward antitheses. It shows that between absolute truth and non-truth there exists room for truths to be exposed to continual revision, thanks to the technique of adducing reasons for and against."
24. Compare Fubini, "Contestazioni," 427.
25. Ibid., 411.
26. Ibid., 428. And see also the Antivalla, attributed to Antonio Cortesi or to his son Alessandro: "Quanquam, Pontifex Maxime, de hac re non ita dicam, ut a me defendi videantur quae turn egregie a sapientissimis definita viris, turn maximis suffulta rationibus, turn pontificum decretis confirmata, turn diuturna possessione stabilita, nulla altenus cuiusque ope indigeant" (ibid., 429). Giovanni Antonazzi, Lorenzo Valla e la polemica sulla Donazione di Costantino, con testi inediti dei secoli XV-XVII (Rome, 1985) is very useful on this theme.
27. Ibid., 428. And see also the Antivalla, attributed to Antonio Cortesi or to his son Alessandro: "Quanquam, Pontifex Maxime, de hac re non ita dicam, ut a me defendi videantur quae turn egregie a sapientissimis definita viris, turn maximis suffulta rationibus, turn pontificum decretis confirmata, turn diuturna possessione stabilita, nulla altenus cuiusque ope indigeant" (ibid., 429). Giovanni Antonazzi, Lorenzo Valla e la polemica sulla Donazione di Costantino, con testi inediti dei secoli XV-XVII (Rome, 1985) is very useful on this theme.
28. Ibid., 428. And see also the Antivalla, attributed to Antonio Cortesi or to his son Alessandro: "Quanquam, Pontifex Maxime, de hac re non ita dicam, ut a me defendi videantur quae turn egregie a sapientissimis definita viris, turn maximis suffulta rationibus, turn pontificum decretis confirmata, turn diuturna possessione stabilita, nulla altenus cuiusque ope indigeant" (ibid., 429). Giovanni Antonazzi, Lorenzo Valla e la polemica sulla Donazione di Costantino, con testi inediti dei secoli XV-XVII (Rome, 1985) is very useful on this theme.
29. See Domenico Maffei, La Donazione di Costantino nei giuristi medievali (Milan, 1969), 316f.
30. Precisely the "horribile et immane mendacium de donatione Constantini," as Luther would later press Valla's claim. University of Florence.