Primary Sources: Selected Works by Valla

The 1962 reprint of Valla’s Opera omnia, contains his most important writings. A new critical edition of his complete works was launched in 2007: “Edizione Nazionale delle opere di Lorenzo Valla” (Florence: Polistampa). Several volumes have now appeared.

• Opera omnia, Basel 1540; repr. with a second volume, Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962.
• Repastinatio dialectice et philosophie, G. Zippel (ed.), 2 vols., Padua: Antenore, 1982. [vol. 1 contains the third version; vol. 2 the first.]
• Dialectical Disputations, B. Copenhaver and L. Nauta (ed. and trans.), 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
• Elegantiae linguae Latinae, S. López Moreda (ed.), Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 1999.
• “Dialogue on Free Will”, C. Trinkaus (trans.), in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, E. Cassirer et al. (eds.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. (Scholar)
• De vero falsoque bono, M. de Panizza Lorch (ed.), Bari, 1970; A. K. Hieatt and M. Lorch (trans.), New York: Abaris Books 1977.
• Collatio Novi Testamenti, A. Perosa (ed.), Florence: Sansoni, 1970.
• “In Praise of Saint Thomas Aquinas”, M. E. Hanley (trans.), in Renaissance Philosophy, L. A. Kennedy (ed.), Mouton: The Hague, 1973. (Scholar)
• De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, W. Setz (ed.), Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1976; repr. Leipzig: Teubner, 1994; C. B. Coleman (trans.), Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1993; G. W. Bowersock, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 2007.
• Epistole, O. Besomi and M. Regoliosi (ed.), Padua: Antenore, 1984.
• Le Postille all’Instituto oratoria di Quintiliano, L. Cesarini Martinelli and A. Perosa (ed.), Padua: Antenore, 1996. (Scholar)
• Correspondence, Brendan Cook (ed. and trans. ), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Selected Secondary Literature

• Camporeale, S., 1972. Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo e teologia, Florence: Nella sede dell’Istituto Palazzo Strozzi. (Scholar)
• –––, 2002. Lorenzo Valla: Umanesimo, riforma, e Controriforma, Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura. (Scholar)
• Celenza, C., 2005. “Lorenzo Valla and the Traditions and Transmissions of Philosophy,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 66: 483–506. (Scholar)
• Celenza, C., 2018. The Intellectual World of the Italian Renaissance: Language, Philosophy, and the Search for Meaning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Copenhaver, B. P., 2005. “Valla Our Contemporary: Philosophy and Philology,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 66: 507–525. (Scholar)
• Copenhaver, B. P. and C. B. Schmitt, 1992. Renaissance Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• Fois, M., 1969. Il pensiero cristiano di Lorenzo Valla nel quadro storico-culturale del suo ambiente, Rome: Libreria editrice dell’Univ. Gregoriana. (Scholar)
• Fubini, R., 1999. “Contributo per l’interpretazione della Dialectica di Lorenzo Valla,” in G. F. Vescovini, ed., Filosofia e scienza classica, arabo-latina medievale e l’età moderna, Louvain-la-Neuve: Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Médiévales, 289–316. (Scholar)
• Gavinelli, S., 1991. “Teorie grammaticali nelle Elegantie e la tradizione scolastica del tardo umanesimo,” Rinascimento, 31: 155–181 (Scholar)
• Gerl, H.-B., 1974. Rhetorik als Philosophie. Lorenzo Valla, Munich: Fink. (Scholar)
• Gray, H., 1965. “Valla’s Encomium of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Humanist Conception of Christian Antiquity,” in H. Bluhm (ed.), Essays in History and Literature presented by Fellows of the Newberry Library to Stanley Pargellis, Chicago: Newberry Library, 37–51. (Scholar)
• Izbicki, T. M., 1993. “Lorenzo Valla: The Scholarship in English Through 1992,” in J. W. O’Malley et al. (eds.), Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Charles Trinkaus, Leiden: Brill, 287–301. [Bibliography on Valla scholarship in English.] (Scholar)
• Jong, Jan de, 2015. “De Sepulcro Laurentii Valae quid veri habeat: Tracing the Tomb Monument of Lorenzo Valla in St. John Lateran, Rome,” Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, 94: 94–128. (Scholar)
• Kessler, E., 1988. “Die Transformation des aristotelischen Organon durch Lorenzo Valla,” in E. Kessler et al. (eds.), Aristotelismus und Renaissance. In memoriam Charles B. Schmitt, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 53–74. (Scholar)
• Kraye, J., 2001. “Lorenzo Valla and Changing Perceptions of Renaissance Humanism,” Comparative Criticism, 23: 37–55. (Scholar)
• –––, 2004. “Pagan Virtue in Pursuit of Christian Happiness: Renaissance Humanists and the Revival of Classical Ethics,” in G. Althoff (ed.) Zeichen – Rituale – Werte: Internationales Kolloquium des Sonderforschungsbereichs 496 an der Westfälischen Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster: Rhema, 55–68. (Scholar)
• Laffranchi, M., 1999. Dialettica e filosofia in Lorenzo Valla, Milan: Vita e Pensiero. (Scholar)
• Mack, P., 1993. Renaissance Argument. Valla and Agricola in the Traditions of Rhetoric and Dialectic, Leiden: Brill. (Scholar)
• Mancini, G., 1891. Vita di Lorenzo Valla, Florence: Sansoni. (Scholar)
• Marsico, C. 2013. Per l’edizione delle Elegantie di Lorenzo Valla: studio sul V libro, Florence: Firenze University Press. (Scholar)
• Marsh, D., 1979. “Grammar, Method, and Polemic in Lorenzo Valla’s Elegantiae,” Rinascimento, 19: 91–116. (Scholar)
• Monfasani, J., 1989. “Was Lorenzo Valla an Ordinary Language Philosopher?” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 50: 309–323; repr. in J. Monfasani, Language and Learning in Renaissance Italy. Selected Articles, Aldershot: Variorum, 1994. (Scholar)
• –––, 1990. “Lorenzo Valla and Rudolph Agricola,” Journal of the History of Philosophy, 28: 181–200; repr. in J. Monfasani, Language and Learning in Renaissance Italy. Selected Articles, Aldershot: Variorum, 1994. (Scholar)
• –––, 2000. “The Theology of Lorenzo Valla,” in J. Kraye and M. W. F. Stone (eds.), Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy, London: Routledge, 1–23; repr. in J. Monfasani, Greeks and Latins in Renaissance Italy. Studies on Humanism and Philosophy in the 15^th Century, Aldershot: Variorum, 2004. (Scholar)
• –––, 2001. “Disputationes Vallianae,” in F. Mariani Zini (ed.), Penser entre les lignes: Philologie et Philosophie au Quattrocento, Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 229–250; repr. in J. Monfasani, Greeks and Latins in Renaissance Italy: Studies on Humanism and Philosophy in the 15^th Century, Aldershot: Variorum, 2004. (Scholar)
• Moss, A., 2003. Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• Nauta, L., 2003. “William of Ockham and Lorenzo Valla: False Friends. Semantics and Ontological Reduction,” Renaissance Quarterly, 56: 613–651. (Scholar)
• –––, 2003. “Lorenzo Valla’s Critique of Aristotelian Psychology,” Vivarium, 41: 120–143. (Scholar)
• –––, 2006. “Lorenzo Valla and Quattrocento Scepticism,” Vivarium, 44: 375–395 (Scholar)
• –––, 2007. “Lorenzo Valla and the Rise of Humanist Dialectic,” in J. Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 193–210. (Scholar)
• –––, 2009. In Defense of Common Sense. Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Critique of Scholastic Philosophy, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press (Scholar)
• –––, 2018. “Latin as a Common Language: The Coherence of Lorenzo Valla’s Humanist Program,” Renaissance Quarterly, 71: 1–32. (Scholar)
• –––, 2021. Philosophy and the Language of the People. The Claims of Common Speech from Petrarch to Locke, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• Paganini, G., 2003. “Hobbes, Valla and the Trinity,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy, 11: 183–218. (Scholar)
• Pagliaroli, S., 2006. “Una proposta per il giovane Valla: Quintiliani Tulliique examen,” Studi medievali e umanistici, Volume 4, Messina : Centro interdipartimentale di studi umanistici, Università degli studi di Messina. (Scholar)
• Panizza, L. A., 1978. “Lorenzo Valla’s De vero falsoque bono, Lactantius and Oratorical Scepticism,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 41: 76–107. (Scholar)
• Perreiah, A. R., 1982. “Humanist Critiques of Scholastic Dialectic,” Sixteenth-Century Journal, 13: 3–22. (Scholar)
• Regoliosi, M. and Marsico, C. (eds), 2013. La diffusione europea del pensiero del Valla: atti del convegno del Comitato nazionale VI centenario della nascita di Lorenzo Valla, Prato, 3–6 dicembre 2008, 2 vols., Florence: Polistampa. (Scholar)
• Regoliosi, M. (ed.), 2010. Lorenzo Valla: la riforma della lingua e della logica. Atti del convegno del Comitato Nazionale VI centenario della nascita di Lorenzo Valla, Prato, 4–7 giugno 2008, 2 vols., Florence: Polistampa. (Scholar)
• –––, 2000. “Le Elegantie del Valla come ‘grammatica’ antinormativa,” Studi di grammatica italiana,w 19: 315–336. (Scholar)
• Rizzo, S., 2002. Ricerche sul latino umanistico, Rome: Studi di Storia e letteratura. (Scholar)
• ––– (ed.), 1994. Lorenzo Valla, Orazione per l’inaugurazione dell’anno accademico 1455–1456: Atti di un seminario di filologia umanistica, Rome: Roma nel Rinascimento. (Scholar)
• Tavoni, M., 1984. Latino, grammatica, volgare: Storia di una questione umanistica, Padua: Antenore. (Scholar)
• Trinkaus, C., 1970. In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought, 2 vols., Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 1988. “Italian Humanism and Scholastic Theology,” in A. Rabil, Jr. (ed.), Renaissance Humanism: Foundations, Forms and Legacy (Volume 3), Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 327–348; repr. in Trinkaus 1999. (Scholar)
• –––, 1993. “Lorenzo Valla’s Anti-Aristotelian Natural Philosophy,” I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance, 5: 279–325; repr. in C. Trinkaus, Renaissance Transformation of Late Medieval Thought, Aldershot: Variorum, 1999. (Scholar)
• –––, 1996. “Lorenzo Valla on the Problem of Speaking about the Trinity,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 57: 27–53; repr. in C. Trinkaus, Renaissance Transformation of Late Medieval Thought, Aldershot: Variorum, 1999. (Scholar)
• Vasoli, C., 1968. La dialettica e la retorica dell’Umanesimo. Invenzione e metodo nella cultura del XV e XVI secolo, Milan: Feltrinelli. (Scholar)