Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457) was the leading philologist of the first half of the fifteenth century, as well as a philosopher, theologian, and translator. His extant Latin letters, though few, afford a direct and unguarded window into the working life of the most passionate, difficult, and interesting of the Italian humanists.
The Dialectical Disputations, translated here for the first time into any modern language, is Valla's principal contribution to the philosophy of language and logic. Valla sought to replace the scholastic tradition of Aristotelian logic with a new logic based on the historical usage of classical Latin and on a commonsense approach.
Uses philological methods to attack the authenticity of the most important document justifying the papacy's claims to temporal rule.