ON PLEASURE - Original text with facing authoritative translation

On Pleasure / De Voluptate (Janus Series 1) (English and Latin Edition)

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Lorenzo Valla

Mental Health

Abaris Books

<p>Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) was a leading humanist scholar and controversial writer of the fifteenth century. Born in Rome he spent part of his early life in other cities in Italy teaching rhetoric. After serving as secretary to the king of Naples, Alfonso V of Aragon, from 1435 to 1448, he eventually returned to his native city where he became apostolic secretary two years before his death. Although his works, all written in Latin, treat a number of linguistic, historical or philosophical issues, his most polemical treatises are those dealing with religious questions. In The Profession of the Religious and The Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine, both dating from around 1440, he advocates an inner kind of spirituality that can be achieved even by the laity and he criticizes the ecclesiastical institutions for their role in exploiting the legend according to which the emperor had allegedly conferred political power on the Pope. These treatises, and especially the well-known Donation, aroused considerable interest among the Protestant reformers; they are, moreover, fascinating texts for the modern reader too. Structured as a dialogue and an oration, respectively, they illustrate the various discursive strategies devised by the author as effective means of persuasion.</p>

The Profession of the Religious and selections from the Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine (Renaissance and Reformation Texts in Translation, 1)

History

Europe

Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922. Excerpt: ... THE DONATION OF CONSTANTINE 137 ancient writer ought to be adduced, one not later than the time of Constantine. However, none such is adduced, but as it happens some recent writer or other. Whence did he get it? For whoever composes a narrative about an earlier age, either writes at the dictation of the Holy Spirit, or follows the authority of former writers, and of those, of course, who wrote concerning their own age. So whoever does not follow earlier writers will be one of those to whom the remoteness of the event affords the boldness to lie. But if this story is to be read anywhere, it is not consistent with antiquity any more than that stupid narrative of the glossator Accursius about Roman ambassadors being sent to Greece to get laws agrees with Titus Livius and the other best writers. "Given at Rome, on the third day before the Kalends of April, Constantine Augustus consul for the fourth time, and Gallicanus consul for the fourth time."1 He took the next to the last day of March so that we might feel that this was done in the season of holy days, which, for the most part, come at that time. And "Constantine consul for the fourth time, and Gallicanus consul for the fourth time." Strange if each had been consul thrice, and they were colleagues in a fourth consulship! But stranger still that the Augustus, a leper, with elephantiasis (which disease is as remarkable among diseases, as elephants are among animals), should want to even accept a consulship, when king Azariah, as soon as he was affected with leprosy, kept himself secluded, while the management of the kingdom was given over to Jotham his son;2 and almost all lepers have acted similarly. And by this argument alone the whole "privilege" is confuted outright, destroyed, and overturned. And if a...

The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, Text and Translation Into English

General Books LLC

Reprint of: Vol. 20, No. 5 (1972) Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics

The Role of Aggression in Human Pathology

Psychology & Counseling

S Karger Ag

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Books by Lorenzo Valla