Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/56

Rh 42 V A L V A L Cicero than a mule is like a man, which is only another way of saying that he had in excess the faults of his age. The entire life, thought, and literature of the first century and a half of the empire were steeped in the influences of rhetoric, enthroned in the seat of education. In Valerius are presented to us, in a rude and palpable form, all the rhetorical tendencies of the age, unsobered by the sanity of Quintilian and unrefined by the taste and subtlety of Tacitus. Here we have the loathing for direct and simple state ment and the pursuit of novelty at any price. Every device which can put a gloss of newness on the language is eagerly adopted. The barrier between the diction of poetry and that of prose is broken down ; the uses of words are strained ; monstrous metaphors are in vented ; there are startling contrasts, dark innuendoes, and highly coloured epithets ; the most unnatural variations are played upon the artificial scale of grammatical and rhetorical figures of speech. It is a most instructive lesson in the history of Latin to set side by side and compare minutely with each other a passage of Valerius and its counterpart in Cicero or Livy. In the MSS. of Valerius a tenth book is given, which consists of the so-called &quot; liber cle prfenominibus,&quot; the work of some grammarian of a much later date. The collection of Valerius was much used for school purposes, and its popu larity in the Middle Ages is attested by the large number of MSS. in which it has been preserved. Like other school books it was epitomated. One com plete epitome, probably of the 4th or 5th century, bearing the name of Julius Paris, lias come down to us ; also a portion of another by Januarius Nepo- tiaims. The best edition of Valerius with explanatory matter is that by C. Kempf (Berlin, 1854); the best text is that by C. Halm (Leipsic, 1865). VALETTA, or VALLETTA. See MALTA, vol. xv. pp. 340- 341. The population was 24,854 in 1881, and was esti mated at 26,700 in 1888. VALLA, LORENZO (c. 1406-1457), one of the most salient personalities of the earlier Italian Renaissance, was born at Rome, of parents derived from Piacenza, possibly in the year 1406-07, or perhaps somewhat earlier. He was educated in the humanistic schools of Rome, according to the customs of that age, learning grammar from some humble dominie and afterwards attending the classes of eminent professors. Valla mentions Leonardo of Arezzo as his chief master in Latin and Giovanni Aurispa in Greek. He wished to establish himself as apostolic secre tary in the Eternal City. But for some reason or other this office was refused him. At the age of twenty-four he went to Piacenza on family affairs, and from this city pro ceeded to Pavia, where he obtained a professorship of elo quence. Like all the scholars of that time, Valla wandered from university to university, accepting short engagements and airing his talents as a lecturer in many cities. It appears that he professed the New Learning in Milan and Genoa as well as Pavia. Somewhere, and at some uncer tain date during this period, he came into relations with Alphonso of Aragon, Avho conquered the kingdom of Naples. Valla did not, however, follow this prince s for tunes in the early days of their acquaintance. We find him once more in Rome in 1443 during the pontificate of Eugenius IV. At this period of his career Valla won the highest reputation by his dialogue De Voluptate and his treatise on the Elegances of the Latin Language. In the former work he contrasted the principles of the Stoics with the tenets of Epicurus, openly proclaiming his sym pathy with those who claimed the right of free indulgence for man s natural and sensuous appetites. It was a re markable utterance, since the paganism of the Renaissance here found, for the first time, deliberate expression in a work of scholarly and philosophical value. The Elegantix was no less original, though in a different sphere of thought. This work subjected the forms of Latin grammar, the rules of Latin style and rhetoric, to critical investigation. It placed the practice of composition upon a foundation of analysis and inductive reasoning. But there was a third essay composed by Valla during the pontificate of Eugenius which displayed the same originality and a like critical acumen. This bore the title of a Treatise on the Donation of Constantine ; and in it Valla proved that the claims founded by the Roman see upon that supposed grant re posed on forged documents and legendary fables. It was not published until 1440, when Valla had been already three years resident at Alphonso s court in Naples. There was every reason why the king of Naples should be interested in a man of Valla s stamp. He wished to attract scholars of the highest ability to his capital, arid he was always on bad terms with the papacy. Valla com bined the qualities of an elegant humanist, an acute critic, a freethinker, and a venomous pamphleteer who had committed himself to a destructive polemic against the temporalities of Rome. Accordingly the king made him his private secretary, encouraged him to open a school of rhetoric in Naples, and defended him against the attacks of friars and inquisitors. From Naples Valla continued his war of pamphlets against the church. He proved that the letter .of Christ to Abgarus was a forgery, ridiculed the Latinity of the Vulgate, questioned the authenticity of the Apostles Creed, and accused St Augustine of heresy. It is a singular note of that period in Italy that, on the death of Eugenius IV., his successor, Nicholas V., invited Valla to Rome, not to arraign him before the bar of the Inquisition, not to punish him for his insolent criticism, but in order to confer upon him the post of apostolic secretary, with substantial pecuniary appointments. This entrance of Valla into the Roman curia has been justly called &quot;the triumph of humanism over orthodoxy and tradition.&quot; Nicholas had no other object than that of fixing one of the chief scholars of the age near his own person. He allowed Valla to open a school of eloquence in Rome, and he paid him munificently for translating Thucydides into Latin. Thus, for the sake of his erudition and stylistic talents, the supreme pontiff rewarded a man whose chief titles to fame are the stringent criticism with which he assailed the temporalities of the church, and the frank candour with which he defended a pagan theory of human conduct. All the biographical notices of Valla are loaded with long accounts of his literary quarrels. Intolerant of rivalry, inordinately vain, and greedily self-seeking as the scholars of that epoch were, they indulged in the fiercest internecine warfare among themselves. The bulky folios of their works contain hundreds of invectives which may be ranked among the most obscene, the most wearisome, and the most disgraceful products of the human intellect. Valla won a regrettable celebrity by the number and the virulence of his enmities. Bartolomeo Fazio, Georgios Trapezuntios, and Poggio felt the stabbing sharpness of his pen. It must, however, be admitted that these antagonists gave back quite as good as they got. It is almost impossible to form a just estimate of Valla s private life and character through the dust-clouds of abuse and dirt which these con troversies stirred up around his memory. He died at Naples in the year 1457. Posterity honours in him not so much the stylist and the scholar as the initiator of a bold critical method, applied to language, historical docu ments, and ethical opinions. The collected edition of Valla s Works is that of Basel, 1465. For detailed accounts of his life and work, consult Tiraboschi ; Voigt s Wiederbclebung dcs Altcrthums ; and Symonds s Renaissance in Italy (vols. ii. and v.). VALLADOLID, a province of Spain, one of the eight into which Old Castile is now divided, is bounded on the N. by Leon and Palencia, on the E. by Burgos, on the S. by Segovia, Avila, and Salamanca, and on the W. by Zaniora. The area is 3043 square miles and the popula tion in 1877 was 247,458. The province belongs entirely to the basin of the Douro, which traverses it from east to west, and within its limits receives the Pisuerga (with the Esgueva) on the right, and the Duraton, Adaja (with the Eresma), and Zapardiel on the left. The country watered by these rivers is for the most part flat and exceedingly fertile, the only part that can be called in any sense hilly being in the north-west, where the low Montes de Torozos