Lorenzo Valla is read about 171 times a day, in 48 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 17 September 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?He proved the Vatican's founding land-deed was a fake. In 1440, the papacy claimed Europe's throne by way of a fourth-century emperor's gift - until a priest with sharp Latin showed the document was written centuries too late, in the wrong dialect, by someone who didn't know Roman law.
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Photos 8
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Portret van Lorenzo Valla Laurentius Valla (titel op object), RP-P-1909-4359
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De falso credita et ementita Constantini Donatione declamatio (1)
Dedication page for the Historiae by Herodotus printed at Venice 1494
Herodotus, Histories, with marginalia by Lorenzo Valla, Vat. gr. 122, fol. 41r und 122r_01.jpg?width=1200)
Historia de la Guerra del Peloponeso. Tucídides. (1450-1499) 01_02.jpg?width=1200)
Historia de la Guerra del Peloponeso. Tucídides. (1450-1499) 02_03.jpg?width=1200)
Historia de la Guerra del Peloponeso. Tucídides. (1450-1499) 03About this person
Born around 1407, Valla trained as a humanist scholar and rhetorician in Renaissance Italy, then took holy orders. His historical-critical method - reading texts the way a lawyer reads contracts - led him to dismantle the Donation of Constantine, the document that had anchored papal claims to temporal power across Europe. By analyzing the Latin, the legal concepts, and the anachronisms, he demonstrated it was a medieval forgery, not a fourth-century grant. The work attacked the institutional foundation of the papacy's political authority and made him a forerunner of reformist critique. He died on August 1, 1457.
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