Lorenzo Valla to King Alfonso on the Naming of His Kingdoms: A Translation with Introduction

Lorenzo Valla to King Alfonso on the Naming of His Kingdoms: A Translation with Introduction Lorenzo Valla has for some time been recognized, as William J. Bouwsma puts it, as 'probably the most profound thinker among the humanists of Italy',1 yet relatively litde of his work has been translated into English.2 Furthermore, Valla has recendy become prominent as a Renaissance precursor to some m o d e m approaches to language. Richard W a s w o goes so far as to refer to a 'revolution (that) did not begin with Saussure; ... it is a definitive feature of the Renaissance' - and especially of that archetypical humanist grammarian, Valla.3 Waswo's own major point is that Valla, like Saussure, recognized that 'language and the people w h o use it do not "represent" a reality but constitute one'/* H e is not thefirstEnglish scholar to notice this feature of Valla's work: Donald R. Kelley observed some years ago, while placing Valla prominendy among the foundations of modern historical scholarship, that 'according to Valla it was the forms of grammar that gave meaning to reality... (which) appeared as a human construct'.5 Despite this interest, none of Valla's major grammatical works has been translated - or even appears likely to be translated in the near future.6 It is in the context of this scarcity that the short oration to Alfonso is l The Culture of Renaissance Humanism, American Historical Association Pamphlets, No. 401 (Washington, American Historical Association, 1973). On humanism, see also Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources, ed. Michael Mooney, N e w York, 1979; Hanna H. Gray, Renaissance Humanism and the Pursuit of Eloquence, reprinted in Renaissance Essays from the Journal of the History of Ideas, ed. Paul O. Kristeller and Philip P. Wiener, N e w York, 1968; George M . Logan, Substance and Form in Renaissance Humanism, Journal ofMedieval and Renaissance Studies 1, 1977, 1-34; Tinkler, Renaissance Humanism and the genera eloquentiae, Rhetorica 5, 1987, 32-52. ^ther works available in English translation are: In Praise of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. M . Esther Hanley, in Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Leonard A. Kennedy, The Hague, 1973, 31-27; On Pleasure: De voluptate, trans. A. Kent Hieatt and Maristella Lorch, N e w York, 1977; The Treatise of Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, trans. Christopher B. Coleman, N e w Haven, 1922; On Free Will, trans. Charles Tiinkaus, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall Jr., Chicago, 1948, 147-82; 'The Profession of the Religious' and the Principal Arguments from 'The Falsely-Believed and Forged Donation of Constantine', trans. Olga Zorzi Pugliese, Toronto, 1985. ^Richard Waswo, Language and Meaning in the Renaissance, Princeton, 1987, 13. ^Language and Meaning, 110. 5 Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law and History in the French Renaissance, N e w York, 1970, 32.°The Profession of the Religious does contain a revealing grammatical argument, however, and the Treatise on the Donation of Constantine is a classic of humanist philological research. Valla on Sicily 103 significant. While it does not present in any systematic way Valla's philosophy of language, it provides a remarkably good example, in a conveniendy narrow compass, of this philosophy in action. The occasion of the oration is apparently simple and minor. A terminology of 'Two Sicilies' had developed to describe Sicily and Naples, and it was to persist, through unions and divisions between the two kingdoms, until 1866. ThetideRex Sicilie citra et ultrafarum ('King of Sicdy this side and that of the lighthouse') had been coined as early as 1303 by Boniface VIII to indicate the union of island and mainland as components of a single kingdom - even though that single kingdom had by then ceased to exist. Storming Naples in 1442, after protracted negotiations and war, Alfonso V reunited the two kingdoms and added to Boniface's coinage the title Rex utriusque Siciliae ('King of the T w o Sicilies'), which was first used in 1443. Despite this nomenclature, however, the two kingdoms remained politically and administratively separate, with no link other than a common sovereign.7 VaUa was a secretary at...