The Transformation of Attitudes towards Ancient Latin Authors and the Legacy of Lorenzo Valla

In the last decades of the 15th c. Roman humanists were deeply influenced by the presence of Lorenzo Valla in Rome (1447/8-1457) and by his new linguistic approach to Latin. In order to limit the influence of the medieval Latin grammar, Valla proposed to extract Latin rules directly from the writings of the classical authors rather than from the late antique and medieval grammarians and their abstract theories. This new method stimulated Valla’s followers to read not only the traditional authors of the medieval Quadriga (Cicero, Sallust, Terence, Virgil), but the whole corpus of ancient Latin writers. Valla’s theories had a deep impact also in the 15th c. Latin lexica, such as Perotti’s Cornu copiae, and in the humanist commentaries, that did not contain the medieval Accessus ad auctorem, but Vitae of the Latin authors often built on the most ancient biographical traditions rather than on the medieval tradition of false information. Furthermore, the works of these humanists were often well known until the 17th c. throughout Europe. They owe their lasting popularity to the printing press, which arrived in Rome in about 1467. There, Perotti, Leto and Calderini immediately employed it for the dissemination of their philological works among colleagues and students in Rome, Italy, and Europe.