Includes bibliographical references and index.

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Christianity, Latinity, and Culture; Copyright; Contents; List of Illustrations; Note on the Translation; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Salvatore Camporeale and Lorenzo Valla; Lorenzo Valla and the De falso credita donatione: Rhetoric, Freedom, and Ecclesiology in the Fifteenth Century; 1. Introduction to a Reinterpretation of the De falso credita donatione; 2. Causa veritatis: From the Exordium to the Peroration; 3. The Antinomy of imperium and evangelium; 4. Section I of the Oration and Parallel Passages in Valla's Works; 5. The Body of the Oration: From Section III to Section VI.

6. Section IV: From the Constitutum Constantini to the Legenda Silvestri6.1 The Constitutum; 6.2 The Legenda Silvestri; 7. Section V: From the Pactum Hludovicianum to the respublica romana; Valla's Anti-Caesarism in Opposition to Augustine; 7.1 The Hludovicianum and the "Transfer of the Empire"(translatio imperii); 7.2 From imperium to respublica: The "Second Part" ofSection V; 7.3 From Valla to Augustine: The Critique of theCity of God; 8. Epilogue: Valla's Defense of the Oration in his Letters to Cardinals Trevisan and Landriani.

Lorenzo Valla between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: The Encomium of St. Thomas -- 14571.1 The Literary Encomium and the Iconographic "Triumph" of St. Thomas Aquinas in the Dominican Tradition; 1.2 The History of Thomism and the Centrality of the Summa Theologiae in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries; 1.3 Valla's Encomium: Its Place in History and Cultural Significance; 1.4 The Cappellone degli Spagnoli in Florence (Second Half of the Fourteenth Century) and the Cappella Carafa in Rome (End of the Fifteenth Century); 2.1 Exordium and Divine Invocation.

2.2 The narratio and the Liturgical Celebration of the Saint2.3 Probatio and refutatio, the Central Section of the Encomium; 2.4 Knowledge, the Second Thematic Unit; 2.5 Valla's Critique of Scholasticism and the Controversy between Thomism and Anti-Thomism in the Fifteenth Century; 2.6 The Stylistic Qualities of Thomas's Writings and the Canons of Latin Rhetoric; 2.7 The Critique of Scholastic Speculation and the Humanist Refounding of Theological Study; 2.8 Philosophy as an "Impediment" to Authentic Christian Thought and the Distinction/Opposition between Patristic Theology and Scholasticism.

2.9 The Reduction of Philosophy to Rhetoric and Valla's Quintilianism2.10 The Linguistic-Semantic Critique of Scholasticism and the Interrelation between Greek and Latin; 2.11 Peroration and Closing of the Encomium; 3.1 Philosophy/Theology; 3.2 Dialectic/Rhetoric; 4.1 The proemium to Book IV of the Elegantiae; 4.2 The Letter to Eustochium and Jerome's Dream; 4.3 The Mechanical Arts, the Liberal Arts, and the Christian Religion; 4.4 The Opposition between Philosophical Theology and Rhetorical Theology, and the Critical Reduction of theVulgate to the Greek Truth (veritas graeca).

This book presents, for the first time in English, two studies by Salvatore I. Camporeale (1928-2002) on the fifteenth-century thinker Lorenzo Valla. Camporeale's work offers new perspectives on Valla, in terms of both content and method.