Lorenzo Valla’s Ars grammatica between Classicism, Middle Ages, and Humanism

Abstract

In the ms. Vatican City, Vatican Apostolic Library, Regin. Lat. 1818 (ff. 67r-74v) a short and unfinished grammatical treatise in 362 hexameters is attested, already attributed by Remigio Sabbadini, in 1899, to Lorenzo Valla. Not all scholars have agreed on the assignment of the Ars grammatica (this is the title with which it is commonly designated) to the Roman humanist. Even after the first – and, so far, only – critical and annotated edition of the text, which appeared in 1990 edited by Paola Casciano (who decidedly favored the attribution to Valla), there was no shortage of discordant voices. In these paper we aim, first of all, to briefly illustrate the content of Valla’s Ars grammatica (opened by a programmatic proem of 40 verses, followed by the actual grammatical section, which however stops in the middle of the discussion of the nomen), as well as taking stock of the status quaestionis relating to the attribution to the Roman humanist.