Special Collections- Vatican Film Library : Secretaries, Scholars, Translators

Webpage - An overview of Valla:
1. Life and Works
2. Valla's Critique of Scholastic Philosophy
3. Valla's “Reform” of Aristotelian Logic
4. Moral Philosophy
5. Evaluation

Webpage. Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Lorenzo Valla.

Webpage
Gives insight into how Valla's tomb ended up in the Lateran Basilica.

This study examines Valla's attack on major tenets of Aristotelian metaphysics, showing how Valla employed common sense and linguistic usage as his guides.

Webpage. Catholic Encyclopedia entry for George Trebizond.

Webpage. Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Leon Battista Alberti.

Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) was one of the most original, creative, and exciting figures of the Italian Renaissance. He wrote the first modern treatise on painting, the first modern manual of classical architecture, and a powerful set of "dialogues" about the princely families that dominated his home city of Florence. He rediscovered the forgotten aesthetics of classical architecture and described, in incomparably vivid terms, the artistic revolution in Florence that began what we now call the Renaissance.

The four treatises included here - Ludi matematici, De Componendis Cifris, Elementi di pittura and De lunularum quadratura - are extremely valuable in rounding out the portrait of this multitalented thinker. The treatises are presented in modern English translations, with commentary that is intended to make evident the depths of Alberti's knowledge as well as address the treatises' mathematical, historical and cultural context, their classical Greek roots, and their relationship to later works by Renaissance thinkers.

Robert Tavernor provides a biographical account of the Italian architect & a detailed consideration of each of the building projects with which he was involved. With new reconstructions of Alberti's buildings & new interpretations of his design intentions, this book will fascinate every reader with an interest in Renaissance architecture.

Contains a biography of Poggio Bracciolini (p. 62-84).

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In this first comprehensive study of the effect of Lucretius's De rerum natura on Florentine thought in the Renaissance, Alison Brown demonstrates how Lucretius was used by Florentine thinkers—earlier and more widely than has been supposed—to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies.

He has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas.

Webpage. Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Poggio Bracciolini.

Originally owned by Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459); autograph manuscript. On fol. 29r, a line drawing by Poggio of an ancient Roman monument with an inscription.

Machiavelli's autograph copy of De rerum natura by Lucretius. VFL Microfilm of Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Codex Rossiani 884, fol. Ia, recto.

Order through MOBIUS.
In this first comprehensive study of the effect of Lucretius's De rerum natura on Florentine thought in the Renaissance, Alison Brown demonstrates how Lucretius was used by Florentine thinkers—earlier and more widely than has been supposed—to provide a radical critique of prevailing orthodoxies.

He has crafted both a work of history and a story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it. Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas.

Webpage. Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Machiavelli.

Philip Bobbitt explores this often misunderstood work in the context of the time. He describes The Prince as one half of a masterpiece that, along with Machiavelli's often neglected Discourses prophesies the end of the feudal era and describes the birth of the neoclassical Renaissance State.

Webpage. Catholic Encyclopedia entry for Regiomontanus.

This volume complements the previous collection of articles by Menso Folkerts, Essays on Early Medieval Mathematics. It deals with the development of mathematics in Europe from the 12th century to about 1500.