Valla’s False Modesty: The Annotationes Novi Testamenti Compared with the Biblical Scholarship of Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) and Aurelio Lippi Brandolini (1454?–1497)

ABSTRACT The Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla (1406–1457) wrote his Annotationes Novi Testamenti in Rome and Naples in the 1440s and 1450s. According to Valla’s own writings, the aim of this work was to cleanse the Latin Bible of textual corruptions and to clarify obscurities and inaccuracies. He questioned the common belief that the Latin Bible was written by Jerome. This article compares Valla’s reflections on his own project with those of two other fifteenth-century humanists who engaged in biblical scholarship: Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) and Aurelio Lippi Brandolini (1454?–1497). Compared to them, Valla’s aim was modest: Manetti and Brandolini never questioned Jerome’s authorship, and yet they competed directly with the Church Father by providing an alternative to the Latin Bible. On the other hand, Valla’s aim may be considered more ambitious, because he directly challenged the Latin Bible as the standard translation of his time.


Introduction
What then?Am I its architect?Would that I were even one of the construction workers!(…) Certainly, I myself am not putting together a new work in any way.Rather, I have tried my hardest to keep the roof of this temple, as it were, in good shape, because if the temple is not cared for, rain will necessarily enter, and matters divine would be unable to be celebrated therein. 1 When Lorenzo Valla (1406-1457) dedicated his Annotationes Novi Testamenti to Pope Nicholas V (r.1447-1455), he compared the text of the Latin Bible to a temple with a leaking roof. 2 Rather than constructing a new building, Valla volunteered to 'repair' the Latin Bible for the Pope in his Annotationes, just as the Church Father Jerome had once revised the New Testament for Pope Damasus. 3 Written in Naples and Rome in the 1440s and 1450s, Valla's Annotationes were a philological commentary on the Latin New Testament, following the text verse by verse, referring to the Greek original.The work showed Valla's mastery of Greek and Latin, often quoting his favourite classical authors as examples of Latin usage.Though they hardly circulated in Valla's lifetime, the Annotationes would profoundly influence humanist biblical scholarship in the sixteenth century, after they were discovered and published by Erasmus. 4 Scholars often point to the significance of the Annotationes for biblical humanism in the sixteenth century, and for the later development of modern biblical scholarship. 5However, there is an ongoing debate on how transgressive Valla's biblical scholarship was. 6It is difficult to answer this question without comparing Valla to predecessors or contemporaries, which is not often done. 7My article provides such a comparison, focusing on one aspect of Valla's biblical scholarship in particular: his challenge to the authority of the Latin Bible.
As we will see, Valla justified challenging the Latin Bible by arguing that it was only a translation, and as such held no authority; and that it was not written by St Jerome, but by an anonymous translator, whose work Jerome had only imperfectly revised.His position seems contradictory: if the Latin Bible held no special authority, he could have gone further than correcting and clarifying it; he could have provided an alternative.This becomes even clearer when he is compared to other authors who practiced biblical scholarship.In the pages that follow, I compare Valla's position to that of others, particularly to two other humanists: Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459) and Aurelio Lippi Brandolini  (1454?-1497).A contemporary of Valla, Manetti authored new Latin translations of the Psalter and the New Testament.One generation later, Brandolini wrote a Latin paraphrase of the historical books of the Hebrew Bible.Valla, Manetti, and Brandolini all defended themselves against the accusation that they undermined the authority of St Jerome by providing an alternative to his translation.We will see that they each motivated their projects in different ways.When they are compared, Valla's work may look modest at first sight, but on closer inspection he was perhaps the most ambitious of the three.
person. 18He also pointed out quotations from the Bible in Jerome's writings that differed from readings in the Latin Bible. 19Valla's view that Jerome had not translated the New Testament was based on a comment by Jerome himself, who allegedly had 'used his pen with restraint' ('calamo imperavimus') when revising the earlier Latin version. 20In the prefaces to the Annotationes, Valla referred to this passage explicitly, arguing that he was not changing Jerome's translation, but revising what had remained of the older Latin text.He simply picked up what Jerome had overlooked. 21adical as it may seem, Valla's argument was only partly new.Medieval authors often questioned the text that they were reading in their Latin Bible manuscripts.In the twelfth century, Nicholas Maniacoria (d.ca.1145) believed that the Latin translation he read in his manuscripts was an amalgam of versions, which explained how errors had crept into Jerome's text, and why it differed from biblical quotations in Jerome's other writings. 22oger Bacon (ca.1215-1292) referred to this view, but he disagreed with it himself.He believed that Jerome's translation had survived up to his own time and had only recently been corrupted by over-zealous theologians.Hugh of St Cher (ca. 1190-1263) warned that the presence of Jerome's prefaces in a manuscript was no guarantee that the text of the translation was also Jerome's. 24ichard FitzRalph (ca.1300-1360) made the same point, arguing that it was impossible and their Latin translation, which was 'nothing of the kind' ('Latinum nihil tale est').28Because of this comment, Poggio feared that Valla meant to make a new translation of the Bible, instead of 'sticking to some little words, as the grammarians do'. 29However, Poggio's fear was uncalled for.Despite Valla's challenge to the authority of the Latin Bible, his aim was to not to produce an alternative, but to correct and clarify it.

Valla on textual corruption
One of the aims of Valla's Annotationes was to point out textual corruptions.In the prefaces, he illustrated this aim with images of pollution and decay: the Latin Bible is compared to a temple with a leaking roof, in need of repair, or to a river collecting mud and dirt as it flows away from its source: … if within four hundred years those streams were already flowing so wildly, it is almost definite that after a thousand years (for it is indeed so many years from Jerome to now) this stream, which was never cleansed, has taken on some filth and pollution, at least in part. 30 find this image also in the earlier version of the preface and in the Antidotum primum. 31Both imagesthe leaking roof and the dirty riverimply that Valla meant to restore the text of the Latin Bible to its original state and that it had once been whole and pure.
Valla's aim to cleanse the Latin Bible of textual corruption is a traditional one, which we find in many medieval authors.They addressed the problem of corruptionand its possible remediesin sophisticated ways.In the twelfth century, Stephen Harding (ca.1059-1134) collated manuscripts of the Latin Bible, and on finding expansions in one of them, consulted learned Jews to ascertain if the passages were in the Hebrew text.When it turned out that they were not, he erased them. 32One generation later, Nicholas Maniacoria wrote about his efforts to establish a reliable text of the Bible.Like Stephen Harding, Maniacoria collated manuscripts, and if they disagreed among them, he consulted Hebrew sources. 33Roger Bacon believed that the text of the Bible, which had become hopelessly corrupted in his own time, should be corrected by comparing it to the Greek and Hebrew original.The Church was to play a leading role in this revision project. 34n Valla's own time, the issue of corruption in the Latin Bible was discussed by Cardinal Bessarion (1403-1473), a Byzantine scholar and an important figure at the papal court, where Valla wrote a later redaction of his Annotationes. 35Bessarion authored a treatise on a text-critical problem at John 21:22, where he believed the Latin translation was corrupt. 36In this verse, Christ replies to a question about the fate of the Apostle John.The Latin translation reads 'Sic eum volo manere donec veniam, quid ad te?' ('Thus, I want him to stay until I come, what is that to you?')In Bessarion's view, the reading 'sic' was a corruption of 'si', a more faithful rendering of the Greek conditional 'ἐάν'.This changed the nature of Christ's reply, making it open-ended: 'If I want him to stay until I come, what is that to you?' Bessarion's treatise was a response to his contemporary George of Trebizond (1396-1472/3), who defended 'sic' as the correct reading. 37Among arguments concerning the use of conditionals in Greek and Latin, as well as the internal logic of the passage, Bessarion gave many examples of textual corruption in the Latin Bible, to illustrate that correcting it was justified.He derived these examples from the work of Nicholas Maniacoria. 38essarion's view on Jerome's authorship of the Latin Bible is not as clearly expressed as Valla's.The opening lines of Bessarion's treatise refer to an anonymous translator ('interpres'), not to Jerome, and the identity of the translator is even explicitly questioned later on. 39However, the use of the word 'interpres' here, rather than Jerome's name, does not necessarily reflect Bessarion's own view regarding the translator of the Latin Bible.He is reporting the words of others who questioned the correctness of the Latin translation, and who would naturally avoid Jerome's name, rather than attack his authority directly.Later on in the treatise, Bessarion wrote explicitly that Jerome's translation had gained general approval, and that it had replaced earlier Latin versions of the Bible, to the point that it was now used by the Church itself. 40essarion also wrote that corruptions had crept into the text later for which Jerome was not to blame, and that such errors should be corrected by consulting the Greek original. 41He commented on the years that had passed since Jerome's revision for Pope Damasus, during which the text had become more and more corrupt, in words that are strikingly similar to Valla's Praefatio. 42Unlike Valla, however, Bessarion believed that when the Latin Bible was corrected, it was Jerome's translation that was 35  being restored to its original form.In other words, while's Valla's comments on textual corruption had much in common with those of other authors, the difference is that Valla did not believe he was reconstructing Jerome's translation, but the work of an anonymous, and not very skillful, translator.

Valla on translation method
Valla went further than pointing out scribal errors in the text: he also took issue with the translation itself, which he believed was often obscure and inaccurate.In both versions of the preface, he accused the earlier translator of following the wrong translation method: by translating word for word ('ad verbum') instead of according to the sense ('ad sensum'), he had obscured the meaning of the text: Add to this that many things are translated in an obscure fashion.This is not the fault of the translator but rather that of the rules and demands of translation, at least of that kind of translation that is not sense for sense but word for word, such as this translation (…). 43lla's comments are connected to a broader humanist debate on translation.From the late fourteenth century onward, humanists had begun to study Greek language and literature, and to reflect on the correct way to translate Greek texts into Latin.
The arrival of the Greek teacher Manuel Chrysoloras (c.1350-1415) in Florence in 1397 is usually taken as the starting-point of the humanist translation movement.Authors such as Coluccio Salutati (1331-1406), Cencio de' Rustici (1380/90-1445) and Uberto Decembrio (1350-1447) presented themselves as a new generation of translators, who did not follow the literal method of their medieval predecessors, but rather opted for translation 'ad sententiam' ('according to the sense'), in elegant Latin.Within this movement, however, different opinions existed as to the freedom allowed to the translator, especially where philosophical or technical texts were concerned. 44ne of the most prominent figures in the humanist translation movement was Leonardo Bruni (ca.1370-1444).Bruni was a prolific translator himself, and he reflected at length on his own method and that of his predecessors. 45He wrote a preface for his translation of Aristotle's Ethica Nicomachea in which he criticized the medieval translation of that work. 46Furthermore, Bruni wrote a treatise on translation theory, De interpretatione recta, which includes critique of an earlier translation of Aristotle's Politica. 47runi's critique of the earlier translations of Aristotle is similar to Valla's comments on the Latin Bible. 48Both Valla and Bruni believed that the earlier translations were obscured by overly literal 'ad verbum' renderings. 49They also criticized the earlier translator for destroying the elegance of the source text.Valla praised the language of St. Paul, comparing him to Homer and Demosthenes.He believed that the anonymous translator of the Latin Bible had not done justice to the Greek. 50Bruni attacked the earlier translator of Aristotle's Politica for destroying the elegance of Aristotle's language. 51Both Valla and Bruni commented on the qualities that a good translator should possess.For Valla, no one could correct the Bible who was not moderately trained in Greek, excellently skilled in Latin, and well-versed in sacred letters. 52Similarly, Bruni wrote that a translator should be intimately familiar with both Greek and Latin, and with a wide range of stylistic models.Only this way could he appreciate the richness of the Greek original and find exact Latin equivalents for each word. 53n the other hand, Valla did not take his critique as far as Bruni.While Bruni made new translations of Aristotle, Valla only corrected the Latin Bible.Furthermore, Valla hardly theorized about translation.He left some comments on the topic, but not nearly as many as Bruni. 54Nor did he comment on the correct way to translate Scripture as opposed to other texts.Valla must have been familiar with the debate on this subject, which went all the way back to Jerome himself.In his treatise De optimo genere interpretandi (Letter 57), Jerome had explained why he had not translated the Bible word for word ('ad verbum'), but sense for sense ('ad sensum'), referring to Cicero and Horace. 55In Valla's own lifetime, several humanist authors theorized about Bible translation.Pier Candido Decembrio (1399-1477), George of Trebizond, and Cardinal Bessarion all referred to Jerome when discussing the proper method for translating Scripture. 56t would have been natural for Valla to use Jerome as an authority when he criticized the overly literal translation choices that obscured the Latin Bible.However, while Jerome is prominently present in both prefaces to the Annotationes, Valla made no allusion to the Church Father's comments on Bible translation.In other words, Valla commented less explicitly on the correct way to translate the Bible than other humanists.
That Valla could have gone further in applying humanist ideas on translation to the Bible is also illustrated by the two authors who will be discussed next: Manetti and Brandolini.

Manetti's motivation
The Florentine humanist Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459) established his scholarly career at an early age in Florence, where he studied Greek and Hebrew. 57He authored numerous orations for his diplomatic missions on behalf of the Florentine Republic, and he formed patronage ties with Pope Nicholas V and Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon (r.1416-1458) and Naples (r.1442-1458).At their courts, Manetti made new Latin translations of the Psalter and of the New Testament. 58We know little about the connection between Manetti and Valla and their projects, but they must have known of each other's work because they were both employed at the Curia under Nicholas V. Indeed, a close analysis of Manetti's translation confirms that he had access to Valla's Annotationes. 59Manetti and Valla had much in commonand yet they motivated their biblical projects in rather different ways.
Manetti announced twice that he planned to explain his reasons for making a new translation in a more extensive work, but this never happened. 60As it is, he briefly touched on this question in two texts.One of them is the preface to his Psalter translation, addressed to King Alfonso of Aragon; the other is a treatise in defence of that translation, the Apologeticus (1458), which he wrote after his work had apparently attracted criticism.In the preface to the Psalter, Manetti explained that he had meant to translate the entire Bible, but that this had proved to be more difficult than he had expected. 61He still hoped to finish it one day, but he now dedicated only the Psalter to the king, as a first instalment.His reason for retranslating the Bible was that the Latin Scriptures were attacked by 'the people we received them from', meaning the Jews and the Greeks.The aim of his new translation was to silence these critics: For because the foundations of the true and solid theology, both ancient and modern, so to speak, are laid in all the books of the Old and New Testament, insofar as all the learned men agree, and because I heard them both, in their Latin translations from the Hebrew and Greek sources, criticized and lashed daily by the people we received them from, I for my part could no longer bear and tolerate it with composure.And therefore, driven by this particular reason, I recently took up the task of translating both testaments anew, and rightly so. 62om the context, it becomes clear that this motivation applies to the entire Bible, not just the Psalter.We find a similar comment in Manetti's Apologeticus. 63 This work, consisting of five books, is dedicated to the complexities of the various versions of the Latin Psalter.In the opening paragraphs of the first book, Manetti wrote that his Psalter translation had been attacked by critics, who accused him of arrogance for making a new translation, while Jerome's was perfectly sufficient.Manetti responded to this that he did not 58 For Manetti's translation of the Psalter, see Dröge, Giannozzo Manetti, 37-64; and Botley, Latin Translation, 99-104.For the New Testament, see den Haan, Giannozzo Manetti's New Testament. 59Den Haan, Giannozzo Manetti's New Testament, 48-58. 60Manetti hinted that he would write more elsewhere in his biography of Nicholas V and in his preface to the Psalter.
Manetti, De vita ac gestis, 66-7; Botley, Latin Translation, 180. 61Botley edited the preface to the Psalter, with information on the manuscripts.Botley, Latin Translation, 178-81. 62'Cum enim uere ac solide utriusque et prisce et moderne (ut ita dixerim) theologie fundamenta in cunctis ueteris ac noui testamenti codicibus tantum modo omnium doctorum hominum consensus iaciantur, atque ambo illa a ueris hebreorum ac grecorum fontibus in latinam linguam traducta ab ipsis a quibus ea suscepimus quotidie carpi lacerarique acciperem, pro uirili mea ulterius equo animo ferre ac tolerare non potui.' Botley, Latin Translation, 179.Translation: den Haan, Giannozzo Manetti's New Testament, 151. 63For the Latin text, see Manetti, Apologeticus; and, with an English translation, Manetti, A Translator's Defense.For a discussion of the Apologeticus, see Trinkaus, In Our Image, 584-601; Botley, Latin Translation, 99-114; den Haan,  Giannozzo Manetti's New Testament, 123-39.deserve blame, but praise, because he defended the Latin Bible against the 'malicious attacks of Jews' ('falsas hebreorum virorum … incusationes'). 64anetti's motivation to retranslate the Bible corresponds to what we know about his intellectual interests, which included Hebrew studies and apologetic debates with Jews. 65e owned a substantial collection of Hebrew manuscripts.66 His Adversus Iudaeos et Gentes is an encyclopaedic work on Christianity that stands in a long tradition of anti-Jewish polemics.67 Some passages in this work show that Manetti was familiar medieval anti-Jewish polemic writings from Spain. 68His motivation for retranslating the Bible resembles that of medieval authors such as Ramon Martí (before 1220-1284), who made his own translations of biblical passages in the context of his anti-Jewish writings.Martí believed that Jerome's translation was not suitable for convincing the Jews, and that a more literal version was called for, although some of his readers would probably object to his not using Jerome's.69 It is possible that Manetti drew inspiration from authors like Martí, but his most likely model was Jerome himself, who is prominently present in the Apologeticus.In book II, Manetti discussed Jerome's translation project, including his reasons for producing a new version of the Bible.70 Jerome had made this translation because the old version was attacked by Jews who believed that it differed from the original Hebrew. 71However, his translation did not end the attacks of the Jews. 72Why this was the case, and how Manetti's own translation would remedy the situation, are questions that remain unanswered in the Apologeticus.
have been relevant to the Psalter as well as to the New Testament, and it would have justified Manetti's new version.However, Manetti did not use it.He included a long list of variant readings in the middle of the Apologeticus, but these are not textual variants in the manuscripts.Rather, they are differences between the two existing Latin translations of the Psalter, based on the Greek and the Hebrew respectively. 76Furthermore, while Manetti described Jerome's revision of the Bible in the Apologeticus and in Adversus Iudaeos, and commented on the textual variety in Jerome's day, he did not point out that this variety must have increased since Jerome's time. 77 third difference between Valla and Manetti is how they theorized on the correct way to translate the Bible.The connection with humanist discourse on translation, and specifically with the treatises of Bruni and Jerome, is much more obvious in Manetti's writings than in Valla's.Book V of the Apologeticus, which is entirely dedicated to the correct way to translate Scripture, is heavily dependent on Bruni's De interpretatione recta: Manetti described the requirements a good translator should meet in terms quite similar to Bruni's. 78He also quoted extensively from Jerome's treatise on translation, De optimo genere interpretandi.Manetti discussed translation method in terms of 'ad verbum' and 'ad sensum' translation, making a careful distinction between translations of theological and philosophical worksincluding the Bibleand lighter genres such as historiography and poetry. 79While Manetti's reflections on Bible translation are much more elaborate than Valla's, he did not use them to justify his own new translation or to criticize Jerome's.Rather, he presented Jerome as the ultimate example of a Bible translator in book V of the Apologeticus. 80y making a new Latin translation of the Psalter and the New Testament, and by applying humanist translation theory to the Bible, Manetti arguably went further than Valla.The same is true for another author who provided an alternative for the Latin Bible that was more in line with humanist ideals of rhetoric and Latin elegance: Brandolini.

Brandolini
Our last case study, Aurelio Lippi Brandolini (1454?-1497), wrote a few decades later than Valla and Manetti. 81Not much is known about his career, but he spent some time at the papal court under Sixtus IV and Innocentius VIII, and also at the court of the Hungarian king Matthias Corvinus (r.1458-1490).He is therefore not so immediately connected with Valla as Manetti and Bessarion.The nature of Brandolini's work is also different.Brandolini's Epithoma in sacram Hebraeorum historiam is a Latin paraphrase of the historical books of the Old Testament, and it arguably did not pose a direct challenge to the Latin Bible.82However, Brandolini's contemporaries evidently believed that his work undermined Jerome's authority.He responded to them in a lengthy preface, which is our only source for his position as regards the Latin Bible. 83According to the preface, Brandolini's main reason for paraphrasing the Old Testament was that the Latin Bible was unattractive to readers.He saw no reason why the divine message of Scripture could not be adorned with rhetorical embellishments. 84Brandolini's preface has not been studied much, but Erika Rummel considered it representative for Renaissance humanists who engaged in biblical scholarship. 85However, when we compare him to Valla and Manetti, we find that his argumentation was quite different.Three points are of particular interest.
The first point is that Brandolini challenged not only the Latin translation of the Bible, but also the original.Like other authors we have seen, he commented on the distinction between words and meaning.He favoured a free translation method for the Bible because he believed that its meaning did not lie in the exact wording, but in the subject matter. 86owever, Brandolini did not stop there.In his view, the Latin Old Testament was unappealing to readers not only because of how it was translated, but also because of the way it was written down by the Hebrew authors: I believed that I would be doing something both useful to myself and pleasing to others, if I would collectas it were into one workthose texts that had been written earlier by the most ancient Jewish authors with a sort of vulgar simplicity and an awkward abundance of words, and later translated by our own such as they were, out of necessity because of the common people; and if I myself would briefly and elegantly arrange them. 87andolini was much more negative about the style of the original than Valla, who praised the language of the Greek text of the New Testament, and blamed the anonymous translator for distorting it. 88Authors before Brandolini had also commented on the 'rusticity' of the Bible in a tradition that went back to Jerome himself, but they did not seek to improve it; rather, they contrasted the simplicity of the Bible with the decadent rhetorical splendour of the classics. 89econd, Brandolini avoided attacking Jerome's authority by introducing a new argument.Although he did not address the question of Jerome's authorship explicitly, he clearly assumed that he was dealing with Jerome's version. 90However, he justified his changes to the Latin Bible by making a distinction between Jerome's context and his own.While in Jerome's time, Brandolini wrote, it had been necessary to translate literally because of heretical groups that each interpreted the Bible as they saw fit, this was no longer the case in the late fifteenth century. 91Brandolini believed that he was free to paraphrase the historical narratives of the Hebrew Bible to render them more moving and effective.There were still some biblical passages where the precise wording mattered, such as prophecies and commandments, and these he had not touched. 92randolini's view on the doctrinal implications of the Latin Bible sets him apart from both Manetti and Valla.While Manetti's purpose was to convince the Jews and the Greeks of the teachings of the Bible, Brandolini wanted to make the text more accessible to readers who no longer cared about the finer points of doctrine. 93His position also differed from that of Valla, who was convinced that a good Latin version of the Scriptures was required as a basis for sound theology. 94Valla wrote in the earlier version of his preface that readers of the text who did not understand Greek invented interpretations that were wide off the mark. 95Inside the Annotationes, he repeatedly pointed out that the rendering of the anonymous translator led to wrong interpretations of the text. 96e even rejected interpretations offered by Thomas Aquinas because they were not based on the Greek original. 97The point of doctrinal implications is key to understanding Valla's approach to the Latin Bible: while he himself did not believe that it held special authority, he knew that others did, and that they based their interpretations on its text.Seen in this light, the aim of Valla's Annotationes was ambitious rather than modest: his purpose was to challenge the standard translation directly and to show its readers where their interpretations were wrong.
version at home. 99Valla never presented his work as an option next to the Latin Bible.His aim was to improve the Latin Bible itself.

Conclusions
When Valla's reflections on his biblical project are compared to those of other authors, specifically Manetti and Brandolini, one thing that stands out is the variety of arguments used.All three authors were part of the humanist movement, but they applied humanism to biblical scholarship in different ways.Whereas Valla commented on the corruption of the text, and on Jerome's authorship, Manetti and Brandolini did not.All three authors commented on the translation method for the Bible, but in three different ways.A first conclusion we can draw is therefore that Valla's arguments are not self-evident.This is important because, from hindsight, it may look as if Valla's approach to Scripture was the natural way to combine humanism and biblical scholarship.The parallels of Manetti and Brandolini show that this is not the case.
Second, these parallels illustrate the paradoxical nature of Valla's approach to Scripture.Manetti and Brandolini both provided alternatives to Jerome's Bible, without ever questioning his authorship, thus competing directly with the Church Father.Valla, by contrast, undermined the status of the Latin Bible by questioning the identity of the translator.He did not assign any special value to the translation, as opposed to the Greek and Hebrew originaland yet he aimed to correct and clarify the text, rather than create something new.Compared to Manetti and Brandolini, his aim seems modest.However, this is a false modesty: Valla's reason for engaging with the translation was that it was valued by otherswho interpreted it wrongly, because of its many corruptions and obscurities.Only by comparing Valla to other authors do we become aware of the arguments that he could have used, and of the options that were open to him; and then we find that his approach to the Latin Bible was not modesty, but a conscious choice.

Disclosure statement
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Notes on contributor
Dr. Annet den Haan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Textual, Historical and Systematic Studies of Judaism and Christianity at Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.She specializes in humanist biblical criticism and translation, focusing on fifteenth-century Italy.She is the author of Giannozzo Manetti's New Testament: Translation Theory and Practice in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2016).