Polemica (e) tradizione nel «Contra Laurentium Vallam» di Agostino Steuco

This paper examines an apparent peripherality within an essay of the humanistic tradition that stemmed against Lorenzo Valla’s «De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione». In Agostino Steuco’s «Contra Laurentium Vallam, De falsa Donatione Constantini, libri duo» (Lugduni 1547), the author quotes Giovanni Pontano’s «De Sermone» as auctoritas against Valla. This paper shows how Pontano’s treatise posits itself as the highest point of the critical tradition against Valla: one that fully concurs less out to confirm the authenticity of the medieval fake «Constitutum Constantini», and more out to examine it by the most advanced fruits of the humanistic philological tradition, beyond Valla’s “gramatica” itself.