Giorgio Valla and His Latin Translations of Galen

Abstract

By means of his Latin translations Giorgio Valla contributed to the rediscovery of ancient Greek medicine in the Renaissance. In particular, he was the first to publish humanist translations of Galen ahead of his contemporaries Niccolò Leoniceno (1428-1524) and Lorenzo Lorenzi (ca. 1460-1502). In 1483 Valla published the translation of De sectis, followed by those of De inaequali intemperie, De optima corporis constitutione, De bono corporis habitu, Praesagium experientia confirmatum, De venae sectione, and De praenotione in 1498. After his death, two other translations by Valla were printed in the fourth complete edition of Galen of 1515-16, namely those of the ps.-Galenic Quaesita in Hippocratis de urinis and De urinae significatione ex Hippocrate. These last two translations came from Valla’s encyclopedia De expetendis et fugiendis rebus, posthumously published by Aldo Manuzio in 1501, which contains translations of Galenic and ps.-Galenic works, or sections of them, including the aforementioned De sectis, Praesagium experientia confirmatum, and De venae sectione. This article presents Valla’s translations of the Galenic corpus and their impact in the complete editions of Galen; moreover, it identifies the Greek sources of the translations, that is manuscripts owned by Valla (Modena, BEU α.P.5.20 = Puntoni 109, α.U.9.4 = Puntoni 61, and Naples, BN III.C.2); finally, it analyses linguistic and stylistic features in Valla’s translations, especially in those attested in two redactions, aiming to shed light on the chronological relations among them.