Valladolid 715was covered with shields and coats of mail. There were
640 doors through which the warriors would pour out to
do battle with one another every day. If they were killed,
they were restored to life in order to spend the night
feasting on the flesh of a boar and drinking mead with
Odin, while still served by the valkyries. This daily ever-
lasting battle was to end only at Ragnarok or “the Doom
or Twilight of the Gods,” when the human warriors
would join the gods to do battle with giants, actually a
cataclysmic battle between good and evil. In pagan times
Valhalla may have originated as a symbol of a grave due a
great warrior rather than a kind of Paradise. Nearby was
the hall for the righteous, Gimli.
Further reading: H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and
Myths of Northern Europe (Baltimore: Penguin Books,
1964).
Valkyrie (Walkyrie, Chooser of the Slain) They were
the mythical maiden warriors who lived with the high
god Odin in VALHALLA. Odin decided the outcome of
battles and who was to fall and who survive. The souls
of the braves were chosen by him to join him in Valhalla.
The valkyries hovered over these battles and carried the
chosen warriors to Valhalla, giving them cups of mead
on their arrival and thereafter. Odin could give valkyries
as brides to warrior kings who had merited it and had
worshiped him as their protector god. Present in many
Scandinavian legends valkyries could appear as both
fearsome supernatural beings and humans. Valkyries
were sometimes called shield maidens or skjaldmcer,a
term that was also used in legendary literature for
human female warriors.
See alsoICELAND ANDICELANDIC LITERATURE.
Further reading:Theodore Murdock Anderson, The
Legend of Brynhild(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1980); Helen Damico, Beowulf’s Wealhtheow and the
Valkyrie Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1984).
Valla, Lorenzo (1407–1457)humanist
Born to a family of jurists at ROMEin 1407, Lorenzo Villa
was ordained a priest in 1431. Even when he was only 20
years old, his critical humanist studies were provocative.
His first work, a comparison of Cicero and Quintilian,
earned him the lasting enmity of Poggio BRACCIOLINIwho
prevented him from obtaining his long-desired papal
curial post.
Lorenzo left Rome and became a professor of
rhetoric at the University of Pavia but had to leave that
town in March 1433 because he attacked the legal schol-
arship of BARTOLOof Sassoferrato. He then became a
secretary to King ALFONSO V in NAPLES and later a
scribe in the papal court. Both Alfonso and Pope
Nicholas V (r. 1447–55) later had to defend him against
charges of HERESY. Despite these problems, from 1455 he
was supported by the revenues of numerous BENEFICES,
including a canonry of Saint John Lateran in Rome.LITERARY ACCOMPLISHMENTS
The INQUISITION had attacked Lorenzo’s philosophical
opinions and his view on the origin at the first council of
NICAEAof the Apostle’s Creed. His treatise on the elo-
quence of the Latin language was the first work to
describe the history of Latin. This attention to philology
led him to denounce the authenticity of the DONATIONof
Constantine in 1440 at the request of Alfonso V. He
showed that the donation was a much later creation, prob-
ably done for the benefit of papal temporal power. He also
corrected Saint Jerome’s Latin translation of the New Tes-
tament in 1442, criticized SCHOLATICISMand its methods,
and completed philosophical and theological works on
will, historical biography of Alfonso, and translations of
the Greek authors Homer, Xenophon, Aesop, Thucydides,
and Herodotus. He died in Rome on August 1, 1457.
See also BRUNI,LEONARDO;FILELFO,FRANCESCO;
VULGATE.
Further reading: Lorenzo Valla, The Treatise of
Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine, trans.
Christopher B. Coleman (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press in Association with the Renaissance Society of
America, 1993); Maristella di Panizza Lorch, A Defense of
Life: Lorenzo Valla’s Theory of Pleasure(Munich: W. Fink
Verlag, 1985); Charles Edward Trinkaus, In Our Image
and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist
Thought,2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1970); Charles Edward Trinkaus, Adversity’s Noblemen:
The Italian Humanists on Happiness(1940; reprint, New
York: Octagon Books, 1965).Valladolid This city in northwestern SPAIN, called
Belad Ulid by the Muslims, was founded anew in the sec-
ond half of the 11th century as part of the program of
repopulating Christians into the Duero Valley. Set in a
region rich in corn, wines, and pasture, it became a prin-
cipal town of the royal domain and remained loyal to the
Crown of CASTILE, becoming the royal residence. Laws
imposed by the Crown in 1265 strengthened the alliance
with the royal government and confirmed the power of a
small patriciate, who then organized themselves into two
groups of factions to share government jobs.
In the late 13th century, Valladolid obtained a larger
administrative region and built a wall that enclosed 13
parishes and numerous convents. ALFONSOX created a
university that received papal recognition in 1346.
Between 1258 and 1506, there were 19 meetings of
the Castilian CORTESand Valladolid (as the capital of the
realm) usually served as a royal residence, a site for the
royal courts of justice, and the location of the chancery.
The Jewish community, once large, gradually declined as
synagogues were destroyed in 1367 and later when Jews