THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
work for its own sake with respect to God, Christ, and the martyrs. The rapid decline of his see city is one of the chief causes which consigned many of the homilies of Valerian to an unmerited oblivion, or ascribed them to others, such as Petrus Chrysologus or Eucherius. (F. ARNOLD.) BrsuiocRapHy: L. Duchesne, Fastes episcopaux de lancienne Gaule, i. 290, 296, Paris, 1907; Histoire littéraire de la France, ii. 328-329; Tillemont, Mémoires, xv. 125; N. Schack, De Valeriano seculi quinti homileta Christiano, Copenhagen, 1814; T. Raynaud, in MPL, lii. 757-836; Gallia Christiana, iii, 1268, Paris, 1876; A. Malnory, S. Césaire évéque d’ Arles, pp. 43, 70, 251, Paris, 1894; Ceillier, Auteurs sacrés, x. 154-159, viii. 444, 605; DCB, iv. 1103; KL, xii. 558-560.
VALESIUS, va-li’shi-us, HENRICUS (HENRI DE VALOIS): French historian and scholar; b. at Paris Sept. 10, 1603; d. there May 7, 1676. Hducated at the Jesuit school in Verdun and at the Collége Clermont in Paris, he went, in 1622, to Bourges to study law, which he abandoned in 1630 to devote himself to scholarship. The first results were his editio princeps of the tenth-century compend ‘“‘ On Virtue and Vice” (Polybwi, Diodori Siculi, Nicolai Damasceni . . . excerpta ex collectaneis Constantini Augusti Porphyrogenete, Paris, 1634), and his edition of Ammianus Marcellinus (1636). His life-work, however, was a critical edition of the Greek church historians, comprising the writings of Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius, with excerpts from Philostorgius and Theodorus Lector (8 vols., Paris, 1659-73; ed. W. Reading, Cambridge, 1720 and often). His minor writings were edited by P. Burman the younger under the title H. Valesti emendationum libri quinque et de critica libri duo (Amsterdam, 1740), which also contains his orations and a biography by his brother Hadrian. (G. LauBMANnNy.)
BrsuiocrapHy: H. Valesius, De vita Henrict Valesii, Paris, 1677; KL, xii. 560-563.
VALETON, JOZUA JAN PHILIPPUS: The name of two Dutch Reformed Old-Testament scholars.
1. Jan Valeton the Elder: b. at The Hague Aug. 28, 1814; d. at Utrecht Feb. 8, 1906. He was educated at the University of Leyden (1832-39), and was then pastor at Waalsch until 1844, when, after the publication of his doctor’s dissertation, Taalibii Syntagma Dictorum Brevium et Acutorum (Leyden, 1884), he was appointed professor of Old Testament at the University of Groningen. In 1876 he left Groningen to accept a similar position at Leyden, where he was the colleague of Abraham Kuenen (q.v.), and there he remained until advancing years forced him to retire from active life. His theological position may be described as that of a liberal conservative. In addition to a number of contributions to theological periodicals, he was the author of Schets der hebreeisch spraakkunst (1850).
2. Jan Valeton the Younger: Son of the preceding; b. at Groningen Oct. 14, 1848. He was educated at the universities of Utrecht and Geneva, after which he was pastor successively at Verit, Gelderland (1872-75), and at Bloemendaal, near Haarlem (1875-77). In 1877 he was called to his present position of professor of Hebrew and Old Testament at Utrecht. He has twice been president of the Association (or Synod) of the Province
of Utrecht (1892, 1903), and was the prime mover in the establishment of a college for training future missionaries; he has also exhibited keen interest in the Students’ Christian Movement connected with the Dutch universities, and has delivered many addresses at their gatherings. He is also a member of the Literary Association of the Netherlands and of the Royal Academy of Sciences. Like his father, he is theologically a liberal conservative. He accepts the chief position of the Reuss-Graf-Kuenen- Wellhausen School of Old-Testament criticism, but is an uncompromising defender of the divinity of Christ and of his literal resurrection, though his reasons are rather the needs of the Christian life than the evidence of documents and the like.
Besides many contributions to Dutch and German theological periodicals, and in addition to a large number of addresses, etc., he has written Viertal voorlezingen over propheten des Ouden Verbonds (Utrecht, 1886, 2d enlarged ed., 1908; dealing with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the ‘‘ Deutero- Isaiah’’) ; Amos en Hosea, een hoofstuk uit de geschiedenis van Israel’s godsdienst (Nijmegen, 1894; German transl. by F. K. Echternacht, Giessen, 1898) ; Christus en het Oude Testament (1895); Vergdngliches und Ewiges im Alten Testament (Berlin, 1895) ; De Psalmen (3 parts, Nijmegen, 1902-05) ; Het Oude Testament en de critik (1906); Het Oude Testament an het licht van wetenschappelijk onderzoeg (1907); Oud-testamentische voordrachten (1909 sqq.); and the section on the Israelites in P. D. Chantepie de la Saussaye’s Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte (3d ed., Tubingen, 1905). T. Wirron Daviss.
VALLA, val/la, LAURENTIUS (LORENZO): Italian humanist and critic; b. at Rome 1405; d. there Aug. 1, 1457. His father was a consistorial advocate in Rome, and an uncle provided Lorenzo with a humanistic training before he turned to theology. He was consecrated as priest in 1431. His first writing, De voluptate ac de vero bono, was not printed until 1483. Meanwhile there appeared Questiones dialectice; De libero arbitrio; and De elegantvis Latini sermonis, a declaration of war against the usual didactics and Latinity of his time. In 1435 or 1436, Valla entered the service of King Alfonso V. of Aragon; and while under his patronage he composed, about 1440, the celebrated Declamatio de falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, which showed the so-called ‘‘ Donation of Constantine” (q.v.) to be a forgery. By 1442, when he accompanied Alfonso to Naples, rumors were already abroad that his views were in opposition to the Church. But the king still protected him against the Inquisition, so that the judicial proceedings against him were suspended (cf. Valla’s Opera, pp. 195, 356). At Naples Valla composed Collatio Novi Testamenti, though this was not published until sixty years later (ed. Erasmus, Annotatones in N. T., Paris, 1505), being ‘ the first fruit of the newly awakened philological studies in behalf of exegesis ” (cf. Mancini, Vita, pp. 238 sqq.).
An attempt of Valla’s to return to Rome in 1444 miscarried through the fanaticism of the priests, and his Apologia, addressed to Eugenius IV., failed to secure favor. It was not until 1447, under Nicho-