 Valla’s contributions to historical, classical, and biblical scholarship are beyond doubt, and helped to pave the way for the critical textual philology of Poliziano, Erasmus, and later generations of humanists. Valla grasped the important insight—which was not unknown to medieval philosophers and theologians—that the meaning of a text can be understood only when it is seen as the product of its original historical and cultural context. Yet his attempt to reform or transform the scholastic study of language and argumentation—and, indeed, their entire mode of doing philosophy—is likely to be met with skepticism or even hostility by the historian of medieval philosophy who is dedicated to the argumentative rigor and conceptual analysis which are the hallmarks of scholastic thought. Nevertheless, while it may be true that Valla’s individual arguments are sometimes weak, superficial, and unfair, his critique as a whole does have an important philosophical and historical significance. The following two points, in particular, should be mentioned.