[Footnote 244: _De Dictis et Factis Alphonsi Regis Memorabilibus._ Æneas Sylvius wrote a commentary on this work, in the preface to which he says, 'Legere potui, quod feci, corrigere vero non potui; nam quid est quod manu tuâ emissum correctione indigeat?'--_Opp. Omnia_, p. 472. This proves Beccadelli's reputation as a stylist.] Those among us who have had the curiosity to study Beccadelli's 'Hermaphroditus' will find sufficient food for reflection upon his post of confidence and honour at the Court of Alfonso.[245] Yet the position of Lorenzo Valla at the same Court is even more remarkable. While Beccadelli urged the levity of youth in extenuation of his heathenism, and spoke with late regret of his past follies,[246] Valla showed the steady front of a deliberate critic, hostile at all points to the traditions and the morals of the Church. The parents of this remarkable man were natives of Piacenza, though, having probably been born at Rome, he assumed to himself the attribute of Roman.[247] Before he fixed his residence at Naples, he had already won distinction by a 'Dialogue on Pleasure,' in which he contrasted the principles of the Stoics and Epicureans, making it clear, in spite of cautious reservation, that he upheld the rights of the flesh in opposition to the teaching of philosophies and Churches. The virtue of virginity, so strongly prized by Christian saints, was treated by him as a violence to nature's laws, an intolerable torment inflicted upon man as God has made him.[248] [Footnote 245: What the biographers, especially Vespasiano, relate of Alfonso's ceremonious piety and love of theological reading makes the contrast between him and his Court poet truly astounding.] [Footnote 246: 'Hic fæces varias Veneris moresque profanos, Quos natura fugit, me docuisse pudet.'] [Footnote 247: 'Romam, in quâ natus sum ... ego sum ortus Romæ oriundus a Placentiâ.'] [Footnote 248: The naïve surprise with which Vespasiano records the fact of virginity (see especially the Lives of Ambrogio Traversari and the Cardinal Portogallo) shows how rare the virtue was, and what mysterious honour it conferred upon men who were reputed to be chaste.] The attack opened by Valla upon the hypocrisies and false doctrines of monasticism was both powerful and novel. Humanistic freedom of thought, after assuming the form of witty persiflage in Poggio's anecdotes and appearing as pure Paganism in Beccadelli's poems, now put on the sterner mask of common sense and criticism in Lorenzo Valla. The arms which he assumed in his first encounter with Church doctrine, he never laid aside. To the end of his life Valla remained the steady champion of unbiassed criticism, the living incarnation of that 'verneinender Geist' to which the reason of the modern world has owed its motive force.