Trinkaus gives most attention to Lorenzo Valla, and in a particularly penetrating essay (6) he identifies Valla as the "
Instaurator of the Theory of Humanism." Meticulous analysis of the Respastinatio dialectice et philosophie demonstrates how Valla appropriated theoretical tools from Quintilian to help him build an intellectual system of humanism that could "be asserted as a counter-weight to scholastic reliance on Aristotelian metaphysics and dialectic" (6.92).