Disputatio nova contra mulieres, qua probatur eas homines non esse (English translation: A new argument against women, in which it is demonstrated that they are not human beings) is a
satiricalmisogynisticLatin-language treatise first published in 1595 and subsequently reprinted several times, particularly throughout the 17th and 18th centuries. Disputatio was written
anonymously, although it has been attributed to
Valens Acidalius, a 16th-century German critic.
Despite the fact that the treatise was meant to parody the
Socinian Anabaptist belief that
Jesus of Nazareth was not
divine, it has also been "used as a serious text to pour ridicule on women".[1]Disputatio proved to be unusually provocative in its time for a publication of its size, which eventually led to the
CatholicHoly See listing the manuscript in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books) on multiple occasions.
Disputatio Nova Contra Mulieres/A New Argument Against Women A Critical Translation from the Latin with Commentary, Together with the Original Latin Text of 1595, Hart, Clive,
Edwin Mellen Press, 1998.
ISBN0-7734-8280-6.
Treatise on the Question Do Women Have Souls and Are They Human Beings?: Disputatio Nova Expanded and Revised Edition, Hart, Clive,
Edwin Mellen Press, 2003.
ISBN0-7734-6541-3.
Czapla, Ralf G. [Ed.]; Burkard, Georg [Ed.]; Burkard, Georg [Trans.]: Disputatio nova contra mulieres, qua probatur eas homines non esse / Acidalius, Valens. (Neue Disputation gegen die Frauen zum Erweis, dass sie keine Menschen sind). Heidelberg 2006.
ISBN3-934877-51-6
^J. Jungmayr, ‘Einführung zu Henricus Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, zu Valens Acidalius und der Gegenschrift von Gediccus’, in Ob die Weiber Menschen sein Oder Nicht?, ed. Elisabeth Gössmann, Iudicium 1996, pp. 46-62