From Sacred Truth to Human Doubts: Arcangela Tarabotti Decrying Men's Privileges in Seventeenth-Century Venice

Arcangela Tarabotti used the Bible to undermine well-established traditions of Venetian society, which confined many women against their will to life in cloister. She opposed the practice, as one of its victims, with skilled use of Biblical examples and quotations which allowed her to highlight the disjuncture between forced enclosure and Christian teaching. This essay will consider her pamphlet "Che le donne siano della specie degli huomini", in which she defended female dignity against the "Disputatio nova contra mulieres", an anonymous work published in Germany in 1595, translated into Italian, which went as far as denying women the possibility of salvation. Through the use of evangelical arguments, Tarabotti undermines the "Disputatio"’s assumptions, encouraging doubts about entrenched misogynistic practices and male dominance.