Lorenzo Valla's proof of the forgery of the Donation of Constantine (De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio), a seminal text of the Renaissance, has never been published in German translation. We are currently preparing the first bilingual, Latin-German edition to contain a reliable text, a new translation by Christian Heitzmann as well as an introduction and commentary by Anita Traninger. It will be published in Hiersemann’s Mittellateinische Bibliothek series. The focus of the introduction will be on outlining the rhetorical character of the text: for institutional, strategic and persuasive reasons, it was important for Valla to fashion himself as a declamator in order to stage a performance of dissent.