Not a Fad: A Trans History Lesson

Chapter 4: Christian Cross Dressers

Hagiography is the term used for stories written about the lives of Christian saints. They are a very particular type of biography. Hagiography tells the story of spectacular deeds, not average occurrences.  Because of this, these stories cannot be taken as depicting a common experience. 

Studying the extremes in a society can teach a lot about what that society values.  For example, let's think about who our celebrities are. At least in American pop culture there is an out-sized emphasis on the wealthy and a very particular type of beauty.  To be specific, the Kardashians are not the average American family, yet they seem to dominate the media. This reveals America's obsession with beauty and money and the average person's desire to access such extravagances. In the same way, the stories told about Christian saints were models for pious people to imitate in the hope of finding redemption (Cameron 143). Medieval saints were sort of like the celebrities of the time.

In early Christian hagiography there was an established subgenre of female monks, or, women who entered monasteries dressed as men.  There may have been as many as 34 of these cross dressing saints! What is most interesting about these narratives is not whether or not these saints all actually existed, but that this archetype was both accepted and embraced (Hotchkiss 131-141).

So, why were these stories so popular in medieval Europe despite the condemnation of cross dressing found in Deuteronomy 22:5? I would argue that there are three main reasons: an established literary tradition, Christian belief in sacrifice, and good ol' fashioned misogyny.

First, as shown in the previous chapters, there were already Roman stories of gender transgressions and metamorphoses. In a way, these types of stories had been normalized.  Although, unlike the Roman stories where masculinized women were also sexually dominant, cross-dressing and gender-bending women in Christian texts are virginal. These women are seen as transgressing gender roles as a sacrifice of their female sexuality in order to maintain chaste virtue.

Second, it is important to understand that ascetic practices were extremely important to the early Christian belief system.  In other words, the Christian religion valued self-sacrifice. Lifelong virginity was emphasized, as was the total sacrifice of self to one's Lord. Remember, the first saints were created through martydom - by literally giving up their lives to Romans executors! Controlling the body through extreme bodily manifestations was a mark of holiness, and sacrificing your gender and sexuality was part of this (Kazhdan 131-143).   Cross-dressing saints fall on the extreme end of this sexless-requirement. 

Finally, there was the misogynistic attitude that presumed women who lived as men were aspiring to better themselves. If these AFAB people succeeded in passing as men, they were honored for being able to overcome their inherent female weaknesses.

Let's expand on the idea of why a misogynistic culture would embrace the canonization of female-to-male saints.

Medieval concepts of sex and gender were very different than our modern views. During this time period women were not viewed as the opposite of men, but rather, as an inferior version of man. This was true in both scientific and religious circles.

Early medical practitioners, such as Galen, thought of the female body as an incomplete form of the male body.  The common belief was that a woman's body had all the same parts as a man's, except that her genitals were "inside-out."  Until the early modern era many female organs, such as the ovaries, did not even have their own name.  Instead they were referred to as female testes (Laqueur 4). Because females were not just different from men, but inherently lesser, some concluded that female cross-dressers were aspiring to improve themselves.  However, this does not mean that gender transition was universally accepted. 

Caelius Aurelianus was a medical writer in the fifth century who transcribed and revised the no longer surviving works of the second century Roman physician Soranos.  In the book On Chronic Diseases, there is a section that discusses men and women who are "inappropriately gendered."  These people are ascribed sexual deviancy and are reported to suffer from mental infirmities (Aurelianus 9.131-3). [Did you catch that? Being "inappropriately gendered" was a recognized illness back in ancient times. Sound familiar? Modern American psychology still considers gender dysphoria a mental illness.]

Religious theologians also that thought of women as inferior to men. Women were imperfect forms of men, who were created in the image of God.  The female sex was almost an afterthought, created from Adam's rib.  Women were seen only as either sexual temptations or as maternal figures whose only purpose was to bear children.  Men were granted a greater fate: it was the male sex who was granted reason, and therefore the right to hold power.  Misogynistic views on the inferiority of the female mind were deeply ingrained in early religious texts.  Fourth century writings by Saint Jerome clearly show this line of thought.  He even goes so far as to say that a woman who wants to serve God inherently becomes more male-like, writing, "as long as woman is for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul.  But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman and will be called man" (Saint Jerome 16:567). Admittedly, this statement does not condone female cross-dressing, but Jerome does concede that it is necessary for a woman to give up her female qualities in order to serve Christ.

These are the reasons why religious cross dressing women in Late Antiquity were accepted as holy. The stories of how and why these AFAB people donned male clothing is more varied. Some stories, like those of 6th century St. Mary/Marinus and 12th century Hildegund von Schönau tell of young girls who were dressed as boys by their families.  There are also examples of "bearded" female saints - St. Wilgefortis, St. Galla, and St. Paula - who prayed for a way to escape betrothals in order to remain virgins and thus miraculously grew beards (Bullough 59-61). Some stories are of women who used cross-dressing as a temporary escape from a dangerous situation, while others tell tales of AFAB people who lived and passed as male for their whole adult lives.

Many of these figures are not regarded as saints today; only a few them can be found in either the Catholic encyclopedia of recognized saints or Butler's Lives of the Saints.  The historicity of many of these people is debatable, although historians agree that the accounts of St. Pelagia the Penitent and the later life of Hildegund von Schönau can be considered historically merited.  But regardless of the veracity of these accounts, the relative popularity of this genre makes these narratives insightful.

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Author's Note:

Were there any facts that you learned and found interesting?

Was there anything in this chapter that you found confusing? Or do you have any followup questions?

Thanks,
- Brian