Boston University is offering a graduate-level “Medieval Trans Studies” course for the upcoming spring semester that explores how “medieval texts speak to the historical, theoretical, and political concerns that animate contemporary trans studies.”The course has drawn criticism from scholars who argue that it reflects modern ideological biases rather than historical accuracy.It considers “the deep histories of transgender embodiment” through an examination of texts stemming from the Middle Ages, according to the course description.Students will read about “alchemical hermaphrodites, genderfluid angels, Ethiopian eunuchs, trans saints, sex workers, and genderqueer monks,” according to the university.Adam Kissel, a fellow with the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy [...said] it is permissible for universities to study how Medieval writers understood their fantasies regarding gender. However, BU’s course is “a distraction from better emphases.”“In the Middle Ages there was no rational doubt that humans were created only male and female. The people knew that freaks of nature were abnormal,” Kissel said.
That's stronger language than I would have used, but it is definitely true that the Medieval understanding of humanity and creation is exactly that human beings were created male and female. The most rational minds of the age were trained by the Church, for whom* it is a point of clear doctrine.
Having spent a lot of time with Medieval texts, I have to say that while there are some interesting cases, you have to go a long way to find them. There is also a lot more about cross-dressing by clear males or females than anything resembling trans-* cases. There's a certain amount of playful literature about cross-dressing, both females dressing in armor in order to pursue a knightly quest, or male knights dressing as women to humiliate each other (either by beating the other male while dressed as a woman, or by forcing the other to wear female clothes as a forfeit for losing). This wasn't aspirational, even in the literature; it was a joke, the way that in Norse mythology Thor is pictured cross-dressing in a comedy story about how he pretended to be a bride in order to recapture his hammer from a giant who had stolen it. In Malory, for example, it's usually a story involving Sir Dinadan, who is most usually a comic relief figure in the Tristan stories.
Outside literature, Joan of Arc dressed as a knight (but didn't fight as one, though she led inspirationally from the front). A Persian scholar describes female Crusaders dressing in armor but not presenting themselves as males, but it doesn't appear this really happened and the story was probably made up to make the Christians look bad. The religious ruling about this holds that such women would be 'anathema' and this scholar thinks it is unlikely women really did this, at least regularly. There were probably females in armor successfully hiding their sex in order to fight as mercenaries, I would guess, but it wasn't an ideal people were striving for -- and it was more likely, I assess, among poorer women who had relatively few options and found mercenary work palatable.
None of this really even approaches the side cases that this course will apparently take as its foci. I think the effect is likely to suggest that the Middle Ages were quite different from what they were, which could easily be a disservice to students. Only after a basic appreciation has been conveyed should such fringe elements be taught to avoid that deception. This is said to be a graduate-level course, though, so perhaps that will be the case.
* Ecclesia is a person in the Medieval Catholic understanding, indeed a female person.
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