Revisionist claims that the Church long venerated "transgender" saints

In the Middle Ages, the Church long venerated "transgender" saints

The history of Christianity shows that saints who would today be called "transgender" were long promoted by the Church.

Medieval Christianity honored figures who today might be described as transgender.

These saints' lives used gender transition as a moral metaphor.

These stories bear witness to a Christian tradition in which transgender identity could offer a model for transcending gender norms in the name of shared spiritual values. In the United States, several Republican-led states have restricted the rights of transgender people: Iowa signed a law removing civil rights protections for transgender people; Wyoming banned public agencies from requiring the use of preferred pronouns; and Alabama recently passed a law recognizing only two sexes. Hundreds of bills have been introduced in other state legislatures to restrict the rights of transgender people.

Earlier this year, several executive orders were issued denying transgender identity. One, titled "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias," claimed that the Biden administration's gender-affirming policies were "anti-Christian." He accused Biden's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of forcing "Christians to affirm a radical transgender ideology contrary to their faith."

Historical parallels

Yet, clearly, not all Christians are anti-trans. And in my research on medieval history and literature, I found evidence of a long history in Christianity of what we might today call "transgender" saints. While the term did not exist in medieval times, the idea of men living as women, or women living as men, was undoubtedly present. Many scholars have suggested that using the modern term "transgender" provides valuable connections for understanding historical parallels.

There are at least 34 documented accounts of the lives of transgender saints dating from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally written in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints have been translated into vernacular languages.

Transgender saints

Among the 34 original saints, at least three achieved great popularity in medieval Europe: Saint Eugenia, Saint Euphrosyne, and Saint Marinos. All three were born women, but cut their hair and donned men's clothing to live as men and enter monasteries.

Eugenia, raised a pagan, entered the monastery to learn more about Christianity and became an abbess. Euphrosyne entered the monastery to escape an unwanted suitor and spent the rest of her life there. Marinos, born Marina, decided to renounce his womanhood and live with his father in the monastery as a man.

These stories were widely read. Eugenie's story appeared in two of the most popular manuscripts of the time: Lives of the Saints by Ælfric and The Golden Legend by Jacques de Voragine. Ælfric was an English abbot who translated the lives of the Latin saints into Old English in the 10th century, making them accessible to a wide lay audience. The Golden Legend was written in Latin and compiled in the 13th century; it is one of over a thousand manuscripts.

Euphrosyne also appears in Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, as well as in other texts in Latin, Middle English, and Old French. Marinos's story is available in more than a dozen manuscripts in at least 10 languages. For those who could not read, Ælfric's Lives of the Saints and other manuscripts were read aloud in churches during religious services on the saint's feast day.

A small church in Paris built in the 10th century was dedicated to Marinos, and her bodily relics were reportedly kept in the Qannoubine Monastery in Lebanon. All of this is to say that many people spoke of these saints.

Sacred transgender identity

In the Middle Ages, the lives of saints were less important from a historical perspective than from a moral one. As a moral narrative, the audience was not expected to recreate the life of a saint, but to learn to imitate Christian values.

The transition between male and female becomes a metaphor for the transition between paganism and Christianity, between wealth and poverty, between worldliness and spirituality. The Catholic Church opposed cross-dressing in laws, liturgical gatherings, and other writings. However, Christianity honored the sanctity of these transgender saints.

In a 2021 collection of essays on medieval transgender and queer saints, scholars Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt argue that medieval Christianity considered transgender identity sacred.

“Transgender identity is not only compatible with sanctity; “Transgender identity itself is sacred,” they write. Transgender saints had to reject conventions in order to live their authentic lives, just as early Christians had to reject conventions in order to live as Christians.

Literature scholar Rhonda McDaniel explains that in 10th-century England, the adoption of Christian values—rejecting wealth, male militarism, or sexuality—made it easier for people to move beyond strict ideas about male and female gender. Instead of defining gender by distinct values for men and women, all individuals could be defined by the same Christian values.

Historically, and even in contemporary times, gender has been associated with specific values and roles, such as the assumption that housework is for women or that men are stronger. But the adoption of these Christian values allowed individuals to transcend these distinctions, particularly when they entered monasteries and nunneries.

According to McDaniel, even cisgender saints like Saint Agnes, Saint Sebastian, and Saint George embodied these values, showing that any member of the public could challenge gender stereotypes without changing their body.

Agnes's love for God allowed her to renounce her role as a wife. When offered love and wealth, she rejected them in favor of Christianity. Sebastian and George were powerful Roman men who, as men, were expected to engage in violent militarism. However, both rejected their violent Roman masculinity in favor of Christian pacifism.

A life worth emulating

Although most saints' lives were written primarily as tales, the story of Joseph of Schönau (Cathcon: thought of a saint but cult never approved) has been recounted as both very real and worthy of public imitation. His story is told as a historical account of a life that would be accessible to ordinary Christians.

At the end of the 12th century, Joseph, born a woman, entered a Cistercian monastery in Schönau, Germany. On his deathbed, Joseph recounted his life story, including his pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a child and his difficult return to Europe after his father's death. When he finally returned to his hometown of Cologne, he entered a monastery as a man, in gratitude to God for bringing him safely home.

Although he argued that Joseph's life was worthy of emulation, the first author of the Joseph story, Engelhard of Langheim, had a complex relationship with Joseph's gender. He claimed Joseph was female but regularly used masculine pronouns to refer to him.

Although the stories of Eugenia, Euphrosyne, and Marinos are told as morality tales, their authors also had complex relationships with their gender. In the case of Eugenia, in one manuscript, the author refers to her using only feminine pronouns, but in another, the scribe uses masculine pronouns.

Marinos and Euphrosyne were often referred to as men. The fact that the authors referred to these characters as masculine suggests that their transition to masculinity was not merely a metaphor, but in some ways as real as Joseph's.

Based on these narratives, I argue that Christianity has a transgender history to draw upon and many opportunities to accept transgender identity as an essential part of its values.

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