Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe

Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600–1530

Elizabeth L'Estrange, Alison More

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138248878
• eBook ISBN: 9781317065913
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History of Art
• Index: Social Sciences

Transcending both academic disciplines and traditional categories of analysis, this collection illustrates the ways genders and sexualities could be constructed, subverted and transformed. Focusing on areas such as literature, hagiography, history, and art history, from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early sixteenth century, the contributors examine the ways men and women lived, negotiated, and challenged prevailing conceptions of gender and sexual identity. In particular, their papers explore textual constructions and transformations of religious and secular masculinities and femininities; visual subversions of gender roles; gender and the exercise of power; and the role sexuality plays in the creation of gender identity. The methodologies which are used in this volume are relevant both to specialists of the Middle Ages and early modern periods, and to scholars working more broadly in fields that draw on contemporary gender studies.

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Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe: Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600–1530

Elizabeth L’Estrange and Alison More

The point of new historical investigation is to disrupt the notion of fixity, to discover the nature of the debate or repression that leads to the appearance of timeless permanence in binary gender representation.¹

In the 1986 article quoted above, Joan W. Scott advocated the use of gender as a category for (re)analyzing the way a variety of academic disciplines, from history and literature to politics and the social sciences, could be approached and scholars’ findings nuanced. Some twenty-five years later, Scott’s article is ‘one of the most cited historical works of its time’.² Although the concept of a ‘category of analysis’ may, and has, been brought into question,³ Scott’s insistence on the importance of disrupting ‘the notion of fixity’ and normalized binary oppositions has become a central concern for scholars of sexuality and gender. This approach has been nuanced further in the light of Judith Butler’s exploration of the performative nature and materiality of gender, as well as of the role of language and biological sex in gender construction.⁴ Furthermore, the work of feminist scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins has drawn attention to the importance of examining the ways in which race and class intersect with gender.⁵ The findings of scholars discussing such issues have resulted in a wider and more theoretical approach to gender that draws on cultural and linguistic studies as well as anthropology, as a way of examining the multiplicities of sexualities and genders. Engaging with such innovations, scholars are now applying similar critical historiographical and analytic techniques to the study of the Middle Ages and the early modern period, as collections such as Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, Constructing Medieval Sexuality, Presenting Gender: Changing Sex in Early Modern Culture and Gender and Christianity in Medieval Europe demonstrate.⁶

In the present volume, scholars of history, art history, religion and literature continue this engagement with theoretical gender studies, exploring the ‘nature of the debate’ as highlighted by Scott. They analyze sources from England to Italy via the Low Countries, and from the Anglo-Saxon period to the early sixteenth century. Their essays question and explore the fixity and cultural dependence of medieval and early modern genders and sexualities through the specific themes of construction, transformation and subversion. Although some of the texts, genres and images discussed may be familiar (saints’ lives, tomb sculpture, the querelle des femmes, humanist letters, female rulers and images of women), the authors offer new and alternative readings of their material by emphasizing the ways in which genders and sexualities were and are constructed by various discourses (visual, linguistic, religious) and how those discourses – and thus the genders they claim to describe – could be transformed or subverted. In particular, the contributors examine not only how sex and gender constructions served a prevailing social order and patriarchal hierarchy, but also how men and women were themselves able to question, manipulate or break down such hierarchies, normalized responses and binary oppositions through their commissions, writings, interpretations or self-presentations.

From Women’s Studies to Gender Studies and Beyond

The discipline of ‘gender studies’ is often described as a trajectory, which developed from both the American Civil Rights movement and from the ‘women’s studies’ movement that emerged from Second Wave Feminism of the 1970s and 1980s. Initially, the terms ‘women’ and ‘gender’ were so closely linked that they seemed synonymous.⁷ The aim here is not to retrace the history of these terms through a literary review but rather to highlight some of the ways in which ‘women’s’ and then ‘gender studies’ have developed as a discipline, particularly in relation to those areas of scholarship that are intrinsic to the contributions to this volume, such as masculinity studies, religious studies, literature and art history.⁸

The concept of ‘gender’ has been subject to many interpretations. As early as the fourth century, the grammarian Servius pointed out that, ‘[g]enders are named this way because of that which they generate’.⁹ While he stated that there were only two biological genders, he conceded that the category of grammatical gender was constructed on the basis of either assigned or authoritative social usage.¹⁰ As gender theories have become considerably more complex since Servius’ time, most scholars would disagree with his idea of two ‘natural’ genders, but would apply his idea of assigned or authoritative constructs to gender roles as well as to grammatical gender.¹¹ In the 1970s, studies such as Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society alerted scholars to the role of social factors in constructing differences between masculine and feminine.¹² In subsequent scholarship, both the concept of gender and theories about its construction have been, and continue to be, problematized. The ever-evolving debate on the nature of gender means that there is no scholarly consensus on the extent to which society or even biological sex affects and informs gender roles. Instead, it is now widely agreed that gender is not a fixed norm, and many critics argue that it is not bound by binary oppositions.¹³ Rather, gender is understood to be a socially constructed, performative and changing heuristic or hermeneutic category, which determines and allows us to find latent meaning in behaviours, texts, images and social structures.¹⁴

If we accept the view that gender is performative, then the terms ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have neither ontological nor hegemonic significance. Consequently, readings informed by gender require a complex process of decoding that includes an historically specific approach to the ways in which genders and sexualities were both understood and constructed in the past.¹⁵ Medieval texts such as chronicles and hagiography contain numerous examples of men and women who question the societal ideal by taking on roles normally reserved for the opposite sex. Notably, stories of woman who disguised themselves as men in order to enter the ‘more perfect’ form of religious life were common.¹⁶ Some of these tales were undoubtedly written to chastize clerics for their decadence, while others, such as the tale of the ill-fated ‘Pope Joan’ who gave birth in a public procession, emphasized the necessity of maintaining traditional gender roles.¹⁷ It is important to recognize, however, that neither the masculine gender role nor its associated characteristics are exclusive to men. In some cases, even those born male were not always portrayed as ‘masculine’. This is evident in studies such as Sean Tougher’s analysis of Byzantine eunuchs, which explores the phenomenon of fluctuating or multiple gender identities and the ways in which they were intertwined with social position.¹⁸

Societal changes not only affect the ways in which gender roles are idealized and perceived, but also the social roles available to men or women. For the Middle Ages, studies such as Monica Green’s exploration of the provision of women’s medicine and healthcare or Martha Howell’s examination of how gender roles adapted to economic developments, explore how changing public needs have dictated gendered norms.¹⁹ In the same way, Mathew Kuefler’s discussion about an emerging ideal of Christian masculinity acknowledges that gender constructions do not occur independently of each other, or of social, economic or religious contexts.²⁰ Consequently, such studies demonstrate the need for a deeper understanding of gender pluralities, facilitating a move from ‘femininity’ to ‘femininities’ and ‘masculinity’ to ‘masculinities’.

Gender: A Category of Analysis

Recognition of the plurality of genders and sexualities has led, perhaps first and foremost, to a reframing of the initial aims of feminist historians: redressing the absence of women from the historical record. As Butler and Gillian Beer have both noted, ‘women’ does not constitute a pre-existing, homogeneous, stable group ready for analysis and, as a result of such thinking, the very possibility of writing or reclaiming ‘women’s’ history has been queried.²¹ For the Middle Ages in particular, this has led to critiques of early ground-breaking studies such as Caroline Walker Bynum’s Holy Feast and Holy Fast, and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber’s Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy that emphasized emotive response, corporeality, childbearing, food and the domestic sphere as defining aspects of womanhood.²² These associations were recast by feminist authors as providing women with means of empowerment in so far as they were qualities or abilities not possessed by men. Although these works have gone a long way towards highlighting how certain forms or experiences of devotion came to be labelled ‘feminine’, the empowering or subversive aspects of these corporeal and maternal constructions of the ‘feminine’ gender, derive, ultimately, from dominant masculine classical and medieval discourses about the female sex, as David Aers has cogently argued.²³ Furthermore, perceptions of gender are often shaped by relationships between the sexes. The essays in volumes such as Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters or Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages illustrate the ways in which the sexes perceive and interact with one another, allowing a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which gendered roles could be constructed, subverted and transformed.²⁴

Scholars have thus moved away from the tendency to study women in a vacuum and have sought instead to analyze how categories become established and reified, deconstructing what Scott called the appearance of ‘timeless permanence in binary gender representation’.²⁵ Similarly, this has also involved a shift away from the dichotomy in which ‘empowerment’ discourses were countered by those that stressed the inevitable reassertion of patriarchy, and thus ‘women’s’ inevitable victimization.²⁶ Attention to women’s varied social roles – different combinations of, for example, marital statuses (single, married, widow), lifestyle choice (nun, beguine, the decision to remain a widow), profession, religion and class – can shed new light on the position of women in society without casting them in the role of victims of patriarchy or as exceptions overcoming the odds. Thus, the essays in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, Aristocratic Women in Medieval France, and Singlewomen in the European Past have focused on questions of agency and women’s ability to exercise authority and power within the constraints of patriarchy.²⁷ Such an approach reveals – and acknowledges – not only the limitations for women within a society that constrained them economically, socially and sexually, but also the possibilities for alternative responses and the different ways in which women’s social roles could allow them to manipulate, transform or subvert traditional hierarchies.²⁸

In this volume, the essays by Francesca Canadé Sautman (Chapter 4: Constructing Political Rule, Transforming Gender Scripts) and Aislinn Loconte (Chapter 7: Constructing Female Sanctity in Late Medieval Naples) continue this investigation by showing how aristocratic women could exercise successful rule in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries by harnessing the power granted to them as queens and countesses, and by manipulating the gender roles they were expected to play for their own ends. In her essay, Loconte shows how images on a funerary monument were used to construct and ultimately transform the image of Queen Sancia of Naples. Although Sancia’s commitments as a ruler prevented her from entering a Franciscan convent, the queen was able to take advantage of her position of power to become a patron and advocate for the order. Her funerary monument, commissioned by her niece, depicted Sancia as the powerful queen, protector and patron she had been during her lifetime. Yet the representation on her tomb also transformed the image of Sancia as a secular ruler by associating her with two spiritually powerful – and above all holy – women, Clare of Assisi and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Loconte shows how, in a further play on gender, the monument used eucharistic imagery to suggest an association between Sancia and Christ, in one case even depicting Sancia in a Christ-like role surrounded by Franciscan nuns in what appears to be a ‘feminized’ version of the Last Supper. Through images, the queen is transformed: instead of remaining a powerful, secular figure, her visual identification with Christ also endows her with spiritual power. The image of Sancia in the place of Christ could be seen as an audacious form of imitatio Christi, yet it also confers a measure of religious authority on Sancia’s secular rule and her actions.

Whereas Loconte deals with how power, gender and imagery could be used to negotiate a transformation between secular and religious spheres, Sautman discusses the intersections between gender and the exercise of power. Here she examines the examples of Joan and Margaret, two thirteenth-century countesses of Flanders, to show how, despite the perceived frailty of their sex, these women occupied prominent, powerful, positions usually reserved for men. Sautman nuances existing approaches to the reigns of these countesses, particularly in relation to the exercise of power, authority and warfare. She shows that, although gendered topoi were used in many attempts to subvert the countesses’ rule, both women strategically applied their administrative strengths to subvert and transform the role of ruler. Her analysis suggests that the rule of Joan and Margaret was in fact part of a longue durée of female administrator-rulers in Flanders, one which parallels, and sometimes even replaces, that of the warrior-prince.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Notes on Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 Representing Medieval Genders and Sexualities in Europe: Construction, Transformation, and Subversion, 600–1530
• 2 ‘What, after all, is a male virgin?’ Multiple Performances of Male Virginity in Anglo-Saxon Saints’ Lives
• 3 Convergence, Conversion, and Transformation: Gender and Sanctity in Thirteenth-Century Liège
• 4 Constructing Political Rule, Transforming Gender Scripts: Revisiting the Thirteenth-Century Rule of Joan and Margaret, Countesses of Flanders
• 5 Violence on Vellum: St Margaret’s Transgressive Body and its Audience
• 6 ‘Pourquoy appellerions nous ces choses differentes, qu’une heure, un moment, un mouvement peuvent rendre du tout semblables?’: Representing Gender Identity in the Late Medieval French Querelle des femmes
• 7 Constructing Female Sanctity in Late Medieval Naples: The Funerary Monument of Queen Sancia of Majorca
• 8 Deschi da parto and Topsy-Turvy Gender Relations in Fifteenth-Century Italian Households
• 9 Fashioning Female Humanist Scholarship: Self-representation in Laura Cereta’s Letters
• 10 Mightier than the Sword: Reading, Writing and Noble Masculinity in the Early Sixteenth Century
• Bibliography
• Index