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Trans Saints in Context, or: What counts as one manuscript?


What one counts as one manuscript can change the interpretation of the texts within it. I was reminded of this during a recent visit to the Biblioteca Capitolare of Verona as part of my project “The Latin Lives of ‘Trans(vestite) Saints’ in Context”. In this project, I study the Latin vitae of so-called Monachoparthenoi – saints who are initially described as female by their hagiographers, but take on a male monastic identity. Most of their vitae were originally written in Greek, but instead of looking at the original texts, I am interested in what scribes writing in Latin in medieval Europe made of these figures: What does copying these vitae reveal about the conceptions of gender boundaries (and the ways in which they could be transgressed) in the minds of those doing the copying?

One way to answer this question is to look at the other texts they were copying at the same time, into the same manuscripts: When the vitae of Monachoparthenoi are transmitted with other saints’ lives, the gender of these saints, their specific models of sanctity, and the general themes raised in their vitae, can provide evidence for contemporary understandings of Monachoparthenoi. Transmitted together with non-hagiographic material, their surroundings might suggest specific ascetic, exegetical, or other arguments that they were used for. In order to uncover the most common contextualizations, I am currently gathering all contents of all pre-13th century manuscripts that transmit the vitae of Monachoparthenoi in a database.

This work sometimes raises the question “What is a manuscript?” – or rather “What is one manuscript?” The manuscript(s?) now bearing the shelfmark Verona, Bibl. Cap. XCV (90) is (are?) a particularly tricky case. Three vitae of Monachoparthenoi – those of Euphrosyne/Smaragdus, Pelagia/Pelagius and Marina/Marinus – are transmitted here (fol. 180r–199v). Which of the surrounding texts should be understood to form the context of these vitae is not obvious, however: As Paolo Chiesa has shown, what looks like one manuscript now started out as several distinct codicological units.

The vitae of interest here were originally part of a small collection which otherwise only transmitted the passions of unambiguously female martyrs (Sophia and her three daughters, Margaret of Antioch; fol. 151v–173v) and a short text praising the concept of chastity (fol. 199v–200r). This context suggests that the compiler understood Monachoparthenoi as female figures. However, a quire transmitting texts on the male martyrs Vigilius, Sisinnius, Martyrius and Alexander of Trento (fol. 174r–179r) was soon inserted in the middle of this collection. It was also combined with a mixed-gender collection of passions (fol. 1r–143r) and another collection of lives and passions of female saints (fol. 203r–272v). These four parts, all written in the early 9th century, must have been combined by the 10th century at the latest, after the passions of the martyrs Sabina (fol. 179r–v), Justus (fol. 200r–202v) and Timothy (fol. 272v–273v) had been added on previously empty folios and all texts had been numbered consecutively. (Another quire [fol. 144–150] was inserted in the 12th/13th century, but is of no interest here.)

Codicological structure of Verona, Bibl. Cap. XCV (90)

Thus, the codicological structure of this manuscript suggests a certain amount of uncertainty over the gender identity of Monachoparthenoi: Did their vitae belong only with the passiones of cis female martyrs, as the compiler of the initial small collection thought? Or did they have a place in a non-gender-specific collection of saints’ lives and passions, opening up the possibility of reading them not, or at least not only, as female? In early medieval Verona, the latter view seems to have won out – but the context was never set in stone.

Verona, Bibl. Cap. XCV (90), fol. 199v–200r: End of the Life of St. Marina/us, short text on chastity (early 9th century); Passion of St. Justus (late 9th century). Foto: Michael Eber. Published with permission of Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona.

Bibliography

  • Paolo Chiesa, Note su un’antica raccolta agiografica veronese (Verona, Bibl. Capitolare, MS. XCV), Studi Medievali 28 (1987), pp. 123–153.
  • Benedetta Valtorta, Manoscritti agiografici latini della Biblioteca Capitolare di Verona. Catalogo (Quaderni di Hagiographica 18), Florence 2020.

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Michael Eber (March 20, 2024). Trans Saints in Context, or: What counts as one manuscript? Digital Palaeography. Retrieved December 11, 2024 from https://palaeography.hypotheses.org/812


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