The third sex: The idea of the hermaphrodite in twelfth-century Europe

Journal of the History of Sexuality

Volumn 6, Issue 4, 1996, Pages 497-517

  Nederman, Cary J ^a   True, Jacqui ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

^b YORK UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BISEXUALITY; EUROPE; HISTORY; HUMAN;

BISEXUALITY; EUROPE; HISTORY, MEDIEVAL; HUMANS;

EID: 0030112650     PISSN: 10434070     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Some of the fruits of this scholarship have been gathered together in Michael Feher, Ramona Naddaff, and Nadia Tazi, eds., Fragments for a History of the Human Body, 3 vols. (New York, 1989).
2. See, e.g., Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London, 1991);
3. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London, 1990); and
4. Michel Foucault's History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols. (New York, 1978-86).
5. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1990), pp. 5-8.
6. Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud Ibid., p. 19.
7. The final verdict on Laqueur's research has by no means been returned, but some of the initial criticisms seem valid. For instance, Joan Cadden, in Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1993),
8. doubts whether the ancient and medieval evidence for the total hegemony of the one-sex model is so unequivocal as Laqueur suggests (Cadden, pp. 2-3). Sally Shuttleworth's review of Making Sex accuses Laqueur of ironing "out contextual complexity" for the sake of advancing his interpretation (Journal of the History of Sexuality 3 [1993]: 634).
9. Peter Laipson's review article questions the explanation Laqueur adduces for the rise of the two-sex model ("From Boudoir to Bookstore: Writing the History of Sexuality," Comparative Studies in Society and History 34 [1992]: 640).
10. And in an extremely critical review, Katharine Park and Robert A. Nye argue that Laqueur's "distinction between the two models blurs into a haze of contradictions," due to an incomplete or one-sided reading of the sources ("Destiny Is Anatomy," New Republic 204 [February 18, 1991], p. 54).
11. For example, Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, "Fetishizing Gender: Constructing the Hermaphrodite in Renaissance Europe," in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York, 1991), pp. 80-111, who acknowledge their debt to Laqueur on p. 106, n. 2.
12. The contributions in Epstein and Straub, eds., are illustrative of the range of interests stimulated by the "new" studies of sexuality.
13. Carla Freccero, "The Other and the Same: The Image of the Hermaphrodite in Rabelais," in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. M. W. Ferguson, M. Quilligant, and N. J. Vickers (Chicago, 1986), p. 149.
14. There is a growing literature on the classical image of the hermaphrodite. See Aileen Ajootian, "Natus biformus: Hermaphrodites in Greek and Roman Art" (Ph.D. diss., Bryn Mawr College, 1990),
15. "Hermaphroditos," in Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zürich, 1990), 5:268-85, and
16. "The Only Perfect Couple: Hermaphrodites and Gender," in Body Image and Gender Symbolism: Feminist Theory and Classical Archaeology, ed. A. O. Koloski and C. Lyons (in press);
17. Georgia Nugent, "This Sex Which Is Not One: De-Constructing Ovid's Hermaphrodite," differences 2 (1990): 160-85;
18. A. Raehs, Zur Iconographie des Hermaphrodite (Frankfurt am Main, 1990);
19. S. Viarre, "L'androgynie dans les Metamorphoses d'Ovide: A la récherche d'une methode de lecture," in Journées Ovidiennes de Parmenie: Acts du Colloque sur Ovide, ed. J. M. Frecaut and D. Porte (Brussels, 1985), pp. 229-40. We thank Ken Kitchell for aiding us in the identification of these sources.
20. A very recent collection, however, has begun to explore some of the anthropological and historical evidence for proliferate sexuality in both Western and non-Western cultures. See Gilbert Herdt, ed., Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History (New York, 1994). No attempt is made there, though, to explore the evidence in the West prior to the eighteenth century.
21. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, "Hermaphrodites in Renaissance France," Critical Matrix 1 (1985): 1-19; Freccero;
22. Lauren Silberman, "Mythographic Transformations of Ovid's Hermaphrodite," Sixteenth Century Journal 19 (1988): 643-52;
23. Julia Epstein, "Either/Or - Neither/Both: Sexual Ambiguity and the Ideology of Gender," Genders 7 (1990): 99-142;
24. Naomi Yavneh, "The Spiritual Eroticism of Leone's Hermaphrodite," in Playing with Gender: A Renaissance Pursuit, ed. Jean R. Brink, Maryanne C. Horowitz, and Allison P. Coudert (Urbana, IL, 1991), pp. 85-97; Jones and Stallybrass, pp. 80-111.
25. Epstein, p. 107.
26. Ibid., p. 124. Epstein is not alone in ascribing this view to Aristotle; Daston and Park, p. 5, do likewise. But in a review of Making Sex (Park and Nye [n. 5 above]), Park recants this claim: "Asserting the incommensurability of male and female, Aristotelians tended to claim that . . . perfect hermaphropidism was impossible" (p. 54).
27. Aristotle De generatione animalium, ed. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA, 1953), 4.4, 772b26-32: "Some creatures develop in such a way that they have two generative organs, one male, the other female. Always, when this redundancy happens, one of the two is operative and the other inoperative, since the latter, being contrary to nature, always gets stunted so far as nourishment is concerned; however, it is attached, just as growths (or tumors) are."
28. Cadden (n. 5 above), pp. 23-25. However, Judith A. Swanson argues in her paper "The Politics of Androgyny: Aristotle on Gender Roles" (Boston University, 1994, unpublished manuscript) that Aristotle still posits an essentially androgynous substructure for human (and other) beings that is prior to the emergence of sexual dichotomy. In this, she seems to confirm elements of Laqueur's thesis in Making Sex (n. 3 above). We thank her for making her research available to us prior to its publication.
29. Epstein, p. 107.
30. Ibid., p. 101.
31. Ibid., p. 107.
32. Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum, 11.3, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911).
33. Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton, NJ, 1988).
34. Cadden, pp. 202, 209-18.
35. Laqueur, p. 135.
36. Ibid., pp. 135-36, 138, 141-42.
37. In another vein, the hermaphrodite is also ignored by James A. Brundage's encyclopedic Law, Sex, and Christianity in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987).
38. For an overview of the Latin reception of Avicenna's Canon, see Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, Avicenne en Occident (Paris, 1993).
39. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (Chicago, 1980), pp. 375-76, n. 50.
40. Jacquart and Thomasset, pp. 22-26, examine the contributions of Constantine the African to medieval Latin thought.
41. The account in the remainder of this paragraph is based on Cadden (n. 5 above), pp. 35-37.
42. De spermate, fol. 188r, Latin 15456, Bibliothèque nationale, MS Paris, cited by Jacquart and Thomasset (n. 20 above), p. 141.
43. Cadden, pp. 198-99.
44. Brian Lawn, ed., The Prose Salernitan Questions Edited from a Bodelian Manuscript (Auct. F.3.10) (London, 1979), p. 103.
45. William of Conches Dragmaticon philosophiae (Strasbourg, 1567), p. 24; and
46. Anatomia Magistri Nicholai Physicus, ed. F. Redeker,
47. in F. Redeker, "Die Anatomia Magistri Nicholai und ihr Verhältnis zur Anatomia Coppenis und Richardi" (Ph.D. diss., University of Leipzig, 1917).
48. An English translation of the latter work is given in George W. Corner, Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 1927), pp. 67-86.
49. Michael Scot, De secretis naturae (Amsterdam, 1643), pt. 1, chap. 7, pp. 243-45.
50. On Michael's career, see Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg, eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 48-49, 58-59.
51. Albertus Magnus De animalibus libri XXVI, 18.2.3, ed. H. Stadler, 2 vols. (Münster, 1916-20).
52. Ibid., 4.4.102. We wish to thank Ken Kitchell, who is preparing a full English translation of De animalibus, for sharing with us his exhaustive knowledge of Albert's natural philosophy.
53. Margaret S. Ogden, ed., The Cyrurgie of Guy de Chauliac (Oxford, 1971), p. 529.
54. Freccero (n. 8 above), p. 328, n. 12; Cadden (n. 5 above), p. 212.
55. It is worth noting that "monstrous" did not convey quite the same connotations in medieval Latin that "monster" does in modern English usage; see Epstein (n. 11 above), p. 107.
56. John of Salisbury Policraticus, 5.10, ed. C. C. J. Webb (New York, 1979), trans. Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 90-91. (We have slightly altered the translation from the published version.)
57. This is reminiscent of Pliny's widely known remark in Natural History 7.3.34 that hermaphrodites in his own day were a source of entertainment.
58. John of Salisbury, Policraticus 5.10; trans. p. 91.
59. The passage should be placed in the context of John's attitude toward women and effeminacy more generally. See Cary J. Nederman and N. Elaine Lawson, "The Frivolities of Courtiers Follow the Footprints of Women: Public Women and the Crisis of Virility in John of Salisbury," in Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Carole Levin and Jeanne Watson (Detroit, 1987), pp. 82-96.
60. The best general account of Bernard's ideas and their contribution to twelfth-century thought is Brian Stock, Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1972).
61. Bernard Sylvestris Cosmograpbia 2.5.17., ed. Peter Dronke (Leiden, 1978), trans. Winthrop Weatherbee (New York, 1973), p. 103.
62. Since Mercury is also the messenger god, there may be some implied reference to the supposed role of hermaphrodites as portents, but this connection is never clearly drawn out by Bernard.
63. On the connection between the elements of Alan's argument, see Jan Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille's Grammar of Sex: The Meaning of Grammar to a Twelfth-Century Intellectual (Cambridge, MA, 1985).
64. The parallel to John of Salisbury is noteworthy: in addition to decrying the current state of morality in the church as well as the temporal sphere in the Policraticus, John condemned contemporary practices of grammar and education in his Metalogicon (which was composed contemporaneously with the Policraticus). John saw definite connections between degeneracy in the realms of public life and of learning. Sec Michael Wilks, "John of Salisbury and the Tyranny of Nonsense," in The World of John of Salisbury, ed. Michael Wilks (Oxford, 1984), pp. 263-86; and
65. Cary J. Nederman, "Knowledge, Virtue and the Path to Wisdom: The Unexamined Aristotelianism of John of Salisbury's Metalogicon," Mediaeval Studies 51 (1989): 268-86.
66. Alan of Lille De planctu naturae, ed. N. M. Haring, in Studi Medievali, 3d ser., 19 (1978): 797-879, chap. 1, meter 1, trans. J. J. Sheridan, Plaint of Nature (Toronto, 1980), p. 67.
67. Cadden (n. 5 above), pp. 221-23; and John W. Baldwin, The Language of Sex (Chicago, 1994), p. 45.
68. Alan of Lille De planctu naturae, chap. 1, meter 1, trans. p. 68.
69. Ibid., chap. 10, prose 5, trans. pp. 156-57.
70. Ibid., trans. p. 157 (translation altered).
71. Ibid., trans. pp. 158-64.
72. For a general survey of Peter's career and thought, see John W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ, 1970).
73. Peter the Chanter, De vitio sodomitico, cited in Boswell (n. 26 above), p. 376. Although Boswell's use in his translation of the "(s)he" form may be cumbersome, it is difficult to imagine how any other rendering would be coherent.
74. Baldwin, The Language of Sex, p. 44.
75. The Digest of Justinian, 1.5.14, ed. T. Mommsen, P. Kreuger, and A. Watson (Philadelphia, 1985).
76. Ibid., 22.5.15.
77. For instance, Azo was a major source for the Bractonian De legibus et conseutudinibus Angliae, which copied the Summa faithfully, including its discussion of hermaphrodites. See S. E. Thorne's edition of De legibus, 4 vols. (Cambridge, MA, 1968-77), 2:31-32.
78. Azo Summa Institutionum (Venice, 1610), 1.5, no. 4.
79. Ibid., 1.5, nos. 1-5.
80. An inference first suggested to us by Cynthia Neville during a conversation in February 1995.
81. Azo Summa Institutionum, 1.5, no. 5.
82. Gratian Decretum 2.4, questions ii and iii, 3.22, ed. A. L. Richter, Corpus Iuris Canonici (Graz, 1959).
83. Summa "Elegantis in iure divino" seu Coloniensis 4.94, ed. Gerard Fransen and Stephan Kuttner, 2 vols. (The Vatican, 1935-78).
84. Summa Parisiensis 2.4, questions ii and iii, s.v. "hermaphroditus," ed. Terence P. McLaughlin (Toronto, 1952).
85. Rufinus of Bologna Summa Decretorum 2.4.3, s.v. "hermaphroditus," ed. Heinrich Singer (Aalen/Paderborn, 1963).
86. Another potentially fruitful source, left unexamined here, is the medieval bestiary, which was often little more than a moralizing tract that categorized and described the follies of mankind. Bestiaries treated the hyena (and sometimes the goat) as lacking a stable gender - "neither male nor female." See T. H. White, The Book of Beasts, Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (New York, 1954), pp. 31-32. The treatment of the hyena as a hermaphroditic creature has a long history. Boswell (n. 26 above) includes in an appendix a chapter of the Paedagogus of the third-century Greek thinker Clement of Alexandria, who reports in connection with the hyena the view "that the same animal has at the same time both types of genitalia, those of the male and of the female, as some have thought, telling of marveluous hermaphrodites and creating a whole new type - a third sex, the androgyne, in between a male and a female" (p. 356). Clement, who adopted a dualistic stance under the influence of Aristotle, disapproves of this claim, however.
87. In his introduction to Herculine Barbin, trans. Richard McDougall (New York, 1980), Foucault claims that prior to the Enlightenment there was no conception of "true sex," so that hermaphrodites were free to assert their gender in a legal forum (pp. vii-viii). We concur with Laqueur (n. 3 above) that Foucault was "utopian in his political claim; gender choice was by no means open to individual discretion" (p. 124). But Foucault is surely correct in his view that dualistic gender, consciously constructed through the legal and moral apparatus, was the source of a hermaphrodite's identity.
88. Cadden (n. 5 above), p. 226.