Posts

Posted on

Distilling Tradition: Anglo-Saxon Botany and the Beginning of Gin

Since moving to England, Iโ€™ve become very fond of gin, and the medievalist in me was thrilled when I was recently gifted a bottle of Ad Gefrin Distillery’s Thirlings Dry Gin. The gin is inspired by Northumbriaโ€™s Anglo-Saxon roots, what Ad Gefrin describes as โ€œa time of welcome, celebration, and hospitality,โ€ and it has been crafted with โ€œa Northumbrian heart and Anglo-Saxon soul.โ€[1] ย 

The gin is gorgeous, both in its presentation and its finish. The bottle itself embodies the locationโ€™s Anglo-Saxon heritage: โ€œFar from just being a vessel for the spirit, the bottle tells its own authentic story. The stepped punt reflects the 7th Century wooden Grandstand discovered on the ancient site and the holes/dimples in the glass represent the post holes which identified where the royal complex of buildings were and enabled archaeologists to calculate their size and height.โ€[2] Its botanical profile is comprised of โ€œflavours inspired by Northumberland, heather and pine from the Cheviot hills, elderberry and dill from the hedgerows, and Irish moss and sea buckthorn from the coast.โ€[3] But the base of all gins, of course, is juniper.

In addition to its distillery that produces both gin and whisky, Ad Gefrin offers an impressive collection of Anglo-Saxon artefacts and an immersive experience of Northumberland’s Golden Age, including the richness and hospitality of the medieval hall. Photo courtesy of Ad Gefrin.

Juniper, a type of coniferous evergreen, is native to various parts of the northern hemisphere. There are approximately 30 species, but the common European species, Juniperus communis, is described as โ€œa hardy spreading shrub or low tree, having awl-shaped prickly leaves and bluish-black or purple berries, with a pungent taste.โ€[4] These berries form the base of ginโ€™s distinctive botanical flavor, which the Craft Gin Club aptly describes as โ€œ[r]esinous, piney and fresh on the palate and nose.โ€[5]

Juniper berries begin green but adopt a deeper blue to purple-black color as they mature. Common juniper is native to most of the northern hemisphere, including the United Kingdom. According to the Woodland Trust, the plant “thrives on chalk lowland, moorland, in rocky areas and old native-pine woodland” and functions as a source of food and shelter for a variety of birds.

The Anglo-Saxons recognized juniper primarily for its medicinal properties. Its Old English name was cwic-beam, which literally translates to โ€œlife-tree.โ€[6] In the Old English Herbarium, a popular medieval treatise dedicated to the identification and application of plants, juniper is listed as sabine or savine in accordance with its Latin name, Juniperus sabina. As a compilation and translation of originally separate Latin treatises, the Herbarium employs Latin alongside English, much in the same way modern medical textbooks maintain Latin terminology for conditions that are then described in English.

The treatise indicates that juniper can be used to treat โ€œpainful joints and foot swelling,โ€ โ€œheadache,โ€ and โ€œcarbuncles.โ€[7] In the first instance, the treatise advises that the plant be concocted into a drink; the entry reads: โ€œFor the kingโ€™s disease, which is called aurignem in Latin and means painful joints and foot swelling in our language, take this plant, which is called sabinam, and by another name like it, savine, give it to drink with honey. It will relieve the pain. It does the same thing mixed with wine.โ€[8] Here, the kingโ€™s disease โ€“ in Old English, โ€œwiรพ รพa cynelican adleโ€โ€“ likely refers to jaundice related to gout.[9] For the treatment of headache, the plant was to be mixed into a kind of poultice and applied to the head and temples.[10] In the case of carbuncles, which refer to a cluster of boils, the plant would be made into a honey-based salve and applied to the infected area.[11]    

Entries for chamomile and heart clover in the only surviving illustrated Old English herbal, a book that primarily describes plants and their applications. As the British Library notes, “Remedies for poisonous bites were marked out with drawings of snakes and scorpions.” The manuscript, produced in England and dated 1000-1025, also contains information on animals and their medicinal properties, though not all of its contents are reliable. (British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius C III, f. 29v).

While juniper was available to the Anglo-Saxons, even in drinking form, distilling was not. In fact, distilled liquors were virtually unknown in medieval England.[12] Rather than spirits, the early medieval English drank beer and mead.

According to John Burnett, โ€œBeer was probably the first drink deliberately made by man.โ€[13] In his book, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, Burnett explains that beer brewed from fermented barley has been recorded as far back as the third millennium B.C. in the Bronze Age civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and beer production became common across Europe during the Celtic Iron Age.[14] In its earliest use, the Old English beor, โ€œbeer,โ€ likely referred to any type of alcohol produced through fermentation, though it appears have been distinct from the less frequently used ealu, โ€œale.โ€[15] Beor may have referred to drinks brewed from malt, while ealu may have been a sweeter and stronger drink.[16] These terms may also have been used interchangeably until hops were introduced much later in the medieval period.[17]

The introduction of hops to the brewing process distinguished ale from beer; it also displaced women as the primary producers of the beverage. As A. Lynn Martin explains, โ€œIn England ale brewing was a domestic industry dominated by alewives. Their brew was usually sweet, sometimes flavored with herbs and spices, and spoiled if not consumed within several days. The addition of hops created a bitter drink that was stronger and lasted longer than ale.โ€[18]

Mead, however, was the predominant drink of the Anglo-Saxons and was made by fermenting a mixture of honey and water. The Old English word for โ€œmeadโ€ is the same for โ€œmeadowโ€: medu, effectively evoking the beverage’s connection to the flowers and bees essential for the production of honey and, in turn, mead. The plant now known as meadowsweet, or medu-wyrt in Old English, was also sometimes used to flavor the drink.[19]

Additionally, the Anglo-Saxon hall was commonly called the medu-hall, or โ€œmead hall,โ€ indicating not only a primary attribute of the hall but also the centrality of the drink to Anglo-Saxon culture. The hall was an integral part of early medieval English society and functioned as a space for social and political discourse, as well as communal gatherings and feasting celebrations. Indeed, the speaker of the Old English elegy known as The Seafarer describes his loneliness in relation to the absent sounds of the hall, which function as a synecdoche for the communal bonds he craves: โ€œA seagull singing instead of men laughing, / A mewโ€™s music instead of meadhall drinking.โ€[20]  

Dated to the 5th century, this glass Anglo-Saxon drinking vessel, known as the Castle Eden Claw Beaker, was found at Castle Eden in Durham, England. The object is currently on display at Ad Gefrin’s Wooler Museum, on loan from the British Museum, and returned to the North East after more than 30 years. Photo credit Sally Ann Norman, courtesy of Ad Gefrin.

Because honey was used for a variety of purposes, including the making of both mead and medicine, beekeeping was also an important part of Anglo-Saxon society. In fact, sugar was not produced in medieval England, so honey was the primary sweetener, which is why it appears so frequently in culinary and medical recipes alike. The Old English โ€œCharm for a Swarm of Bees,โ€ a metrical incantation, serves as evidence of honeyโ€™s necessity. Essentially, the charm is a magic spell meant to entice a swarm of bees to a keeper and encourage them to remain:  

Charm for a Swarm of Bees

For a swarm of bees, take earth and throw it down with your right
hand under your right foot, saying:

I catch it under footโ€”under foot I find it.
Look! Earth has power over all creatures,
Over grudges, over malice, over evil rites,
Over even the mighty, slanderous tongue of man.

Afterwards as they swarm, throw earth over them, saying:

Settle down, little victory-women, down on earthโ€”
Stay home, never fly wild to the woods.
Be wise and mindful of my benefit,
As every man remembers his hearth and home,
His life and land, his meat and drink.[21]

Eventually, mead went by the wayside, and wine became the more popular drink near the end of the Anglo-Saxon period โ€“ at least among the wealthy. As Burnett points out, while the consumption of wine was relatively high throughout the Middle Ages, โ€œit never rivalled beer as the drink of the masses.โ€[22] 

By the 16th century, distilled drinks were โ€œbeginning to be served together with sweetmeats at the end of banquets as pleasurable, stimulating aids to digestion.โ€[23] Distillation describes the process of heating a liquid into a vapor, which is then condensed into a pure essence, and the procedure may have been known to the Chinese as early as 1,000 B.C.[24] Burnett explains that the โ€œthe requisite knowledge was brought to the West either by the Cathars or by returning Crusaders, who had seen distillation practised by Arab alchemists. A coded recipe for โ€˜aqua ardensโ€™ appeared in a French monastic tract about 1190 alongside one for artificial gold, and through the medieval world spirits were regarded as mysterious, even magical, substances, used only medicinally for their stimulating, reviving qualities.โ€[25]

He continues: โ€œEnglish records of โ€˜aqua vitaeโ€™ distilled from wine appear in the fourteenth century, when it was made by monks and apothecaries, and became more widely known during the Black Death (1348-9) as a warming prophylactic. Spirits were also redistilled with herbs and flowers from the physic gardens of monasteries to make a variety of liqueurs with therapeutic properties, while in private households spirit-based โ€˜cordialsโ€™ were recommended for the treatment of palsey, the plague, smallpox, apoplexy, ague and other diseases.โ€[26]

Gin, from the Dutch genever, or โ€œjuniper,โ€ because it was distilled with the plantโ€™s berries, started being imported into England from the Netherlands during the late 16th century. The original product was โ€œa highly flavoured, aromatic drinkโ€ that is still produced in the Netherlands and typically enjoyed neat.[27] By the mid-18th century, however, England had begun producing its own version in London, which was โ€œless coarse and more subtly flavoured.โ€[28] By this time, spirits were being consumed largely for pleasurable, rather than medicinal, purposes.

While gin and distillation were not known to the Anglo-Saxons, juniper certainly was, and in this way, the spirit’s botanical roots are intertwined with medieval English history.

Emily McLemore, Ph.D.
Alumni Contributor, Department of English
Lecturer, Bishop Grosseteste University (U.K.)

[1] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin. Special thanks to Chris Ferguson and Claire Byers from Ad Gefrin for supplying additional information and wonderful photos.

[2] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin.

[3] Ad Gefrin, https://adgefrin.co.uk/spirits/gin.

[4] “juniper,” Oxford English Dictionary.

[5] Craft Gin Club, “The Gin Herbarium: A Guide to Herbal Gin Botanicals!,” https://www.craftginclub.co.uk/ginnedmagazine/guide-gin-herb-botanicals.

[6] “cwic-beam,” Bosworth Tollerโ€™s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary.

[7] Anne Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies: The Old English Herbarium and Early Medieval Medicine, Routledge (2023), p. 113.

[8] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[9] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[10] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[11] Van Arsdall, Medieval Herbal Remedies, p. 165.

[12] William Edward Mead, The English Medieval Feast, Routledge (2019), p. 123.

[13] John Burnett, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain, Routledge (1999), p. 112.

[14] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 112.

[15] โ€œbeer,โ€ Oxford English Dictionary.

[16] โ€œale,โ€ Oxford English Dictionary.

[17] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 112.

[18] A. Lynn Martin, Alcohol, Sex, and Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Palgrave (2001), p. 7.

[19] Emma Kay, Fodder and Drincan: Anglo-Saxon Culinary History, Marion Boyars Publishers, Ltd. (2023), p. 153.

[20] Craig Williamson (translator), The Complete Old English Poems, University of Pennsylvania Press (2017), p. 468.

[21] Williamson (translator), The Complete Old English Poems, p. 1081.

[22] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 142.

[23] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[24] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[25] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[26] Burnett, Liquid Pleasures, p. 160.

[27] โ€œgin,โ€ Oxford English Dictionary.

[28] โ€œgin,โ€ Oxford English Dictionary.

Posted on

Why Fortify?ย  A Short Introduction to Four Byzantine Fortifications in the Maeander Valley

I chose these four fortresses as representations of the observable differences between Byzantine fortified sites.  Not all fortifications were made equal.  Differences lie not only in the choice of how walls and towers are constructed, but also in the placement of these fortified sites in the landscape.  Careful analysis of these features can reveal the underlying assumptions and motivations of the builders.  I have chosen among these four fortifications a military base, a refuge, a center for agricultural exploitation, and a fortified residence within the Maeander River valley.

The Locations of the Fortresses, made by author in QGIS.

Kadฤฑkalesi[1]

Kadฤฑkalesi is a great example of a military fortress likely built and used by the Byzantine armed forces.  The entrances, not just the main one but the two postern entrances too, had a bent gate, which denies an attacker a good view inside the fortress (see Figure 2).  The towers project from the walls and include a larger circular tower which is more resilient to projectiles than a square tower.  Throughout the entire circuit of walls, platforms known as battlements were built for soldiers to be able to view the landscape.  The walls were caped with crenulations, which provided coverage for those soldiers from fire from below (see Figure 3).  This fortress was found on a small hill above a road, about 50 meters above sea level.  On the one hand, this elevation gave the soldiers good visibility of the surrounding countryside, but, on the other, it was low enough that the soldiers could quickly do something about a threat (see Figure 2). 

The Bent Gate of Kadฤฑkalesi, photo by author.
The Battlements of Kadฤฑkalesi, photo by author.

Fฤฑndฤฑklฤฑ Kalesi[2]

Fฤฑndฤฑklฤฑ Kalesi was a large fortress on the top of a mountain, enclosing an area of seven hectares at an elevation higher than 600 meters above sea level.ย  Like Kadฤฑkalesi, the walls were built with military concerns in mind; a series of towers and periodic battlements defend the portions of wall spanning the gaps between rocks, while a double gate fortifies the most vulnerable part of the fortress in the southeast.ย  The size of the fortress was partly determined by geology; the walls follow the edges of a massive rock outcropping.ย  Unlike Kadฤฑkalesi, however, the fortress was isolated from the Byzantine roads that cross the mountain and unable to serve in the policing of routes.ย  I agree with scholars who see Fฤฑndฤฑklฤฑ Kalesi as a refuge for times of invasion with only a small permanent peacetime population.[3] ย This was a fortress, not of lords or soldiers, but of farmers and shepherds, who needed its great size to house flocks of sheep and its isolated location to keep just far enough away from any potential raiders that this โ€˜bluff in stoneโ€™ may appear like a formidable military fortress.ย 

View North from Inside Fฤฑndฤฑklฤฑ Kalesi, photo by author.

Mersinet ฤฐskelesi[4]

The impressive fortress found on the southern coast of Lake Bafa appears to be a military fort like Kadฤฑkalesi.  The use of blind arches to support the battlements even shows an improvement over the thick walls of Kadฤฑkalesi.  However, I argue that military effectiveness was not the main concern of this fortress.  The defining element of the fortress is a great tower bisected by the enceinte wall.  However, there is no communication between the walls and the tower; anyone stationed in the tower could not advance into the battlements in response to a threat.  Second, the tower does not protrude from the wall, which decreased its visibility and potential range of fire.  While Mersinet ฤฐskelesiโ€™s position does provide a good view of the eastern half of Lake Bafa, nearby hills could provide a better view.  Instead, this fortress has more in common with the isolated towers found around Lake Bafa and in the wider Maeander Valley.  Mersinet ฤฐskelesi is an isolated tower with an increased budget.  I suspect that this fortress and the other towers have something to do with the exploitation of agricultural estates as these towers lie at the edge of the most plentiful area of farmable land adjacent to Lake Bafa, even if this fortress is usually interpreted as a fortified monastery[5] or military base.[6] 

View of Tower of Mersinet ฤฐskelesi from Lake Bafa, photo by author.
Central Tower of Mersinet ฤฐskelesi from inside the Fortress, photo by author.

The Monastery of Stylos[7]

The final fortress is the monastery of Stylos.  Its walls aided the defense of a community which resided in isolated places like a type of fortified residence.  However, this monastery was never intended to operate like a military fortress.  For instance, the battlements were limited to walls located at known entrances on the north and south side.  They were only interested in watching visitors who intended to use a proper gate and not in observing the wider region.  Nor was it a refuge.  While the monastery was deep in its mountain like Fฤฑndฤฑklฤฑ Kalesi, Stylos is near a branch of an ancient road network, which gives the monastery a greater ability to interact with others on and off the mountain.  Finally, the division of interior fortification betrays a uniquely monastic concern: the proper veneration of the founder of the monastery.  The inner bastion of the monastery contains the hermitage of Saint Paul the Younger cut in a tower of rock and decorated with a painted program of religious images (see Figures 6 and 7).  I suspect the fortification of the hermitage likely served to encourage the veneration of their founder and to connect that founder with the builder of the walls, likely Christodoulos of Latros who would go on to found the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian on Patmos.  Whatever the purpose of the inner gate was, it is hard to imagine it served the defense of the monastery. 

The Inner Gate of Stylos Leading to the Hermitage, photo by author.
View of the Hermitage of Saint Paul the Younger, photo by author.

Tyler Wolford, PhD
Byzantine Studies Postdoctoral Fellowship
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

[1] Wolfgang Mรผller-Wiener, โ€œMittelalterliche Befestigungen im sรผdlichen Jonien,โ€ IstMitt 11 (1961): 19-23.

[2] Hans Lohmann et al., Survey in der Mykale 1, Bonn: Rudolf Habelt, 2014-2017, II.510-513 (MYK 65).

[3] Jesko Fildhuth, Das byzantinische Priene, Berlin: DAI, 2017, 96-98; for an opposing view see Lohmann et al., Survey in der Mykale, I.284-290.

[4] Mรผller-Wiener, โ€œMittelalterliche Befestigungen,โ€ 17-19.

[5] Urs Peschlow, โ€œLatmos,โ€ Reallexikon zur byzantinischen Kunst 5 (1995): 695-696.  

[6] Mรผller-Wiener, โ€œMittelalterliche Befestigungen,โ€ 18-19.

[7] Theodor Wiegand, Der Latmos, Milet III.1, Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1913, 61-72.

Posted on

Reading Medieval Fables as Trans Narratives: The Ass and the Lion Skin Revisited

In an earlier blog post, I wrote about four fables where animals โ€œdress upโ€ as another species, and looked at these in terms of socioeconomic classโ€”this is what medieval authors like Marie de France, Robert Henryson, and Alexander Neckam were clearly aiming to comment on, and these fables can be seen, I argued, in the context of medieval sumptuary laws and anxiety about social mobility.

From an illustration by John Tenniel, โ€œThe ass in the lionโ€™s skin,โ€ 1848. New York Public Library.

Iโ€™d now like to revisit the same fables, considering them this time through a different lens: trans experience. This way of interpreting these fables has been on my mind the whole time. In discussing the fables with other people, I have found that they readily come up with trans readings of them (i.e., they suggest to me that the stories about one species wearing the skin or feathers of another can be seen as metaphors for being transgender, and that a trans reading of them could be interesting). As someone who hasnโ€™t really worked in trans studies before, I have felt underequipped, in terms of offering a theoretically-informed take that meaningfully incorporates other scholarship in this area (there is a lot of exciting new work being done in trans medieval studies; see โ€œFurther Reading,โ€ below, for a very non-comprehensive selection).

Despite this hesitation on my part, a trans reading of these fables feels far more salient to me right now than a socioeconomic one, and I think there are more urgent ethical stakes; medieval sumptuary laws are obsolete (and were, at the time, apparently rather ineffectual), whereas trans people are currently a hypervisible minority whose rights are under attack.

The thing is, when you look at these fables as trans narratives, they send a bleak message. These fables essentially suggest, as many other fables do as well, that we can never escape certain fundamental, supposedly โ€œnaturalโ€ categories, and that trying is dangerous and inadvisable. Iโ€™d like to look more closely at a couple of versions of a single fable, The Ass and the Lion Skin (Perry Index 188/358), to illustrate how this message is set up, as well as the parallels one could see between what befalls these fictional animal characters and the experiences of trans humans.

The first version I discuss is a Latin prose fable from the thirteenth century, by Odo of Cheriton:

Asini uiderunt quod homines male et dure tractauerunt eos, stimulando, (h)onera imponendo. Viderunt etiam quod timuerunt Leones. Condixerunt ad inuicem quod acciperent pelles leoninas, et sic homines timerent illos. Fecerunt sic. Asini igitur, induti pellibus leoninis, saltabant, discurrebant. Homines fugerunt credentes esse Leones. Tandem Asini inceperunt recanare. Homines diligenter auscultauerunt et dixerunt: Vox ista uox Asinorum est; accedamus proprius. Accesserunt tandem; viderunt caudas illorum et pedes et dixerunt: Certe isti sunt Asini, non Leones, et ceperunt Asinos et multum bene uerberauerunt.1

The donkeys saw that humans treated them badly and harshly, striking them and putting burdens on them. They also saw that they [i.e., the humans] were afraid of lions. They decided amongst themselves to put on lion skins, and that way humans would be afraid of them. They did this. And so the donkeys, wearing lion skins, leapt and ran about. Humans fled, thinking that they were lions. Eventually the donkeys started braying. The humans listened carefully and said: โ€œThat sound is the sound of donkeys; letโ€™s get closer.โ€ After a while they got up close; they saw their tails and feet and said, โ€œClearly these are donkeys, not lions,โ€ and they seized the donkeys and beat them very thoroughly.

Odoโ€™s moral then proceeds to analogize the wayward donkeys to โ€œfalse menโ€ (homines falsi), particularly those in the Benedictine order; his fables often criticized the clergy.

Odoโ€™s version of this fable differs from others in some respects, e.g., the earliest version, which is also in Latin (Avianus, ca. 400 CE),2 or the late Middle English version in Caxtonโ€™s Aesop.3 While in the latter two versions, a single donkey comes across a lion skin by chance, in Odoโ€™s telling, the act of donning lion skins is a collective decision by multiple donkeys, a calculated response to their ill treatment by humans. These donkeys arenโ€™t just taking on the appearance of a different species, they are taking on the appearance of a much higher-status species, in an attempt to protect themselves (lions often stand in for tyrants, rulers, kings, etc. in fables, whereas fable donkeys are typically quite abject). If we are reading species as analogous to gender, here, there are, of course, differences of power and privilege when it comes to gender, too. The fact that women and men are not simply treated differently, but unequally, has induced some feminists to assert that transmasculine identities arise as a response to the social pressures of misogyny (i.e., that transmasc people are trying to โ€œescapeโ€ womanhood because being a woman in a patriarchal culture is painful). One troubling implication of this line of thought is that a lot of trans people simply wouldnโ€™t exist as such, in an โ€œidealโ€ society without gender inequality.

In The Ass and the Lion Skin, the wearing of a new skin is not just a matter of appearance; the animal in the lion skin looks different, and they behave differently as well, chasing others as though they were a feline predator instead of an equid beast of burden. Initially, those other characters react to the donkey(s) as if they were indeed a lion, until something gives the donkey away. If we choose to read Odoโ€™s fable through a trans lens (though his aim seems to have been to denounce clerical misbehavior), the fact that it is the donkeysโ€™ brays that give them away might sound familiar to anyone who has dysphoria about their voice not matching their gender identity, and anyone who has been misgendered after starting to speak.

The humans in this fable scrutinize, too, specific physical characteristicsโ€”the tail and feetโ€”and on those grounds determine what the donkeys โ€œreallyโ€ are, and react with violence. I canโ€™t help but think of โ€œtransvestigatorsโ€ who pore over photos of trans people (or cis people that they think might be trans), insisting that a particular feature reveals that the photoโ€™s subject is quintessentially male or female, at odds with their presentation and identity. I also canโ€™t help but think that being โ€œclockedโ€ as trans can indeed be the prelude to experiencing hostility, from hate speech to physical violence.

Not only do the donkeys undergo physical violence, this violence is intended to restore the status quo. It is coupled with a kind of ontological violenceโ€”the (re)definition of the target in the dominant partyโ€™s terms. โ€œClearly, these are donkeys, not lions,โ€ the men say before beating them. Even more strikingly, in Avianusโ€™s version, the donkeyโ€™s master concludes by saying, โ€œMaybe you can trick strangers with your imitation roar; to me, you will always be a donkey, as you were beforeโ€ (forsitan ignotos imitato murmure fallas; at mihi, qui quondam, semper asellus eris, lines 17โ€“18). In a trans context, this makes me think of a stubborn family member who insists that they simply canโ€™t perceive or treat their relative as their actual gender identity, because theyโ€™ve spent so many years thinking of them as the gender assigned to them at birth.

So, when I look at these โ€œtrans-speciesโ€ fables in terms of transgender experience, my takeaway is depressing. The texts promote a status quo in which no one really can, or should try to, appear or behave outside of the categories โ€œnatureโ€ has assigned. They gloss the act of wearing a โ€œnew skinโ€ as a form of untenable inauthenticity, and portray the โ€œtrans-speciesโ€ characters as being inevitably put back in their place with violence. These are the lessons we are seemingly meant to learn.

I want to do some kind of reparative reading of these fables, and to find something liberatory or subversive, but I struggle to, because the texts themselves do work in the opposite directionโ€”and transphobes have recognized that. Another famous fable of an animal wearing a different skinโ€”the fable of The Wolf that Dressed in a Sheepskin (Perry Index 451), in which a wolf mimics a sheep in order to better prey on the flockโ€”has been used in recent years by anti-trans authors and cartoonists (who I wonโ€™t platform with linksโ€”this should be easy to find if you wish). This kind of rhetoric often fixates on transfemininity, in particular, portraying trans women as deceptive and even dangerous. For instance, the trope of predatory men-dressed-as-women attempting to infiltrate womenโ€™s bathrooms has been used as an argument for anti-trans โ€œbathroom bans,โ€ which have been passed in 19 US states over the last four years, part of a larger wave of anti-transgender legislation. The โ€œbathroom banโ€ laws purport to address what is in fact a thoroughly imaginary problem, making bathrooms less safe for anyone who is trans and/or gender non-conforming.

Woodcut of The Ass and the Lion Skin, from a 1479 incunabulum of Heinrich Steinhรถwelโ€™s Fables of Aesop.

What do we do with didactic literature, stories that aim to teach lessonsโ€”in this case, medieval fables with moralsโ€”if the lessons are not ones we want to endorse or to heed, and if the stories themselves are being weaponized against a vulnerable minority? I donโ€™t know. I think one step is to acknowledge that these texts are โ€œnaturalizingโ€ social categories by mapping them onto different animal species, in order to suggest that social differences (such as class and gender) are starkly distinct and immutable, impossible to changeโ€”as impossible as it would be for a donkey to become a lion, or a wolf to become a sheep. However, as I argued in the previous post, if these social categories actually were โ€œnatural,โ€ โ€œbiologically innate,โ€ and unalterable, there would be no impetus to tell stories, over and over again, warning people not to act โ€œunnaturally.โ€

Nonetheless, if we want liberatory or subversive trans fables, we might have to write them, or rewrite them, rather than looking to the medieval versions of these particular texts.

Linnet Heald
PhD in Medieval Studies
University of Notre Dame

Further Reading:

  1. Latin text from Lรฉopold Hervieux, Les Fabulistes latins depuis le siรจcle dโ€™Auguste jusquโ€™ร  la fin du moyen รขge, vol. 4, Eudes de Cheriton et ses dรฉrivรฉs (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1896), pp. 198โ€“99. All translations in this post are mine. โ†ฉ๏ธŽ
  2. Duff, Arnold Mackay, and John Wight Duff, eds. Minor Latin Poets, Volume 2. Loeb Classical Library, vol. 434. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 690. โ†ฉ๏ธŽ
  3. Lenaghan, R. T., ed. Caxtonโ€™s Aesop: Edited with an Introduction and Notes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967, p. 179. โ†ฉ๏ธŽ
Tags: animals, Avianus, fables, medieval literature, Odo of Cheriton, transgender , , , , ,