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In late antiquity, several hagiographies of assigned female saints who presented themselves as men were popular among Christian audiences. Within these hagiographies, the subjects changed their gender presentation and lived as men, often in monasteries intended for those assigned male. However, current historiography explains away these acts of gender variance from the historical record. Scholars often view these saints’ presentation as a means to negotiate patriarchy, such as to attain authority reserved for men (Lubinsky; Davis; Bennaser). Scholars seem to feel that a change to masculine presentation needs a pragmatic reason and understand the attainment of authority within this mindset. This seems to indicate a compulsion to explain away gender variance in order to view these figures as cisgender women and continue an understanding of holy figures within modern socialized gender norms. However, this compulsion imposes anachronistic notions of gender onto late antiquity by ignoring their context in favor of the gender binary of western modernity. In the late antique Mediterranean, gender was constructed along a spectrum of embodied behavior. This presentation will demonstrate that authority can be understood as one means of gender embodiment. Rather than view masculine presentation as a way to gain authority, I argue that authority can be understood as yet another form of masculine embodiment by these saints. Simultaneously, this presentation will disrupt anachronistic cisnormative views imposed upon late antiquity through the use of transgender studies.

I will primarily use the example of Matrona of Perge (5th century); Matrona entered a monastery in Constantinople as a eunuch named Babylas. Although the abbot, Bassianos, eventually discovered her assigned sex and arranged for her to leave the monastery, Matrona returned and received Bassianos’ blessing to open her own monastery for those assigned female. In the earliest version of Matrona’s hagiography, Matrona and the other members of her monastery wore traditionally male habits. Bassianos also made Matrona an episkopos and gave her the power to lay on hands. This level of authority held by someone assigned female has yet to be fully examined and will be analyzed in this presentation. Scholars (Lubinsky; Davis; Bennaser) have argued that Matrona’s continued masculine presentation was symbolic of or a way to have attained her authority. This presentation will examine how authority and power were constructed as masculine in late antiquity in order to argue that Matrona’s masculine presentation and position of authority may have both been aspects of her gender embodiment. I will demonstrate how we can understand both her presentation and position as masculine embodiment possibly indicative of an identity that might be considered transgender today. Although Matrona’s identity may be out of reach, through the use of transgender historical methodologies, this paper will use her behaviors to preserve gender variance from historical erasure. Therefore, this project is an intervention in epistemic violence that has implications for gender non-conforming people today.