The Making of a Trans Monk: Caesarius of Heisterbach and Joseph of Schönau

Five versions exist of the life of the Cistercian monk Joseph of Schönau, who upon his death in 1188 was discovered to have a body understood as female. This article explores the version written by Caesarius of Heisterbach in his Dialogus miraculorum, examining Caesarius’s construction of Joseph’s spiritual and gender identity and the linkages between the two. It asks how someone labelled by Caesarius as a ‘girl’ could also be a monk and a model for male novices to follow, and shows that the depiction of Joseph as a trans monk – if not precisely a trans man – becomes legible once Caesarius’s exemplum is situated within both the broader context of his work and Cistercian constructions of gender and religious life. This article is part of a special issue on Marginality and the Medieval Church that examines how categories of marginalisation were constructed, negotiated and resisted within the medieval church.