Publicaties

This book analyzes the theme of disguise in fifteen Byzantine Saints’ Lives. The corpus includes Lives of so-called ‘cross-dressing’ saints (female saints who live as men), of ‘holy fools’ (saints who pretend madness to hide their holiness) and of ‘beggar-saints’ (saints who live in (the proximity of) their parental house as beggars without making themselves known to their parents). This is innovative because these holy types are not typically ...

This chapter critically examines two long-held beliefs with regards to Thecla, the first Christian heroine to take on male dress: 1) that she is the forerunner of Byzantine transvestite saints and 2) that her tale is a reference point for their narratives (fourth to seventh centuries). Arguably, these claims are usually based on hasty assumptions or insufficient evidence built on one particular transvestite saint’s Life, the Life and Martyrdom ...

Byzantine hagiography has produced a number of stories about female saints who spend their lives disguised as men. Scholars have interpreted these figures (also known as ‘cross-dressing saints’) in various and diverging ways. According to some, they express a transgression of patriarchal gender norms, while to others, the stories reaffirm such norms. This article argues that the different views are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It ...