Medieval Lesbians

How do you begin to look for examples of lesbians in the medieval period? Even though it was deeply frowned upon by the powers that be, the clues are very much there... if you know where to look. What examples do we have? How did the male-run church respond to fears that nuns were getting too close for their liking? And how did a 13th century court react when a dildo was presented in a case against a woman accused of sodomy? Joining Kate today is medieval historian Tess Wingard to help us find out more. You can find out more about Tess's work here: https://tesswingard.wordpress.com/ This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. All music from Epidemic Sounds/All3 Media. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards! UK & Ireland listeners please place your vote on the Spotify mobile app here: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kate Lister?

  Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? Well, sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles. Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.

• 0:37Speaker 01

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeists. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.

• 1:14Kate Lister?

  Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, and you are you. And I'm so glad that you are here. But before we can continue together, I have to tell you, this is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things in an adulty way, covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too, which basically means if you are of a sensitive disposition, [BLEEP] off. Just [BLEEP] off. We don't want you round here. Sorry. It had to be said. Right, on with the show.

• 1:46Kate Lister?

  If you're looking for indisputable evidence of lesbian culture and lesbian lives and, well, almost any kind of queer history before like 1970, you are gonna be in for a tough time. But that's not to say that the clues aren't there if you know where to look.

• 2:07Kate Lister?

  Here, in the modest, unassuming medieval church in the south of England, is a brass memorial etching, laid into the stone beneath our feet. These weren't uncommon, but they were usually done for married couples. And what's notable about this one is that it features two women, Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge. They're not wearing headscarves either, which typically meant that they were unmarried. And rather than looking out at the viewer, they're gazing into each other's eyes. Could this be a glimpse into medieval lesbian life? And if it is, well, what other examples do we have? Well, in this episode, we are going to find out.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  What do you look for, madam?

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Oh, money, of course.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  I make perfect compliments of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.

• 3:13Speaker 02

  Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

• 3:16Speaker 04

  Goodness, my beautiful dame, goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry.

• 3:24Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheet, the history of sex scandal in society, with me, Kate Lister. As we well know, we well know, lesbians and same-sex attractive people have existed since day dot. Whether the historical records actually capture that or not. Due to the nature of, well, oppression, homophobia, sexism, misogyny, I mean, what a list. But all of that means finding examples in history, not just of same-sex relationships, but relationships between women, is really, really difficult to do. But I love a challenge, and so do many other historians, thankfully. Joining me today is one of those amazing historians, Tess Wingard,

• 4:08Kate Lister?

  who is here to tell us about medieval lesbian culture. If this kind of history piques your interest, and why wouldn't it, why not click back to our episode on Tudor lesbians after you've listened to this one? Well, without further ado, let's crack on.

• 4:28Kate Lister?

  Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Tess Wingard. How are you doing?

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Doing good. It's great to be here.

• 4:37Kate Lister?

  We're here to talk about, well, many things, but your work. You are the author of, let me get the title right, Unclean Beasts: Sex, Animality, and the Invention of Heteronormativity 1200 to 1550. Tess, what made you want to write this book?

• 4:53Speaker 05

  So it emerged out of my PhD thesis. So I did my first major research project, looking at how ideas around sexuality and categories of sex and gender really kind of changed and developed in the 13th century. And I was particularly interested in the role that new ideas around animals, animal-human difference, and the natural world, which also emerged in the same period in the 13th century, how that played a role in shaping these new ideas around sex.

• 5:31Kate Lister?

  What was happening around 1300 to make all these changes that you identified? That's a huge question. I'm sorry. What are the main influences that you looked at in your work?

• 5:41Speaker 05

  So there's two really, really big key historical changes that's taking place around the year 1200 through to 1300. So on the sex side of things, you have the Fourth Lateran Council, which is this big meeting of the Catholic Church where they decided a lot of stuff. But one of the key things that they were really interested in is making it mandatory for all Christians to receive confession at least once a year.

• 6:12Kate Lister?

  Right.

• 6:12Speaker 05

  So before then, it was the kind of thing where you might only really get confession perhaps once in your lifetime. If you were not very devout, you'd get it before you die. But otherwise, it's not really a regular part of people's lives. And so after Lateran IV, they make it so in theory, everyone has to do it at least once a year. And so with that, you have... Kind of a growing interest in classifying different kinds of sinful behaviour, so different kinds of sexual acts, and in educating laypeople more about that and how to kind of identify when they are doing something immoral.

• 6:55Kate Lister?

  Ooh, is that where the penitentials come from? They're my favourite, the medieval indexes of sin that the early church would use to look up certain sins to see what the punishment is, and they are mad, they are absolutely bonkers.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  The penitentials are a little bit earlier. We see them more from, I think really the sort of sixth century through to the 10th and 11th, but they are great fun with how, like you say, how weirdly specific they get. They kind of break down different kinds of sexual acts, like, oh, if you masturbate, that's X number of years of penance you have to do. If you have sex with someone who's unmarried, that's so many years of penance. And if you have sex with an animal, that's even more. But by the 13th century, there's a bit of a change in attitudes really, and you have

• 7:48Speaker 05

  a lot of writers, people like Thomas of Chobham, later John de Burgh, who, they say, you know, these penitentials, these list of punishments, they're good in theory, but they're too strict to actually really make anyone follow. So we need to have a more kind of common sense approach to what penitence is supposed to do to make up for or to really express penance and regret for the acts they've done.

• 8:19Kate Lister?

  We are here to talk very specifically about lesbians in the medieval period. Now, this is a fascinating subject because we know that they were there. They were definitely there, they were definitely there, but finding evidence of this history is notoriously difficult. It's much harder than finding a history of gay men. How have you gone about researching something like this? What sources are you using?

• 8:48Speaker 05

  A big part of what's informing my approach there is this idea that a historian of medieval lesbians, Judith Bennett, came up with. So she puts forward this idea of the lesbian like, which is where she basically says, it's very hard if you're looking only for evidence of sexual acts and specifically genital acts as the smoking gun for lesbians in the historical record, you aren't really going to find very much. So when she was writing in the 1990s, historians generally thought there was maybe around a dozen or so legal cases of lesbianism that met that very, very narrow criteria

• 9:32Speaker 05

  that they could find before 1600, let's say. And what Judith Bennett was saying was we need to think more broadly about what kinds of medieval lives and what kinds of evidence might demonstrate the kind of presence of lesbians in the historical record. So broadening out what we think of as sexual acts and erotic acts. So not just looking for genital contact, strap-ons, that kind of thing, but thinking more about other kinds of maybe physical intimacy, emotional intimacy between women, that kind of thing.

• 10:06Kate Lister?

  That's fascinating. What kind of evidence would you, I mean, you on, it's dangerous, Grahan, and historians are notorious for going, yes, but they might have just been good friends. That's like an ongoing internet joke now that we do that. So what would you be looking for as this kind of broadening of evidence where you're like, okay, it's not a strap-on, but it is evidence of intimacy. What kind of things would you be looking for?

• 10:30Speaker 05

  So the kinds of things I'd really be focusing on would be. Written or recorded expressions of intimacy and closeness that go beyond the norms of platonic friendship in a given period.

• 10:46Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Speaker 05

  Or that in some way seem to mirror or emulate the kinds of expressions of intimacy that you see between identifiably straight couples in this period. So one of the really classic examples for this is the case of Elizabeth Etchingham and Agnes Oxenbridge.

• 11:06Kate Lister?

  Okay, hit me.

• 11:07Speaker 05

  There are these two women in mid 15th century England, specifically in the, in the kind of area of Sussex, and they have a memorial brass plaque to them in the Etchingham Parish Church. And you can still see it today, and it's this really, really beautiful kind of design. And it shows the two women, Elizabeth and Agnes, not quite facing directly to each other, but kind of tilted towards each other. And it comes with a little memorial inscription underneath that commends the souls of both women to God. And we don't really know a lot about these two women beyond this memorial plaque.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  We do know that neither of them ever married. We have no other records of them appearing anywhere else as kind of anyone's wives. What we do know about this plaque is that it's very, very striking. So the way that these two women are depicted facing each other, we can also tell from the design of these two women on the plaque that they are shown with long uncovered hair.

• 12:17Kate Lister?

  I'm looking at it right now.

• 12:19Speaker 05

  So they're shown with long uncovered hair, which is a sign that they are both maidens. So they're both unmarried.

• 12:25Kate Lister?

  Ooh.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  And so this design, though, the way that they are both memorialized on this plaque together, and the specific way they're shown facing each other in that way, that is a design which is almost exclusively used for married, straight couples in this period. So the.

• 12:45Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 12:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, the only rare exceptions you see to that are sometimes you might see siblings portrayed like that, or sometimes a parent and child. But almost never do you see two unrelated people of the same gender portrayed like that.

• 13:04Kate Lister?

  That's fascinating.

• 13:06Speaker 05

  And it's also when the brass plaque was made in the 1480s, that style of design was also very, very kind of new and trendy. And it's again, one that a lot of art historians have looked at that and have said, this is showing a greater degree of emotional intimacy and warmth between a couple compared with the older styles of memorials for couples that tend to be more, maybe a bit kind of more rigid, emotionless. They usually portray the couple as they would be buried, so both facing the viewer. And it's a bit less emotionally warm, whereas this new style is much more intimate and close. So that's kind of interesting that they chose that one.

• 13:51Kate Lister?

  See, lesbians leading the way in interior design for the last thousand years. But that leads me on to my next question, which is a really important one when with anybody doing this kind of research, is how would the medieval people have viewed this? Because today, our understanding of sexuality is it's, it's an identity, is you come out, you say, I am gay, I am straight, I am, actually, no, people don't come out and say that they're straight, do they? That would be a weird one, but maybe they should. But what, what do we talk about in the medieval period? How did they understand sexuality?

• 14:27Speaker 05

  So medieval society, it doesn't have the same kinds of categories of sexual identity that we have today. So there's not really anything like, you know, a straight or a heterosexual identity, or a gay or lesbian identity.

• 14:45Speaker 05

  You do have this category of the sodomite.

• 14:49Kate Lister?

  Ah, yes.

• 14:50Speaker 05

  So it's a category that basically does what it says on the tin. It's anyone who engages in sodomy. The problem is, this is a very kind of fuzzy, broad category that different clerical authors will describe sodomy as being different kinds of things. But generally, a good rule of thumb is it's any kind of sexual act that can't potentially lead to reproduction and pregnancy. So that can be as broadly inclusive as maybe oral or anal sex between, you know, a man and a woman. Or sometimes some authors define it much more narrowly as just involving sex between two people of the same gender, so two men, two women.

• 15:33Speaker 05

  But the thing is, this category of the sodomite, it's different from our kind of modern categories because as far as we know, it's never really used as a self-identifier. So we don't have any record of anyone saying, you know, "I'm a sodomite, I associate with other sodomites." It's only ever really used as a way to classify someone else and more usually to kind of insult them or criminalise them.

• 16:02Kate Lister?

  Is there any records of anybody being prosecuted for other crimes of sodomy contained within that label? Has anyone ever been dragged to court for giving someone a blowjob or giving somebody oral sex or masturbating? Because all of those things could technically be sodomy. Or was this largely and pretty much exclusively used to target the queer community? Although they wouldn't have used those words.

• 16:26Speaker 05

  We do have some very kind of rare evidence of sodomy as a criminal offence being used to target what we might call straight people or people engaged in straight sex, but the kinds of things like oral or anal. We do have some records of that, but in practice, it's much more commonly used to target queer people. And overwhelmingly, it's usually more applied to men who have sex with other men. But we do have some records of it also being applied to women who have sex with other women.

• 17:03Kate Lister?

  Apparently oral sex is still on the statute books as being illegal in several American states. It's unenforceable because it's no longer the law, but that's because it was part of the sodomy law, that sodomy was illegal. So technically, technically, oral sex was as well. And that's quite freaking recent history, isn't it? Let's talk about lesbians. How were they understood in the medieval period? Because there's a wealth of research trying to understand how they would have conceptualised of somebody that we would now say is gay. They wouldn't have identified as a sodomite. I've read an argument that sexuality was something, it wasn't who you were, it was something you did. How do you apply this to women, who were notoriously difficult to research, anyway?

• 17:48Speaker 05

  There were some interesting medical ideas in this period about what made some women be attracted towards other women.

• 17:59Kate Lister?

  Oh, is this the giant clitoris? Yeah, oh god.

• 18:02Speaker 05

  It's the giant clitoris.

• 18:05Kate Lister?

  Completely bonkers. Sorry, I do love this one. Go on, keep going.

• 18:10Speaker 05

  So, there's this idea in medieval science, which actually derived originally from kind of medieval Islamic writings on sex that got translated and transmitted to the Christian world, which, there's this idea that some women, just naturally through how their bodies are made, or how they develop, that they are thought to have kind of enlarged clitorises, which they use to penetrate other women. These women are called tribades, and that's where we have this kind of modern, slightly out old-fashioned term, but tribadism, that's used for lesbians.

• 18:55Kate Lister?

  I wonder about this. This is my theory on how they understood, or misunderstood lesbianism throughout much of history. And it goes back to this idea of this large clitoris. And it comes down to the fact that they couldn't conceive of sex without a penis. They couldn't understand- Like they just, even today, people struggle with that. You ask any lesbian at all and they will, they will have got at least once in their life have heard something along the lines of, but what do you do in bed? As if like they're just sat there waiting for the penis to show up. And that's certainly the truth throughout our history. And I have a feeling that this emphasis on, well, they must be growing this massive clitoris, which is actually a penis. Because then that kind of makes sense to them of like, but that's how they would have sex. So what do you think of that?

• 19:40Speaker 05

  So there is some awareness in some kind of medieval medical writers that the, the clitoris, and this can be kind of normal sized clitorises as well as the gigantic ones, that they are kind of the source of sexual pleasure in women. So we see this in the writings of people like Gilbert the Englishman or Peter Urbano, these two very kind of famous 13th century authors. And they kind of identify roughly that the clitoris is a body part that's full of nerves and those nerves can be stimulated to achieve orgasm.

• 20:22Kate Lister?

  Well done lad.

• 20:22Speaker 05

  So actually Peter Urbano writes that women can achieve orgasm through the stimulation of the clitoris alone. So that kind of idea that medieval people can't imagine sex without a penis can be true in many contexts, but there is definitely some awareness of ways of having and doing sex that don't necessarily involve a penis or penetration of any kind.

• 20:52Kate Lister?

  This is a big question. I'm not sure that anyone's ever been able to answer it and have everybody go, oh, that makes sense. Why is it, do you think, that gay men have historically been persecuted much more severely than women having sex with women? Not exclusively, and we're going to talk in a bit about some of the women who were prosecuted under Sodom and Lot. So they're certainly not exempt from it. But historically, gay men have drawn much more attention than gay women.

• 21:18Speaker 05

  There's been a lot of theories about it and I don't think anyone's ever really had a very definitive answer on it. But one argument that's very commonly been put forward.

• 21:31Speaker 05

  Is that the law tends to be more concerned about kinds of queer sex that involve penetration of some kind. So the handful of legal cases that we do have that involve women almost always involve the women fashioning some kind of dildo or some kind of strap that they use in order to penetrate other women. And so what we perhaps might be seeing a pattern of there is that women who don't engage in that may just simply not be considered transgressive enough or really doing something

• 22:15Speaker 05

  serious enough to merit prosecution. And it's only when they are known to be doing that kind of penetration, which is acting as a kind of gender subversion. So in that case, the women who are penetrating other women, they are, in a sense, becoming men or kind of fulfilling a male role. And so it's specifically that kind of gender transgression that's the real issue there, rather than necessarily inherently the fact that it's two women having sex.

• 22:44Kate Lister?

  And we're kind of back again to that idea that, well, that's what counts as sex. Like, the rest is just, like, kind of jolly japes, almost. I read, there was one case, like, they all seem to be called Catherine, but there was one in, I think it was Germany, and most of the transcript is taken up with people on the jury philosophizing about whether or not two women could even have sex. And they almost got off, but they didn't. But like, they almost, because they're just going, well, they can't be sodomites, they can't be, because they don't have penises, they just can't get their heads around it at all. It's a really, I don't know if I'm glad to hear, but it's good to hear that you found some space for, there is an understanding that sexual pleasure doesn't just involve a penis. That seems very progressive for them.

• 23:28Kate Lister?

  Let's talk about some of the cases, because I think that these are important, because unfortunately, all the records that are left to us are kind of skewed, because the way we find a lot of examples of women that we would Called lesbians or queer or anything is in court records. So what kind of cases have you found?

• 23:47Speaker 05

  I'm still kind of at the early stages of my current project, which is going to be surveying the kind of legal records of the English Church in the 14th century. So these are the courts where we would hope to find cases of sodomy involving women. But some of the kind of most interesting cases that we already have, that historians are kind of already aware of. One of my favourites is from Bologna, so in Italy. And it's from the very end of the 13th century in 1295. And it's before the civic courts. So it's the secular city courts rather than the church courts.

• 24:32Speaker 05

  And this is a woman called Bertalina, who is nicknamed Gersia. And usually in the court record, she's called by this nickname, Gersia. So she's basically brought before the court on several charges. So she's accused of the act of sodomy, but also of love magic. So trying to cast spells to make people fall in love with her. And fortune telling, which at this time is also a crime.

• 25:08Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Tess after the short break.

• 25:24Kate Lister?

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• 28:04Kate Lister?

  Lesbianism and fortune telling. Right, okay, that's two quite disparate crimes being brought together.

• 28:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, she's very much a prototypical astrology girlie. I love her so much.

• 28:18Speaker 05

  But her story is brilliant. The narrative that we get in court, once the witnesses start being interrogated about what she's actually done. So they say that this Gersia had fallen in love with a widow, and she had actually basically hired some singers to come and serenade this widow outside her home.

• 28:39Kate Lister?

  We've got to admire the chutzpah of that. Okay.

• 28:43Speaker 05

  Exactly. And the thing is, she's absolutely fearless. She's so great. Because she basically says to one of her neighbours, who ends up being a witness in the trial against her, she just straight up says, you know, "I fancy this woman. I would like to have sex with her."

• 29:00Kate Lister?

  Wow.

• 29:00Speaker 05

  And the witness says to her, you know, "You can't really do that. That's not okay." And Gersia just replies, doesn't care, and then shows the witness something that in the document is called a virilia. And it's not exactly certain what that means. It's not really a word that we have a lot of other examples of it being used in court records. But it's probably a dildo that she's using because it's included as one of these things that she's using to have sex with other women. So despite the fact that this is, you know, a crime, she's completely brazen about it. And I just love her for it.

• 29:41Kate Lister?

  Why do you think she wasn't worried about that? I mean, because this stuff, it's not like they were hauled up in front of the court and they went, "Right, don't do that again. Please desist." Some of these women were burnt to death. Why do you think that Bertie was so, "No, fuck it. I'm off to, I fancy you. I'm gonna sing your songs." That's so brave, to the point of bunkers.

• 30:03Speaker 05

  I think the key thing in her case is that it really seems like, even though...

• 30:10Speaker 05

  You know, sex between women is a crime on the books. It just seems to be something that in her community, people just don't really care about. They might disapprove of it. They might think there's something weird or wrong with her for doing it. But it's not really something that motivates them to take action. So it's very notable, actually, that at this trial, all the witnesses say that these events involving Gersia and the widow, all of this takes place months and months ago. And no one has really taken it to court until now, when this, this man in particular decides to get her prosecuted. And there's a suggestion, but we don't necessarily,

• 30:54Speaker 05

  we don't necessarily have the full evidence for it. But it seems likely that maybe this was a witness bringing a charge of sodomy against her as a kind of pretext for some other kind of fight or dispute that they're having.

• 31:08Kate Lister?

  Oh, I love the fact that they interviewed the neighbours and they were just going, yeah, it's just the lesbians being mad again. What do you want from us? It's just some, some horrible, horrible man. But I've noticed, but then I'm not as, this isn't my specialist area like it is with you. But it seems to me that prosecutions like this come in waves. It's, it's almost like, like the witchcraft trials is like they, in certain areas, they pop up and there's like, oh my God, we've got to prosecute people. And then they kind of die away. And when they're dying away, I'm often would it like, is there a kind of an uneasy understanding of what's happening in these communities? Like, is it just that the people knew and they just kind of tutted and rolled their eyes?

• 31:52Kate Lister?

  Or what happens to make it suddenly become an issue with the courts, do you think, in these places?

• 31:58Speaker 05

  It's very often connected with other kind of bigger social or political factors.

• 32:07Kate Lister?

  Yeah.

• 32:07Speaker 05

  So a lot of the times when you're seeing these sudden big spikes in prosecution for sodomy, it's taking place at times of other kind of bigger social change. So perhaps when some of the most well-known examples are a little bit later, sort of towards the end of the Middle Ages, but during the Reformation, at times when certain regions are starting to go through the process of reforming, converting to Protestantism, you see this kind of spike in prosecutions. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of theories around this that suggest that maybe it's kind of a way of channeling all this anxiety around moral decay and the

• 32:51Speaker 05

  state of society into targeting this kind of sexual behaviour that before people weren't so interested in.

• 32:58Kate Lister?

  What happened to Bertie? Was she okay?

• 33:01Speaker 05

  So the good news with Bertie is that the end of the court record says that officers of the court were summoned to try and find her, but she had already fled the city by the conclusion of the case. Yeah.

• 33:16Kate Lister?

  Oh.

• 33:16Speaker 05

  So as far as we know, she's, she had a happy end.

• 33:20Kate Lister?

  Oh, she might still be on the run. A lot of them didn't. My producer Stuart has just messaged me to go, hurrah. So yeah, hurrah for everybody. Hurrah for Bertie. Everyone listening going, yes. But a lot of them didn't get that ending where they, they ran away. Um, who, I'm gonna butcher this now and I'm so sorry. Katharina Herzeldorfer, that's spoken like a German native.

• 33:47Kate Lister?

  What was her case?

• 33:49Speaker 05

  So Katharina Herzeldorfer, she was

• 33:55Speaker 05

  someone who was, appeared before the court in Speyer, so that's a German town in the year 1477, so right at the end of the Middle Ages. And Herzeldorfer's case is kind of a, quite a difficult one to look at, or there's a lot of different layers to it, because the only name we have for Herzeldorfer is the one given in the record, Katharina Herzeldorfer. But there seems to be some suggestion in the court records that they might have been someone we might think of as transgender today.

• 34:34Kate Lister?

  I have wondered that looking at this stuff. No, I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'm gonna ask you next, how as a historian do you go about navigating that? But tell us her story, or their story first.

• 34:45Speaker 05

  Hetzel Dorfer's story is quite a complicated one. It's hard to kind of trace through because all we have are the witness statements and Hetzel Dorfer's own confession. And a lot of them seem to almost contradict each other. So as best as we can tell, Hetzel Dorfer is someone who has travelled to Speyer from elsewhere in Germany, along with a younger woman, who at times, Hetzel Dorfer, there's the suggestion that this is their sister, other times, there's a suggestion that maybe it's just another random woman that they're trying to pass off as a woman. And they come to Speyer and it seems like at least some of the time, they are dressing

• 35:29Speaker 05

  and presenting themselves as a man. So some of the witnesses say that, and I quote here, "she who stands in the dock", i.e. Hetzel Dorfer, and who is supposed to be a man. So this idea that they literally think that Hetzel Dorfer is a man and is trying to pass themselves off as one. Yeah.

• 35:56Kate Lister?

  I'll be back with Tess after the short break.

• 36:16Speaker 06

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• 36:46Speaker 01

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeist. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.

• 37:32Kate Lister?

  How do, because it's so complicated, this, and you are into, you're into a minefield with this stuff, aren't you? Because unfortunately, Katharina was not here to say, I identify this. And as you rightly point out, all we've got are biased records speaking about this person. And there have been many cases of women just dressing as men because life was a bit fucking easier to do that. How do you go about, when you're writing about somebody like Katharina, how do you go about writing about them?

• 38:04Speaker 05

  This is something where, actually, I think there's a lot of value in taking that original idea of the lesbian like and adapting it to thinking about the transgender like. So, again, the perfect or the best form of smoking gun for trying to explore a trans life in the medieval record would be to find some clear evidence where someone says. Yeah, diary or some kind of statement that, you know, I experience gender dysphoria or I want to be seen as this gender. And there is some evidence for that in some sources, but most of the time

• 38:46Speaker 05

  you have to look more indirectly for other signs or evidence that might point to someone, you know, living in ways that mirror the modern transgender experience. And so in Hetsal Dohfer's case, one of the most compelling bits of evidence that suggests that they are best understood perhaps as a trans person is returning back to the theme of dildos.

• 39:11Kate Lister?

  It's a dildo. In every case, it's there.

• 39:15Speaker 05

  It's here in this one, and actually it's part of Hetzendorfer's own confession. They admit that they have crafted this thing. But what's different about this one is that it's it's not just something that Hetzendorfer is using as a sex toy, basically, but it's fashioned out of red leather stuffed with cotton and with a kind of hole in the middle of it. And then they kind of tie it around themselves. And what's significant is that actually the other witnesses in the case say that Hetzendorfer uses this to, well, to pee through. So it's it's kind of like a medieval shiwi, essentially.

• 39:58Kate Lister?

  That's smart. That is a smart cookie because that would give you away, wouldn't it? Straight away if you if you couldn't pee standing up back then, that would do it.

• 40:06Speaker 05

  But that's that's the kind of really the possibly trans side of this is that Hetzendorfer is clearly wearing this thing on a day to day basis, not just when they're having sex, but it's actually, it's in some way perhaps kind of gender affirming or helping them to pass as male in the way that perhaps a trans man or other kind of trans masculine people today might have a paca or other kind of prosthetic penis.

• 40:34Kate Lister?

  Wow. Before we get to other cases, what happens to Hetzendorfer?

• 40:41Speaker 05

  So unfortunately, Hetzendorfer does not have as happy an end as Gersia. So they are convicted and they are executed by being drowned in a river, which is, it's a punishment that is very, very exclusively reserved usually for women in, particularly in medieval German courts. So it's really a kind of final kind of insult to injury that, you know, if we are to think of Hetzendorfer as trans, and certainly that's what I think they are, it's kind of a final indignity that they are killed in a very kind of.

• 41:23Speaker 05

  Female way as kind of a final like negation of their gender identity.

• 41:28Kate Lister?

  How did that case even end up at court? Because this stuff, in order to kind of catch people out, what we're talking about here is basically sex acts. And for the medieval mindset, they kind of were looking for smoking guns. So the evidence that they need is as blunt as you have a penis, you have a vagina, you were trying to put that penis into that, blah, blah, blah. It's like that. How did this case end up in court? How does any of it end up in court?

• 41:56Speaker 05

  So we unfortunately don't really know for Hetsal Dor for

• 42:00Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 42:00Speaker 05

  how it came to the attention of the courts. But generally, there's kind of different legal systems in Europe at this time, and there's different ways for cases to end up in the courts. So for the church courts, which is where a lot of sodomy cases end up, because sodomy is across all of Europe at this period. It's a, what we call an ecclesiastical crime. So it's something that can be tried by the church. So those cases will be brought to the attention of the courts if they're already kind of public knowledge in a community. So we have this concept of the, it's the Latin phrase publica fama.

• 42:44Speaker 05

  So public knowledge or kind of public reputation. So if, let's say, everyone in a town knows that one person or one woman is a lesbian and is having sex with other women. When the church courts come around, so they tend to come around in a kind of cycle. So every few months or every year or so, they'll come back to a region. The church court officials will say, you know, what's happening in this region? Who kind of has a bad reputation at the moment?

• 43:14Kate Lister?

  Show me the lesbians.

• 43:15Speaker 05

  Exactly. So at that point, the person's community might essentially dob them in and bring it to the attention of the courts. And then that starts the trial process.

• 43:27Kate Lister?

  Okay.

• 43:27Speaker 05

  But in other regions, so in a lot of Europe.

• 43:33Speaker 05

  We have kind of secular courts which also prosecute sodomy as a kind of secular crime. So this is particularly anywhere that adopted Roman law. England very famously never adopts Roman law. It has its own legal system. But in a lot of places like Germany and Italy, they do have the civil law. And the civil law, which is the law of the kind of late antique Roman Empire, so way back into the kind of fourth and fifth centuries, that specifically has a, you know, it registers sex between men or sex between women as a crime that's punishable by death. So in these places that have this kind of civil court

• 44:15Speaker 05

  system, you might sometimes have kind of special courts that specifically investigate moral offences or sexual offences. And there might be officers of this court kind of going out into communities, investigating these cases and bringing people to the attention of the courts. Maybe a kind of parallel might be the idea of how in, at least in the modern British criminal system, for instance, you can have, you know, the police, or I think it's the Crown Prosecution Service, will bring charges against a person if it's for an offence that not necessarily individually pressed charges against them for.

• 44:57Kate Lister?

  So as a final question then, although I could talk to you about this forever and ever, I'm always interested in what kind of lesbian subculture could have existed at this time? Because it seems that you can find remnant shadows, hints of a gay subculture. And I think that's, that's enabled by the fact that men are allowed into public spaces in a way that women are not. But do you think that there was a lesbian subculture at this time? What do you think?

• 45:29Speaker 05

  I don't think there was ever a very organised or self-conscious lesbian subculture in the way that we might see much later, really from the 19th century onwards. But I think where you do perhaps see some suggestion of places where medieval lesbians might congregate or might kind of find each other, it's in the convents and in the nunnery.

• 45:54Kate Lister?

  Of course it is.

• 45:58Speaker 05

  But it's an interesting one because we kind of have evidence from really both sides of the fence there. So even in the Middle Ages themselves, we have a lot of writers and a lot of groups who are very concerned about what they see as rampant, you know, rampant queerness in both for men monasteries and also for women in nunnery. So in the 1390s in England, you have this group of, some people call them heretics, some people would call them religious reformers, but the Lollards who want, you know, a lot of reforms of the church and its practices.

• 46:38Speaker 05

  But one of the things that they are particularly concerned about is basically in convents. They're worried that all these women who are taking vows of chastity and are swearing off sex with men, that this is leading them to basically engage in all kinds of, everything from masturbation to sex with other women. So you have this kind of anxiety on the one side that people outside the convents think there's loads of lesbian sex going on in there. But actually, if you also look at some of the records of nuns in these institutions, you do see some interesting suggestions of what might be evidence of maybe kind of lesbian intimacy or very close lesbian friendships.

• 47:23Kate Lister?

  Ooh, Hildegard Bingen, Hildegard. There was a sneaky hint that, she's one of my favourites. Hildegard might have been a bit close to some nuns here and there.

• 47:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, if you look at Hildegard's letters, she has this one particular nun who's a real favourite of hers, this is Richardis. And she writes all these letters to Richardis about how disappointed she is in her quote unquote friend when she moves abbys and moves far away from her. But one of my other really, really favourite examples, because it's just quite sweet, is we have the records of this one letter that was written in the 12th century, and it was written between two nuns. So it's one nun sending it to

• 48:15Speaker 05

  the other. And it's just hard to read it as anything other than very, very deep romantic love. Some people have said it's friendship. I'm not convinced. So this letter says, in the kind of modern translation, "To C", so just the initial C, "sweeter than honey or honeycomb, B", so again, the initial B, "sends all the love there is to her love. You who are unique and special, why do you make me delay so long so far away? You are the only woman I have chosen according to my heart."

• 48:51Kate Lister?

  Oh, come on. That's two seconds away from adopting a pug together. That's not just mates. Oh, that's lovely. Oh, I love that.

• 49:02Speaker 05

  It's so sweet. Actually, two friends of mine chose that letter for a reading at their wedding. So it's got resonance for lesbians today, just as much as in the 12th century.

• 49:14Kate Lister?

  Oh, that's amazing. Tess, you have been fascinating to speak to. You really have. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you?

• 49:23Speaker 05

  So I have a website. It's very straightforwardly, just Tess Wingard. I think it's tesswingard.wordpress.com. But if you Google my name, it's one of the first things that comes up. And that's got all my publications and everything, and tells you a little bit more about my work.

• 49:41Kate Lister?

  Thank you so much for coming to talk to me today. You've been marvellous.

• 49:45Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you. It's lovely to be here.

• 49:52Kate Lister?

  Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Tess for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along, wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject, or maybe you just fancied saying hi, then you can email us at [email protected]. Coming up, we've got episodes on the origins of sexting and dinosaur sex. Yes, you did hear that correctly. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, betwixt the sheets for History of Sex, Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Would you believe us if we told you there was a podcast that was haunted? Well, there is. It's called Two Girls, One Ghost. We didn't want to believe it at first, but we can no longer ignore it. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. We're talking ghosts caught on camera. Demonic possessions. Cursed mirrors. Bigfoot. Poltergeist. Exorcisms. Near-death experiences. Unsolved mysteries. Missing persons. Each week, we explore the deepest, darkest, spookiest places in the world. Tune in to Two Girls, One Ghost wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen at your own risk.