Somatic Ambiguity an~

masculine Desire in tbe

01~ Englisb Life of Eupbrosyne
ANDREW P. SCHElL

T he Old English Life of Euphrosyne details the life and salva-

tion of a female transvestite. 1 By exchanging her female
iden~ity for a monastic habit, Euphrosyne frustrates her fa-
ther Paphnutius's plan to marry her off to a worthy suitor, and she
lives out her days as a virgin dedicated to God, only abandoning her
masculine disguise as an aged "man" on his/her deathbed before
her father and fellow monks.2 The prosaic, almost tranquil end to

1 For an overview of transvestite saints see Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends f!f the Saints:
An Introductirm to Hagiography, trans. V. M. Crawford (London: Longmans, Green, & Co.,
1907), 197-207; Marie Delcourt, Hermaphrodite: Myths and Rituals of the Bisexual Figure in
Classical Antiquity, trans. jennifer Nicholson (London: Studio, 1961), 84-102; john Anson,
"The Female Transvestite in Early Monasticism: The Origin and Development of a Motif,"
Viatar 5 (1974): 1-32; Vern L. Bullough, 'Transvestism in the Middle Ages," in Sexual Prac-
tices and the Medieval Church, ed. Vern L. Bullough and james Brundage (Buffalo:
Prometheus, 1982), 43-54; Rudolf M. Dekker and Lotte C. van de Pol, The Tradition of F~
male Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989), 44-46; joyce
E. Salisbury, Church Father.'i, Independent Virgins (London: Verso, 1991),97-110. For more
general studies of transvestism as a cultural phenomenon, see Marjorie Garber, Vestea In-
trTflstS:CrosJ-J)rening and Cultural Anxiety (London: Routledge, 1992), and Vern L. Bullough
and Bonnie Bullough, Cross JJre..uinf{, Sex, and Gender (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl-
vania Press, 1993).
2 The rift' of Jj·uphro.ryne appears in two manuscripts: British Library MS Cotton julius
E.vii and British Library MS Cotton Otho B.x. For descriptions of the manuscripts see N.

Exemplaria 11.2 1999 © Pegasus Press, University of North Carolina at Asheville

346 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

Euphrosyne's life stands in contrast to the deaths of other virgin

saints. In JElfric's Life of Eugenia, Eugenia also assumes a masculine
disguise in order to preserve her virginity,but, unlike Euphrosyne,
long before dying she dramatically bares her breast and proclaims
her womanhood:
JEfter pysum wordum heo touer hyre geweedu and eeuewde
hyre breost pam breman Philippe, and cwee~him to, "I>ueart
min feeder . . . and ic so~lice eorn Eugenia gehaten pin agen
dohtor. "3
After these words she tore apart her clothes, and revealed her
breast to the angry Philip and said to him: ''Youare my father
... and truly I am called Eugenia, your own daughter."
Eugenia leaves behind her foray into transvestism and establishes
a community of virgins in Rome. She maintains her virginity in
the face of excruciating torture and gruesome execution, en-
during the formulaic ordeals of a Christian martyr before her
death.
Euphrosyne's end is not as public, not as dramatic, and not the
typical spectacular death of a virgin martyr. The narrator casually
notes that
pa gefylde Srnaragdus on prere netennyse eahta and pryttig
wintra, and befeoll on untrurnnysse and on peere eac
for~-ferde.

R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957),

numbers 162 and 177. The Life ofEuphrosynewas once thought to have been written by.£l-
fric for inclusion in his Lives of Saints, but it is now considered one of four anonymous
saints' lives included in the collection. For the evidence against lElfric's authorship, see
Peter Clemoes, "The Chronology of lElfric's Works," in The An~axons: Studies in Some
Aspects of their History and Culture Presented to Bruce Dickins, ed. Peter Clemoes (London:
Bowes & Bowes, 1959),219, and the work of Hugh Magennis in "Contrasting Features in
the Non-lElfrician Lives in the Old English Lives of Saints," Anglia 104 (1986): 316-48, and
"On the Sources of Non-lElfrician Lives in the Old English Lives of Saints, with Reference
to the Cotton Corpus Legendary," Notes and Queries 32.3 (September 1986): 292-99, and
s.v. "Euphrosyna" in Sourcesof Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture: A Trial Version, ed. Frederick M.
Biggs, Thomas D. Hill and Paul E. Szarmach, MRTS 74 (Binghamton, N.Y: CEMERS,
1990).
3lElfric, Life of Eugenia in /Elfric's Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS o.S. 76,82,94,
114 (Oxford, 1881-1900; repro 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 1:38, lines
233-35, 238-39. All translations are my own.
ANDREW P. SCHElL 347

Then Smaragdus fulfilled, in that unknown state [i.e. her life

as a man], thirty-eight years and fell sick and therefore died.4
Mter this rather anticlimactic statement, Euphrosyne reveals her
identity to her father:
Nelle pu leng beon hohful be pinre dehter Eufrosinan. So~lice
ic earme eom sio sylfe and pu eart Pafnuntius min freder.
290-92
Be no longer worried about your daughter Euphrosyne. In-
deed, I, miserable one, am she herself, and you are my father
Paphnutius.
For Euphrosyne, there is no departure in a blaze of public martyr-
dom and no Manichean struggle of virgin purity with heathen evil.
Instead, the understated, intimate departure of the aged transvestite
marks the success of a life well-lived in the service of God. Eu-
phrosyne's end, so different from the deaths of Eugenia and
other female saints (such as Agnes, Agatha, and Lucy) in JElfric's
Lives of Saints, indicates the essential ambiguity of Euphrosyne her-
self: she is neither man nor woman, but rather an emblem of so-
matic ambiguity held in continual suspension. In Cynewulf'sJuliana,
the virgin saint has "freondrredenne freste gestapelad" ("steadfastly
established her conjugal love") for God, and has Christ's love "in
fer~locan freste biwunden, / milde modsefa, mregen unbrice" ("fast
en twined in her heart, and in her a meek spirit, an everlasting
strength ").5 Recognizing this immovable force, her diabolical enemy
declares,

Ic to sope wat
pret ic rer ne si~ renig ne mette
in woruldrice wif pe gelic,
pristran gepohtes ne pweorhtimbran
mregpa cynnes.6

4 Life of Euphrosyne in /Elfric's Lives of Saints, 2:350, lines 260-62. All other references to
the Life of Euphrosyne are to this edition by line numbers only. I have occasionally repunc-
tuated Skeat's text.
5 Juliana in The Exeter Book, ed. George P. Krapp and Eliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ASPR 3
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1936), lines 107 and 234-35.
6 Ibid., 547-51.
 348 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

I truly know that I have never ever met any woman like you
in the world, more bold in mind or more stubborn, among
womankind.
Such an exchange is typical in the livesof virgin saints, but we do not
find this characteristic absolute light of virginity guiding the narra-
tive of the Life of Euphrosyne; instead, the narrative is a composite of
ambiguity and uncertainty, a fleeting glimpse of the half-hidden
shadows of erotic desire.

I
Euphrosyne's transformation into the monk "Smaragdus," marked
in the text by a corresponding shift in pronouns, allowsher to escape
the carnal world of marriage and thus to keep her virginity unde-
filed.7 One monk-eonfidant advises her to "ne gepafa <5upret cenig
man pinne lichaman besmite" (77-78 "not allow any man to defile
your body"), and a second implores her to withstand "pa costnunga
pines flresces" (115-16, "the temptations of the flesh"). She decides
that her only recourse is to seek shelter in a monastery as a man:
Heo pa pone wiflican gegyrlan hire ofdyde and hi gescrydde
mid werlicum, and on refentid gewat of hire healle and nam
mid hire futig mancsas, and lJa niht hi gehydde on digelre
stowe. 130-33
Then she took off her womanly clothing, and dressed herself
in manly clothing and in the evening departed from her hall

7 For general background on virginity in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, see Rose-
mary Ruether, "Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church," in Re-
ligion and Sexism: Images of Women in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary
Ruether (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974), 150-83;john Bugge, Virginitas: An Essay in
the History of a Medieval Ideal (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975); Clarissa Atkinson,
"'Precious Balsam in a Fragile Glass': The Ideology of Virginity in the Later Middle Ages,"
joomal of Family History 8.2 (Summer 1983): 131-43; Peter Brown, "The Notion of Virgin-
ity in the Early Church," in Christian Spirituality I: Origins to the Twelfth Century, ed. Bernard
McGinn andJohn Meyendorffin collaboration with Jean Leclercq (New York: Crossroad,
1985), 427-43, and The Body and Society:Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Chris-
tianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 259-84; Aline Rousselle, Porneia: On
Desire and the Body in Late Antiquity, trans. Felicia Pheasant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988),
129-40; Susanna Elm, "Virgins of God": The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1994).
ANDREW P. SCHElL 349

and took with her fIfty mancuses, and that night she hid her-
self in a secret place.
Euphrosyne, the nubile virgin daughter of Paphnutius's heart, does
not emerge from this wonderfully ambiguous "secret place"; only
Smaragdus remains, a strange composite entity, resistant to clear
representation as if he has corne forth trailing the indeterminacy of
the unknown hiding place in which she spent the night.8 The text
refers to Smaragdus as "he," but the reader's understanding runs
counter to this change in pronouns: we "know" that Smaragdus is re-
ally Euphrosyne, but the change in clothing corresponds to a com-
plete transformation in gender, at least from the narrator's point of
VIew.
This conflict. grows more complex when Smaragdus identifies
himself as a eunuch when he joins a monastery. Euphrosyne does
not claim that she is the man "Smaragdus"; she is the eunuch
"Smaragdus." The two terms are not interchangeable, and the dis-
tinction further complicates the problem of just how the reader is
supposed to identify this creature's gender. At this point, she is an
entity of indeterminate sex, a complex of conflicting claims. This
ambiguity is present in the important biblical discussions of eu-
nuchs: Deuteronomy 23:1 condemns them, decreeing that "Non in-
travit eunuchus, attritis vel amputatis testiculis et abscisso veretro,
ecclesiam Domini" ("A eunuch whose testicles are removed or cut
off, or whose male member is severed, shall not enter the church of
the Lord").9 However, Isaiah 56:4-5 commends eunuchs:
Quia haec dicit Dominus eunuchis: "Qui custodierint sabbata
mea, et elegerint quae ego volui, et tenuerint foedus meum,
dabo eis in domo mea et in muris meis locum, et nomen

8 The anonymous Latin life omits the description of her hiding place as "secret": "air
scondit se in aliquo loco per totam noctem" ("she concealed herself in some place
throughout the entire night"), Vita sanctae Euphrosynae virginis, PL 73, col. 646. Although
the Latin text printed in the Patrologia Latina is not the exact source for the Old English
translation, it is close enough for comparative purposes: see Magennis, "On the Sources
of Non-iElfrician Lives," 299, and Grant Loomis, "Further Sources of iElfric's Saints'
Lives," Harvard Studies in Philology and Literature 13 (1931): 5-6. I follow the Anglo-Saxon
text in referring to Euphrosyne as "her" and Smaragdus as "he."
9 Quotations from the Vulgate are from Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam Clementinam, ed. Al-
berto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado (Madrid: Editorial Cat6lica, 1977). Translations
arc my own.
350 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

melius a filiis et filiabus: Nomen sempiternum dabo eis, quod

non peribit."
For thus saysthe Lord to eunuchs: 'To those who keep my sab-
baths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my
covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a place
and a name better than sons and daughters: I will give them an
everlasting name which shall not be cut off."
Eunuchs embody conflicting moral judgements, and any attempt at
reconciling these divergent positions calls for multiple distinc-
tions.10 Jesus even-handedly explains the types of eunuchs in
Matthew 19:12: "Sunt enim eunuchi, qui de matris utero sic nati
sunt: et sunt eunuchi, qui facti sunt ab hominibus: et sunt eunuchi,
qui seipsos castraverunt propter regnum caelorum" ("For there are
eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who
have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have
castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven"). As
these passages suggest, eunuchs require interpretation; they do not
declare their import at face value, but must be "read." In the same
way, Smaragdus's identification of himself as a eunuch invites the
reader to question what kind of eunuch he is, adding another layer
of ambiguity to the character's identity.As the reader moves through
the text, the conflicting interpretations of Euphrosyne/Smaragdus
collide, leaving the reader with questions instead of the definitive
"answers" presented by other virgin saints who stand in the clear
light of Truth.

II
From a practical standpoint, Euphrosyne chooses to portray her-
self as a eunuch because it will make her "manly" disguise more be-
lievable: if she appears somewhat delicate and feminine to the
monks, her identity as a eunuch might explain the confusion. Her
disguise is supposed to free her from the sexuality of the secular
world as she escapes her suitors, but when the monks accept Smarag-

10 For a discussion of the theological background of the eunuch see Robert P. Miller,
"Chaucer's Pardoner, The Scriptural Eunuch, and the Pardoner's Tale," Speculum 30 (1955):
180-99, repro in Chaucer Criticism: The Canterbury Tales, ed. Richard]. Schoeck and]erome
Taylor (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960),221-44.
ANDREW P. SCHElL 351

dus into the community, the perilous energy of sexuality follows

him. When Smaragdus arrives, the abbot entrusts him to a mentor,
one who can teach the young novice "mynsterlice drohtnunge and
pone halgan regol" (151-52, "monastic life and the holy rule") .11
Agapitus takes Smaragdus "under his wing," but trouble follows:
l>agecigde se abbod ane bropor to him se weesgenemned Aga-
pitus, haliges lifes man and wur~ful on peawum, and betcehte
him pone fores~dan Smaragdum, and him to CW~~, "Heonon-
for~ pes sceal beon pin sunu and pin leorningcniht." Agapitus
pa underfeng hine on his cytan. l>aforpam se sylfe Smaragdus
weeswlitig on ansyne, swa oft swa ~a bro~ra comon to cyrcan,
ponne besende se awyrgeda gast meenigfealde gepohtas on
heora mod, and wurdon pearle gecostnode purh his
feegernysse. And hi pa eet nyxtan ealle wurdon astyrode wi~
pone abbod forpam swa wlitigne man into heora mynstre
geleedde; and he pa gecigde Smaragdum to him and cwee~,
"Min bearn piu ansyn is wlitig and pissum broprum cym~ micel
hryre for heora tyddernyssum. Nu wille ic peetpu sitte pe sylfon
pire eytan and singe p~r pine tida, and pe peerinne gereorde.
Nelle ic peh p~t pu ahwider elles ga."12 155-69
Then the abbot called a brother to him who was named Aga-
pitus, a man of holy life and honorable in conduct, and
handed over to him the aforesaid Smaragdus, and said to him,
"Henceforth this shall be your son and your disciple." Agapitus
then accepted him into his cell. Then, because Smaragdus
himself was beautiful in appearance, whenever the brothers
came to church, the accursed spirit sent manifold thoughts
into their minds, and they were sorely tempted by his beauty.
Finally they were all stirred up against the abbot because he
had brought so beautiful a man into their monastery; he then
called Smaragdus to him and said, "My child, your counte-
nance is beautiful and great ruin comes to the brothers be-
cause of their frailty. Now I want you to sit by yourself in your
cell, and sing there your hours, and eat in there. I do not want
you to go anywhere else."

11 See Graham Gould, The Desert Fathers on Monastic Community (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1993), 2~87, for a discussion of the mentor-student relationship in the monastery
based on the Sayings of the 1Jf-sertFathers.
12 Ibid., 150-57, on the role of solitude in the monastic community.
 352 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

This complex passage registers several different anxIetIes of the

community. First, there is the possibility that the desire the monks
feel for Smaragdus is actually heterosexual desire for Euphrosyne,
the woman under the disguise. According to such a reading, some-
how the monks sense that Smaragdus is really a woman, and theyex-
perience the corresponding sexual temptations. The text does not
explicitly gloss the episode this way, however, and the monks' re-
sponse cannot be explained away so simply. The second possibility is
that their desire for Smaragdus is homosexual. The literal meaning
of the text seems to support this interpretation: the monks are angry
at their abbot for bringing "so beautiful a man" into their com-
pany.I3 Allen Frantzen calls this interpretation the "homosexual sub-
text" which the narrative obscures by making the object of
homosexual desire actually a beautiful, transvestite woman. 14
The third set of possibilities revolves around the ambiguities of
the eunuch body. IS Frantzen sees the eunuch identity in the Life of
Eugenia and the Life of Euph rosyne as an embodiment of a masculine
ideal, insofar as Eugenia and Euphrosyne do the "manly" thing by
giving up their sex for God: "Real men finally transcend the bodyal-
together, a performative gesture of their own, a repeated and cease-
less denial of the male body. "16 Frantzen has an important point
here, but it is possible to see the eunuch not so much as the "ideal
manly man" (in a theological sense), but rather as a liminal creature,
the embodiment of alterity; the beautiful eunuch disrupts the
monastic community because of his somatic ambiguity. The text con-
stantly pushes the reader between masculine and feminine "read-
ings" of Euphrosyne/Smaragdus's body, but the underlying sex of
the eunuch exemplifies the one-sex model of sexual difference.
The one-sex model was an important conceptual apparatus for

13 The Latin text is more vague than the Old English: instead of "swa wlitigne man the
n

Latin simply has "talem pulchritudinem," "such beauty" (Vita s. Euphrosynae, PL 73:647).
Rouselle, Porneia, 147-48, details the temptation young boys held for late-antique monks.
14 AllenJ. Frantzen, ''When Women Aren't Enough," speculum 68.2 (April 1993): 466.
15 For background on eunuchs see Miller, "Chaucer's Pardoner"; Wendy Doniger O'Fla-
herty, Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980), 297; Brown, Body and Society, 67-68; Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender
from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990),176-78.
16 Frantzen, "When Women Aren't Enough," 467. See also Frantzen's new Before the
Closet: Same-Sex LQVejrom Beowulf to Angels in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998).
ANDREW P. SCHElL 353

thinking about sex in the west from antiquity through the Renais-
sance.17 Medical authorities defined the sexual bodies of men and
women as different not in kind, but only in degree: all bodies are
"male"; the female is simply a less perfect, not-Fully-formed, inverted
variation of the male body.18 Medical knowledge in Anglo-Saxon
England follows the orthodoxy of one-sex thinking set down in an-
tiquity.19 A corollary to one-sex thinking is that, under proper condi-
tions, men could lose their anatomical priority over women and slide
back into a "more female" state: the male body was a "fearsomely plas-
tic thing" susceptible to changes which could make it less male than
it should be.2o If a man lost his virility, he might "collapse back into a
state of primary undifferentiation. "21As a eunuch, Smaragdus repre-
sents the monks' subconscious knowledge that the male body was a
potentially fluid substance subject to change. In a eunuch, the po-
tential corporeal flux of the one-sex body was in play:
[I] n the construction of the one-sex body the borders between
blood, semen, other residues and food, between the organs of
reproduction and other organs, between the heat of passion

17 Laqueur coins the term "'one-sex model" in Making Sex, basing his argument mainly
on medical texts. Other scholars have noted the existence of a one-sex model of sexual
difference in the Middle Ages: see Vern L. Bullough, "Medieval Medical and Scientific
Views of Women, " Viator4 (1972):485--501; DanielleJacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sex-
uality and Medicine in the Middle Age5, trans. Matthew Adamson (Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1988),46-47;Marie-Christine Pouchelle, The Body and Surgery in the Middle
Ages, trans. Rosemary Morris (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990),180-81.
18 Laqueur, Making Sex, 25--62.
19 For pre-Conquest insular manuscripts of the standard medical authorities that dis-
seminate the one-sex model, such as Galen and Pseudo-Apuleius, see Helmut Gneuss, "A
Preliminary List of Manuscripts Written or Owned in England up to 1100," Anglo-Saxon
England 9 (1981),manuscript numbers 145,183,184,402,421,479,527,549,633.See
also J. D. A. Ogilvy, Books Known to the English, 597-1066 (Cambridge: Medieval Academy
of America, 1967),75--77,143,159. Ogilvy will be superseded by the Saurces of Anglo-Saxon
Literary Culture project, which will eventually give a better idea of the sources of medical
knowledge in Anglo-Saxon England. The best study of the subject is M. L. Cameron,
Anglo-Saxon Medicine, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 7 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1993); see especially 65--73on the classical tradition behind
Anglo-Saxon medicine. For an analysis of the one-sex model in Norse sagas, see Carol
Clover, "Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe," Speculum
68.2 (April 1993):363-87.
20 Brown, Body and Society, 10.
21 Ibid., 11.
354 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

and the heat of life, were indistinct and, to the modern person,
almost unimaginably-indeed terrifyingly-porous. 22
From this perspective, what makes the monks in the Life of Eu-
phrosyne angry is not only their dismay at being assaulted by sexual
temptation; they are angry at-and afraid of-the plasticity of the
male body represented by Smaragdus.23
Further, the disruption associated with the beautiful eunuch re-
veals the potential eroticism of the monastic community. Smaragdus
represents the changeable nature of the male body, the "reality"un-
derlying a fantasy of plenitude. The monastery is a network of ho-
mosocial relationships; Agapitus "accepts [Smaragdus] into his cell,"
an act of intimacy replicated on a larger scale throughout the
monastery.24Although these homosocial bonds are not consciously
sexual, the possibilities of erotic action define the community. Be-
cause he literally embodies the capacity for masculinity to melt away,
Smaragdus exposes the deliberately occluded continuum of desire
in the monastic space. For a moment, the illusion of presumptive
heterosexuality falls away as this subversive element discloses the
erotic nexus of homosocial desire in the monastery.
The alternative masculinities insinuated by Smaragdus threaten
the very fabric of the homosocial community. The monks grow
angry, not at the alluring Smaragdus, but instead at the abbot who
had unleashed such temptation in their midst. As is typical of ho-
mosocial situations, erotic desire is here redirected as anger or ri-

22 Laqueur, Making Sex, 42.

23 The eunuch body shares some of the qualities of the "carnival body" explored by
Peter Stallybrass and Allon White (drawing on Bakhtin) in The Politics and Poetics of Trans-
gression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986),22: "The grotesque body is emphasized as
a mobile, split, multiple self, a subject of pleasure in the process of exchange." What does
not fit in a clear category and inhabits the margins of any system generates fear and de-
sire; Smaragdus is what Julia Kristeva calls "the abject" or "What disturbs identity, system,
order ... [and] does not respect borders, positions, rules" (Powers of Horror: An Essay on
Abjection [New York: Columbia University Press, 1982], 4). The abject is a paradox (Kris-
teva, 9-10):
We may call it a border; abjection is above all ambiguity. Because, while releasing a
hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what threatens it--on the contrary,
abjection acknowledges it to be in perpetual danger. But also because abjection itself
is a composite of judgment and affect, of condemnation and yearning, of signs and
drives.
24 On homosocial bonding, see Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Mal£
HomosocialDesire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
ANDREW P. SCHElL 355

valry.25The erotic energy activated by Smaragdus's body races about

the nodes of the homosocial network, arriving at the feet of the
abbot as passionate anger rather than passionate desire.
The discovery of Euphrosyne's transvestite nature occasions a
final collision of gender categories. The abbot prays:
"Eufrosina, Cristes bryd and haligra manna tudor, ne beo pu
forgitende pinra efenpeowa and pyses mynstres, ac gebide to
Drihtne for us p£et he gedo us werlice becuman to h£elo hy~e,
and us do d£elnimende mid him and his halgum." He ~a be-
head pret pa gehr05ra hi gegaderodan and pone halgan
lichaman mid wurpmynte byrgenne befreston. l>ahi ~a onfun-
don p£et heo w£eswifhades man, pa wuldrodan hi on God se pe
on pam wiflican and tydran hade swilce wundra wyrca5.
313-20
"Euphrosyne, bride of Christ and offspring of holy men, do not
forget your fellow servants and this monastery, but pray to the
Lord for us that He may make us come manfully to the harbor
of safety, and make us companions with Him and His saints."
He then ordered the brothers to gather around, and to entrust
the holy body to the grave with honor. When they discovered
that she was a man of the female sex, they gloried in God, who
in the womanly and tender nature works such wonders.
The abbot implores Euphrosyne to make sure that the Lord will
bring the members of the community to heaven ''werlice," that is,
"manfully" or "as men" (''viriliter" in the Latin).26 Euphrosyne, al-
though now revealed as a woman, can nevertheless still beseech God
to direct the monks' lives in a "manly" fashion. This adverb echoes
Euphrosyne's own assessment of her life on her deathbed: "God
reImihtig hrem weI gedihtod min earme Iif and gefylled minne
willan, pret ic moste pone ryne mines lifes werlice geendian"
(28~87, "God Almighty has well ordered my miserable life and ful-
filled my desire, that I might end the course of my life manfully").
Euphrosyne's life has left her, finally, as a protean figure, able to put
on different "styles of the flesh," in Judith Butler's phrase.27 She is a

25 Ibid., 2, 19-27.
26 Vita s. Euphrosy nae. PL 73:651.
27 Judith Butler, Gender Troubl£: Feminism and the Suooersion of Identity (New York: Rout-
ledge. 1990). 139.
 356 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

liminal figure, resistant to clear representation, and the strange res-

onance of ''wifhades man" ("a man of the female sex") speaks to this
Iimin ality. 'Wifhades man" can of course be rendered more neu-
trally as "a person of the female sex" (i.e., a woman), but I believe
my translation highlights, at the least, a potential (mis) understand-
ing of the phrase. Note that the epithet does not occur in the Latin,
in which the monks only see "tam stupendum miraculum. "28 Within
the terms of the text's own complex narrative designations, Eu-
phrosyne is not a "man" or a "woman" in any sense; hel she is a nar-
rative manifestation of the anxieties attending both the one-sex
model of sexual difference and the bonds of homosocial desire.

III
Not only from the narrow perspective of monastic sexual anxiety,
but also in broad, narrative terms, the Life of Euphrosyne is about the
hopes and fears of men, not women.29 The only other female char-
acter, her unnamed mother, dies while Euphrosyne is still a child;
when the girl is seven years old "pa gewat hire modor" (25).30 This
terse statemen t excises the mother from the narrative after she has
fulfilled her primary purpose: to give Paphnutius an heir. Her infer-
tility, before Euphrosyne's divinely assisted conception, troubles Pa-
phnutius "forpam nan bearn n(Cs gem(Cne P(Ct (Cfter his forc>sic>e to
his (Chtum fenge" (5-7: "because there was no child between them
who might inherit his possessions after his death"). 31 This conflict,
broached in the first lines of the vita, drives the reproductive motives
of Paphnutius and his wife; she, in fact, wants a child "swipost forpam
heo geseah hire weres sarignysse" (9-10, "especially because she saw
the sadness of her husband"). As soon as she solves Paphnutius's

28 Vita s. Euphrosynae, PL 73:651: "such an amazing miracle."

29 For a close reading of the Life of Euphrosyne narrative, see Paul E. Szannach, "St. Eu-
phrosyne: Holy Transvestite," in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints' Lives
and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996),353-65. Although I
disagree with Szarmach concerning the implications of Euphrosyne's cross-dressing, his
narrative analysis makes a number of important points.
30 The Latin text is similarly brief: "'mater ejus migravit de hoc saecul0," "her mother
passed on out of the world" (Vita s. Euphrosynae, PL 73:643).
31 The desire for a male heir is clearer in the Latin ("£ilium," Vita s. Euphrosynae, PL
73:643) than in the Old English ("bearn").
ANDREW P. SCHElL 357

dilemma, she exits from the narrative. Euphrosyne's nameless

mother never resolves into focus; she is visible only through the lens
of masculine imperatives.
Similarly, masculine economies dominate Euphrosyne's life.32 She
is an asset of Paphnutius's estate, and, as he takes personal charge of
her education and upbringing, he develops his "investment" for the
eventual exchange of marriage. He holds out for the highest price
from potential suitors once word of Euphrosyne's beauty and wis-
dom has spread, settling only for one who was ''weligra and wurpa
ponne ealle }>aopre" (34, "wealthier and more honorable than all
the others").33 When she escapes to the monastery, the abbot be-
comes her "father," and although she has exchanged the sexual
world of marriage for the celibate world of the monastery, a crowd
of men still surrounds her, defining her and circumscribing her ac-
tions. She is a commodity in overlapping masculine economies.34
The narrative focus on the experiences and emotions of Paphnu-
tius rivals the focus on Euphrosyne. In his laments for his lost daugh-
ter, Paphnutius speaks the most ornamental, moving dialogue in the
vita.35 His character follows a clear arc of development: through the
loss of his treasured daugh tef, he learns the worthlessness of earthly
wealth and the true riches of heaven. His enlightenment proceeds
through a complex series of ironic plot twists; for example, he con-
stantly lobbies (and pays) clerics to bless his daughter, but the
abbot's blessing,

32 For a concise definition of "economy" in this sense see Gillian Overing, Language,
Sign, and Gender in Beowulf (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1990), 121 n2:
"Economy" is used as a comprehensive term for the complex of cultural systems of
change and exchange, wherein power is sought, claimed, and distributed; "masculine
economy" denotes the social and material conditions of patriarchy, in which women
may be construed as commodities in the system of change and exchange of power re-
lations between men.
33 Money is a pervasive theme in the vita; see Malcolm Godden, "Money. Power and
Morality in Late Anglo-Saxon England." Anglo--Saxon England 19 (1990): 41-65 for a fine
discussion of the semantics of money and society in Anglo-Saxon England.
34 See Luce Irigaray's explanation of the commodity role played by women in a patri-
archal culture in This Sex l'WzichIs Not One, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press. 1985).84: "The use. consumption. and circulation of [women's] sexualized
bodies underwrite the organization and reproduction of the social order. in which they
have never taken part as 'subjects.'"
35 In the Old English text. lines 192-201,265-74; in the Latin. PL 73:647-48,649-50.
358 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

"Drihten God, pu pe oncneowe Adam rer he gesceapen wrere,

gemedema ~e pret pu gymenne hrebbe pisse peowenne, and
pret heo sy drelnimende pres heofonlican rices," 53-55
"Lord God, You who knew Adam before he was created, allow
it to happen that you have care of this your servant, and that
she might have a portion of the heavenly kingdom,"
takes all too literal effect, as God sweeps Euphrosyne awayfrom her
father and into the monastery, ensuring her virginity and place
among the elect. Paphnutius evolvesas he moves from ignorance to
revelation in a passionate and complex way. In comparison, Eu-
phrosyne is a static character, passed like a baton in a narrative re-
flecting masculine fears and desires.
In his reading of the Life of Eugenia, Paul Szarmach sees St. Paul's
injunction, "non est masculus, neque femina ... in Christo jesu,"
"operating in the deep structure of JElfric's Life."36 This biblical text
would sanction Eugenia's transvestite behavior as theologically an-
drogynous, allowing her to "un-woman" herself in order to attain the
heavenly kingdom.37 He comes to the same conclusion concerning
Euphrosyne, but in addition to the "subtext" of Galatians, he ad-
duces aesthetic reasons for Euphrosyne's transvestism. Her male dis-
guise is a "narrative problem," her subterfuge an aspect of "classical
and dramatic comedy."38 When Smaragdus tempts his fellow monks,
Szarmach leaves open the question of whether their feelings are ho-
mosexual or heterosexual, or whether "the DE author [is] simply
toying ... with the sexual theme," but concludes that the outcome
of the temptation scene "does advance the narrative. "39 As Frantzen

36 Paul E. Szarmach, "}Elfrie's Women Saints: Eugenia," in New Readings on Women in Old
English Literature, ed. Helen Damico and Alexandra Hennessey Olsen (Bloomington: In-
diana University Press, 1990), 155. Galatians 3:28: "Non est ludaeus, neque Graecus; non
est servus, neque liber; non est masculus, neque femina. Omnes enim vos unum estis in
Christo lesu," "There is not jew, nor Greek; there is not slave, nor free; there is not male,
nor female. For you are all one in Christ jesus." For a comparison of the Old English and
Latin versions of the Life of Eugenia, see Gopa Roy, "A Virgin Acts Manfully: JElfric's Life of
St Eugenia and the Latin Versions," Leeds Studies in English, n. s. 23 (1992): 1-27.
37 Szarmaeh, ibid., 155. For a survey of the theological basis and context of the Gala-
tians passage see Wayne Meeks, 'The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in
Earliest Christianity," History of &ligions 13.3 (February 1974): 165-208. For a broader
comparative perspective see O'Flaherty, Women, Androgynes, 283-334.
38 Szarmach, "Euphrosyne," 356.
39 Ibid., 358.
ANDREW P. SCHElL 359

has pointed out, this type of reading glosses over the complex sexual
ambiguities of the transvestite saints' lives.40 The Life ofEuphrosyne is
rife with contradictions, problems and conflicts that cannot be ex-
plained away through an appeal to extra-textual aesthetics or theol-
ogy. Although the Galatians passage is not actually in either text, it is
certainly a possible element in the reception history of transvestite
saints' lives; however, we must resist the desire to read the text only
according to its own dominant protocols. Far more explanatory
power is accumulated by reading the silences, the ideological con-
flicts and the erotic possibilities of the Life of Euphrosyne.
The reading of hagiography is thus a complex matter. The pull of
broad theological interpretation is strong: on the surface, the tradi-
tional, "formulaic," and unoriginal nature of hagiography implies
that all the lives of the saints are one Life, emblematic of God's
power on earth, and a model for emulation.41 However, to deny the
rich complexity of hagiographic narrative, its seemingly endless re-
combination of traditional elements, is to underestimate a signifi-
cant source of sense-making in medieval culture. If narrative is "an
ideological act in its own right, with the function of inventing imag-
inary or formal 'solutions' to unresolvable social contradictions, "42
we must look below the narrative surface of the Life of Euphrosyne in
order to examine the rich tangle of ideological threads connecting
it to medieval readers, making it relevant and meaningful to their
lives. The Life of Euphrosyne is what Alan Sinfield calls a "faultline
story. " Such stories "address the awkward, unresolved issues; they re-
quire the most assiduous reworking; they hinge upon a fundamen-

40 Frantzen, "When Women Aren't Enough," 467. An undercurrent of sexuality is not

uncommon in hagiography; in Roads to Paradise: Reading the Lives of the Early Saints
(Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1987), Allison Elliott has a "'suspicion
that one of the functions of hagiography was to provide entertainment, and that a good
deal of disguised salaciousness slips through under the cloak of edification" (128 n62).
See David Townsend, "Omissions, Emissions, Missionaries, and Master Signifiers in Nor-
man Canterbury," ExempZaria 7 (1995): 291-315, for a study of masculine desire in
Goscelin's eleventh-eentury Latin vita of St. Augustine of Canterbury.
41 See Michael Lapidge, "The Saintly Life in Anglo-Saxon England," in The Cambridge

Companion to Old English Literature, ed. Malcolm Godden and Michael Lapidge (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991),243-63, and Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learn-
ing and the Desire for God, trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York: Fordham University Press,
1961), 200-201.
42 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1981), 79.
360 Ambiguity and Desire in the Life of Euphrosyne

tal, unresolved ideological complication that finds its way, willy-

nilly, into texts. "43 The vita registers the unconscious ideological
stresses of the community-that of both its original constituent read-
ership, and of a long line of medieval interpretive communities that
valued the Life enough to copy and translate it.
The protocols of reading such a text need not be an all-or-nothing
choice between identifying the theological traditions of conscious ha-
giographic intention, or exploring the text's unconscious, competing
ideologies. The two readings are compatible, the psychosexual di-
mension in this case present within the theological horizon, like a fly
embedded in amber, frozen and preserved for the viewing of cen-
turies. The analogy falls somewhat short: a covert "sexual" meaning is
not locked within the text, but instead it is continually reformed and
negotiated as the text is copied, translated, and reread across multi-
ple cultures. Each new reception of the text entails a new activation
of its aesthetic pleasures, a new extraction of meaning, a new signifi-
cance; as the Life of Euphrosyne moves through what Jauss calls the
"horizons of historical life-worlds," it carries with it a variety of po-
tential responses to its theological, and ideological dimensions.44
Hagiography is polysemous, layered with meanings that can only be
apprehended fully be reading the text "against the grain"; we must
apply a critical language that allowsfor the interpretation of the nar-
rative beyond the primary conscious interpretations attached to the
text by medieval authors.45 The application of a critical language that

43 Alan Sinfield, Cultural Politics-QJuer Reading (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylva-

nia Press, 1994),4. See also Catharine Belsey, Critical Practice (London: Routledge, 1980),
57-58.
44 Hans Robert Jauss, "The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature," trans. Tim-
othy Bahti, New Literary History 10 (1979),183.
45 Caroline Bynum appeals to the need to engage in "two languages," or to read byanal-
ogy when analyzing the past: "It is not only possible, it is imperative to use modern con-
cerns when we confront the past. So long as we reason by analogy rather than merely
rewriting or rejecting, the present will help us see past complexity and the past will help
us to understand ourselves" ("Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist's Perspec-
tive," Critical Inquiry 22 [1995]: 31). Nancy Partner likewise warns against reading a cul-
ture solely through its expressed intentions: "To break the circle of self-defining language,
one needs another language with its own definitions and presumptions. Interpretation is
translation, not paraphrase" ("Reading the Book of Margery Kempe," ExempZaria 3
[1991]: 37). For a similar orientation see, inter alia, John P. Hermann, Allegories o/War:
Language and Violence in Old English Poetry (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1989); Gavin I. Langmuir, History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1990), 3-68.
ANDREW P. SCHElL 361

probes the unconscious elements of hagiography can help us under-

stand the silent appeal that texts like the Life of Euphrosyne had for dif-
ferent interpretive communities. From an authorial standpoint, the
Life of Euphrosyne is about the salvation of a young virgin, despite the
wishes of her father-about extreme sacrifice and its rewards. How-
ever, on an ideological level, where intersections of fear and desire
meet, this text interrogates the limits of the masculine body and the
limits of erotic desire between men. Unlike Eugenia, whose cross-
dressing ends with an impressive martyrdom that effectively normal-
izes her and places her firmly in the tradition of female virgin saints,
Euphrosyne leads a far more ambiguous life. Perhaps .tElfric sensed
this, choosing to translate and include Eugenia's story, and not Eu-
phrosyne's, in the Lives of Saints. Within the terms of the narrative, Eu-
phrosyne's femininity is never activated; she does not marry, does not
have sex, and lives as a man for most of her life. She is a man-but we
also know that she is a woman. The narrative holds her identity in a
state of suspension, denying the reader any definitive interpretation.
As Smaragdus the eunuch, a liminal, dangerously malleable version of
the male body, hel she disrupts life in the monastery by laying bare the
potentially erotic component of homosociality. This moment of fric-
tion allows us to glimpse the shadows cast by the dominant discourse
of the text, shadows that conceal the possibilities of erotic difference.

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