In this epilogue, I would like to discuss the productivity of trans and genderqueer readings of medieval hagiography in three contexts: the development of hagiographical studies since the 1960s, of gender studies since Simone de Beauvoir's seminal work Le deuxième sexe (1949-1950), and, finally, of historical studies since the publication of Pierre Nora's multi-volume edited collection, Les Lieux de mèmoire (1984-1992). It should be clear that this afterword is not intended as anything like a final conclusion to this volume, claiming to neatly resolve all of the questions raised. Instead, it is an invitation to further explore gender and saints, to reflect on both categories as well as on methods of trans and genderqueer reading, and, finally, on the societal meaning of such studies today.

Scholarly contexts

Hagiographical studies have boomed since the 1960s, when historians of ideas discovered that tales about saints were among the richest sources for cultural change. Ever since the French historian Jacques Le Goff held up hagiography as a source ‘par excellence’, medievalists have shown how saints reflected the ideas, practices and feelings of their contexts and, indeed, how such phenomena changed over time, as well as between geographic and cultural domains.

De Beauvoir arguably invented gender, although she does not use the term: the idea that, although biological sex may exist, the categories ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are constructed differently in different cultures.