Between male and female: cross-dressed female saints in Antiquity

Abstract

In several reports about Christian martyrs and saints in ancient times, the figure of woman is imagined or actually dressed in clothes and masculine traits. This transition from female to the male gender is a discursive strategy to enable women's access to functions, activities and feelings before the sealed condition of women. Furthermore, it allows a reflection on the status of the genus of the martyr or the female saint who ventures in the two spheres, which gives a kind of life that goes beyond (or even transgresses) the boundaries of genre, in which the pathos is not erotic absent, and even stimulate the formation of 'transgender'.