Roisin Cossar, University of Manitoba
Ruth Mazo Karras, Trinity College Dublin
Shannon McSheffrey, Concordia University
In this video three historians of gender and sexuality examine the case of Rolandina Ronchaia, a transwoman in mid-fourteenth century Venice.
Video
Primary Source in Translation
"The Case of Rolandina Ronchaia, a 14th-century transwoman?" Translated by Shannon McSheffrey, with assistance from Ruth Mazo Karras, Roisin Cossar, and Althea Thompson.
Classroom Discussion/Activity Possibilities
1. Compare this document with two other records of interrogation of medieval people charged with gender transgressions:
• John/Eleanor Rykener from late fourteenth-century England (translation of record available online: Paul Halsall, "The Questioning of John Rykener, A Male Cross-Dressing Prostitute, 1395," Internet Medieval Sourcebook, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/1395rykener.asp (1998; accessed 30 Nov. 2020).
• Katherina Hetzeldorfer from fifteenth-century Nuremberg in the Holy Roman Empire (translation available in Helmut Puff, “Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 1 (2000): 61–62, https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-30-1-41)
Further Reading
David Lorenzo Boyd and Ruth Mazo Karras, “The Interrogation of a Male Transvestite Prostitute in Fourteenth-Century London,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1, no. 4 (1995): 459– 65, https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1-4-459.
Ruth Karras and Tom Linkinen, “John/Eleanor Rykener Revisited,” in Founding Feminisms: Essays in Honor of E. Jane Burns, ed. L. E. Doggett and D. E. O’Sullivan (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 2016), 111–21, http://www.tara.tcd.ie/handle/2262/91231.
Ruth Mazo Karras and Katherine E. Pierpont, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others, fourth edition (New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 2023).
Helmut Puff, “Female Sodomy: The Trial of Katherina Hetzeldorfer (1477),” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 1 (2000): 41–62, https://doi.org/10.1215/10829636-30-1-41.
Roland Betancourt, “Transgender Lives,” in Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), 89-120.
Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt, eds., Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2021). https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789048540266/trans-and-genderqueer-subjects-in-medievalhagiography.
Greta LaFleur, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Kłosowska, eds. Trans Historical: Gender Plurality Before the Modern (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021).
Tess Wingard, "The Trans Middle Ages: Incorporating Transgender and Intersex Studies into the History of Medieval Sexuality," English Historical Review. forthcoming soon (as of August 2023)
Cite
Roisin Cossar, Ruth Mazzo Karras, and Shannon McSheffrey, “The Case of Rolandina Ronchaia, a 14th - century transwoman?,” Middle Ages for Educators, July 22, 2020. Accessed [date]. https://middleagesforeducators.princeton.edu/case-rolandina-ronchaia-14th-century-transwoman