Kerstin Losert
Kleider machen Männer.
Mittelalterliche Geschlechterkonstruktion und die Legende der Hildegund von Schönau
Clothes make Men.
Construction of Gender in the Middle Ages and the Legend of Hildegund von Schönau
English abstract
The hagiographic motif of a woman who poses as a man, enters an abbey and is ultimately revered as a saint goes back to the late antiquity and can be found up to the late Middle Ages. The very existence of this motif with its positive evaluation of changing one's clothes is surprising especially if one considers that many early christian and medieval authors deemed changing one's clothes and thus one's sexual identity as an attack against the hierarchy of the sexes and thus a challenge to the natural order. The example of the Vita of Hildegund von Schönau shows that the positive description of women in men's clothes in legends is not unproblematic but needs to be legitimized by certain narrative strategies. In his version of the Hildegundvita the Cistercian monk Caesarius von Heisterbach attaches female characteristics to the protagonist by way of anecdotes in order to underline the impossibility to surmount the barriers between the sexes. But as he does so the author's claim that the monks had no idea about Hildegund's true sexual identity is in stark contrast with the description of the more than conspicuous behaviour of the young girl.