In an earlier thread, I wrote briefly about trans people in medieval Europe, and discussed some of the main issues when studying the medieval history of trans people.

Today, if you'll indulge me, I want to spend some time discussing a single person in detail. I want to talk about the way she's been written about, and about her and what she can teach us about life as a trans person 600 years ago.

This is the story of Eleanor Rykener.

We only have one record of Eleanor's existence, and it's an extremely historically important ones. The record is an account of her trial.

We only have about three surviving records of so-called "sodomy trials" in Britain before the 16th century. The fact that one of these three involves a trans person is either incredibly fortunate, or it is an indication that they had quite a few more trans people around in those days than we might suspect.

Eleanor was arrested on the streets of London in December 1394 between the hours of 8 and 9pm. She was caught "committing that detestable, unmentionahle, and ignominious vice."

Legal records did not usual use such strong language when referring to sex work, so it is likely that Eleanor was specifically accused of sodomy. "Sodomy", in the middle ages, had a very broad and flexible definition, and Eleanor stretches this definition.

If "sodomy" is understood as anal sex, or as sex between two people who both have penises, Eleanor would have been found guilty. If it was sex between two people of the same gender, the question becomes more complicated for Eleanor's accusers.

The record of her trial, for the most, part does not use either male or female pronouns when referring to Eleanor, because it is written in Latin. In Latin, you only use a gendered pronoun for the object of the sentence ("him" or "her"), not the subject.