Shape of Sex : Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance (9780231551366) by Devun Leah

Author:Devun, Leah
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LIT004160, Literary Criticism/Lgbt, LIT004190, Literary Criticism/Ancient & Classical
Publisher: Lightning Source Inc
Published: 2021-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

THE JESUS HERMAPHRODITE

The images of the alchemical hermaphrodite in the Zurich manuscript of Aurora consurgens also link the text to a similar program of miniatures attached to an anonymous alchemical text known as The Book of the Holy Trinity (Das Buch der heiligen Dreifaltigkeit), also from the early fifteenth century and from the same southern German area of production.63 Although we cannot identify the author, we know that he visited the Council of Constance in order to promote his work before the Emperor Sigismund, and that he attracted the interest of other nobles, including the emperor’s brother, Wenceslas of Prague, and the margrave Friedrich of Brandenberg, who subsequently became his patron. Perhaps due to the enthusiasm of aristocrats for the alchemical manufacture of gold, the book enjoyed enough success to survive in at least twenty manuscripts, many of which are vividly illustrated. Its illuminations resemble those of Aurora consurgens inasmuch as they also depict the alchemical stone as a biform, nonbinary-sexed human. They also further explore medieval understandings of Christ as male and female to develop a new pair of images: the Jesus-Mary hermaphrodite and the Antichrist hermaphrodite.

Central to The Book of the Holy Trinity is the author’s claim that Christ contains within him his mother, the Virgin Mary, who comprises his feminine principle, as well as the principle of his humanity.64 The author states that “one can never see the mother of God without also seeing that God eternally hides and intermingles [his mother] within him. God was and is eternally his own mother and his own father, human and divine, his divinity and his humanity intermingled within. And he depends on that which he wishes to be hidden most of all within himself, the divine and the human, the feminine and the masculine.”65 Next, the author emphasizes the inseparable nature of Christ and Mary:

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