Gender, Transformation, and Change in Ancient Manuscripts

I attended a classics lecture at Bryn Mawr College, “The Grammar of Sanctity” with speaker Charlie Kuper in which he discussed his work examining gender in the Greek, Latin, and Syriac versions of the “Life of Euphrosyne Who Was Called Smaragdus.” The story itself is about a girl named Euphrosyne who was raised by her single father in ancient Greece. She decided to leave home in pursuit of becoming a monk and living at a monastery. In order to do so, she disguised herself as a man and changed her name to Smaragdus (the Greek word for emerald). Her gender transformation worked to fool the priest into allowing her to stay at the monastery, but quickly the other monks began to lust after Smaragdus and she was sent elsewhere so that she could not affect the monks in such an ungodly way. Smaragdus fell ill and found her father to whom she admits that she is his daughter. She passed away and was buried at the monastery as a saint. Charlie Kuper works to analyze this story through ancient manuscripts specifically to look at the way in which Euphrosyne’s gender pronouns change throughout the story. He has been studying 13 ancient manuscripts that tell this story in the languages of Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Armenian. Within the manuscripts, the pronouns for Euphrosyne differ and often change from she/her to he/him when the saint changes their name to Smaragdus. The saint’s gender also changes back and forth quickly between lines. The way in which the gender pronouns change is dependent on the scribe’s interpretation of the work. For example, in one of the Greek manuscripts, the scribe changed the pronouns of Euphrosyne when she changed her name and filled the text with messages of transformation, appearance, and change, in order to elicit the idea that “the body may change, but the soul does not.” Kuper discussed that ancient Greek and Latin scholars were very interested in pronouns and gender, which is interesting because it is often thought that age-old ideas about gender were limited to the gender binary that many are pushing against today with the idea that gender is a spectrum. I brought my friend, Jordan Denaver, to the talk and afterwards we discussed how and why Kuper’s work could have an impact on society. We discussed that this kind of examination of ancient works helps to rethink queer identities in ancient times, which could maybe translate to more open ideas about gender, transformation, and breaking rigid binaries that are ingrained in society today.