St Wilgefortis and Her/Their Beard: The Devotions of Unhappy Wives and Non-Binary People

This image (figure 1) of St Wilgefortis hangs in the abbey Church of St Etienne in Beauvais. We see a bearded saint, dressed in late medieval women’s clothing, with luscious long plaits, curvaceous breasts and a look at once of suffering, relief and compassion. Wilgefortis’ story is dramatic and unforgettable. She was, the legend tells us, a young Christian woman, the daughter of the king of Portugal, and devoted to her faith. But her ambitious father promised her in marriage to the pagan king of Figure 1: St Wilgefortis at the Church of St Etienne in Beauvais, c. 1500 (image: Jean-François Madre, secrétaire de l’Association Beauvais Cathédrale)

Sicily. Wilgefortis was distraught, and prayed all night that God would find a way to release her from this obligation. When she awoke in the morning, she had grown a beard. The pagan king was apparently repulsed by the sight of her and renounced the marriage immediately. But this was not the end of Wilgefortis' trials. Her father, apoplectic with rage at the thwarting of his plans, crucified her.
I have used the pronouns 'she/her' so far to tell Wilgefortis' story, but I will alternate between 'she/her' and 'they/them' as the article progresses. Wilgefortis and her beard did many things, and were meaningful for many different people. As we move between different images of Wilgefortis, we will find some depictions which focus explicitly on her feminine body, superimposing her beard like a piece of armour against an unwanted sexual predator. But we will find others which present a saint who is far more explicitly non-binary, where their masculine and feminine attributes are juxtaposed in ways which are seamless and beautiful. Indeed, beauty as a category of analysis has a lot to tell us about Wilgefortis and why she/they mattered.
In writing about Wilgefortis, I join an increasingly crowded field, and one which is genuinely inspiring in the new directions which are emerging. 3 But in the appeal of this figure is deeply personal. It is entangled, without being autoethnographic. 4 My interest in history has always been twofold: the exploration of distant emotional worlds which nevertheless resonate with my own experiences; and the possibility of using the past to throw critical light on the present. And these two perspectives shape my goals in exploring what Wilgefortis did for medieval people. Wilgefortis was never canonized and was even removed from the official list of saints in 1969. Rather, this saint emerged slowly into popular consciousness in the later Middle Ages, disappeared abruptly in the twentieth century, and is now again reaching new admirers within and beyond the Church. In what ways was this saint meaningful and important, and what light does that shed on our own dilemmas and challenges? 5 Wilgefortis was important in a range of ways to medieval people, including unhappy wives. 6 She was feted in the late Middle Ages as the patron saint of unhappy relationships: women could turn to her for solace and even to pray for physical relief from bullying husbands. As we will discover, there is a frustrating asymmetry between the wealth of surviving images of Wilgefortis, and the dearth of textual sources. The onus is on us to do the imaginative and contextual work necessary to think about how people may have responded to the saint. It is never enough to claim that we lack sources for certain groups: piecing together emotional echoes with wider historical context enables us to recover experiences beyond those of the noisy and powerful. 7 A degree of informed empathy and compassion can help us to take seriously the ways in which some women turned to this saint: supplicants have too often been mocked or dismissed even by the most serious scholars. 8 Historians of emotions have taught us about the cultural constructedness and contingency of emotions. 9 But our own emotional worlds are necessarily entangled with those of our subjects, and we can make a virtue of this. There are emotional logics and experiences which reverberate across time, even whilst their articulation and the particular forms of oppression to which they responded belong to another period. Our own experiences, frustrations and unhappinesses can implicitly shed light on what may seem otherwise like irrational or even frivolous responses by people in the past. Equally, understanding the ways in which those in unhappy relationships turned to Wilgefortis may provide us with insights into what is contingent and what is universal in our own experiences. 10 Among Wilgefortis' other gifts -the ability to offer relief to the dying, support for the sick and so on -is their gender identity. In delightfully clear and nonenigmatic ways, Wilgefortis is a non-binary saint. They provide a celebrated figure of non-binary identity, one which shifts by time, place and depiction, but which does not disrupt gender binaries so much as move beyond them in an inspiringly expansive way. 11 Wilgefortis is a generous figure, unlike their father, and the crucified statue gazing out from the wall of the cathedral at Beauvais speaks at once of pain and suffering, and of relief and settlement in a non-binary state. In other words, Wilgefortis tends not to be depicted as a saint in transition, but a saint whose self is complete. We can speculate, if not prove, that Wilgefortis was a moving and significant figure for non-binary people.
Wilgefortis' beard was important in different ways to the many people who sought solace from her, but the point is more than just an example of multiple significations. The key challenge and insight for our own times that this story provides is about a convergence of interests of the oppressed and unhappy. We can imagine abused or otherwise unhappy wives, and non-binary people, approaching these images together. Wilgefortis offered solace to them all because their challenges were not polarized. Unhappinesses, oppressions, experiences of bullying, are all different, but they overlap. Modern feminism is currently split by discussions about gender identities. 12 It is a challenge particular to the twenty-first century, but Wilgefortis and her/their supplicants suggest another approach. Wilgefortis speaks alike to women in unhappy relationships and to those suffering the effects of gendered prejudices and categories, and suggests that we should speak to each other.
What do saints do for people? They are intercessors, of course. One prays to a saint in the hope that a figure with more immediate experience of human conundrums and suffering will be able better to carry that message to God. 13 Beyond a strictly theological framework, many Christians might hope that the saint would simply get on with the task themselves and answer their prayers. But saints have further roles to play. Their presence is also didactic. They offer narratives of escape from trouble (most often through pain, less often through the growth of a beard) which teach particular Christian pathways. Images of saints, so ubiquitous in religious buildings and manuscripts in the Middle Ages, thus work not just as comfort but as teaching.
And saints were also potentially role models. Imitation of holy figures lay at the heart of late medieval devotion. 14 Thomas a Kempis' famous Imitation of Christ in its fifteenth-century English translation reminded the faithful that: 'Biholde pe queke ensaumples of olde fathers, in pe whiche shone verey perfeccion, and pou shalt see howe litel hit is and allemoste that we do' (Look to the examples of the Church fathers, in whom perfection itself shone; then you will see how little and inadequate are our own actions). In other words, we are not as virtuous as those who came before us, and yet we should continue to strive for virtue and learn from the shortfall. 15 The preacher Jacques de Vitry goes further, pointing out to those seeking to imitate the saintly Marie d'Oignies (d. 1213) that the choices made by saints were not appropriate for all: her actions came from a 'priuilege of grace [so] lat pe discrete reder take hede that priuilege of a fewe makith not a commun lawe' (a privilege of grace, so let the perceptive reader be reminded that the privilege of the few does not make a law for all). 16 Few can have assumed that Wilgefortis' example was one which could be straightforwardly imitated: the beard was surely an unusual solution to an unwanted sexual predator, and the crucifixion was not an element of the story designed to inspire imitation. On the other hand, imitation of Wilgefortis' trust in God and determination to reject the unwanted suitor were perhaps genuinely inspiring in challenging circumstances. And indeed, she/they are a rather more appealing saint to a modern audience precisely because imitation here did not just mean passive acceptance of whatever horrible misogyny and prejudice society might throw at one.
Most surviving evidence for the cult of Wilgefortis is visual: from statues and wall paintings to oil paintings, manuscript illuminations and prints. Such images are sprinkled throughout Europe, clustering particularly in the Iberian peninsula, Flanders and East Anglia in England. 17 The cult was socially capacious. The manuscript images reveal aristocratic interest in the saint: Mary of Burgundy owned a book of hours with a striking image of Wilgefortis. 18 A fifteenth-century wooden statue of Wilgefortis, brought to Wales in the nineteenth century by the collector John Jones, and now in the Storiel museum in Bangor, speaks to a late medieval urban interest in the saint (figure 2). But images such as a sculpture at Langford Church in Oxfordshire (figure 3) or the rood screen at Worstead in Norfolk suggest that the peasant women of the parish also turned to this figure. There is some laconic evidence in English wills which indicates that men too took an interest in the cult. 19 Legal documents give little sense of why people sought out Wilgefortis. To recover the motivations of devotees, in particular unhappy wives and non-binary people, we must turn to more unusual sources. There is very little surviving textual evidence more generally about Wilgefortis, although the English Reformation produced a few comments about this popular saint, and there is an interesting defence-cum-meditation-cum-misogynist screed on the subject by Thomas More. 20 The images were to be engaged with publicly in an ecclesiastical setting, but also to provide personal and private solace in an intimate domestic setting. 21 The story of Wilgefortis, indeed, may have an iconographic origin. Amongst the various theories regarding the origins of the cult, the most promising seems to be that it arose from a misinterpretation of the image of the Holy Face in Lucca. 22 Local worshippers were apparently so puzzled by the feminine-looking dress of the crucified Christ in this image -iconographically, this had a distinctively Byzantine flavour -that the story began to circulate that this was actually a crucified woman. But for our purposes, this is not really the point. The question of where Wilgefortis came from was not relevant for those who turned to her/them for solace or support. The range of ways in which saints worked for people helps us to understand what people saw, and what these images did. 23 As people turned to saints as intercessors, the images were not mere representations, but seemed almost literally to embody their holiness. In other words, one was not simply approaching a visual reminder of the saint; one was in some sense approaching the saint themselves. 24 The Holy Face of Lucca, the statue from which Wilgefortis' cult may have emerged, was often deemed to have miraculous qualities. It was apparently sculpted by Nicodemus, the follower of Jesus, and carried by an angel to Italy in the eighth century. It was a representation, but more than this, it was believed to be imbued with a kind of sacred presence. 25 Many images of Wilgefortis show a fiddler in the bottom corner, and Wilgefortis herself wearing only one shoe: this is a reference to a story whereby the statue loved the fiddler's music so much that she gave him her golden slipper. When he was then accused of having stolen the slipper, the statue miraculously handed him her other one too. In fact, a twelfthcentury legend tells of a jongleur or travelling minstrel who was inspired to play to the Holy Face of Lucca statue and was rewarded with a golden slipper. 26 The confluence of these legends may tell us something about the genealogies of Wilgefortis. More than this, though, the relationship between the stories points to a belief that these statues and images did more than just represent the saint. The slipper also provides a useful reminder that images were often clothed by the faithful, another kind of living, breathing interaction which made these statues far more than passive representations. 27 Most images of Wilgefortis were not in themselves deemed miraculous, nor did people necessarily believe them to be infused with some kind of animated spirituality; but it is nevertheless true that images did something beyond the merely mimetic.
More than this, though, saints were also there to act didactically. We should imagine these images of Wilgefortis drawing the gaze of those who approached them. Famously, according to Pope Gregory the Great, 'pictures are the books of the unlettered': this is not just a comment about non-elite participation, it is a call to read, absorb, and meditate upon images. 28 These were not images designed to be seen out of the corner of one's eye. Some have an explicitly narratological bent, and can be read by viewers to reveal Wilgefortis' story. The fresco in figure 5, for example, depicts in a single scene the miracle of Wilgefortis' beard, their appalling suffering on a cross, and their miraculous saving of the fiddler. Others simply confront the viewer with the single striking image of Wilgefortis on the cross with no further visual clues or information; they demand a more meditative and contemplative approach. It is key, of course, that Wilgefortis was crucified: whether or not viewers were aware that the saint may have originated in misreadings of images of the crucified Christ, the resonances were clear. And images of the crucifixion inspired not only meditation but compassion (at times in a literal sense, with the stigmata of some mystics in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries). 29 All these modes of viewing -the meditative, the dialogic and miraculous, the readerly, the compassionate -need to be at the core of our sense of what Wilgefortis meant to contemporary medieval people.
We will explore some of these images and their qualitative differences in more depth over the course of the article, but for now, suffice it to say that they are all beautiful. I side-step here lengthy debates about the nature of aesthetics in the Middle Ages: quite clearly, these figures have a loveliness which invites an emotional response. This is not a matter of obeying complex rules of aesthetics; rather it is about repeated artistic choices to present a young person who seems complete, at ease with themselves, and with no sense of dissonance or ugliness. None of the images suggests the monstrous or the exotic, but they do convey a powerful sense of holiness. In other words, none of these images attempts to sensationalize Wilgefortis' non-binary body. Instead, who she/they are -no more, no less -arrests the viewer because of their beauty, these striking expressions of suffering and relief, and the peaceful transcendence they seem to offer.
The names of Wilgefortis are informative: they point to a web of associative meanings and comforts offered by the saint. The name Wilgefortis is possibly derived from 'Hilge Vratz', which is the Middle High German for the holy face, pointing to the Lucchese provenance of the Holy Face image. But words take on a range of different associations over time, and these matter for our purposes more than strict etymologies. 30 It is probable that the sounds of the names evoked multiple meanings for worshippers. 31 The sense of 'holy face' is an association which also foregrounds the significance of the saint's story in their face. Worshippers are invited to seek solace and meaning in the face and beard. This is a web of meanings which foregrounds the saint's non-binary status and suggests that their holiness and beauty lies precisely in their transcendence of gender categories. The name Wilgefortis may also be derived from 'Virgo fortis', the strong virgin: the sound certainly evokes this association. In this sense, Wilgefortis offers those who approach her a story of courage and strength, and a model of determination and tenacity: this is a name which foregrounds sexual choice as the core element of her meaning. In England, the saint became known as Uncumber, and was similarly Ontcommer in the Netherlands; in Iberia, the most common appellation was Liberata. All these names put freedom and liberation at the top of the palimpsest of possible meaning the saint could embody for supplicants. 32 This freedom was multi-layered: freedom from all kinds of common human problems, and more pointedly from unwanted sex, from unwanted advances, from unwanted marriages; but also freedom from unwanted labelling and the constraints which that so often produced. Yet conversely, Wilgefortis was also sometimes known as Kummernis: bondage or grief. It is perhaps a useful reminder that as historians we cannot simply make Wilgefortis into what we want them to be. On the one hand, this was a saint who embodied a perhaps upliftingly varied set of medieval responses to gender, sexuality, relationships and women: on the other hand, this was a saint whose story was infused with suffering. The emotional world of Wilgefortis and those who approached her was often one of profound unhappiness.
This article is in two parts. Its diptych structure is in some ways a shame because the very wondrousness of Wilgefortis lies in their uncontainability and their breaking of boundaries. But my aim is to explore the ways in which groups oppressed in different ways might find common ground in their appeals to the saint: so the first part will discuss what Wilgefortis did for unhappily married wives, and the second part what she did for non-binary people.
UNHAPPILY MARRIED WIVES Marriages were often unhappy in the Middle Ages. The occasional story surfaces of a happy and mutually respectful medieval marriage, 33 but this was a profoundly patriarchal and indeed misogynist society, which encouraged oppressive relationships. 34 We also tend to assume that women just had to put up with this (men too, for that matter) . 35 Yet we all know unhappiness to be many-layered and richly textured. Women were not passive: it is not enough just to suppose that women expected to suffer in marriage, and that wives simply accepted their fate.
What do we actually know about unhappy wives? Wilgefortis offered comfort to these women, but we lack detailed texts about their encounters with her. We need to establish a wider context of responses to unhappy marriages so that we can more convincingly explore the saint's role. We do know that not all women simply submitted to misery: patriarchy and misogyny are not so victorious as to produce complete abjection. Sometimes women ran away. As Sara Butler points out, 'Cases of desertion appearing in the ecclesiastical courts are examples of marriages in crisis', and women did not necessarily accept their unhappy circumstances. 36 These women risked destitution, social ostracism and excommunication; after a space of forty days, a sentence of excommunication could be passed coercively to force women back to their husbands and to undertake penitence. 37 In England, for example, one Christine Verner was excommunicated in 1388 by the bishop of Salisbury because she had run away and refused to return to her husband. Sometimes their experiences surface in the records because they actually killed their husbands. The English Statute of Treasons in 1352 rendered husband-killing an act of petty treason. 38 Jurors were intransigent on this point, in contrast with their frequent flexibility regarding other crimes. And yet some desperate women did attack their husbands. 39 Sometimes the experiences of unhappy wives surface because their husbands killed them, or physically abused them so appallingly that these cases of domestic violence reached the courts. As is now widely recognized, domestic 'discipline' was widely encouraged in the Middle Ages, and beatings needed to produce visible and extreme physical pain and injury before any action would be taken. In a few cases, incidents of abuse appear in ecclesiastical registers because a wronged wife sought separation a menso et thoro (divorce was almost never granted, and this form of separation from table and bed was the most that could be hoped for). 40 More often, though, women realized that there was very little legal redress or protection available; so we only hear of such cases when they resulted in death, permanent maiming or miscarriage, and thus caught the attention of the criminal courts. The system of medieval pastoral care spent a good deal of time considering what might distinguish appropriate domestic discipline from unacceptable violence. Despite the enormous amount of ink spilled on the subject by preachers and in confessional manuals and penitentials, little conclusion was reached beyond a sense that beatings should be 'proportionate' and 'moderate'. 41 But studying the ways in which men discussed abuse is not enough. 42 What of the experiences of the women who found themselves beaten and abused? The agonies of confessors trying to decide when they 'reasonably' deserved to be beaten did little to lessen the pain. And what of the women whose abuse was not covered by these kinds of discussions? The women subjected to slaps and kicks? The women whose freedom of action was curtailed and controlled by coercive husbands, even beyond the removal of freedoms by laws of marriage anyway? And what of the women who suffered a barrage of emotional abuse: verbal bullying, contempt, daily unkindnesses which would certainly not have caught the attention of confessors and preachers, let alone the criminal courts? Unhappy marriages come in many forms, as Tolstoy reminded us. 43 So does abuse.
It is of course hard to uncover these experiences, but we can try to listen more attentively. What choices did women have in the face of daily abuse and unkindness? Wilgefortis stood alongside a range of options. The most obvious choice was the 'put up and shut up' model, clearly encouraged in many sources produced by an extremely patriarchal society. Literary and folkloric tropes reiterated this. The story of the patient Griselda, emotionally abused by her husband at length, is a case in point. A young peasant girl, Griselda is plucked from obscurity by a middle-aged nobleman, Gautier/Walter, and chosen because he believes he can mould her to his will. He tests her by undermining every choice she makes, pretending that her children have died, and finally by sending her home because he claims that he wants to take a wife more appropriate to his station. Griselda never complains. She is ultimately 'rewarded' when her husband takes her back, convinced of her patience and submissiveness. The story has folkloric origins, and was famously retold by Boccaccio, then Petrarch, and then by Chaucer. Similar guidance was given by the fictional 'goodman' who wrote a book of advice for his young bride. Whilst he said that husbands should behave righteously, she was nevertheless enjoined to tolerate any unkindnesses submissively and without complaint. 44 Strikingly, in Boccaccio's and Chaucer's renditions of the Griselda story, the comments of the intra-textual characters suggest that medieval audiences were at least troubled by the husband's behaviour. 45 It was not only male authorities telling medieval women to put up with humiliation and hurt. There were also a number of female saints whose own stories of various kinds of marital abuse supposedly provided inspiration and role models. St Monica, the mother of St Augustine, was known to have been married to a cruel and adulterous man. She responded, apparently, with saintly patience until she was finally widowed. 46 Women could pray to St Monica in the hope that she might help them to remain calm and collected, and they could meditate and contemplate her example in the hope of being inspired by her example of patient suffering. But late medieval women could also turn to saints from more recent times: Saints Elizabeth of Hungary and Godelieve of Brabant for example, were both models of submissiveness and acceptance of cruelty and abuse. 47 We may find little of comfort in these women. And there is plenty of evidence that their example failed to inspire all medieval wives either. Women's patterns of responses to oppressive relationships were far more richly textured. Wilgefortis, bearded and crucified, patiently suffered her pain at crucifixion, but passionately sought divine protection from the horror of an unwanted sexual relationship. For medieval women, she became a powerful figure to turn to in marital misery.
Beyond our own imaginative work with the surviving images, and the evocation of the women who contemplated this suffering figure, we have fragmentary textual evidence of what Wilgefortis did for wives. Sir Thomas More in the sixteenth century includes Wilgefortis in the staging of a discussion between an imaginary Protestant 'messenger' and More himself (in a literary incarnation). The messenger chooses Wilgefortis as an example of lamentable medieval superstition. Apparently medieval women would offer her a peck of oats in order to rid them of their unwanted husbands; the messenger describes 'the superstycyous maner and unlefull petycyons/ yf women there offer otys vnto saynt wylgefort/ in trust yt she shall vncomber them of theyr housbondys' (the superstitious and unlawful petitions of women who offer a peck of oats to Saint Wilgefortis in the hope that she will disburden them of their husbands). 48 The lavishly illustrated Wilgefortis of the Burgundy book of hours evokes the noblewomen who could contemplate this model of conjugal resistance, 49 but More's reference to the peck of oats is more socially wide-ranging. Oats were the coarsest and cheapest of cereal crops, often grown on formerly sterile land, affording us a rare glimpse of peasant women who may have hoped for help. The passage reminds us that most women did not just patiently suffer, and murdering or fleeing one's husband was not the only option. Women complained, they longed for redress, they sought practical help and spiritual comfort from a saint. Most importantly, they gave voice to their unhappiness.
More was obviously convinced of the gullibility and amorality of praying for the sudden death of one's husband, but his text was actually written in a bid to defend saints' cults against some of the denigrations of reformers. So the response of More himself to the Protestant 'messenger' figure argues that women were not necessarily hoping for the death of their husbands when praying for 'unencumbering': 'For yt may they by mo wayes than one' (for it may be in more ways than one). He explores the possibility that women may 'be vncombred yf theyr housbondys change theyr comberous condycyouns' (be disburdened if their husbands change their unpleasant ways). He goes on to claim that women may also have been asking that their own nasty ways and vile tongues be cured so as to irritate their husbands less. Without wishing to spend too long unpacking More's views, it is worth noting his sense of the range of prayers women were carrying to Wilgefortis. Even More recognized that extreme marital unhappiness brought not clear-sighted wishes for the annihilation of the husband, but confused frustration and muddled hopes. 50 In other words, his lines indicate an awareness that unhappy wives did not even necessarily know precisely what it was they were asking for. Unhappy relationships often work like that: it is not necessarily the case that a clear solution is in sight and one can work single-mindedly towards it, whether by praying to a wondrous saint, or by other means. Perhaps some women really did offer the oats hoping for a thunderbolt to strike their husbands. 51 But maybe many offered the peck of oats in the hope that Wilgefortis would show them a less dramatic way out, or provide a gentler easing of their suffering.
Wilgefortis can thus remind us that there is plenty of evidence for a range of complex responses to unhappy marriages in the Middle Ages. Even if domestic abuse was largely tolerated by canon and secular law, we know that many women sought redress, or quite simply safety, by running outside their homes and invoking the help and protection of the local community. 52 This provides, of course, a striking contrast with today, when speaking of domestic abuse too often feels shameful and taboo for victims and survivors. 53 If women could turn to their local communities, they did so in the knowledge, or at least hope, that others would find the behaviour of their husbands unacceptable.
Wilgefortis could be sought out by those in unhappy relationships, but more specifically by women who wanted to repel unwanted sexual advances. 54 If women did not want to have sex with their husbands, Wilgefortis was a source of support and solace. Medieval marriage was clearly constructed around the idea of the conjugal debt. This was owed by both men and women in marriage, but put alongside theology and the violence of patriarchy, it could reduce, if not completely nullify, the sexual agency of wives. 55 But women could protest against this, and their appeals to Wilgefortis may provide a powerful insight into the reluctance, distress, and agency of many women in trying to control their sex lives within marriage. In this, Wilgefortis joins a cluster of saints whose hair provided ways to ward off unwanted sexual advances: Saints Catherine of Siena and Margaret of Hungary are said to have prayed for changes to their appearance in order to protect their virginity. 56 Wilgefortis' beard seems to have grown at a period in which body hair was more than ever taking on a range of meanings: Friesen points out the Franciscan context of female hermits keen to demonstrate their abnegation of all worldly things. 57 More pointedly, though, interest was intensifying in saints who had apparently turned away from worldly sexuality to devote themselves to Christ. Mary Magdalene's body was apparently discovered in Vézelay in 1265 with 'an extraordinary abundance of female hair'. 58 Mary Magdalene, like Mary of Egypt (with whom she was often conflated), had apparently turned away from a life of sex work, and images showing her covered in abundant body hair signified this withdrawal from sexuality. 59 It was not a great leap for women to seek in these saints a model not of sexual abnegation per se, but of protection from sex. It is a crucial distinction. Saint Agnes was another figure who apparently became miraculously covered with hair when led into a brothel: this may be read as indicative of her great chastity, but the narrative turn of the story indicates that the hair was protection. 60 In other words, these women provided solace for wives whose husbands demanded sex, and for whom there seemed no way out, just as much as providing inspiration for chastity. 61 Wilgefortis was a figure who, with the miraculous help of God, was able to control access to her own body.
The hope of some of Wilgefortis' devotees to avoid unwanted sex resonates with the hopes of those women who attempted to persuade their husbands to share a vow of spiritual marriage (Margery Kempe is a famous example). 62 This would involve the renunciation of sex for the rest of their lives. The practice was certainly driven by late medieval lay religious devotion, but perhaps also offers insights into the sexual dynamics of late medieval marriage. In one powerful play, produced by the Parisian guild of goldsmiths in 1368, a woman convinces her husband to undertake a vow of spiritual marriage with her. 63 When he breaks the vow, it becomes clear to the audience (medieval and modern) why she was so keen on marital chastity in the first place: he is an ingratiating bully. Indeed, the play presents classic features of the behaviour of emotional and controlling narcissists. One moment, the husband claims that he is happy to share this vow because he loves his wife and respects her views (ll. 138-9). The next day, he rapes her: she cries out, so the audience can hear that she does not consent -this is not willing. She is in such a state of distress that she vows the child to the devil: Vous estes uns homs sanz raison Quant ensi estes eschaufez Et je donneray aus maufez Le fruit, se de vos je conçoy (ll.186-9) (You are a man without reason, when you're heated up like this: if I conceive your child, I will give him to the devil) Immediately after, her husband is contrite and obsequiously loving: he will now do penitence 'pour vostre amour' (l. 222 -'out of love for you'), one minute earlier having shouted 'Il le vous conviendra souffrir/[. . .] vueillez ou non' (ll. 176, 185 -'you just have to put up with it [sex], whether you like it or not'). 64 The emotional vacillations of the man disempower the woman not only sexually, but emotionally too: the audience sees the attempts to manipulate and control.
More comic treatments abound in late medieval literature. Chaucer's wife of Bath has had multiple husbands, all of whom she has despised and effectively set aside. She is obviously a figure of fun created by a man; but she is also a hugely powerful figure, and one who is so immediately likeable that we must assume medieval audiences had a more flexible sense of right and wrong within marriage than a narrowly misogynist imperative for female submission to suffering. 65 The late thirteenth-century fabliaux material from which Chaucer drew so much of his inspiration is full of stories of unpleasant husbands who receive their come-uppance. The story of the bourgeoise d'Orléans tells of a nasty bully of a husband, whose jealous attitude towards his lovely wife meets with its just deserts when she not only cheats on him, but sets up the play so that her servants believe the husband to be the importunate lover and set upon him with clubs and sticks, eventually chucking him on the dung heap where he apparently belongs. 66 The entire conceit of the fabliau rests on a sense that this bully deserves no sympathy. The dynamics become explicitly intersectional in another fabliau, the story of Bérengier au long cul. In this, an impoverished young noblewoman is obliged to marry a wealthy town upstart in order to save her family's fortunes. 67 He knows well his own inferiority: it is clear to the audience that it is his own insecurities which lead him to beat and abuse his wife. She gets her revenge by dressing as a man, going in this disguise to meet the husband in the wood, and reducing him to a quivering wreck who drops his sword. His punishment is to kiss her bottom, though he is so stupid that he has little idea of what he is kissing, and just wonders at the 'long cul' of this valiant young knight. No one laughed about Wilgefortis; Bérengier au long cul, on the other hand, was certainly intended to inspire a chuckle. But both stories suggest a world in which women and wives could step beyond the submissiveness expected of their gender, and stand up for themselves. The powerful presence of Wilgefortis and her beard, standing in churches, in manuscripts, and on buildings, offered a striking visual reminder that life is not just about suffering and that women are more than what is done to them.

NON-BINARY PEOPLE
Unhappily married wives were perhaps not the only ones to turn to images of Wilgefortis with hope. Wilgefortis embodied a range of gendered identities, and may have been a resonant and meaningful figure for non-binary people. In this section, I continue with my approach of reconstructing enough context to imagine the ways in which people approached Wilgefortis and found them meaningful. We have no written evidence to substantiate this, but why would we? The images present a figure of striking beauty and serenity, with non-binary characteristics which are neither hidden nor drawn attention to.
Thinking about viewing practices is always to some extent a work of imaginative reconstruction: viewers' expectations shaped, and were shaped by, wider structures as well as their own subjectivities. 68 We now know enough of non-binary experience in the Middle Ages to realize that this was a society with a textured sense of gender, even whilst imbued with deep prejudice. Leah DeVun in particular has explored the prolific number of representations of non-binary people in this period: they intertwine this with what we know of the actual experiences of those who did not identify with binary gender categories. 69 They have thought carefully about how these representations were meaningful for individuals. The expectations of non-binary viewers of images of Wilgefortis were complex. There seems to have been a wider tendency to associate non-binary characteristics ever more explicitly with a monstrous 'other' in so-called learned texts at least. 70 People were confronted by frequent othering and cruel caricature. But they also knew that they lived in a society which was in fact aware that gender is not binary. So Wilgefortis stood before people who knew only too well the violence of caricature and abuse, but who also knew that their experiences were acknowledged. In turn, viewers themselves shaped attitudes to Wilgefortis, and contributed to a sense that this was a saint whose identity was to be cherished. Wilgefortis would have been at once expected, and comfortingly noteworthy in the lack of sensationalization in their portrayal. This is Wilgefortis as depicted by Hieronymus Bosch (figure 4). She has here just the faintest hint of a beard. Her breasts are clearly visible, her shape explicitly feminine. There are various implications. First, Wilgefortis' beard engages both male and female characteristics at the same time. This challenge to gender binaries was deeply resonant with people's relationship with Christ himself. Wilgefortis' presence indicated that everyone, of whatever gender, had a place in the spiritual body. Despite the misogynist structures of medieval society, it is not true that male spirituality was always deemed more Christlike, and the female inferior in all ways. 71 Late medieval worship of Christ complicated the relationship between male and female spirituality, as Caroline Walker Bynum in particular has shown. The feminine attributes of Christ were played upon in a range of contexts. Some of this remained centred on gender, with Christ's role as a mother increasingly discussed and foregrounded. 72 It was also about sexuality. For example, the very striking late medieval obsession with Christ's wounds often depicted the wound in his side very deliberately like a vulva. 73 This is important because it reminded people of all genders that Christ's suffering encompassed their experience too. On the other hand, everyone certainly often expected to engage with the more masculine attributes of Christ -and Wilgefortis' beard indicates the inclusiveness of the 'imitation of Christ' in this way too. Catherine of Siena, the mid-fourteenth century saint, also apparently had a vision of herself with a beard, signifying her miraculous closeness to Christ. 74 So, in this first sense, Wilgefortis' beard engaged with a set of religious practices which explicitly evoked both masculine and feminine attributes in Christ and included men, women and non-binary people in the body of Christ. In some images, though, it is Wilgefortis' transcendence of gender which is most explicitly foregrounded. Hans Memling's Wilgefortis (together with Mary of Egypt) is a fifteenth-century diptych from an altarpiece ( figure 6). 75 This particular image was produced on the occasion of Adriaan Reins's reception as a brother of St John's Hospital in Bruges in 1479. Wilgefortis was perhaps an appealing choice because of the care they offered to their supplicants. Altarpieces served a dual function: they centred attention on the Eucharist and were intimately bound up in the experience of communion, but they were also loci for encouraging devotion to saints. On feast days, many altarpieces were opened up. 76 But not all altarpieces were great public displays: many were installed on and over altars in chapels served by chantry priests, and were representative of the growing personalization of devotional observance. Memling's Wilgefortis would have been viewed primarily by the brothers and sisters of St John's hospital. In this liturgical, but rather personal setting, the image could be seen, lingered over, and contemplated. 77 The images on altarpieces were to provoke sustained reflection themselves, and from there to move the soul 'to imaginative concentration on the objects of devotion'. 78 And this Wilgefortis was a figure to contemplate beyond any sense of male or female. Memling shows a figure here who very strikingly eclipses and transcends categorization. Their faint beard and stern expression invite us to think about how those with trans identities and the gender-queer might have found a figure in whom they could find solace, role modelling, and intercession. Memling has not simply painted a woman with a beard; he has produced an image which points to a society in which the expansiveness of gendered identities was acknowledged and encompassed. Similarly, in the fifteenth-century fresco of Wilgefortis at Ravensburg (figure 5) there are no explicitly female or male attributes. A serene figure looks down kindly and gently on the fiddler playing at their feet. The viewer feels embraced by the kindness of their expression and the loveliness of the image: the saint wears a rather shapeless garment. Medieval gender roles were clearly deeply patriarchal -but at the same time, these images point to the possibility of stepping outside or transcending them. There is, of course, a wider context of non-binary saints, who have attracted a good deal of attention in recent years. 79 Most examples are late antique, and most concern women who became male at some point in their lives, sometimes being 'uncovered' later in their story. As Roland Betancourt and Leah DeVun have powerfully pointed out, such figures demonstrate that non-binary identities and experiences were present, articulated, and in many cases profoundly valued in the Middle Ages. They have also shown that while images and narratives varied in emphasis, often it was the moment of transition which attracted particular iconographic attention. 80 Wilgefortis is rather different, then, in that here is a saint whose story, or whose passage through time, was iconographically and even narratively less important than their apotheosis as a non-binary figure. No image of Wilgefortis shows a moment of transition, either growing the beard, or some putative removal of the beard. All the images, whether those that emphasize breasts, or those that remove any gender signifiers beyond the beard, present a figure who is emphatically non-binary and who just is. In many ways, it is the 'just is' of these images which is particularly moving. No figures stand pointing at the beard. There is no sense of disharmony between the beard and the rest of the person. All is proportionate, all is portrayed as natural. 81 In this sense, Wilgefortis must have been, and remains, a powerful figure of non-binary identity.

CONVERGENCE OF INTERESTS
I would like to finish by turning to two images of Wilgefortis closer to my own conceptual and geographical home. The first is now to be found on the east side of the porch into Langford Church in the Cotswolds (figure 3). It is an extraordinary church, with a vast nave and chancel of barnlike proportions and airiness. The statue on the outside seems to have been moved during the nineteenth century to its present location. It is probably of eleventh-century origin, and to our eyes quite clearly shows a crucified Christ, now headless. But Ilse Friesen suggests that in the Middle Ages, this figure was re-interpreted as Wilgefortis. 82 Perhaps the voluminous garments produced the association. Perhaps it was just that Wilgefortis was needed in the parish, and this statue fitted the bill.
In any case, the figure presented here has no particularly female attributes, nor any particularly male attributes beyond the beard. It is an austere figure, and one which we might describe as genuinely genderless in its presentation. If the local people of Langford turned to this statue in the late Middle Ages, it seems quite plausible to imagine that this was a figure who could sustain both unhappily married wives and non-binary people. The very austerity of the figure, its severe lines, its refusal to fit into any categories, render it one quite literally for everyone. The women who brought their pecks of oats, weeping internally from the daily miseries of their unhappy marriages, the non-binary people who would have found an image which transcended the narrow categories of gender which made daily life difficult: this Wilgefortis spoke to them all. I do not imagine that anyone now is about to offer Wilgefortis a peck of oats: I am not about to do so. But the convergence of interests that she/they imply between women needing to defend and proactively assert their own identities and selfhood in the face of bullying and harassment; and between non-binary people, is surely a powerful message for our time. Perhaps the most famous image of Wilgefortis is to be found in Westminster Abbey (figure 7), much to the chagrin of the sixteenth-century reformers. In this depiction, Wilgefortis' beard is carefully shaped but luxuriant. But their female attributes are also clear. This is a Wilgefortis intent on study, holding a book in her/their hand, and perhaps inviting the viewer to be similarly contemplative.
What strikes me most about the image is its seriousness, its serenity, its beauty. There are some deeply problematic comments about Wilgefortis in some of the scholarly literature -not least the frequent use of the word 'ugly'. To be fair, these scholars are echoing many of the textual versions of the story: Wilgefortis apparently asks Christ to 'to take all beauty from her in order to Wilgefortis is not ugly. 84 If the beard warded off her suitor, it was not because it made her ugly -the images show her still more beautiful. The beard was protection, it was queer identity, it was identification with the complex gendering of Christ. And late medieval religion had space for such beauty.
NOTES AND REFERENCES 1 I would like to thank the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust, both of whom have enabled periods of research leave during which I have encountered and thought about Wilgefortis. Especial thanks go to Lyndal Roper, Robert Gildea and Malcolm Vale for wonderfully generousspirited and insightful comments.
2 The sources are gathered in Acta Sanctorum: a common medieval prayer, a hymn from a 1533 prayerbook, and two narratives, one dated to a 1466 Latin manuscript: 'De S. Liberata Alias Wilgeforte, Virgine et Martyre', Acta Sanctorum, 20 July, vol. 5, 1727, pp. 50-70. This is a critical compilation of documents about saints, begun by the Jesuit scholar Heribert Rosweyde in the seventeenth century and continued to this day by the Bollandist association. 6 We should bear in mind the reminder by Richard Marks that Wilgefortis clearly appealed also to a wide range of men from across the social spectrum; 'The Dean and the Transexual', pp. 349-63. Lewis Wallace argues that 'It is perhaps less her "androgyny" and more the symbolic adaptability inherent to her gender crossings that made Wilgefortis's cult so popular with both men and women'; 'Bearded Woman', p. 53.
7 Although the subject matter is far removed, the approaches pioneered by Saidiya Hartman are both inspiring and instructive: 'Venus in Two Acts', Small Axe, 26: 12/2, June 2008.
8 Ilse Friesen declares that the unhappy women turning to Wilgefortis with their offerings indicate that 'once superstition, occult practices and psychological abuse had distorted and replaced former sources of spiritual support, the established medieval tradition with regard to St Uncumber was doomed to become obsolete'. I disagree -these women deserve to be listened to, and to have their pleas taken seriously; Friesen, Wilgefortis, p. 62.
9 See in particular Barbara Rosenwein, Generations of Feeling, 600-1700, Cambridge, 2015. 10 Erin Maglaque has described the process of excavating medieval emotions as potentially a form of therapy: 'Promises, Promises' (review of Barbara Rosenwein, Love: a History in Five Fantasies), London Review of Books, 44: 8, April 2022. 11 See Leah de Vun, The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance, Columbia, 2020.
12 It has also been noted in strong terms that the vehemence and divisiveness of this debate can actually play into the hands of the patriarchy: 'A mutant alliance of conservative radicals and biologically-determinist feminist separatists are out to insist that the greatest threat to women is not the intimate partner violence of fact, but the swim-champ trans women of fiction [. . .] "Woman" is a