Curatorial Note: Distinguishing Transgender Female Saints and Transgender Female Monks

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Transgender Female Monks are women who entered male monastic communities by adopting a male identity—often including a male name and lifelong masculine presentation. These figures lived undetected among men, and their biological sex was typically revealed only at death. Their stories foreground the performative and socially embedded dimensions of gender in the monastic context.

This typological distinction is not meant to impose modern categories retroactively, but to offer analytical clarity within the scope of medieval representations of gender variance and sanctity.