Modern science has sought to define hermaphroditism in terms of genetic inheritance, as a rare anomaly in which gonads for both sexes are present in an individual possessing both the male XY and the female XX chromosomal pairs, and who may display external genitalia with the traits of both sexes. The relatively more frequent pseudo-hermaphroditism usually refers to gonadal dysgenesis, i.e., a partial, defective, or abnormal formation of the genitalia.
Hermaphroditism is often discussed in medieval texts in both theoretical and practical contexts by alchemists,Footnote 1 canonists, theologians, and natural philosophers. Despite its rarity, medieval authors perceived hermaphroditism to be widely observed. The early thirteenth-century Bishop Jacques de Vitry remarks that “Some hermaphrodites, that is having both sexes, were seen by many in parts of France,”Footnote 2 a remark that was repeated during the thirteenth century by his disciple Thomas of Cantimpré,Footnote 3 by Ps-John Folsham, and by Vincent of Beauvais.Footnote 4
Medieval discussions of hermaphroditism have interested scholars in gender studies for their relevance to contemporary discussions of intersexuality, and they have interested scholars struggling to map a cultural history of disability. Among the latter Irina Metzler, for example, has argued that in medieval society hermaphrodites could be considered permanently “impaired” or “disabled” because it was generally thought that they were unable to procreate.Footnote 5
Here I intend to examine Albert the Great's natural-philosophical treatment of hermaphroditism. Albert (d. 1280) is one of the most distinguished medieval naturalists. He is the only scholastic to comment upon the entirety of the Aristotelian philosophical corpus, and the only one known during his own lifetime as “the Great.”Footnote 6 His massive commentary upon Aristotle's biological works — De animalibus — became not only an authority for natural philosophers but also a textbook for later medieval and early modern medical education.Footnote 7 As such, his discussion of hermaphroditism — infused with Aristotelian philosophical notions — provides an important touchstone for most later medieval treatments.
Hermaphrodites for Medieval Theology and Scientific Taxonomy
As for the Androgyni, or Hermaphrodites, as they are called, though they are rare, yet from time to time there appears a person in whom each sex appears, so that it remains uncertain from which sex they ought to take their name; it is customary, nevertheless, to give them a masculine name, as the one more worthy.Footnote 8 (Augustine, De civitate dei 16.8.2)
For medieval authors, hermaphroditism represented a problem for scientific taxonomy as well as a problem for theology and law. A theological difficulty appeared already at baptism: should a hermaphrodite be baptized as a male, or a female? The late medieval natural-philosophical pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata varia anatomica — otherwise known by its incipit Omnes homines (which bore little connection to the larger pseudo-Aristotelian Problemata, Footnote 9 other than the name) — cites Albert the Great as an authority about thirty times. The text epitomizes the scholastic medieval discussion on hermaphrodites and applies Albert's scientific view of hermaphroditism to address some practical social and theological concerns that Albert himself did not address. The Problemata varia anatomica endorses Augustine's view above but adds a philosophical justification based on the Aristotelian understanding of agency. Thus, it responds to the question,
whether [a hermaphrodite] ought to be baptized with the name of a man or a woman? One may reply that with the name of a man, because names are imposed by convention [ad placitum] and the naming ought to be made according to the more worthy, because a man is more worthy than a woman by virtue of the fact that an agent is more distinguished than one that undergoes its act, as is clear from the third book of On the Soul.Footnote 10
After baptism problems remained since determinations of sex entailed a legal condition with diverse implications for marriage, inheritance, and rank. Could the hermaphrodite marry as a man, or a woman? The medieval church would authorize marriage for a hermaphrodite, but only after sexual, legal, and social identity was determined according to the hermaphrodite's dominant sex.Footnote 11 The dominant or principal sex will typically be decided by the hermaphrodite's sexual development and consequent ability for a male or female role in intercourse, and therefore in accord with the Problemata’s notion of agency.Footnote 12 The Problemata varia anatomica contends that determination of the dominant sex can be established by an inspection of the size of the respective genitalia and by a determination of which “has the power for the sex act”:
One asks whether such a one [a hermaphrodite] should be viewed as a man or a woman? One should reply that in that individual the size of the one member must be considered against the size of the other member, and consideration should be given to which member has the power for the sex act, and if it is the male [member], then it is a man, and if it is the other, then it is a woman.Footnote 13
Despite the subject having both male and female genitalia, once having made a determination as to whether the male or female was dominant, medieval law required a stable gender identity. According to a commentary to Ps-Albert the Great's De secretis mulierum, composed perhaps toward the end of the thirteenth century presumably by one of Albert's disciples, “if a hermaphrodite appears to be closer to a male, he will live as a male, and if closer to a woman, he will live the life of a woman. He will not be able to participate in both sexes because it is against the law.”Footnote 14 This determination had additional consequences under the law: whether the hermaphrodite inclines toward the male or the female will determine how s/he will be received in court and will determine whether s/he may give testimony. The Problemata concludes:
One may reply according to the rule of law that he ought to swear before he is admitted to judgment which member he can use and according to this he ought to be admitted according to the use and power of such a member, and if both members are used then according to the catholic he is unclean [according to holy mother church he ought not to be tolerated].Footnote 15
Just as a determination of sex had implications for baptism, marriage, and participation in the courts, so too it had implications for one's role in the life of the church. Could the hermaphrodite be ordained to become a member of the clergy? The Problemata asks “whether [the hermaphrodite] can assume sacred orders” and replies that “One should respond according to what has already been said.”Footnote 16 That is, one should reply in accord with the text considering whether a hermaphrodite can testify in a court of law. If the hermaphrodite is received as “male” by the court, then it seems that the “male” hermaphrodite may enter sacred orders.Footnote 17
Although medieval natural philosophers acknowledged the significance of the legal and theological difficulties alluded to above, for the natural philosopher, however, other questions were foregrounded. The hermaphrodite seemed to violate the strict dichotomy of male and female and introduced an unwelcome ambiguity to the natural order. Avicenna's (d. 1037) influential Canon of Medicine identifies three different types of hermaphrodites based on the visual appearance of the genitalia:
For one who is a hermaphrodite possesses neither the virile member nor the feminine member. And among them there are those who have both the one and the other, but one of them is more hidden and feeble, and the other is the opposite; and sperm descends from one of them but not the other. And among them, there are those who have both [members] equal [in size] and it has been reported to me that there are among them those who are active and passive, but this is scarcely verified.Footnote 18
According to Avicenna, then, hermaphrodites may have neither sexual organ or both. When they have both, one is usually visible or dominant, and the other more hidden and weaker. Others have genitalia equal in size and although it has been said that there are those who are can adopt both active and passive roles during coition, he is unable to confirm this. Seemingly transgressing a clear binary classification of male and female, however, “hermaphrodites inhabit geographies of ambiguity.”Footnote 19 When attempting to provide an appropriate taxonomy for hermaphrodites, two positions emerge among medieval Latin writers: hermaphrodites may be treated as intersex individuals constituting a “third sex” that is both (or neither) male and female;Footnote 20 or, especially following the thirteenth-century introduction of biological works by Aristotle, for whom there can exist no complete or perfect being between a male and a female, the hermaphrodite will appear as an imperfect, monstrous, or defective individual of the species.
Since Aristotelian tradition treats the hermaphrodite as imperfect or “monstrous,” it raises a question of the hermaphrodite's relationship to the natural order. Albert frequently cites Aristotle's dicta that “nature does nothing in vain, nor is it lacking things necessary to it”Footnote 21 and “nature does not leave out what is necessary nor does it abound in what is superfluous.”Footnote 22 It became axiomatic for scholastic thinkers that everything in nature has a purpose; therefore, it was essential to specify the hermaphrodite's place in the order of nature. In fact, for the Problemata varia anatomica, nature preserves this truth when she does not create a hermaphrodite with two male or two female genital organs; should she do so, then nature would do something in vain.Footnote 23 Although axiomatic, then, that hermaphrodites must have some natural purpose, still that purpose remained obscure. As Joan Cadden remarks in her study of Petrus of Abano's commentary on Ps-Aristotle's Problemata, “[hermaphrodites were] a widely recognized natural category with specific physical causes but no identifiable natural purpose.”Footnote 24 Despite having natural physical causes, they appeared to fall outside nature's primary intention as monstrous creations or “errors” [peccata] and were grouped with other “monstrous” natural products, such as conjoined twins.Footnote 25 In Albert's commentary on Aristotle's Physics, such individual “errors” or “flaws” represent the surest proof that nature is directed to a final cause or end, just as an artist's failed work attests to the goal the artist had hoped to achieve. And art, Albert reminds us, imitates nature.Footnote 26 Therefore, even though one may not be able to identify a specific natural purpose behind hermaphrodites, still qua “errors” they serve to demonstrate nonetheless that nature always acts for the sake of an end.
Nature's Primary and Secondary Intention
Albert the Great examines the natural causes that produce hermaphrodites and considers their relationship to the goal or purpose of nature. In his Quaestiones super de animalibus, Conrad of Austria's reportatio on a series of disputed questions that Albert the Great addressed in Cologne ca. 1258, Albert responds to the question, “whether the generation of one that shares each sex — like the hermaphrodite — is natural.” Albert explains that nature is guided by a first and second intention:
It belongs to nature's first intention to produce the best that it can. But it belongs to the second intention that, if it departs from the best, it produces one that it is nearest to it. This is why, when the natural power is strong, it produces a male. When, however, the production of a male is impeded by the recalcitrance of the matter — if the dispositions of the matter surpass or simply overpower — then it produces one like the one from which the matter is derived, so that it produces a female. However, if the power partially prevails and is partially overcome, to the extent that the power prevails it produces members suited to a male, and to the extent that it is overcome it produces members suited to a female. Nevertheless, this does not occur without a superfluity of matter, for otherwise it would not produce a penis and a womb in the same fetus. Thus, if we consider nature's first intention the production of a fetus such as this is unnatural; however, if we consider nature's second intention, this production is natural because it proceeds from a natural cause.Footnote 27
In this text Albert introduces a theme that appears throughout his philosophical corpus: that nature sometimes fails to achieve its principal aim or first intention; when this occurs, it produces the next best that it can. If nature always achieved its primary intention, she would produce only males. In the text above, this failure of the masculine power is attributed to the recalcitrance of matter, resulting in a female. In other texts, it becomes evident that it is not only the recalcitrance of matter at work, but also other causes — including heavenly, astrological causes — that may impede or weaken the male's formative power or negatively affect the womb's environment. Thus, Albert recognizes that “certain stars impede the formation of a human being, regardless of how effective and well disposed the semen and the womb may be for conceiving, as there are some stars in the sign of Aries that bring about monstrous births … and some births of such monsters have occurred among us and have come to our attention.”Footnote 28 In his commentary on the Sentences, Albert remarks that he has proved that the position of the stars can influence begetting by an experiment: he interrogated “two honest and good matrons” [ego probavi experimento hoc in duabus matronis probis et bonis] who gave birth to monsters, having both conceived when the sun was in the same position in the heavens.Footnote 29 Although most “monsters” for Albert share the species nature with the parents and only depart from the parents in appearance, others — especially those that have been produced under the influence of certain astrological causes — have so violently departed from their parents’ nature that they only share the nature of the genus and not the species; thus, “a human birth might have the head of a ram or a bull, as is said of the Minotaur in the tales of the poets.”Footnote 30
In monsters that continue to share the species nature of the parents, they will depart from the parents’ appearance principally in terms of the “excess, lack, position, or shape of the members.”Footnote 31 When the male's formative power is only partly overcome by recalcitrant “female” matter, moreover, and when there exists an overabundance or superfluity of matter, nature may produce both male and female members in the same individual, resulting in “a penis and a womb in the same fetus,” i.e., a hermaphrodite. Since the hermaphrodite departs from the primary intention of nature Albert identifies hermaphrodites as “monsters” [monstra]: “for various reasons, male and female can occur in the same one owing to a flaw in nature, as is evident among hermaphrodites, who have each member. But this is a monster in nature.”Footnote 32 Without an overabundance of matter redundant genitalia will not arise, but equally a weakness with respect to the male seminal formative power seems necessary to explain the simultaneous presence of female and male genitals. For Albert, then, “the primary source of monstrosity is rooted in matter, and the secondary source of monstrosity comes from the efficient cause.”Footnote 33 Thus, “a monster's first flaw stems from matter, but because matter does not lead itself into act, but is led into act by an agent, … for this reason the agent is therefore the secondary cause of the monstrosity.”Footnote 34 Therefore a flaw in both the matter and the agent produces a hermaphrodite, which, although natural, departs from nature's “first intention.”
The Female as an Imperfect Male
The notion that nature creates a flawed product when it achieves only its second intention is best illustrated through the Aristotelian contention that a female is a “flawed male,”Footnote 35 a notion that medieval Latin theologians and natural philosophers sought to explain. In the first half of the thirteenth century, Ps-John Folsham's Liber de naturis rerum identified the female's colder humoral complexion and physical weakness as her principal shortcomings.Footnote 36 Most natural philosophers will locate her “weakness,” however, in her subordinate or passive role in generation. The early thirteenth-century David of Dinant (d. ca. 1217) explains, citing Aristotle's De generatione animalium, that only the male emits sperm; the female only provides the material (that is, the menstrual blood) for the formation of the embryo. For this reason, Aristotle describes the female as an imperfect male.Footnote 37 The male sperm provides not only form to a fetus, but also is its principle of motion. Johannes de Fonte, a late thirteenth-century Franciscan who compiled a scholastic florilegium of Aristotelian texts, notes:
By definition, a male is one who can generate in another; a female is one who can generate in herself or rather who generates from another. A man provides the principle of motion and form to the one generated but a female provides the body and matter. … The animal body exists from the female; the soul [exists] from the male. The soul is the substance and substantial form of the body. A female is a flawed male.Footnote 38
As a “flawed” or imperfect male, women fall short of the species perfection located in the male: they provide the passive matter necessary for procreation whereas the male provides the active and formal principle. Females result from accidental causes in generation; for Aristotle, in at least this trival sense, females too are regarded as monstrous.Footnote 39 Albert the Great had noted as early as his commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences (which he began in Paris in 1243 and completed in 1249) that Aristotle had proved in his De animalibus that “specific nature never intends a woman, but that a female is rather a flawed male.”Footnote 40 Similarly, in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics, likely completed in Cologne a little before 1250, Albert contrasts the aims of universal and specific nature by considering
a female, which particular nature never intends to make, but is caused from the corruption of some natural principles, because nature intends a perfect work, which is the male, and this is why Aristotle says that “a female is a flawed male” just like a crooked tibia [is flawed]. Nonetheless, the female does not exist outside the natural course of universal nature, which is the cause of order in inferior things and moves by generating a female, so that she will be an aid to the man for generation, seeing that were she not necessary for generation, nature never would produce a female, but the nature of the human would be preserved and would be complete in the male.Footnote 41
Were nature always to achieve its primary intention it would produce only males; nonetheless, the female is produced in accord with nature's secondary intention and, indeed, is essential to it. Albert expanded significantly in his Cologne lectures, the Quaestiones super de animalibus:
Nature is of two types: universal and specific [natura particularis]. Universal nature intends to conserve the entire universe and its parts, and because species are parts of the universal [partes universi] and not individuals, this is why universal nature intends principally to conserve the species. But a species of animals cannot be conserved without the generation of individuals, and a female as well as a male are required for this generation. This is why universal nature intends the female as that without which the species cannot be preserved. However, specific nature intends to produce something like itself, and because the power of the male is the agent for the generation of the animal and not the power of the female, this is why the specific agent [agens particulare] principally intends to produce a male. If, nevertheless, there is a defect in terms of the material or the heat, which it uses like an instrument, and it cannot generate suitably according to its intent, then it intends what it can produce, and thus a specific nature principally intends a male, but nonetheless it intends a female secondarily and in a flawed way [occasionaliter].Footnote 42
Albert the Great seems to have led Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274), his most celebrated student, to adopt a similar position both in his Sentences commentaryFootnote 43 and in the later De veritate. Footnote 44 Despite the “flawed” or imperfect nature of the female, she has an essential purpose and is necessary for the generation of individuals and, thereby, for perpetuation of the species, at least in our present condition.Footnote 45 For Albert certainly a female is produced not only when suitable material is not present to produce a male, but also when the male's complexional heat is inadequate to overcome the female's complexional coldness. Albert elaborates further on the role of complexional heat and cold in the determination of sex differences:
It happens that sperm undergoes some degree of undigestion in the manner mentioned previously and it then generates a female. If it does not suffer it, it produces a male. … For this reason a female is a male that has suffered a flaw. For, as has been well shown in previous parts of this investigation, male's sperm, which is formative and factive for a fetation, always aims to make one like itself, always to produce a male unless it is hindered by some flaw which corrupts the instrument with which it works, and this flaw is heat. Or it may be hindered by the intractableness of the material which it forms and makes, this being the humor. When either or both of these suffers molinsis Footnote 46 in the area of the genitals, it forms a female lest the work of nature be rendered totally useless. Although she does not generate as such, she is still a helper to the male and necessary for the purpose of generation just as the passive is necessary for the active and just as material underlies works of art. This is why too we have said in the Physics that the material desires form as does the female the male and the ugly the beautiful.Footnote 47
Even though in his commentary on De animalibus Albert acknowledged the existence of a humor that may be designated “female sperm” [sperma muliebre], at the same time he modifed the “Galenic” doctrine on a woman's “sperm” and rejected a direct agency or causal role for it in the generation of a female:
If someone should object, saying that the cause of masculinity is the man's sperm and the cause of femininity is the woman's sperm, we would say that this is entirely false. For the proper cause of masculinity is the sperm's heat and that of femininity is her complexional coldness. Yet, while this is the true cause of masculinity, nevertheless many things work together toward this cause. … Thus the cause of masculinity and femininity is almost always varied and it rarely has a simple cause. And when the causes that come together for the formation of the groin areas are equal, a hermaphrodite is formed.Footnote 48
The male sperm's complexional heat is the principal cause determining sexual differentiation, although a variety of factors may interfere with nature's primary intention (viz., the production of a male). Among these are when the male sperm is ejaculated in various spurts, with some entering the hotter right side of the womb and some entering the left. Also, when a woman lies on her left side after intercourse this may produce daughters rather than sons. Although “the whole and true cause is the heat of the sperm, … [there are] other causes which lie in the material of the woman or in the location of the womb.”Footnote 49 The relative heat of the male's sperm, the tempering cold that represents the recalcitrance of the matter (the menstrual blood), and matter's abundance also play some role. A combination of causes may tip the scales one way or the other, toward a male or toward a female, but “when the causes … are equal, a hermaphrodite is formed.” Thus, three possibilities arise: the male power is dominant and will produce a male; the male's weakness allows the female, material cause to dominate in order to produce a female; and, the male and female apply equal influence to produce a hermaphrodite. What is the hermaphrodite's relationship, however, to nature's intention? Is it a product of nature's secondary intention, like every female, or does it somehow fall outside of this scheme altogether? An answer to this question may arise in part from a consideration of resurrected bodies.
Male Perfection and the Fate of Defective Bodies at the Resurrection
In the patristic era, some biblical theologians had averred that because females fall short of the species perfection, women will not be resurrected qua women but rather as men.Footnote 50 By the thirteenth century it was not only the biblical text, however, that raised doubts about the resurrection of women but also Aristotle's authority, which Thomas Aquinas invokes when he responds to those who contend that,
What is produced incidentally and contrary to the intention of nature will not rise again. Because at the resurrection every error will be removed. But the womanly sex was produced beyond the intention of nature, from a defect in the formative power in the semen, which cannot produce matter for the fetus for virile perfection. Thus the Philosopher says in the sixteenth book of On Animals that the female is a flawed male. Therefore the womanly sex will not rise again.Footnote 51
Although Thomas cites Augustine to establish that women will be resurrected in female bodies, the contention that women will only enter heaven or paradise in male bodies persisted, nonetheless — not least among medieval heretics. According to the early fourteenth-century inquisitional record of Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers, the Cathar heretic Guillelmus Belibasta preached that women will not enter the glory of paradise as women, but rather their souls will first enter into the bodies of men.Footnote 52
Despite assurances that women will be resurrected in their own bodies, their resurrected bodies will no longer be adapted to sexual intercourse and procreation;Footnote 53 women's bodies will be “repaired” at the resurrection. Albert the Great endorses this view as well,Footnote 54 perhaps because all of nature yearns to be masculine and to express the male's power of agency, just as matter desires form:
Every imperfect thing naturally desires to be perfected, and a woman is an imperfect human [homo imperfectus] in comparison to the man, and this is why every woman desires to exist under [the category of] manhood [virilitas]. For there is no woman who would not wish to put off the basis of her femininity [femineitas] and naturally to put on manhood. And in this same way matter desires to put on form.Footnote 55
Consequently, adds Albert the Great, when an angel assumes bodily form it will naturally choose a male rather than a female body because of the male's greater perfection;Footnote 56 for the same reason at the Incarnation God chose to assume a male's body.Footnote 57
While failing to mention hermaphrodites specifically with respect to the resurrected body, Albert the Great asserts that “the general resurrection will correct two things in nature, namely error and defect — error in the members’ deformity [in monstruositate membrorum], defect in a body's diminished stature.”Footnote 58 Such bodily “repairs” will even occur in the bodies of the damned.
Although women will be resurrected qua women, it seems that there will be no hermaphroditic bodies following the resurrection just as, according to many thirteenth-century theologians, had Adam not sinned nature would never have produced hermaphrodites in the first place.Footnote 59 Like conjoined twins, who either will have superfluous limbs removed to form one body or who will be separated into two complete bodies at the resurrection,Footnote 60 so hermaphrodites too will have superfluous genitalia removed or be separated into two bodies — one male and one female.Footnote 61
Their defects remain, however, in the present order. Hermaphrodites are “monstrous” and “errors” of nature; females are flawed males. In sum, then, even though females fail to realize the purpose of the specific or particular nature, and therefore fail to achieve the perfection of males, they do realize the purpose of universal nature, which is to preserve the species. Although women perform an essential role for the perpetuation of the species and universal nature, assigning a similar purpose to hermaphrodites is more difficult since they were often understood to be incapable of procreation and therefore, as Irina Metzler argues, permanently “impaired” or “disabled.” Hermaphrodites, although products of natural causes, are not essential for the perpetuation of the species. Unlike the way he treats generation of females, Albert treats the generation of hermaphrodites within his discussions of teratology or birth abnormalities. Although female bodies will be resurrected, no resurrected bodies — which present the ideal of redeemed nature — will be hermaphroditic. Unlike females, the hermaphrodite, even though produced by a natural cause, seems to exist beyond nature just as every “monster is that, however, which surpasses nature's boundary”;Footnote 62 but as the product of natural causes the hermaphrodite is also within nature. Thus, “if we consider nature's first intention the production of a fetus such as this [having both a penis and a womb] is unnatural; however, if we consider nature's second intention, this production is natural because it proceeds from a natural cause.”Footnote 63
Hermaphrodites, Teratology, and the Problem of Their Generation
Two principal questions arise for Albert with respect to hermaphrodites and generation: first, how are hermaphrodites formed; and second, can hermaphrodites reproduce? In answer to the first, Albert explains that nature produces “errors” [peccata] or “monsters” [monstra] from one or more of four causes during generation:Footnote 64 from an inadequate quantity of material; from a superabundance of material; from a disproportion of material qualities; or from a defect in the material “container,” the secundina or placenta. “Monsters” sometimes arise owing to a disproportion of qualities, i.e., excessive heat or cold. The heat characterizes the male's complexion, while cold (and moistness) is found in the female's, but when both contraries (hot and cold) seem present equally, then hermaphrodites are born because the formative power is sufficient to provide the members — both external and internal — for each sex.Footnote 65
Albert rejected the theory that explained the production of hermaphrodites according to the sperm's location in the middle chamber of a five- or seven-chambered womb. Following a tradition incorrectly attributed to Galen, Michael Scot (d. ca. 1235) — upon whose translation from the Arabic of Aristotle's De animalibus Albert relied — contends that there are seven cells or chambers in the womb: three on the left and three on the right and one in the middle. Males were thought to develop in the chambers on the hotter right side, and females on the left, while hermaphrodites were formed in the middle chamber.Footnote 66 Albert the Great contends, however, that in humans the womb has two concavities like two chambers.Footnote 67 Contrary to the Galenic tradition that explains multiple births by assigning each fetus to one of seven chambers in the womb, Albert asserts that often twin fetuses are found in one and the same chamber,Footnote 68 and dissection has discovered many fetuses in a single chamber.Footnote 69 The better explanation for multiple births is not that the spermatic material has been divided into many chambers in the womb, but that the animals that produce multiple births introduce more sperm than is needed for the creation of a single fetus. The male's formative power then divides the sperm, creating more than one fetus (e.g., twins), provided that there is also sufficient material available to it.Footnote 70 When abundant material is present, but perhaps not enough to create separated twins, and when complexional heat and coldness are simultaneously present, a hermaphrodite will be generated having both genital members.
With his rejection of the theory that the sperm's location in chambers of the womb either to the right or to the left fully accounts for sexual differentiation into male and female,Footnote 71 or that hermaphrodites are produced when the sperm is contained within the middle chamber of a seven- or five-chambered womb, Albert decisively rejects a Galenic-Hippocratic model that treats hermaphrodites as a third sex and inclines instead toward an Aristotelian model that treats hermaphrodites as a flawed natural product having redundant genitalia resulting from a superfluity of material in the womb and a weakened seminal power.Footnote 72 Albert adds that when those “accidental monstrous traits which occur in certain generated ones which people call hermaphrodites” produce both male and female genital members in the same fetus, this doubling is “caused by the superfluity which is the material for generation.”Footnote 73 In this sense, Albert treats the presence of male and female genitalia on a single individual in much the same way as he does polydactylism (i.e., extra digits on the hand): sperm divides the superfluous material into extra parts.
Albert's most complete explanation for the production of hermaphrodites occurs in his massive commentary on Aristotle's biological works, De animalibus 18.2.3.66–67, completed during the early 1260s:
The hermaphrodites about which we are now speaking have the cause of their generation we have mentioned. For if the impregnating sperm should find abundant moisture and should overcome it perfectly, it will divide it totally and make two twins, resembling the male in sex. If, however, it is equally overcome both in its entirety and in its parts it will produce two twin sisters. If, though, in one part which has been divided off it is overcome and in the other it overcomes, then the twins will be different in sex, one male and the other female. … If the material is abundant only in a single member which is near the groin, then that which is overabundant in that same place will be divided up. If the power in one is overcome and overcomes in the other, then a hermaphrodite [male and female] will be generated. Sometimes the shape of each member is so complete to sight and touch that a person cannot tell which sex is dominant. And there is nothing preventing such a young also from having two bladders and that it emit urine through each of them or that during intercourse it play both the active and the passive role, lying both on top and below. But I do not think that it can both impregnate and become impregnated. Certainly, however, that sex will be the more principal which is aided by the complexion of the heart. Yet sometimes the complexion of the heart is so much in the middle that one can scarcely discern which sex is dominant.Footnote 74
In his commentary on Aristotle's Physics, Albert again remarks that
It is said of ones such as these that in intercourse they lie on top and lie on the bottom; for the location of the genital members does not prevent this, because according to nature the location of the male member is above the nerve of the coccyx and the location of the woman's vulva is near the anus.Footnote 75
Despite the ability to “lie on top and lie on the bottom” Albert does not think that the same hermaphrodite “can both impregnate and become impregnated.” Nature dictates that each one will have a dominant sex. The dominant sex cannot always be determined by visual examination alone, “just as we proved by visual inspection in certain ones that are of both sexes, such that knowledgeable men could not discern which one would prevail.”Footnote 76 This is best illustrated by a case of cryptorchidism in Albert the Great's De animalibus:
In a certain man born in our time the testicles were contained higher up within the skin in such a way that their outward bulge gave the suggestion of the two lips of a woman's vulva. There also seemed to be a split in the middle which was closed over by skin. Since the parents thought he was a girl, and that the split should be opened to ready her for intercourse, an incision was made and out leapt his testicles and his penis. He afterward took a wife and bore many children from her.Footnote 77
Although a visual inspection may sometimes fail to make an appropriate designation, the dominant sex will typically be determined by the heart's complexion. The heart is the hottest organ in the body,Footnote 78 and although its location may incline to either the right or left side in the body, “the heart's influence is greater on the right side”Footnote 79 and therefore it will most often produce a principal or dominant male sex in a hermaphrodite. The hermaphrodite appears to be of both sexes, but must perform as one or the other, thereby restoring a binary or dichotomous order to nature. In their appearance, however, Albert concludes that the hermaphrodite is a monstrous failure of nature:
These creatures with a different sex in the same individual have one and the same cause as that which is the cause of a certain sort of miscarriage. In this the woman or female does not miscarry, but rather the fetation becomes monstrous in shape.Footnote 80
Impotence and Infertility among Hermaphrodites
Despite the presence of both male and female genitalia in hermaphrodites, since one must be dominant or principal Albert the Great concludes, “I do not think that it can both impregnate and become impregnated.” Albert thereby differentiates hermaphrodites among higher animals from lower animals and plants. Among plants, he observes, when dry heat is joined with moist cold in the same complexion, this complexion is called hermaphrodita.Footnote 81 Such plants are capable of self-generation. Similarly, there are certain imperfect marine animals that are naturally hermaphroditic and can reproduce without coition.Footnote 82
For higher animals, however, for which the human is the most perfect example,Footnote 83 active and passive powers and complexional heat differentiate male and female, and perfect generation requires coition. As a result, Albert seeks to correct those unscientific opinions that understood certain higher animals to be hermaphroditic throughout their species, or identified certain animal species as capable of alternating their sexual activity: i.e., animals that are at times male, and female at other times. He notes that because of a failure to observe carefully, those philosophers are mistaken
who say of the hare (which some call the hyzum) that it is sometimes male and at other times female and that it sometimes conceives and at other times impregnates. … But what they believe about the hare, which the Arabs call the adhab — namely, that it has each set of members on alternate months — is not true. … So these things which they say are false, and the things which we have mentioned are the sources of the error.Footnote 84
In the same way, Albert repudiates the claim commonly found in the bestiary tradition that the hyena species is hermaphroditic and capable of alternating its sex.Footnote 85 Although no higher animals alternate sex or are hermaphroditic throughout their species, individual animals and individual humans might possess both male and female genitalia, although such cases are rare. Thus,
Sometimes the fetation is born possessing both sexes, with a man's penis and a woman's vulva. Such a fetation is called a hermaphrodite and this monstrosity occurs sometimes too in the goats which the Greeks call the virreagaryez, since they possess the members both of a male and a female.Footnote 86
Despite the appearance of individual hermaphrodites, active and passive powers are naturally separated among higher animals in the species nature and, moreover,
these powers cannot be united perfectly in one individual. For the forming power, as Avicenna says, is strengthened by a dry heat, but the formable by a moist cold. If these were united in one body according to their intentions, perfect generation would be destroyed. This is why a hermaphrodite does not generate.Footnote 87
Albert concludes, then, that individual hermaphrodites do not reproduce as both male and female, i.e., by auto-fecundation or by impregnating themselves; if they could, then “perfect generation would be destroyed,” i.e., generation through coition. Precisely because the hermaphrodite cannot reproduce by itself alone, says Albert, those who claim that Adam was originally a hermaphrodite or androgynous, having both sexes, wrongly follow “the heresy of the Jews,” since were Adam originally a hermaphrodite, he would have been unable to fulfill the first commandment: “be fruitful and multiply.”Footnote 88
Albert expresses the opinion, then, that despite the presence of both male and female genitalia hermaphrodites are simply incapable of reproducing by themselves: perfect generation requires the sexual intercourse of two individuals with opposing powers, one active and the other passive. He concludes above, then, that since perfect generation requires a formative power that is separate and distinct from matter, “this is why a hermaphrodite does not generate,” at least not alone. Consequently, even though hermaphrodites possess the genitalia of both male and female, they do not oppose nature's higher purpose, which is realized in coition. If they reproduce, they will do so either as male or female. In perfect generation among higher animals, “the male reproduces by generating from its own substance in another, that is, in menstrual blood,”Footnote 89 whereas the female does not herself generate but rather provides the matter in which the male produces a progeny by its formative power.
Is it Albert's conclusion, however, that hermaphrodites are incapable of generating at all through coition? Is this what he intends when he says “this is why a hermaphrodite does not generate”? Does Albert confirm, then, Irina Metzler's contention that in medieval society hermaphrodites could be considered permanently “impaired” or “disabled” because it was generally thought that they were unable to procreate? I do not think so. It is important to observe the linguistic distinction between a hermaphroditus, a masculine noun, and a hermaphrodita, a feminine noun. Thus, at the end of the eleventh century, Constantine the African, a Benedictine monk at Monte Cassino and translator of Arabic medical materials, remarked that [male?] hermaphrodites do not menstruate — Hermaphroditus (sic) non habent menstrua — implying an inability to contribute menstrual blood as the material for conception. Michael Scot repeats this claim.Footnote 90 This statement need not imply, however, that hermaphrodites cannot generate at all, but only that the “male” hermaphrodite cannot menstruate and cannot supply the material for a fetation. It leaves open the possibility that the “male” hermaphrodite can generate “from its own substance in another, that is, in menstrual blood.”
Contrariwise, both the commentary to Ps-Albert's De secretis mulierum and the Problemata varia anatomica impute an inability to reproduce in another to a shortcoming in the “female” hermaphrodite's male member or formative power. Therefore, “the [female] hermaphrodite [hermofrodita] is always incapable of generation with respect to the male member.”Footnote 91 In the same way, according to Ps-Aristotle's Problemata varia anatomica, “natural scientists say that a [female] hermaphrodite [hermofrodita] will always be impotent in the virile member.”Footnote 92 These texts suggest only that “male” hermaphrodites cannot provide the material for the fetation, and that the “female” hermaphrodite cannot introduce sperm with the formative power through the male organ in order to generate in another. In themselves, these statements confirm that the binary division of nature into male and female is preserved in hermaphrodites: a “male” hermaphrodite cannot become pregnant, and a “female” hermaphrodite cannot impregnate another. In the same way Albert, in his response to the question “[whether] nature could produce such a fetus … [that] could generate on its own, since it would have the members appropriate to each sex,” replies that the hermaphrodite cannot conceive or become pregnant in and by itself, although perhaps the [male?] hermaphrodite can generate in some other individual:
although it would have the members of each sex nevertheless it is unable to cast sperm through the male member into its own womb. Thus perhaps it can cast its sperm and generate in another, nevertheless it cannot become pregnant, because as was touched on in the fifth book, all mannish women [viragines] are sterile because they do not have wombs suited to conception, and this is why etc.Footnote 93
Albert is commenting on Aristotle who, although not discussing hermaphrodites, had asserted that while in nature mules are sterile throughout their species, “mannish women” do not produce menstrual blood while “womenly men” produce only a thin semen resulting in sterility.Footnote 94 If a “mannish woman” signifies a “male” hermaphrodite, Albert's remark that perhaps a hermaphrodite can generate in some other individual implies, then, that a “male” hermaphrodite can generate in another through the male member, although he cannot become pregnant since, as Constantine the African had insisted, Hermaphroditus (sic) non habent menstrua. Lacking the menstrual blood that provides the material for the fetus, such a hermaphrodite is incapable of giving birth. Therefore, although Albert states somewhat tentatively that hermaphrodites might be able to reproduce in others, they are incapable of impregnating themselves; moreover, a “mannish women” does not produce menstrual blood, which is the matter for the fetus. Likewise the “female” hermaphrodite, i.e., Aristotle's “womanly man,” cannot produce sperm with the formative power and will be sterile; or, as the Problemata varia anatomica states, the “female” hermaphrodite [hermofrodita] “is always incapable of generation with respect to the male member.” The “male” hermaphrodite may possess the perfection of every male, nonetheless: i.e., the active power to form or generate in another. Both Ps-Albert's De secretis mulierum and the Problemata varia anatomica seem to transmit a view, then, that conforms to Albert's own opinion.
This suggests that even though a “monster” in physical appearance, for Albert the hermaphrodite is a product of natural causes and can fulfill nature's intention via coition and reproduction — by casting sperm into and generating in another, in the case of a “male” hermaphrodite, or by being impregnated, in the case of the “female” hermaphrodite. The natural dichotomy between male and female remains despite the appearance of superfluous genitalia.
Conclusions
Despite the relative infrequency of hermaphroditism, medieval theologians, canonists, and natural philosophers paid much attention to its theological, legal, and scientific implications. Under the influence of Aristotle, Albert the Great explained the ambiguous biology of hermaphrodites as a “monstrous” flaw or defect in nature, in terms closely related to his explanation for conjoined twins and to the appearance of females as “flawed males.” When the male's formative power is overcome by the recalcitrance of matter, and when that matter is superabundant in the fetus's groin area, both male and female genitalia may develop on the same individual. While such an occurrence clearly falls short of nature's primary intention, Albert explains hermaphroditism in terms of natural causation nonetheless. Furthermore, despite his claim that hermaphroditism is a “monstrous” error of nature, Albert does not impose any moral judgment upon hermaphrodites. The fault is nature's and not their own. Although a monster is “evil” in the sense that it represents a failure to achieve nature's intention, “nevertheless the monster itself, insofar as it possesses the definition of being [ens], is good.”Footnote 95
Albert not only addresses the formation of hermaphrodites in the womb, however: he also introduces a discussion of the generative capacity of hermaphrodites themselves. Although they are incapable of auto-fecundation, “male” hermaphrodites seem capable of generation in another through coition, and “female” hermaphrodites may become pregnant through another. Although their appearance creates ambiguity, for Albert they do not constitute a third sex. Rather, the heart's complexional heat will determine the hermaphrodite's dominant sex, which must be either male or female. Because the hermaphrodite's superfluous genital organ is unnecessary for the generation of individuals, and because hermaphrodites represent an “error” of nature, there will be no hermaphroditic resurrected bodies, whereas females will be resurrected qua females. As a result, even though hermaphrodites have natural causes, they (as well as other monstra) are absent from a vision of the ideal nature achieved at the resurrection.
