I, monster: queerness and the Liber Monstrorum in early medieval St Gall

This article analyses a ninth‐century copy of the Liber monstrorum from St Gall in which the first monster, a ‘human of both sexes’, speaks in the first person. The scribe also put the Liber monstrorum into dialogue with Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae , in which Isidore argued that monsters were not ‘contrary to nature’. Combined with an ambiguously gendered depiction of Christ added to the Liber monstrorum by a later user, this suggests that there were some in early medieval St Gall who saw being ‘of both sexes’ – which could be interpreted to reflect same‐sex attraction, and/or non‐binary, intersex, and trans identities – as natural, even potentially Christ‐like.