The night fell in a hurry over London. They were the last days of 1394, and the narrow street of Soper’s Lane It was populated with dark shadows to the beat of hurried steps.
A figure slipped between the wooden stalls and poorly illuminated corners, with a bold female dress.
Who saw her from afar, would think she was a lagging woman, perhaps a widow who resisted retiring to her bedroom. However, More attentive eyes would notice some strange nuance: The voice, the bearing, a gesture, its movements.
In that dissonance between the visible and the hidden scholars of culture, sexualities and the medieval period.
It is like this: what we know about John Rykener (or Eleanor, as presented) comes from a single judicial registryan interrogation made before the mayor of London on December 11, 1394.
This source, found in the archives of that city, is the only written testimony that allows us to approach their life and the particular circumstances that surrounded their arrest. We do not have personal newspaperslater witnesses or letters that expand their portrait.
The Rykener case offers us a window – yes, but invaluable – to Explore perceptions about sexuality and gender identity in Medieva Englandl. Normally, the courts of the city processed cases of debts or property disputes.
However, this time, something unusual was documented: the arrest of two men, one of them dressed as a woman, accused of “committing a detestable vice” in a position of Soper’s Lane.
The first was John Britby, from York; The second, John Rykener, who called himself Eleanor and offered sexual services to men and women equally.
The scene described in the document is as brief as interesting. It is said that, on Sunday night, between eight and nine, some city officers surprised Britby and Rykener in full carnal act.
Immediately, they were taken to prison. During the interrogation, Britby confessed to having believed that Rykener was a woman and admitted to having proposed a sexual encounter in exchange for money. What could have been a more prostitution case was shaken by the revelation that “Eleanor” was actually John.
The scandal of that duality multiplied when Rykener began to relate, in detail, the multiple relationships he hadincluding priests, friars, nuns and married women.
As Rykener declared before the mayor, his transvestism and sex work had begun long ago, motivated, apparently, by two figures: Anna, a prostitute who taught him “the female mode”, and Elizabeth Bruererer, a London embroidered who dressed him from woman for the first time.
In the house of the latter, the transvestite acquired not only the custom of wearing clothes considered “female”, but also The ability to embroider. This trade allowed him to mix among artisan women, offering a perfect camouflage to perpetuate his double life.
This testimony of Rykener reveals a remarkable journey: it is said that time spent time in Oxford, where she worked as an embroidery and offered sexual services to scholars and students. He even mentions Concrete Knights Names They paid for their company.
He also confesses to having traveled to Burford, where he served as a Tabernero, already Beaconsfield, where he slept with a woman, Joan Matthew. This ability to Assume different sexual identities It allowed him to alternate between different clients.
Ecclesiastical scandal
The most shocking thing for the court was the mention of high -ranking clergymen, Franciscan friars and even nuns, which immediately turned the matter into an ecclesiastical scandal.
When asked why he accessed priests so easily, Rykener’s response was pragmatic: well, they paid more!
In the London society of the fourteenth century, Prostitution was a regulated phenomenon: The city used to focus on arresting pimps, not necessarily those who exercised the trade. For its part, sodomy was considered a sin pursued more in ecclesiastical courts than in the secular ones.
Rykener’s case, however, put the municipal authorities in the face of a difficult situation: they had an individual who, in the eyes of the law, did not fit in the usual category of prostitute, but which, at the same time, generated a moral stir for their sexual practice with male clients. Jurisdictional confusion explains why, in the end, there were no records of a subsequent trial or conviction.
Dress female clothes in England of that time was tolerated in theatrical contexts, but not like daily free choice practice. Rykener’s daring when he appears as a woman to sustain relationships with men evidence both the thrust of economic need and the freedom that some people found in the streets of London.
His permanence in Oxford, working as an embroidery and being Eleanor, suggests that it was not only a timely resource; For a while, he lived and unfolded with benefits that his identity choice gave him (being a woman).
For some scholars, Rykener could be considered an example of survival transvestism. For others, it would be a precursor to transgender identities, as it adopted different sexual preferences according to their own determinations.
In a city where trade flourished and political tensions with King Ricardo II were constant, the simple fact that the mayor took the trouble to interrogate Rykener so thorough points to deeper reasons. Some historians have stated that the interrogation sought to show the municipal authority to the laxity or hypocrisy of the clergy.
Others see in the case a form of political propaganda to exhibit rigorous control of urban bourgeois morals. Be that as it may, the focus was put in pointing out the transvestism and supposed sodomy; These elements became a symbol of a “unnatural” situation, attributed to “disorders” that the city tried to suppress.
After the interrogation and confessions, the documentation is interrupted. There is no record that formal charges be presented nor that some penalty against Rykener was dictated. Simply, the document stops providing information.
Years later, a “John Rykener” appears in the archives, as a defendant of A different crime and escaped from the prison of the Bishop of London. It could be the same person, but there is no way to confirm it with probative documentation.
In the London society of the fourteenth century, prostitution was regulated: it was arrested for pimps, not prostitutes.
The fact that there is evidence of nuns, clergy, friars and merchants interacting with someone who fluidly sailed between the sexual genres determined in the male/female duo shows that Medieval reality was more multifaceted than we usually conceive.
The richness of his case lies, precisely, in which we only have a fleeting story. But that the imagination that happens to an investigation trunca fills holes. In that exercise, everyone can project The concerns of our own era Regarding a figure that marked trend.
The same one who walked through Soper’s Lane One day and not, with a dress, a pants, and that used different names according to the occasion.
