Book 24 (de Spoletana muliere). Pliny

says that it is no fable that women are changed into men. Martin Delrio uses the following words (quoting from Pliny, Historia Naturalis, VII, 4) : “I myself saw in Africa L. Cossicius, a Tisdritanian citizen, changed into a man on his wedding day.” S. Augustine* mentions heathen records of women becoming men, and of hens being changed into the masculine sex, not, however, by witchcraft but naturally : for witches cannot actually do this thing, but only in appearance to deceive us by casting a glamour over our senses with the help of the devil, as we have shown elsewhere.
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Examples.
Giovanni Pontanof (Hist. Neapolit.) tells that at Gaeta a woman changed into a man after having been married for fourteen years to a fisherman: and another, named Emilia, after having been for twelve years the wife of Antonio Spensa, a citizen of Eboli, dissolved her marriage, married a wife and begot children. He speaks also of another woman who had borne one son to her husband, and suddenly assumed virility, left her husband,
* Me
+ “Pontano.” ‘De Bello Neapolitano,” V,
**Pontamt Opera Omnia,” Basileae, 1538, II,
PP. 574-75:
58 COMPENDIUM
and married a woman who bore children to her.
Cocceius Sabellicus* has some simi- lar stories which I shall omit, and will set down two instances which occurred in Spain in our own time, and were faithfully described by Antonio de Turrecrematat in his Jardin de las Flores curtosas.
In the town of Ezgueira in Portugal, about nine leagues from Coimbra, there lived a nobleman who had a daughter named Maria Pacheco. When this girl was at the age when a woman’s monthly courses usually begin, in- stead of a fluid excretion there broke or otherwise grew from those parts a virile member; and so, from being a girl, she suddenly became a pubic young man endowed with virility, and assumed the name of Manoel Pacheco. He then took ship for India and endured much hardship and performed great deeds as a soldier. Returning to his country he married a noble wife: yet Amatus the Portu- guese, writing in his Centuries, makes no mention of any children, but says that he remained unbearded and with a feminine cast of countenance, these being indications of imperfect
* “Cocceius Sabellicus.’? Marcus Antonius Cocceius Sabellicus, a Venetian writer of emin- ence. He is the author of ‘‘Epistolarum libri XII”; “Orationum libri XIT?; “De situ Uenetae libri tres’; and many poems, of which some are devotional, such as “‘De laudibus Deiparae Uirginis Eligiae XII.” I have used the collected edition of his ‘‘Opera,’’ Venice (23 December), 1502.
t ‘Antonio de Turrecremata.”’ In Latin Torquemada. The first edition of the “‘Fardin de las Flores curiosas, en que se tradan algunas materias . . . etc.”, 1s Salamanca, 1570. *‘Olivante de Laura,” a romance by Turrecre- mata was discovered in Don Quixote’s library and condemned to the flames by the curate. Turrecremata was a very popular author in his day, and the ‘‘Fardin de las Flores’? was trans- lated into French by Gabriel Chappuys as the “‘Hexameron’”’ as early as 1579. It was re- ie Lyons, 1582; Paris, 1583; Rouen, 1610.
BK. I. CH. XVI.
virility. Finally Torquemada adds that he heard this from a most trust- worthy friend of great authority.
Not far from Benaventana in Spain the wife of a farmer of moderate fortune was ill-treated by her husband because she was barren. Weary of such bad treatment she ran away one night dressed as a man-servant, and in this guise went from place to place earning her living by menial work. After some time, either because of the efficacy of her natural heat or through imagination induced and strengthened by her continuous mascu- line clothing and work, she found that she had actually turned into a man. Therefore she, who had long been a wife, determined to act the husband, and consummated her mar- riage with a woman. The secret was kept for a long time, since she did not dare to tell it to any one, until a certain man who had been very well known to her noticed that she was in face very like that farmer’s wife who had run away. He asked if he were her brother; whereupon she told him the whole story as it happened, and so it came to light.
Baptista Fregosot (Exemplorum, I, 6) writes as follows. At Naples,in the reign of Ferdinand I, Ludovico Guarna, a citizen of Salerno, had five daughters, the two youngest of whom were named Francesca and Carola. When these two girls reached the age of fifteen the genital parts of both of them sprouted into masculinity, so that they changed their clothes and were taken for men, being called Francesco and Carolo.
At Eboli in the same region, a girl had been betrothed for four years. On the first night of her marriage she went to bed with her husband: but either owing to the friction or to some other unknown cause, when the hymen which gave her the appear- ance of a woman was broken, a male
organ stood out. She then went home
t “Baptista Fregoso.”? An Italian writer of the fifteenth century.
BK. I. CH. XVII.
and sued in the Courts for a return of her dowry, and was thereafter reckoned as a man.
Phlegon writes: “A virgin born at Smyrna named Philotis was, on reach- ing maturity, given by her parents in marriage to a man: but a masculine organ appeared and she changed into a man. Also in Laodicea in Syria a woman named Aeteta was changed into a man while in the very act with her husband, Aetetus. This was when Macrinus was Governor of Athens, and Lucius Lamia and Aelianus were Consuls at Rome.”
Michel de Montaigne says that in his time there was at Viering a girl named Maria who, as she was dancing rather vigorously, was suddenly made a man by the sprouting of male organs, and was given in the Sacra- ment of Confirmation by the Bishop of Soissons the name of Germain, by which she began to be known. A beard grew upon her chin, and she lived long, even to a decrepit old age, but never married a wife.
If this can come about naturally, as sO many authors maintain, I should think that with God’s permission it is possible to the devil, relying upon natural causes.
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