A doodle of Christ in the pose of crucifixion, surrounded by pen trials. The face is partially erased, and the legs and right hand are missing. The breasts look more round and "feminine" that one might expect.

Dr. Michael Eber

Queer Medieval History

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 237, p. 1. Image via https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/de/csg/0237.

About

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Cologne specializing in the history of gender identities and sexualities in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

My research explores cultural and intellectual exchange across the eastern and western Mediterranean, with a focus on how medieval scribes transmitted, excerpted, and recontextualized texts.

I hold a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Free University Berlin, and have also held research and teaching posts in Innsbruck, Göttingen, and Oxford. Most recently, I led a German Research Foundation (DFG)-funded project on the Latin translations and adaptations of the vitae of trans saints from the 5th to 12th centuries.

Full CV here.

Selected Publications

I, Monster: Queerness and the Liber Monstrorum in Early Medieval St Gall

Early Medieval Europe 34/4 (2024)

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.

Christologie und Kanonistik. Der Dreikapitelstreit in merowingischen libri canonum

Harrassowitz Verlag (2023)

This monograph, based on my Ph.D. thesis, demonstrates that the bishops of the Merovingian Frankish kingdom adopted highly nuanced positions toward the so-called Three Chapters controversy. This becomes evident through an analysis of three late sixth-century Gallic canonical collections whose seemingly idiosyncratic and even chaotic compilations were, in fact, deliberate and reveal a theologically and ecclesiologically coherent engagement with the Christological debates of the time.

If you don’t have access to any publication through your library, use the contact form below – I will send you a pdf!

All Publications

Monographs

  • Christologie und Kanonistik. Der Dreikapitelstreit in merowingischen libri canonum. MGH Schriften 82. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2023.
  • With Stefan Esders and Till Stüber. Die Lebensbeschreibung des Lupus von Sens und der merowingische Machtwechsel von 613/14. Studien, revidierter Text und Übersetzung. MGH Studien und Texte 70. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2022.

Journal Articles

  • “Sexuelles Begehren, Geschlecht und monastische Disziplin in den Viten der Euphrosyne/des Smaragdus (BHG 625, BHL 2722, BHL 2723).” In Das Mittelalter 30/2 (2025), 319–35. DOI: 10.17885/heiup.mial.2025.2.25259.
  • “I, Monster: Queerness and the Liber Monstrorum in Early Medieval St Gall.” In Early Medieval Europe 32/4 (2024), 543–64. DOI: 10.1111/emed.12736.
  • “Christology and Grace in the Additions to Augustine’s De haeresibus.” In Journal of Ecclesiastical History 74/2 (2023), 237–58. DOI: 10.1017/S0022046922001051.

Book Chapters

  • “Historische Ordnung or Just a Mess? Tracking Dossiers in Early Medieval Canon Law Collections.” In The Art of Compilation: Manuscripts and Networks in the Early Medieval Latin West, edited by Anna Dorofeeva and Michael Kelly. Binghamton: Punctum Books, 2025, 45–80. DOI: 10.53288/0494.1.04.
  • “Similiter et nos anathematizamus. Dogma als Synodalkanon auf gallischen Konzilien des 6. Jahrhunderts.” In Der Bischöfliche Impetus. Individueller und kollektiver Gestaltungswille in Gesellschaft, Kultur und Wirtschaft vom 6. bis 8. Jahrhundert. Zürcher Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft 16, edited by Andreas Bihrer, Sebastian Scholz and Gerald Schwedler, 123–43. Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau, 2025. DOI: 10.7788/9783412532260.123.
  • “Ein Plädoyer für Nachsicht. Cod. 212 der Kölner Dombibliothek im kanonistischen Einsatz.” In Mittelalterliche Handschriften der Kölner Dombibliothek. Neuntes Symposion der Diözesan- und Dombibliothek Köln zu den Dom-Manuskripten (25. bis 26. November 2022). Libelli Rhenani 85, edited by Harald Horst. Cologne: Erzbischöfliche Diözesan- und Dombibliothek, 2024, 143–59.
  • “Loose Canonesses? (Non-)Gendered Aspects of the Aachen Institutiones.” In Monastic Communities and Canonical Clergy in the Carolingian World (780–840). Categorizing the Church. Medieval Monastic Studies 8, edited by Rutger Kramer, Emilie Kurdziel and Graeme Ward, 127–38. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022. DOI: 10.1484/M.MMS-EB.5.128533.
  • With Stefan Esders, David Ganz, and Till Stüber. “Selection and Presentation of Texts in Early Medieval Canon Law Collections. Approaching the Codex Remensis (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Phill. 1743).” In Creative Selection Between Emending and Forming Medieval Memory. Millennium Studies 96, edited by Sebastian Scholz and Gerald Schwedler, 105–36. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2022. DOI: 10.1515/9783110757279-008.

Other Publications

Events

May 22-23, 2025International Conference

Trans Sainthood in Translation, ca. 400–1500
German Historical Institute, London

Get in Touch