210 Ulisse Aldrovandi

established as a god; after serving in various roles, he was killed in the senate, received by Venus and the other gods, and placed among the stars.

"Hardly had she spoken these words when nurturing Venus stood in the middle of the senate house, invisible to all, and snatched the soul from the limbs of her Caesar; not allowing it to vanish into the air, she bore it to the celestial stars."

While we have until now played the storyteller in recording these transformations of men, it is now our duty to publish those that are true and natural, as well as those performed beyond the ordinary course of nature. Pliny first records that he found in the Annals from the time of the consulships of P. Licinius Crassus and C. Cassius Longinus that a boy at Casinum was born a girl but became male, and by order of the Haruspices was deported to a desert island.

Also, Licinius Mucianus, as reported by Pliny, relates that he knew Aescus at Argos, who was formerly called Aescusa; she had even married, but when a beard grew, he attained manhood and took a wife. Pliny also mentions L. Cossicius, a citizen of Thysdrus, who was transformed into a male on his wedding day. Livy adds to this, mentioning the consulship of C. Fabius Maximus and M. Claudij Marcellus, a time when a certain person in Spoleto turned from a woman into a man.

In the age of the Emperor Constantine, as St. Augustine reports, a girl in a part of Campania was changed into a male, who was subsequently brought to Rome. Volaterranus records that the same thing happened in the time of Alexander. Furthermore, Empedocles of Agrigentum, of the Pythagorean sect, testified (according to Philostratus) that he had been both a girl and a boy.

Among the Portuguese, in a town called Esgueira, nine leagues from the city of Coimbra, a noble girl, according to Amatus Lusitanus, emitted a hidden penis upon reaching marriageable age.

In Gaeta, as Jovianus Pontanus wrote, a woman who married a fisherman suddenly had male organs erupt; ashamed of her condition because she was mocked by everyone, she retreated to a monastery and, upon her death, was buried in the Church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva.

Likewise, according to Fulgoso, during the reign of Ferdinand I in Naples, Ludovico Gnarra, a citizen of Salerno, had five daughters by his wife; the two eldest, named Francesca and Carola, became males in their fourteenth year and, changing their names, were called Francesco and Carlo.

These transformations are truly authentic and beyond doubt. In the initial stages of development, the male organs of these individuals are formed inside the skin, while on the outside, only a fissure mimicking female genitalia is visible. Over time, however—whether due to heat or the physical exertion of a leap—this fissure widens, the fully formed male organs emerge, and the person who previously appeared female immediately becomes male.

We know of surgeons in our own time who have occasionally detected hidden male organs by touch; when the fissure in the skin through which the infant urinated was opened with a scalpel, the penis and testicles emerged. Albertus Magnus confirms our view with the story of someone born in his time who kept his male organs inside his skin; although two swellings between the thighs gave the appearance of a vulva, once a surgeon made an incision, the testicles and penis sprang forth.

Ambroise Paré further supports this opinion. While he was staying in the French county of Vitry during the reign of King Charles IX, he was shown a German man named Germain who had formerly been a girl named Marie. This person was considered a girl until the age of fifteen, until one day, while vigorously chasing pigs that had broken into the harvest, she jumped over a ditch with a great leap. The skin ruptured, and the previously hidden male organs emerged. Weeping, he returned home and told his mother that his intestines had popped out during the jump. The mother, along with a summoned surgeon, observed that he had transformed into a man. When the matter was brought to the Eminent Cardinal Lenoncourt, the Bishop, they convened an assembly and changed his name and dress to that of a man.

The same author recounts a similar case from the year 1560 regarding a person thought to be a girl until the age of fourteen; while playing with other servant girls, the previously tucked-away male organs erupted. When the parents realized what happened, with the intervention of ecclesiastical authority, they changed the name from Joan to John.

Similarly, the celebrated Montuus reports that he heard from the most serene Eleanor, sister of Emperor Charles V, that one of her servant girls had been changed into a male. But he wisely adds that in these cases, the sex is not changed, but rather revealed.

From