The Contradictions and Controversies of Marc de Montifaud

at both his crucifixion and resurrection. In a number of denominations of Christianity, including Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, she is considered a saint somewhere along the way, though Magdalen's identity in the cultural consciousness shifted. Nowhere in the four Gospels of the New Testament is it mentioned that this woman was a prostitute or a sinner. But that is the image likely conjured in your mind when I first said

her name. According to the BBC, it was actually in the sixth century that Mary Magdalen became confused with two other women in the Bible, Mary of Bethany, and another unnamed sinner from Luke's Gospel. Both these women washed Jesus's feet with their hair, I imagine, hoping that one day Lady Gaga would sing about them. In five hundred and ninety one, Pope Gregory the First gave an Easter sermon conflating all three female figures into one, and thus Mary

Magdalen as we now know her, was born. In nineteen sixty nine, the Catholic Church declared that Mary Magdalen was not the sinner nor the prostitute in question. But after fourteen centuries, it's hard to walk back a mistake like that in the minds of the public. In the nineteenth century, only a little less than one hundred years before the Catholic Church would set the record straight, one writer would quote earn the fate of a prostitute unquote for publishing

works about Magdalen, among other indecent pieces of literature. Mark de Montefoe originally published the history of Mary Magdalen with the title The Courtesans of Antiquity, and the book quickly came under scrutiny by an increasingly authoritative Catholic Church for being an erotic history of a religious figure who was lest we failed to acknowledge the irony erroneously eroticized by

the Catholic Church in the first place. The censorship of the author De Montefoe didn't start and stop with that title change. Continue uking to publish provocative work over the next few years would land the writer on trial and eventually sentenced to eight days in San Lazar Prison, a forced labor camp for prostitutes and violent female criminals. Des Montefaut was indignant at this ruling for a number of reasons, one being that he was a member of the nobility.

He said, quote they dared to carry out such infamy on my person. Another, arguably more important reason is that de Montefa's colleagues, who were charged with similar transgressions were sent to San Pelagier Prison, a comparatively lenient facility for artists and writers, primarily Dsmntefou was affronted because he was being sentenced not as a writer, but as a woman.

Born Marie Amali Chatrall, de Montefau mark Mont began writing under his professional and often personal chosen name at only sixteen years old, but it was more than just a nom de plume. He began to wear men's clothing more regularly as he got older, and was wearing them full

time by eighteen eighty. In portraiture, we see Mark's look evolved from the kind of loose fitting androgynous style similar to masculine dandies of the era, to close cropped hair and well fitted suits in fashion with French men at

the turn of the century. For reference as to when the concept of transgender identity as we know it first entered the French luxicon, de Montefot's last works were published in nineteen hundred, and it was only five years before that that something close to quote transgender made it into the French language in a translation of psycho Pathia Sexualis

and its chapter on quote androgyny and guy Injury. It was a groundbreaking work at the time as one of the first psychological works on homosexuality, but as you can probably guess from the name with Psychopathia in the title, it proposed that homosexuality was a mental illness. The nature of transgender identities are a complex project when discussing historical figures whose relationship with gender was well complex. Des Montefot lived in France during a period in which gender was

highly policed. Starting in eighteen hundred, it was in fact illegal for French women to wear pants without obtaining a permit. More on that later. But Mark's expression of identity went beyond dressing in masculine clothes. In professional and many personal settings, Mark preferred to be with masculine language and addressed by his names Mark de Montefa and later his pen name

Paul Erasme. Throughout his life, he alternated between signing his personal letters with Mark and with Marie, and an eighteen eighty letter from his mother uses both moncher and font the masculine and ma Cherie infant of feminine within the same page to address her quote, dear child. Because in public, in regards to his work and often in his personal life, Demntefoe preferred to be referred to in the masculine. I'll be using him pronouns for the writer as we discuss

his life and career in the Spotlight. But this, of course, isn't just a story about Demontefo's gender identity. It's a story about telling stories, about censorship, and about someone who wouldn't and couldn't stop telling stories no matter the consequences. I'm Danish schwartz and this is noble blood. Marc de Montefau was born in Paris in eighteen forty five, and the education that would one day serve his writing began early. His mother was Catholic and taught him the principles of

the religion. His father, though, was a physician and a freethinker during the Libris Pinset boom of the nineteenth century. French freethinkers of that time generally rejected a religious dogma and sought to define the world through observation and experience.

Mark in his work would incorporate both of his parents' lessons, but it was certainly his father who influenced his own outlook on life as far as more formal education and Mark found a talent for art, and he would study at a private studio because women weren't permitted places at Paris's Le Call de Beaux Art until eighteen ninety seven.

Writing would still prove to be his greater passion. In his youth, he published a few pieces in a travel magazine and had written an unpublished novel, But the young artist began publishing under the name Marc de Montefau at around eighteen or nineteen, his first piece appearing in the influential journal Lartiste in eighteen sixty five. One year earlier, Mark had married Spanish noble Juan Francis Leon Equivnent, the

Comte de Luna, making Mark a countess. Leon was over a decade older than Mark, and he had been previously married, but the two found common ground with a shared passion for the arts. De Comte had been living in Paris for several years by eighteen sixty four, working as the personal secretary to the famed writer Arsin Hussey. Hussey is an incredibly minor character in this story, but indulge me just a moment to reading the headline of his eighteen

ninety six New York Times obituary, It's just extraordinary. Arsin whosey dead last of the Romanticists and most faithful of the idealists, A prince Charming of the Empire. His was one of the most attractive personalities of Paris, and his work is an artist's May we all hope to be remembered half as glowingly. Anyway, this Prince Charming of the Empire was more importantly the editor of Lartiste, and under his leadership it became the most influential cultural journal in France.

It's likely that it was Leon who connected Mark and Lartiste, and we know the Compte supported and encouraged Mark's writing throughout his career. Quite literally, a husband's permission was needed at the time for a wife to publish. We don't know exactly how Leon and Mark met, or whether or not the marriage was arranged, but it's possible that Mark's father ran in similar intellectual circles as who say. The couple would eventually have one son, also called Mark, born

in eighteen seventy four. Mark was still presenting socially as a woman at this time, but in a surprisingly modern arrangement, Mark and Leon combined their last names, both going by the surname Kuvan des Montefau. This was arranged at the request of Mark's father, who was disappointed that he didn't have a son to carry on the family name. Leon would even eventually take to signing his name Leon de Montefaux professionally, which made both Mark and his husband professionally

known as Monsieur de Montefaut. Contemporaries like Case eventually referred to Mark as mister Mark de Montefaut to differentiate him from his husband. The young Monsieur de Montefaut got his first major story in May of eighteen sixty five when he was asked to review the Salon. Not to be confused with various salons hosted by intellectuals, the Capital s

Salon was the art event of the city. Each year, thousands of artists submitted their work, hoping to be selected by the committee for a spot on the floor to sealing displays. The salon could be career making or career breaking, hosting many of French art's most famous names at different points of its history. Eighteen sixty five saw, for example, the controversial nude portrait of a prostitute Olympia by Manet, despite tensions between the traditional salon and the progressive Impressionists.

Perhaps surprisingly based on his future work, Mark dismissed this painting as an immature eccentricity. If only the painter had a quote healthier mind, he noted, he might have produced some real art. Years later, Mark would review the eighteen seventy four Salon, lamenting quote, if there's anything we regret, it's seeing studies of the nude abandoned for landscapes, So perhaps his issue was with Manet more specifically, or perhaps he just came around on the idea of nude paintings.

Mark didn't shy away from referencing sex himself. Within that same eighteen sixty five essay, he argued that seeing too many paintings in one day was overstimulus, writing that what he needed was quote the visual virginity that is the true guiding light of the painter and the critic. The casual reference to a taboo subject like virginity was decidedly masculine.

For the time, readers would have had no incentive to question whether or not this Mark de Montefau they were reading was the stereotypical man they were no doubt picturing. Mark would continue to review the Salon for years to come, his essays commenting not only on the art itself, but his general thoughts on the state of the culture in

which they were produced. Speaking to the mood at the turn of the century, he reflected in his eighteen sixty eight essay that the French needed quote a renewal in their organs, sight and perception of things, and quote as he sensed an encroaching on we Mark was searching for, as summarized by these scholar vandlen Gutner, an expression of

imagination and inspiration rather than just tactile sensation. Mark would have to spark that inspiration himself, and he attempted to do so a few short years later in eighteen seventy, with the publication of The Courtesans of Antiquity, later titled

The History of Mary Magdalene. In her book Before trans Three Gender Stories from nineteenth century France, which contains the most detailed English language biography of Mark, historian Rachel Mesh writes that the book was the first of quote many efforts by Montefot to recover the history of sexuality in order to demonstrate two seemingly opposing facts that aros had long been part of the French Catholic tradition and that sexual mores were more arbitrary products of culture, determined by

time and place end quote. You can also imagine Mark reconciling those two seemingly opposing schools of thought that he was raised by himself the fruit of a marriage between

a traditional Catholic woman and a freethinking man. The History of Mary Magdalene was more literally a study of the visual and literary representations of Mary Magdalen throughout history, with language that was decidedly erotic when it was published, who say printed excerpts in Lartiste, paired with an introduction that may or may not have been written by Mark himself,

calling it a bold and curious work. This unattributed writer, who again might be the author, goes on to note that readers sometimes found de Montefot's art criticism too eloquent, but now quote mister Mark de Montefau has stripped off that fancy dress. He has understood that truth is all the more beautiful when it marches fully nude. It is a big old wink to those in the know. Again possibly written by Mark, possibly written by someone close to him.

Based on the surviving photography we have, we know Mark was still presenting feminine at this point in his life, but he had, in a more metaphorical sense, stripped off that fancy dress a long time ago, publicly presenting as male through his writing, using Mark exclusively as his nom de plume. However, as Mesh theorizes, it's also possible that he was wearing men's clothes to attend the salons he

reviewed and passing publicly. His entry ticket to the salon was for a Monsieur de Montefau, and it would likely have raised many quests if he had showed up in a dress back to Mary Magdalen, though Lartiste was perhaps leaning into the age old tactic of outrage marketing, also describing the book as a quote, danger and audacious act, practically sacrilege. As you know from the top of this episode,

outrage there was. The work was highly successful for a while, reprinted four times before the Franco Prussian War, but in the war's aftermath, the Catholic Church was reasserting their power in the country, and writers and journalists increasingly ended up on trial. The controversy with Magdalen put Mark on the Church's radar, but he wouldn't be officially charged with offense to public decency until eighteen seventy six, when he published a re edition of a late seventeenth century texx that

was already controversial in its own time. Yes, Mark was sentenced to jail for a work that wasn't even his. I thought, if we were going to eliminate him from memory, Mark said of that writer he republished during his trial we could put him in a library instead. Mark also spent his time on the stand mocking his accusers the quote narrow minded men whose hair, for good reason could

hardly stand on end. In horror, when he heard the guilty verdict, he ran to the prefect's office and asked how a publishing infraction could land him a comtesse no less in the notorious San Lazaree. It wasn't at all to inflict personal injury upon you, the police prefect told him. But because the administration would not put a woman insane

peleget Mark was furious. He wrote that he would being treated quote like a woman who had blatantly acted against all social structures instead of the quote archaeologist, bibliographer and critic. He considered himself to be above all else. Quote I admit that despite my enormous efforts, he reflected, my mind can simply not accept the logic of this sentence, and I doubt that the reader can either summed upmost efficiently,

he would write, quote. What I found unnatural and perhaps unfair is the fact that a fence to decency can be purged for all writers in San Pelagee, and for me alone in jail. As a freethinker, Mark was taught to question, to reject convention. What the administration accepted as fair was ludicrous to him. He once later described himself as inhabiting the skin of an artist. Overcome with me male literary spasms. It gives us a lot of insight

into his sense of self. The artist has no gender associations, but the compulsions he had to wright are masculine. Based on the other quotes, Mark clearly believes the identity of artists, archaeologist and bibliographer and critic are more important than any notions of gender, but he still felt compelled to write publicly as a man. Mark was then asked if he would like to request a pardon, which he rejected as that would mean admitting wrongdoing, and instead he decided to

flee to Brussels. From there he negotiated with the authorities to serve his sentence instead in Maison du Bois, a mental institution. The stint did little to change his ways. The very next year he published The Vestal Virgins of the Church, another erotic history, and so back to Maisson de Bois he went. Mark eventually stopped writing these histories when he found himself unable to obtain reference materials from the library, the librarians having been convinced not to help him.

That was fine, he would just turn to writing fiction. You won't be surprised at this point to hear that eleven passages of his first novel, Madame de croiss were condemned as indecent. Once again, back to Messan du Bois, The story goes that this time a worker warned him that the doctors had put arsenic into his acne medication. He pulled the classic move of pretending to swallow while secretly dumping the medicine into the garden, successfully avoiding a

threat on his life. Outside of his very vocal and apparently murderous detractors, Mark was also growing a sizeable fan base. The controversy surrounding his novel was, as it often still is, a great marketing tool, and the novel was highly in demand. There was, also, however, a new faction of critics who felt betrayed that Mark de Montefaut was not who they

thought he was. Reporting from one of his trials revealed that the quote booklover was in fact a young blonde woman, tall and frail, with listless blue eyes and a charmingly bold attitude, while another noted she always had that same look of a woman dressed as a man. It's unclear at what point readers at large learned the quote unquote truth of his perceived past as a quote woman, wife and mother. But the public began to look into his life so scrutinously that it became a matter of his safety.

Isn't it high time that public modesty return? When critic raved that it cuts short the grotesque ravings of these women. Could they be wives and mothers? These mad women, these crazies, these hysterics. He then went on to suggest that Mark and quote women like him should be locked in mental institutions, subjected to special showers. There was, on another hand, also a new erotic interest in Mark, a fetishization, with one journalist noting his angelic eyes and the sharp groans issued

from his mouth in court. He would write two more novels, The Perverts and Sabine, both of which managed to escape scrutiny, but Mark was ironically still forced to flee to Belgium again, this time to avoid legal fees. Eeteen eighty he returned to Paris published a collection of droll stories, described by Mesh as erotic Rabelasian tales in which young damsels stumble accidentally onto the pleasures of the flesh, and was forced to flee back to Belgium, this time with his husband

and son. Mark described this period as quote one of the most painful of my life. Rumors began to spread that he and Leon were in fact not married and rather living in sin with children born out of wedlock. Friends withdrew from his life. A soiree he hosted was apparently infiltrated by a marquise attempting to seduce him in order to prove that Montefau was secretly harboring passions for women.

As to the legitimacy of that claim, Mark often invoked the words of Sappho in his work, and while there is no no evidence of affairs with women, he certainly had fixations with a number of female friends and even rivals, but more on that in the epilogue. Shortly after the family returned to Paris in eighteen eighty two, Mark was publicly humiliated with the publication of a short story called

Madame de Sade in the French paper Le Figaro. The tale is about a young woman who is sentenced to prison for pornographic publications, with the twist being that she was actually put up to writing them by her husband, who knew that her jail time would be great for sales. The woman in the story doesn't mind prison, however, rather seeing it as an escape from her abusive husband, who

had taken advantage of her troubled mind. There was a clear line between the oft legally troubled Monsieur de Montefaut and the stories protagonist, and he was lit. He denounced the author as a small earthworm and a miserable runt who had ejaculated his garbage upon the paper. Mark and Leon went to their friend, the editor of rival paper Le Voltaire, to ask for help. I have a child, Mark told him, my dear little Mark, whom you know,

and I owe him an honorable name. Yet they pass off my husband, the most loyal of men, as the most wretched of them all. Their friend agreed to ask Francis Minard, the editor of Figaro, for a retraction, but this was refused. Any similarities to persons living or dead, or actual events was purely coincidental, so Mark took matters into his own hands. Literally. The next day, the couple purchased tickets to the premier night of the comedy Francaise,

knowing Magnard would be there. Mark showed up in a tailcoat and white tie for a night at the theater, and he and his husband waited for their target, the editor of the figure out to leave his box at the end of the third act. When he finally exited, Leon approached with the intent to slap him, but another man noticed and held him back. It was Mark, then, who got in Menard's face. You are a coward and

a wretch, he shouted, alerting the other patrons. In the name of my revolted conscience, I have come to say this to your face. He then produced the newspaper with the story in question and used it to slap the editor hard right against the nose. As a writer and a person, its clear Mark understood a number of things very well, including both dramatic and comedic timing. As Mesh points out in the book before trans it's possible that Menard did not even recognize the person who had just

whacked him with a copy of his own magazine. I mentioned the traditionally masculine tailcoat and white tie but this was also the first time Mark had appeared in public with cropped hair. Newspaper reporting on the incident the day after shared the Montefau, the author of several smuddy stories for which she was condemned by the police, was quote wearing men's clothing since her return from Brussels, and no

one knows why another noted that quote. In fact, it would be impossible to know that she was a member of the fairer sex if you had seen him that night. Mark would continue wearing masculine clothing for the rest of his life, but perhaps surprisingly, he didn't write much about that in his personal accounts. It didn't seem like this was a big public transition. It seemed like this was just the point that he began dressing the way he

had always envisioned himself all along. Writing to friend after the slap incident, and I will not make an Oscar's joke, Mark wrote of his clothing quote, I had already been wearing in several circumstances when I had ventured to far off neighborhoods to study behaviors men's clothing. He does not specify what behaviors he was studying, but we can perhaps

infer he was gathering material for writing. He also writes that he realized he was quote perfectly incognito dressed as a man in Paris, and so when he was in exile in Belgium he often used men's clothing to pass as his son's tutor instead of his mother to quote watch over my child in full security. He then goes on to explain I adopted the suit that I still wear, meaning that he simply adjusted to dressing as a man full time. The white high formal wear at the theater

was explained as well. It wasn't in order to slap a wretch that I put on a casino and white necktie. Rather, he adhered to quote all the clothing etiquette necessitated by the places where I went. In other words, he didn't choose to dress like a man to go to the theater as a statement. He simply dressed as a man in the clothes that a man would wear going to

the theater. As I mentioned at the top of the episode, it was in fact illegal for women, and in Mark's case, those French society considered women legally to wear pants anytime except during carnival. A special hants permit was required and could only be obtained with a doctor's approval for medical reasons. You can imagine that gender affirming care was not on the list at the time, but for the record, what did constitute as a valid medical reason has not been documented.

It's also worth noting that while effectively obsolete, the law wasn't officially repealed until two thousand and thirteen, yes two thousand thirteen. For Marx surviving archives, we see correspondence in which he seeks information about obtaining a pants permit, but we know he never actually got one. Instead, he likely had an oral agreement with those necessary bureaucrats. There are four accessible photographic portraits of Mark, and in three of

the four of them, he is wearing pants. One such photograph, dated around eighteen eighty, was later gifted from Mark Junior to one of Mark Senior's friends. Inscribed by him as the quote last feminine portrait of the man who was his mother, this picture captures the androgynous dandy esque look I described earlier. Mark's look can be interpreted in this photograph as that of a particularly rebellious young frenchwoman or a young frenchman in Oscar Wilde Circle As time goes

on and Mark matures, his style shifts further. His mid length hair becomes a close cropped, decidedly masculine style, and he trades his loose fitting pants that both men and women might have worn for well tailored suits. But let's return to that incident at the theater. Now it was public knowledge that Mark was not only back in town, but guilty of assault. He would have to return to you,

guessed at Brussels. He had no regrets writing what woman who loved her husband, upon seeing him treated this way would not have acted as I did. The authorities attempted to make a public spectacle of Mark's arrest by sending two free theater tickets to the couple's home, but the sting operation was a failure when Lay showed up with the young Mark for some father's son bonding time. In eighteen eighty four, Mark would finally return to Paris for

good and begin publishing yet again. He would continue publishing, chiefly his droll stories, which often found young women in humorously compromising situations thanks to their confusion surrounding gender and sexuality. One story follows a young provincial woman on her first trip to Paris, She goes to buy a lamp un suspension, but accidentally asks for un suspensier a jockstrap. Later, she sees the word hermaphrodite and asks her aunt what it means.

Her aunt, panicking, tells her it's a kind of fish, which our young protagonist, of course, goes on to try to order at a restaurant. Mark would also publish more historical work, one in particular focused on France. Huis Timoleon Abbe de Choisse, a seventeenth eighteenth century French writer who was known for both his historical and religious works, and

also known for his cross dressing. Thus lived and died Francois Timolon de Choise, Mark wrote, the one who had been exiled repeatedly as a girl, and who was later celebrated as a hero. It's not hard to imagine that Mark felt a kindred spirit. Later in his life, Mark began to publish under a new name, Paul Arasme, likely to avoid the scandal surrounding the name Mark de Montefau. My life as a writer is so connected to my private life. He once wrote that it would be impossible

to separate them in two. Paul, like Mark before him, was easily accepted by readers as a man, and Mark would continue writing under that name four years. Upon Mark's death in nineteen twelve, a dolence letter to the young Mark his son read quote, believe, dear friend, that the great soul of Paul Arassme will manage to survive all events and will conserve the precious and imperishable memory of the contest Demontefau, contest Demontefau, Paul Erassme, Monsieur de Montefou,

Marc Marie. All of these are the same fascinating soul. In his lifetime, he would refer to himself as a man, as a woman, as a wife, which of course makes writing about him a little tricky. But perhaps it's best to put it in Mark's own words. I am myself myself alone. Mark once wrote, ultimately, I am me. That's the story of Mark de Montefou. Keep listening after a brief sponsor break to hear a little bit about Mark's lovers. We know that the marriage between Mark and Leon was

full of mutual support. After all, Mark did slap a man to defend his husband's honor. But Mark was not without his extramarital affairs. The affair we know about was between him and Villiers del Adam, a fellow writer and a friend of both Mark and Leon. Villiers ultimately ended it, not wanting to betray either his friend lyon any further, or, as he saw it, not wanting to betray his future wife. Listen. He wrote to Mark in a letter, I have loved enough.

I am incapable of caprices, and if I love again, I only want to love my wife. It's pretty romantic for a breakup letter, even if it's a slightly more poetic version of I'm sorry, I can't don't hate me. Then there was the affair that Mesh speculates about, but we can't prove. A Limp. Adorad was a writer around twenty years Montefoe's senior. The two were friends until Montefoe became a public enemy and alleged his friend attempted to

send her doctor to spy on him. If you remember the indecently condemned novel Madame de Croisse, Mesh argues the character Es is a stand in for a Limp in the novel. Teres is a woman who, despite being depicted as much older than the novel's protagonist, Raymond is a

known beauty, even women felt unexpected raptures. Montefau writes as the female protagonist upon seeing her friend naked, when faced with the physical perfection which offered itself willingly during a friendly visit to the touch of men, could the friends to enemies potentially have been friends to lovers to enemies? We'll never know. Noble Blood is a production of iHeartRadio

and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manke. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noemi Griffin and rima Il Kahali, with supervising producer Josh Thain and executive producers Aaron Manke, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick.

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