The Holiday Pride:
A Pittsburgh LGBT+ Community Museum
Saints Game
Welcome to Saints Game, the text-based game about medieval transgender saints!
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Make sure to read the below content information before playing.
To play, click the button above. You will be taken to the game's page on itch.io which is a free game distrbutation platform. Click the 'run game' button on that page and a new browser window will appear with the game ready to play!
WARNING: Saints game features misogyny, discussions of rape but no descriptions or depictions of rape, descriptions of illnesses and wounds, and death of the main character.
In the early medieval period, there were about six ‘transgender’ saints that had their own holidays and were preached in churches. Their stories feature in Aelfric’s Saints Lives which was a manual for priests on how to teach the stories of saints.
This game presents multiple endings and story lines based on the stories of these six transgender saints. While fictional, this game does take on the real history of the medieval period. Can you find all of the endings? (Hint: There are thirteen!)
Sources:
Aelfric’s Lives of Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Satins’ Days Formerly Observed by the English Church translated by Walter W. Skeat
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The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe by Judith M. Bennett and Ruth Mazo Karras
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The Sex Lives of Saints: An Erotics of Ancient Hagiography by Virginia Burrus
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Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West by Lynda L. Coon
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Sainted Women of the Dark Ages by JoAnn McNamara, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley
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The Wisdom of Solomon: https://www.sacredbible.org/studybible/OT-25_Wisdom.htm
Medieval Trials: https://famous-trials.com/medievaltrials/2320-home
Crime, Compurgation and the Courts of the Medieval Church by R.H. Helmholz in Law and History Review Vol. 1 No. 1
Translated Aeneid: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilAeneidI.php
Translated Codex Amiatinus: https://www.loc.gov/item/2021668243
The Western Medical Tradition: 800 BC to AD 1800 by Lawrence Conrad, Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter, Andrew Wear: https://archive.org/details/westernmedicaltr0000unse_z5u7
Medieval Medicine: A Reader by Faith Wells: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781442601031
images from Wikimedia