Abstract

MAGANTO PAVON, Emilio. The intervention of Dr. Francisco Díaz in the inquisitorial process against Elena/o de Cespedes, a transsexual surgeon found guilty by the Inquisition in Toledo in 1587. Arch. Esp. Urol. [online]. 2007, vol.60, n.8, pp.873-886. ISSN 0004-0614.

Objectives: To make known, comprehensively, an almost unknown episode in the life of Dr. Francisco Diaz (1527-1590), surgeon of the king Philip II, and author of the first urology treaty in the history of medicine. To our knowledge, to date there were few references about the participation that, as an expert, Francisco Diaz had to have in the inquisitorial process against Elena de Cespedes, a presumed hermaphrodite accused by the Inquisition because being a woman married another one pretending to be a man. The trial was carried out in Toledo in 1587 and had great impact in that time, because the accused, dressing with male clothes and usurping the prerogatives of a man, had gotten by fraud titles and favours which were forbidden for women, the title of surgeon among them. Except for the reference by Folch Jou and Burshatin, both short and incomplete, no other author or biographer of the famous surgeon had cited this episode of his life, which to our judgment could mean a great damage to his reputation. Methods: We reviewed the works by the two aforementioned authors, all the works and biographies about Dr. Francisco Diaz that we could found, and microfilmed and transcript the whole bundle 234, expedient 24, from the section Inquisition at the National Historical Archive in Madrid, corresponding to Elena de Cespedes (alias Eleno) ( 500 pages) to obtain the greatest amount of data about the accused and the performance of Dr. Francisco Diaz. Results and conclusions: Francisco Diaz was requested, as an expert, by the Vicar of Madrid to perform the examination of the genitourinary organs to give or not marriage license to that woman saying she was a man. In his report in the year 1586, surprisingly the urologist declared that the petitioner was a man. As it would be demonstrated during the trial, the accused, who alleged being hermaphrodite in her defense, had been able to deceive the expert with her tricks altering her genital morphology. Thanks to her surgical knowledge she had mutilated herself surgically closing her vagina and placed a device to simulate she was a male. At the end, after the opinion of the counter experts of the Inquisition Francisco Diaz had to retract, confirmed that the accused was a female, and accused her of witchcraft to save his responsibility. Nevertheless, in the work we conclude that the accused was a male transsexual, which, in part, would excuse the urologist’s error 400 years later.

Keywords : Francisco Diaz; Inquisition; Transsexuality; History of Urology.

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