Sex and Order in Natural Philosophy and Law

Arichly decorated manuscript copy of Albert the Great’s On Animals—MS Latin 16169, now housed at the Bibliothèque nationale de France—pictures a group of illuminated birds and animals, some of which copulate with wild abandon in the manuscript’s bas-de page (see fig. 4.1).¹ On a nearby folio, a delicate drawing of a nonbinary-sexed human hovers at the manuscript’s edge, keeping company with four other figures: two human-animal hybrids, a hairy beast, and a set of conjoined twins (see fig. 4.2 and fig. 4.3).² The manuscript itself is an exceptional object, purchased in the fourteenth century by the masters at