Situated at the intersection of queer theology, longitudinal research on material culture and trans studies, this thesis presents a coherent medieval theology of a transhuman incarnated Christ. This manifests both at academic/ecclesiastical levels and at lay, mystic and poetic ones. The material evidence stems from exegetical and mystical texts, sermons, lay poetry, community dramatic pageants and visual imagery from book- to architectural-scale. The accumulation of these sources results in a coherent theology associated with the incarnational technology of the sartorial habitus. The habitus theology enables both the medieval and the modern reader to encounter an incarnated Christ that dons humanity as textile. The history of the habitus thology is joined by an art-historical study of skin colour as a gendered signifier, in order to demonstrate the multiple avenues of trans-ontological visibility in medieval sources.

The exploration of embodied and material devotion of the middle ages reveals possibilities of queer readings regarding gender and even ontological status of the human body. The alternatively-bodied/-gendered Christ not only provides a different way of understanding the past and finding what in modern terms would be non-conforming bodies and genders, but also a history for thinking through gender and embodiment in contemporary religious, artistic or daily practice. The theological implications of this are large not just for understanding the medieval body and its boundaries, but also for giving a past to contemporary queer theology and body theology.