Читать книгу Gay Art - James Smalls - Страница 5

Unlike antiquity, the Middle Ages has been the period least studied for signs of Western homosexuality in art. The rise of Christianity and the increasing influence on the daily lives of people accounts for the near invisibility of homosexuality in the art of this period. Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 381 under Theodosius the Great (346–95). Emperor Constantine (274–338) had legalised Christianity in the fourth century AD. The death penalty for male homosexual acts was first imposed in 342 by Emperors Constantine and Constans, and then again by the Theodosian Code of 390 (Warren Johansson and William A. Percy, “Homosexuality,” in Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage, eds., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, New York, Garland Publishing, Inc, 1996, pp.160–61). Theodosius decreed death by burning for homosexuality. Lesbian behaviour had been similarly proscribed in the Middle Ages through a law in 287 AD imposed by Diocletian (245–313) and Maximianus. The death penalty for both male and female homosexual acts was not repealed in civil law until the late eighteenth century in most Western European countries.

The extreme measures taken by these rulers were justified by theological rationalisations on sexual ethics ranging from Saint Paul to Saints Augustine and Jerome. Of all the church fathers, it was Saint Augustine who held the longest influence over sexual attitudes in the Christian West. Around 400 AD, Augustine launched an attack against classical myth and attempted to ‘correct’ its immoral pagan aspects. Relying heavily on the Old Testament, he insisted that all non-procreative forms of sexual gratification were wrong because their sole goal was pleasure and not propagation of the species.

Between the fourth and fifteenth centuries, most art was produced under church patronage, and even private commissions were often mandated to have religious themes (Saslow, p.56). All representations of sexual acts, especially homosexuality, were discouraged and later attacked by the church. Christian intolerance against homosexuality resulted primarily from reaction to the hedonistic legacy of Greco-Roman paganism where homosexual practices were, in many instances, encouraged. Christianity set out to deny the body and all forms of earthly pleasures. When erotic themes do appear in medieval art, they tend to be couched in “solemn spirituality and ineffable mysteries” (Saslow, p.56). During the medieval period, homosexuality was split into two polarised camps: the classical ideal of amicitia (a chaste, intimate friendship), and sodomia (an unstable term condemning a range of sexual acts from anal sex, to masturbation and bestiality) (Saslow, pp.56–57). As invading ‘barbarians’ (mainly Germans and Celts) increasingly overwhelmed the Western Empire, many of the stringent anti-homosexuality measures initiated by Christian emperors became impossible to enforce.

Those who eventually took control remained respectful of Christianity but were less inclined to invest so much energy into criminalising homosexuality. The last of the Church fathers, Pope Gregory the Great (590–604), did attempt, however, to convert the barbarians and came up with new ways to enforce the previous ban on homosexuality. One of the more effective means was through issuing penitentials, or manuals designed to instruct and aid priests in giving spiritual guidance to the laity. Penitentials first appeared in Ireland and England, and later spread to the European Continent. These manuals categorised sins according to their severity and assigned specific penances for absolving them. Without exception, all of the penitentials condemned sodomy, intercrural intercourse, and masturbation. Although the penitentials stressed penance over punishment for most sins, they did treat homosexuality more severely, especially where oral and anal sex were involved. Under Charlemagne (768–814), penances for sodomy were applied to the laity, but its practice was condemned and deemed unpardonable for monks (Johansson & Percy, p.166). The penitentials were primarily directed at men since lesbian sexual relations in general were scarcely mentioned.

40. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Fountain of Youth, 1546.

Oil on lime panel, 122.5 × 186.5 cm. Staatliche Museen, Alte Meister, Berlin.

The Unspeakable Vice

During the Middle Ages theologians applied the term ‘sodomite’ to those whose sexual acts went “against nature”. Homosexuality was not, however, the only unnatural sin. Bestiality and all heterosexual acts that did not lead to procreation were also included. The legal definition of a sodomite was restricted to anal intercourse with a man or woman, or vaginal penetration of an animal. The sodomite was also reviled because he committed sacrilege in terms of marriage and did not honour his vow of chastity. The connection between sodomy and bestiality was a carryover from antiquity – times in which Christians associated pagan practices with sodomy and satyrs. In several encyclopaedias of animal lore (called Bestiares), science was used to condemn sexual variety. These books were very popular and drew upon authoritative classical writers such as Aristotle or Pliny, both of whom described the unusual sexual traits of certain animals. Church fathers associated these deviations in nature with homosexuality. The most reviled creatures in this lore were the hyena and the weasel, the former of which was believed to have the ability to change its sex and grow alternate genitalia once a year (Saslow, p.60).

Once theologians defined all sexual relations between partners of the same sex as “sins against nature”, condemnation and repression by clerical and civil authorities followed. Sodomy was deemed more than just sinful, it was downright criminal.

Along with Christianity, Judaism also played a role in criminalising homosexual acts and behaviours. The Old Testament books of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, as well as Deuteronomy 22:5 and 23:18, were interpreted as expressly forbidding male homosexuality, transvestism and prostitution (Johansson & Percy, in Bullough and Brundage, p.160). In the early church, before tradition or canonical texts became fixed, most people accepted the Judaic view that homosexuality, like infanticide, was a very grave sin (Johansson & Percy, p.161). The epistles of Saint Paul, heavily influenced by Judaic thought, comprise one third of the New Testament and are the earliest of preserved Christian writings. In them, Paul was explicit about sexual matters, categorically forbidding all sex outside marriage. He singled out homosexuality, even between females, for special condemnation, as well as transvestism of either sex, masturbation, long hair on males and other signs of effeminacy or softness.

The early Middle Ages ended with an intense new wave of invasions that resulted in the dissolving of the Carolingian Empire in 817. Around the middle of the eleventh century, the Church reorganised itself and fervent clerics launched a vicious attack against sodomites. As had been the case earlier, homosexuality, bestiality, and masturbation were considered sodomitical acts “against nature” because they excluded the possibility of procreation, the touchstone of marriage and sexual morality. Sodomy was especially condemned among members of the clergy who had, by that time, gained a reputation for indulging in such activities. Sodomy, a vice ascribed mostly to clerics at the time, was repeatedly linked with heresy. Under Pope Gregory VII (1073–85), clerical celibacy was mandated. The drive to ensure conformity was relentless and gave rise to a moral purity crusade directed against Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Jews, as well as heretics and sodomites (Johansson & Percy, p.168). After 1250, severe penalties for homosexual acts were ordained and became part of canonical law. By the mid-thirteenth century, the church had become obsessed to the point of paranoia with the topic of sodomy.

41. Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights

(detail of centre panel of the triptych), c. 1504.

Oil on panel. Museo nacional del Prado, Madrid.

42. The Rape of Ganymede, 850–1120/1150–1190.

Column capital. Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Vézelay.

Fire and Brimstone

The medieval notion of sodomy and justification for its condemnation originated in particular interpretations of the biblical source Genesis, where the destruction of Sodom is described.

Enraged by the sodomite’s sin, God destroyed the city of Sodom with flaming rain. The plot of the story suggests retribution for a variety of sexual offences by both men and women of all sexual persuasions. Sodomy’s prohibition, no matter if the act were hetero- or homo-sexual, was based on its non-procreativity. Although sodomy also applied to heterosexual anal sex, the term had a stronger application to homosexuals. The “sin of Sodom” gradually became the standard euphemism for male-male intercourse. Later theologians and lawmakers combined the biblical reference to the destruction of Sodom with classical allusions that left its homosexual meaning unmistakeable. Around 1170–1190, a mosaic decorating the cathedral at Monreale in Sicily was created that centred on the story of the destruction of Sodom. Art historian James Saslow has recently commented that homosexuality and sodomy were so chilling as both act and thought during the Middle Ages that it was not only morally unspeakable, but also visually unimaginable. This explains why homosexuality is never explicitly depicted in medieval art (Saslow, pp.57–8). There were ways, however, of getting around this, especially for those interested in expressing homosexual emotions and behaviour.

Medieval society, like societies of classical antiquity, glorified intense emotional bonds between men and, less widely, between women. During the medieval period, emotional bonding remained a potent ideal in both the realm of the secular and the sacred. In the realm of the sacred, homosexual desire was secretly fostered in monasteries, places in which people of the same sex lived together and swore fraternal links as well as celibate lives. In real life, medieval men and women found it difficult to adhere to such ideals of intimate, non-sexual bonding.

43. The Visitation. Relief.

Sacred Pairings in the Byzantine World

In the fourth century AD, Constantine founded a new Eastern empire at Constantinople (now Istanbul in Turkey). Strict proscriptions against homosexual acts were incorporated into the Byzantine Code of Justinian I (483–565) in 529, 534, 538, 544, and resurrected in the West beginning in the eleventh century. Justinian outlawed all male prostitution and condemned to death both partners in any homosexual act. Despite these drastic measures, homosexuality was widespread in the Byzantine world, and it was in Byzantium where a tradition of sacred ‘marriages’ sanctioned by the church emerged that celebrated the spiritual union of two people of the same gender.

The late historian John Boswell has written books about Church toleration, if not sanction, of homosexuality in this period. His views remain extremely controversial and continue to stir up much debate over the issue. In his writings, Boswell discusses Christian same-sex unions in both canonical texts and in secular laws as they had been previously sanctioned by the Church. It has been argued, however, that “not a single Christian father, Penitentialist, Scholastic or Canonist, Protestant Reformer or Catholic Counter-Reformer or even any Orthodox, Coptic, or Nertorian ever wrote even a neutral, much less kind, word about sodomites.” (Johansson & Percy, p.179). Many scholars of medieval art and history agree that Boswell has distorted our understanding of Christian marriage in that he attempted to make a modern-day gay marriage out of the medieval practice of asexual same-sex spiritual bonding.

The earliest examples of homosexual sacred marriages are Byzantine devotional pictures of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, both Roman soldiers martyred around the year 300. Many icons were produced depicting the two together as physically and spiritually united. By the 600s the couple enjoyed a huge cult following in the eastern (later Orthodox) church. Sergius and Bacchus were the best known of several “paired saints” whose mutual devotion epitomised the ideal of self-sacrifice. These couples are often shown in tender embrace and are essentially a transposition of the pagan theme of committed lovers like Harmodius and Aristogeiton or Achilles and Patroclus onto a Christian image. Such pairings at times also included women like Perpetua and Felicitas.

The biographer of Saints Sergius and Bacchus wrote that “being as one in their love for Christ, they were also undivided from each other in the army of the world” (quoted in Saslow, p.61). When Bacchus refused to recant his beliefs, the emperor ordered him flogged to death. Sergius lamented his lost comrade as a “brother”, a term then charged with sexual potential. Later, Bacchus appeared to Sergius in a vision, prophesising that after Sergius’ death he would receive Bacchus as a heavenly reward for this suffering.

The blessing of Sergius and Bacchus was invoked in a religious ceremony performed frequently throughout the Middle Ages. The ceremony between two people of the same sex paralleled heterosexual marriages in that its purpose was also the joining together of two people in a sacred bond of mutual affection and support. After the ceremony, each would set up house and share their lives together (Saslow, p.61). Boswell has discovered dozens of texts verifying the existence of such same-sex unions. Some of these texts describe the rituals as involving certain aspects that resemble contemporary heterosexual orthodox marriages. The Greek ritual manuals for these ceremonies were widely copied, some well into the fifteenth century. Some accounts record that same-sex unions were even performed in Renaissance Italy until they were outlawed in the 1600s.

Same-sex unions in the Byzantine world stimulated in the West a similar ambiguous conflation of spiritual and physical desire. In the year 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne attempted to revive a Christianised “Holy Roman Empire” with its capital at Aachen in Germany. He modelled his new empire on Byzantium. Charlemagne’s courtiers wrote lyrically about male friendships. Many of their stories were full of quotes from classical authors recounting nostalgic moments of temptation by pederasty (Saslow, p.62). As a result of this return to Latin sources for inspiration, these authors began to blur the boundaries between what was permissible and what was forbidden in terms of the physical expression of same-sex love. The medieval church continued to grapple with issues concerning the carnal expressions of these lofty desires.

44. Jonathan, David and Saul from Somme le roi.

Illuminated manuscript. The British Library, London.

The Romanesque Period (1000–1200)

Between the time of Charlemagne to the year 1000, Western Europe had recovered from most of its social and economic problems resulting from internal and external strife, invasions and anarchy.

Food became more plentiful once again, wealth expanded, and populated urbanised centres sprang up. During this period, homosexuality was more widely reported among all classes of society – nobility, clergy, and commoners. Increasingly, the urban centres began to rival the aristocracy and the monastery as centres of culture. In the cities, same-sex social networks developed. Secular urban authorities cultivated an atmosphere of liberty and tolerance, turning a blind eye to an increasingly visible subculture of male prostitutes, bordellos, and taverns. By the twelfth century, there was an unprecedented flowering of homoerotic poetry, mostly written in Latin.

Most of these authors were churchmen who, in addition to writing on standard religious themes, also wrote works boldly celebrating love between men. Although a significant amount of literature resulted from this homosexual subculture, very little visual art was produced. Saslow has suggested that this was due to differences in patronage and audience for visual material, for whereas poems were private (easier to hide), inexpensive, and more accessible to the average sympathetic reader, paintings and sculptures were costly and required collective workshops that functioned in public view (Saslow, p.63). Moreover, the majority of artists were patronised by the church and any visual expression of homosexual feelings would have been frowned upon. An exception to this, however, is found in Romanesque architectural sculpture of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The best known carving of this period containing homosexual content comes from the pilgrimage church of La Madeleine at Vézelay, built between 1096 and 1137. A capital from one of the church’s nave pillars shows the rape of Ganymede story (Saslow, p.64).

In addition to the designs on the church of Saint Madeleine at Vézelay, other architectural sculptures of the eleventh and twelfth centuries in both France and Spain provide additional graphic illustrations of homosexuality.

In Romanesque Spain and at Sémalay in south-western France, for example, there exist architectural details showing male couples performing sodomy. At La Chaize-le-Vicomte, a column capital shows a pair of copulating monkeys to symbolise the bestiality associated with sodomy. At Châteaumeillant, another sculptured capital depicts two bearded men embracing and kissing, one with his erect penis exposed. Carved above this latter couple is the Latin phrase bac rusticani mixti (loosely translated as “Look at these crazy peasants”). At Cahors, sodomy is among the sins depicted in the blocks carved over the door ways. All of these works are unique compared to other medieval sculptures and have long intrigued and puzzled scholars (Saslow, p.65). Because these images were all depicted in pilgrimage churches leads many to believe that they most likely functioned as moralising sculptures intended to warn pilgrims against such sins.

45. David and Jonathan, 13^th century.

Illuminated manuscript. The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

Intolerance and Repression (1200–1400)

Despite church invectives against it, sodomy had become so visible by the late 1100s that church and state authorities felt compelled to root it out entirely. A series of heavy-handed reforms followed. In 1123, the Roman Catholic Church formally demanded celibacy of all the clergy who had, by that time, gained a notorious reputation for engaging in sodomy. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 specifically condemned sodomy and decreed excommunication for any member of the clergy or laity found guilty of this “crime against nature”. Heterosexual marriage was also strictly regulated and divorce was forbidden. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council required every believer to make regular confession to a priest. The Papal Inquisition was made permanent in 1233 to target all heretical acts and beliefs. By 1300, a slew of new civil laws decreed the death penalty for sodomy. Also, homoerotic poetry almost entirely disappeared. Art during these trying times was used primarily as propaganda in reinforcing the anti-sodomy message.

There were several forces besides religious and moral ones that contributed to the crackdown on sodomy during this period. For example, there was a growing fear of low birth rates and diminishing population. Hence an intolerance of non-procreative sex resulted. Another force was religious pietism spearheaded by monks of the Franciscan and Dominican orders. Lastly, feudalism began to break down and harsh political rivalries developed. An accusation of sodomy was one sure and effective way of eliminating one’s political enemy.

The single greatest religious force during this period was Saint Thomas Aquinas, whose thirteenth-century Summa Theologica (1267–73) reigned for centuries as the standard authority on Catholic moral theology. This text reinforced Saint Paul’s strictures against homosexual behaviour as it had been noted in Romans 1:27. His strict moral sanctions were based not only on the Bible, but on a distortion of Aristotle’s ideas regarding pederasty in antiquity and on his own understanding and acceptance of biblical tradition (Johansson & Percy, p.175). In the Summa, Aquinas put forth arguments directed specifically against sodomy, ranking it as a crime second only to murder (Saslow, pp.67–8). Aquinas was a member of the Dominican order which orchestrated the Inquisition and took an aggressive stance against heresy and sin. The Dominicans had expressed vehement opposition against same-sex marriages and, in fact, destroyed many pages that described such ceremonies.

46. Jesus and Saint John the Beloved, c. 1300.

Painted and gilded wood sculpture.

Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin.

47. Group of Christ and of Saint John of Sigmaringen, 1330.

Polychrome and gilded walnut. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin.

David and Jonathan

Despite disdain for same-sex unions by Aquinas and the Dominicans, the story of David and Jonathan appeared regularly during this period in a popular spiritual manual called the Somme le roi and was illustrated numerous times throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In it, vices were listed and paired with their virtuous opposites. The Somme le roi was originally assembled for the French king Philip III and served as a layman’s guide to moral issues (Saslow, p.73). The story of David and Jonathan served as an example of chaste same-sex friendship.

The special relationship between David and Jonathan was narrated in the biblical First Book of Samuel and tells the story of Jonathan, the son of King Saul, who formed an intimate friendship with David, a handsome shepherd who played the harp and who later became a soldier and slew Goliath. In 1 Samuel 18:1, the narrator proclaims that “the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David,” and that “Jonathan loved him (David) as his own soul”. Jonathan’s father, Saul, disapproved of the special bond between his son and David and forced the latter to flee the court. The two friends embraced and then parted sorrowfully. The biblical narration describes how “they kissed one another, and wept one with another, until David exceeded” (1 Samuel 20:41). Jonathan then went into battle alongside his father and was killed by the Philistines. David was then crowned king. Upon hearing the news of Jonathan’s demise, David lamented: “The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how are the mighty fallen!… I am very distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (2 Samuel 1: 19–26). David’s elegy for Jonathan has been put to use as a religiously sanctioned means of expressing male same-sex desire. The sad moment of their parting has been iconographically related to Saint John the Evangelist’s (also known as “the beloved disciple”) tenderly laying his head on Jesus’ bosom – a scene that has allowed for the representation of physical and emotional intimacy between men in religious art. The pairing of Jesus and Saint John had been frequently represented in manuscript illuminations one century before that of David and Jonathan. As a couple, they became very popular in German sculpture after 1300.

Moralising Manuscripts

Despite the proliferation of images of spiritual love between same-sex couples, there also arose at this time in France, Italy, and England, stories of homosexual love in vernacular writing that began to supplement biblical writings. At the time, works of both ancient mythology and biblical scripture were translated and adapted with commentaries and illustrations intended to reinforce orthodox interpretations (Saslow, p.69). Titles like the Ovide moralisé (moralised Ovid) and the Bible moralisée (moralised Bible) attempted to “purify” or “moralise” ancient sources by condemning their previous sexual ethic and employing allegory (Saslow, p.69). The Bible moralisée, a compendium of texts and images compiled by thirteenth-century French royal theologians, and revised and copied throughout the fourteenth century, was amply illustrated. Twin illustrations were typically paired in circular frames to highlight a particular moral. In one edition, now located in Oxford, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is linked with two homosexual couples: a monk kissing a layman, and two women embracing. Both scenes locate the protagonists in the mouth of Hell by the presence of devils. The inclusion of lesbianism here is unique, perhaps reflecting concerns over sexual aberrations to the increasingly problematic “special friendships” among nuns in convents.

The Ovide moralisé is a secular version of the Bible moralisée. Its primary function was to re-evaluate the pagan elements contained in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In one fourteenth-century manuscript located in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris, a page devoted to the story of Jupiter and Ganymede accurately illustrates Ovid’s conception of Jupiter as an enthroned king of heaven awaiting the eagle’s delivery of Ganymede. The text below the image chastises Jupiter for giving in to a desire that was “against law and against nature”. Such a rebuke against a powerful deity suggests that artists and authors were no longer interested in ancient literature for its philosophical content, but as a source for didactic rhetoric against its pagan and carnal elements (Saslow, pp.70–1).

48. Adam and Eve and Sodomites, 13^th-14^th century.

Illuminated manuscript from La Bible Moralisée.

Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

49. Guido da Pisa, Dante and Virgil Meet the Sodomites, inspired by Inferno, Canto 15, c. 1345.

Illuminated manuscript. Musée Condé, Chantilly.

Descent into the Inferno

One of the most popular and recognisable moralising texts of the Middle Ages was Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. Dante (1265–1321) is considered one of the greatest of the medieval poets and one of the founders of Italian literature. His Divine Comedy, the premier epic poem of Christianity, envisions Dante’s pilgrimage through hell, purgatory, and heaven. In the poem, the damned are subdivided into five groups according to the severity of their transgressions. Along his journey, Dante twice encounters sodomites. In Cantos 14 through 16 of the Inferno (Hell), the sodomites are confined to the seventh circle or the circle of the violent. Sodomy is understood here as violence against God’s creation. Those guilty of it are lumped together with blasphemers who do violence to God in speech, and with usurers who commit violence against the nature of money. Sodomites are sentenced to run naked over burning sand and under a steady rain of fire – a punishment reminiscent of the biblical destruction of Sodom itself.

Due to suggestions of a non-committal stance against sodomy on Dante’s part, it is believed that he did not outright condemn it as vice. In Cantos 14 through 16 of the Divine Comedy, Dante seems to soften his stance on sodomy – seeing it as a sin positioned only one step below salvation. In his journey through purgatory, Dante encounters penitent sodomites (Purgatorio, p.26). The sodomites and those guilty of other “unnatural” heterosexual activities move in two interlocking groups, each calling out the name of his sin. More than sodomy, heterosexual lust and its penance are prevalent throughout the Divine Comedy. This suggests that Dante wanted to minimise sodomy as an evil and felt no need to join in the exaggerated denunciations of it by many of his contemporary theologians (Mark D. Jordan, “Dante Alighieri,” in Haggerty, pp.242–3).

Dante’s Divine Comedy also shows sensitivity to the emotional and spiritual rewards of male friendship (amicitia). Along his journey, Dante is accompanied by an escort identified as the Latin poet Virgil. This, plus the fact that Dante references many mythological creatures and joins them into a grand religious synthesis, indicates that he was well-versed in classical literature. The largest illustration of Dante’s poem is a fresco by the fourteenth-century artist Nardo di Cione, located in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. The fresco dates from the 1350s and labels the individual compartments of the Inferno (Saslow, p.70). Nardo’s illustration for the seventh circle is vague in that where the sodomites should be the artist only shows generic sufferers and omits the one incriminating caption, “Violent against nature”. Saslow has suggested that the artist’s evasiveness regarding the sodomites may reflect growing revulsion against even the mention of the vice in the wake of the Black Plague that was devastating Europe in 1348 (Saslow, p.71).

Despite downplaying the severity of sodomy as sin, the reference to sodomy at all in Nardo’s large-scale fresco cycle is rare in the history of art. Sodomy and sodomites were more frequently illustrated in smaller, private manuscript copies of Dante’s poem. In fact, the vast majority of the art of the Middle Ages was restricted to manuscript illustration and other minor art forms, which in turn were typically commissioned by nobles and churchmen, both of whom had been especially targeted as suspected practitioners of sodomy. Back in the fourth century, Saint Basil had admitted that homosexuality was a particular problem among monks. It was, however, the nobility that had the leisure and wealth to indulge in any and all hedonistic appetites. In addition to the numerous illuminated manuscripts produced from the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries, warnings about sodomy were directed specifically at monks and aristocrats in church architecture and furnishings. The carved capital showing the Rape of Ganymede at Sainte Madeleine in Vézelay is one such example.

50. Templar Embracing a Cleric, c. 1350.

Illuminated manuscript from Jacques de Longuyon, Les Vœux du Paon. The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.

51. Richard Puller and His Page Burned at the Stake in Zurich, 1482, c. 1483.

Illuminated manuscript from Diebold Schilling, Die Grosse Burgunder-Chronik. Zentralbibliothek, Zurich.

The Late Middle Ages

The Middle Ages technically ended in 1492, when Ferdinand and Isabella re-conquered Spain from the Muslims and sponsored Christopher Columbus’ voyage to the Americas. At this time in Italy, Renaissance humanism and neo-Platonism began to spread, thus altering perceptions of human indulgences. As laws against sodomy increased in frequency and severity during the late medieval period, more sexual subcultures appeared and more clandestine sexual encounters occurred in many European cities, especially in London, Cologne, and in many Italian urban centres. The combination of sodomy as a religious taboo along with an increase in the number of underground sexual practitioners provoked an “administrative process of repression” and innovative policing procedures (Johansson & Percy, p.177). Alarmed by an increase in secular knowledge and a rebirth of paganism, a waning medieval society doubled its efforts to eradicate sodomy. In places like Germany, however, the persecution of sodomites and those accused of witchcraft increased with a vengeance. Enthusiasm for public executions and public humiliation of homosexuals increased. Burning at the stake remained the most spectacular form of capital punishment for sodomy.

The problem of successfully regulating sodomy became most apparent in fifteenth-century Florence, where a crackdown on homosexual activity was unsuccessful due to its widespread practice among young males. In Florence, the penalties for sodomy were gradually reduced as the number of those convicted increased (Johansson & Percy, p.177). However, strategies of repression mounted and manifested themselves in the form of mutilation, exile, fines, and other drastic measures including being burned alive.

Female Homosexuality in the Middle Ages

Of all the minority groups within medieval society it was women who were, according to Jacqueline Murray, the “twice marginal and twice invisible” (Jacqueline Murray in Bullough and Brundage, p.191). When it came to a consideration of women’s sexuality, medieval culture was as misogynistic as Roman society.

Men’s behaviour seemed to have mattered more since, as Augustine noted: “The body of a man is superior to that of a woman as the soul is to the body.” (Saslow, p.60). Saint Paul spoke of the “vile affections” among women before those of men. Saint Augustine condemned “the things which shameless women do even to other women,” specifically pointing an accusatory finger at “maidens, nuns, wives, and widows” (Saslow, p.60). As with male homosexuality, female homosexuality was, when discussed at all, denounced by clerics and theologians. As time passed, however, later clerics paid even less attention to female homosexuality than did their predecessors.

Our primary knowledge of the existence of female homosexuals and female homosexuality during the Middle Ages comes from ecclesiastical discourses of canon law and theology. Even with most of these, lesbian sexual activity was frequently ignored, marginalised, or subsumed under categories of male homosexual sins (Murray, p.197). In some of these discourses, however, same-sex emotional attachment and sexual practice was consistently condemned. The only hint of “lesbian” activity as “unnatural” found in either Jewish or Christian scripture is contained in Romans 1: 26–27. As already mentioned, this text formed the foundation of an important theological discourse that began with the church fathers and continued through Thomas Aquinas and after.

Although some scholars interpret this passage as condemning heterosexual women’s sexual perversions, most believe that it specifically makes reference to lesbian sexual activity. It has been pointed out, however, that Saint Paul was writing during a time when Roman society condemned female homoeroticism as a reaction against women’s perceived refusal to remain subordinated to men (Murray, pp.194–5).