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 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.
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).
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