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.
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.
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.
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
