Paul Halsall
(Fordham University 1988)
The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages
Homosexual sex was widespread in the Middle Ages and
there is abundant information on what church writers
and secular legislators thought about it. Shoddy or par
tisan scholarship and a distinctly modern disdain of
homosexuals by scholars until recently marked much of
the discussion of the history of this medieval
homosexuality. Since 1955, and especially since 1975,
much work has been done that is of reasonable quality.
The concentration has tended to be on the Church's, or
society's, attitude to homosexuality. This paper takes
a different tack and looks at the personal experience
in the Middle Ages of those we would now call homo
sexuals and the structures in which they were able to
experience their sexuality. Their experience fits in
with the wider experience of sexuality in Middle Ages
and this also will be considered. Naturally, we can say
little about what sexuality felt like for individuals,
but a possible framework for their experience can be
reconstructed from existing sources. This will be,
necessarily, a framework for the experience of
homosexual males for significant information exists
only about men and boys.
The main focus of the present paper will be on the
experience of homosexuality for individuals and on what
can be gleaned about the subcultures or other kinds of
social networks homsexuals belonged to in diverse
medieval periods. There are theoretical issues to face
in this inquiry, about the concept of homosexual and
homosexuality, and the overall place of homosexuality
in the study of medieval sexuality. Only after looking
at these will we move to a consideration of sources and
the uses that can be made of them. A examination of the
often ignored issue of why people engaged in homosexual
activities will help us to focus better on the core of
this paper which will be to consider those medieval
societies in which we have knowledge of homosexuality
and to see if they fit into any typology. The
typologies looked at are of the types of homosexuality
we can see present and at the social contexts in which
this sexuality was expressed.
Use of Terms
Michel Foucault opened up the serious
investigation of the history of sexuality. His view
was that sexuality is socially constructed in a way
similar to grammar, and so to talk about homosexuality
in the past would be a solecism; for Foucault the
experience of a modern western gay man is
incommensurable with same-gender sex in other periods
or cultures. This distinctive perspective has become
orthodox for many writers. John Boswell led the attack
on Foucault's thesis, although his own theory that
there have always been homosexual subcultures does not
seem to be verifiable. Other authors not attached to
structuralist theory, such as Guido Ruggiero, are now
joining Boswell. The core issue is did homosexual
behaviour exist before the modern period as the
affective preference we call homosexuality? The word
homosexual is a nineteenth-century invention, and it is
often suggested that one alternative, sodomy, had too
varied a meaning in the Middle Ages to substitute for
it. Self-conception is surely important in defining a
person's sexuality, but we need not be too realist
about it: a thing does not need a name to exist.
Homosexual acts existed and even though the meaning of
the word sodomy has been much discussed for the Middle
Ages, and it could be applied to acts such as anal
intercourse between married people, in the majority of
cases it refers to various sexual acts between men. A
working definition is that homosexuality, the desire
for at least sexual contact with someone of the same
gender, is a perquisite of a person practising
homosexual acts on a regular basis, even though as this
paper makes clear, the social framework may vary
greatly.
Medieval Sexuality
A study of homosexuality fits into the wider
history of sexuality in the Middle Ages. Discussions of
sex dating from the period are almost all
ecclesiastical, while current scholarly interest is
with the sexual lives of lay people. This requires an
oblique use of sources similar to that needed with the
history of homosexuality.
Late antique thought in general had turned against
sexuality. The revival of transcendence in philosophy
downgraded the body and exalted rationality as a path
to divinity. Christian theologians took up the theme
with gusto. In the West, St. Jerome and St. Ambrose con
ceived of sex as a way of tying the spirit to
carnality. St. Augustine took up another platonic theme, that
passion derogated from reason, and argued that, while
procreation was a virtuous end for sex, attempts to
gain pleasure were unnatural since rationality was
inevitably compromised. His views set the tone for
western Christianity. Sex was permissible only within
marriage and when it aimed at procreation, and only
then if you did not enjoy it too much. This general
theme was particularised in discussions of what was
allowable between married people. Masturbation was
out, as were anal and oral sex; all were pleasurable
and did not lead to procreation. Vaginal intercourse
also was permitted only in what has become called the
"missionary position" and there was an extended
discussion of the sinfulness of having the woman on
top, of entry from behind and anal sex. Eventually
many commentators came to the conclusion that any
unusual coital positions were unnatural, although it
was never agreed exactly what was permitted and the
concept of "natural" proved to be flexible.
Clearly the theories of ostensibly celibate
authors did not accord with the practice and types of
sexual activity practised by heterosexuals. The
discussions of possible sins by theologians indicate
that some people were committing those sins; there is
some evidence that users of early medieval penitentials
inquired into what sins a penitent had committed and
so the penitentials do reflect practice as well as
churchmen's concerns. After the institution of
compulsory confession at the Fourth Lateran Council
(1215), the practices of the laity resulted in a new
consideration of ethics by theologians; Bishop
Grosseteste of Lincoln, for instance, worked on
Aristotle's Ethics, and new handbooks for confessors
were produced. This evidence shows that heterosexuals
in the Middle Ages practised a wide range of sexual
activity. As well as procreative sex in the missionary
position, heterosexuals seem to have enjoyed sex with
the woman on top, in the "doggy position", and oral
sex. Heterosexuals also had anal sex, and this seems
to have been used as a form of contraception along with
coitus interruptus. In periods when marriage was
delayed we can also be fairly sure that masturbation
was an outlet. Other evidence, apart from conventional
love literature, makes it clear that people also loved
each other on occasion. People do seem to have had
psychological defenses against the ecclesiastical
onslaughts on their sexuality; there was a popular
belief that sex between married people was always
without sin, and there was a phrase si non caste,
tamen cauts.
This wider world of medieval sexuality includes
homosexuality, and we have been looking at it to
establish that homosexuals were not alone in having
their sexuality negated by ecclesiastical ideology.
Turning now to how historians have approached this
aspect of medieval sexuality, we find that three themes
predominate; biography, church and society's views of
homosexuality, and the persecution suffered by
homosexuals.
The least informative in terms of gaining a
historical perspective on the subject has been the
biographical approach. There are numerous biographies
of St. Anselm, St. Aelred, William Rufus, Richard I and
various renaissance homosexuals. Little context has
been given to their sexual lives, and the goal is often
prurient or to "prove" that homosexuals are as good or
better than heterosexuals.
Another approach has been to look at society's
view of homosexuality. This takes into account church
views and secular laws. Bailey's work is well known in
this area, and the results of this sort of study have
been informative. The goal has often been to change
contemporary opinion.
The persecution of homosexuals has been the
greatest concern of many writers on the subject. Gay
writers in particular have seen the origins of modern
oppression in Christian Europe. The two major themes
have been the growth of intolerance and actual
persecution. John Boswell argues strongly that
Christianity only became hostile as it absorbed the
effects of social changes which had nothing to do with
religion. Furthermore, it was only in the thirteenth
century that condemnation of homosexual activity became
a major theme. Boswell sometimes overstates his case,
but he is on to something; churchmen become much more
consistent after the mid-thirteenth century in their
condemnation at the same time that in the secular
sphere capital punishments begin to be handed out.
Various writers have drawn links between the treatment
of Jews, lepers, heretics and homosexuals. Each group
tended to be scarred with the stigma of the others.
Physical persecution followed the increase in
intolerance. The burnings began when the secular
lawmakers took up the ecclesiastical themes. Their
motives were explicitly religious; fear of the divine
vengeance meted out to Sodom was often given as a
reason for the new laws. Why these laws and punishments
were made only in the thirteenth century is disputed.
Gay activist writers tend to see Christian morality
entering the laws, but equally important was that it
was only in the thirteenth century that secular laws
were made in great numbers and law makers looked to
Roman Law which since Justinian had explicitly
condemned homosexuality.
If physical persecution was a factor in the lives
of homosexuals only in the late Middle Ages, it was not
the only way they might have felt attacked. They were
constantly aware, if they had contact with the church,
that their sexual desires were sinful. There has been a
tendency to see homosexuals as unique in this respect,
but as the discussion of sexuality in general made
clear, almost all sexually active people were in a
similar position. Heterosexuals were allowed at least
some sexual expression and the whole orientation of
society towards marriage gave them a way of coping.
Homosexuals' social networks will be examined to see if
they provided a similar mechanism.
Sources
There were earlier studies of the history of homo
sexuality, but the work of Derrick S. Bailey marked a
new departure in the use of sources. Bailey's sources
were canon law, secular law such as Justinian's Code
and the barbarian codes, and some writings of the
church fathers and their medieval successors. Bailey's
work was constantly referred to by many of the other
writers in following two decades. John Boswell also
uses these sources, although with a broader knowledge,
but due to his determination not to look only at
negative attitudes to homosexuals, he introduced
evidence from sources such as troubadour and other
poetry and writings of monastic authors such as Aelred
of Rievaulx. Boswell also took care to look at the
context in which, for instance, canons were issued, and
was able to question Bailey's interpretations38. In this
way and by taking medieval discussions of friendship as
relevant to homosexuality, Boswell has widened
considerably the evidence available for discussion.
It is important to look at these sources because
both Bailey and Boswell are interested in a global
understanding of medieval homosexuality; Bailey is
mainly interested in the Church's view while Boswell
also attempts to comprehend the lifestyle of
homosexuals. The problem with both is that their
sources are discontinuous. There is much information,
but we are talking about a thousand years of history on
a diverse continent. Canon law and commentaries, along
with theological and spiritual writing do allow a
fairly continuous analysis of the views of the clerical
elite. The need to jump from Spain to France to
Scandinavia does not allow a similar analysis of the
actual situation of homosexual people. Law codes,
canons and scholarly commentaries are difficult to tie
to what was happening in particular places to
particular individuals. They necessitate that the
authors who use them talk about "medieval culture" and
"Christian attitudes" over large areas and long time
periods. The hermeneutical difficulties of using such
contrasting sources as seventh-century Visigothic codes
and twelfth-century monastic writing to say anything
consistent about medieval homosexuality are immense.
There has been an increase since 1978 in the
number of studies looking at local areas. Ruggiero,
Goodich, Gade, Krekic, Roth and others have used local
inquisition records, court records and poetry to
present the history of homosexuality from such diverse
local areas as Norway and Dubrovnik to Venice and
Florence. The opportunity is now available to use these
local records to come to refine more general conc
lusions. Many of the sources already used on a global
basis can also be used as local evidence, for instance
St. Peter Damien's Liber Gomorrhanius might be looked
at for the information it gives on central Italy in the
eleventh century. The goal in this paper is to direct
attention away from the generality and to the variety
of homosexual people's lives.
Motivations for Homosexuality
Given the difficulties of homosexual sex in the
Middle Ages, it is legitimate to ask why people chose
to act in this way. No etiology has ever been
established for homosexuality and its expression has
varied from culture to culture; in most it has been
tolerated or approved, but in others it has been
absent. In contrast with some non-European cultures
homosexual activity is referred to in such diverse
places and times that it always was an option, a
conceivable possibility, in the Middle Ages. John
Boswell thinks it is basically an urban phenomena, and
this is true of anything we can call a subculture, but
the evidence of the Irish penitentials, produced in a
land without cities, suggests that the urban aspect
should not be pushed.
It might be thought that homosexual activity, seen
as personal motivations and desires, does not fit into
any economic pattern. Differing patterns of hetero
sexual institutions such as marriage can be linked to
economic trends. Marriage as a means of property
transfer among the twelfth-century French aristocracy
was a different institution to that of marriages
between peasants, or between town dwellers. Homosexual
subcultures, however, emerged fully only in urban
areas. We can see the impact of the commercial
revolution here. The growth of towns was connected to
the rise in trade. Several factors resulted from this.
First of all, especially in Italy, the cities were
large enough to provide anonymity; social control was
shifted to the family and the magistracy and away from
the community at large. This "gap" in social control is
what allows a subculture to develop. Delayed marriage
in late medieval Italian towns also meant that there
were sexually mature young people who might experiment
given the lack of heterosexual opportunity45. Men who
were by inclination homosexual were also given longer
to discover this before being married. Some reasons for
being homosexual, or developing homosexual traits, do
seem to have an economic base.
Another explanation for being homosexual has been
suggested, again in the Italian context, by Herlihy46.
He takes up the issue of the age differential, which
could be up to fifteen years, between married couples
in Florence. This meant that mothers were often as near
their children's' age as their husbands. Herlihy thinks
this affected infantile development, retarded the age
of marriage and produced a "feminised" society. This
is a Freudian explanation of homosexuality, and apart
from being unprovable does not explain why a
"feminised" man should become a distant paterfamilias
when he finally married after the age of thirty.
One of the reasons people have sex is usually
overlooked. They find it pleasurable. There is no
sexual activity that is unique to homosexuals, although
some acts may be more frequent. The sources available
enable us to say something about the type of sexual
activities homosexuals practised. Early medieval
Irishmen seem to have confessed to anal intercourse,
interfemoral intercourse, and mutual masturbation.
Oral sex including the swallowing of semen was also
noted. We have no information as to whether kissing was
practised. Flagellation seems to have been a penance
rather than a pleasure. St. Peter Damian thought this
constellation of activities was prevalent amongst his
clerical contemporaries in central Italy. When we hear
the voice of homosexual poets from Spain, Arab writers
discuss anal sex but, along with their more chaste
Jewish counterparts, the emphasis is on kissing and
its pleasures. Kissing was about as far as monastic
writers in Christian Europe would go, although the
Templars were accused of analingus. Renaissance
Florence saw prosecutions for anal sex, and Ruggiero
recounts the trials of a transvestite prostitute and
another case in which the relationship of the two
charged parties was sado-masochistic. There was then a
variety of sexual activity practised by homosexuals and
the repertoire seems more or less complete. It can be
noted that discussion of oral sex apart from kissing is
relatively rare, and that interfemoral intercourse is
discussed as frequently as anal penetration. Medieval
writers and trial reports all seem to assume that anal
sex was always done from behind. All these activities
were condemned by the Church and society throughout the
period. For people to break such persistent taboos we
must acknowledge just how strong the drive for sexual
pleasure is in many individuals - as strong and
sometimes stronger than any moral precept.
Types of Homosexual Activity in Medieval Europe
Discussion of medieval homosexual sex has brought
us to one of the major themes of the paper - the types
of homosexuality we can see in medieval Europe.
Randolph Trumbach has suggested one way of
understanding the variety. His thesis is that there are
homosexually-oriented men in most societies, but
equally that there is usually horror at the idea of an
adult male playing a passive role in sex, the so-called
"women's role". He suggests that two strategies have
normally been adopted to cope with the conflict; the
first allows men to have sex with adolescent boys, who
are allowed to be passive for this period of their
lives, or there are fully accepted adult male trans
vestites. These were strategies to retain the
masculinity of one partner. For Trumbach, Christian
society is unique in rejecting both active and passive
homosexual activity, and because of this there is the
phenomenon of homosexual subcultures in West. He
thought that because of this there must always have
been homosexual subcultures in the West. Trumbach is
wrong - there have been long periods in western history
without any discernible homosexual subculture.
Trumbach was also at fault in not distinguishing
between types of sexual activity and types of social
networks or subcultures; the two are not necessarily
connected. His discussion of types of sexual activity
raises the legitmate question of why in some societies
we observe homosexual relations between equals, and in
others the adult/adolescent pattern. This is not
reducible, as Trumbach supposes, to whether or not
there was a homosexual subculture. There were societies
such as Spanish Jewry which show signs of a conscious
subculture but where all the evidence points to
adult/adolescent activity, and places where the
opposite seems to hold. Trumbach's theory is far too
rigid, but has value in raising questions about the
variety of forms homosexuality takes. This variety is
the subject now under consideration.
This section will look at those societies in
which we can see the first type of pattern of sexual
activity, that between men and boys, or where one
partner played a definitely passive role in sex. There
were real variations within this pattern.
Scandinavia has left a little evidence in law and
literature about homosexual practice. A single
regulation of 1164 survives against all homosexual
activity, but does not seem to have been enforced. The
literature makes it clear that homosexual acts were
acceptable as long as a man played a "male" role. There
was a word "argr" or "ragr" used to insult men who had
played a receptive role; the indication is that anal
sex was the activity imagined. Gade asserts that
homosexual relationships existed in Norse society, but
offers no proof of this from either law or literature.
Old Norse society seems to have been one where it was
acceptable for most men to express homoerotic desire,
especially with slaves, but where no evidence of
homosexual social networks survives. The sex in
question is usually described as between men; a strong
distinction between active and passive roles does not
here reflect any emphasis on pederasty.
Medieval Hebrew/Spanish culture has left a more
varied record of homosexual activity than Scandinavia.
Maimonides took a strict view of homosexual activity
and admonished both partners, but seems to have been
more lenient when one of the partners was under nine
years old. Although this would be a young age to have
sex, this rabbinic view has some links with the
Hebrew/Spanish literary culture whose poets wrote many
beautiful verses dedicated to the love of boys. The
most notable poets of the period wrote on the theme,
and there seems to have been no question of them
copying ancient Greek forms, although Arabic ghazal
poetry was known to them. The allusions in the poetry
were distinctly Jewish:-
Like Joseph in his form,
like Adoniah his hair.
Lovely of eyes like David,
he has slain me like Uriah.
The sexual activity referred to by Jewish poets, unlike
Muslims, did not go beyond kissing and fondling. There
were themes and images that recurred in this genre of
poetry from the eleventh to thirteenth century. The
poets knew of each other's work, were widely read, and
were integrated in society. There was here then, the
same active/passive pattern of homosexuality as in
Scandinavia, but there the similarity ends. Amongst
Spanish Jews homosexuality was a question of sex with
boys, but it was also surrounded with a halo of
romance. The boys suffered no disgrace, although sex
with bearded youths was despised, and there was a
literary and social network of those who were attracted
to other males.
There are numerous references to homosexual
activity in literature in twelfth-century Christian
France. Here the evidence of the type of sexual
activity is mixed. The poetry of the homosexual bishops
Baudri of Bourgueil (1046-1130) and his friend Marbod
of Rennes (1035-1123) reflects the situation of Jewish
Spain with an emphasis on pederasty and some awareness
by the poets of each other's work. The bishops were
even less forthright about the sexual activity they
envisioned than the Jewish poets. However, pederasty
probably was not all that was going on; Ivo of
Chartres, at the same period and in the same region,
discusses sodomy and fellatio distinctly from
pederasty, and Peter Damian, who wrote at the same period
although in a different place, mentions mutual
masturbation, interfemoral sex and "the complete act
against nature" without making a special complaint of
pederasty or one partner being passive. For the poets
however, pederasty, and by implication an
active/passive distinction, was the norm but this might
have been a literary topos reflecting an awareness of
Roman literary themes.
Trumbach's first type of homosexuality, where a
great distinction is made between active and passive
roles is made, does then appear to have occurred in
medieval Europe. In the instance where the strategy
was most clearly to preserve the masculinity of one
participant, Scandinavia, pederasty does not seem to
have been an issue. Where we find pederasty as the
pattern of active/passive activity our evidence comes
from individuals who do not stress their own
masculinity. So while passivity/activity is a fair way
to typify sexual activity, more than just the desire to
preserve masculinity was at issue; in the Jewish case,
Mosaic law was slightly less harsh on pederasty and
Christian intellectual poets had classical models to
consider. Trumbach's theory may be correct for
"primary" cultures, ones that do not have to come to
terms with previous cultural norms, but in Jewish and
Latin Christian societies constant referral to earlier
classical formulations requires that anthropological
data and theories be used with care.
Homosexual activity where there was not an active-
passive pattern would, in Trumbach's theory, be unique
to the West and related to the subculture he thought
always existed. Here we are talking about the
possibility of reversing sexual roles in a given
culture, or where no strategy was deliberately adopted
or expected by society to preserve masculinity. In
every culture there would be some who preferred an
active or passive role, but the strategy, if it could
be called that, would be the agreed pleasure of the
participants. Was this sort of sexual pattern evident
in any time or place in the Middle Ages?
Early medieval Irish confessors, as reflected in
their penitentials, were not worried by pederasty and
made no great distinction between active and passive
activity. They do distinguish between men and boys and
talk about sexual acts that are mutual and do not fit
into the active/passive paradigm. The penitential of
Cummean (c. 650) in particular talked about boys having
sex together and Columban (c. 600) instructed that a
sodomite should never be housed with another person
without mentioning the age of either person. Sex
between monks was condemned frequently, and here also
there was some equality in that sexual activity was
between men of similar status. So in early Ireland,
where there is no evidence of any homosexual
subculture, there may well have been the option of sex
on an equal basis. In this case Christian condemnation
of both parties may ,as Trumbach predicted, have led
each partner to act for pleasure rather than to
preserve social status. The only problem concerns the
degree to which we can trust the penitentials to
reflect social reality.
Monastic writing on love and friendship in the
twelfth century represents some of the earliest
evidence we have of the views of homoerotically
inclined men. Unlike Baudri of Bourgueil's musings over
pretty boys, writers such as Anselm and Aelred of
Rievaulx wrote to other monks. The objects of their
affection were younger men but they envisioned lifelong
and exclusive relationships, such as the affair Anselm
had with the young monk Osbern. It is not clear what
part sex played in these relationships; although it is
not mentioned overtly by the writers they were
attracted to males and all their emotional life centred
on men. In this milieu also we can perhaps allow some
sort of equality in the activities of homosexuals.
Contemporary with these loving monks, there was a
very different society of young fighting men, the
aristocratic elite of northern France. Duby described
the life of aristocratic youth and thought it possible
that they had sex together. Possibly the education of
knights in all-male groups, for many years with little
prospect of early marriage, would have encouraged
homosexual activity. Certainly Richard I, who embodied
twelfth-century knightly mores, had homosexual
relationships. From what we can construe of this
aristocratic activity it was mutual and between men of
the same age group. We hear nothing of the condemnation
of passive activity seen in Norse lands.
There is some evidence from non-elite and non-
monastic groups in Southwest France in the late
thirteenth century from the inquisition records of
Jacques Fournier. One Arnold of Verniole was tried c.
1323 and his homosexuality came up in the records. It
is clear that he had no trouble persuading many younger
men to sleep with him. In spite of the age difference,
both partners played active and passive roles in
penetrative sex. Arnold's motive in changing roles
around was pleasure. He does not seem to have had a
masculinity axe to grind.
The most extensive evidence of sexual activity
comes from renaissance Italy. It will be argued later
that this is the best example we have of a homosexual
subculture in the period before 1500, but for the
moment the thing to note is that there is evidence of a
wide variety of sexual patterns. Florence in
establishing its magistracy to extirpate sodomy in 1432
specifically condemned active and passive partners as
if they were both committed by adults, although the
prosecutions published by Brucker refer to homosexual
rape of boys. The Florentines also established
heterosexual brothels in 1415 with the intent of luring
young men from sodomy: they seem to have thought the
problem was one of unsatisfied sexual urges rather
than the possibility that some men might have preferred
to be passive. In Venice, Ruggiero, drawing upon trial
records, suggests that active/passive role playing was
the norm, and there were many cases of an older man
and an adolescent engaging in classic pederasty. But in
this homosexual subculture this was not the only
pattern; Ruggiero's own figures show that the number
of sodomy cases involving boys remained steady at about
25 per cent for 175 years. There were also cases of
whole groups of young noblemen of the same age group
being prosecuted96 and depositions from partners who did
take turns in active and passive penetration. In Italy
as well then, we find that equality in sexual roles was
a conceivable option for homosexuals.
In this long section Trumbach's theory of
homosexual activity has been tested in reference to
medieval Europe. He erred it seems in thinking that the
active-passive model of homosexual sex would not occur
in Christian societies, and in tying types of sexual
activity to particular types of culture. On the other
hand, the Christian condemnation of both partners in
penetrative sex may be related to the existence, in a
variety of western contexts, of a homosexuality that
does not conform to the norm in other cultures of
distinct active and passive partners. The wide spectrum
of social contexts looked at here has also demonstrated
that social context and the types sexual activity are
not closely related. The rest of this paper leaves the
study of sexual practice and takes up the theme of
social contexts.
Homosexual Networks & Homosexual Experience
So far homosexual networks or subcultures have been
distinguished from sexual activity. It is worthwhile
asking just what we mean by a subculture. Only then can
the social experience of homosexuals be analysed.
By "subculture", sociologists mean a number of
differenmt things. A culture is the name given to the
whole web of assumptions, history, language,
traditions, art, and crafts that a individuals in a
society hold in common. Society is composed of many
groups, and each group will have its own particular
subset of traditions that make it a subculture;
consciousness of being a group is usually a factor. The
number of groups is enormous, since one individual may
belong to more than one group, so there is academic
interest only in certain sorts of subcultures;
religious, ethnic, womens' and deviant subcultures have
all been of interest to scholars, often reflecting
their own concerns. In any large subculture there will
be sub-sub-cultures. To take the example of the modern
gay subculture, within the whole there are the
distinct, if sometimes overlapping, subcultures of men
interested in leather clothing, and of men interested
in opera; they share the general subcultural knowledge
of code words, gay meeting places, and gay history, and
will probably be aware of and understand "camp", but
each subgroup also has its own meeting places,
interests and language. Such subcultures did exist in
the Middle Ages, amongst, for instance, the Jews, but
as a category of thought "subculture" describes a
society more complex than that discernible in our
sources about homosexuality, with the possible
exceptions discussed later. This is not to say that
homosexuals lived life in total isolation. A more
useful concept is that of a social "network": a
homosexual would not have experienced his sexuality in
isolation if he had had a social network of homosexual
friends, fellow monks or former sexual partners. It is
also easier to discern such networks than the apparatus
of a subculture through the sources we have. A
generalised homosexual subculture after all would mean
only that a series of such smaller networks were
interlinked. A final point here, pace Trumbach, is that
no continuous homosexual subculture did exist in the
Middle Ages. Although we have looked at evidence from a
number of periods and regions there is no evidence that
any one group of homosexuals knew of any other's
existence. In this section we shall look at the this
social experience of gay men and at why there were
social networks or subculture in some places but not
others.
Plainly, some homosexuals had an entirely
individualised experience of sexuality with no
awareness of others, or at least many others with same
feelings and certainly no conception of a different
sexuality. There were a number of homosexual monarchs,
who, with the exception of Edward II, seem to have
escaped any severe punishment; one example would be
Richard I of England. Many of these monarchs do not
seem to have been tied into any social network. Of the
societies already covered Scandinavian homosexuals seem
to have been integrated with the general population:
there is no evidence that all men had sex with others,
but those who did were not regarded badly. The Norse
concept of "argr" or being passive in sex does not seem
to have been applied to any particular group. Ireland
and other regions reflected in the penitentials have
left no other evidence that would allow us to see
social networks. Possibly there were small groups in
some monasteries, and men who played with other as
youths might have remained in contact, but this remains
speculation. We can be fairly sure that in the many
areas and periods for which there is no surviving
evidence there were isolated individuals who possibly
made local contacts; the sexual habits we can observe
in the variety of places we do know about indicates as
much. Such individual experience might have been the
fate of the majority of homosexuals in the Middle Ages.
There are sundry cases where the sources point to
small groups or networks. In some royal courts there
was a network of homosexually interested men. At the
court of Charlemagne, Alcuin and his circle wrote
erotic poems and letters to each other, complete with
nicknames with classical references. This is too small
to be considered a subculture, but the homosexuals who
belonged to it did have social support. The Norman
courts, particularly that of William Rufus, also bear
witness to homosexual networks: St. Anselm preached a
sermon asking the court to stop wearing long hair, and
William of Malmesbury, admittedly at a distance of
thirty years, reports young men walking naked around
the court. A similar phenomenon of social networks can
be seen in monastic circles. In the eleventh century
St. Peter Damian imagined that whole groups of clerics
in his region got together with "eight or even ten
equally sordid men" and that homosexual priests
absolved each other of their sins. Such social
networks, although not necessarily sordid, can be seen
in the letters of Aelred of Rievaulx. For many men of
a homosexual inclination, once the Cistercians
introduced adult recruitment, a monastery must have
seemed a good way to escape the pressures of marriage.
Our evidence comes from abbots' writing; the experience
of lower level monks is not known. Of the non-elite
and non-monastic groups examined earlier, the records
of Montaillou, and the trial records of Arnold of
Verniole, indicate no extensive subculture, but Arnold
did have a whole circle of homosexually active
acquaintances. Although there is no way of quantifying,
it is possible that small social networks of friends
were the commonest way homosexuals who had any social
support experienced their sexuality. The sources just
do not support the theory of a continuous or even a
commonly recurring subculture, but do show more than
isolated individuals.
If social networks are the most we can see in most
periods, are we ever justified in seeing more developed
homosexual subcultures in the Middle Ages? The
Hebrew/Spanish poets bear witness to a tradition
lasting many centuries: the first poet to write in the
tradition of homoerotic poetry was Yishaq ben Mar-Saul
in the eleventh century and his successors continued
composition until the thirteenth century. This seems
to lend support to the idea that amongst Spanish Jews
there was a subculture. The problem is that our
evidence is literary, and, while this does show a
continuing tradition of code words, images, and
sensibility, we do not know if there were meeting
places, lasting relationships or any consciousness
among non-literary homosexuals that they formed a
group. Even with these reservations, we can see some sort of
subculture in Spain, based, as noted earlier, on the
sexual attraction of adults for adolescents. Boswell is
keen to see twelfth-century French culture and
literature as evidence of a widespread subculture114. He
brings into play the writings of Baudri of Bourgueil,
Marbod, and variety of other litery works, including
one poem which seems to refer to male brothels
operating in Paris, Chartres, Sens and Orleans. There
was also a verse debate between Helen and Ganymede on
the merits of the love of boys and the love of women.
Boswell sees such literature as "the product of a
society in which gay people were an important segment
of the population," and "where defenses of gay love
were sufficiently common to have taken on a defiant
rather than apologetic tone". Added to the sources
discussed by Boswell, there were reports of
homosexuality at Paris University in 1219, and in
Paris in general in 1230. The limited evidence does
point to a homosexual subculture amongst clerics, both
priestly and scholarly, in northern France from perhaps
the late eleventh until sometime in the thirteenth
century. The sexuality expressed in the surviving poems
is centred on sex with young males but with some
indications of more equal relationships between adults.
It is not clear if the homosexual networks we can see
in English monasteries at the period, or the possible
homosexuality amongst aristocratic youth, were linked
with the homoerotic traditions of the secular and urban
clergy of northern France. Late medieval and
renaissance Italy presents a special case. Italian
homosexuality in late Middle Ages has been well
documented by Ruggiero. The sources are entirely
different from the literary evidence used by Boswell,
and although we do not hear the voices of homosexuals,
Venice's court records describe a varied homosexual
subculture in the fifteenth century with distinct
meeting places near the Rialto amongst other places.
Ruggiero thinks that this subculture only came into
being in the fifteenth century. More rudimentary
social organisation is discernible in Italy before
that: Dante is quite aware of sodomites a century
earlier. Although only Venice has been investigated in
full there were muncipal statutes in many other Italian
cities of the period, and it is possible much more
evidence of homosexual subcultures is available in
their court records. Homosexual subcultures did exist
in the Middle Ages, although there are full records for
none of them. The total number was small, and they were
limited to certain areas. For most of the period there
was only the most limited social organisation for
homosexuals.
There are no set reasons why a homosexual network
or more developed subculture should develop in one area
and not in another. Much work has been done on the
persecution of homosexuals, and Boswell's thesis is
that persecution destroyed the homosexual subculture of
the twelfth entury. That may have been the case in
France, but the most developed subculture we are aware
of, that of Venice, grew up in an atmosphere far more
dangerous for homosexuals than anything in the
thirteenth century.
Persecution was not the only relevant fact in the
existence of a subculture. Urbanisation as such has
little to do with the existence of homosexual activity,
Scandinavia and early medieval Ireland show that, but a
developed social organisation seems to be necessary
before sub-groups can form their own networks. Not
every town had a homosexual network, as far as we can
see, but almost all the networking that did occur was
related to urban life125. Small networks must have grown
up accidentally as a group of acquaintances came to
recognise their sexuality in each other. Only when and
where there was a continuous subculture would there be
real opportunities for homosexuals outside these chance
networks to find a social context for their sexuality.
Conclusions
This paper has looked at the experience of
medieval homosexuals from a distinct perspective. In
particular the development of persecution and hatred,
the elaboration of a theological and juridical
onslaught, has been sidelined. The goal has been to
discuss the way in which homosexuals experienced their
sexuality. The theoretical problems were discussed
along with previous approaches to the issue. Source
material instead of being used to make large
generalisations has been taken as evidence for
localised information. The central part of the paper
looked at why people might act homosexually, and at the
type of sex they had. The last two sections took up the
suggestions of Randolph Trumbach on the type of
sexualities and subcultures that might be found. Very
clearly there were distinct types of sexual activity in
different periods and areas, but these activities do
not seem to accord with any particular social
organisation of homosexuals: there was a pederastic
emphasis in the Spain, with a developed subculture, and
there were relationships conducted on a more equal
basis in areas where there is little evidence of
homosexual social organisation. What has become clear
is that homosexuality existed in immensely varied forms
in the Middle Ages. A global approach to the whole
period is of some use and interest, but to try to
understand the lives of homosexual individuals it is
necessary to consider their local circumstances and the
structures in which they lived.
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