Attitudes to Same-Sex Sexual Relations in the Latin World

Summary

SAME-SEX SEXUAL RELATIONS were once considered in some ways the very definition of the problematic term “deviant”—in fact the Oxford English Dictionary still gives “homosexual” as a secondary and offensive meaning of “deviant.” This chapter will discuss the persecution and state violence that this behaviour encountered in the Middle Ages. This is not to deny that there were also other, more affirming attitudes. Scholars of medieval literature in particular, but also historians, have shown that there were in the Middle Ages subcultures of same-sex sex, love, and desire, whether expressed through identity, writing (including rich traditions of love poetry in many medieval languages), or action. Stories like Roger of Hoveden's report that Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus of France were such good friends that they shared a bed—if it is indeed evidence of sexual activity—demonstrate that the term “deviant” is very problematic here. The same is true of other examples of same-sex friendships: whether or not they involved what moderns would consider sexual activity, medieval people did not necessarily see anything wrong with them.

There has been a great deal of scholarly and popular discussion over whether sexual identities or orientations existed before the modern era, or whether premodern societies focused entirely on acts rather than identities. For present purposes it is quite clear that, whether or not sexual identity or orientation existed, what was criminalised was behaviour. Preference could be considered unusual and in some cases deviant, but here we shall be concerned with “same-sex behaviour” rather than “homosexuality.” Even “same-sex behaviour,” of course, is not a medieval term, but rather a modern rubric that I use to cover what might in the Middle Ages have been called “sodomy,” or a variety of other terms or euphemisms.

The term “sodomy” was multivalent. It could be used to denote any sort of sexual intercourse other than penis-in-vagina, man-on-top. It could also be used in a more generalized way to mean not specific activities but rather a general miasma of sexual sin. It thus has to be considered carefully in context. Mark Jordan argued that it does not have a stable meaning in medieval theology, but is associated with outsiders, and easily slips into metaphors of contagion.