Homosexuality in the Middle Ages

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Paul Halsall:

The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages

Preface

The following is a paper written in 1988. I would change some, perhaps many of the conclusions, and certainly the theoretical approach. In particular I would emphasis the position of large aggregates of human beings [i.e. cities and monasteries] as

a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition for homosexual sub-cultures.

It should also be noted that this paper stands firmly against the social constructionist model of homosexual cultures. It sees, in Western culture at least, the persistent existence of recognizably homosexual sub-cultures which recur whenever

opportunity presents itself. I am now much more open to constructionist arguments, but would insist that the free variation some aspects of constructionism seems to posit, does not exist:- in fact a small number of formulations recur repeatedly.

The bibliography on medieval homosexuality in the ten years since this paper was written has grown enormously. There is an up-to-date online bibliography available. Anyone seriously interested in this topic needs especially to get hold of the

following (full citations in the online bibliography):

Michael J. Rocke: Forbidden Friendship

James Brundage: Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe

John Boswell: Same Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe

Mark Jordan: The Invention of Sodomy

Bernardette Brooten: Love Between Women

Let me stress this was a term paper by a graduate student. It may still have some interest, but it does not represent my current ideas, or what I would regard as publishable material.

Paul Halsall

Halsall@murray.fordham.edu

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 partisan 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 [1]. 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 homosexuals 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 [2].

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 homosexuals 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 [3]. 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 [4]. This distinctive perspective has become orthodox for many writers [5]. John Boswell led the attack on Foucault's thesis [6], although his own theory that there have

always been homosexual subcultures [7] does not seem to be verifiable. Other authors not attached to structuralist theory, such as Guido Ruggiero [8], are now joining Boswell. The core issue is did homosexual behavior 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 [9]. 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 practicing

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 [10]. The revival of transcendence in philosophy downgraded the body and exalted rationality