Posted in category "History"
I’m curling up with a good book by the fireplace this Christmas: The Unmentionable Vice: Homosexuality in the Later Medieval Period. Written by Michael Goodich, the book was published in 1979.
I have often wondered why and when the church began to focus on sodomy as a sin so detestable it crystallized in the phrase “peccatum mutum” - the mute sin, the silent sin- the secret sin. What combination of people and events came together to ignite a centuries-long persecution of homosexuals by the church? Why did it start? What incident, situation, person or persons was the catalyst for the continuing cascade of religious persecution that began in the 11th century?
Three other books dealing with medieval gay history are also on my list to read: John E. Boswell’s two books - Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Christianity From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (1980); Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (1995); and Sodomy, Masculinity and Law in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050-1230 (2004) by William Burgwinkle.
One major aim of his work, Dr. Boswell wrote, was “to rebut the common idea that religious belief–Christian or other–has been the cause of intolerance in regard to gay people.”
Dr. Goodich seems to have drawn the opposite conclusion.
In two 1976 articles in the Journal of Homosexuality, Michael Goodich briefly sketched the close connection between heresy and sodomy in 13th century secular and ecclesiastical law. His book, The Unmentionable Vice, elaborated that sketch into a full-scale study of homosexuality in Europe from the 11th to the early 14th century. Goodich posits it is during this period the Catholic Church consolidated its moral condemnation of homosexual activity.
Although the Council of Ancyra had treated sodomy as a crime as early as 314 A.D., at the beginning of the 11th century there was no uniform legislation on the subject. It seems to be been regarded primarily as a non-Christian vice.
But thereafter more and more attention was given to sexual conformity. Two treatises devoted to the denunciation of homosexuality, Peter Damian’s Book of Gomorrah (1049) and Alan of Lille’s Complaint of Nature (ca 1165) were published during this period.
With the opening of the Fourth Latern Council (1215), “a more miltant, aggressive phase opened in the history of the Catholic Church,” Goodich writes. The penalities for conviction of sodomy continued to be strengthened, and the Inquisition was developed as a means of hunting down heretics and sodomites. The Domincian Order was to take an instrumental role in exterminating heresy and hunting down that “evil filth” (sodomites).
Although he was an Italian Renaissance figure, in the 1490s Dominican Girolamo Savonarola of Florence succeeded in declaring sodomy a capital offense punishable by death.
One of the interesting parts of Goodich’s book is the verbatim report of the trial for heresy and sodomy of Arnold of Verniolle in 1323. The distance between theoretical views and actual practice (sound familiar!) is shown by the apparent ease with which he met his partners.
By his own confession, Arnold committed sodomy with several young men, whose testimony is also included. Arnold was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment in chains, on a diet of bread and water.
What happened to him?
The late John Paul II was wounded in a 1982 knife attack. The would-be assassin, a priest, attacked the pope during a visit to Fatima Square in Portugal. The priest was opposed to the reforms adopted by the church after Vatican II.
The pope kept the injury secret. He carried on with the trip without disclosing his wound.
The incident is described in a new film, Testimony, and is based on the 2007 book of the same name by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the pope’s long-time secretary and friend. Cardinal Dziwisz accompanied Karol Wojtyla from his time in Poland until his last days in the Vatican. The film is a testimony of John Paul II’s life, presenting many new facts and interpretations. 
The film premiered at the Vatican on October 16, 2008. It is narrated by actor Michael York.
Dziwisz, who is now cardinal of Krakow, Poland, was John Paul’s private secretary and closest aide for nearly 40 years, including all his 27 years as pontiff.
“Today I can say what up to now we have kept secret,” Dziwisz said in the move. “That priest wounded the Holy Father..When we got back to the room there was blood.”
The attack occured on May 12, 1982, when Juan Fernandez Krohn lunged at John Paul with a bayonet during a ceremony in the shrine of Fatima in Portugal. The Pope had gone to the shrine to give thanks for surviving a gunshot wound from Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981.
Krohn was an ultra conservative priest, and former member of the Society of Saint Pius X. He was expelled from that group because he openly proclaimed Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre opposition to Pope John Paul II was too weak. 
Krohn was expelled from Portugal in 1985 after serving half of a six year jail sentence.
Gay clerics and those rumored to be–nuns, priests, bishops, cardinals, monks, abbots, even popes–have been with us always. Some were celibate. Others were not. Most were discreet. Others celebrated their love and loves. One of them was Alcuin of York.
Alcuin, also known as Alcuinus (Latin) and Ealhwine (Saxon) was born in York, in Northumbria, England in 735 A.D. 
At the invitation of Charlemagne, Alcuin headed the king’s school for his children at Aachen from 782 to 796. He was a leading figure at court during that time. He wrote many theological and dogmatic treatises, as well as a few grammatical works and a number of poems.
Alcuin was made abbot of Saint Martin’s at Tours in 796, where he remained until his death on May 19, 804. He is considered among the most important architects of the Carolingian Renaissance.
John Boswell, in Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) writes:
“A distinctly erotic element…is notable in the circle of friends presided over by Alcuin at the court of Charlemagne. This group included some of the most brilliant scholars of the day (Theodule of Orleans, Anglibert, Einhard, et al,), but the most erotic element subsisted principally between Alcuin and his pupils. Intimates of this circle of masculine friendship were known to each other by pet names, most of them derived from classical allusions, many from Vergil’s Ecologues..The prominence of love in Alcuin’s writings, all of which are addressed to other males, is striking…”
One of the most famous poems is addressed to a student whom Alcuin called “Daphnis” and laments the departure of another student, “Dodo,” who is referred to in the poem as their “cuckoo“. 
Boswell explains that “One expects hyperbole in poetry, but even in Alcuin’s prose correspondence there is an element which can scarcely be called anything but passionate. He wrote to a friend (a bishop…)
‘I think of your love and friendship with such sweet memories, reverend bishop, that I long for that lovely time when I may be able to clutch the neck of your sweetness with the fingers of my desires. Alas, if only it were granted to me, as it was to Habakkuk (Daniel 14:32-38), to be transported to you, how I would sink into your embraces,..how much would I cover, with tightly pressed lips, not only your eyes, ears and mouth, but also every finger and toe, not once but many a time.”
“Love has penetrated my heart with its flame,” wrote Alcuin to Arno, Bishop of Salzburg (c. 750-821). “Neither sea nor land, hills nor forest, nor even the Alps can stand in its way or hinder it from always licking at your inmost parts, good father, or from bathing your heart, my beloved, with tears…Let us seek the delights and ever-enduring realms of heaven with our whole heart, mind, and hand. The blessed hall of heaven never separates friends; a heart warmed by love always has what it loves. Therefore, father, abduct me with your prayers, I beg you (precibus rape me). Then our love will never be estranged.”
Surely, Alcuin was one of the first Catholic religious figures to blend gay sexuality and spirituality in his writing, relationships and life.
One of the most fascinating, but least mentioned stories in the Bible is about King Saul and the Witch of Endor. The spectre of the prophet Samuel rising from the ground to confront the king has to be one of the creepiest, horrifying scenes in any literature–Bible or pulp fiction. 
The Canaanite Witch of Endor appears in the First Book of Samuel, chapter 28:4-25. She was an oracle, a woman “who possesses a talisman” though which she called up the ghost of the recently deceased prophet Samuel at the demand of King Saul of Israel.
After Samuel’s death in Ramah, Saul had driven all the necromancers from Israel. Then, in a bitter irony, Saul sought out the witch, anonymously and in disguise, only after he had received no answer from God from dreams, prophets or the Urim and Thummim as to his best course of action against the assembled forces of the Philistines. Samuel’s ghost offered no advice, but predicted Saul’s downfall as king. 
The Witch of Endor had a string of ancestors that stretched back over 10,000 years before her fateful seance.
Israeli archaeologist, Dr. Leore Grosman, and her team from Hebrew University discovered the remains of a 12,000 year old witch in a tomb in northern Israel. The woman lived at the time of the prehistoric Natufian culture, an ancient community that lived in the region 10,000 years before Jesus. 
The witch was around 45 years old when she died. She was petite, and had an asymmetrical appearance due to a spinal condition or injury that would have affected her gait, causing her to limp or drag her foot.
The tomb, located at Hilazon Tachtit in western Galilee, contained a vast number of grave offerings. Among them were 50 complete tortoise shells, the pelvis of a leopard, the wing tip of a golden eagle, the tail of a dow, two marten skulls, the forearm of a wild boar and a human foot.
It would be interesting to study how women’s abilities for diviniation and spiritual intercession went from high respect in the Natufian society to persecution by King Saul and clerics in medieval Christianity.
Was it the evolution to a male God figure calculated? Did male saints and male religious authorities co-opt religious intercession and power roles to reside only in their own gender?
