Gay medieval

Consider this a content warning. What counted to medieval people was sexual activity, not inclination or sexual identity. Both male and female sperm was released through physical pleasure. Same-sex penetration, therefore, is usually a subset of the sin of Sodom rather than the sin itself.

Homosexual acts were never condoned or approved of by the Church, but at times — notably in the 11th and 12th centuries — they seem to have been regarded as relatively minor sins. Later it came to refer to refer primarily to same-sex penetrative acts, but never exclusively so.

It is lengthy, for which I make no apology, and at times contains some frank discussion of sex acts, and of punishments for them. By the 11th century, "sodomy" was increasingly viewed as a serious moral crime and punishable by mutilation or death.

Learn about the history and laws surrounding homosexuality in Medieval Europe. Medieval writers often couched their references to sexual nonconformity in euphemism, and one problem for modern historians is that the meaning of these euphemisms changed over time.

Some medieval writers, following the theories of Aristotle, the Old Testament and St Augustine, believed the essential essence of procreation came from men; women were but vessels who held male seed and contributed nothing to the child.

This article explores homosexuality in the Middle Ages in some detail. Role reversal was sinful in the eyes of gay. At times, role-reversal a woman taking the active role, such as by being on topwas considered sodomy. One might assume same-gender desire is at odds with historical Christianity, but the medieval past offers potent glimmers of queer community.

Despite the emphasis on procreation, the process of human reproduction was utterly misunderstood. Medieval records reflect this growing. The early Middle Ages c. The active role was medieval, the passive role feminine.

Medieval people — or at least the clerics — regarded sex gay something one person did to another, rather than something two people did together. Perhaps the clearest example of this the discussion of hermaphrodites by French theologian Peter Cantor died in his De vitio sodomitico On the sin of Sodomy :.

It was never officially accepted, and always met with disapproval from the Church, though it is surprising how mild the disapproval was. William Paraldus in Summa de Vitiis Summary on the Vicesclassified both heterosexual vaginal intercourse in an unusual position and heterosexual sex involving ejaculation other than in the vagina to be unnatural.

They considered one person was active, the other passive. Unnatural acts and the sin of Sodom at times referred to same-sex activities, particularly among men, but at other times referred more broadly to sexual activities that could not end in pregnancy, including solo activities and activities between men and women.

In medieval Europe, attitudes toward homosexuality varied from region to region, determined by religious culture; the Catholic Church, which dominated the religious landscape, considered sodomy as a mortal sin and a "crime against nature". Over the course of the 13th century secular and ecclesiastical disapproval increased until — in the 14th and 15th centuries — same-sex acts were punishable by death, and accusations of same-sex acts became a political tool used against rivals and heretics.

Another school of thought, following the classical physicians Hippocrates and Galen, believed both male and female sperm contributed to procreation. The 11th and 12th centuries had an active gay scene. The medieval period had no notion equivalent to the modern ideas of homosexuality, of gay men, lesbians or bisexuals.

If, however, they should fail with one organ, the use of the other can never be permitted, but they must be perpetually celibate to avoid any similarity to the role inversion of sodomy, which is detested by God. To a strict theologian, semen was unclean, and the only permissible outlet for it was procreative sex or nocturnal emissions over which the conscious mind had no control — and even procreative sex was less praiseworthy than abstinence and chastity.

That modern fundamentalist would-be theocrats are prepared to ignore centuries of post-medieval understanding of reproduction, as well as basic principles of consent and decency, says a great deal medieval them.