Existence Of Homosexuality Throughout The Renaissance example essay topic

Sexuality, and the role that sexuality plays in the spectrum of life, from literary to more contemporary reflections in the media, are difficult subject areas to approach. What makes this cultural and literary study impressively difficult to tackle is the ever-changing perception of what it means to be gay against the changing background of our societies. The idea of sexuality along with the social and ethical complications surrounding it during the Renaissance created a society of sexually repressed people, a society that few dared to rebel against. In many ways, scholars such as Michael Rocke, author of Forbidden Friendships, examine the accomplishments of the Renaissance, asking whether the products of this period of elitism actually have benefited society and people today, because much of what occurred during this period acts as the foundation for many systems of belief today. Beginning with the publication of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Between Men, in 1985, the emergence of male homosexuality has become a prominent topic of medieval and Victorian literary culture. During the introduction, Sedgwick comments on the importance of understanding and recognizing a homosexual continuum, paying particular attention to the term, "Renaissance".

She states: We can't possibly know in advance about the Harlem Renaissance, any more than we can about the New England Renaissance or the English or Italian Renaissance, where the limits of a revelatory inquiry are to be set, once we begin to ask - as it is now beginning to be asked about each of these Renaissances - where and how the power in them of gay desires, people, discourses, prohibitions, and energies were manifest. We know enough already, however, to know with certainty that in each of these Renaissances they were central. The actual definition of the word "homosexual" within the context of the period is essential for a complete understanding of what it meant to be gay during the same time. Often, the word homosexual is mistakenly associated with the words sodomite or sodomy. However, when those words are used interchangeably, the homosexual identity is blurred, and many times, is misunderstood. In an article by Giovanni Dall " Orto, entitled " 'Socratic Love' as a disguise for same-sex love in the Italian Renaissance", Dall " Orto differentiates between what was meant by the term "sodomite", and it's relationship to homosexuality: The recent stimulating discussion about the 'historical construction of the homosexual' deals with the problem of when who we now call 'homosexual people' begin to identify themselves as a 'different' category, and when society began to see them as a distinct minority.

In other words, when did the 'homosexual' take the place of the 'sodomite". Recently, the original hypothesis that the category of homosexuality was created about 1850 through the diagnostic and classificatory work of physicians, psychiatrists, and neurologists has yielded to other theories, and the beginning of a homosexual subculture, with features comparable to the modern one's has been fixed- for now - at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Italian Renaissance was fraught with Christian doctrine and belief, and one of the most influential writers of the period that addressed issues such as gender and sexuality was Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas represented the Christian moral agenda, and spoke about the role of women, establishing gendered roles for both men and women.

In an article entitled, "Sexual Relations in Renaissance Europe", Garn LeBaron explores the relationship between the perceptions of sexuality during the Renaissance as declared by Thomas Aquinas. He states: Regarding marriage, Aquinas thought that it had only two recommendations: It allowed children to be conceived without sin, and it kept men out of sexual trouble. Aquinas also went into great detail listing the various sexual sins in their corresponding order of magnitude. These included: ... bestiality, sodomy... Once a foundation for understanding the existence of homosexuality is in place, no real meaning can be assessed until it can be applied to a real person. Once the existence is made into a reality for someone in particular, it becomes more believable.

For instance, many scholars have suggested that Erasmus of Rotterdam was indeed homosexual. One such scholar is author, Forrest Tyler Stevens, who wrote an essay in the book, Queering the Renaissance, entitled, "Erasmus's 'Tigress': The Language of Friendship, Pleasure, and the Renaissance Letter". In this essay, Stevens provides a bit of insight into who Erasmus was, and the suggestion that perhaps Erasmus dealt with homosexual feelings for his friend, Servat ius Roger us. He asks: Was Erasmus a homosexual? Worse still, was he a jilted homosexual pursuing an unwilling straight acolyte? Were the monasteries refuge for those pleasures one dare not name among Christians?

Most Erasmus scholars maintain an embarrassed silence about the letters, refusing the speculate about either Erasmus or the monasteries; a small number talk of the love letters written by Erasmus as either a key to his latent homosexuality of another example of hidden homosexual history. The major problem in researching the history of the homosexual identity is the significant lack of reliable and worthy information left available. Throughout history, homosexual men and women have been silenced, while the public rarely acknowledges their community at all. Even more critical are the literary sources and histories that were written by homophobic authors.

In all, the difficulty of researching this issue is substantial. Florence, during the Renaissance, is quite unique, for it developed a reputation for being pervaded with homosexuality, or "sodomy" in the language of the time. Stemming from this reputation, reeling from significant decrease in the population due to the Black Death, and pressured by homophobic clerics, the city of Florence set up what was known as "The Office of the Night", a judicial board solely in charge of investigating and prosecuting acts of sodomy. Michael Rocke, author of Forbidden Friendships, uses a large number of the texts that have survived, and reconstructs the Florentine homosexual history during the Renaissance. In Rocke's estimation, the issue of homosexual practices was a pervasive issue in Renaissance Florence.

In a city in which approximately 40,000 people lived, he concludes that nearly 17,000 men were charged with acts of sodomy during the seventy years that "The Office of the Night" existed. He states: During the seventy-year tenure from 1432 to 1502, this magistracy, with the limited participation of other courts, carried out the most extensive and systematic persecution of homosexual activity in any premodern city. Yet in doing so the courts also brought to light a thriving and multifaceted sexual culture that was solidly integrated into the broader male world of Florence. Whether Rocke's population estimations are accurate or not, the fact that so many charges of sodomy were brought against these people is remarkable, and it would appear to implicate a substantial minority of the male population over two generations, almost half by Rocke's estimation. Careful consideration must also be directed toward the number of individuals that never had charges brought against them, and with that the number grows.

An interesting fact shows that most of the men accused of the act of sodomy were beneath the age of 35 and / or unmarried men. The other interesting bit of knowledge showed that most men in Florence married later in life, perhaps at age 30 or 31. This created a city fraught with young, uprooted, sexually vigorous males in a city where many of the women were kept hidden away at home, beneath the overprotective watch of fathers and brothers. In turn, a culture of male-to-male sexual love arose. The most common arrangement for these male lovers was quite traditional in the sense that the older partner in the relationship was expected to penetrate the younger partner; no doubt a standard by which to measure the power between the two men. However, exceptions to this unspoken rule were infrequent, yet still existed.

Reports of older men wishing to be penetrated existed, and Rocke addresses this issue, stating: But the number of passive partners declined sharply from the ages of eighteen to twenty as boys grew older and abandoned their subordinate position and other males. Both younger and older men who continue to "let themselves be sodomized", as will be seen, not only were the objects of ridicule but also were liable to harsh punishment. Properly wary of imposing anachronistic models of the past, Rocke repeatedly stresses that these men were not "homosexual", much less "gay", and they were not at all involved in anything like the modern gay subculture of today. No doubt, as Rocke says, many men whom we would not call homosexual engaged in sodomy primarily because it was such a pervasive part of the drinking, gambling, and open sexuality of the single male culture. But, despite his protests, clearly some men had a lifelong preference for homosexuality. Lack of access to women clearly accounted for much of the activity, but some men evinced a preference for men.

Some men pursued young males throughout their entire lives, sometimes falling in love with their partners and developing relationships lasting anywhere from two to four years. If they were single, that was likely their primary sexual outlet. On the other hand, if they were married, some still preferred their young men to their wives. Some men apparently undertook homosexual "marriages" in which the men swore fidelity to each other holding hands over the bible on a church alter. Even "The Office of the Night" appeared to regard such men as married to one another. Rocke states: Further, same-sex unions not only had classical antecedents in Greece and Rome, and in the Middle Ages were given a Christian blessing in special liturgical ceremonies, but also are found in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries elsewhere in central Italy.

Similarly, if no concept of a discreet "subculture" existed, there were interlinked networks of "sodomites" who gathered to drink and gamble together at specific taverns and designated locations known as brothels or workshops, where men loaned their homes or businesses to friends who would rendezvous with other men there. Judicial records afford glimpses of dinner parties, trips to country houses and other social activities. Many of these "sodomitical" relationships were apparently tolerated and even encouraged by parents and relatives who saw that they could gain protection and political advancement from a son's well-placed lover. In addition, since older lovers customarily gave their partner's gifts or money from time to time, families often welcomed the financial gain.

Rocke addresses this issue by stating that: In addition to companionship, networks of friends could provide concrete forms of assistance and protection. The friendships formed through and around sodomy perhaps helped some med find jobs with others who shared their erotic interests, as the many examples of employers and their workers implicated in sodomy might suggest. The ideas of youthful sodomy or contacts that did not become too open and notorious were in fact tolerated in Florence during the Renaissance. Despite the large number of accusations, fewer than 3,000 men were convicted, which is less than twenty percent, and many fewer actually paid their fines, and rarely was there any action taken against them for doing so.

When pushed too hard to punish people severely, "The Office of the Night" itself engaged in a passive resistance, once refusing to convict anyone for fourteen months. During the reign of the fanatical and homophobic friar Savonarola in the 1490's, young patrician males, no doubt involved in sodomy, staged a "wild riot" inside the Cathedral during the friar's Ascension Day sermon to protest his puritan crackdown. Savnarola's reign was soon followed by history's first known gay rights demonstration where a group of young aristocrats demanded that all sentences for those "exiled or deprived of office for sodomy" be revoked. Rocke describes the event stating: Nothing better justifies the prominent role in sodomy ascribed to youths than the remarkable defense of convicted sodomites by a band of young aristocrats during a daring raid on city hall that helped overturn the Republican regime in 1512. On August 31, with Spanish and Medicean troops at the city gates, some thirty young partisans of the Medici led by twenty-three-year-old Anton francesco degli Albizzi invaded the government palace and forced the Gonfalonier Piero Soderini to resign. The existence of homosexuality throughout the Renaissance can at times be difficult to find.

For many years, the extensive evidence has been piled beneath layers of homophobia, and as the material surfaces, a deeper understanding of the role that homosexuality played in real life situations in the Renaissance becomes more clear. Indeed, many times, the same questions centered on the significance of sexuality, and the important role it plays in creating an accurate representation of the culture, are asked today. The rediscovery of his and much other material makes Rocke's interpretation found in Forbidden Friendships fascinating and occasionally startling. More importantly however is that books like this and other material that shed light on the history of homosexuality establish a confirmation of human continuity with the past.

Bibliography

Dall " Orto, Giovanni". 'Socratic love' as a disguise for same-sex long in the Italian Renaissance", Journal of Homosexuality, 16 (1988), pp.
33-65. Reprinted in Gerard and He kma, The Pursuit of Sodomy (9189), 33-65. LeBaron Jr., Garn. "Sexual Relations in Renaissance Europe". web Rocke, Michael. Forbidden Friendship. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Los Angles: University of California Press, 1990.
Stevens, Forrest Tyler. Queering the Renaissance. Ed. Jonathan Goldberg. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994.