Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature

by William Burgwinkle

  68. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford

  University Press, 1997), p. 143.

  69. All of these citations occur in the context of Bersani’s discussion of Gide’s L’Immoraliste in Homos, pp. 122, 125, and 126.

  70. “Saepe cernebam praesentissimo mantis intuitu Christum clavis affixum, in cruce pendentem, avidusque suspiciebam stillantem supposito ore cruore” (Opusc. 19, PL 145, col. 432; cited in McNulty, Peter Damian, p. 32).

  71. “Statue quoque tibi certamen assiduum adversus carnem, armatus semper assiste contra inportunam libidinis rabiem. Si luxurie flamma in ossibus estuat, proti- nus illam memoria perpetui ignis extinguat. Si callidus insidiator lubricam carnis speciem obicit, ilico mens ad mortuorum sepulchra oculum dirigat et quid illic suave tactu, quid delectabile visu reperiatur, sollerter attendat” (323, 17–22).

  72. Carrette, Foucault and Religion, p. 72.

  73. “Cum ergo sancta quaelibet anima Redemptori suo veraciter in amore conjunctitur, cum ei denique velut in sponsali thalamo per oblectationis intimae glutinum cop- ulatur.. .” (Epistolae lib. IV, 16. PL 144, col. 333; cited in McNulty, Peter Damian, p. 30).

  74. John Boswell (Christianity, p. 253 n.37), commenting on these same passages says: “‘Hunting’ and terminology related to it figure prominently in poetry by or about gay people, and it is possible that it represented what ‘cruising’ describes in the gay subculture of today, although as a metaphor it is obvious enough not to require any special explanation.” This association might better explain John’s puzzling and vehement objections to what must have been a very common and necessary practice for most people outside of the major cities. It is interesting, in light of Boswell’s suggestion, to note that William Rufus is killed during a hunting expedition and that Guigemar is kidnapped and Narcisus entrapped by the image in the water during the course of hunting. Since all three scenes are in one way or another linked with homoeroticism or improper gendering (Guigemar and the doe/stag, Narcisus and the male image, William Rufus and his murder amongst his “degenerate” mates) it would appear that this association is worthy of further research. See chapter 6 in Joachim Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages,trans. T. Dunlap (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 415–416; and

  Kolve, “Ganymede,” p. 1022.

  75. Acteon, son of the daughter of Cadmus, one day observed Artemis bathing. In revenge, she transformed him into a stag and he was chased and killed by his own hounds. See Ovid’s account in Book 3 of the Metamorphoses.

  76. Daniel D. McGarry, trans., The Metalogicon of John of Salisbury: A Twelfth-Century Defense of the Verbal and Logical Arts of the Trivium (Berkeley and London: 1955, repr. Gloucester, Mass.: Greenwood Press, 1971), p. 13. Hereafter, page numbers cited in the text refer to this edition.

  77. Hunting is often associated with violence, aggression, and displays of hyper- masculinity, even today, but such characterizations are somewhat culture-bound. Anthropologists often see hunting as providing a spiritual and economic contri- bution to society: “It is a creative, even tender activity, a triumph of utility in the service of others – truly a kind of indirect nourishing or nurturing” (David Gilmore, Manhood in the Making [New Haven and London: Yale University Press,

  1990], p. 116; citing Ernestine Friedl, Women and Men: An Archeologist’s View [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1975], pp. 12–32). Clearly there was a distinc- tion made amongst twelfth-century nobility and intellectuals between hunting for provisions and hunting as a sport of excess and narcissistic self-promotion.

  78. Matthew Bennett (“Military Masculinity in England and Northern France c. 1050– c. 1225,” in Dawn M. Hadley, ed., Masculinity in Medieval Europe [London and New York: Longman, 1999], pp. 73–74) suggests as well that hunting together with other boys formed an important part of the apprenticeship undergone by aristocratic youths in knightly training. Hunting served as a substitute for war but also as a ritualistic bonding experience in which co-operation and loyalty were nurtured. The ways in which such bonding experiences exploit homosocial and homoerotic codes in all-male communities is still a fraught topic today.

  79. As Bruce Holsinger shows (Music, Body, and Desire, p. 158), these attitudes and the metaphors in which they are encoded were widespread amongst twelfth-century Parisian intellectuals. The introduction of polyphony at Notre Dame brought to the surface a sexual anxiety that associated unconventional sexual practices with musical technique even much earlier in the century.

  80. See Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s insightful work on the monster as cipher for boundaries and the transgression of boundaries: Cohen, ed., Monster Theory: Reading Culture (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996) and Of Giants: Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages. Medieval Culture Series 17 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

  81. John is alluding to Macrobius III, xiii., 4.5; cited in Frivolity trans. Pike, p. 371.

  82. See Lavine’s diatribe in Eneas for her use of this same charge (“il voldroit deduit de garc¸on, / n’aime se males putains non” [9133–9134]) and Nature’s reasoning in Alain de Lille’s De planctu naturae (chapter 5). In all cases, sodomites are guilty by virtue of, and in some sense defined by, their association of commerce with sex.

  83. In the Roman des sept sages, the King, who must be “heterosexualized” and lose weight through more or less forced sexual relations with a woman, is given as hisplaything the wife of his seneschal. This experience converts him to the joys of heterosex and there is no further mention of his being a sodomite; but, following John’s logic, the seneschal himself is now a type of sodomite, selling his wife for his King’s salvation. See Mary Speer, ed., Le Roman des sept sages de Rome (Lexington, Ky.: French Forum Publishers, 1989).

  84. As noted by Pike, John is not quoting the Vulgate exactly, as least not the version that we know today. John Boswell (Christianity, p. 216 n.30) calls this passage a “pastiche of classical quotations” and asserts that it probably does not represent John’s true feelings on the matter. I am not so sure about that, though John’s diversionary tactics in raising the topic do indicate some reluctance to broach it. Even when he has broached it, however, he begins by treating it obliquely. When he hits the nail on the head, however, it is with some considerable force.

  85. Dyan Elliott’s “Pollution,” is a brilliant and comprehensive exploration of how involuntary ejaculation was conceptualized by a number of theologians. Her con- clusion, that such ejaculations evoked considerable gender anxiety through the dissolution of the fiction of control that John would say is endemic to masculinity, is fascinating and generates new ways of reading such comments in the Policraticus and Alain de Lille’s De planctu naturae (trans. James J. Sheridan [Toronto: Pontif- ical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980]). See also Leyser, “Masculinity in Flux,” pp. 103–120.

  86. This would be my explanation: not necessarily that John or his immediate prede- cessors approved of same-sex relations but that they held to a code of non-disclosure that John and his generation also helped to eliminate.

  87. J. H. Harvey, The Plantagenets (London: B. T. Batsford, 1948).

  88. John Gillingham, “Some Legends of Richard the Lionheart: Their Development and Their Influence,” in Janet L. Nelson, ed., Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1992), pp. 51–69. The same argument is made in the more recent book on Richard (Richard I [New York and London: Yale University Press, 1999]). See Ann Trinidade’s Berengaria: In Search of Richard the Lionheart’s Queen (Dublin: Four Court’s Press, 1999), pp. 190–195, for some judicious comments which counter Gillingham’s assessment.

  89. Stephen C. Jaeger, Ennobling Love: In Search of a Lost Sensibility (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

  90. Ibid., p. 12.

  91. Roger of Howden in Gise`le Besson and Miche`le Brossard-Dandre´, eds.,
Richard

  Coeur de Lion (Paris: 10/18, 1989), p. 80.

  92. See the texts collected in Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, pp. 25–32. These editors note, however, that such omens were standard fare in royal chronicles. All translations from this edition are my own.

  93. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 301. William of Newburgh was an Augus- tinian monk whose Historia rerum Anglicarum covers nine hundred years of history. He was not an intimate of the court and bases his contemporary history largely on others’ accounts of events.94. Merlin had predicted that the sons of Henry would rise up against him (“The lion cubs will awaken and leaving behind the woods will come to hunt within the walls of the cities; they will perpetrate a horrendous massacre of those who stand in their way and cut out the tongue of the bulls. They will put chains around the necks of lions and bring up the ways of the ancestral times” [Benedict of Peterborough in Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 34]). Several prophetic dreams are also recounted. Gerald of Wales tells of one that occurred to Saint Godric the hermit which begins with Henry and his four sons lying before an altar. When they arose they wiped the dirt from their shoes and clothing on the altar cloths, then climbed atop the crucifix and let fall their urine and excrement upon the altar. In the final tableau, Henry and two of the sons, Richard and John, are literally tearing each other to pieces at the foot of the altar, while Geoffrey and Henry fade from view.

  95. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 27. Gerald of Wales (aka Giraut de Barri) was a liaison officer, chaplain, and secretary to Henry II (from 1184 until Henry’s death in 1189) and served as an advisor to John during his expedition to Ireland in 1185–86. He set out for the crusades in 1189 but was sent back to England after the death of King Henry. He served Richard briefly. After Richard’s return from captivity, Gerald ceased to serve the court directly and lobbied incessantly to become Bishop of Saint David’s in Wales. He spent nearly four years lobbying for this appointment in Rome to no avail and spent his last twenty years (from age sixty on) writing. He produced at least seventeen volumes. In his early Topographia Hibernica, his assessment of Henry II and his sons is quite positive, not surprising since he needed their support to fulfill his ambitions. By the time he composed the De Principis instructione (c. 1199–1216), he had soured considerably on the Plantagenets. His final assessment of Richard was of opportunity lost, a man chosen by God for great things who never accomplished them because of personal flaws. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 390; Thorpe, Journey through Wales, Introduction; and David Rollo, “Gerald of Wales’ Topographia Hibernica: Sex and the Irish Nation,” Romanic Review 86, 2 (March 1995), pp. 169–190; and Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable and French Romance in Twelfth-Century England (Lexington, Ky.: French Forum Publishers, 1998).

  96. Conrad’s claim to the throne of Jerusalem was supported by Philippe Auguste.

  Richard, on the other hand, supported the more “legitimate” claim of Guy de Lusignan, the widower of the heir to the throne, Sibylle, whose son, King Baudouin V, had died in 1186.

  97. Ralph (or Raoul) of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum covers the period 1086–

  1210. The section dealing with Richard is concerned largely with the Crusade, his captivity, and his death. Not an eye-witness to the events chronicled, Ralph’s portrayal of Richard contributed to the legend of Richard as the great warrior King (Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 391).

  98. The two girls, Marguerite and Ae´lis, were the daughters of Constance of Castille,

  Louis’s second wife and Eleanore’s replacement. Marguerite was married to Henry at the age of two (her husband was five); Ae´lis was never married to Richard.99. “Philipo. . . . quem ipse in tantum honoravit per longum tempus quod singulis diebus in una mensa ad unum catinum manducabant, et in noctibus non separabat eos lectus. Et dilexit eum rex Franciae quasi animam suam; et in tantum se mutuo diligebant, quod propter vehementem dilectionem quae inter illos erat, dominus rex Angliae nimio stupore arreptus admirabatur quid hoc esset.” Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, pp. 320–321.

  100. Ibid., pp. 332–333. Roger of Hoveden (or Howden) was a clerk who served Henri

  II as diplomat, annalist, and counselor. His Chronica cover the period from the seventh century to the year 1201. He depended largely on the chronicle of Benedict of Peterborough for some of the details and events that he discusses.

  101. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 333.

  102. Richard was held captive, first in Austria and then in Germany, from October

  1192 to January 1194 (Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 395).

  103. Richard’s De rebus gestis Ricardi Primi covers just four years of Richard’s reign from his coronation in 1189 to his departure from the Holy Land in 1192. He generally expresses admiration for Richard (Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 393).

  104. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, pp. 93 and 104 n.1.

  105. Juvenal, The Satires, trans. N. Ruud, intro and notes W. Barr (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 128–132. “tristis abit et, quod potuit tamen, ultima cellam / clausit adhuc ardens rigidae tentigine vulvae, / et lassata viris necdum satiata recessit, / obscurisque genis turpis fumoque lucernae / foeda lupanaris tulit ad pulvinar odorem.” The same citation can be found in the Eneas romance, again with a strongly sexual connotation. There the Trojan warrior, Tarcon, is mocking the woman warrior, Camile, for fighting like a man. Telling her that she should more appropriately be doing battle under bedclothes with him and the men he will share her with, he promises that after a vigorous group rape: “vos porriez estre lassee, / pas n’en seriez saolee.” (you would be tired, but you would not be satisfied [Eneas, ll. 7105–7106]).

  106. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 13.

  107. Ibid., p. 96.

  108. Eleanore’s daughter, Jeanne, had married William the Good, the Norman King of Sicily, but upon his death in 1189, Tancred, his illegitimate cousin, had taken power. One of Richard and Eleanore’s reasons for having come to Sicily was to return Jeanne and much of her dowry and William’s gifts to Henry II to England, against Tancred’s wishes. Eleanore clearly also intended to marry Richard and Berengaria as a way of securing his power and extending his influence.

  109. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 113.

  110. See Trinidade, Berengaria, for more information on her fate.

  111. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 278.

  112. Ibid., p. 55.

  113. Ibid., p. 279.

  114. Ibid., p. 280.

  115. Ibid., pp. 280–281.

  116. Ibid., p. 287.117. Ibid., p. 288.

  118. Ibid., p. 296. Coming from Gerald, who had no compunction about discussing the sodomitic past of the Welsh, it is surprising to see him evoking unmentionable topics, though the rank of Richard might have something to do with his reticence. Then again, reversion to this topos is an almost sure-fire way of identifying sodomy.

  119. Pike, trans., Frivolity, 205.

  120. See, for example, Bertran de Born’s songs 80, 21: Ges no me desconort ... and 80,

  29: Non puosc mudar ... in W. Paden, T. Sankovitch, and P. H. Stablein, eds., The Poems of the Troubadour Bertran de Born (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 231, 370; and W. Burgwinkle, Razos and Troubadour Songs (New York: Garland, 1990), pp. 80, 107.

  121. Pike, trans., Frivolity, 208.

  122. It was in 1190–1191, during Richard’s reign, that the tomb of Arthur was “dis- covered” at Glastonbury Abbey. Whether or not it was, as has been asserted, a publicity stunt to raise money after the disastrous fire of 1184 or a political ploy to show that Arthur was definitively dead and would not be returning to help the Welsh cause, the discovery could certainly have been exploited to add luster to the Plantagenet line (Geoffrey Ashe, Avalonian Quest [London: Methuen, 1982]).

  123. Eneas is either a sodomite by association (all Trojans are sodomites, as the Queen te
lls us in the romance of Eneas) ora bad heterosexual, in that he used and deserted Dido and stands responsible for her death.

  124. John Gillingham, The Life and Times of Richard I (London: Weidenfeld and

  Nicolson, 1973), p. 168.

  125. The Journey Through Wales/The Description of Wales, trans. Thorpe, p. 37 n.1.

  126. De vita Galfredi in Giraldi Cambrensis opera, vol. IV, ed. James F. Dimock

  (London: Roll Series, 1868), p. 423; cited in Boswell, Christianity, p. 229 n.69.

  127. Besson and Brossard-Dandre´, Richard, p. 315.

  128. Ibid., p. 317.

  129. Ibid., pp. 314–316.

  130. Fight Club, screenplay Jim Uhl, based on novel by Chuck Palahniuk, dir. David