1400 - 1499 (15th-Century)
A group of French men, c.1470. Archive: Alamy
1400 In Strasbourg 2 men were convicted of having repeated mutual masturbation.
One managed to flee, but the other was executed. They first met in a
public lavatory.
c.1400 Ibn Khaldun, historian & sociologist, wrote homoerotic poetry, but thought those
who committed same-sex acts should be stoned.
1403 Florence brings in a range of measures to try and prevent sodomitical behaviour.
1406 A large Venetian sodomy trial involved 35 accused. Jurisdiction for sodomy cases
was transferred to a high-level governmental body.
1407 In Venice, a cleric found guilty of sodomy was placed in a cage in the Piazza San
Marco and was starved to death.
20 November. A sworn brotherhood ceremony takes place between Duke Jean of
Burgundy & Duke Louis of Orléans.
1409 In Augsburg 5 men were convicted for committing sodomy with one another: 2
chaplains, a priest, a friar and an artisan.
An anonymous long satire criticising sodomites was published in Florence.
c1410 Jan Matthijssen, Dutch legal writer, states that sodomy is such a foul & nasty sin
that even the Devil turns round to avoid seeing it.
1411-2 Dirk Potter, Dutch poet, travels in Rome, which he later referred to as the
“inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
1412 Another anonymous long satire criticising sodomites was published in Florence.
1418 A special tribunal was set up in Venice to deal with cases of sodomy.
1420 Venetian authorities noted the prevalence of sodomy in their fleet. A 500-lire
reward was offered for informing on those indulging in same-sex activity.
1421 12 July. Nicholas Molyneaux and John Winter, two esquires of Henry V, make a
vow of sworn brotherhood in the church of St. Martin at Harfleur.
1423 A Byzantine manuscript is discovered containing Plato’s Phaedrus.
In Bologna, the future pope Eugene IV, had 3 men & a house incinerated for
sodomy.
1424 Bernardino of Siena referred to “the hidden places where people keep a public
brothel of boys, like the ones with public prostitutes”. He also stated the
Black Death in Florence was a punishment for sodomitical behaviour.
He also claimed that Jesus did not mention sodomites because “in his time there
were no sodomites.”
1425 Hermaphroditus by Antonio Beccadelli (“Il Panormita”). It contains some
depictions of male same-sex activity.
Perugia’s new anti-sodomy laws were quite complicated: Consenting boys (12-15)
had a 3-month prison sentence; older youths were fined; Men had a heavy
fine or were burnt.
1431 De Voluptate by Lorenzo Valla written. The principles of the Stoics were
contrasted unfavourably with the Epicureans. Sensual pleasures were
exalted.
1432 Ufficiaki di Notte [The Officers of the Night] created to root out sodomy in
Florence.
1435 Antonio Beccadelli wrote a recantation of his Hermaphroditus [see 1425].
1437 The False Hypocrite by Mercurino Ranzo was performed at the University of
Pavia. It is a comedy of sodomitical desire.
1440 15 September. Gilles de Rais arrested was for the murder of 140+, many of the
boys were sodomised as a ritual of satanism in order to acquire
knowledge, power & riches.
c.1440 Donatello’s bronze nude of the Biblical David is cast.
Donatello’s David
1444 Vladislas III of Varna dies in battle. The night before he is reputed to have slept
all night with a handsome Hungarian page. This is the reason given for
his failure to be canonised.
1446 Jean Rey and his friend Colrat contracted an affrèrement, and in this case the
union may have had a sexual element.
1452 In Caen, France, a rare sodomy case was prosecuted.
1453 Mehmet II captured Constantinople. Captured Christian youths were placed in his
harem.
May. Enrique IV of Castille’s marriage is annulled for non-consummation. There
were rumours he preferred men.
1454 In Ferrara a man was accused of being a wicked sodomite, and even sodomized
his wife.
1455 The Greek scholar George of Trebizond directly accuses Plato of sodomy.
Francois Villon, poet, allegedly part of the same-sex loving Colin de Cayeaux's
circle, accidentally kills a priest, and flees. His Ballades en argot, are
alleged to be about a refined system of same-sex relations.
c.1455 Richard Strangways, while studying heraldry reports on 2 Spanish knights who
were sworn brothers, and one forsook his own arms, and took on those of his
sworn brother.
1457-60 A chronicler mentions that many sodomites from Picardy were burnt at Lille.
1458 Venice creates anti-sodomy officers to check taverns.
1458-65 Francesco Filelfo publishes a series of venomous epigrams against Giannantonio
de’ Pandoni, and accuses him of sodomy in a letter written in Latin.
1459-1502 Florence. An average of 350 people per annum came to the notice of Officers
of the Night. [passive partners were now ignored by the law.]
1460 Espill by Jaume Roig (Valencian poet) contains a brief negative reference to
sodomy.
c.1460 Pope Pius II accuses the mercenary leader, Sigismondo Malatesta, of violating his
daughters & his son-in-law.
1463 An Alsatian nobleman, Richard Puller von Hohenburg, showed sexual interest in a
servant who then blackmailed him.
1464 13 individual sodomites were prosecuted in a Venetian court case. The Council of
Ten decreed that decapitation and burning of the body should be the result of
guilty sodomy cases.
c.1465 Fra Carnevale’s painting the Presentation of the Virgin seems to depict 2 men
sexually interested in each other, as an example of moral decay.
1466 Death of Donatello, the Italian sculptor of homoerotic subjects.
After an earthquake in Naples, a Sienese ambassador blames the sin of Sodom,
rife in Naples.
1467 Venetian law requires surgeons & barbers to report signs of anal damage.
1468 Giulio Pomponio-Leto was extradited from Venice to Rome, because his teaching
of the Classics were subject to a clear suspicion of sodomy. However, he
was charged with heresy, impiety & conspiracy to murder Pope Pius II.
His co-accused was Filippo Buonaccorsi, who fled Rome, but left behind
sodomitical verses – including a poem in praise of Antonio Lepido, whom
Lepido, whom he called his Ganymede.
1470 The Council of Ten in Venice decrees banishment for 2+ years as an alternative
punishment for sodomy.
In Bruges a man was accused of grabbing another man by the genitals in an inn.
Under torture he admitted to doing the same in public bathhouses.
In Mankind, a morality play, the character New Guise is shown to be effeminate.
1470-80 ‘Pierangelo Siciliano’ lamented students of Giannantonio de’ Pandoni in Rome
who indulged in same-sex activities.
1471 William Smythe, Winchelsea parson, preached he had committed a sodomitical
crime with a Thomas Tunley. No further action was taken.
c.1471 Errol de’ Roberti’s predella includes characters ignoring the miracles of St.
Vincent Ferrer – including 2 apparent male lovers – an older man & a
youth.
In Regensburg a merchant asked a skinner to sodomize him, before he
sodomized the skinner. They first had sex in an Augustinian friary
latrine.
1473 Marsillio Ficino produced a neoplatonic bowdlerisation of Plato’s Symposium.
1473-4 Marsillio Ficino and Cavalcanti are separated for a time, and Ficino writes many
love letters to his friend. These were later used as the basis for his 1492
volume.
1474 18 mercenaries in the service of the Duke of Burgundy were put on trial at Basel.
Some claimed to have been sodomized by their superiors, and they
performed the act on their inferiors. Others claimed to have been raped
in Italy when young.
Two active men and 4 passive youths were prosecuted in a Venetian court case.
The men who were doing the penetrating were decapitated and then
burned. A passive boy (10) was whipped, but a passive youth (18) had
his nose cut off & was given 25 lashes.
The Republic of Ragusa [Dubrovnik] produces a law which decreed that anyone
found guilty of sodomy was to be decapitated & burnt.
In Bologna Pietro Rasori’s wife accused him of bringing boys back to their
house & abusing them. She also had to submit to anal sex.
Jacopo Panuzzi (52) was indicted for offering boys money to sodomize them.
Where?
Richard Puller von Honneburg was arrested again [see 1463], and released 2
years later after confessing to sodomy & giving up his lands.
1475 In Bruges a 20-year-old alleged sodomy case was examined, and the younger man
from earlier was convicted & executed.
1476 9 April. Leonard da Vinci (23) is charged with sodomy of Jacopo d’Andrea
Saltarelli (17), but was not convicted after 2 months in prison.
Marsilio Ficino coins the term Platonic Love in a letter to Alamanno Donati.
1477 An anti-sodomy regulation was targeted on apothecary shops in Venice.
Katharina Hetzeldorfer was put to death in Speyer after accusations that she had
her “manly will” with other females.
1478 Salvi Panuzzi (45) was indicted for fondling the genitals of a young cleric during
a sermon.
c.1478 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Italian nobleman & philosopher visits Florence
and meets Angelo Poliziano. It is believed they may have become lovers.
1479 The poet Angelo Poliziano begins work on Fabula di Orfeo, which contains a plea
for homoerotic love.
1481 Christoforo Landino, as a humanist attempted to deflect attention away from
Ganymede’s physical beauty by emphasizing his sweetness of thought.
In Zurich Richard Puller von Hohenburg [see 1474] attempted to regain his lands,
but when the Swiss authorities discovered he was sodomizing his servant &
other men he was burnt at the stake.
Richard Puller von Hohenburg and Anton Mätzler, accused of sodomy and burned at the stake, Zurich, 1482
1482 The Essence of the Jakudo is written by Ijiri Chusuke. He is the first writer to
mention shudo, where lovers swear eternal love whether their partners are
noble or common, rich or poor.
1482-90 Erasmus writes ardent love-letters to the unresponsive Servatius Rogerus, while
they are both inmates of the Emmaus monastery in Stein, near Gouda.
1483 3 Turks were put on trial in Venice accused of sodomising a Christian boy (c.14).
c.1483 Niccolò Cósmico writes a Latin love poem addressed to a black youth ‘Adrastus.’
1484 Marsilio Ficino publishes a commentary (written 1469) on Plato’s Symposium.
He tried to argue that Plato’s love between men was a love of their minds
which were more developed than females. He argued that some men
“naturally love males.”
A comic novella by Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti from Bologna appears. A
lustful cleric attempts sex with what he thinks is a woman, but isn’t fazed
when he finds it is a man in disguise.
In Cologne an accusation was made that sodomy was rife, but some theologians
attempt to hush it up.
Death of Pope Sixtus IV. Stefano Infessura records unsubstantiated gossip in his
journal: “He, as is handed down from the people, and the facts demonstrated
was a lover of boys and a sodomite.”
1486 Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus maleficarum mentions that every type of devil
abominates the sin of sodomy & other unreproductive sexual acts.
1489 Hecatelegium, a collection of poems by Pacifico Massimi. Some poems reference
male same-sex behaviour. He is unique in admitting he has participated
in passive sodomy.
In Lucerne, Switzerland 2 men were burnt at the stake for mutual masturbation, a
3rd in that group, a Benedictine monk was not executed.
In York for the past century not a single sexual case in the records is for sodomy.
1491 Conrad Peutinger describes the papal court as practicing “every sort of depravity
and unspeakable vice.”
c.1491 Giròlamo Balbi, Italian humanist, is accused of sodomy & heresy, and flees to
Paris.
1492 At Merton College, Oxford, Richard Edmund, a young Fellow was charged with
encouraging several youths to sin against nature. He was removed from
the college.
Angelo Poliziano, poet, is accused of sodomy.
Marsilio Ficino publishes his platonic love letters in Latin to his colleague and
long-time friend, Giovanni Cavalcanti, who is embarrassed by them.
Salvi di Niccolò Panuzzi, (59), a notorious Florentine sodomite, a repeat offender
of fondling the genitals of a young cathedral cleric was exiled for 3 years
and given a heavy fine.
Christian leaders finally gained full control of the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim
rulers. Mass expulsions of Muslims and Jews were accompanied by claims
that both groups condoned and committed sodomy.
1493 Florentine authorities issued a decree ordering the managers of public baths not to
admit suspect boys.
1494 Columbus’ doctor reported that Carib men castrated boys they captured from
enemy tribes, keeping the eunuchs on hand to abuse sexually.
Death of Angelo Poliziano. He was believed to have died of syphilis contracted
from a male lover, but modern forensics showed he died of arsenic poisoning.
Pico Mirandola died at the same time, also from arsenic poisoning.
Poliziano wrote Greek epistles begging kisses and caresses from young men.
Savonarola preaches against sodomy in Florence.
1495 Death of Sultan Mahmud Mirza. His nephew the Emperor Babur later said he was
a maker of catamites.
Marsilio Ficino publishes his platonic love letters in Italian.
1496 Crackdown in Venice looking for loitering patientes (passive youths).
Salvi di Niccolò Panuzzi (63) admits soliciting several young men to sodomize
him. He is sentenced to be executed and burnt, but was commuted to a
large fine and confinement in an asylum. His family prevented the latter.
Savonarola again preaches against sodomy in Florence.
Syphilis arrives in Strasbourg. The preacher Geiler blames sins of all kinds.
In Venice a decree mentions both male and female who pimp boys and women for
the sin of sodomy.
1497Timeoto da Lucca preaches on Christmas Day to the Doge of Venice that to prevent
plague there should be a crackdown on sodomy, and that nun’s convents were
nothing but whorehouses and public bordellos. The Doge ignored
the sermon, but men caught in same-sex acts fled the city or were exiled from
it, though nobles were often executed. Unusually, in Venice passive partners
were treated more leniently.
Erasmus turns his affections towards William Hermann of Gouda.
Giròlamo Balbi is forced to flee Prague after further accusations of sodomy.
Giovanni Sclafenato dies. On his tomb is engraved that he was made a cardinal
“for ingenuousness, loyalty,…and his other gifts of soul and body” [by Pope
Sixtus IV].
1498 In Castile a prosecutor in a sodomy trial claims that sodomy caused famines &
pestilences.
Death of Savonarola. Soon afterwards his manual for confessors was published.
This includes the instruction that speaking shameful words or lascivious
actions in order to please some adolescent boy was a mortal sin. One
Florentine at the death of Savonarola was known to exclaim: “thank God,
now we can sodomize.”
Corbacho by the Archpriest of Talavera is published (written in 1430s). It
mentions friars who want sex with men, some are active, others want the
female role, ie passive.
Erasmus (32) is attracted to one of his pupils, Thomas Grey (c.21), the grandson
of Elizabeth Woodville.
Erasmus by Hans Holbein the Younger, source: Wikipedia
1499Death of Marsillio Ficino. Coined the term ‘Platonic love’. Wrote a commentary on
The Symposium and was the first translator of The Phraedrus. Founder of
Neoplatonism.
William Jekkes, priest of Salle, Norfolk, provides in his will for his burial as close as possible to Simon Bulleyne, a fellow priest.
Babur, the first Mughal emperor falls in love at 16 with a bazaar youth called Babiri.
1500The Council of Ten (Venice) reintroduced the death penalty for all active sodomites
and passive man aged 20+. Minors were to be banished.
In Venice in the previous century 264 sodomy cases were tried involving 498
individuals. The frequency of trials now began to rise to 5 per year.
In Zurich in the previous century there were only 5 executions for sodomy.
In Bruges after an anti-sodomy campaign in the previous century 73 men were
executed.
c1500Bartolomeo della Rocca writes a treatise with a whole chapter on the catamite. He
has noticed the propensity for passive sex in boys aged 40-70.
Deli Birader, poet, compiled a series of bawdy stories & poems for the entertainment
of a prince. A substantial chapter is about sex with youths.
Bibliography
Aldrich, Robert, Gay Life Stories, London: Thames & Hudson, 2023.
Aldrich, Robert & Garry Wotherspoon (eds.), Who’s Who in Gay & Lesbian History: From Antiquity to World War II: London,
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Bray, Alan, The Friend, University of Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2003.
Griffin, Gabriele, (ed.), Who’s Who in Lesbian & Gay Writing, Routledge: London, 2002.
Malcolm, Noel, Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1759, Oxford: OUP, 2024.
Norton, Rictor, My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters through the Centuries, San Francisco: Leyland Publications: 1998.
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