Dear Folks,
Since this subject has now begun to take on a scholarly tack, I have some
questions which perhaps others might be able to provide some answers to:
1. Several of the saints are portrayed as penitents, whose lives
involved them in such sins against nature as adultery, and prostitution.
I have thus far not run across any whose sin was explicitly sodomitical--
leaving aside the argument concerning Ailred of Rievaulx (advanced by
MacGuire), Pelagius (the handsome prince of Cordoba who allegedly resisted
the advances of the Moslem potentate), and the couples who Boswell
suggests were involved by inference in some form of same-sex marriage (a
view I'm not inclined to accept, but without knowledge of Old Slavonic,
it's hard to judge). Does anyone have examples of some penitent saint who
had formerly been so inclined?
2. I have been struck by the stress laid in many of the early codes of the
tertiary groups on the exclusion of sodomites, and the citation of
Ephesians 5.6 in the prologues to their regulations; I believe this was
also case in the regulations formulated by Ranier Fasani for the early
Flagellants. Is it possible that many of their early members were in fact
reformed 'sodomites' and 'catamites', and that even their founders were so
inclined? Some of you (like Gary Dickson) may have some expertise or
thoughts on this.
Michael Goodich
On Sat, 30 Nov 1996, Thomas Izbicki wrote:
> Sodomy is a rather flexible term. It can be found including heterosexual
> practices. For example, I once tripped across a legal text beginning,
> "Si Petrus cognovit Bertham sodomitice."
>
> tom izbicki
>
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