Major part of the textual evidence of late medieval English culture seems to be silent about sodomy and sin against nature. Imagining medieval culture and the medieval people, the silence may easily be understood as obvious. Most of the discussion in the past was, of course, centred around completely different matters than those considered here, but in examining theological treatises and commentaries, judicial documents, and laws and decrees, as well as, for example, mystery plays, the historian seems to find less than she or he probably presumes, and faces silence surrounding samesex sexuality in the past. Little of the more general secondary discussion gives any encouragement either. Yet coming across silences concerning the matter is revealing as well. And such silences are taken to be revealing in several scholarly arguments today. Both of these discussions then and now, separated by time, must be taken into scrutiny when considering silences and silencing.

The advice to priests to keep silent about sin against nature in the quotation above was written by John Mirk in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. In the face of silence in numerous sources on treating sins where one would wish to come across a mention of the matter, Mirk's advice typical of the remarks one comes across, if one comes across with anything at all. On the other hand, in the text quoted above, Mirk also relates how he himself has found a “wryten” argument concerning sin against nature; he has found another text giving a lesson concerning silence regarding sin against nature, which he then follows and shares further with his readers. Or, there was something else he found, and he decided to advise his readers not to speak or write about it at all – but the fact remains that he most probably read something about the matter. Then Mirk's reader thus faces a silence, but not only that; this silence is not complete. It never was, and the silencing of same-sex sexuality has a tradition of its own. Both silence and the silencing are under scrutiny in this chapter.