From stinking deeds to deepest love

The aim of this study has been to achieve and offer the plurality of the later medieval English understandings of same-sex sexual acts and desires. I hope I have accomplished some of this self-set scholarly aim, and I am satisfied with the fragmented results; there are a number of stories instead of one. In the course of scrutinising questions ranging from sodomy to deepest love, one faces the ultimate ambivalence of the late medieval understanding of same-sex sexual matters, an understanding that included the opposite and paradoxical views as, on one hand, the most horrible sin and on the other, the most glorified love – and much in between. A more traditional historian's desire to build up a conclusive and cohesive narration in closing the study has not been my desired aim. The varied ways in which the later medieval English faced same-sex sexual matters may be approached as culturally shared traditions. These included an understanding of sodomy as heresy, as an unnatural sin of the flesh and mind, as a matter to be left in silence, as among litanies of accumulations, as a reversal of norms, and as a cause for laughter. Finally, there are silences that leave space for possibilities, including cultural traditions of admired and praised friendships, represented in both literary narratives and records of those who lived their lives in later medieval reality.

In frameworks of condemnation, the most obvious means of rejecting same-sex sexuality consist in regarding it as sodomy and sin against nature, two concepts that overlap and also explicate each other. The concept of sodomy was invented by Peter Damian as a part of his famous lamentation Liber gomorrhianus, or the Book of Gomorrah, in which he utterly condemns such matters, offering an argument later immortalised by Thomas Aquinas in his brief, yet influential definition. The common use of the concept, however, emerged in early modern times, not during the medieval centuries. The role of “sodomitical discussions” is, in my opinion, over-used in the scholarly field, strengthening the history of condemnations in the history of same-sex sexual matters with a variegated history. Sin against nature violated norms, laws and orders of nature, and enriched the corporeal imaginary.