Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance FlorenceOxford University Press, 5 mars 1998 - 384 pages "This is a superb work of scholarship, impossible to overpraise.... It marks a milestone in the 20-year rise of gay and lesbian studies."--Martin Duberman, The Advocate The men of Renaissance Florence were so renowned for sodomy that "Florenzer" in German meant "sodomite." In the late fifteenth century, as many as one in two Florentine men had come to the attention of the authorities for sodomy by the time they were thirty. In 1432 The Office of the Night was created specifically to police sodomy in Florence. Indeed, nearly all Florentine males probably had some kind of same-sex experience as a part of their "normal" sexual life. Seventy years of denunciations, interrogations, and sentencings left an extraordinarily detailed record, which author Michael Rocke has used in his vivid depiction of this vibrant sexual culture in a world where these same-sex acts were not the deviant transgressions of a small minority, but an integral part of a normal masculine identity. Rocke roots this sexual activity in the broader context of Renaissance Florence, with its social networks of families, juvenile gangs, neighbors, patronage, workshops, and confraternities, and its busy political life from the early years of the Republic through the period of Lorenzo de' Medici, Savonarola, and the beginning of Medici princely rule. His richly detailed book paints a fascinating picture of Renaissance Florence and calls into question our modern conceptions of gender and sexual identity. |
Table des matières
3 | |
PART I | 17 |
PART II | 85 |
PART III | 193 |
Change and Continuity in the Policing of Sodomy in the Sixteenth Century | 227 |
Penalties Levied | 237 |
Statistical Tables | 243 |
Notes | 253 |
Bibliography | 331 |
347 | |
Autres éditions - Tout afficher
Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence Michael Rocke Affichage d'extraits - 1996 |
Expressions et termes fréquents
absolved accusations active partners adolescents Antonio Bartolomeo Bernardino of Siena boys brothels brothers chapter city's condemned confessed courts culture denounced denunciations Eight of Watch engaged in sodomy erotic evidence example exile fifteenth century fines Firenze Florentine florins Francesco Francesco Vettori friar's friends gender Giovanni Girolamo Savonarola Gonfalonier Herlihy homoerotic homosexual activity homosexual relations homosexual sodomy Ibid implicated in sodomy incriminated informer Istorie Jacopo Klapisch-Zuber late medieval later Lorenzo magistracy males marriage married MC Catasto Medicean Medici named Niccolò Niccolò Machiavelli Night Officers notaries OGBR older Panuzzi passive partners pederasty penalties percent persons Piagnone Piero podestà policing of sodomy political Prediche Florence Prediche Siena probably prosecuted prostitution punishment Quattrocento regime Renaissance Renaissance Florence repression Savonarola self-accusers sentence sexual relations sexual roles social sodomy in Florence sodomy laws Storia taverns Toscan Trexler Ufficiali di notte Venice vice wife women young youths
Fréquemment cités
Page 4 - In this small city of around only 40,000 inhabitants, every year during roughly the last four decades of the fifteenth century an average of some 400 people were implicated and 55 to 60 condemned for homosexual relations. Throughout the entire period corresponding to the duration of the Office of the Night, it can be estimated that as many as 17,000 individuals or more were incriminated at least once for sodomy, with close to 3,000...