Forbidden friendships: homosexuality and male culture in Renaissance Florence

Abstract

The men of Renaissance Florence were so renowned for sodomy that "Florenzer" in German meant "sodomite." Indeed, 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 the seventy years from 1432 to 1502, some 17,000 men - in a city of only 40,000 - were investigated for sodomy; 3,000 were convicted and thousands more confessed to gain amnesty. Michael Rocke vividly

Contents

Introduction: Florence and Sodomy -- 1. Making Problems: Preoccupations and Controversy over Sodomy in the Early Fifteenth Century. Traditional Controls. Agitation for Reform, 1400-1432. The Attack from the Pulpit: Bernardino of Siena -- 2. The Officers of the Night. The Institution. Politics and Sodomy in the 1430s. The Turning Point in the Late 1450s. The Magistrates at Work. Community Controls -- 3. "He Keeps Him Like a Woman": Age and Gender in the Social Organization of Sodomy. Sexual Roles and Behavior. Boys and Men. Becoming a Man -- 4. Social Profiles. Young and Old. Bachelors and Husbands. Provenance and Residence. Social Composition -- 5. "Great Love and Good Brotherhood": Sodomy and Male Sociability. Encounters. The Character of Sodomitical Relations. Family Complicity. Friends, Networks, Sodalities -- 6. Politics and Sodomy in the Late Fifteenth Century: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Abolition of the Night Officers. The Lorenzan Age. The Coming Scourge. The Spirit and the Flesh: Sodomy in Savonarolan Florence. The Suppression of the Office of the Night -- Epilogue: Change and Continuity in the Policing of Sodomy in the Sixteenth Century -- Appendix A. Penalties Levied -- Appendix B. Statistical Tables.