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Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue: -The Middle Ages
---------------------------------------------------------------------- (First paragraphs below drawn in large part from Encarta.) The Middle Ages is the period in the history of Europe that lasted from about AD 350 to about 1450. At the beginning of the Middle Ages, the western half of the Roman Empire began to fragment into smaller, weaker kingdoms. By the end of the Middle Ages, many modern European states had taken shape. During this time, the precursors of many modern institutions, such as universities and bodies of representative government, were created. No single event ended the ancient world and began the Middle Ages. In fact, no one who lived in what is now called the Middle Ages ever thought of themselves as living in it. In the Middle Ages, people thought they were living in modern times, just as people do today. The term Middle Ages was invented by people during the Renaissance (see List Digest 268, June 2001), a period of cultural and literary change in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. The term was not meant as a compliment. During the Renaissance, people thought that their own age and the time of ancient Greece and Rome were advanced and civilized. They called the period between themselves and the ancient world "the Middle Age." The adjective "medieval" comes from the Latin words for this term, medium (middle) and aevum (age). Since the Middle Ages covers such a large span of time, historians divided it into three parts: the Early Middle Ages, lasting from about 350 to about 1050; the High, or Central, Middle Ages, lasting from about 1050 to about 1300; and the Late Middle Ages, lasting from about 1300 to about 1450. (The following is drawn in large part from an essay in French by C, Beurdeley.)
Hoping to stamp out "that infamous vice," Charlemagne decreed death for sodomy—but to no great effect. Some 200 years later, at the Council of Rheims in 1049, the Deacon Peter, speaking in the name of Pope Leo IX, castigated the abominable practices of the laity and the priesthhood. William of Nangis wrote that in 1092 a bishop of Orleans named John had himself called "Flora" by his male "concubines"; in the evenings youths who sold themselves to men would walk through the streets of the town singing ditties in his honor. Some chroniclers, like Odoric Vital, maintained that it was the Norman invaders who infected the French lords with the "vice against nature." He wrote: "Effeminate fops prevailed throughout the land and employed themselves without restraint at their foul debauchery; catamites, deserving to be burned at the stake, indulged repeatedly in the horrible inventions of Sodom."
The Norman invaders in the preceding paragraph were descended from pagan Vikings from Denmark who had raided Normandy, which is now (but was not then) a province in northeastern France, between 800 and 900 AD. By the 11th century, they had carved a new Normandy and, as "Normans," in 1066 invaded England under William the Conqueror and defeated the Saxon lords at the Battle of Hastings, making him William I of England. Despite stubborn social resistance for the next 300 years (read Sir Walter Scott's novel "Ivanhoe" or rent the 1952 Elizabeth Taylor movie of the same name), the Normans so thoroughly integrated themselves into English society, as they had done in Normandy when arriving as Vikings, that today the English language still combines almost equal elements of Old English and Old French in its vocabulary, and Britain offers infinite variations of anglicized French family names. Gay people who have enjoyed the fleshpots of modern Denmark and other Scandinavian countries can easily understand the inclination of the Vikings toward homosexuality, as attributed to them by medieval chroniclers. Other Danish Vikings went to Germany, England, Spain, and the northwestern Mediterranean coast. Swedish Vikings entered eastern Europe in what is now Russia, using the large network of rivers, carrying or rolling their boats overland between them, while the Norwegian Vikings sailed to Greenland and North America. According to Odoric Vital, a hermit had predicted the accession of Robert II Curthose, the Duke of Normandy— nicknamed Shortbritches— "a prince like unto a lascivious cow, who giveth himself over to luxury and sloth, and who would lay hand upon the riches which rightfully belonged to the Church and divide them among his ruffians and infamous flatterers."
In the twelfth century, male friendship was idealized and held sacred—as it often is in warrior societies. Women were considered dangerous—for they sapped the valiance of the fighters—and unworthy of spiritual intimacy with men. In the epic poems of the Middle Ages the men are generally devoted body and soul to their companions-at-arms. Thus in the Song of Aspremont (late twelfth century), the wife of the Saraxin king Agolant questions the Duke of Naimes: "Frenchman, tell me the truth: Have ye women in your land? And are the Christians all as handsome as you?" "Lady," replies the Duke, "of that I know naught, but many a finer man there is than myself. You ask, am I married? No, lady, and I would never consider such a thing, for my heart belongs entirely to my lord."
William of Nangis reports that in 1120, when the ship they were sailing on ran aground and left them stranded, the knights in the following of the son of Henry I all practiced homosexuality. The female poet Marie de France, who lived at the court of Henry II in England, makes Guenevere mock the young knight Lanval, who had had the temerity to resist her overtures:
I have heard it whispered many times
The notoriety of Take Thibaut was such that, in his great poem Le Testament, Francois Villon gives his name to the Bishop of Orleans, Thibaut d'Auxigny, whom he accuses of sodomite practices. (Note that in the Middle Ages it was common practice to accuse one's enemies of "sodomy"—the usual term for homosexuality. The Knights Templar, the Albigensians, the Waldenses were all denounced as being devotees of the "abominable vice against nature.") Whereas the chroniclers frequently mentioned instances of homosexuality at the court of kings like John the Good, who whiled away blissful hours with his lover Lacerda during his imprisonment in England, or told with thrills of horror how Edward II was impaled (see On-line Digests 216-218, April 2001); the great poets of the age, Dante and Petrarch and the troubadours of Provence, passionately celebrated the love of high-born ladies. As Petrarch has written, "The fountainhead of love is Beauty, and none other, and Beauty is that which striketh the eye with brightness." In the writings of these poets, Beauty is embodied in woman. But in their daily lives they also knew passions of a different sort. Dante places two poets who were the forerunners of the new lyric style—the doke stil nuovo— among the sodomites in Purgatory: the troubadour Arnaut Daniel and Guido Guinizelli. The author of the Divine Comedy was being relatively lenient, since he did not put them in Hell with his master, Brunetto Latino, who was there, not for homosexuality as was long believed, but for "sinning against the Holy Spirit,"— considered a kind of spiritual sodomy.
As the French scholar Rene Nelli writes in his study of erotic themes in the poetry of the troubadours (L'Erotique des Troubadours), the ideal of courtly love held by the lyric poets from the twelfth century on "transferred the values of homosexuality, of idealized friendship in Antiquity— the values, if you like, of male Platonism—to heterosexual love." By celebrating the femininity of the young ladies of the castle, the troubadours helped to dispell the misogyny of the lords and barons of the Middle Ages. Thanks to them, women began to be considered worthy of being loved, not merely possessed. Indeed, one now had to earn the esteem of the woman one loved by performing feats of valor and demonstrating how chivalrous one was. The lover was devoted to his lady in the same way that the vassal was devoted to his lord; he had to be ready to die in her service. This upgrading of the status of women in the twelfth century was peculiar to Southern Europe. Some historians attribute it to the tempering influence of Christianity which "purified" morals; others trace it back to the poetic traditions of the Arabs who had settled in Andalusia. Now, among the Arabs, as had been the case among the Greeks, love was often homosexual: witness Ibn Da'ud's Book of the Flower, which was dedicated to a young man; whereas French courtly love, the Fin'Amor of the troubadours, was essentially heterosexual. And in fact, though it was frequently practiced, homosexuality is seldom mentioned in the literary works—the epics, the courtly romances and the lyrics—of the High and Later Middle Ages.
Things changed, of course, with the rise of humanism in the oncoming Renasissance. (See List DIgest 268, June 2001.)
I consider what Ben wrote to be totally accurate. I only want to add some more information about the Normans. Linguistically, the word "Norman" is related to the words "Norway" and "Norwegian". "Norman" is a shortened form of "Northman". Norman = Northman = Man of the North. Norway is a short form of "North Way". Similar forms and shortenings occur in the other extant Teutonic/Germanic languages. The Vikings of northern Europe spread south to Denmark, then to France, then to England (the Normans). Others went to all the areas listed by Ben. They explored but did not settle in North America. A really adventurous and fearsome and sexy bunch, fond of all-male company in all of these travels and migrations, yet spreading their genes widely.
OK, guys. I set you up for puns. Let's hear them.
My mothers family name is DeBerry and there are stories
about impropriety in
the offices they held which led to thier having to leave
France. There is
even talk that the family was the last king of France, which
would allude to
Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and beheadings by the
guillotine and the
rebellion. I put little credence in it as their sole son
died in prison, not
much more than 12 years old and the fact that John, my
grandfather in 1796
was a Huguenot, and this was most effectively dealt with
with the Edict of
Nantes in the late 1400s. Interesting it should appear..
Ben Boxer wrote about the possibility that our
list member descends from the kings
of France. This painting of the Duke at prayer occurs in a Book of Hours (prayer book). The original is in the Cloisters, a museum located the Washington Heights/Ft. Tryon area of New York City. The Cloisters is a museum of Medieval European Art and is owned by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. I visited the Cloisters last month with some members of this list. My reproduction of this book was given to me by my first lover in 1958. He was an "old" man of 52 at that time. I was then 29 and married and a father. He was my parish priest. When we first became lovers, he was 46 and I was 23. Now when I am 71, 46 no longer seems old.
George of Boston (Boston Bill)
The Vikings also invaded Ireland.They were reputedly first
seen here in 795
A.D.At the time Ireland had undergone a long period of peace
after being
Christianised and a multiplicity of monasteries had sprung
up.These provided
rich pickings for the marauding Vikings.The raids led to the
building of
round towers for protection on the monks and their sacred
vessels.
As in other countries they soon settled and intermarried
with the native
people.They founded Dublin,capital of Ireland ,among other
towns. End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #273
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