“Nature is a Mother Most Sweet”: Homosexuality in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Italian Libertinism

Mario Mieli, Elementi di critica omosessuale, (Turin: Einaudi, 1977), translated into English as Homosexuality and Liberation: Elements of a Gay Critique, trans. David Fernbach (London: Gay Men’s Press, 1980). See the title of chapter two, “Come gli omosessuali, di rogo in rogo, divennero gay,” which Fernbach rendered as “Fire and Brimstone, or How Homosexuals Became Gay.” Mieli’s treatise has recently been reissued: Elementi di critica omosessuale, ed. Gianni Rossi Barilli and Paola Mieli (Milan: Feltrinelli, 2002).Google Scholar

René Pintard, Le libertinage érudit dans la première moitié du XVII siècle (Paris, 1943; rpr. Geneva and Paris: Slatkine, 1983).Google Scholar

See Pintard and Alan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London: Gay Men’s Press, 1982). I would add that it is amusing to see how scholars of sixteenth/seventeenth-century Italian libertinism and scholars of seventeenth/ eighteenth-century French libertinism struggle to discern continuity between the two main periods of the movement. See, for instance, the attempt to synthesize the disparate definitions of libertinism circulating today made by James Turner, “The Properties of Libertinism,” Unauthorized Sexual Behavior During the Enlightenment, ed. Robert Maccubin, Eighteenth-Century Life 9 (1985), pp. 75–87. Among other things, this essay notes that some scholars place “the first major flourishing” of libertinism too early … around 1650! Which is to say no less than a full century after its first real flourishing in Italy; by 1650 it was already fading away.Google Scholar

Giorgio Spini, Ricerca dei libertini (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1983; 2nd edition).Google Scholar

See Giorgio Spini, “Alcuni appunti sui libertini italiani” in: Il libertinismo in Europa, ed. Sergio Bertelli (Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1980), pp. 117–24. Protestant scholar Spini accuses Catholics of having used “a godless theory of religion as imposture … for a positive end, that is to defend Catholicism.” He goes on: “Nor is it at all beyond the realm of possibility that this type of polemic contributed to the growth and diffusion of libertine ideology” (p. 121; all English translations Cestaro unless otherwise indicated). In the same volume an amazing example of the use of libertine arguments in religious polemics is studied by Valerio Marchetti, “Nelle fabbriche dell’immaginazione antilibertina: Andrea Cardoini,” pp. 169–80, which deals with a critique of Calvin that ends up turning the “heretic” leader into a diabolical and libertine-style “impostor.” On the other side of the fence, the use of libertine thematics to combat “Catholic superstition” is examinedGoogle Scholar

by Giancarlo Carabelli, “Libertinismo e deismo in Inghilterra” in: Ricerche su letteratura libertina e letteratura clandestina nel Seicento, ed. Tullio Gregory et al. (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1981), pp. 407–16.Google Scholar

While insisting on its spiritual purity, Saint Aelred of Rievaulx (1110–1167) in the middle ages had defined the relationship between Jesus and John as a “marriage”; see John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 225–26.Google Scholar

Cited by Jim Kepner, Becoming a People (Hollywood: National Gay Archives, 1983), p. 19.Google Scholar

“O Cristo era afeiçoado a Sâo Joâo porque dormiam ambos.” The witness adds that Michel had said: “ ‘Se Sâo Paulo falou tanto nas molicies, é que alguma cousa obrara nelas,’ dando a entender que S. Paulo cometera o pecado de molicies.” (“If Saint Paul spent so much time talking about mollities it’s because he must have had some experience in the area,” suggesting that St. Paul had commited the sin of mollities), Arquivio Nacional da Torre do Tombo, Lisbon. “Inquisiçao de Lisboa,” n. 10093. I would like to thank Professor Luiz Mott of Bahia (Brazil; http://luizmott.cjb.net/) for this citation, as well as the one in the note following. On the Latin term mollities (“softness,” often referring to masturbation in medieval theological discussions), see Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), especially pp. 102–06, 168–69.Google Scholar

See Ira Wade, The Intellectual Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972).Google Scholar

For Antonio Rocco, see also my “Antonio Rocco and the Background of his ‘L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola’ (1652)” in: Among Men, Among Women, Conference at the University of Amsterdam, 22–26 June 1983 (Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1993), pp. 224–32, 571–72 (much of this has been incorporated into the present essay). For those interested in the tortuous tale of how the book came to be attributed to Rocco,Google Scholar

see Laura Coci, “L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola: nota biobibliografica,” Studi secenteschi 26 (1985), pp. 301–29 and pp. 95–98 of Coci’s edition, L’Alcibiade fanciullo a scola (Rome: Salerno, 1988). Although difficult to obtain, an English translation now exists: Alcibiades the Schoolboy, trans. J. C Rawnsley (Amsterdam: Entimos, 2000). On the literary and cultural context, see Claudio Varese, “Momenti e implicazioni del romanzo libertino nel Seicento italiano” in: Bertelli, pp. 239–69 andGoogle Scholar

Albert N. Mancini, “La narrativa libertina degli Incogniti: tipologie e forme,” Forum italicum 16 (Winter 1982), pp. 203–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Armando Marchi, “Il Seicento en enfer: la narrazione libertina del Seciento italiano,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 2 (1984), pp. 351–67, provides valuable insights on seventeenth-century Italian intellectuals and libertines. More recently,Google Scholar

see Armando Maggi, “The Discourse of Sodom in a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Text” in: Reclaiming the Sacred: The Bible in Gay and Lesbian Culture (New York: Haworth, 1997), pp. 25–43. A German translation with a reprint of the Italian text was published by Wolfram Setz as: Antonio Rocco, Die Schüler Alkibiades. Ein philosophisch-erotischer Dialog (Hamburg: MännerschwarmSkript Verlag, 2002). This edition proposes ancient texts relevant to Rocco and the Alcibiade, plus a “Nachwort” by Wolfram Setz, Wär ich einem Tag und eine Nacht Alkibiades. Geschichten um ein kleines Buch, pp. 199–255.Google Scholar

Jean-Paul Aron and Roger Kempf. Le pénis et la démoralisation de l’Occident (Paris: B. Grasset, 1978).Google Scholar

See, however, the collection of essays edited by Catherine Cusset, Libertinage and Modernity (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998), which includes an essay by Philippe Roger on “The role of female homosexuality in Casanova’s memoirs.”Google Scholar

See also Randy P. L. Conner, “Burning Desire: Claude Le Petit, Libertine Poet,” Papers on French Seventeenth Century Literature 27, 53 (2000), pp. 421–33,Google Scholar

and James Grantham Turner, Schooling Sex: Libertine Literature and Erotic Education in Italy, France, and England 1534–1685 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).Google Scholar