The catholic church, which dominated the religious landscape, considered sodomy as a mortal sin and a crime against nature. Learn about the history and laws surrounding homosexuality in medieval europe. The general view that homosexuality wasn’t tolerated in the middle ages applies primarily to the later middle ages, from the 13th century onwards This was something of a backlash to the more permissive urban life of the 11th and 12th centuries Byzantine bishops (5th century) tortured and mutilated as a punishment for homosexuality, alongside countless other, unnamed victims of late roman and byzantine persecutions Most of the foundations of what we see in early medieval europe were laid by the roman empire, which at its height influenced almost all corners of the continent.
The study of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual relations during the middle ages is a new area of research, with some of the first important books on the topics being published in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Homosexual sex was widespread in the middle ages and there is abundant information on what church writers and secular legislators thought about it Shoddy or partisan scholarship and a distinctly modern disdain of homosexuals by scholars until recently marked much of the discussion of the history of this medieval homosexuality Since 1955, and especially since 1975, much work has been done.
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