GAY PENITENTS would have found Fra Luigi Sinistrari an understanding confessor, in spite of all that scary talk about torture and flogging and burning at the stake. When you get past the fierce rhetoric of the Inquisition, you find a childlike innocence and the gentle spirit of Saint Francis. It runs contrary to stereotype, but Fra Luigi was a kindly old inquisitor.
The Reverend Father Ludovicus (Luigi) Maria Sinistrari de Ameno is the author of the theological classic Demoniality, which explains that the world is populated by ethereal beings who frequently appear to mortals, seeking sexual favors from them. The part of Fra Luigi’s work that deals with demoniality has attracted considerable attention. Recently I did an Internet search for “Sinistrari” and got 224 hits. About half were devoted to the topic of “sex with the Devil,” with the others clustering around the topic of “sex with aliens from outer space.”
But some of Fra Luigi’s treatises dealt with more earthly concerns. Two of his major works are Lewdness, which I have translated for the first time from the Latin and published recently, and Peccatum Mutum (The Mute Sin, Alias Sodomy), which was fi
rst published in English in 1893. You might expect Peccatum Mutum to be about homosexuality, but instead it is Lewdness that has more to say about same-sex sexual behavior.
Fra Luigi, who lived from 1622 to 1701, came from the little town of Ameno, Italy. When he was 25 he joined the Friars Minor of the Strict Observance. He started out as a professor of theology at the University of Pavia and went on to become a consultant to the Supreme Council of the Inquisition at Rome and, finally, Vicar General of the Archdiocese of Avignon.
In 1688, when he was 66, the Friars Minor selected Fra Luigi to draw up a criminal code for their community. He labored for a dozen years, finally publishing the De Delictis et Poenis Tractatus Absolutissimus (The Most Absolute Treatise of Crime and Punishment) in 1700, a year before his death. It was promptly put on the Index of Prohibited Books because of certain technical matters having to do with jurisdiction and the qualification of judges. These defects were corrected for the 1753-1754 publication of his Complete Works, three enormous tomes prefaced by an approving letter from Pope Benedict XIV and signed with the Papal Seal.
One hundred double-column folio pages of the Tractatus are devoted to crimes against chastity. These crimes are treated in thirteen chapters of ascending gravity, starting with “Keeping Bad Company,” proceeding through “Fornication,” “Adultery,” “Rape,” and “Violation of Cloister,” and then on to “Lewdness,” “Sodomy,” “Bestiality,” and “Demoniality.” Fra Luigi lets us know that none of this shocks him. He is aware of the effect of Original Sin on human nature. “Human wickedness is so great, and the senses are so depraved from the filth of pleasure,” he observes serenely, “that in one and the same act wicked deeds contrary to nature can be multiplied.” In fifty years in the confessional, he has heard it all, and he has the stories to prove it.
For many years the Friars Minor enjoyed this edifying work in their quiet cloisters, little noticed by the world. Fra Luigi’s researches became known to a wider public in the late 19th century when Isidore Liseux (1835–1894) discovered Demoniality and published it in French and English translation. It was a bestseller, as theology books go. In England, in 1934, all copies of the Fortune Press edition were destroyed by court order, making Fra Luigi one of the few authors to be suppressed by both the Vatican and the English Magistrates. In the U.S., Demoniality has been reprinted many times and is still in print today.
In what follows I discuss the last chapters of the Tractatus, which deal with some of the most interesting sins that Fra Luigi delineates.
Chapter X. Lewdness
Lewdness (Mollities) is a catch-all term for miscellaneous sex acts. Fra Luigi recognizes just two categories of sexual activity: intercourse, whether vaginal or anal; and “pollution,” which is everything else. Pollution ranges from wet dreams, which are involuntary and not sinful at all, through the whole range of lewdness, such as masturbation (of self or another), fellatio, cunnilingus, coitus interruptus (anal or vaginal), and various types
of rubbing. Sodomy is a special case of intercourse, namely anal intercourse with emission “in the vessel.” If there is anal intercourse but emission occurs “outside the vessel,” it is not sodomy but instead pollution.
Sodomy—ejaculation in the anus, strictly speaking—is abominable and punishable by death, but Fra Luigi recognizes that there are many greater and lesser degrees of seriousness in the huge range of types of pollution. He lays down a general principle—the greater the distance the criminal act is from “the method instituted by nature from which generation can follow,” the graver the crime—but does not follow up with any method to measure such a distance. Instead, he discusses two kinds of aggravating circumstances: the mode, which is the exact sexual act; and the kind of person you did it with. This enables him to distinguish between, say, masturbation (not very serious) and child molestation (very grave).
Homosexuality is not an aggravating circumstance. Fra Luigi differs with some of his contemporary theologians, who held that same-sex sexual activities are ipso facto cases of sodomy. He expressly says carnal acts involving a man with another man, or a woman with woman, are exactly equivalent to those same acts involving a man and a woman. This is because men and women differ not in genus nor in species, but only in “accidents.”
Fra Luigi is not very severe when it comes to basic pollution, which is uncomplicated by harm to others. He agrees with the opinion of Conradus Clingius that you qualify as a hardened sinner only if you persist in the sin of pollution for as many years as Christ lived upon this earth—that is, for 33 years. By the same token, if you have strayed from the correct path, you have 33 years to mend your ways. What’s more, you don’t even have to mention this sin in confession (see sidebar).
From this it appears that the Friars Minor of the Strict Observance had essentially a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The penitent need say only that “Since my last confession I have committed pollution three times,” and the confessor need not inquire about the details. Just be sure not to ejaculate in the anus—everything else is mere pollution—and you have 33 years to reform. In Lewdness Paragraph 19, Fra Luigi mentions in an aside that Florence has done away with the death penalty for sodomy. This is the earliest instance I have found of the decriminalization of sodomy.
Chapter XI. Sodomy
Sodomy was “the sin not to be named” among Christians, but it was always a confused category, because if you couldn’t speak about it you couldn’t very well be clear on what it encompassed. The original legislation was in the Code of Justinian, and honest Fra Luigi admits that he cannot understand it. In the chapter on sodomy he remarks: “Therefore the Emperor, in the law condemning wickedness of this kind, uses very select terms indeed, but so obscure that one can scarcely comprehend the sense of the law; he had rather perhaps the law itself should not be understood by the ignorant, than speak plainly of a most foul deed.” Fra Luigi tells us that the received view is that Justinian’s “Unspeakable Sin” is anal intercourse.
As it happens, Fra Luigi has been reading a book on descriptive anatomy, and this enables him to describe several hitherto unreported modes of sodomy. There are four permutations. The first two, a man penetrating a woman and a man penetrating another man, are the common ones. But who knew that it was also possible for a woman to penetrate another woman, or even a man? Fra Luigi figured this out from his anatomical studies, which educated him about the clitoris and gave him insights that had been missed by less erudite confessors. Here is his story (“Sodomy,” Paragraph 19):
I have it from the lips of a very trustworthy Confessor, that while he was hearing, a case cropped up, in which a certain noble lady, being exceedingly fond of a lad, used to keep him at her house for going to bed with her, and she had carnal knowledge of him from behind and was most violently in love with him. This woman, who had borne three children to her husband, took a dislike to his conjunction and spent her lust with that young fellow, a lad of about twelve years old. The Confessor believed the woman was an androgynous, for he told me so: he did not know the Doctrine of the Clitoris, which we have been setting down thus far.
Fra Luigi seems mighty pleased with himself for knowing the Doctrine of the Clitoris, and he devotes most of the “Sodomy” chapter to this topic. He tells some good stories about sex assignment mistakes, such as the nun who developed a low voice and grew a beard. The chapter hardly deals with homosexual matters at all.
Chapter XIII. Demoniality
Demoniality is Fra Luigi’s “Evergreen Classic.” Isidore Liseux discovered the manuscript in an old bookshop in London in 1872 and published it with a French translation in 1875. The first English edition appeared in 1879. Liseux’s admirable preface is a literary detective story solved with a discovery that this was in fact a lost work of Fra Luigi. But it was not entirely lost. The first 22 paragraphs of Liseux’s manuscript are identical with the first 22 paragraphs of Fra Luigi’s chapter on Demoniality in the Tractactus Absolutissimus. But in the manuscript the garrulous friar rambles on with stories about cases he has known of incubi and succubi, and how to exorcise them.
Fra Luigi takes care to distinguish cases of intercourse with the Devil (very rare) from intercourse with “Folletti” (very common). From early times the countryside of Europe had been populated by sprites of various sorts—maenads, sylvans, nereids, and satyrs in antiquity, and in modern times elves, leprechauns, trolls, goblins, and fairies. They dwelt in woods, on rocks, in springs or streams, and under bridges. The Italian branch of this family were the Folletti. They frequently fell in love with human men and women, and their subtle nature, allowing them to become invisible and to pass through walls and doors, gave them ample opportunity to solicit, and sometimes to attain, the favors they sought. In such situations they were called incubi (in effect, our “tops”) or succubi (“bottoms”), depending upon the circumstances.
This phenomenon gives Fra Luigi much to consider. Are the Folletti a species distinct from men? A distinct genus? Are they rational? Do they have souls to be saved or damned? Can they impregnate a woman and, if so, is it with their own seed or with human seed collected in a previous sexual encounter?
After dispatching these and many more pertinent questions, Fra Luigi goes on to tell from his own experience a story that happened at Pavia when he was lecturing in theology there. A very respectable lady called Hieronyma woke up in the middle of the night, her husband sleeping soundly beside her, and heard a voice that said: “I am captivated by your beauty, and desire nothing more than to enjoy your embraces.” And she felt somebody kissing her cheeks, so lightly, so softly, that she might have fancied being grazed by the finest down. Eventually Hieronyma got to see the incubus, “in the shape of a lad or little man of great beauty, with golden locks, a flaxen beard that shone like gold, sea-green eyes calling to mind the flax-flower, and arrayed in a fancy Spanish dress.” She of course refused him what he wished. He persisted and played many poltergeist pranks—he even caused all her clothing to fall off in front of the whole town just as she was entering church to go to Mass. At last he gave up, defeated by her resolute chastity.
And what punishment did Fra Luigi prescribe for those weaker than Hieronyma, those who succumbed to the charms of the incubus or succubus? His answer: “As regards the penalties applicable to Demoniality, there is no law that I know of, either civil or canonical, which inflicts a punishment for a crime of this kind. … As a rule it is punished, out of Italy, by the gallows and the stake. But, in Italy, it is but very seldom that offenders of that kind are delivered up by the Inquisitors to the secular power.” Finally, in Paragraph 113, he reduces intercourse with incubi and succubi to simple pollution. Hieronyma might as well have obliged the beautiful little man.
The illustrations are printer’s devices from the 1753-1754 edition of Fra Luigi Sinistrari’s Complete Works.
Hugh Hagius teaches a course on globalization at Fairleigh Dickinson University, NJ. He also independently publishes reprints of rare texts related to gay and lesbian history. Fra Luigi’s Lewdness is one of the reprint titles. The other titles can be seen at www.bibliogay.com.
