IN HIS 1995 BOOK The Marriage of Likeness: Same-sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe, John Boswell argued that in medieval Europe unions between same-sex couples were acceptable under certain circumstances and even sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. He preferred the term “same-sex unions,” because the definition of marriage has changed so drastically throughout history in general and that of the Catholic Church in particular. “The meaning and purpose of marriage,” he wrote, was “profoundly different from its modern counterpart,” citing examples that showed how romantic love, an integral part of modern marriage, was rarely a consideration in the past. Marriage for the most part was about property, power, and children.
Only months after Boswell’s book was published, it had gone through four printings and sold in excess of 31,000 copies, far more than most books on medieval history. Christian reviewers were on the whole negative, while most others praised Boswell’s thorough research and applauded his opening up this subject for discussion. Among his critics were those who questioned the accuracy of his translations and interpretations of a number of specialized texts. Then there were those who condemned the book even before it was published, suggesting that nothing Boswell did could have won these critics over to his argument.
In the book, Boswell produced a large assortment of examples from the historical annals around the world to argue that custom and law recognized several different kinds of union that could involve two men. His main focus, of course, was on medieval Europe. Many of the discussions concerned the meaning of the Greek word “Adelphopoiesis,” a category of relationship that was recognized by the Catholic Church.
Evidence of these types of relationships can be found in various Christian contexts up to the 18th century. One couple that became the stuff of legend was comprised of two men who were later made saints, Sergius and Bacchus. The two were fourth-century high-ranking Roman soldiers who, when suspected of being Christians, were ordered to worship at a pagan temple in order to test their belief. When they persistently refused, they were chained, dressed in female attire, and paraded around the town. Bacchus was beaten to death but the next day his spirit appeared to Sergius urging him to be strong and reassuring him that they would be together forever. The following day Sergius was also tortured to death.
There is considerable doubt as to authenticity of this story, but they became popular saints who were venerated widely. Boswell argued that the relationship between Sergius and Bacchus contained a romantic element, citing the fact that the earliest text contains the word “erastai,” which in Greek is the plural of “erastēs,” which referred to a pæderastic relationship between an older man and a younger man. Despite much criticism of Boswell’s translations and interpretations, Sergius and Bacchus have become popular in some corners of modern LGBT culture.
Included in Boswell’s book is a section on “Topographia Hibernica” (“Topography of Ireland”), a 12th-century work by Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales). It is less a topographic work than a history of Ireland, and a highly prejudicial one at that. Boswell’s translation of Gerald came in for special criticism. The passage takes up only one of 390 pages in The Marriage of Likeness, but it brought forth an outsize volume of the ink in reviews as critics argued over what was going on in a medieval ceremony described by Gerald. The passage appears in the third book of Topographia Hiberniaetitled “Of the Inhabitants of Ireland” and bills itself as “A proof of the iniquity (of the Irish) and a novel form of marriage.” Boswell’s translation goes as follows:
Among many other examples of their wicked ways, this one is particularly instructive: under the pretext of piety and peace they come together in some holy place with the man they want to join. First they are united in pacts of kinship, then they carry each other three times around the church. Then, entering the church, before the altar, in the presence of the relics of saints and with many oaths, and finally with a celebration of the Mass and the prayers of priests, they are permanently united as if in some marriage. At the end, as further confirmation of the friendship and a conclusion of the proceedings, each drinks the other’s blood, which is willingly shed for this. (This, however, they retain from the rites of pagans, who customarily use blood in the sealing of oaths.)
Alternative suggestions and translations have interpreted the ritual with a completely different emphasis. The most widely available translation of Topographia Hiberniaeis the Penguin Classics edition of 1969 by John O’Meara. He believed the piece said:
A proof of their wickedness and a new way of making a treaty. Among many other tricks devised in their guile, there is this one which serves as a particularly good proof of their treachery. Under the guise of religion and peace they assemble at some holy place with him whom they wish to kill. First they make a treaty on the basis of their common fathers. Then in turn they go around the church three times. They enter the church, and swearing a great variety of oaths before relics of saints placed on the altar, at last with the celebration of Mass and the prayers of the priests they made an indissoluble treaty as if it were a kind of betrothal. For the greater confirmation of their friendship and completion of their settlement, each in conclusion drinks the blood of the other which has willingly been drawn especially for the purpose.
It was this translation, which was republished in 1982, that remains authoritative. An earlier 1876 edition by John S. Brewer and James F. Dimock give the piece more-or-less the same meaning. Boswell criticized these writers for their “artful mistranslation and a general unwillingness to recognize something as ostensibly improbable as a same sex reading.”
Boswell was accused of having an agenda when he translated Gerald, that of making it read more like a homosexual marriage. However, if Boswell can be accused of having an agenda, so can the other translators. In 1876, the death penalty for homosexuality had been removed only fifteen years earlier, replaced by ten years to life, so Brewer and Dimock would not have dared to publish anything positive about homosexuality. When O’Meara published his version in 1969, homosexuality had only been partially decriminalized two years earlier. Men could still be sent to jail, and public opinion was predominantly negative. This could help explain O’Meara’s unsympathetic translation, though an anti-gay bias becomes less easy to justify in 1969 than in 1876. Also, if the piece was truly about a treaty, why in certain cases, as reported by Dimock in 1867, was the page defaced in one version and cut out of another?
Very few translations have appeared since Boswell’s time. A 2000 translation in the Medieval Latin Series from In Parentheses Publications of Cambridge, Ontario, conforms to the “treaty” version. So, in order to seek some clarification on this somewhat esoteric but important question, I launched a small investigation into the matter of translation.
The title of the piece in Topographia Hiberniaein its original Latin appears as “De argumento nequitiae, at novo desponsationis genere,” and the word that has caused the controversy is “desponsationis.” Throw the word into Google and the results will show that most definitions refer to betrothal, engagement, or marriage. A similar search on the singular term desponsareshows similar results. In both Portuguese and Spanish, desposar, from the Latin root, also refers to marriage, as does the English word spouse, meaning a marriage partner.
That said, it’s also true that far down the list of definitions the words “contract,” “treaty,” “pledge,” and “promise” do appear. It is obviously these last definitions that early translators have concentrated on, ignoring the most popular definitions which are always listed first in any dictionary. Not being a Latin scholar, I sought expert advice from the National Library of Wales, the National Library of Ireland, and the British Library. The last two hold original copies of Topographia Hibernica. The people at the Wales and Ireland libraries responded that it might be more appropriate to approach academics, but the British Library replied with information taken from R. E. Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-List: From British and Irish Sources(1965). There desponsationis “gives the meaning espousal, betrothal or marriage,” adding that “betrothal was as legally binding as marriage.” But if this was being written in 1965, it means that John O’Meara must have ignored it in his 1969 translation—even though, according to the British Library, this standard reference for medieval Latin had laid out the evidence for a “marriage or betrothal” meaning, noting that a treaty, promise, or contract of marriage was legally equivalent to marriage itself.
The meaning of these Christian same-sex unions was extensively considered by the late Alan Bray in his 2003 book The Friend. He considered many cases, including that of Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, who shared a tomb in Istanbul in the 14th century. When Clanvowe died on a military pilgrimage, Neville “died in grief for him,” and the image on their tomb makes “even the casual visitor pause, for in the engraver’s arrangement the helmets of the two men seem as if about to kiss.”
Bray acknowledges that Boswell’s works in places was flawed and that it cannot be known if these same-sex unions were sexual or not. However, he warns against dismissing Boswell based on a narrow definition of “marriage”: “An unqualified rejection of Boswell’s thesis in these terms is itself open to the same kind of criticism. It reduces the range of what we recognize today as being sexual to the narrow question of sexual intercourse, and it glosses over the historical disparity that, in the past, marriage has been one, as it is not in modern society, among several forms of what one might call voluntary kinship: kinship created not by blood but by ritual or a promise.” That being the case, it seems to me as a practical matter that any new editions of Topographia Hibernica ought to be based upon the most accurate and up-to-date translations of key terms in the text.
This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg, and there needs to be a general acknowledgement that many historical texts have been translated and interpreted with the intention of diminishing or suppressing evidence of same-sex unions. There is also the problem of the “researcher’s cut” by those experts in certain languages who either deliberately exclude evidence or omit it for lack of interest. (I touch on this in my book Forbidden Lives with regard to people like Gwen John.)
Boswell died from AIDS complications the year The Marriage of Likenesswas published, so we are denied his responses to critics. Further research by others has explored the subject in more depth, but there is still a lively debate concerning the terminology of ritual “brotherhood.” As Bray notes, marriage in the past has been just one form of voluntary kinship or union, and it is that which challenges the heteronormative narrative. Today, for example, the “bromance” has become common parlance—from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Smithy and Gavin in the TV sitcom Gavin and Stacey—though, to be sure, any hint of a sexual relationship is studiously avoided. At the end of the day, all we can really say is that a human institution such as marriage can have multiple meanings at any time in history, while its meanings can also change over time.
Norena Shopland is the author of Forbidden Lives: LGBT Stories from Wales(Seren, 2018).
