Letters from Sodom: ‘Emotional’ Agency and Evidence of Sexual Crime in the Early Modern Courts of Italy and Spain

From Firenze University Press Journal: Journal of Early Modern Studies (JEMS)

Juan Pedro Navarro Martínez, University of Barcelona

In 1913, Rainer Maria Rilke published a German translation of the love letters of a late seventeenth-century Portuguese nun, Mariana Alcoforado. “e letters quickly became a popular text on carnal desire, the pain of spite and the absence of love. In the epilogue to his translation, Rilke wrote of his fascination with the symbolic and intimate character of this type of writing, presumably bequeathed to a single reader. ‘We are not lacking in information and comments on the life of feelings. But we only see them in the brief moments when they suddenly rise above the current of destiny or — with a little more calmness — when already dead, collapsed, they float over its surface’ (2009, Epilogue, 59). Numerous researchers after Rilke have pointed out, however, the possible documentary falsification of Alcoforado’s letters, suggesting that they might be attributable to Lavergne de Guilleragues, a French politician and intellectual who may have made up an epistolary exchange to give expression to the intimate writings of some of the women of his time. “e Rilkian definition of the ‘life of feelings’ is nonetheless interesting, emphasising, as in the case of Alcoforado/Guilleragues, past emotional spaces. “e letters observe that forbidden love bestowed an enjoyment ‘de las delicias nunca imaginadas’1and that ‘Todas las emociones que me causas son siempre intensas’ (Alcoforado 1996, Second Letter, 61). Indeed, these discourses, long reviled by historiography, are today becoming increasingly necessary in the elaboration of memories and genealogies of the emotional. As for the document type in which these spaces of intimacy in the Ancien Régime can best be recognised, the choice of today’s social historians would not be too different from Rilke’s: the epistolary form. Personal letters, over and above official and political ones, are an essential resource for under-standing everyday life, social concerns and more subjective representations centred on desire and affection (Mestre Sanchís 2000; Castillo Gómez 2011, 2017). “is type of source allows us, at the same time, to learn about the political and ideological opinions of the writers, as well as about questions concerning social uses, gender dynamics and, of course, aspects relating to the affective network of the sender and the receiver of the letters. However, there are spaces and issues that are difficult to narrate in writing, even for those closest to the recipients. Sexual practices against nature, and specifically sodomy, which referred to all relations between persons of the same sex, had already been elevated to the category of crime through civil and canonical legislation. In medieval Castile, it was the VII Partida of Alfonso X the Wise (1252–1284) which condemned those ‘que fazen pecado de luxuria contra natura’3 to death. “e Pragmática de Medina del Campo (1497) by the Catholic Monarchs raised the capital punishment to death by fire (Chamocho 2012, 104–105). In the Italian regions, each governed according to its own courts and institutions, civil laws were asynchronous. Siena already had a law in force equating sodomy and heretical practices as early as 1262, and only three years later, Bologna would also enact a specific law against sodomy. In the city of Florence, meanwhile, sodomy as a crime began to be punished by castration from 1325 (Rocke 1987, 701–723). Shortly afterwards, the city of Rome, through the Statuti del Comuneof 1363, began to criminally prosecute these practices, condemning those accused of sodomy to death by fire (Baldassari 2005, 110). As the centrepiece of the Papal States, the city of Rome was also governed by the series of bulls that, since the papacy of Pius V, openly condemned sodomy as a criminal offence. “e reform of the Apostolic Constitution, ‘Cum Primus’, and the bull Horrendum illud scelus,which set out that clerics guilty of sodomy were also to face death by fire, were published in the space of just two years, between 1566 and 1568. Against such a bleak background, it is obvious that sexual transgressions of the norm were hardly ever explicitly stated. So much so that all unnatural sexual practices were recorded under the name of ‘nefando’ — something that cannot be named without causing disgust or horror. “us, the term ‘nefarious sin’ became a common phrase in moral theology, but also in scribal practice, as a synonym for various crimes such as sodomy or bestiality. As these practices could hardly be mentioned, tracing them in writing in the private sphere is even more complex.”e present research focuses precisely on this dual functionality of letters seized in judicial cases concerning the crime of sodomy. I will consider two different historical moments: sixteenth-century Rome and eighteenth-century Madrid. “e raison d’être for this choice lies in the substantial similarities in the development of the judicial processes for nefarious sin in the ‘Tribunale Criminale del Governatore’ in Rome and in the ‘Sala de Alcaldes de Casa y Corte’in Madrid, two courts of ordinary justice which, during the early modern age, administered justice in the respective cities, exerting social control over these jurisdictions alone. “e aim of this essay is to carry out a detailed study of the written documents confiscated due to their ‘expressiveness’ and to analyse them as judicial evidence that contributed to the process of identifying ‘hardly probable’ criminal practices. Additionally, the study uncovers love letters between men, as well as missives from their families and friends. It will also be possible to learn more through the popular literature consumed by the defendants, certificates and other official documents, and even their job applications. All this will give us insight into their everyday life and dissidence, with the aim of understanding the ‘emotional’ agency of these individuals.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/jems-2279-7149-15294

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