From Slurs to Silence? Sodomy and Mendicants in the Writings of Catholic Laymen in Early Modern Ghent

Abstract

This article analyzes the reactions of catholic laymen to a sodomy trial held in Ghent during 1578. The recently established Calvinist city council had accused a number of mendicants of the crime against nature to slander their religious opponents. The lack of official response by the clergy has led to the assumption that the laity also remained silent in the face of Protestant sodomite slurs. Remarkably enough, a considerable number of Catholic laymen passionately attempted to rehabilitate the convicted friars through the popular narrative genre of city-chronicles, the so-called Memorieboeken, even though sodomy was an unmentionable sin. Furthermore, chroniclers were still writing about the trial more than a century after the fall of the Calvinist regime. Clearly, the Catholic restoration of the city was accompanied by the stigmatization of old enemies and so, this particular sodomy trial not only shows how religious polemics could influence responses to deviant sexuality, it also reflects the formation of an urban historical consciousness.