Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages

by Robert Mills

During the Middle Ages in Europe, some sexual and gendered behaviors were labeled “sodomitical” or evoked the use of ambiguous phrases such as the “unmentionable vice” or the “sin against nature.” How, though, did these categories enter the field of vision? How do you know a sodomite when you see one?           In Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages , Robert Mills explores the relationship between sodomy and motifs of vision and visibility in medieval culture, on the one hand, and those categories we today call gender and sexuality, on the other. Challenging the view that ideas about sexual and gender dissidence were too confused to congeal into a coherent form in the Middle Ages, Mills demonstrates that sodomy had a rich, multimedia presence in the period―and that a flexible approach to questions of terminology sheds new light on the many forms this presence took. Among the topics that Mills covers are depictions of the practices of sodomites in illuminated Bibles; motifs of gender transformation and sex change as envisioned by medieval artists and commentators on Ovid; sexual relations in religious houses and other enclosed spaces; and the applicability of modern categories such as “transgender,” “butch” and “femme,” or “sexual orientation” to medieval culture.           Taking in a multitude of images, texts, and methodologies, this book will be of interest to all scholars, regardless of discipline, who engage with gender and sexuality in their work.

Genres: History, Queer, Nonfiction, Religion, European History, Gender and Sexuality, Medieval

400 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 2014

About the author

Robert Laurence Mills (April 15, 1927 – October 27, 1999) was a physicist, specializing in quantum field theory, the theory of alloys, and many-body theory. While sharing an office at Brookhaven National Laboratory, in 1954, Chen Ning Yang and Mills proposed a tensor equation for what are now called Yang–Mills fields. This equation reduces to Maxwell's equations as a special case.

Reviews

[Frank Farrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I stumbled on this book in Manchester University library. The title caught my eye. Flicking through it, I came across a section about God sending a plague of ‘emeroids’ in the Old Testament. It piqued my curiosity, so I borrowed the book.

It’s a very scholarly, detailed work, which makes summarising it very difficult because you feel as if you can’t leave anything out when you try to explain his ideas!

Mills incorporates a wide range of sources to analyse and compare.

I found parts difficult to follow as he makes some sophisticated points. But the book is a wealth of information about medieval experience of sodomy.

On a lighter note, I picked up a couple of phrases I rather liked: ‘anal incursion’ and men having sex with women in ‘alien ways’.

There is the wonderful story of a swindler who in exchange for a multicoloured goat demands four hairs from the Duke of Burgundy’s anus.

I also learned about Saint Eugenia and an early example of false rape accusation.


The book is serious and Mills shows a profound command of his subject matter.