McNeill, John.
L’Eglise et l’homosexuel, un plaidoyer
. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1982. [Published in the US as
The Church and the Homosexual
. Kansas City: Sheed Andrews and McMeel, 1976.]
—Against Nature; Bible, the; Catholic Church, the; Damien, Peter; Debauchery; Heresy: Islam; Judaism; Paul (of Tarsus); Theology; Vice.
SODOMY.
See
Sodom and Gomorrah
SONGS (France)
The journals of Charles Collé, the famous French songwriter and dramatist from the eighteenth century, contained the “poetic projects and … most secret thoughts” of a “poet of the open-air cabaret” (
poète de guinguette
); in it, he lamented: “I planned, long ago, to produce a satire about these gentlemen [i.e. homosexuals]. They are
against nature
reprobates, and their sin deserves an infernal treatment. But I do not know how to go about it, without offending modesty, by putting it to song. I am very disappointed that there is nothing that rhymes with buggerer [
bougre
]; with this little difficulty aside, I would be able to compose something proper by which to call them out.” This joke reflects Collé’s obsession with homosexuality which translated into an astonishing amount of epigrams, rhyming verses, and songs on the subject. The lack of a rhyme for “
bougre
” did not stop Collé (nor songwriters who either preceded or followed him) from mocking “these gentlemen,” often with spirit, but sometimes too with spite. And when unable to compose something modest, these songwriters would turn with abandon to lewdness.
It is easy to find the origins of homophobic satire among the Latin poets Catullus, Martial, and Juvenal, as well as in the
Priapeia
and
Satyricon
. In
Italy
during the Renaissance, homophobic satire, chiefly playful in tone, was produced by neo-Latin poets such as Pacifico Massimi (
Hecatelegium
) and Antonio Beccadelli (
Hermaphroditus
), as well as popular authors such as Pietro Aretino (
Il Marescalco
)
,
Boccaccio (
Decameron
)
,
Antonio Vignale (
La Cazzaria
), and others. Homophobic works that were nastier in tone were rarer, such as those by Niccolò Franco (
Rime di contra Pietro Aretino
).
Despite the wealth of Italian satire, one of the earliest poems written to be sung is German in origin: the “Confutatio Proverbii Italici de Germanorum ebrietate In Pedicones Italos Carmen Impolitum phalenticum Conradi Leontorii Quinto Kalendas Decembris ex tempore Argentinae 1493” (Refutation of the Italian proverb on the drunkenness of Germans against the Italian pederasts, a Rude and phallic song by Conrad Leontorius, improvised the 27th of November 1493 at Regenburg). Undoubtedly composed during a drunken meeting of humanists, the purpose of this song was to take revenge upon the Italians, who traditionally insulted German national honor by mocking not only their fondness for liquor but also their general crudeness. Even at this early date, the song draws on the usual homophobic arsenal: demasculinization (through use of the word
cinaedus
, meaning “sodomite”), the invocation of the laws of the gods and Nature, and the idea that homosexuality is something foreign, in this case the “Italian
vice
.”
In
France
, early satires that invoked homophobic sentiments were scathing, such as those by Etienne Jodelle, for example, whose final piece was a venomous diatribe (“Contre la Riere-Vénus” [Against the Riere-Vénus]), and Pierre de Ronsard, whose three homophobic sonnets are quoted in Pierre de L’Estoile’s
Registre-journal
on the reign of
Henri III
. It is in this volume that the first true French songs can be found. In the absence of a melody, it is difficult to know for certain if a piece of verse (be it an epigram, a mocking ditty, or a vaudeville) was ever put to music, yet most of these verses are undoubtedly songs, even if only in the literary sense. They attack the King’s royal
favorites
with extraordinary
violence
, calling down Heaven’s wrath to punish them: “
Au grand diable soit telle engeance! / C’est de la graine de Florence, / Qui ruinera notre France, / Si Dieu, par son juste courroux, / Ne les abisme et perd trestous!
” (To the Devil with this crew! / It will be the seed of Florence / Who will ruin our France / Unless God in his just wrath / Ruins and scatters them all!); also, “
Dieu, par qui tout est rangé, / Fault-il que la France se perde, / Et que le peuple soit mangé, / Par ces beaux petits Fouille-merde!
” (God, by whom all is made right / Must France perish / And her people be consumed / By these pretty little shit-seekers!).
France’s disorder during this tumultuous era is reflected in the songs about the disorder in the “Court of
Sodom
” where gender is nebulous (“
Que ce sont beaux compagnons / Que le Roy et tous ses mignons! / Ils ont le visage un peu palle, / Mais sont-ils femelle ou masle?
” [What good companions / Are the King and his minions! / Their faces are pale / But are they female or male?]) and the social order has been perverted (“
Un homme à l’autre se marie, / Et la femme à l’autre s’allie / Brouillans ensemble les ordures / De leurs deux semblables natures
” [A man can marry another man / And woman with woman unite / Mixing together the offal / Of their common natures]). Lesbians are not spared from satire either, as demonstrated by a 1581 piece entitled
La Frigarelle
, which tells the story of a young woman confused by a “mannish” (“
hommace
”) lesbian whom she takes to be a hermaphrodite, but who corrects her: “
Ha non, ha non
…
/ Saché que je suis Femme, et que j’ai en moi / Rien qui ne soit diffèrent des Femmes comme toi,
/
Mais j’ai entièrement tout le Désir d’un homme
” (Oh no, oh no … / Know that I am a Woman, and inside me / Is nothing different from Women like you / But I have in me all the Desire of a man”). L’Estoile does not hesitate to point out that these vile deeds are “certain signs of a great storm ready to break upon the State.” The reign of Henri III is the only period in which songs make scapegoats of sodomites, blaming them for all the troubles of the kingdom. The difficult years of La Fronde (1648–1653), the French civil war over the policies of Cardinal (Jules) Mazarin, then the minister of France, resulted in various accusations of sodomy against the Cardinal by those who became known as the
mazarinades,
but these were made in a burlesque style, never invoking any sort of divine vengeance: “
Mazarin ce bougeron / Dit qu’il n’aime pas les cons / C’est un renégat, / Un bougre d’ingrat / De les avoir en hayne
;
/ Il n’eust jamais esté qu’un fat / Sans celui de la Reyne/ Lon la / Sans celui de la Reyne”
(Mazarin, that bugger / Says he doesn’t like cunts / He’s a renegade / A bugger ingrate / To hate them so / He would be nothing more than a pig / Without that of the Queen / Loh la / Without that of the Queen). Or again, “
Suivez, empaleurs de garçons, / Jules, qui vos docteurs enseigne, / Il vous donnera des leçons. /
…
/ Le bougre sçait en cent façons, / Pêcher un étron à la ligne
.
”
(Follow, you impalers of boys / Jules, who your doctors teach / He can give you lessons / … / The bugger knows a hundred ways / To catch a turd on a pole.).
Libertine Thought & Scandals
The dawn of libertine thinking in France at the beginning of the seventeenth century is surely responsible for a change of tone regarding the treatment of homosexuals. It should be said that the figureheads of this movement were almost all homosexual (or reputed to have been, at least); for instance, Théophile de
Viau
, Des Barreaux, Claude Le Petit, Dassoucy, St-Pavin (nicknamed the King of Sodom), Cyrano de Bergerac, and the Baron de Blot L’Eglise, Claude de Chouvigny, as well as many of their protectors, such as the Prince of Condé. With bravado, many libertines took up the defense of sodomites, or evoked their own personal takes on the subject in songs like the following (by the prolific Baron de Blot): “
Amy, le cul fut de tout temps / Le plaisir des honnestes gens / Et de Rome et de Grèce
;
/ Tous nos docteurs l’ont déffendu, / Mais un auteur plus entendu / Dit qu’il est pour l’individu / Et le con pour l’espèce
” (My friend always, the ass / Is the honest man’s pleasure / And of Rome and of Greece; / All our doctors have forbidden it, / But a more knowledgeable expert / Says it is good for the individual / While the cunt is just for the species), and “
Je ne demande au Seigneur / Pour bonheur, / Que d’estre buveur, fouleur, / Incrédule et sodomite, / Puis mourir, / Puis mourir, / Puis mourir d’une mort subite!
” (All I ask of the Lord / Is the pleasure / Of being a drinker, a winemaker, / An non-believer and a sodomite / Then die, / Then die, / Then die a swift death!). With the threat of being burned at the stake very real, these sodomites responded with songs themselves, such as this one improvised (in Latin) by the Prince of Condé and the Marquis de La Moussaye while facing the risk of drowning while sailing down the stormy Rhône: “
Le cher ami La Moussaye: / Bon Prince, quel temps! / Lanlanladerirette / Nous périrons sous cette pluie / Lanlanderiri. / Nos vies sont assurées / Car nous sommes sodomites / Lanlanladerirette / Et ne périrons que par le feu / Lanlanderiri
” (Our dear friend La Moussaye: / Good Prince, what weather! /
Lanlanladerirette
/ We will perish out in such a rain /
Lanlanderiri
. / Our lives are safe / As we are sodomites /
Lanlanladerirette
/ Our only death shall be by fire /
Lanlanderiri
).
This boldness was essentially a veiled form of self-derision, which could be likened to an early form of camp humor. But even though these songs mocked homophobia, it should be noted that the same libertines who composed them also penned some of the most homophobic missives of the
mazarinades
. For example, Cyrano de Bergerac, who once depicted an amiable homosexual culture in
L’Autre monde
(The other world), also wrote the ferocious
Ministre d’Etat flambé
(Minister of the burning state). As for the previously quoted Baron de Blot, he did not hesitate to sing cruelly about Cardinal Mazarin after the death of his nephew: “
L’oncle pleure comme une vache, / S’escriant: Hélas! quel malheur! / Il m’estoit neveu et bardache,
/
Et je l’avois mis en faveur
” (The uncle weeps like a cow, / Crying: Alas! What misfortune!/ He was both my nephew and lover, / And I who favored him so). Not even homosexuality could escape the great French tradition in which “everything ends with a song.” This recurring theme would swell into a crescendo that culminated during the French Revolution, as demonstrated by the hundreds of homophobic songs collected in the large (forty-two-volume) collection compiled by Pierre de Clairambault, which was reprinted and expanded by the Count de Maurepas. Most of these pieces detail the heterodox habits of figures well known to the public, revealing curious and compromising anecdotes about them.
In general, the songs were not more virulent than those which attacked the cuckolded, the impotent, and dissolute women. The homophobia expressed in them often highlighted the foreign origins of homosexuality. For example, one song insinuated that the questionable tastes of Philippe d’Orléans, the brother of King Louis XIV, was evidence that his real father was Cardinal Mazarin, an Italian: “
Philippe le petit cocu, / Quitte le con et prend le cu, / Lui-même est bien souvent foutu
;
/ Il aime le derrière! / Et par là le vilain, / Fait bien voir que son père / Fut un Prélat romain
” (Philippe the little cuckold, / Quit the cunt and took the ass, / He himself is often screwed; / He loves the rear end! / And there the villain, / Does well, for his father, you see / Was a Roman prelate). In the same vein, the Italian origins of French composer Jean-Bapiste Lully were often referenced; for example, suggesting that while flattering a woman, he declared: “
Qui vous voit un moment est pour jamais charmé
;
/ Moy qui suis Florentin, j’ay changé de côté
” (He who sees you but for a moment is charmed forever; / Even I, who is from Florence, have changed sides).
Many songs attacked monks, priests, and other clergy living in all-male enclaves, part of a long anti-clerical tradition at least as old as this 1566 song, in which a Cordelier monk declared: “
De filles n’avons nul besoin, / Car avons nous pas nos novices / Avecque lesquels prenons soins / De trouver toutes nos délices
;
/ Et ce faisant n’avons point peur / D’en avoir aucun déshonneur
” (Of girls we have no need, / For have we not our novices / With which we take care / To find all our delights; / And doing so we have no fear / Of incurring any dishonor). The most common targets for attack were the Jesuits, for their educational tactics (“
On prétend qu’aux jeunes garçons, / Ils donnent d’étranges leçons
” [It’s said that to the young boys / They give some strange lessons]); in the songs, “
jésuite
” was often paired with “
sodomite”
(but not always): “
Les jésuites, gens de goût fin / Et qui ne sont pas dupes, / Portent plus volontiers la main / Aux culottes qu’aux jupes / Et prouvent, par bonne raison / Et par fine doctrine, / Que le cul, plus étroit qu’un con, / Chatouille mieux la pine
” (The Jesuits, men of fine tastes / Who are not fools, / Are more inclined to place their hands / On pants than upon skirts / And prove, through good reasoning / And fine learning, / That the ass, narrower than the cunt, / Is better for tickling the rod).
By the seventeenth century, some songs started to convey the anxiety over the existence of homosexual networks. Not only did these songs mock close friendships that were suspect (such as that between Lully and the Duke of Vendôme, whose name caused no end of amusement when rhymed with Sodom), but they also targeted the list of the Court’s homosexuals who had brought the Count of Vermandois, the young bastard son of Louis XIV, into their circle: “
On suit de bien près la piste / De tous les anticonistes / Pon, patapon, tarare pon pon. / Les dames, dans leur chagrin / Travaillent soir et matin
/
Pour en composer la liste
” (The trail is being closely followed / Of all those who disdain the cunt /
Pon, patapon, tarare pon pon
. / The ladies, in their chagrin / Work night and day / To put these names down in a list). The same kind of incriminations reared its head again fifty years later around the Freemasons and their secret rites, which were likened to homosexuality: “
De leur destin, / Si l’on faisait juges les dames, / De leur destin, / Ils auraient bientôt une triste fin. / Par elles, condamnés aux flames
…” (Of their fate / If women were made their judges / Of their fate, / Theirs would soon be a sad end. / For by these women, they would be condemned to burn at the stake …).