Less than two centuries later, in Spain, a new tribunal would carry out the Catholic Church’s repressive work against homosexuals. With the signing of the papal bull of November 1, 1478 (
Exigit sincerae devotionis affectus
), Pope Sixtus IV gave life to the Spanish Inquisition.The request had come directly from the Catholic monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella of Castile as a means to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms; this would be the most unique characteristic of this new court, that which brought together papal will with that of Spanish political powers at the highest level. The court was constituted as a council under the name
Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisition
. It originally had four members, all ecclesiasts, one of whom held the title of Inquisitor General.
It is not known today what pushed Pope Clement VII, by a decree on February 24, 1524, to entrust the repression of sodomy within the Aragon peninsula to the sole tribunal of the Inquisition. The decree made explicit mention of the homosexual habits of the Moorish minority, and of the threat of “putrid contamination of the healthy faithful by these few black sheep.”The repression of Aragon homosexuals in Spain began later, under the reign of Philip II (beginning in 1560) and would continue unabated until the end of the seventeenth century.
The Spanish Inquisition made a distinction between “perfect” sodomy (where it involved two males) and “imperfect” sodomy (when it took place within a heterosexual relationship); however, nine cases out of ten concerned homosexual relations. Later, the tribunal’s jurisdiction over matters of sodomy grew to also encompass those on ships, which maintained regular connections to the region, as well as those populations on the new continent, which were subject to the tribunal at Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), established in 1610. Between 1560 and 1630, the three Aragon tribunals (in Barcelona, Valencia, and Zaragoza) investigated the majority of those accused, who were most often clergymen or peasants. Other groups were also singled out: sailors, slaves, students, and shepherds. They all shared in common a tendency for social instability and had few local roots. However, this did not prevent a few nobles from finding themselves at the mercy of the court. The Moors, targeted by Pope Clement VII’s decree of 1524, only made up a small percentage of those accused (8.2%) between 1560 and 1609 (the date when they would be expelled from the country). The number of foreigners indicted, on the other hand, was significant: Italian sailors from coastal ports, French travelers in Catalonia, Portuguese, and Turks. Homophobic repression and xenophobia were closely linked; this association ensured that the tribunal would have the people’s approval, by denouncing those with whom the general public also had issues. A large number of the accused were arrested in the two large cities of Barcelona and Valencia, which were ports of arrival and departure for many commercial ventures and a common ground for misfits, vagabonds, slaves, and servants of all kinds. The suppression of lesbians was also carried out, but a June 1, 1560 decree by the Suprema (the Council of the Inquisition) restricted this accusation to those who, during their liaisons, made use of an instrument. Cases involving women were rare.
The power of the Spanish Inquisition was reinforced under the reign of Charles V (1517–56) and that of his son, Philip II (1556–98), giving the tribunal latitude to proceed with arrests without any consideration of either territorial or juridical limits. This situation was exploited by those in power, whereby those who were perceived as enemies were accused of sodomy and subsequently arrested. The sodomy trial of Pedro Luis Galceran de Borja (of the Borgia family), Grand Master of the Order of Montesa, in 1572 was a perfect example of an attempt at the political elimination of an aristocrat by bitter adversaries. Another trial indicted a very influential person, Philip II’s secretary Antonio Perez, who was accused of having ordered the assassination of Juan Escobedo, secretary to the king’s half-brother, Don Juan of Austria. Perez fled and took refuge in Aragon; however, another trial was launched against him in absentia, this time accusing him of the multiple crimes of sodomy,
Judaism
, and hostility toward the Spanish Inquisition. (The new sodomy charge was supported by the damning testimony of a young page, Antón de Añón.) The trial set in place a manhunt that was stymied when the fugitive escaped to France. Once again, the crimes of homosexuality and
treason
were invoked together to ruin the reputation of a man who had fallen into disgrace.
The average length of a trial against an accused homosexual was six months and fifteen days, a period that varied based on how quickly the accused admitted to the offense. For de Borja, mentioned above, the interval was several years, and the cost to his wealth was considerable; in fact, the expenses for keeping him detained were paid out of his own pocket. During the entire time, he was kept in a prison cell in a secret location. The trial’s procedure, also secret, never allowed him to learn the identity of those who had denounced him and were testifying against him.
Contrary to popular belief, torture was a normal part of the investigation and never used as a punishment. In the perspective of the time, its use allowed the Spanish Inquisition to uncover the “truth” in those cases where there were insufficient witnesses or where the accused denied the charges. One of the most common forms of torture involved the pulley, whereby the subject was suspended by his hands, a weight was tied to his ankles, then he was raised and dropped in heavy jerks; another was the garrote, in which the subject was tied down to a device and a rope placed around his neck which is increasingly tightened (it was also used as a means of execution). An accused who was able to resist torture had a good chance of being freed and his trial suspended.
Those found guilty or who admitted their guilt incurred a punishment of 200 lashes of the whip and would be sentenced to the slave galleys for three to seven years (the average being six years and eight months), followed by an equivalent amount of time in exile. The court would deliver the sentence in a room in the palace of the Spanish Inquisition or as part of an
auto da fé
taking place in a central location in the city. Only those sodomites sentenced to death would appear before an
auto da fé
, a lavish and well-attended public ceremony, the purpose of which was to illustrate the example not to follow. The Holy Office would be there in full, enjoying privileges over the rest of the Church hierarchy as well as civil authorities. The condemned wore the
coroza
on his head
,
a sort of miter decorated with the flames of hell, as well as the
sambenito
, a yellow tunic painted with St Andrew’s cross in red, on which would be written his name and his crime, also surrounded by flames. The death sentence would be assigned to those homosexuals convicted of repeated offenses, which in fact made up a good number of the accused. The capital punishment, known as
relaxe
(because the tribunal relaxed, or relinquished, responsibility for the punishment to the secular arm, the only group permitted to mete out death), would follow about twenty-four hours after the
auto da fé
. The unfortunate individuals would be burned at the stake, which generally took place outside the walls of the city. If the condemned converted or repented, he was often strangled to death by the executioner before being put to flame.
The darkest period of this response to sodomy lasted about two decades, from 1570 to 1590. But the virulence of this repression lessened under the 1621–65 reign of Philip IV and the government of his favorite, the Count-Duke of Olivares, whose priorities seemed to be quite different from those of the Inquisitors. As a result, no homosexual was sentenced to death after 1633. In fact, compared to other European countries, very early on, Spain stopped punishing homosexual acts by death or torture. In Aragon, a few sodomy trials were still carried out, but by the royal court. The punishments were more severe in these cases; for example, following the trial of the Marquis d’Aytona’s cooks in Valencia in 1581, a fifteen-year-old convicted of being a “passive sodomite” was “made to sit on a burning grill.”
In the New World, royal orders issued on January 25 and February 7, 1569, excluded Natives from being subject to the juridical power of the Spanish Inquisition. Native Americans were thus spared from the tribunals established in Mexico (1568) and Peru (1569), but not in Brazil, where proponents of the Portuguese Inquisition would make regular visits beginning in July of 1591; as a result, about forty trials for sodomy took place. Prior to this, the Dominican theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1480–1546), one of the greatest defenders of the Native cause (along with Bartolomé de las Casas), nevertheless stated that it was the duty of the Spanish to ruthlessly fight against the abominable homosexual habits of the Natives. Their practice of sodomy was rejected by the conquerors in the same way as their cannibalism and rites of human sacrifice. According to de Vitoria, these practices condoned what he considered a just war against the chaos and sin that went against the natural order.
Overall, the Inquisition constituted one of the darkest chapters in the history of homophobia, as well as the Church. However, the myths surrounding the Inquisition are arguably larger than the facts: the number of those burned at the stake was less than many imagine, although the persecution of homosexuals, and the ever-present threat of execution, certainly made life extraordinarily difficult for them.
—André Fernandez
Bennassar, Bartolomé.
L’Inquisition espagnole XVe–XIXe siècle
. Paris: Hachette, 1979.
———.
Histoire du Brésil 1500–2000
. Paris: Fayard, 2000.
Burman, Edward.
Supremely Abominable Crimes: The Trial of the Knights Templar
. London: Allison & Busby, 1996.
Carrasco, Raphaël.
Inquisición y Represión sexual en Valencia
. Barcelona: Laertes, 1986.
———. “Le Châtiment de la sodomie sous l’Inquisition (XVle–XVIIe siècle),”
Mentalités,
no. 3, Paris (1989).
Fernandez, André.
Au nom du sexe: Inquisition et répression sexuelle en Aragon (1560–1700)
. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003.
García Cárcel, Ricardo, and Doris Moreno Martinez.
Inquisicío
. Madrid: Historia critica, 2000.
Mott, Luiz.
Justitia et Misericordia: a Inquisição portuguesa e repressão a nefando pecado de sodomia
. Paris: CIDH, 1990.
Spencer, Colin.
Histoire de l’homosexualité, de l’Antiquité à nos jours
. Paris: Le Pré aux Clercs, 1998. [Published in the US as
Homosexuality in History
. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1995.]
Vainfas, Ronal. “Tropico dos pecados: moral, sexualidad e inquisição no Brasil.” In
Dicionário do Brasil Imperial
. Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 1989.
—Against Nature; Bible, the; Catholic Church, the; Damien, Peter; Debauchery; Heresy; Latin America; Paul (of Tarsus); Sodom and Gomorrah; Spain; Theology; Vice.
INSULT
Insult is an essential component of the phenomenon of homophobia. Even though the subject is sometimes complex and not easily defined, there have been suggestions that homophobic insults ought to be penalized by the law. French philosopher Didier Eribon’s analysis of the power of insult argues strongly in favor of this position.
Insults usually target an individual’s abnormality or inferiority, or that of a group of individuals in comparison to others. But more fundamentally, insults play a role in the construction of the identity of the person to whom they are addressed—an identity that is
necessarily
inferior. This occurs whether the insult is explicit or implied, or when even the suggestion of
violence
is perceived as a legitimate threat.
The depth of an insult’s effect depends on its recipient’s knowledge that he or she can, at any moment, be assigned to a position of inferiority; it is also based on exclusionary values deeply ingrained in everyday language. For gays and lesbians, the experience of this language has the additional consequence of instilling insurmountable feelings of
shame
, fear, and social inferiority.
Through the use of insults, language is a powerful vehicle for homophobia. But words are not simply occasional tools of aggression. By and large, they translate and perpetuate the representation of an arbitrary social hierarchy determined by sexual orientation. Moreover, this does not only include formulas that are
objectively
violent (“dirty fag,” “rotten dyke”), but also, in a more global sense, the whole of discourse that elaborates, justifies, or expresses
discrimination
against homosexuality. This being said, from a theoretical point of view (to the extent that this concept could be applied to any number of diverse situations), it becomes possible to realistically consider the possibility of outlawing homophobic insults.
Before doing so, however, one must first be able to distinguish, on one hand, the critique and scientific deconstruction of a discourse that elaborates on the concept of discrimination and, on the other, the law’s potential to criminalize homophobic insults. In effect, laws in many countries already protect gay and lesbian citizens from discrimination, violence, and hatred; many of these laws were originated to combat racism, and “sexual orientation” was later added as a category. In order for such laws to evolve to further protect gays and lesbians from homophobic insults, they would need to specify the prohibition of libel that evinces a homophobic character, or as it has been defined in France,“any allegation or imputation of a fact that casts a slur on or undermines the consideration of a person to whom it is directed”; as well, any insult of a homophobic nature, that is, “any offensive expression, term of derision, or invective not at all based in fact.”
From this perspective, the law cannot be reasonably invested with the mission of eradicating homophobic insult completely. But as a first step in the right direction, it can push for the cessation of one of homophobia’s most insidious manifestations, especially by educating the public that it is not only inappropriate, but unacceptable. France became a pioneer in this area in 2004, when the French parliament adopted legislation that criminalized the insulting of homosexuals or women, punishable by up to one year in prison.
—Daniel Borrillo and Thomas Formond