For centuries, the inquisition struck terror into the hearts of those deemed to be heretics by the church. Intertwined with charges of heresy and sorcery were often complex issues around sexuality that were reduced in the pre-modern mind to sinfulness and a disordering of divine creation. Pity the nun questioning her own identity or a priest who sincerely believed Jesus was gay.
Enter the bleak world of the inquisition and the appalling and deadly way it approached questions around sexuality.
Maria Duran questions her identity – and so does the inquisition
Catalan-born Maria Duran was a novice nun at the convent of Nossa Senhora do Paraiso in Portugal. In 1741, she was arrested by the Inquisition. After a lengthy trial, Maria was sentenced to be lashed and then exiled from the country. She was accused of making a pact with the Devil to acquire a “secret penis”. This was attested by several aggrieved female witnesses.
Voluminous trial documents, still held in Lisbon’s Torre dos Tombo (national archive), detail a bizarre trial. Maria was born in modern Spain, spending part of her youth dressed as a man and enrolling in the army of Aragon. After coming to Portugal, she discarded her male clothes and became a nun.
Very soon, women alleged that they had been penetrated by her with one nun, Agostinha Teresa da Purificação, stating she became pregnant and then miscarried.
The nuns seemed confused about what exactly had happened to them, while Maria Duran flatly denied either contact with the devil or having a penis. However, she was accused of witchcraft. A medical examination confirmed she was a woman, but the Inquisition judges voted by a majority to put her to torture.
She was eventually forced to admit her sins in front of the Portuguese king and was then exiled.
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Out and proud Franciscan friar comes to grief
Brescia-born Francesco Calcagno, a young Franciscan friar, allegedly slept with a different man every night and justified his behaviour by claiming that Jesus had been in a sexual relationship with his disciple, John. He also said that Saint Paul committed sodomy. This open display of homosexuality was never going to last long in the 16th century – especially from somebody wearing a clerical habit.
Francesco was taken into custody by the Inquisition in Venice and accused of blasphemy along with both promoting and practising sodomy. The brave young man showed absolutely no contrition whatsoever. One has to assume he was fully resigned to his gruesome fate. On 23 December 1550, Francesco was executed.
In his trial by the Inquisition, Calcagno openly admitted to being influenced by a notorious bawdy book in circulation at the time called La Cazzaria or The Book of the Prick. In it, two men called Arsiccio and Sodo discuss the merits of sex between men. Openly declaring an interest in this licentious tome was like committing suicide.
Love letters between two women
Felipa de Souza was born in Tavira, Portugal in 1556 who emigrated to Brazil, which had only been discovered just over fifty years before. She was married, widowed, and then remarried but throughout this time, had many relationships with women.
Unwisely, Felipa wrote a string of love letters to Paula de Siqueira which, in 1591, fell into the hands of the Inquisition – which had stepped up its activities in Brazil.
She was accused of ‘female sodomy’ with seven women and instead of denying this capital crime, she declared her “great love and carnal affection” for women. The Inquisition was scandalised but decided against the death penalty. Instead she was publicly whipped and then exiled from the state of Bahia.
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