Talk:Homosexuality in medieval Europe

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The claim that Plato, Aristotle and Cicero were opposed to "homosexual acts" is unsupportable. All three were a product of their time that took the permissibility sexual relationships between men and men, or men and boys, to be entirely dependent on the class/age of the penetrator/penetratee and other considerations like discretion, sexual continence/restraint, and so on. Speaking about "homosexuality" is erroneous, almost all modern scholarship tends not to discuss things in terms of modern sexual orientation, and rather focuses on the act and social context

The citations provided are also wholly lacking in specificity — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.80.232.79 (talk) 16:14, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

The article says "If a person was found to be homosexual". Again, this is a very dubious formulation. The laws of the Italian city states focused on acts, not orientation.

As said before, the claim that Plato called homosexual acts transgressions against natural law is objectively false. He, at least, did not decry them wholesale as the medieval Catholic church would. Numerous positive references to the homoerotic/pederastic relationship(s) of Socrates are explicit in the Platonic canon. The Phaedrus is an easy example, but more exist in other works such as the Republic, the Crito, the Phaedo, the Laws, and the Symposium. The fact that the latter two are cited in support of this (once again) objectively false statement is strange and almost inexplicable. Also, as implied above, the modern concept of sexual "orientation" (that is, an inherent and identifiable characteristic of a human being that is explicitly predictive of sexual object choice) did not exist until, arguably, the mid-twentieth century. In this light, the framing of this entry as a whole becomes troublesome at best. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.241.237.67 (talk) 02:29, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

This is just Western Europe

These types of pages always ignore that Europe is not just France, England, and Germany.. The attitudes among Crimean Tatars, Volga Tatars, people in the Volga in general, or Kievan Rus would've all been different obviously.. Europe was not just Christian either — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2607:FEA8:4AA3:D100:993F:40F0:17:61EB (talk) 04:31, 4 July 2025 (UTC)

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any proof of anyone ever being a self professed homo during this period rather than being accused of it?

so far, all I have ever seen is people being accused of homosexuality in this period, never anyone saying they are in fact homosexual. it would be nice to have a section on self professed homos in europe, rather than a list of people who have been accused of it. it reads almost like a list of people who have been accused of blasphemy or of heresy. It makes me wonder if the claim that russia has no homos is actually true, for if europe could have had no homos, why can't russia today? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamesthefrank (talk • contribs) 04:55, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

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— Assignment last updated by Chiptunedude (talk) 23:34, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Overly focused on negative/mainstream Catholic views of medieval homosexuality

Although the Catholic church is undoubtedly very important to medieval culture and politics and medieval homosexuality was certainly very stigmatized, modern scholarship has been focusing more on trying to understand what the lives of ordinary people would have been like. There certainly were queer people in medieval Europe, and there's plenty of evidence for it (just not as famous -- see the Irish Times article or Judith Bennett paper I cited in last edit). The article would benefit from a section better highlighting these aspects of medieval homosexuality as well. This is also related to the comment noting the over-focus on Western Europe. EmmaKBat (talk) 18:12, 15 June 2026 (UTC)

Difficulty of separating historical figures by modern identities

It seems difficult to me to separate discussion of homosexuality from gender-nonconformity in premodern times, since people didn't always separate these identities the same way we do today. Perhaps this page should be moved to "homosexuality and gender-nonconformity in medieval Europe" (or similar construction; I'm not a medieval scholar so idk if there's a more widely-accepted construction) -- as far as I could find there is currently no article addressing gender-nonconformity in medieval Europe already. EmmaKBat (talk) 18:19, 15 June 2026 (UTC)