8 - Sex in Florence in the Fifteenth Century

Summary

Florence in the fifteenth century was in transition from the medieval to the modern world, and sexual attitudes and practices were very much in flux. The most distinctive feature of Florentine sexuality was the city’s international reputation as a hotbed of ‘sodomy’. Traditional structures of marriage and the family coexisted with a widespread culture of male homoeroticism. Female prostitution was sanctioned by the state, in the hope that it would reduce both male homoeroticism and adulterous relations. At the same time the new ideal of romantic love was spreading to all social classes, bringing changes to the ways people thought about marital and intimate relations. This chapter focuses both on the idealization of male homoeroticism in humanist culture and on the repression of male homosexual activity by the Office of the Night, the judicial branch that policed sodomy. It contrasts the celebration of physical beauty in Florentine visual arts with the preaching of the Dominican reformer Savonarola, who harshly condemned worldly luxuries. Savonarola’s public execution by burning in 1498 provides an ironic contrast to his own bonfires of the vanities, in which luxury goods were burned, but it also mirrors the public burning that was the traditional punishment for sodomy.