As can be expected from the reference to priests in the title of this article, it focuses mostly on relations between men. But there is some information on women within the more general context of “sodomy” involving clerical personnel.
16th c
LHMP entry
This is a data-heavy examination of cases under the Spanish Inquisition for sexual-related offenses during a critical period from the mid 16th century to the end of the 17th century. There is very little in the article that speaks directly to sexual activity between women, but it provides a context for attitudes and risks during that period.
This article looks at the fascination with cross-dressing women in popular culture in 16-17th century England. “Cross-dressing” in this context doesn’t necessarily mean serious gender disguise, but includes ritualized cross-dressing in the contexts of celebrations, as well as partial cross-dressing where the use of specific male-coded garments was viewed as transgressive.
Lanser opens her article with the bold hypothesis that “in or around 1650, female desire changed.” That there was a conceptual shift in gender relations reflected in literature, politics, religion, and individual behavior in which private intimate relationships between women became part of public life, and that this shift shaped women’s emergence as political subjects claiming equal rights.
In 1599 in Mexico City, a 54 year old Dominican “beata” concluded her confession to the Inquisition by indicating she had nothing more to say “even though she might have more sins than the queen of England”.
[Note: I’ll be including additional data and discussion of some of the vocabulary discussed in this article for my readers. The original article was written for an audience that is assumed to have a familiarity--perhaps even fluency--in the Welsh language. I think it’s not entirely self-serving to think that my PhD in Welsh historical linguistics might be excuse enough to think I can bridge that gap for my readers.
Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme (commonly referred to as “Brantôme”) was a French writer of the 16th century. He was a soldier and courier and wrote several volumes of memoirs and biography, but the most well-known (or at least, notorious) section is known as Vies des Dames Galantes (The Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies) which, contrary to the rather positive title, is a scurrilous gossip-rag focusing on women’s sexual escapades and especially on the topic of wo
This is an excerpt from a German family chronicle about the Counts of Zimmern. All material transcribed from the published original will be in bold type. My translation will be in plain type, and my commentary will be in italics. I’ll be interleaving my translation and discussion with several separate sections and noting where I’ve omitted material that wasn’t relevant to the interests of the Project. The German text is a transcription of the original 16th century manuscript, reflecting 16th century spelling conventions.
This article takes a focused look at all the women (and there were only 13 of them) recorded in London legal records for cross-dressing as men in the century after 1450. While this data set is too small to draw strong conclusions, the variation among the cases challenges our understanding of the purposes and motivations for female cross-dressing. The article provides a longer chronology of cross-dressing in London before 1603 from sources that include letters and courts overseen by the city, the Bishop’s commisssary, and the chancery.
The article takes a critical look at the concept of “chastity” as an attribute of the mythical goddess Diana, especially as interpreted in early modern literature and art, and at the depiction of Diana as the focus and leader of a community of women who reject romantic and erotic interactions with men, but engage in those interactions with each other.
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