Chapter XLIII: Homosexual Love (2)

In Greece pederasty in its baser forms was censured, though generally, it seems, with no great severity, and in some states it was legally prohibited.[154] According to an Athenian law, a youth who prostituted himself for money lost his rights as a free citizen and was liable to the punishment of death if he took part in a public feast or entered the _agora_.[155] In Sparta it was necessary that the "listener" should accept the "inspirator" from real affection; he who did so out of pecuniary considerations was punished by the ephors.[156] We are even told that among the Spartans the relations between the lover and his friend were truly innocent, and that if anything unlawful happened both must forsake either their country or their lives.[157] But the universal rule in Greece seems to have been that when decorum was observed in the friendship between a man and a youth, no inquiries were made into the details of the relationship.[158] And this attachment was not only regarded as permissible, but was praised as the highest and purest form of love, as the offspring of the heavenly Aphrodite, as a path leading to virtue, as a weapon against tyranny, as a safeguard of civic liberty, as a source of national greatness and glory. Phaedrus said that he knew no greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth; for the principle which ought to be the guide of men who would lead a noble life cannot be implanted by any other motive so well as by love.[159] The Platonic Pausanias argued that if love of youths is held in ill repute it is so only because it is inimical to tyranny; "the interests of rulers require that their subjects should {479} be poor in spirit, and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire."[160] The power of the Athenian tyrants was broken by the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius; at Agrigentum in Sicily the mutual love of Chariton and Melanippus produced a similar result; and the greatness of Thebes was due to the Sacred Band established by Epaminondas. For "in the presence of his favourite, a man would choose to do anything rather than to get the character of a coward."[161] It was pointed out that the greatest heroes and the most warlike nations were those who were most addicted to the love of youths;[162] and it was said that an army consisting of lovers and their beloved ones, fighting at each other's side, although a mere handful, would overcome the whole world.[163]

[Footnote 154: Xenophon, _Lacedæmoniorum respublica_, ii. 13. Maximus Tyrius, _Dissertationes_, xxv. 4; xxvi. 9.]

[Footnote 155: Aeschines, _Contra Timarchum_, 21.]

[Footnote 156: Aelian, _Varia historia_, iii. 10. _Cf._ Plato, _Leges_, viii. 910.]

[Footnote 157: Aelian, _op. cit._ iii. 12. _Cf._ Maximus Tyrius, _op. cit._ xxvi. 8.]

[Footnote 158: _Cf._ Symonds, _loc. cit._ p. 92 _sqq._]

[Footnote 159: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 178.]

[Footnote 160: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 182.]

[Footnote 161: Hieronymus, the Peripatetic, referred to by Athenaeus, _op. cit._ xiii. 78, p. 602. See also Maximus Tyrius, _op. cit._ xxiv. 2.]

[Footnote 162: Plutarch, _Amatorius_, xvii. 14.]

[Footnote 163: Plato, _Symposium_, p. 178.]

Herodotus asserts that the love of boys was introduced from Greece into Persia.[164] Whether his statement be correct or not, such love could certainly not have been a habit of the Mazda worshippers.[165] In the Zoroastrian books "unnatural sin" is treated with a severity to which there is a parallel only in Hebrewism and Christianity. According to the Vendîdâd, there is no atonement for it.[166] It is punished with torments in the other world, and is capital here below.[167] Even he who committed it involuntarily, by force, is subject to corporal punishment.[168] Indeed, it is a more heinous sin than the slaying of a righteous man.[169] "There is no worse sin than this in the good religion, and it is proper to call those who commit it worthy of death in reality. If any one comes forth to them, and shall see {480} them in the act, and is working with an axe, it is requisite for him to cut off the heads or to rip up the bellies of both, and it is no sin for him. But it is not proper to kill any person without the authority of high-priests and kings, except on account of committing or permitting unnatural intercourse."[170]

[Footnote 164: Herodotus, i. 135.]

[Footnote 165: Ammianus Marcellinus says (xxiii. 76) that the inhabitants of Persia were free from pederasty. But see also Sextus Empiricus, _Pyrrhoniæ hypotyposes_, i. 152.]

[Footnote 166: _Vendîdâd_, i. 12; viii. 27.]

[Footnote 167: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv. p. lxxxvi.]

[Footnote 168: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 26.]

[Footnote 169: _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, xxxvi. 1 _sqq._]

[Footnote 170: _Sad Dar_, ix. 2, _sqq._]

Nor are unnatural sins allowed to defile the land of the Lord. Whosoever shall commit such abominations, be he Israelite or stranger dwelling among the Israelites, shall be put to death, the souls that do them shall be cut off from their people. By unnatural sins of lust the Canaanites polluted their land, so that God visited their guilt, and the land spued out its inhabitants.[171]

[Footnote 171: _Leviticus_, xviii. 22, 24 _sqq._; xx. 13.]

This horror of homosexual practices was shared by Christianity. According to St. Paul, they form the climax of the moral corruption to which God gave over the heathen because of their apostasy from him.[172] Tertullian says that they are banished "not only from the threshold, but from all shelter of the church, because they are not sins, but monstrosities."[173] St. Basil maintains that they deserve the same punishment as murder, idolatry, and witchcraft.[174] According to a decree of the Council of Elvira, those who abuse boys to satisfy their lusts are denied communion even at their last hour.[175] In no other point of morals was the contrast between the teachings of Christianity and the habits and opinions of the world over which it spread more radical than in this. In Rome there was an old law of unknown date, called Lex Scantinia (or Scatinia), which imposed a mulct on him who committed pederasty with a free person;[176] but this law, of which {481} very little is known, had lain dormant for ages, and the subject of ordinary homosexual intercourse had never afterwards attracted the attention of the pagan legislators.[177] But when Christianity became the religion of the Roman Empire, a veritable crusade was opened against it. Constantius and Constans made it a capital crime, punishable with the sword.[178] Valentinian went further still and ordered that those who were found guilty of it should be burned alive in the presence of all the people.[179] Justinian, terrified by certain famines, earthquakes, and pestilences, issued an edict which again condemned persons guilty of unnatural offences to the sword, "lest, as the result of these impious acts, whole cities should perish together with their inhabitants," as we are taught by Holy Scripture that through such acts cities have perished with the men in them.[180] "A sentence of death and infamy," says Gibbon, "was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant, . . . and pederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed."[181]

[Footnote 172: _Romans_, i. 26 _sq._]

[Footnote 173: Tertullian, _De pudicitia_, 4 (Migne, _Patrologiæ cursus_, ii. 987).]

[Footnote 174: St. Basil, quoted by Bingham, _Works_, vi. 432 _sq._]

[Footnote 175: _Concilium Eliberitanum_, ch. 71 (Labbe-Mansi, _Sacrorum Conciliorum collectio_, ii. 17).]

[Footnote 176: Juvenal, _Satiræ_, ii. 43 _sq._ Valerius Maximus, _Facta dictaque memorabilia_, vi. 1. 7. Quintilian, _Institutio oratoria_, iv. 2. 69:--"Decem milia, quae poena stupratori constituta est, dabit." Christ, _Hist. Legis Scatiniæ_, quoted by Döllinger, _op. cit._ ii. 274. Rein, _Criminalrecht der Römer_, p. 865 _sq._ Bingham, _op. cit._ vi. 433 _sqq._ Mommsen, _Römisches Strafrecht_, p. 703 _sq._]

[Footnote 177: Mommsen, _op. cit._ p. 704. Rein, _op. cit._ p. 866. The passage in _Digesta_, xlviii. 5. 35. 1, refers to _stuprum_ independently of the sex of the victim.]

[Footnote 178: _Codex Theodosianus_, ix. 7. 3. _Codex Justinianus_, ix. 9. 30.]

[Footnote 179: _Codex Theodosianus_, ix. 7. 6.]

[Footnote 180: _Novellæ_, 77. See also _ibid._ 141, and _Institutiones_, iv. 18. 4.]

[Footnote 181: Gibbon, _History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, v. 323.]

This attitude towards homosexual practices had a profound and lasting influence on European legislation. Throughout the Middle Ages and later, Christian lawgivers thought that nothing but a painful death in the flames could atone for the sinful act.[182] In England Fleta {482} speaks of the offender being buried alive;[183] but we are elsewhere told that burning was the due punishment.[184] As unnatural intercourse, however, was a subject for ecclesiastical cognizance, capital punishment could not be inflicted on the criminal unless the Church relinquished him to the secular arm; and it seems very doubtful whether she did relinquish him. Sir Frederick Pollock and Professor Maitland consider that the statute of 1533, which makes sodomy felony, affords an almost sufficient proof that the temporal courts had not punished it, and that no one had been put to death for it for a very long time past.[185] It was said that the punishment for this crime--which the English law, in its very indictments, treats as a crime not fit to be named[186]--was determined to be capital by "the voice of nature and of reason, and the express law of God";[187] and it remained so till 1861,[188] although in practice the extreme punishment was not inflicted.[189] In France persons were actually burned for this crime in the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century.[190] But in this, as in so many other respects, the rationalistic movement of that age brought about a change.[191] To punish sodomy with death, it was said, is atrocious; when unconnected with violence, the law ought to take no notice of it at all. It does not violate any other person's right, its influence on society is merely indirect, like that of drunkenness and free love; it is a disgusting vice, but its only proper punishment is contempt.[192] This view was adopted by the French 'Code pénal,' according to which homosexual practices in private, between two consenting adult parties, whether men or women, are absolutely {483} unpunished. The homosexual act is treated as a crime only when it implies an outrage on public decency, or when there is violence or absence of consent, or when one of the parties is under age or unable to give valid consent.[193] This method of dealing with homosexuality has been followed by the legislators of various European countries,[194] and in those where the law still treats the act in question _per se_ as a penal offence, notably in Germany, a propaganda in favour of its alteration is carried on with the support of many men of scientific eminence. This changed attitude of the law towards homosexual intercourse undoubtedly indicates a change of moral opinions. Though it is impossible to measure exactly the degree of moral condemnation, I suppose that few persons nowadays attach to it the same enormity of guilt as did our forefathers. And the question has even been put whether morality has anything at all to do with a sexual act, committed by the mutual consent of two adult individuals, which is productive of no offspring, and which on the whole concerns the welfare of nobody but the parties themselves.[195]

[Footnote 182: Du Boys, _Histoire du droit criminel de l'Espagne_, pp. 93, 403. _Les Établissements de Saint Louis_, i. 90, vol. ii. 147. Beaumanoir, _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_, xxx. 11, vol. i. 413. Montesquieu, _De l'esprit des lois_, xii. 6 (_[OE]uvres_, p. 283). Hume, _Commentaries on the Law of Scotland_, ii. 335; Pitcairn, _Criminal Trials in Scotland_, ii. 491, n. 2. Clarus, _Practica criminalis_, book v. § Sodomia, 4 (_Opera omnia_, ii. 151). Jarcke, _Handbuch des gemeinen deutschen Strafrechts_, iii. 172 _sqq._ Charles V.'s _Peinliche Gerichtsordnung_, art. 116. Henke, _Geschichte des deutschen peinlichen Rechts_, i. 289. Numa Praetorius, 'Die strafrechtlichen Bestimmungen gegen den gleichgeschlechtlichen Verkehr,' in _Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, i. 124 _sqq._ In the beginning of the nineteenth century sodomy was still nominally subject to capital punishment by burning in Bavaria (von Feuerbach, _Kritik des Kleinschrodischen Entwurfs zu einem peinlichen Gesetzbuche für die Chur-Pfalz-Bayrischen Staaten_, ii. 13), and in Spain as late as 1843 (Du Boys, _op. cit._ p. 721).]

[Footnote 183: Fleta, i. 37. 3, p. 84.]

[Footnote 184: Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42.]

[Footnote 185: Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law before the Time of Edward I._ ii. 556 _sq._]

[Footnote 186: Coke, _Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England_, p. 58 _sq._ Blackstone, _Commentaries on the Laws of England_, iv. 218.]

[Footnote 187: Blackstone, _op. cit._ iv. 218.]

[Footnote 188: Stephen, _History of the Criminal Law of England_, i. 475.]

[Footnote 189: Blackstone, _op. cit._ iv. 218.]

[Footnote 190: Desmaze, _Pénalités anciennes_, p. 211. Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 207.]

[Footnote 191: Numa Praetorius, _loc. cit._ p. 121 _sqq._]

[Footnote 192: Note of the editors of Kehl's edition of Voltaire's 'Prix de la justice et de l'humanité,' in _[OE]uvres complètes_, v. 437, n. 2.]

[Footnote 193: _Code pénal_, 330 _sqq._ _Cf._ Chevalier, _L'inversion sexuelle_, p. 431 _sqq._; Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 207 _sq._]

[Footnote 194: Numa Praetorius, _loc. cit._ pp. 131-133, 143 _sqq._]

[Footnote 195: See, _e.g._, Bax, _Ethics of Socialism_, p. 126.]

From this review of the moral ideas on the subject, incomplete though it be, it appears that homosexual practices are very frequently subject to some degree of censure, though the degree varies extremely. This censure is no doubt, in the first place, due to that feeling of aversion or disgust which the idea of homosexual intercourse tends to call forth in normally constituted adult individuals whose sexual instincts have developed under normal conditions. I presume that nobody will deny the general prevalence of such a tendency. It corresponds to that instinctive repugnance to sexual connections with women which is so frequently found in congenital inverts; whilst that particular form of it with which legislators have chiefly busied themselves evokes, in addition, a physical disgust of its own. And in a society where the {484} large majority of people are endowed with normal sexual desires their aversion to homosexuality easily develops into moral censure and finds a lasting expression in custom, law, or religious tenets. On the other hand, where special circumstances have given rise to widely spread homosexual practices, there will be no general feeling of disgust even in the adults, and the moral opinion of the society will be modified accordingly. The act may still be condemned, in consequence of a moral doctrine formed under different conditions, or of the vain attempts of legislators to check sexual irregularities, or out of utilitarian considerations; but such a condemnation would in most people be rather theoretical than genuine. At the same time the baser forms of homosexual love may be strongly disapproved of for the same reasons as the baser forms of intercourse between men and women; and the passive pederast may be an object of contempt on account of the feminine practices to which he lends himself, as also an object of hatred on account of his reputation for sorcery. We have seen that the effeminate men are frequently believed to be versed in magic;[196] their abnormalities readily suggest that they are endowed with supernatural power, and they may resort to witchcraft as a substitute for their lack of manliness and physical strength. But the supernatural qualities or skill in magic ascribed to men who behave like women may also, instead of causing hatred, make them honoured or reverenced.

[Footnote 196: See also Bastian, in _Zeitschr. f. Ethnol._ i. 88 _sq._ Speaking of the witches of Fez, Leo Africanus says (_History and Description of Africa_, ii. 458) that "they haue a damnable custome to commit vnlawfull Venerie among themselues." Among the Patagonians, according to Falkner (_Description of Patagonia_, p. 117), the male wizards are chosen for their office when they are children, and "a preference is always shown to those who at that early time of life discover an effeminate disposition." They are obliged, as it were, to leave their sex, and to dress themselves in female apparel.]

It has been suggested that the popular attitude towards homosexuality was originally an aspect of economics, a question of under- or over-population, and that it was forbidden or allowed accordingly. Dr. Havelock Ellis thinks it probable that there is a certain relationship {485} between the social reaction against homosexuality and against infanticide:--"Where the one is regarded leniently and favourably, there generally the other is also; where the one is stamped out, the other is usually stamped out."[197] But our defective knowledge of the opinions of the various savage races concerning homosexuality hardly warrants such a conclusion; and if a connection really does exist between homosexual practices and infanticide it may be simply due to the numerical disproportion between the sexes resulting from the destruction of a multitude of female infants.[198] On the other hand we are acquainted with several facts which are quite at variance with Dr. Ellis's suggestion. Among many Hindu castes female infanticide has for ages been a genuine custom,[199] and yet pederasty is remarkably rare among the Hindus. The ancient Arabs were addicted to infanticide,[200] but not to homosexual love,[201] whereas among modern Arabs the case is exactly the reverse. And if the early Christians deemed infanticide and pederasty equally heinous sins, they did so certainly not because they were anxious that the population should increase; if this had been their motive they would hardly have glorified celibacy. It is true that in a few cases the unproductiveness of homosexual love has been given by indigenous writers as a reason for its encouragement or condemnation. It was said that the Cretan law on the subject had in view to check the growth of population; but, like Döllinger,[202] I do not believe that this assertion touches the real root of the matter. More importance may be attached to the following passage in one of the Pahlavi texts:--"He who is wasting seed makes a practice of causing the death of progeny; when the custom is completely continuous, which produces an evil stoppage of the progress of the race, the creatures have become annihilated; and certainly, that action, from which, when it is universally proceeding, the depopulation {486} of the world must arise, has become and furthered the greatest wish of Aharman."[203] I am, however, of opinion that considerations of this kind have generally played only a subordinate, if any, part in the formation of the moral opinions concerning homosexual practices. And it can certainly not be admitted that the severe Jewish law against sodomy was simply due to the fact that the enlargement of the population was a strongly felt social need among the Jews.[204] However much they condemned celibacy, they did not put it on a par with the abominations of Sodom. The excessive sinfulness which was attached to homosexual love by Zoroastrianism, Hebrewism, and Christianity, had quite a special foundation. It cannot be sufficiently accounted for either by utilitarian considerations or instinctive disgust. The abhorrence of incest is generally a much stronger feeling than the aversion to homosexuality. Yet in the very same chapter of Genesis which describes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah we read of the incest committed by the daughters of Lot with their father; [205] and, according to the Roman Catholic doctrine, unnatural intercourse is an even more heinous sin than incest and adultery.[206] The fact is that homosexual practices were intimately associated with the gravest of all sins: unbelief, idolatry, or heresy.

[Footnote 197: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 206. See Additional Notes.]

[Footnote 198: _Cf._ _supra_, ii. 466 (Tahitians).]

[Footnote 199: _Supra_, i. 407.]

[Footnote 200: _Supra_, i. 406 _sq._]

[Footnote 201: von Kremer, _Culturgeschichte des Orients_, ii. 129.]

[Footnote 202: Döllinger, _op. cit._ ii. 239.]

[Footnote 203: _Dâdistân-î Dînîk_, lxxvii. 11.]

[Footnote 204: Havelock Ellis, _op. cit._ p. 206.]

[Footnote 205: _Genesis_, xix. 31 _sqq._]

[Footnote 206: Thomas Aquinas, _Summa theologica_, ii.-ii. 154. 12. Katz, _Grundriss des kanonischen Strafrechts_, pp. 104, 118, 120. Clarus, _Practica criminalis_, book v. § Sodomia, Additiones, 1 (_Opera omnia_, ii. 152):--"Hoc vitium est majus, quam si quis propriam matrem cognosceret."]

According to Zoroastrianism, unnatural sin had been created by Angra Mainyu.[207] "Aharman, the wicked, miscreated the demons and fiends, and also the remaining corrupted ones, by his own unnatural intercourse."[208] Such intercourse is on a par with Afrâsiyâb, a Turanian king who conquered the Iranians for twelve years;[209] with Dahâk, a king or dynasty who is said to have conquered Yim and reigned for a thousand years;[210] with Tûr-i Brâdar-vakhsh, {487} a heterodox wizard by whom the best men were put to death.[211] He who commits unnatural sin is "in his whole being a Daêva";[212] and a Daêva-worshipper is not a bad Zoroastrian, but a man who does not belong to the Zoroastrian system, a foreigner, a non-Aryan.[213] In the Vendîdâd, after the statement that the voluntary commission of unnatural sin is a trespass for which there is no atonement for ever and ever, the question is put, When is it so? And the answer given is:--If the sinner be a professor of the religion of Mazda, or one who has been taught in it. If not, his sin is taken from him, in case he makes confession of the religion of Mazda and resolves never to commit again such forbidden deeds.[214] This is to say, the sin is inexpiable if it involves a downright defiance of the true religion, it is forgiven if it is committed in ignorance of it and is followed by submission. From all this it appears that Zoroastrianism stigmatised unnatural intercourse as a practice of infidels, as a sign of unbelief. And I think that certain facts referred to above help us to understand why it did so. Not only have homosexual practices been commonly associated with sorcery, but such an association has formed, and partly still forms, an incident of the shamanistic system prevalent among the Asiatic peoples of Turanian stock, and that it did so already in remote antiquity is made extremely probable by statements which I have just quoted from Zoroastrian texts. To this system Zoroastrianism was naturally furiously opposed, and the "change of sex" therefore appeared to the Mazda worshipper as a devilish abomination.

[Footnote 207: _Vendîdâd_, i. 12.]

[Footnote 208: _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, viii. 10.]

[Footnote 209: _Sad Dar_, ix. 5. West's note to _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, viii. 29 (**_Sacred Books of the East_, xxiv. 35, n. 4.)]

[Footnote 210: _Sad Dar_, ix. 5. West's note to _Dînâ-î Maînôg-î Khirad_, viii. 29 (_Sacred Books of the East_, xxiv. 35, n. 3).]

[Footnote 211: _Sad Dar_, ix. 5. West's note to _Dâdistân-î Dînîk_, lxxii. 8 (_Sacred Books of the East_, xviii. 218).]

[Footnote 212: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 32.]

[Footnote 213: Darmesteter, in _Sacred Books of the East_, iv. p. li.]

[Footnote 214: _Vendîdâd_, viii. 27 _sq._]

So also the Hebrews abhorrence of sodomy was largely due to their hatred of a foreign cult. According to Genesis, unnatural vice was the sin of a people who were not the Lord's people, and the Levitical legislation represents Canaanitish abominations as the chief reason {488} why the Canaanites were exterminated.[215] Now we know that sodomy entered as an element in their religion. Besides _[k.]ed[=e]sh[=o]th_, or female prostitutes, there were _[k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m_, or male prostitutes, attached to their temples.[216] The word _[k.]ad[=e]sh_, translated "sodomite," properly denotes a man dedicated to a deity;[217] and it appears that such men were consecrated to the mother of the gods, the famous Dea Syria, whose priests or devotees they were considered to be.[218] The male devotees of this and other goddesses were probably in a position analogous to that occupied by the female devotees of certain gods, who also, as we have seen, have developed into libertines; and the sodomitic acts committed with these temple prostitutes may, like the connections with priestesses, have had in view to transfer blessings to the worshippers.[219] In Morocco supernatural benefits are expected not only from heterosexual, but also from homosexual intercourse with a holy person.[220] The _[k.]ed[=e]sh[=i]m_ are frequently alluded to in the Old Testament, especially in the period of the monarchy, when rites of foreign origin made their way into both Israel and Judah.[221] And it is natural that the Yahveh worshipper should regard their practices with the utmost horror as forming part of an idolatrous cult.

[Footnote 215: _Leviticus_, xx. 23.]

[Footnote 216: _Deuteronomy_, xxiii. 17. Driver, _Commentary on Deuteronomy_, p. 264.]

[Footnote 217: Driver, _op. cit._ p. 264 _sq._ Selbie, 'Sodomite,' in Hastings, _Dictionary of the Bible_, iv. 559.]

[Footnote 218: St. Jerome, _In Osee_, i. 4. 14 (Migne, _op. cit._ xxv. 851). Cook's note to _1 Kings_, xiv. 24, in his edition of _The Holy Bible_, ii. 571. See also Lucian, _Lucius_, 38.]

[Footnote 219: Rosenbaum suggests (_Geschichte der Lustseuche im Alterthume_, p. 120) that the eunuch priests connected with the cult of the Ephesian Artemis and the Phrygian worship of Cybele likewise were sodomites.]

[Footnote 220: See Westermarck, _The Moorish Conception of Holiness_, p. 85.]

[Footnote 221: _1 Kings_, xiv. 24; xv. 12; xxii. 46. _2 Kings_, xxiii. 7. _Job_, xxxvi. 14. Driver, _op. cit._ p. 265.]

The Hebrew conception of homosexual love to some extent affected Muhammedanism, and passed into Christianity. The notion that it is a form of sacrilege was here strengthened by the habits of the gentiles. St. Paul found the abominations of Sodom prevalent among nations who had "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the {489} Creator."[222] During the Middle Ages heretics were accused of unnatural vice as a matter of course.[223] Indeed, so closely was sodomy associated with heresy that the same name was applied to both. In 'La Coutume de Touraine-Anjou' the word _herite_, which is the ancient form of _hérétique_,[224] seems to be used in the sense of "sodomite";[225] and the French _bougre_ (from the Latin _Bulgarus_, Bulgarian), as also its English synonym, was originally a name given to a sect of heretics who came from Bulgaria in the eleventh century, and was afterwards applied to other heretics, but at the same time it became the regular expression for a person guilty of unnatural intercourse.[226] In mediæval laws sodomy was also repeatedly mentioned together with heresy, and the punishment was the same for both.[227] It thus remained a religious offence of the first order. It was not only a "vitium nefandum et super omnia detestandum,"[228] but it was one of the four "clamantia peccata," or crying sins,[229] a "crime de Majestie, vers le Roy celestre."[230] Very naturally, therefore, it has come to be regarded with somewhat greater leniency by law and public opinion in proportion as they have emancipated themselves from theological doctrines. And the fresh light which the scientific study of the sexual impulse has lately thrown upon the subject of homosexuality must also necessarily influence the moral ideas relating to it, in so far as no scrutinising judge can fail to take into account the pressure which a powerful non-volitional desire exercises upon an agent's will.

[Footnote 222: _Romans_, i. 25 _sqq._]

[Footnote 223: Littré, _Dictionnaire de la langue française_, i. 386, 'Bougre.' Haynes, _Religious Persecution_, p. 54.]

[Footnote 224: Littré, _op. cit._ i. 2010, 'Hérétique.']

[Footnote 225: _Les Établissements de Saint Louis_, i. 90, vol. ii. 147. Viollet, in his Introduction to the same work, i. 254.]

[Footnote 226: Littré, _op. cit._ i. 386, 'Bougre.' Murray, _New English Dictionary_, i. 1160, 'Bugger.' Lea, _History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages_, i. 115, note.]

[Footnote 227: Beaumanoir, _Coutumes du Beauvoisis_, xxx. 11, vol. i. 413:--"Qui erre contre le foi, comme en mescreance, de le quele il ne veut venir à voie de verité, ou qui fet sodomiterie, il doit estre ars, et forfet tout le sien en le maniere dessus." Britton, i. 10, vol. i. 42. Montesquieu, _De l'esprit des lois_, xii. 6 (_[OE]uvres_, p. 283). Du Boys, _Histoire du droit criminel de l'Espagne_, pp. 486, 721.]

[Footnote 228: Clarus, _Practica criminalis_, book v. § Sodomia, 1 (_Opera omnia_, ii. 151).]

[Footnote 229: Coke, _Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England_, p. 59.]

[Footnote 230: _Mirror_, quoted _ibid._ p. 58.]