WORDS & FLESH: OBSESSIONS & DEATH

ENDING SEMINAR FIVE

Salvador Dali Metamorphosis of Narcissus1937 

This title is deliberately odd. First of all I refer to a text which was a seminar. It was never written as a book, but delivered orally and transcribed. The afterlife of these transcripts, is better left to some future archivist, who might be able to gather the various documents, fragments oral testimonies, and notes

Second it is impossible to cite any definitive Urtexte because Lacan’s seminars have been subject to interpretation and reinterpretation from their first transcripts and hearers. My

own preferences for this seminar is a French edition and two English renderings.

Third, it must be underscored that these texts remain raw. Though the seminars craved editorial input, it never happened for decades. The transcripts circulated anonymously amongst the Others, who in this case were devoted colleagues and pupils. Not surprisingly the continued circulation of raw transcripts led to suspicion, legal debates about ownership, and -the very big question- as to whether Lacanian teachings as well as the psychoanalysis he constantly reconstructed could ever be transmitted in an authoritative, unitary, and smooth fashion.

For the purposes of this brief note, towards the end of this seminar Lacan comments on the concept of obsession. He believed the root obsession was a persistent rumination as to whether the Subject itself was alive or dead. Death is therefore a necessary association (or signifier) for any Lacanian account of obsessiveness.

Freud’s death drive is perplexing. Is it singular, plural, or both? A similar question can be asked of the love or life drives. The answer of course, is both. Whatever Freud meant by drives, their trajectories are not immutable. A drive can trigger and change into  its opposite. Drives have circuits indeed, but their timings, trajectories, comings, goings and spheres of operation can be inscrutable….. in other words “unconscious”

What I find strange about Lacan’s interpretation of Freudian death drives is that he studiously avoids any reference to anything physical or organic. Freud’ death drive was primarily interpreted by himself as organic. As in Dali’s representation of Narcissus, subjects undergo -and sometimes desire to undergo- metamorphic changes -especially from organic to inorganic. Of course there was a psychological dimension to such a drive or drives. But death was not solely restricted the associations of signifiers -however unconscious.

The history of psychoanalysis can be perplexing. Even when Freud was still working and writing, there were many analysts who completely rejected Freud’s death drive. Max Schur, was such a one. Schur (1897-1969) became Freud’s GP in  Austria after he lost confidence with his previous doctors. He accompanied Freud to London. Schur also wrote a book about Freud which remains first class but sadly ignored.To be forthright -it was Schur who looked after Freud’s cancer and assisted him to die. Doctor and patient had a pact. When the old man experienced his pain as unbearable, Schur agreed to inform Anna of her father’s decision and administer a lethal dose.

But then there were those contemporaries that welcomed the theoretical and practical presence of death drives. Kurt Eissler (1908-1999) was a veteran Austrian analyst who later worked in America. It was Eissler who for many years was responsible for the Freud Archives and collecting interviews from contemporaries- like the family of Little Hans. Finally an abiding inspiration for Lacan was Melanie Klein for whom death drives were psychological, imaginary, symbolic and real processes operating within and without subjects

During the final sections of Seminar Lacan speculates about the word in the beginning. Obviously a reference to the opening of the fourth gospel, whose author is named John. The biblical text about the word (ο λογοσ) in the beginning continues, but the following is not quoted by Lacan:

 Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο,

καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν — καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ πατρός — πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας.

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth. John 1:14 King James’ Version

Does Lacan’s word ever become flesh? The opposite seems more apposite to me. Rilke tried to make the world invisible with his poetry; similarly Lacan’s signifiers dissolve things fleshly into an infinite succession of associations (or signifiers). It should be said therefore, that Lacan's signifier kills the flesh.

It is the genius of Lacan’s signifiers, as well as Freud’s literalism, that helps one to appreciate the words of Thomas Beckett in T S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral. The play dates from 1937, the very year Freud published Analysis Terminable and Interminable

I have smelt

    Death in the rose, death in the hollyhock, sweet pea, hyacinth,

      primrose and cowslip. I have seen

    Trunk and horn, tusk and hoof, in odd places;

    I have lain on the floor of the sea and breathed with the breathing of

      the sea-anemone, swallowed with ingurgitation of the sponge. I have

      lain in the soil and criticised the worm…………………

 Corruption in the dish, incense in the latrine, the sewer in the

      incense, the smell of sweet soap in the woodpath, a hellish sweet

      scent in the woodpath, while the ground heaved. I have seen

    Rings of light coiling downwards, leading

    To the horror of the ape. Have I not known, not known

    What was coming to be? It was here, in the kitchen, in the passage,

    In the mews in the barn in the byre in the market-place

    In our veins our bowels our skulls as well

    As well as in the plottings of potentates

    As well as in the consultations of powers.

Notes

K Eissler: Death Drive, Ambivalence, and Narcissism, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child XXVI (1971)
Melanie Klein : On The Sense of Loneliness 1963. Available at https://www.scribd.com/document/377411574/Klein-1963-on-the-Sense-of-Loneliness

Max Schur: Freud: Living and Dying 1972 International Universities Press

Versions of Lacan’s Seminar V

French: http://staferla.free.fr/S5/S5 FORMATIONS .pdf

English by Cormac Gallagher http://www.lacaninireland.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Book-05-the-formations-of-the-unconscious.pdf?utm_source=newsletter_654&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=reading-group-reminder
English by Russell Grigg Formations of the Unconscious: Book 5: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Seminar of Jacques Lacan, Book V  Polity 2017


In 1925 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote this to his Polish translator Witold Von Hulewicz
Nature, the things we move among and use, are provisional and perishable, but they are. For as long as we are here, our possession and our friendship, sharers in our trouble and our happiness, just as they were once the confidants of our ancestors. Therefore it is crucial not only that we not corrupt and degrade what constitutes the here and now, but precisely because of this provisionality it shares with us, that these appearances and objects be comprehended by us in a most fervent understanding and transformed. Transformed? Yes, for our task is to stamp this provisional, perishing earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its being may rise again, “invisibly,” in us…
we are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us. ... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again “invisibly,” inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible

From the notes contained in the Duino Elegies,  translated by Edward Snow  North Point Press, p.70

Maurice Merleau-Ponty Le Visible et l'invisible, suivi de notes de travail Gallimard 1964

Sigmund Freud Analysis Terminable and Interminable 1937 from the Standard Edition 23 translated by Strachey & others. Available online in German and English

https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Freud_Analysis_Terminable_Interminable.pdf 

https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/freud/endlich/endlich.html

The Tyranny of an All

He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars:

general Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer,

for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organised Particulars.

William Blake         

in memorium: Glenda Jackson

1936-2023

                                   The Tyranny of an All

This brief paper arises from encounters with the “All” in my clinical work. It is also inspired by an ongoing philosophical perplexity about “the All”. This series of aporiae began in my youth, when monks at my seminary laboured hard to teach me symbolic logic. Sadly -or fortunately- their logic managed to make me even more confused!

Although I see analysands much less than earlier in my career,  I have become aware recently of how an analysand’s “All” might try to dominate -and even subvert- both an analysis as well as its subject.

Lacan’s triple registration of Symbolic, Real, and Imaginary might seem to dissolve any All for both analysands and analysts. Instead everything that can be thought and experienced must, in principle, belong to one of these registers or some combination of them. But this is not necessarily the case for everyone. Not everyone lives in a world dominated by three registers.

Commitment to an All might involve individuals operating with other registers, that of the Ideal for instance. Of course the notion of an Ideal was ruthlessly criticised by early psychoanalysis. The Ideal in this instance would be some remnant of enforced religious orthodoxy,  a weird science, authoritarian regimes, or simply the prevailing norms of a civil community -whether that community be some rural stekl or fashionable suburb of imperial Vienna.

Nevertheless psychoanalytic theory and practice did eventually establish a lofty Ideal of its own. I instance here notions of “genital maturity”. Once upon a time this represented the goal (or end) of analysis for both patients and practitioners. Whatever genital maturity was supposed to have represented then, it was thankfully deflated by Lacan when thematising sexual relationships. Here there is no ideal, real, or imaginary: instead there are perplexing lacunae of various sorts. (see footnote)

Ideality is also associated with political theory, action, or cause. An analysand might well be committed to a programme of political action inspired by ideals of social equality for the distribution of goods and services, for instance.  This noble ideal can easily become a sort of drive. It becomes an All in short. It dominates the living, thinking, and actions of the individual.

A massive challenge to this commitment very often arises from others -namely ones closest political associates and comrades. Even the analyst becomes one of these. I remember well one analysand who had been expelled from every socialist group in his locality. Often he would engineer actively his own expulsion. In short he refused all compromise with any of his social and political ideals. Though he needed comrades to achieve his ideal political objectives, he invariably chose to remain faithful to his ideal, which functioned as the All of his life. This was his great desire and remained so. He preferred to be a solitary revolutionary  than to dilute his ideals with any social bond

Analysing one’s own construction of the All could well threaten to betray your own very being, striving, and doing to date. An analysis may seem to push you to you towards evil opponents of your progressive programme -like intellectual nihilism or profound apathy. Apatheia in the true sense of the word involved ataraxia too: inactive passivity, an empty longing, and inability to achieve.

 Is there any hope for a politically active analysand?

After years of analysis one politically active person told me that his life was governed by a dilemma. Apparently the only alternative to his All was complete unhappiness, the death of hope.  This crucial formulation marked a tremendous change in the direction of his analysis. Unlike the other socialist I mentioned above, this individual began to question the dominance and tyranny of his ALL with surprising consequences.

Briefly I have considered two alternatives to a dearly held social and political All. One took the way of sticking to the All of his desire. The other began to reformulate a central dilemma resulting from the tyranny of his All. 

In both instances the All abhorred castration.

footnote: lacunae

I use this word to designate several gaps, hollows, emptinesses or surds. Regrettably a lacanian gap (hole or whatever) is in danger of becoming a massive singularity.....a sort of "empty" All. It is quite easy to slip from believing there is one All, albeit empty, to believing there is One answer to plug that gap

 Maybe an individual has a plurality of splits, lacks, and inaccessibles. Why should a he, she, it, or they have just one?? 

Castellamare di Stabia November 6 2024

Are we are all delusional now?

Laughing Fool circa 1500, possibly by Jacob Cornelis van Oostsanen Wikipedia & Public Domain

A psychoanalytic movement recently offered an intriguing seminar interrogating whether "we are all delusional here?"

The colloquium was indebted to Lacan's musings about James Joyce, who may, or may not have avoided some devastating psychosis by novel-writing  and word playing. Nevertheless asking whether "we" are all mad "here" predated both James Joyce and Jacques Lacan.

But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."

"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” 

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Occupants of Wonderland are by definition "mad"; but each in their own way. The Hatter is mad, though in a different way from the Red Queen.

Whereas the English language attempts some differentiation between illusion and delusion; continental French prefers the word Illusion which embraces both concepts and all degrees of the same. So one can reform Lacan's question to read whether all human subjects are immersed in some illusionary version of reality. If one wanted to talk about the delusions encountered in psychiatry, the choice words would derive from a variety of word. One of the greatest French diagnoses of the early twentieth century was "la folie des grandeurs"  or in English "delusion of grandeur"

Interrogating psychosis is a cultural undertaking of venerable age. How and why do  people with seemingly psychotic symptoms abruptly cease they display? One possibility highlighted by some, is that a more stable existence might be acquired by pursuing a hobby -like writing or art. Such a hobby is not simply a conduit for excessive thoughts, feelings, or energies. Nor is it simply a new dawn of creativity. Rather deep commitment to a creative hobby helps individuals to stabilise themselves socially, psychologically, and culturally. 

Unfortunately there have been people living within the structures or styles called psychosis who had hobbies, professions, meditations, and pursue keenly cultural endeavours; but nevertheless fail to stabilise. On might recall Lucinda Joyce. The promising avant garde artiste who was a promising, creative dancer, failed to make a career even with help from C G Jung and a succession of psychiatric experts. The Irish choreographer and historian of dance, Deirdre Mulrooney, wrote

Lucia Joyce dancing at Bullier Bal, Paris. May 1928. Photograph by Bernice Abbot (public domain)

 Not unlike Mary Wigman, founder of German Ausdruckstanz/Dance of Expression, after a few broken engagements, Lucia suffered a nervous breakdown. While Wigman survived her breakdown to become one of the most important modern dance practitioners of the 20th century, Lucia was incarcerated by her brother, and ended up trapped in mental asylums for most of her life, with many equivocal diagnoses, variously put in straitjackets, and once even injected with bovine serum. (Giorgio Joyce, quite a tragic figure himself, would also commit his ‘marvellously wealthy’ older wife Helen Fleischmann to a mental institution). Alas, Lucia’s father, her greatest champion and supporter, died when she was just 34. After his death, Nora never visited Lucia again. Giorgio only visited her once, in 1967. Go figure! Lucia outlived them both, until 1982, in Saint Andrew’s Mental Asylum in Northampton.

See: Reclaiming Lucia Joyce's legacy - The Lyric Feature 

https://www.rte.ie/culture/2019/0711/1061493-reclaiming-lucia-joyce-the-lyric-feature/

The distinction -whether structural or no- between florid psychosis and ordinary living enjoys an extensive practical history.

 In the history of European medicine, the greatest theorist of "melancholy" was the scholarly academic Richard Burton. He offered several typologies for melancholia: love depression is one, whilst religious mania was another. Russia, for instance, enjoys a proud history of holy fools One called Basil was

Naked, dirty & forever mumbling their prayers, they could proffer raw meat to a tsar, call him a bloodsucker and yet still be invited to a royal feast afterwards. Their “supernatural” powers inspired awe in nobles and peasants alike.https://www.rbth.com/history/331573-why-did-russian-tsars-love

holy icons of st basil: fool of christ

Another question begging answers is the location and identity of the "we" in this quote. Most concepts relating to identity or location are slippy.  A valued colleague suggested to me how an innocuous everyday "we" can easily become a big or royal WE. Any therapeutic practitioner talking about a "we" - is referring to a bigger Other. This "we" thus resembles claims made by religious, political, and other social groupings when isolating a sanctioned authority along with an excluded minority.  resembling somewhat  the "cart and carriage" or "love and marriage. The we lends me an identity which nobody can tarnish, because the "we" of the Others is inviolable, absolute, and indubitable. Theories of religion refer to this epistemic style as "fideism". It is a near absolute  claim, encapsulating the All and the Others in a god, political belief, praxis, or imaginary group structure. 

Testifying about one's psychoanalytic experience obviously concerns chiefly my own experience, social being, history, including even my amazing professionality. But how can others be expected to ratify it?There is a circularity here when traversing from I to the We, thence to the Others and back again to myself. It resembles a solipsist wondering why there aren't more people that agree with her. Maybe it is easier to shut the discussion down because some allegedly foundational concept is being attacked. Fideism is a conundrum that creates and destroys its own truth and testimonies.

Everything I claim to be the case is- eo ipso- related to everything else. Hence my subjectivity is valid for all.... just as all Lacan's concepts are related internally as well as chronologically

Criticising Lacan or Freud is supposed to be both futile and contradictory. One is better to subjectivise their teachings. Interrogating writings from some futile "external" viewpoint means one is metamorphosed into an academic, philosopher, master, or super therapist. This position is reified. I cease being a Subject Viator -always in transit. Now I have arrived at my destination and destiny. Nevertheless it is sometimes imperative to interrogate. For example many speakers at the conference mentioned above thematised the concept of delusion. They teased out differences between psychosis or the "psychotic" by exploring regional ontologies for delusion.  Hence one might be exceedingly delusional, without necessarily adopting a full-blown psychotic style.

During the first fifty years of the twentieth century it seems to me that most behaviours, specialisms, and institutions  devoted to "the psychotic" were obscured, if not downright hidden from public interrogation in western civilisations. As the century proceeded psychological, analytic, and psychiatric words became more widely known and used, whilst pseudo-illnesses (such moral insanity, homosexuality, along with  supposed perversion, degeneration or stigmatised minorities).   

Eventually concepts of mental illness became banal during the following century. From the nineteen sixties onwards "mental health"  came to refer to an increasing public awareness of a previously hidden sector of society. I remember well when I began to work in the domestic department of one of the largest psychiatric hospitals in Europe as a stores labourer. The director of the hospital said to me at interview "I have some massive wards here that will terrify you". He predicted correctly; because he was referring to vast "psycho-geriatric wards" that shocked a boy of seventeen. They reminded me of the black and white
holocaust documentaries produced after the defeat of Germany and her allies that accompanied most of my childhood. 

A young boy walking along a roadside strewn with corpses in Dachau. Copyright Getty & also public domain

As novelist Beryl Bainbridge testified, the war was indeed over but the nightmares were just beginning.

WE WERE never taught about the war at school. Because my father's business friends in Liverpool were mostly Jewish, I actually believed that the war was being fought to save the Jews. I couldn't have been more wrong.

When the war was over we went to the Philharmonic in Liverpool. We got out of the train at Exchange station, then walked in a crocodile to the Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street and saw the films the troops had taken when they entered Belsen.

It was the most extraordinary, numbing experience - those little mummified skeletons which were just being pushed up by a machine, to be carted into pits ... I had nightmares for a long time afterwards. Independent  Monday 08 June 1998

Whilst many of my colleagues rightly explore the meaning and structures of delusions, my purposes here are more modest. I am interrogating the "we" and the "here" associated with the quotation about delusion.

The "here and now" of delusions that followed public images after the "Shoah" which incinerated innumerable Jews, communists, gypsies, and gays, has poignant currency still. Were Europeans delusional or even mad to inflict such destructiveness on themselves and their Others -even after the previous destructions of 1918!! The "now" can contract and expand its magnitude as required by its users. But I doubt it is a definable temporal concept because of its slippage and diverse composition of ideal, real, and fantasy formations.

Hence the "We" contracts and expands. During Bainbridge's paragraphs the "we" is a family, one's school pals, an educational establishment, a religious/ethnic minority,  and business associates. But it expands in time, in space.

 icon of basil

angels and sodomists

Sodomists and Angels

Renaissance sodomy was very different from anything encountered in contemporary Gay, Bi, Transgendered sexualities, communities, or subcultures.

Florence's incredible Ponte Vecchio is now the home of silver smiths, expensive tourist shops, exclusive perfumeries, and gentleman's outfitters. In Renaissance times the bridge was full of butcher's shops, the most prominent being those of owned by the Mazzante family. Three of the five butcher brothers were implicated in sodomy, whilst over fifty men, also wage earners on the bridge, were also investigated by civil authorities for sodomy.

 males engaged in sodomy came from across the social spectrum” and lists that laborers in textile production were the largest group of those denounced, with 24%; next were the clothing makers, 15%; then the other crafts, merchants, butchers, barbers, with 6.4%; followed by the clergy, 3.6%.

In other words so-called "sodomites" were not restricted to the  high art circles of Florence nor highbrow readers of Ficino's brand of Platonism. Whatever was meant by sodomy at that time, was practised by merchants, retailers,  and craftsmen. Indeed erotic relations between men seems to have been a fruitful means of patronage, promotion, commerce, and advertising. 

From the outset it must be noted that the definition of sodomy in European legal codes was highly variable. Maximally sodomy could refer to any form os sex that avoided reproduction. For this reason it is not surprising that heterosexual buggery should be labelled sodomy. Minimally, sodomy concerned sex between males with the recipients of so-called passive penetration being the worst of all..... as far as the city of Florence was concerned

Such value judgements arose because lacking any solid legal definition, alleged misdemeanours of sodomy originated in church laws and codes which classified as a "sin" and even here it was not completely obvious what sins of sodomy were. Secular courts had no theological moralists available to assist justices. Not surprisingly this "crime" fluctuated in both its meaning and the severity of sentences. In South Netherlands there were unusual prosecutions for sex between women. When tolerated male sexual performances they could used to promote patronage...for example using a particular butcher might be secured. Patronage through sex was not the preserve of high arts and learning. Furthermore, male on male sex was a social alternative to heterosexual sex when men did not marry until they were in their thirties. Buggering defeated males in war, seems to have been a summary means of humiliation, torture , and punishment during the ceaseless Italian wars of this period. This truly popular form of military rape was investigated only extremely rarely.

The madonna and child above are accompanied by two saints. One is Saint Peter, the other is Catherine of Sienna: a celebrated writer, visionary, and diplomat who underwent a "mystical marriage" with Christ. Saint Peter is commending the person financially responsible for the painting to the infant Christ and his mother. A familiar artistic trope is the infant functioning as a priest: here he is ritually blessing the donor -or backer- who is wearing the habit of a Carthusian monk.

Il Sodoma

The talented artist who produced this remarkable piece was  Giovanni Antonio Bazzi 1477-1544, usually associated with the  renaissance style of Sienna.Though once married, he soon separated and began to enjoy the company of "boys and beardless youths". He also loved pets. His home was full of all sorts of animals, as well as his beloved youth-boys.  Fine clothing too was affectation he brought to perfection through his tailors. His infamous nickname instantly became an occasion for self affirmation. In poems, musical tributes, and the like he praised "the sodomite"  -namely himself. So it isn't at all surprising that it became quite normal call him "il Sodoma" even when speaking to his face, as well as in everyday gossip. Like Oscar Wilde later, he loved being talked  about -especially salaciously! Il Sodoma was used by at least one Renaissance pope as a form of personal address and sign of affection to him.

There is just one supposed self-portrait of Bazzi. It depicts a slightly vain young man wearing cap, fine clothes, with flowing locks. He is looking across and sideways at us -perhaps seductively. It is not impossible that this image is mock-up or pastiche; by which il Sodoma paints himself resembling the style of an artist whom he greatly admired -the younger, and ascendant, Raphael (1483-1520).This image is to be found amongst a series of frescos dedicated to the achievements of St Benedict.

Detail of fresco St Benedict repairs a Broken Colander through Prayer.

Chiostro Grande, Abbazia territoriale di Monte Oliveto Maggiore. 

This image is in the public domain and dated c. 1502

Maybe this is a self portrait after all. Nevertheless there is definite homage to Raphael's portraiture.

 

Raphael: Portrait of Agnolo Doni c. 1506 public domain

 

This nickname -Il Sodoma- is perhaps better translated into modern English by  "the paedophile" . This noun better catches the overtones of danger, sleaze, illicit sexuality, immorality, exhibitionism, public prurience, and illegality that constantly menaced men of his sort. Sodomite could be, like the more contemporary term paaedophile, a word encouraging anything from social approbation to public lynching.

Persecution and Cancelling Life

Sodomites were more than marginal oddities, curiosities, or liminal people. The Renaissance sodomite was regularly male and a suspect criminal easily targeted by churches, princes, states and public prurience. A guilty verdict could result in death by public burning, which was a punishment first recommended centuries ago in laws enacted by Theodosius.

The inscription in the upper body of this coloured cartoon reads

Verbrennung des Ritters Richard (Reichardt) Puller von Hohenburg mit seinem Knecht, dem Barbier und Lautenschläger Anton Maetzler am 24. September 1482 vor den Toren Zürichs (tatsächlich aber auf dem Fischmarkt) wegen Sodomie

The incineration of the knight Richard Puller of Hohenburg with his servant, the barber and lute player Anton Maetzler on September 24, 1482 at the gates of Zurich (but actually on the fish market) because of sodomy

 

Burning of Convicted Sodomites Zurich 

Die Grosse Burgunderchronik Diebold Schilling de Altere, circa 1483 public domain 

 

A pan-European campaign was regularly waged by papacy and curia against sodomy from the thirteenth century onwards. Death penalties were encouraged, revived, and special courts established. The item above depicts the state murder of Alsatian knight Richard Puller von Hohenburg and Anthony Mätzler, his servant. Having successfully avoided prosecution in Europe, Richard was eventually convicted by testimony extracted barbarically from a former servant who had become the knight's blackmailer and persecutor. The two men were burnt alive.

Individual principalities, as well as nation states, took over responsibilities from churches for investigating and punishing this crime of sodomy. One estimate argues there to have been seventeen thousand people tried for sodomy in Florence between 1432 and 1502. England lagged behind continental Europe; it was in 1533 that Henry VIII, both king and defender of the Roman faith, introduced the Buggery Act whereby felons received sentences of death by hanging. This punishment was mitigated by Victorian law-makers in only 1861.

Sodomy laws were a gift to those who wished to cancel, harass, and even kill rivals, enemies, or hated factions. Monarchs, princes, nobles, entire religious orders, as well as private individuals could easily be accused  -or rather "denounced" - as sodomites by using the legal machinations of the day. 

As far as Renaissance Florence was concerned, the body responsible for investing and prosecuting sodomy, prostitution, and public nuisance was an institution called Ufficiali di notte e conservatori dell'onestà dei monasteri or night officers. This organization founded in 1432 operated until 1502. They erected taboro (letter boxes) around Florence, explicitly used for anonymous accusations of sodomy. The populace was not only welcome to use the taboro, but were actively encouraged to do so and in some instances bribed to fabricate allegations. Cooperating with the Ufficiali was a laudable civic duty.

Between 1432 and 1502, its years of activity, about seventeen thousand men came to its attention (which represents a great number in a population of about forty thousand). The board and its morality police were regularly criticized for being too lenient, despite the seventeen thousand men that attracted its attention. At any one time the estimated population of Florence during the Renaissance was around forty thousand people. There appears to be an awful lot of sodomists in Florence during those seventy years or so!!

And here is the rub. It was difficult to determine precisely was "sodomy" was -especially in Florence. The full title of the night officers included the words  e conservatori dell'onestà dei monasteri. A literal translation of  this morality policing board is Night officers and guardians of the honesty of the monasteries. This reference to guarding the reputation of monasteries or convents was somewhat anachronistic even in the fifteenth century. But it is a useful indication that "sodomy" originated as a religious offence and one which is never precisely defined. It might include male to male sex, public sexual abuse of minors, incest within families, opportuning, tavern brawling, rent boys, as well as "prostitution" and political discontent. Something similar seems to have been the case at the Parliament of Paris: sodomy was an incredibly difficult offence for secular authorities to prosecute.

Nevertheless there was one particular form of sex that received official censure in Florence. Any male admitting to (or accused of) being passive during anal sex, earned severe condemnation and punishment -if proven. But even this censure of popular morality was capable of being treated ironically and even comically by the accused when they came to court. Linking sodomy with passive anal penetration, had the unforeseen consequence of allowing courts to exercise leniency in relation to all other indictments of sodomy. Compared to receiving anal penetration, everything else became less serious and less threatening to the well being of the populace. Such were the confusions surrounding sodomy, that heterosexual couplings practicing buggery could be forced to appear in court.  It is not surprising therefore, that the bye laws governing the activities of the "Night Officers" were constantly changing, calls for stricter punishments and policing for ever forthcoming, and spurious allegations or confessions traded for acquittal or conviction of some minor offence. Nevertheless morality policing in Florence achieved several thousand convictions during the seventy years of existence. Involvement with them could be disastrous. Amongst German-speaking peoples the word Florenzer became a euphemism for sodomite.

Of course a certain amount of forbearance and ignorance was feigned by religious or state authorities. They took cases one by one. Protection might be afforded to gifted court artists for instance; yet this was arbitrary but patrons could not be relied upon indefinitely. The artists featuring in this piece -those creating images of a sodomising or feminizing nature- may well have been at the cutting edge of risqué art. But they were nevertheless situated precariously as far as law and punishment were concerned. This needs to be remembered in any discussion involving Leonardo, himself denounced to court officials as a sodomite in 1476, albeit anonymously. It is only for that reason he escaped conviction.

Monna Vanna by Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno (Salaí) c. public domain

This image above is of a painting known as Lady Vanna -or Monna Vanna. For a considerable period of time it was called "the nude Monna Lisa". Personally I find little resemblance to the features of Mona Lisa in this painting. To me it seems a rather camped-up version of the world-famous painting in the Louvre. A feminized male no less; though admittedly executed with some sensitivity and homage. Nevertheless the hands and fingers of the image seem awkward and wooden. There is something outstandingly odd about the breasts as well. They seem like add-ons or "after-thoughts": as if painted onto an originally male torso. Without breasts, this image might just work as male. There is still speculation that beneath the Vanna lies a cartoon sketch by the hand of Leonardo himself.

There is a belief that the facial image of this Monna Vanna resembles closely a favourite model of Leonardo's who featured in his portrait of John the Baptist

The name of this man was Gian Giacomo Caprotti da Oreno called for short "Salai"; a loyal pupil of Leonardo's for some twenty five years. He entered the master's household at ten years of age eventually becoming muse, model, and pupil. The old man bequeathed art to his former "little devil", as well as farming land in Italy.

At this juncture it is necessary to state the obvious. Many female portraits by Leonardo are definitely not ambiguous or androgynous. His subjects often are shown to be womanly, sexual, young. They are depicted desirable, desired, and desiring in a new style that was seemingly classical, but at once more subtle, more real and ..... more feminine. There is no need to labour this.

A third sex?

During the Renaissance another human variant, this time androgyny, was becoming increasingly fashionable for another class of beings, namely "angels". These were the traditional messengers of God, bird-beings, at once human and non human, were challenges to contemporary sciences and enquiring minds. Leonardo was fascinated by them: especially their abilities of flight and locomotion. In renaissance Italy it was entirely expected that contemporary human beings would soon fly with the aid of wings, machines, or both. Similarly in twentieth century in America it was possible to celebrate enormous technological advancements, yet at the same time to believe people were regularly abducted by aliens. Renaissance scholars knew well how some angelic beings had gendered forenames, like the famous St Michael, others seemed quite ambiguous. Angelic beings fascinated Leonardo artistically, scientifically, and anatomically.  Because they neither married nor reproduced, did they have genitals? Were they perhaps eternally confined an everlasting adolescence? If they did not eat either, what would their internal anatomic and physiological features be? How do their remarkable pinions work?

One of the great moral traits of angels was their obedience: invariably and unquestioningly did they obey G/god's orders, delivering all divine messages without demur. Another angelic attribute was this: adoration. They hymned god's praises ceaselessly with immense artistry and skill using all sorts of musical instruments and not just harps. On the other hand they could be as devastating as any nuclear arsenal with destruction, punishing, or rescuing being their chief activities when the end of a universe was commanded. War and its instruments were a pressing technological concerns for Leonardo too; his income often depended upon his abilities to design weapons of attack and means for defence. Flying machines might be a great asset in any war. So interest in angels was a practical military concern; and not purely aesthetic. Thinking about angels could be likened to contemporary weapons technology. Indeed  the bloodiest characters in the final mass destruction of the Apocalypse are angels:

Jede Engel ist schrecklich

R M Rilke

One of Dr Who's weeping angels (from BBC America)

completed 18/3/2023

Angels to follow 

Some Readings:

George Armstrong  Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. Review of Rocke's book. Los Angeles Times Nov 2 1997

Judith Brown Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy  1986 OUP

Fernando Cascai Scrutinizing Historiography: From Pederasty to Sodomy to Homosexuality to LGBT/Queer Sexualities. Published in `Fascination of Queer edited by Ramello. Interdisciplinary Press 2011

Marsillo Ficino Commentary on Plato's "Symposium" on Love Translated by Sears Jayne. Second Edition Paperback. Spring Publications 1983

Cathrine Fletcher: The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance 2020 Vantage

Jamie Gemmell Homosexuality in Renaissance Florence: The Ambiguities of Neoplatonic Thought. not dated ......

Meridith J Gill Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy CUP 2021.

Hamilton, Tom (2020) 'Sodomy and criminal justice in the Parlement of Paris, c.1540-c.1700.', Journal of the history of sexuality., 29 (3). pp. 303-33

Hamilton, Tom (2021) 'A sodomy scandal on the eve of the French Wars of Religion.', Historical journal., 64 (4). pp. 844-864.

Hidden Florence https://hiddenflorence.org 

Μary McCarthy: The Stones of Florence Mariner Books 2002

Alex Mills Leonardo An opera for the Victoria and Albert Museum 2019 http://www.alexmills.info/leonardo

Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence. Oxford University Press, 1996. 

Jonas Roelens ‘Visible Women. Female Sodomy in the Late Medieval and Early Modern Southern Netherlands (1400-1550)’, BMGN/Low Countries Historical Review 130, no. 3 (2015):

3-24.

Jonas Roelens 'A Woman Like Any Other: Female Sodomy, Hermaphroditism, and Witchcraft in Seventeenth-Century Bruges', Journal of Women's History 29, no. 4 (2017): 11-34.

Jonas Roelens Gossip, defamation and sodomy in the early modern southern Netherlands (2018) RENAISSANCE STUDIES. 32(2). p.236-252

Men had to live closely with other men from all classes during battles which were often ferocious, bloody, and rapacious. Male rape was frequently alleged during the innumerable Italian Wars. Allegations were sometimes high-jacked by military interests, which were quite capable of manufacturing them as well. Catherine Fletcher is a reliable guide here.