r/todayilearned • u/[deleted] • 14h ago
TIL When Savonarola, a fanatic friar, took control of Florence he harshly persecuted homosexuality. After his reign ended, people were eager to return to enjoying all the things he banned: one government official attending the friar's execution was quoted saying "thank God we can sodomise again!"
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u/roc420 14h ago
It would be hard to escape a quote like that in any era
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u/Ainsley-Sorsby 14h ago
Unfortunately the majority of the sources for the quote seem to be pro Savonarola, so they refused to name him and just quote him as "some wicked individual" etc, but one source managed to get that legend's name on the history books: Benvenuto del Bianco
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u/lemonxellem 12h ago
So how can we be sure the whole retelling isn’t pro Savonarola propaganda?
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u/Ainsley-Sorsby 12h ago
see the comment above, its corroborated by 3 different chroniclers
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u/lemonxellem 12h ago edited 9h ago
The chroniclers you just said were pro Savonarola? How do we know that particular chronicler didn’t want to discredit Benny Blanco? But definitely I’ll just trust you and not question sources or motives or historical context when your post was removed for lacking substance. Haha, sodomy - is that what you’re looking for?
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u/death_by_chocolate 14h ago
"How could I leave that behind?"
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u/Votesformygoats 14h ago
Talk about mudflaps my boys got em
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u/sprocketous 13h ago
The bigger the robe, the deeper i probe, you know what I mean
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u/parabola9999 13h ago
"The bigger the cushion, the better the pushing"....
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u/Ainsley-Sorsby 14h ago
Relevant part is on page 269, and this is from the source quoted in the paper:
According to chroniclers, this revolt sparked the resurgence of all those activities that had earlier been suppressed: the brothels and other taverns reopened, men gambled in public, and, it was said, sodomized with renewed zeal. Several scandalized sources reported that after the "tumult" in the cathedral, no less than an eminent official of the Republic gratefully remarked, "Thank God, now we can sodomize!"113 The strength of the friar's adversaries and youths' disruptions and flamboyant involvement in forbidden pleasures were only reinforced when Pope Alexander VI's excommunication of Savonarola was proclaimed in the city in mid-June.114
and there's a footnote explaining more about the sources of the quote:
Sources disagree on the attribution and timing of this remark, yet its wide reportage gives it credit. Pseudo-Burlamacchi simply noted it was said by "the wicked" after the Ascension Day riot; Vita, 109. Bartolomeo Redditi agreed on the timing but attributed it to a member "of the highest magistracy of the city," presumably the Signoria; "Breve compendio e somario della verita predicata et profetata dal R. P. fra Girolamo da Ferrara," in Quellen und Forschunjjen zur Geschichte Savonarolas, ed. Schnitzer, 1:49-50. Finally, Filipepi assigned the remark to Benvenuto del Bianco, according to him one of the Ten, who uttered it to a colleague during Savonarola's execution; Cronaca, 507. Del Bianco was not one of the Ten elected after Savonarola's arrest (see Villari, Storia, 2:c), but he was indeed a prior for May and June 1497, when the riot occurred (Cambi, Istorie, 21:104).
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u/ObvsThrowaway5120 13h ago
“Sodomized with renewed zeal” lol.
They were clappin cheeks all night long!
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u/garmander57 12h ago
At first I thought you were trolling when you mentioned Bartolomeo Redditi but turns out he’s real: https://commons.ptsem.edu/id/bartolomeoreddit00schn
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u/tokynambu 14h ago
San Marco in Florence, home of both Savonarola and Fra Angelico, is just around the corner from the Accademia , and is one of the best places in the city.
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u/Calenchamien 13h ago
Keep in mind, for most of English history, “sodomize” just meant have sex outside of marriage, which could mean having adulterous affairs, sleeping with prostitutes, or, indeed, having gay sex.
The chances this guy was celebrating a return of gay sex specifically are low, but not zero
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u/Leonardo-Saponara 12h ago
While that is somewhat true, especially in a legal context, Savonarola used the word "sodomia" with the meaning of... Sodomy which is anal sex, both homosexual and heterosexual (women have an arse too, you know).
While Savonarola explicitly preached against women involved in sodomy, as far as I know he burned alive only men for it.
In contemporary erotical/satirical poetry "sodomia" was also used exclusively for anal sex, both heterosexual and homosexual one, and it was presented humorously as a clergy's vice.
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u/e-dt 12h ago
According to the book cited in the source:
... when Florentines used the words "sodomy" and "sodomite" in a generic way they probably had sexual relations between males in mind, since these were by far the most common and conspicuous, and aroused the greatest public concern.
For instance, a recorded sermon against sodomy by Bernadino of Siena had this to say:
Above all, as he often remarked, parents sinned by dressing their young sons too fashionably, grooming them too well, making them too attractive. For this only made them alluring targets for sodomites, if not sodomites themselves. "It's a serious crime," he taught, "to have a short doublet made for [your sons] and stockings with a tiny patch in front and another in back, so that they show a lot of flesh for the sodomites."
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u/Archarchery 12h ago
They definitely did not just mean it as a euphemism for sleeping with prostitutes, that was listed as a separate sin that was taken up with renewed vigor.
And homosexuality has always existed, just suppressed to varying degrees. Even discounting bisexuality, the number of men who are exclusively gay has probably always been higher than 1 out of 100, so no matter where and when, there was always going to be some sort of secret homosexual under-culture in any major city.
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u/Ainsley-Sorsby 12h ago edited 12h ago
Not that low i would say:
Though elders and moralists might have decried the excesses of the hot-blooded young, there was a sort of tacit acceptance, within bounds, of their sexual liberality. In a letter in 1523 to Niccolo Machiavelli, Francesco Vettori responded to his friend's concerns about his son Lodovico's intimacy with a younger boy. He recommended indulgence, and recalled their own youthful experiences:
Since we are verging on old age, we might be severe and overly scrupulous, and we do not remember what we do as adolescents. So Lodovico has a boy with him, with whom he amuses himself, jests, takes walks, growls in his ear, goes to bed together. What then? Even in these things perhaps there is nothing bad.
This was the kind of attitude in Florence at the time, or at least we know for a fact it as present in the city, even if not everyone had the same opinions as Vettori here
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u/thekazooyoublew 13h ago
the friar's execution
Excommunication...
Here i am thinking this guys hollering gleefully about sodomy, while the dudes being killed... Gave the whole story quite a darker feel for sure.
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u/dark_hypernova 12h ago
"Silenzio, silenzio...Twenty-two years ago, I stood where I stand now- and watched my loved ones die, betrayed by those I had called friends. Vengeance clouded my mind. It would have consumed me, were it not for the wisdom of a few strangers who taught me to look past my instincts. They never preached answers, but guided me to learn from myself. We don't need anyone to tell us what to do. Not Savonarola, not the Medici. We are free to follow our own path. There are those who will take that freedom from us, and too many of you gladly give it. But it is our ability to choose- whatever you think is true- that makes us human...There is no book or teacher to give you the answers, to show you the way. Choose your own way! Do not follow me, or anyone else."
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u/pic_omega 12h ago
What a good speech. Where is it from?
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u/Mallard--Man 12h ago
Assassin’s Creed 2. I believe the subject of the post is one of your targets. YouTube clip should be below!
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u/Friendly-Profit-8590 12h ago
I’m no fan of capital punishment but say what you will about the methods these days at least the intent is a relatively fast and painless death.
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u/Archarchery 12h ago
Sodomy was never, ever gonna disappear no matter how repressive the laws, because it seems that in all populations, around 5% of men are exclusively homosexual with 10-20% being bisexual to at least some degree.
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u/BlueTourmeline 11h ago
Savonarola is the main character of Jo Walton’s historical fantasy LENT. It’s brilliant and brain bending.
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u/EnzoKosai 12h ago
Please be respectful of the gay community.
Come on guys!
(See what I did there...)
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u/Separate_Expert9096 12h ago
Asking for a friend - human anus does not produce lube naturally, like vagina, so how did they fuck in these times, when synthetic lube wasn’t invented?
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u/MetalcoreIsntMetal 12h ago
there are many natural lubricants, such as oils that were commonly used
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u/DeuceSevin 12h ago
Spit.
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u/DeuceSevin 12h ago
But a serious answer - any oil would do. And this being Italy, probably olive oil.
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u/hect1c 12h ago
really interesting how morals change depending on time and place, wonder how the next 100 years will look
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u/DeuceSevin 12h ago
Assuming we are still around in 100 years.
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u/Archarchery 12h ago
There’s 8 billion of us, there’ll still be some of us around even if our descendants are crawling through rubble.
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u/Apprehensive-Fun4181 13h ago
Note: The Roberts Supreme Court is picking and choosing from history & language to engineer a Theocracy. They obviously have to ignore things like this.
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u/todayilearned-ModTeam 12h ago
Please link directly to a reliable source that supports every claim in your post title.