Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Essays
- The Current State of Research on Late-Medieval Drama: 2005–2007. Survey, Bibliography, and Reviews
- Recovering Queen Isabeau of France (c.1370–1435): A Re-Reading of Christine de Pizan's Letters to the Queen
- Diálogos textuales: una comparación entre Clériadus et Méliadice y Ponthus et Sidoine
- Money as Incentive and Risk in the Carnival Comedies of Hans Sachs (1494–1576)
- Los prólogos y las dedicatorias en los textos traducidos de los siglos XIV y XV: Una fuente de información sobre la traducción
- The Rise and Persistence of a Myth: Witch Transvection
- Text, Culture, and Print-Media in Early Modern Translation: Notes on the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)
- “Ne supra crepidam sutor!” [Schuster, bleib bei deinem Leisten!]: Das Diktum des Apelles seit Petrarca bis zum Ende des Quattrocento
- “De l'ombre de mort en clarté de vie”: The Evolution of Alain Chartier's Public Voice
- “Nudus nudum Christum sequi”: The Franciscans and Differing Interpretations of Male Nakedness in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Robert Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice and Its Sources
“Nudus nudum Christum sequi”: The Franciscans and Differing Interpretations of Male Nakedness in Fifteenth-Century Italy
from Essays
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Essays
- The Current State of Research on Late-Medieval Drama: 2005–2007. Survey, Bibliography, and Reviews
- Recovering Queen Isabeau of France (c.1370–1435): A Re-Reading of Christine de Pizan's Letters to the Queen
- Diálogos textuales: una comparación entre Clériadus et Méliadice y Ponthus et Sidoine
- Money as Incentive and Risk in the Carnival Comedies of Hans Sachs (1494–1576)
- Los prólogos y las dedicatorias en los textos traducidos de los siglos XIV y XV: Una fuente de información sobre la traducción
- The Rise and Persistence of a Myth: Witch Transvection
- Text, Culture, and Print-Media in Early Modern Translation: Notes on the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)
- “Ne supra crepidam sutor!” [Schuster, bleib bei deinem Leisten!]: Das Diktum des Apelles seit Petrarca bis zum Ende des Quattrocento
- “De l'ombre de mort en clarté de vie”: The Evolution of Alain Chartier's Public Voice
- “Nudus nudum Christum sequi”: The Franciscans and Differing Interpretations of Male Nakedness in Fifteenth-Century Italy
- Robert Henryson's Orpheus and Eurydice and Its Sources
Summary
In the year 1420, a small band of Franciscan friars was arrested in Venice by the Signori di Notte [Lords of the Night], one of the special magistracies responsible for policing and prosecuting serious crime. The four friars were charged with violation of the Most Serene Republic's law against sodomy; what had they done to provoke such a charge? At the time of their arrest, the friars were parading naked through the streets, bearing crosses in their hands and leading a large procession of the faithful in a public exercise of pious devotion. Since the grave charge of sodomy was involved, the case was transferred to a higher — in fact, the highest — judicial body, “the most powerful and feared” Council of Ten. This group was traditionally responsible for judging conspiracy and treason, but earlier in that century, had been given jurisdiction concerning sodomy prosecution as well.
The Venetian government did not view the clerical status of the defendants as grounds for immediate suspension of doubt and examined the case with due attention: indeed, given the well-documented and vast amount of sodomitic activity among the local clergy, often hidden and protected by church authorities themselves, the judges knew better than automatically to assume innocence among such a population of males. In the end, however, the Franciscans won their reprieve from the Ten, who arrived at the conclusion that “the said friars are monks of good reputation and their deeds were not carried out with any evil intention” (ibid., 5).
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- Fifteenth-Century Studies , pp. 171 - 197Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008