Saints, Women and Humanists in Renaissance Venice by Patricia H. Labalme;

Author:Patricia H. Labalme;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2023-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

12. Punishments

For sodomites who were unprotected by nobility, youth, or clerical status, as for some who were, punishments ranged from execution to mutilation, branding, whipping, imprisonment, exile and, later, galley service. Mutilation and execution were usually contrived as public spectacles, to warn off other possible criminals and to serve as ceremonial purges of the body politic.108 In 1552, a man and a woman, found guilty of procuring sodomite prostitutes, were condemned to be exposed on a ‘pallo’ between the columns of St. Mark’s, wearing ignominious mitres on their heads, and then their ears were cut off and they were sent into perpetual exile.109 A few months later, a convicted sodomite was exposed on a scaffold and paraded along the Grand Canal as far as Santa Croce, where he was attached to a horse’s tail, dragged to the Rialto, and there, at the scene of the crime, his two hands were cut off, and then he was dragged again to the Piazza San Marco where, between the two columns, he was beheaded and burned. All along his route a herald preceded him, proclaiming his crime.110

106ASV, Sant’Ufficio, Busta 8, fasc. 28, Feb.–July, 1550. The priest, in this case, appears more widely read than ignorant. He also cited a libertine pamphlet, La Cazzaria, written by a Siennese author, Antonio Vignale (under the academic pseudonym of Arsiccio Intronato) in support of some of these scandalous ideas. See fols. 6–6v of the case, and Scarabello, p. 82. 107It should be added that sodomite priests were a common-place of Renaissance literature. Machiavelli, in his Mandragola, speaks of sodomy as ‘one of those sins which goes with holy water’, and Vasari refers to friars and priests ‘che si fanno impalar come le vigne’ (Alessandro del Vita, Galanteria e Lussuria nel Rinascimento [Arezzo 19521, pp. 169–77). Pavan estimates that of the Venetian sodomy cases in the fifteenth century, 1/11 “to 1/12 involved ecclesiastics (p. 279). In a number of cases, the priest was attached to a school. See Criminali, Reg. 8, fol. 121v, June 22, 1554. Frequently referred to as locations of sexual turpitude by the Council of Ten were the solarii, scenic constructions mounted on platforms which were used in the religio-civic celebrations of the city, where, according to a decision of 1462, ‘sub spetie boni, sodomie, inhonestates, et mala multa insimilibus committuntur’ (Misti, Reg. 16, fol. 100v, June 2) 108For an early ritual execution mandated by the Quarantia for sodomy see Lombardo, pp. 13–14, 40–41 (Nov. 22, 1342). Guido Ruggiero discusses ritual punishment in his article ‘Law and Punishment in Early Renaissance Venice’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 69 (1978), 156–66. Murderers, robbers, and even blasphemers were also ritually executed. For more examples of ritual executions for crimes other than sodomy, see Criminali, Reg. 8, fols. 68v–69, Dec. 10, 1552, for arson; Reg. 8, fol. 187v, Aug. 17, 1557, for blasphemy; Reg. 9, fols. 40v-41, April 26, 1560, for murder and robbery. 109Criminali, Reg. 8, fols. 64v-65, Aug. 17, 1552. It was only after the

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