In the late Middle Ages, the Italian word fama had a wide semantic range that encompassed such vitally important topics as reputation, honor, community memory, and trustworthiness. In this dissertation, I examine how fama manifested within sodomy prosecutions in late medieval Italy and what insights such prosecutions can give into topics as varied as gender, legal culture, and society. A person of bona fama had significant legal and social benefits, while a person of mala fama had legal and social impediments. Thus, fama—in all its definitions—permeated both legal discourse and societal interactions. The significance of fama is on full display within the theater of the courtroom, especially within prosecutions that attempted to censure a host of sexual activities denoted with the term sodomy. While not unknown in earlier eras, sodomy prosecutions rose to a new prominence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries when the secular authorities of various Italian cities enacted anti-sodomy laws and began to stage more frequent public punishments of convicted sodomites. To fully explore the connections between fama, sex, and the law, I perform a comparative analysis of sodomy prosecutions in Florence, Venice, and Lucca. I argue that societal and governmental differences served to create unique cultures of fama that accounted for the different legal outcomes for convicted sodomites and the different societal attitudes towards sexuality in each location. Regimes characterized by turbulence tended to be more lenient towards suspected sodomites, since sex between older, established, men and teenaged boys was an acceptable form of gaining adult fama. In contrast, regimes dominated by oligarchies comprised of a hereditary nobility took a harsher stance against sodomy, fearing that secretive encounters between males could lead to challenges against the ruling elite and the fama of the city as a whole. Other topics discussed include: fama as it appeared in the courtroom, the social and sexual dimensions of boyhood and youth, the reputations of places, and the role of women in sodomy prosecutions.

Creator

• Noll-Syrigos, Kathleen Anne

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-9379-qk51

Subject

• Medieval history

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15846
• etdadmin_upload_860406

Keyword

• Middle Ages
• Fama
• Sexuality
• Italy
• Gender
• Renaissance

Date created

• 2021-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright