Cities of the Plain: The Rhetoric of Sodomy in Peter Damian's "Book of Gomorrah."
1995; Columbia University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2688-5220
Autores Tópico(s)Historical and Archaeological Studies
ResumoSodomy is named for a city.(1) Reversing familiar scenario where body supplies a set of metaphors for body social, and its cognates invoke a civic community to represent a set of bodily acts.(2) The logic of etymology, of course, is that men of as described in Genesis 19 were indeed sodomites. When viewed from a distance, however, story of appears neither to confirm nor to deny this conjecture: instead, story functions as point of departure in process of naming sodomy, whereby both and Gomorrah, cities of plain, become by-words for moral and in particular sexual iniquity.(3) The fable of thus reveals more about genealogy of moral language than about physical behavior of its citizens. As recent discussions of metaphorical properties of sodomy have shown, there is much to be gained from referring term back to communities of discourse in which it has been used.(4) Reclaiming Sodom(5) from sodomy affords not only a different view of bodies and pleasures hitherto stigamatized, but also a reintroduction to city itself. This essay is a preliminary attempt to describe rhetorical institution of sodomy in eleventh century, a decisive moment also in institution, materially and rhetorically, of city in western Europe. Many historians now see urban revolution of eleventh-century West as equivalent in scale and importance to that which took place in ancient Near East over three millennia previously.(6) In both cases, what made possible founding of cities was mobilization by a ruling elite of an agricultural surplus sufficient to support their needs and expanding ambitions. A new degree of social differentiation among this elite was both cause and consequence of forcible organization of peasant labor -- in particular sharp definition of a class of religious specialists. The priesthood so constituted often found themselves in an ambivalent ethical position, acting as both guardians and critics of new social order. It is, perhaps, in context of such priestly uncertainty over moral status of city that we should seek to understand emergence of a discourse on sodomy in eleventh century. What modern scholars may celebrate as the urban revival or transformation of year one thousand,(7) a contemporary cleric was inclined to describe as resurrection of Sodom, rebuilding of defenses of that were razed by fire.(8) In his view, calling forth memory of Sodomites appeared -- deceptively as it turned out -- to offer a timely analysis and solution to social and moral tensions arising among diversifying elite in an unfamiliar urban landscape. Our text is Book of Gomorrah, a violent condemnation of sodomitical behaviour among clergy composed in latter half of 1049 by Italian ascetic Peter Damian. Writing to Pope Leo IX, Damian sought to attract papal attention to this new and urgent danger: In our region a certain abominable and most shameful vice has developed.... The befouling cancer of sodomy is, in fact, spreading so through clergy or rather like a savage beast, is raging with such shameless abandon through flock of Christ that for many of them it would be more salutary to be burdened with service to world than, under pretext of religion, to be enslaved so easily under iron rule of satanic tyranny.(9) Much of treatise is couched in this strongly figurative language. Thus Damian depicts despotism of Queen Sodom over her knights, stripped of armour of virtue, and her slaves, defiled in secret and dishonored in public.(10) Near start of his discussion, however, Damian does enumerate exactly what he means by sodomy and how it is being committed. There appear to be four varieties of this criminal vice, namely masturbation, mutual masturbation, interfemoral intercourse, and anal intercourse. …
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