Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (Studies in the History of Sexuality) - Softcover

Rocke, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195122925 ISBN 13: 9780195122923

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

"This is a superb work of scholarship, impossible to overpraise.... It marks a milestone in the 20-year rise of gay and lesbian studies."--Martin Duberman, The Advocate

The men of Renaissance Florence were so renowned for sodomy that "Florenzer" in German meant "sodomite." In the late fifteenth century, as many as one in two Florentine men had come to the attention of the authorities for sodomy by the time they were thirty. In 1432 The Office of the Night was created specifically to police sodomy in Florence. Indeed, nearly all Florentine males probably had some kind of same-sex experience as a part of their "normal" sexual life.

Seventy years of denunciations, interrogations, and sentencings left an extraordinarily detailed record, which author Michael Rocke has used in his vivid depiction of this vibrant sexual culture in a world where these same-sex acts were not the deviant transgressions of a small minority, but an integral part of a normal masculine identity. Rocke roots this sexual activity in the broader context of Renaissance Florence, with its social networks of families, juvenile gangs, neighbors, patronage, workshops, and confraternities, and its busy political life from the early years of the Republic through the period of Lorenzo de' Medici, Savonarola, and the beginning of Medici princely rule. His richly detailed book paints a fascinating picture of Renaissance Florence and calls into question our modern conceptions of gender and sexual identity.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Rocke is the Nicky Mariano Librarian of the Biblioteca Berenson at Villa I Tatti, the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, in Florence.

Review:

"A fascinating and groundbreaking study of the archives of the Office of the Night....All levels."--CHOICE

"Rocke presents a careful and nuanced appreciation of language and concepts of gender and sexual roles....The value of this highly important study rests on the book's lucid prose and its learned contribution to our understanding of human, or at least Western, sexuality."--Library Journal

"This is a superb work of scholarship, impossible to overpraise....It marks a milestone in the 20-year rise of gay and lesbian studies."--The Advocate

"Michael Rocke here presents a careful analysis, using the records of the Office of the Night, a magistracy created solely to prosecute sodomy that operated from 1432 to 1502...This is a valuable study that will be of interest to a wide range of historians."--Men and Masculinity

"Rocke's book received excellent scholarly reviews but little popular notice when it was published two years ago. Now issued in paperback, it deserves a wider readership by gays. Many may find the lives of men half a millennium ago and across the seas a distant mirror of their own lives, full of fascinating similarities and disconcerting differences...Rocke's book [is] fascinating and occasionally startling reading, as well as a confirmation of our own continuity with the past."--Windy City Times

"Forbidden Friendships adds an important chapter to the history of homosexuality and through it places Florentine politics in the Renaissance in a new perspective."--Speculum

"A sort of Kinsey Report for Renaissance Florence...A must-read for gay scholars, [the book] is the first attempt to clearly quantify sexual norms for Renaissance Florence or, indeed, any other place at such an early date...Rocke certainly establishes bisexual and homosexual relationships long before John Addition Symonds's usage of the terms."--Journal of Homosexuality

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0195122925
• ISBN 13: 9780195122923
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384