Book of Gomorrah: An Eleventh-Century Treatise against Clerical Homosexual Practices

XVI. A Deserving Condemnation of Abominable Shamefulness

XVI A DESERVING CONDEMNATION OF ABOMINABLESHAMEFULNESS Truly, this vice is never to be compared with any other vice because it surpasses the enormity of all vices. Indeed, this vice is the death of bodies, the destruction of souls. It pollutes the flesh; it extinguishes the light of the mind. It evicts the Holy Spirit from the temple of the human heart; it introduces the devil who incites to lust. It casts into error; it completely removes the truth from the mind that has been deceived. It prepares snares for those entering; it shuts up those who fall into the pit sothey cannot get out. It opens hell; it closes the doorof heaven. It makes a citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem into an heir of infernal Babylon. It makes of the star of heaven the stubble of eternal fire; it cuts off a member of the Church and casts it into the consuming fire of boiling Gehenna. This vice tries to overturn the walls of the heavenly homeland and is busy repairing the renewed bulwarks of Sodom. For it is this which violates sobriety, kills modesty, strangles chastity, and butchers irreparable virginity with the dagger ofunclean contagion. It defiles everything, stains everything, pollutes everything . And as for itself, it permits nothing pure, nothing clean, nothing other than filth. "To the clean all things are clean, but to the defiled unbelievers nothing is clean."70 This vice casts men from the choir of the ecclesiastical community and compels them to pray with the possessed and with those who work for the devil. It separates the soul from God to join it with devils. This 70 Tit. 1:15. 63 64 Book of Gomorrah most pestilential queen of the sodomists makes the followers of her tyrannical laws filthy to men and hateful to God. She commands to join in evil wars against God, to carry the military burden ofa most evil spirit. Sheseparates from the companionship ofangels and captures the unhappy soul under the yoke of her domination away from its nobility. She deprives her soldiers of the arms71 of the virtues and exposes them to the piercing spears of all the vices. She humiliates in church, condemns in law, defiles in secret, shames in public, gnaws the conscience as though with worms, sears the flesh as though with fire. She pants to satisfy her desire for pleasure, but on the other hand she fears lest she become exposed and come out in public and become known to men. Should he not fear her, he who dreads with anxious suspicion the very participant in their common ruin? A person who himself participates in a sinful act ought not to be a judge of the crime in confession as long as he hesitates in any way to confess that he has sinned himself by joining in the sin of another. The fact is that the one partner could not die in sin without the other dying also; nor can one provide an opportunity for the other to risewithout risinghimself. The miserable flesh burns with the heat of lust; the cold mind trembles with the rancour of suspicion; and in the heart of the miserable man chaos boils like Tartarus, while as often as he is pierced with mental stings he is tormented in a certain measure with painful punishment. In fact, after this most poisonous serpent once sinks its fangs into the unhappy soul, sense is snatched away, memory is borne off, the sharpness of the mind is obscured. It becomes unmindful of God and even forgetful of itself. This plague undermines the foundation of faith, weakens the strength of hope, destroys the bond of charity; it takes away justice, subverts fortitude, banishes temperance, blunts the keenness of prudence. And what more should I say since it expels the whole host of the virtues from the chamber of the human heart and introduces every barbarous vice as if the bolts of the doors were pulled out. To be sure, the view of Jeremiah which concerns the earthy Jerusalem is suitably adapted to this case, "The foestretched out his hand to all her treasures; she has seen those nations enter her sanctuary whom you forbade to come into your assembly."72 71 Perhaps an echo of Caesar, The Gallic War 3.6.3, trans, by H. J. Edwards (Loeb Classical Library; Cambridge, MA, 1917). 72 Lam. 1:10. Condemnation of Abominable Shamefulness 65...