Sexual Hierarchies, Public Status: Men, Sodomy, and Society in Spain’s Golden Age (review)

Cristian Berco examines the Inquisition’s records of 626 trials for homosexual sodomy between 1540 and 1776 in Valencia, Zaragoza, and Barcelona. He proposes to show how the interpersonal ‘hierarchy’ involved in male-to-male sexual relations coincided or conflicted with the individuals’ status in society, as determined by social class, religion, nationality, and ethnicity. Berco situates his research in the context of queer studies, but he extends his focus beyond the question of homosexual identity to include ‘the historical significance of homosexual behaviour as inextricably linked to social processes, structures, and hierarchies.’ He argues that homosexual sodomy was widely accepted by Spanish society as long as it did not result in ‘misalliance’ of the interpersonal hierarchy and the social status of the males involved.

Berco assumes that male sexual relations, whether homosexual or heterosexual, involve a dynamic of dominance and passivity reflective of male and female roles in heterosexual relations. Thus he finds that the act of homosexual sodomy produced social conflict, because it allowed men of inferior social status to assume dominant roles in sexual relations with males of a higher status. Employing details from the trial records, his first three chapters describe ‘the complex world of male sociability, masculinity and eroticism,’ including the physical spaces where sodomy occurred and the social status of the men involved. Later chapters deal with the difficult interaction of this ‘world’ with the larger social order, including laws against sodomy, trial processes, interrogations, torture, and the role of social class, religion, nationality, and ethnicity in rates of conviction and severity of sentencing. Clergymen, for example, received ‘relatively mild sentences’ despite ‘a large number of accusations,’ while ‘Moriscos and muslim and black slaves found guilty of sodomizing Christian teenagers’ suffered much heavier consequences.

Sexual Hierarchies contributes to Spanish Golden Age cultural studies by providing readers access to myriad details of the trial records in question. The individual experiences of homosexual males in a variety of social contexts provide a vivid sense of this aspect of social life. The prose is clear and well crafted, and the book includes extensive notes, an index, and a full bibliography. The central thesis, that social class, nationality, religion, race, and ethnicity of men accused of homosexual sodomy greatly influenced their fates is persuasively presented.

Despite these virtues, some aspects of the book suggest that enthusiasm for the subject has displaced rational objectivity. Berco offers scant evidence for his fundamental assumption about masculine sexual behaviour, yet it leads him to some very bold assertions. Not only was homosexual sodomy a real social phenomenon, he argues, but also it was considered normal for all men: ‘To most men, the essential aspect of sexuality consisted of their ability to dominate their passive partner, whether another man, a male adolescent, or a woman. Sexual preference did not seem to play a particularly strong role in this system.’ Even though ‘almost three quarters of cases tried correspond to adult men allegedly sodomizing adolescent boys,’ little distinction is made between willing participation among adults and the coercion and rape of adolescents. That the public and civil and church authorities might have reacted against this behaviour as child abuse is not considered. Instead, all cases of sodomy fall into the category of ‘amorous relations,’ and the negative reaction is attributed to the ‘social misalliance’ they caused.

The idea of seventeenth-century Spanish society in Sexual Hierarchies largely discounts the influence of religion. Teachings against sodomy merit just a few perfunctory quotes, and the ‘moral’ voice of the church in general is dispatched as ‘the increasingly repetitive and ossified discourse continuously emanating from preachers, inquisitors, and proscriptive literature.’

While Berco admits that ‘it is impossible to determine the amount of sexual activity that occurred between adult men,’ he nonetheless refers to ‘the veritable bacchanalia of semi-public and public sex that took place in early modern cities and villages.’ The number of cases studied, 626 for a...