1292: Johann de Wettre, medieval Europe’s first documented sodomy execution

ExecutedToday.com ^ | September 8th, 2015 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1292, Johann de Wettre, “a maker of small knives,” was condemned to die at Ghent for sodomy.

De Wettre was consequently (whether on September 8 or subsequently) “burned at the pillory next to St. Peter’s” in what appears to be the earliest documented execution of homosexuality in Christian Europe. Whether he was a habitual or a one-time offender, how he was detected and prosecuted, and the fate of his male partner — all of these are obscure.

One can safely suppose that de Wettre was not the first European executed for sodomy; perhaps the scanty lines we have of his death are only fortuitously preserved because he suffered his very public fate in one of Europe’s largest and most prosperous cities.

However accidental, de Wettre’s stake is a landmark for Christendom’s emerging conception of same-sex desire as not only a capital crime, but a downright existential threat.*

No matter what Leviticus might say on the subject, the late Middle Ages furnish no documented examples of official persecutions but a rich corpus of same-sex literary amour, often penned by monks — a class of men whose debauchery (real or alleged) would come to invite violent attacks in the coming centuries......

[dangus]

The vast majority of people killed in the actual Spanish Inquisition (as opposed to vigilantism*) were priests who had committed sodomy, all too often with young boys.

( * Only Catholics could be tried during the Inquisition; the Church had no jurisdiction over non-Catholics. However, street mobs caused such unrest that the state leaders, who were also Catholic, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, expelled Jews from Spain. Among the “Catholics” tried were also many Jews and Muslims who feigned conversion in order to be spared street justice or expulsions, so please understand that I do not mean to negate the suffering and injustice committed in the context of the Inquisition.)

[refreshed]

I detect a new narrative and a rewriting of history. Christianity was always against sodomy. It was not an emerging belief. It is a crime against nature, themselves and God who set the order. There was probably a time when it was overlooked amongst the religious elite, but that is not freedom. It is degradation.

[Murder of Crows]

Well said.

[Antoninus]

Hardly the first.

"In that year [A.D. 528] some of the bishops from various provinces were accused of living immorally in matters of the flesh and of homosexual practices. Amongst them was Isaiah, bishop of Rhodes, an ex-praefectus vigilum at Constantinople, and likewise the bishop from Diospolis in Thrace, named Alexander. In accordance with a sacred ordinance they were brought to Constantinople and were examined and condemned by Victor, the city prefect, who punished them: he tortured Isaiah severely and exiled him and he amputated Alexander's genitals and paraded him around on a litter. The emperor [Justinian] immediately decreed that those detected in pederasty should have their genitals amputated. At that time, many homosexuals were arrested and died after having their genitals amputated. From then on there was fear amongst those afflicted with homosexual lust." [Source: Jeffreys, Elizabeth, Michael Jeffreys, and Roger Scott, trans. (1986) The Chronicle of John Malalas: A Translation. Australian Association for Byzantine Studies: Melbourne, p. 253.