Posted on 07/11/2024 10:39:38 AM PDT by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1644, Joost Schouten, the able merchant and diplomat of the Dutch East India Company, “was strangled and burned to ashes in my presence in Batavia [Jakarta] because of his gruesome sodomy.”
That’s the report of Gijsbert Heeck who, like Scouten, left a noteworthy memoir. Heeck allowed that Schouten “was a man of unusual knowledge and extraordinary intellect,” but despite his gifts remained “in his heart … a hypocritical villain and seducer of many, secretly using his prominence and great authority to force them away from the path of decency into the way of his shameful foulness, seeking thereby to satisfy his devilish lechery.”
Before all that devilish lechery stuff came to light, Joost Schouten (English Wikipedia link | Dutch) had enjoyed a brilliant two-decade career in the Far East, most notably in Siam. There, Schouten ingratiated himself with the Siamese king Prasat Thong,* winning lucrative trade concessions, personal honors, and a seat for himself on the East India Company’s executive organ, the Council of the Indies.
A report that Schouten initially wrote for that company surveying Siam’s geography, people, and politics was published in 1638 and translated into many tongues: he was the first general account of Siam for Europeans. While several others would follow (pdf) in the 17th century, Schouten’s Description remains an essential source for the period.....
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
That account describes how serious that “consenting adults” “lifestyle” was taken as our civilization was on the ascendancy.
Too bad some of the old customs have fallen into disuse.
God bless “the old ways”.
The majority of people actually sentenced by the Spanish Inquisition, for whom records were sentenced exists, for crimes of homosexual corruption. (That probably wasn’t true for the initial reconquista, during which records were sketchier.)
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