Reading: “Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: Lesbians in the Middle Ages.” by Jacqueline Murray
- about this article, found through @nakimushiga-ru’s blog.
According to Jacqueline Murray, lesbians are twice marginalised in medieval studies: when homosexuality is studied in the Middle Ages, the focus is often on male homosexuality, and when women are studied by medievalists, lesbians are dismissed as “homosexuals”—lesbians being incorrect women, anyone?
Another marginalisation relates to the use of the term lesbian itself. According to Jacqueline Murray, some deny that lesbians even existed in the Middles Ages, or even before the word lesbian came into wide understanding and use in the past few centuries to designate women exclusively attracted to other women. Using lesbian to describe some women in the Middle Ages then become an anachronism. Jacqueline Murray asks if “terms like “lesbian” and “gay” [can] be used to describe people and activities in premodern societies, long before the appearance of an identifiable lesbian/gay subculture or lesbian/gay self-awareness”. But there is no need for a “subculture” or even “self-awareness” to be a lesbian.
Given that so little sources are available—a recurring theme in this article is the paucity of accounts relating to lesbianism (most sources from the Middle Ages mentioning lesbians are religious or legal texts condemning lesbianism)—and especially so little sources written by women on the subject, the account painted so far of the existence and prevalence of lesbians in the Middle Ages is very precarious.
There are no accounts cited in this work by the first concerned, lesbians living in the Middle Ages. All the sources are condemnations or books of rules written by men, or similar condemnation from women—who were likely not lesbians themselves. What do the lesbians have to say for themselves? There seems to survive no account written by them of their own experiences. While medievalists say they are loath to say that lesbians existed in the Middle Ages because of anachronisms, they seem awfully eager to conclude that the men writing at these times had all-encompassing knowledge.
Take the case of Benedetta Carlini for exemple, extolled by Jacqueline Murray as “illustrat[ing] the complex interrelationship between the sexual and and spiritual realms” and “perhaps one of the most well-known and problematic examples of alleged premodern lesbian sexual activity”. Benedetta Carlini was an italian nun of the seventeenth century. She was put on trial by an ecclesiastical tribunal, which sentenced her to life emprisonnement. Jacqueline Murray writes that “she tried to use mystical visions to gain spiritual and temporal authority in her convent and the surrounding community. She also claimed that she was possessed by an angelic spirit, which used her body to have sexual relations with her companion nun.” From what she wrote in this article, I gather she learnt that from the trial transcripts, which from her own account are not clear as to what Benedetta Carlini’s crime even was.
She goes on: “[w]hile the transcripts of the investigation indicate that Benedetta did engage in genital sexual relations with another woman, she did not admit to having any memory of such activity, let alone an awareness of making a selfconscious sexual choice. She certainly had no self-identity as a “lesbian” or as a woman we moderns might place comfortably on Adrienne Rich’s “lesbian continuum”.”
Why the “certainly” here, dear Jacqueline? How can you know for sure, without any direct testimony from the woman concerned, that she was in no way a lesbian? Put yourself in Benedetta’s shoes for a second. You are a nun on trial for sexual activity with another woman in a world that condemns such relations as sinful, at a time when witch-hunts were very much a thing. I too would claim that I was possessed by “an angelic spirit” if I was caught by men. Her denials in the context of a trial—the result of which could very well have meant bodily harm or death for her—do not mean that she was not sexual attracted to her fellow nun and allow us, centuries later, no latitude to judge whether or not she was a lesbian. The only thing that we can judge is that society at the time very much frowned on sexual relationships between women, and that misogyny was very much a thing. But to say definitely that Benedetta was not a lesbian? That’s intellectual dishonesty.
This kind of reasoning is the main problem in this article, and very likely with all materials that presume to judge of lesbianism in the past given whose writing are used as source. You are never going to get an organic, respectful, full picture of the lives of lesbians in the past if you have no access to writings and sources made by these lesbians in a context where they could be authentic to their true selves. If your letters to your beloved fellow nun risk being intercepted by your hierarchy or any men, when the law says that female homosexuality is a sin, of course you are going to use euphemisms, speak in half words, and generally make sure nothing too incriminating can be found. If you have to marry a man because of your family, or traditions, or just basic survival, and the man could beat you, deny you food and shelter, or plain kill you if he learned that you were still seeing and loving your female childhood sweetheart, who is struck in the same predicament? Of course you’re being discreet and don’t parade your love in the public eye. Of course in that kind of general atmosphere of disgust and hatred towards lesbian, especially from churches, the only accounts of potential lesbians that reach us in the twenty-first century are going to be those of lesbians who got caught and tried for their love. And these accounts are therefore biased.
It’s easier to pretend that lesbian did not exist before say a couple of centuries. But it’s intellectually lazy to pretend that women had no conscience of their own feelings and desires towards other women. I don’t see anyone claiming that heterosexuality did not exist a few centuries back. But lesbians? Those were obviously unicorns, mythical being in the Middle Ages. There’s just one step here to saying that lesbians are just women who were rejected by men and that lesbianism is a myth. You either recognise that women have always had rich inner lives, no matter the epoch or the setting, whether they could act on their feelings and desires, or you believe that women are lesser creatures, incapable of independent thoughts until a century ago or so. Especially given the lack of source materials made by women in your analysis—Jacqueline Murray’s notes are full of articles or books by men, pieces translated by men, that make for a very narrow perspective of lesbians.
