- Giovanni di Giovanni
Giovanni di Giovanni (c. 1350 –
May 7 ,1365 ?) is one of the younger victims of the campaign againstsodomy , waged inFlorence since theMiddle Ages .He was convicted by the
Podestà court of being the passive partner of a number of different men. He was labeled "a public and notorious passive sodomite." His punishment was to be paraded on the back of an ass, then to be publicly castrated. Finally, he was to have his anus burned with a red-hot iron (or, as the sentence read: " [punished] in that part of the body where he allowed himself to be known in sodomitical practice.") It is presumed he did not survive the ordeal. [cite book|title=Forbidden Friendships, Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence|date=1996|publisher=Oxford University Press|pages=pages 24, 227, 356, 360|last=Rocke|first=Michael|isbn=0195122925] citation |title=Literature and Homosexuality |first=Michael J |last=Meyer |year=2000 |publisher=Rodopi |isbn=904200519X]His prosecution came on the heels of the
Black Death , thebubonic plague epidemic which had ravaged the city two years earlier. Many in the religious establishment associated the disaster to the destruction ofSodom and Gomorrah and blamedsodomites for having brought the wrath ofGod down on the heads of the populace. The remedy they promoted was to purify the city ofevil by means of fire, leading to burnings at the stake and other punishments such as that suffered by Giovanni di Giovanni.Fact|date=August 2007References
ee also
*
History of Early Christianity and Homosexuality
*History of sexuality
*Homophobia
*Violence against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and the transgendered
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.