The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology.

What does "medieval moral theology have to say about homosexuality? The only precise answer is, Absolutely nothing." Such is Mark Jordan's conclusion to his detailed and disturbing tour through the back roads of medieval Christian thought. I say "back roads" because some of the most interesting material comes from once popular-now obscure - medieval manuals for confessors; and, when one turns to major figures such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, homosexuality is treated so obliquely that it is not always clear just what is being discussed. The confessional manuals regarded homosexuality as "unspeakable"; it seems to get a "silent treatment" even in developed moral theology.

Homosexuality was regarded in the manuals as "unspeakable" in a precise sense for the confessor and the penitent. In Robert of Flambrough's Penitential Book - one of the most widely used manuals of the thirteenth century-the confessor may ask whether the penitent "had someone" in a manner out of the ordinary. But, if the penitent asks what that means, Robert says that the confessor ought not to respond. "For I never make mention to him of something from which he can take the occasion of sin." In other words, the confessor is not to get into details lest he introduce the penitent to a type of conduct the poor soul had previously not considered. Homosexuality was also "unspeakable" on the side of the penitent: it was regarded as "bestial" and so the sin, like the beasts, cannot speak. "The love that dare not speak its name" has a long metaphysical history.

When we come to the two great theologians, Albert and Aquinas, Jordan argues that homosexuality again fails to speak or be spoken to. Albert the Great is particularly interesting because of his unequaled mastery of the sciences of the day. Sex was a medical-biological subject as well as a subject for moral direction. Albert knew the Canon of Medicine by the great Arab philosopher-physician, Avicenna. A condition called al-ubna (the desire to have the passive role in anal intercourse) was regarded - at least by some authorities - as a medical condition caused by an excess of semen around the anus. If al-ubna were a medical condition, then it would seem to escape moral opprobrium. Jordan faults Albert-the-moralist for ignoring the medical/physiological issue. Jordan sums up: For Albert "the desire to exclude [homosexuality] from speech... is [enacted] with regard to medicine and natural philosophy. Where he will not engage, he keeps silence."

Aquinas calls homosexuality a "carnal, bestial, and unnameable vice," which sounds pretty awful. However, despite the heavy rhetoric, Jordan notes that Thomas regards it as only "a middling species of a subsidiary class of sins." Jordan regards Thomas's arguments as misreadings of Augustine and Aristotle. Aquinas shifts from an Augustinian fear of misdirected libido - where the proper end of desire is the love of God - to misdirection of the natural organs and functions since they were created by God for the purpose of propagation. Whatever Aquinas may say about the biological capacities of the sexual organs, he fails to speak to the complexity of sexual libido. Silence again.

A careful reader will have noted that so far I have not once mentioned the word "sodomy" which is what Jordan claims is being "invented" by the poets, confessors, and theologians of the period. The omission is deliberate: The "invention" of the word sodomia was the work of Peter Damian in the middle of the eleventh century. Just what is sodomia - what were the Sodomites up to? Peter is clear that it was homosexual activity and that such acts merit punishment equivalent to blasphemy: utter destruction. Peter fixes sodomia in two senses: He specifies it to homosexuality, and by making sodomy an abstract noun, he creates a broad polemical category which by-passes the complexities and nuances of individual behavior - in the way that "Christian" covers in some sense John Paul II, Jerry Falwell, and Saint Francis. Once invented, sodomia comes to mean homosexual conduct, and to be an essential characterization of individuals who engage in same-sex acts.

The problem with Peter's invention is that it is by no means clear that homosexuality was the Sodomitic fault. The longer tradition is that the fault of Sodom was luxuria. Thus Ezechiel: "This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, overabundance of bread, abundance, and leisure. They did not extend their hand to the poor. They were raised up and committed abominations before me" (16:49-50). Aquinas retains this tradition when he categorizes homosexuality as a subspecies of luxuria. In the New Testament, when Jesus talks about the destruction of Sodom he does not link it to some specific sin, it is an example of how the terrible wrath of God may fall on anyone who fails to hear God's word (Matt. 10:15).

I said at the beginning that Jordan's treatment is "detailed and disturbing." The "detail" is in the reading of all sorts of odd documents. The disturbing character is in the details: the bizarre sexual teaching of the day. Incest is regarded as a lesser sin than masturbation because at least "the seed is placed in the proper vessel." Masturbation might be forgiven once, but if it persists there is no hope for the unfortunate sinner. Whatever one may finally think about the arguments against homosexual acts, the general tenor of medieval teaching on sexuality suggests that Jordan is correct when he says "we have no persuasive Christian account of human sex generally, much less of its enactments between members of the same sex...."

Mark Jordan is a recognized medieval scholar and a professor at Notre Dame; he is also, as he indicates in the preface, a gay activist. The reviewer is none of the above. I am not in a position to question Jordan's scholarship, which seems to me authoritative. However, my own sense is that medieval treatments on sex are generally so confused and censorious that one should not be surprised that homosexuality is ill-treated.

If one wished to rescue these medieval treatises from deserved oblivion and obloquy, one could return to the original identification of Sodom with luxuria. One might then say that modern Americans live in the city of Luxuria. The overabundance and lack of generosity displayed in ancient Sodom seem everywhere apparent. An issue for citizens of Luxuria is the place of sex: heterosexual, homosexual, any old type and variety. Sex seems to have become the cultural obsession in Luxuria.

The medieval writers featured in Jordan's book resided in a different city - the city of Ascetica. The citizens of Ascetica would regard our sex-drenched cityscape as badly disordered. This culture may have been too constrictive to regard procreative heterosexual cohabitation in the missionary position as the "natural," only barely licit, form of sexual congress (the standard teaching of the confessional manuals). But luxuriating in every sexual twinge and twitch may only free us from the fixation of procreative nature on into the obsessions of sexual diffusion and sterile fantasy. To note yet another restrictive moralist, whose teachings once influenced American history: We have moved from John Calvin to Calvin Klein. Dubious progress.

Dennis O'Brien is president emeritus of the University of Rochester.