I was half-listening to an NPR story about the Crusades yesterday, and the person being interviewed referred to a knight, general or another king (I missed who it was) was King Richard the Lion Hearted’s “homosexual lover”.
So was Richard really gay or bi; or does this go to my theory that everyone who is known well enough will be “outed” if s/he is dead long enough?
I don’t know about recent, but the idea was sure put forth in The Lion in Winter. We trust Hollywood, don’t we?
Well, I suppose it’s true, as even The Encyclopedia Britannica says so.
The “Lion in Winter” first put forward the theory to the general public, but the concept has been around for many years. Richard is generally accepted as a homosexual or bisexual by most of his biographers, and his suggested lovers include King Sancho VI of Navarre (brother of his wife!), several of his knights, and, yes, King Philippe of France.
According to Roger de Hovedon, a contemporary chronicler, who remarks of their meeting:
“Richard, [then] duke of Aquitaine, son of the king of England, remained with Philippe, the king of France, who so honored him for so long that they ate every day at the same table, and from the same dish, and at night their beds did not seperate them. And the king of France loved him as his own soul; and they loved each other so much that the king of England was absolutely astonished at the passionate love between them and marveled at it.”
the Latin version of the text is even stronger:
“Ricardus dux Aquitaine, filius regis Angliae, moram fecit cum Philipo rege Franciae, quem ipse in tantum honoravit per longum tempus quod singulis diebus in una mensa ad unum catinum manducabant, et in noctibus non separabat eos lectus. Et dilexit eum rex Franciae quasi animam suam; et in tantum se mutuo dilegebant, quod propter vehementem dilectionem quae inter illos erat, dominus rex Angliae nimio stupore arreptus admirabatur quid hos esset.”
This (along with other evidence) has been taken as meaning that Richard and Philippe were involved in a homosexual relationship. However, these arguements have been countered with the allegation that sharing meals and a bed was not an unusual thing to do back then. Of course, where such actions completely ordinary and understandable, why did Roger feel the need to comment on them…?
Richard several times confessed publically to unnamed “vices”, and all his life priests were to thunder at him to beware of the sins that did in Sodom and Gommorah. Once he confessed these “vices” to his new wife, and then promised to be true only to her bed.
Besides this, and possibly even more controvesial, is the fact Richard had no legitimate children. In fact, his wife, Berengaria of Navarre, probably counted herself as lucky if he could remember her name from one day to the next. He broke off a highly profitable engagement to Princess Alix of France (Philippe’s sister) with the excuse that she had been his father’s mistress. He had one recorded bastard son, but no legitimate ones. This son isn’t unusual, since bastards were considered something of a status symbol back then, and even a homosexual might subject himself to a woman in order to “prove his virility”, as it were. And do you want to know what he named that poor little boy? Philip! Can you believe it?
There is still a lot of controversy over whether he was homosexual or not, but there does seem to be cause for thought. By the way, a short list of other historical figures who were or may have been gay or bisexual:
King William II Rufus of England.
Queen Christina of Sweden.
Alexander the Great, King of Macedon & Hephastion.
King Edward II of England & Piers Gaveston & then Hugh le Despencer.
King James I of England & the Duke of Buckingham.
William Rufus de Vane King, vice-president of the United States.
Julius Caesar the Dictator and Nicomedes, King of Bithynia.
Mark Antony & Gaius Scribonius Curio.
Eleanor Roosevelt.
And that’s just off the top of my head!
Phallyn writes:
The “recorded” bastard (who plays a major role in King John, one of Shakespeare’s more forgettable plays) is generally thought to be an invention. Richard’s contemporaries certainly thought him to be a homosexual (and also gave him a less well-recalled nickname: “Richard Yea-and-Nay”). Calling him a homosexual hasn’t caused any controversy in learned circle for at least 40 years (possibly longer; I won’t claim a close acquaintance with learned historical circles).
As for the rest of Phallyn’s list:
“King William II Rufus of England.” No question.
“Queen Christina of Sweden.” Quite possibly. She was also nuts.
“Alexander the Great, King of Macedon & Hephastion.” See Dr. Reames-Zimmerman as to why she thinks “gay” is inappropriate for them.
“King Edward II of England & Piers Gaveston & then Hugh le Despencer.” Edward and Piers, no question (you don’t want to know how the magnates put Edward to death. Trust me on this). Hugh; maybe. He certainly didn’t hurt by the relationship (until the end), no matter what his own preferences were.
“King James I of England & the Duke of Buckingham.” Again, no question.
“William Rufus de Vane King, vice-president of the United States.” No data.
“Julius Caesar the Dictator and Nicomedes, King of Bithynia.” Aside from the comments WRT Alexander and Hephaistion, I’d note that (as I’ve said before) that Caesar (a/k/a calvus moechus) impresses me as the kind of guy who’d screw anything that moved.
“Mark Antony & Gaius Scribonius Curio.” Wasn’t it Curio’s father who called Caesar, “Every man’s wife and every woman’s husband”? Not that that’s evidence to the contrary.
“Eleanor Roosevelt.” This probably deserves its own thread in GD.
i searched google and couldn’t find the specifics. how’d they do it?
curiosity hasn’t killed me yet.
>>>[Deimos] searched google and couldn’t find the specifics. how’d they do it?
curiosity hasn’t killed me yet.<<<<<
Okay. Remember now, this is only what is SAID of how he died. We don’t know if it actually happened or not; as I recall, there is no contemporary source for the specifics of Edward’s demise, so take this with a grain of salt.
Roger Mortimer and Queen Isabella were ruling England in the name of Edward II and Isabella’s teen son, the future King Edward III. They needed to get rid of Edward II, but bear in mind that they couldn’t execute a crowned king, and outright murder would’ve been too much. So they came up with a way to kill him without leaving a mark on his body.
First, Edward was starved. No luck, he just didn’t seem to be dying fast enough. Then they tried taking his water away from him in his cell, but the guy just wasn’t planning on kicking the bucket anytime soon. So the magnates went into his castle prison, and held him down. Someone found a poker (for a fireplace, right?) and heated it up until it was red-hot. Then they rammed the poker up his…ummm…well, since there’s just no polite way to say it…they rammed it up his ass. His screams were supposedly heard for miles.
Well, that did the trick. Edward died and his son was crowned king. A few years later Edward III got up the courage to have Roger Mortimer arrested and hung. So there. That’s about it.
And of course the manner of Edward’s death (assuming that’s what really happened, of course) was no doubt related to his sexual orientation as well…
While we’re at it, I’ll put in a plug for Marlowe’s Edward II, which is a damn fine play.
(And a side note re James I and Buckingham: Dumas cast Buckingham as a romantic leading-man type in The Three Musketeers, which amuses the hell out of me. :D)
Alexander the Great, Socrates, and Nero had sex with men; but I wouldn’t call them “gays” or even “homosexuals”. For such a concept to exist, there must also exist a society which insists upon strict heterosexuality as the norm of behavior.
As for Richard, while he did live in late Medieval Europe, presumably a very strictly heterosexual society, he undoubtedly operated in a subculture where having sex with other men was tolerated, as his extended forays on crusade were largely an all male affair.
Mind you, the fact that a man had no children is, by itself, a pretty lousy indication that he was gay. About 5% of the heterosexual male population is infertile (http://www.duj.com/Article/Moreira.html); about 5% of the male population is gay. So it’s just as likely he was shooting blanks.
I’m always astonished by the degree of certainty expressed by some historians about which medieval people were/weren’t gay (or about any aspect of their private lives and personalities, really.)
In most cases, you have at best 4 or 5 first hand sources to work with. Now imagine that you only had 4 or 5 sources with which to judge the personality of a Richard Nixon, or a Bill Clinton…
Pericles, the Athenian general and statesman, was supposedly considered somewhat eccentric by his contemporaries because he was exclusively heterosexual at a time when most upper class Greek men were bisexual.
Actually, the assumption that Edward II and Gaveston were lovers has been questioned. See Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II’s adoptive brother (Oxford University Press, 1994).
Similar doubts surround James I and Buckingham. There is now general agreement among historians of early seventeenth England that James I was probably a homosexual, but there is still considerable uncertainty as to whether his attraction towards Buckingham was ever physically consumated. Whether Buckingham was, in any meaningful sense, homosexual therefore remains open to dispute.
>>>Similar doubts surround James I and Buckingham. There is now general agreement among historians of early seventeenth England that James I was probably a homosexual, but there is still considerable uncertainty as to whether his attraction towards Buckingham was ever physically consumated. Whether Buckingham was, in any meaningful sense, homosexual therefore remains open to dispute.<<<<
Of Buckingham King James wrote to the Privy Counsel in 1617:
“I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George.”
Francis Osborne wrote of them together:
“In wanton looks and wanton gestures they [James and Buckingham] exceeded any part of womankind. The kissing them after so lascivious a mode in public and upon the theatre, as it were, of the world prompted many to imagine some things done in the tyring house [i.e. attiring or dressing room] that exceed my expression no less than they do my experience.”
But perhaps most interesting are the letters James & George shared. Buckingham writes to James of his love, asking if the later loved him “better than at the time which I shall never forget at Farnham, where the bed’s head could not be found between the master and his dog.”
Also, James responds to George with:
“I naturally so love your person, and adore all your other parts, which are more than ever one man had, that were not only all your people [i.e. Frenchmen and relatives] but all the world besides set together on one side and you alone on the other, I should to obey and please you displease, nay, despise them all.”
Besides James, Buckingham was also said (if we are to trust contemporary Sir Simonds’ D’Ewes) to be in “favour” and “intimate” with Sir Francis Bacon, who John Aubrey says very bluntly “was a pederast”. I understand Bacon’s brother was also charged with sodomy in the summer of 1586.
>>>Actually, the assumption that Edward II and Gaveston were lovers has been questioned. See Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston: Edward II’s adoptive brother (Oxford University Press, 1994).<<<
As for Piers Gaveston, the link below goes to a review of the book “Pierre Gaveston: Edward II’s Adoptive Brother”. I’m not saying it’s nessecarily the end-all, be-all of this discussion – but it does make some pertinant points.
All this evidence is very well known and none of it comes anywhere close to proving the claim. James’s comment to his Privy Council was intended to refute accusations that he had shown excessive favour towards Buckingham. There were plenty of reasons why James would have felt that he had to defend his friendship with Buckingham, most notably the recent grant of an earldom to him, whether or not the two of them were lovers. The Christ/St. John parallel is very strong evidence that the issue was favour rather than sex. The two letters can also be interpreted in the same way. Each was trying to flatter the other. James’s letter was intended to be shocking, not because he was necessarily refering to sex but because he was deliberately inverting the conventions of a letter written between a monarch and a servant. If this was intended to be anything more than a private joke, it would make more sense to say that James knew that, as a matter of political policy, he needed to be able to trust Buckingham completely. Buckingham, on the other, was simply toadying to his boss. The Farnham reference is also easily explained - as a Gentleman of the Bedchamber, Buckingham was required to protect the king by sharing his bedchamber. Seventeenth century English kings never slept alone. Osborne’s comment seems convincing but leaves open the question of whether what the world imagined took place behind the scenes was just that - the product of their imaginations. Buckingham would not have been the first or last employee to see advantages in persuading everyone else that he was sleeping with the boss even if he wasn’t. D’Ewes, who is never the most reliable of sources, was simply reporting gossip. Given that (as I said above) there is general agreement among historians of the period that James probably was a homosexual, the hypothesis that he was actually sleeping with Buckingham is a plausible one. It may even be true. However, there are alternative explanations which seem just as plausible. The professional concensus remains that the nature of James’s relations with his male favourites is likely to have been little different from the (probably non-sexual) relations which had existed between Elizabeth I and her favourites. The current trend is to see Buckingham as a serious politican, if a rather incompetent one, who should be compared to other minister-favourites such as Olivares or Richelieu.
Chaplais’s arguments have indeed proved controversial and have been much debated. My statement that the assumption that Edward II and Gaveston were lovers has been questioned still stands.
As you said Phallyn, they couldn’t mark Edward II’s body, so they tied him face down on a table and, prior to the insertion of the poker, inserted a tube, into which the poker was inserted, thereby burning Edward from the inside out. Of course, as you said, this is all speculation and rumor.
I think we should pay attention to what Wumpus is saying. Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert & Sullivan, was assumed to be gay for decades after his death, but I’m given to understand some of his journals recently came to light which reveal he was in a long-term affair with a married woman.
So right there you have evidence both that he wasn’t gay, and a reasonable explanation why he was never “openly” involved with a woman. But it almost didn’t become known.
And Sullivan lived so recently he was practically a contemporary of ours. How can we presume to know the sexual orientation of people who lived 700 years ago?
APB –
I never questioned your right to be doubtful. I simply posted the letters so that others could make up their minds for themselves. I myself happen to believe quite strongly that there was a physical relationship, but that is my opinion. Perhaps others will agree with me, perhaps others will find the evidence lacking. But that is for them to decide.
As for the Piers Gaveston issue – yes, it has been questioned. I know that. That is why I posted that link, which leads to a criticism of that questioning. The fact that relationship has been questioned was never in doubt. Why did you feel the need to point that out to me again?
The point which I originally took issue with was Akatsukami’s tone of absolute certainty. Professional historians recognise that the issues are much more complicated than that. Personally, my views are:
Edward II and Gaveston - almost certainly.
James I and Buckingham - possibly.
And here’s another “theoretical couple” you might not have heard about: William Bligh and Fletcher Christian.
Yes, really. Forget the Gable/Laughton movie. Richard Hough wrote an extremely comprehensive book, Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian, in which he theorizes at the end about the possibilities with those two. He spends an entire chapter on it, in fact. This book was the basis of the 1984 movie The Bounty, with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson. The “possibilities” are shown in very subtle ways, nothing overt.
I’m not saying it’s true or accurate. It’s just another one of those things…