User talk:Ridiculus mus/sandbox/Leo X drafting sandbox

Comment on proposal II

Contaldo never participated in consensus-building, but unilaterally made a series of edits on 7 April which he pretended to justify in Talk: section 21. This is the state of the section after the edits of Contaldo80 made on 7 April 2015 (footnotes omitted, but a survey of the few changes he made thereto is given below). I have introduced paragraph numbers to assist in analysis.

(1) Scabrous verse libels of the type known as pasquinades were particularly abundant during the conclave which followed Leo's death in 1521 and made imputations about Leo's homosexuality.[24] This suggestion was also shared by two contemporary historians (Paolo Giovio and Francesco Guicciardini). Zimmerman notes Giovio's "disapproval of the pope's familiar banter with his chamberlains - handsome young men from noble families - and the advantage he was said to take of them."[25]

(2) Martin Luther, who had also once stayed in Rome, accused Leo of vetoing a measure that cardinals restrict the number of boys they kept for their pleasure, "otherwise it would have been spread throughout the world how openly and shamelessly the pope and the cardinals in Rome practice sodomy"; encouraging Germans not to spend time fighting fellow countrymen in defence of the papacy.[26] However, another contemporary and eye-witness at Leo's Court, affirms that Leo was chaste all his life.[27]

(3) Since the late 18th century, historians both Catholic and non-Catholic have reviewed and given no credence to such imputations of unchastity (specifically homosexuality) made against Leo in the years and decades following his death, or else have regarded them as unworthy of notice.[28] The few who stand outside this consensus fall short of concluding that Leo was unchaste.[29]

Footnotes

[24] = old [26]

[25] = old [27]

[26] is new: Derek Wilson, The life and legacy of Martin Luther, Random House, 2007, p282

[27] = old [28]

[28] = old [24]

[29] = old [25] with the gloss "(homosexuality)" added to McCabe's term "unnatural vice", and shorn of the last sentence "Both Falconi and McCabe were ordained as Catholic priests but had ceased ministry long before writing the books cited here."

My comments on Contaldo edits

[A] The change to the structure. Rejected.

My edit was a single paragraph containing 4 sentences. Contaldo added material and broke the single paragraph into 3, the central one referring to two eye-witness accounts: one for and one against Leo's chastity. The one against is inherently unstable and must be deleted (see below). If material already in a footnote and superfluously elevated to the main text is also deleted (as it must be - see below), the division into 3 paras can be reversed. The topic (of sexual morality) is, in any case, a minor one which does not justify expansion.

[B] Reordering the previous sentences. Accepted in part.

Previously there were four sentences. #1 was an overview of the consensus of critical opinion of imputations of unchastity made against Leo. #2 noted the two moderns who stood outside the consensus. #3 explained the two main sources of the imputations. #4 noted (without naming) a contemporary eye-witness (identified in a footnote). Contaldo moved #3 to open the section (to which he added two sentences, one new and one taken from an existing footnote). Then comes the new para. with new material to which #4 is added. Contaldo's third para. comprises #1§ and #2. Whether the section opens with the old #1 or the old #3 is not of great moment. My proposal I in the drafting sandbox opened in effect with #3.

[C] Elevating to the main text material in a footnote. Rejected.

This is material still to be found at new footnote 25. There is no call to duplicate material in this way, and especially not to privilege some accounts over others. Apart from improperly privileging anti-chastity voices (and skewing them in the process to make them seem all of a kind), it serves no purpose except to pad out the sub-section.

[D] Introducing entirely new material. Rejected.

This is the Luther material, which derives from a popular biography of Luther published in 2006. No reference to Luther's work is given and the quote may or may not be apocryphal. Having regard to the Strathern fiasco, I am not inclined to accept at face value this passage from Luther as being authentic, and one would need to know the context in which it appears in the 2006 book. For entirely other reasons it seems to me unnecessary to pursue that enquiry:

(i) the quote is presented as if Luther was on a par with Herculaneo, i.e., a contemporary and eye-witness at Leo's Court. Luther made one visit to Rome, in 1511 or 1512, under Julius II and so was not an eye-witness of Leo's Court.

(ii) the quote (if authentic) conflicts with the sentiments expressed in the letter of 1520 quoted in the "general assessment" sub-section.

(iii) Luther was given to invective against the papacy in his later years and so the source (even if authentic) is not credible.

(iv) The quote is inherently unstable, referring as it seems to do to a decision of the Lateran Council which Leo approved and did not veto. The only reference I have to the conciliar decree is in a treatise by Pope Benedict XIV "On Heroic Virtue", chapter IV, §14 where it is paraphrased as requiring cardinals to live "soberly, chastely, and piously" etc. It is cited and (in the relevant part) quoted by Jill Burke in "Sex and Spirituality in 1500's Rome", The Art Bulletin, vol.88, No. 3 (Sept. 2006), pp.482-495, at p.491. [the bull promulgating the decree is Supernae dispositionis arbitrio of 1514, cited and quoted in part by Gigliola Fragnito, "Cardinals' Courts in Sixteenth-Century Rome", The Journal of Modern History, vol. 65, No. 1 (March 1993), pp.26-56, at pp.32f.]

On reconsideration I withdraw my objection, letting the quote stand but making extensive comments in the footnote.

[E] Terminology. Rejected, but subject to reconsideration.

Three times Contaldo has introduced the anachronistic terms "homosexual" or "homosexuality" (coined in 1897 as to denote sexual pathologies). In the opening sentence he replaced "unchastity" with "homosexuality"; in the penultimate sentence he added to "unchastity" the gloss "(specifically homosexuality)"; in footnote 29 he glosses "unnatural vice" (a quote from McCabe) with "(homosexuality)". In talk Contaldo notes that the sub-section mentions claims made against Leo and considers it necessary to "actually say what those claims were".

(i) The discourse in Giovio and Guicciardini specifies chastity. That is the term employed and there is no justification for departing from it.

(ii) The 3 pasquinades quoted by Dall'Orto on his website (I ignore Luther, and, in W&A, Dall'Orto gives no details) either use synonyms for men who are anally penetrated (naming Leo as one, or associating him with such) - he is described as "fiorentin, baro, ciego e paticone" (1522), and is said to have valued "bardass'e buffon" (1533); or else spell out the sexual activity in which he was allegedly engaged when he died - "per fotter troppo in cul un suo ragazzo" (1521). Dall'Orto adds an undated satiric epitaph which named two men (described as "cinedi" from Latin cinaedus meaning male concubine or, loosely, for a man of effeminate or luxurious habits) as lamenting his death.

(iii) These libels divide into two groups: (a) those which accuse Leo of anal sex both active (1521) and passive (1522), and (b) those which associate him with men who are either effeminate (the undated satirical epitaph) or are predisposed to being penetrated anally (1533). In light of this range, the choice of "homosexual" is clearly inadequate to cover the ground, not least because it is ambivalent as to whether an attitude (disposition/ orientation) or activity is meant: a man might have the disposition but not act on it, or engage in the act (in prison or other exclusively male environments, for example) without having a disposition towards it. Unchastity, on the other hand covers thoughts, words, and deeds but does not extend to a disposition/ orientation which is not acted upon (a situation which does not feature in the libels or in Giovio or Guicciardini). I would be open to expanding in a minor way in a footnote on the content of the pasquinades, but they are insignificant and worthless.