Sodomy and Criminal Justice in the Parlement of Paris, c.1540-c.1700

Abstract

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries haveoften been seen as a time when criminal courts continued the precedent set by the medieval Inquisition in persecuting the sexual crimes labelled as “sodomy”. Yet evidence from the criminal archives of the Parlement of Paris – the largest secular court in Europe, with ajurisdiction that covered over half the French population– reveals how authorities in France were not engaged in the systematic persecution of sodomy. The Parlement tried only 132 casesof sodomy involving sex between men from 1540-1700. This article argues that precisely because sodomy was “unmentionable,” according to the rhetoric of these ecclesiastical and judicial elites, the practices they referred to as sodomy were so rarely defined, and the jurisprudence of the courts remained hidden behind fierce public condemnations. The ambiguous language used in official court records proclaimed the terms of moral discipline while concealing the reluctant toleration of the crime early modern courts labelled as “sodomy.”Sexual crimes rarely came to court in this period and instead were tacitly tolerated.