ABSTRACT
Comparable expressions enjoyed the favor of canonists and authors of con fessionals on the European continent; in 1700, for example, Ludovico Sinistrari d'Ameno records the terms peccatum muturn ("silent sin"), vitium nefandum ("unspeakable vice"), and vitium innominabile ("unnameable vice"), all designat ing the crime against nature or sodomy. A century before, the Andean historian of Peru, Garcilaso de la Vega, claimed that sodomy was so hated by the Incas and their people that the very name was odious to them and they never uttered it; while the Incas were apparently hostile to male homosexuality, Garcilaso's claim that they refused to name it is probably a projection of Christian attitudes. Significantly, Gar-
cilaso also mentions a city that, like Sodom, was destroyed by fire for its addiction to homosexuality. In late antiquity, through a false etymology based upon the Greek form of the place name, Sodom was inter preted as meaning pecus tacens, "silent herd," a gloss that may have influenced the later formula peccatum mutum. Wil liam of Auvergne (ca. 1180-1249) said that it was the "unmentionable vice," noting Gregory the Great's claim that the air itself was corrupted by its mention.
