“Ut Cum Muliere”

Although legal records provide much valuable information on the practice of “sodomy” in late medieval Italy, such evidence is remarkably scant for other parts of Europe. ¹ The document presented here stands practically alone for medieval England as a description of same-sex intercourse as well as male transvestism. ² It thus helps assess how medieval English society viewed such behavior. Medieval ideas about what modern people call “sexuality” cannot be elucidated only from the writings of canonists and theologians, ³ but must also be sought from documents recording social practice. First-person accounts on which scholars might base a reconstruction of an individual's sexual subjectivity are rare in the Middle Ages. When such accounts do appear, they are likely to have arisen in a legal context and to be subject to all sorts of problems of interpretation. ⁴ Nevertheless, as they reflect both the way individuals saw themselves and the way the legal system interpreted their behavior, such accounts are important avenues into medieval constructions of sexuality.