ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the way in which focusing on same-sex attraction can shed new light on how we conceive love and desire in the late medieval and early modern period. Firstly, it re-examines the extensive historiographical debate on the social and cultural history of homoeroticism in late medieval and early modern Europe through the lens of emotions. This perspective allows us to go beyond some of the conundrums in which historians of homosexuality working ʻfrom below’ have sometimes found themselves tangled. The diverse and often overlooked emotional lexicon contained in the judicial reports of trials against sodomites is explored. From this vantage point, we can have a glimpse not only into what people felt for each other, but also into the way in which unconventional desires affected their self-perception and their positioning within society.
