A Catholic peeks behind homophile revisionist history….. and finds bunkum:
Anti-Catholic polemicist Steve Hays recently wrote:
“Given that Michelangelo was a notorious homosexual whose art reflects his homoerotic fixation, Dave’s illustration is a queer choice to prove his point.
(comment of 1-8-07)
So was he or wasn’t he? Particularly, Catholics want to know if he was a practicing homosexual (which is where the bulk of the sinfulness lies). I don’t know one way or another, myself, but I highly suspect that his case might be one of many that radical homosexual activists (who notoriously butcher biblical texts also) have chosen to distort historical evidence and fact. Basically, they conclude that anyone who was single may have been a homosexual. Cardinal Newman is one oft-cited example that comes to mind right away. Does anyone argue that Michelangelo was not a homosexual, with solid reasoning?I found a review by Loren Partridge (Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 2, Summer, 1984, pp. 269-271), of Robert S. Liebert’s book, Michelangelo: A Psychoanalytic Study of His Life and Images (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 1983). Unfortunately, access is limited, but the Google blurb which led me to it cited Partridge as follows: “Liebert argues persuasively that Michelangelo was probably not an active homosexual. This is a refreshing corrective . . .”
James H. Beck is the author of Three Worlds of Michelangelo (Norton: 1999). A review in Axiom News, 25th February, 1999, page 9 states:
Artist and gay icon Michelangelo may not have been gay according to a controversial new study into his life and works. James Beck, author of the study and specialist in Renaissance art at Columbia University, claims that his lack of sexual activity was more to do with a fear of sexually transmitted diseases, a dislike of sex in general and devotion to his family, rather than any homosexual tendency.
His study, Three Worlds of Michelangelo states: “Michelangelo may have never married out of distaste for the sexual act.”
Professor Beck said: “The fact that he admired and rendered marvellous images of young men cannot be used as evidence of real or latent homosexuality. As female models were very rare, Michelangelo based his rendering on males, usually his studio boys, as was customary.”Patricia Fortini Brown, in her review of the same book in The New York Times, wrote:
“And what about his much discussed sexual orientation? While allowing that his celebration of the male nude extended to a masculinization of his female subjects, Beck denies that Michelangelo was a homosexual, ”closet or otherwise.” Nor was he particularly attracted to women. According to the author, the sparse evidence suggests that the artist ”had few, if any, sexual experiences.” Passion he had, but it was directed toward his art.An article in the evangelical magazine, Christian History & Biography, “Larger Than Life,” by Laurel Gasque (8-17-06), denies the common assertion of Michelangelo’s homosexuality:
“Around the time he was painting The Last Judgment, Michelangelo, now nearly 60, met two people who would have a profound personal impact on his life and faith: Tommaso de’ Cavalieri (1516–1574) and Vittoria Colonna (1492-1547).
By all accounts, both Cavalieri and Colonna were of outstanding character and intelligence. Both came from ancient families. Tommaso was beautiful in appearance. Vittoria, widow of the Marchese of Pescara, radiated the inner beauty of a devout heart. Both inspired adoration in Michelangelo. In his own words, “Whenever I see someone who is good for something, who shows some power of the mind, who can do or say something better than the others, I am compelled to fall in love with him, and give myself to him as booty, so that I am no longer my own, but all his.”
Words like these taken at face value (with little consideration for the ambiguity in the use of pronouns in Italian), along with his friendship with Cavalieri, have caused many people in recent times to argue that Michelangelo was a homosexual. Some of his own contemporaries suspected him of this, and he denied the charge.
His poetry attests to the fact that he was no stranger to lust and guilt, whether from acts or thoughts alone. The conflict between his deep admiration for earthly beauty and his yearning for a love that transcended physical desires – “the tension between nature passionately loved and grace passionately longed for,” as Dixon puts it – was a source of tortuous inner struggles. However, as Michelangelo scholars John W. Dixon [possibly referring to the book, The Christ of Michelangelo] and James Beck have argued, there is no historical evidence that he ever had sexual relations with anyone, man or woman. He claimed he was married only to his art.
Loving others, for Michelangelo, was a way of loving God. Cavalieri and Colonna brought him nearer to Christ. In a madrigal addressed to Colonna, he wrote, “In your face I aspire to what I am pledged from heaven.”Is the above information all nonsense? Is it believable and credible? Can Steve Hays produce solid research for the contrary assertion? Or is his statement drawn mostly or solely from “certain knowledge” gleaned from only a fleeting acquaintance with the subject matter? Perhaps because all the so-called “gay” activists claim Michelangelo as their own, Steve accepts this without doing any research himself (as a way to run down the Catholic Church – and its art -: one of his favorite pastimes)?
You be the judge. It seems to me that this is likely yet another of the innumerable commonly-accepted myths and fairy-tales that non-Christian secularists with an agenda wish to see promulgated and assumed without argument. I don’t know enough to render a definite, strongly-held opinion, but it looks that way, based on similar myths and propaganda that I have observed time and again.”
Hello,
The problem with all of this is that Michelangelo’s homosexuality is not only discussed by “LGBT church haters propagandist”, but by a lot of scholars, who, unlike James Beck, find it likely.
It seems J. Beck developed himself in parallel another very common myth namely the “idealization” of a necessarily sexless artist. I think an artist, even a “religious” artist, has a sexual orientation, like anybody. And I would like to know when Michelangelo “denied” to be a “homosexual”. I read nothing about that anywhere.
Moreover if the reason of a sexless life was the fear of sexual diseases… I think nobody should have had sex when Michelangelo was alive and even nom… Therefore, I think it’s not very good argument.
I think the truth is more subtle than that : it’s true there’s no evidence that Michelangelo was a “promiscuous” homosexual. Nonetheless, I absolutely don’t believe those who want make me believe he had absolutely no same-sex orientation. The fact that he wrote love poetry to some men like Cavalieri and the same year, drawed Ganymed with the eagle, the symbol of homosexuality, refute that blunt claim from James A. Bech.
Thank you.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. However, effusive same sex letters were quite common late into the 19th century and it is anachronistic to read a 20th century construct called homoeroticism into them. It used to be called friendship
And was often expressed in the most over-the-top language.
Thank you, but sorry, I am afraid your reply is a rather unimaginative and expected one, because it’s the reply all people who don’t want to consider the entire set of evidences about Michelangelo’s homosexuality usually make.
It’s obvious that Michelangelo’s nephew, who altered his poetry to change the masculine pronouns into feminine pronouns, knew very well the difference between love and “””frienship””” and it was very long before the 19th century.
By the way, I don’t know if “effusive same sex letters” were so “quite common”, but it’s a fact too that such letters were very commonly (and logically) written by homosexuels or bisexuals. J.J. Winckelmann is, with Michelangelo another case, even if in the case of W, the sexual side is better documented.
So, frankly, the only kind of “wishful thinking” for people (and many of the biographers of this artist with them, it’s most important) who note that all indicates that Michelangelo was predominantly homosexual, is to think that people who deny that fact on principle will stop to deny on principle.
Have a good day. 😉
http://rictornorton.co.uk/michela.htm
And I must add that “effusive” is at least an understatement in the case of Michelangelo. ^^
Uis.edu/lgbtqa/michelangelo
See, for eg., “But were they gay? The mystery of same-sex love in the 19th century,” The Atlantic, Sept.7, 2012
It is obvious that some évidences have been destroyed, but not all :
http://rictornorton.co.uk/michela.htm
In a letter to the boy’s uncle, Luigi del Riccio, Michelangelo speaks of the youth as “the flame who consumes me” and he relates a dream in which the boy “mocked my senile love,” but alludes to a physical consummation: “My love has ratified the agreement which I made of myself to him.” The most explicit proof is a rejected version of a quatrain for the tomb:
The earthy flesh, and here my bones deprived
Of their charming face and beautiful eyes,
Do yet attest for him how gracious I was in bed
When he embraced, and in what the soul doth live.
Whether this tomb inscription is meant to be spoken by Michelangelo or by Cecchino, the allusion to their common bed is clear. This was accompanied by a note advising Riccio to burn the last two lines “in the fire without witness” and to substitute the more abstract lines “Do yet attest that grace and delight was I, / In what a prison here the soul doth live.”
The operative word here is “rejected.” I devoutly hope I am not judged posthumously by every crossed-out line of fiction I have ever penned. Poetry is not autobiography. Poetic language is not poetic intention. Poetic intention is not autobiography and autobiographical imaginings are not autobiographical facts. You are erecting a tower on shifting sand.
So, that’s not true that there is no “indication” of Michelangelo’s homosexuality. LGBTA Resource Office from University of Illinoy could have been better informed.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/09/but-were-they-gay-the-mystery-of-same-sex-love-in-the-19th-century/262117/
This link is very interesting, but it seems to indicate that homosexuality didn’t exist before Wilde…
I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that. By the way, the title of this article could have been “did they straight ?” as well. Because frankly, “clear evidences” of Michelangelo’s or even Whitman’s heterosexuality…
The fact that Whitman replied indignantly to Symonds means nothing. Edmund Gosse (who married and had children, at the contrary of Whitman) did the same in a first letter to Symonds but letter admitted that he was gay in a second letter.
Anyway the cases have to be examined one by one. The words used by Michelangelo, Garfield or Whitman are not the same, as well as what we know about their very different biographies.
Hi, lack of imagination has never remotely been a fault of mine. Quite the opposite.
But you mistake my position entirely. First – I do not accept the propaganda term, homosexual, except as a shorthand to refer to people who are physically intimate with the opposite sex.
There are homosexual behaviors but not identities.
Second, this category – a third sex – was created only a century or so ago by political activists. Committing a homosexual act did not turn you into a separate category of being by any means and sharing same-sex friendships of even great intensity was quite common. Beds were often shared without sexual activity.
Third. Homosexual activists have not been above forging letters and photos to create proof of homosexuality and even pedophilia. Lewis Carroll has been a victim of that type of forgery. So caution is justified.
Fourth. I have no problem accepting that artists, more often than others, have tormented sex lives. Tchaikovsky was clearly homosexually inclined. However, Chopin was not, although activists have tried claiming him. In the light of such activism, I am bound to be sceptical of claims in this area.
Fifth, major non-gay scholars like James Beck have concluded the evidence does not add up to anything as definite as a sodomitical lifestyle. Suppressed desires, longings, nude art, and lascivious poetry do not make an artist a sodomite, any more than penning detective fiction turns a writer into a serial killer.
What “””propaganda”””, is it the “magic word” ? ^^ People who are attracted by the other sex are heterosexuals, even without having been “intimate” with anyone. It is exactly the same with people attracted by their sex : they are homosexuals. “Asexuality”, if it really exists, is the state of people having no desire at all and I think it’s rather rare. ^^
There always have been heterosexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals. It’s not because these words have been coined in 1869 that this fact of life was not valid in 1868. So, it’s of no importance that someone think sexuality is not part of identity. It is, factually.
“Homosexual activists” (who precisely ?) “forged photos and letters”. Ha good… I’m very interested by these forged photographies to know what it represents. Your statement is rather curious, because a lot of documents dealing with homosexuality have been destroyed or altered in history. It is the case of most of John Addington Symonds’ papers for example, with perhaps other letters sent by Whitman or other people he knew. So, what forgery ? Missing papers, rather. ^^
In the case of Michelangelo, the forgery did exist, but the forger is the nephew having “heterosexualized” some of his writings in print.
Did it come to the mind of “major non gay” James Beck that the only possible reason of this alteration is that the original version made clear that Michelangelo was homosexually inclined ? If not, caution is justified.
So, major gay and non gay (frankly, whatever…) biographers who concluded that Michelangelo was homosexually inclined didn’t need “forged photos” of the artist in “compromising situation”. 😉
Nonsense. Every friendship is an attraction. Attractions can be intense. If you read the writings of the saints, you will find much of the language quite erotic. The Bible is filled with erotic spiritual language. Eros at its most sublime has nothing to do with your genitals and your crude categories of homo, hetero and what not. Sodomitical acts are forbidden traditionally being inimical to the production of life, to health, and to emotional maturity and spirituality. That you have set up a straw man heterosexuality with no room for any same-sex feeling within it is your problem and does not remotely undermine my position.
You’re perfectly right to state that the “operative word” is “rejected”, because Michelangelo realized that this version was autobiographicaly too explicit ^^ That why he wanted this text to be destroyed, even if it finally wasn’t. ^^
Who said that poetry couldn’t be a form of autobiography ? Is it a dogm ? Actually, it’s quite the contrary : there is a lot of examples of poets having an autobiographical inspiration. And anyway, it’s dogmatical again to state that a poem adressed to another people has not a biographical content, that it’s just “imagination”. It’s nonsense. 😉
So, to deny on principle that historical datas indicate that Michelangelo was homosexually inclined is like erecting tower in shifting sand. It’s just highly inconvincing. 😉
It is unconvincing to you because you are a homosexual activist and most likely a practicing homosexual yourself, hence the desire to create a special culture of kindred souls. Completely redundant as Michelangelo, Bach, Mozart, etc. belong to humanity, and regardless of your sexual practices you are a human being.
As I wrote in my first post, the problem is that “Michelangelo’s homosexuality is not only discussed by “LGBT Church hater propagandists”, but by a lot of scholars who, unlike James Beck, (non gays or gays or whatever), found it likely” So you can speculate about me as much as you want, it’s of no importance and it’s a rather weak argumentation.
What about you then ? aren’t you a anti-homosexual activist and the fact to present James Beck as a “major non gay” as an irrefutable proof of neutrality is not, precisely, the proof of your lack of neutrality ?
Because if a homosexual stating that all indicates that Michelangelo was homosexual isn’t by definition neutral, then with this funny way of thinking, a heterosexual stating the contrary is not neutral : you would have to be a gay stating that he was heterosexual or a heterosexual stating that he was gay to be neutral… It’s nonsense.
So don’t worry : I dont have the “desire to create a special culture of kindred souls”, I am only interested in historical truth and historical datas tell us that Michelangelo was homosexually inclined, like Tchaikovsky and that Bach and Mozart, and a lot or other people were not.
As you can write, I don’t fear to admit that truth, despite the statute of “homosexual activist” you generously, very neutrally and unilaterally applied to me.
And yes, you are right : homosexuals, like Tchaikovsky or Michelangelo belong to humanity.
Sorry, one more thing : like everybody, I am afraid of venereal diseases too and therefore, the best choice for me is perhaps to not have sex at all. Nevertheless, even the fact that I would have no sex at all wont make disappear my sexual orientation nor my sexual desires.
So why would it be different for Michelangelo and why should’t be noted that wroting poetry to men with a strong homoerotic symbolism is an evidence of a same-sex orientation ?
And finally is it because he feared venereal diseases or because sex didn’t interested him that he seems to be a lifelong celibate ? Frankly, these two motivations are not the same and are even quite the opposite. As if James Beck decided a priori that Michelangelo couldn’t have been homosexual at all and that any more or less relevant argument in his sense was good enough.
To be oriented (what does that even mean) to homosexual acts does not make you a homosexual.
Otherwise, everyone who struggled with fantasies of killing would have to be locked up for murder.
Inclinations of all kinds exist in all people.
Furthermore, alll you are saying is a lonely man who was mostly celibate had a rather passionate attachment to the young lads who modeled for him. This is quite human, no? One can be attached for many reasons that are not lecherous. Adults without children can be drawn to them as the replacement for sons they never had. A religious artist can see cherubs and angels in a boy’s supernal beauty.
Why is the attachment specifically sodomitical?
And if M did not commit sodomy, he was not a sodomite.
It’s funny how you pretend not to understand. 😉
To be homosexual or heterosexual is absolutely not correlated to the intensity of your sexual life. “to be heterosexually oriented” is, for a man, to be attracted to women and “to be homosexually oriented” is, for a man, to be attracted to men. ^^ It’s not necessary to lead a sexual life to be “oriented”, because a very ugly heterosexual with whom no woman would want to sleep with is still a heterosexual, “heterosexually oriented”. ^^
Then, it sounds like sterile casuistics to claim that people “oriented to homosexual acts” are not homosexuals.
Dante Alighiery wrote love poetry to women and even without having slept with them : he was a heterosexual, I’m sure no one is going to deny that fact. So, when Michelangelo wrote love poetry to men, making clear for anyone who can read, that he was physically attracted to them, it’s not because he was mostly heterosexual, for sure. ^^
I’m not suprised by the delicate analogy between murderers and those filthy “sodomites”. 😉 But this “metaphor” is ineffective : to be homosexually oriented isn’t a crime.
A poor “lonely man who” had a “passionate attachment” for young lads, of course it’s “human” : homosexuals are humans. These “attachments” were not for lack of anything better : Michelangelo could write love poetry to female models, after all. He didn’t : instead of that, he drawed rather erotic Ganymeds (the symbol of pederasty since the Antiquity) for Cavalieri.
So it’s really not necessary to be an hysteric “LGBT propagandist” (the magic word ;)) to conclude that Michelangelo was homosexually oriented : you just have to examine the datas without the blinders of people using middle-aged terms such as “sodomites”. 😉
I use the term sodomite because that is exactly what the church objects to – sodomy, whether committed by men or women, whether married or unmarried. It is a much broader category than the recently coined ‘homosexual’ and does not carry the political agenda nor the freight of an identity and it is far older than the middle ages, going back to Biblical and classical pagan times and earlier. Do you also object to words like eros or epiphany or agape or hubris as “middle-aged” (sic)? If not, why not? Tendentiousness? Also, why is it that when it comes to attacking traditional gender roles, you activists – clearly you are not scholars – find sexuality fluid, but then when someone’s desires (as interpreted by you, of course) seem ambiguous or conflicted, they are “fixed” as homosexual, which is suddenly NOT fluid but as precise as the tiny droplet of black blood that allowed racists to categorize people? You are simply unable to grasp my fundamental point that the fixation with genitality is making you unable to see that heterosexuality is also not a category among others, it is the given of the human condition. The other may exist, it is not the given and cannot equate itself to the given without intellectual gymnastics and university subsidies.
All of this is really interesting, but the fact to use words such as “sodomite” is far from being neutral, politically or otherwise. 😉
Where did I write I found sexuality is “fluid”? Nowhere : the only thing I personnally, am going the write (because I am not The LGBT Agenda as well as you are not The Homophobic Agenda), is that homosexuals, bisexuals and heterosexuals exist since a very long time.
That’s just a fact. ^^
Correction, people have committed sodomy for a very long time and have had friendships with their own sex forever. Whoever doubted that? You still do not get the reification I am objecting to.
Your last two comments must have gone straight to spam and been deleted because of multiple posting and perhaps some word usage or ad hominem that caught the spam filter and was rated Flaming or Trolling. I write from a Christian perspective. I do not mind anyone writing from a pagan anti-Christian or materialist perspective if they are fair- minded as to evidence. As I said, Tchaikovsky, Poulenc…no doubt homosexual in your usage. M, so far as I have seen the evidence, was celibate almost entirely.
By the way, the activist, Symonds, was a pederast and part of the pagan British intellectual establishment steeped in institutional pedophilia, with a vested interest in supporting Burckhardt’s anti-Christian reading of European high art as against theology, whereas it was steeped in it. M was a follower of Savaranola.
Now, this thread must end here. If you wish to promote your ideas rather than clarify mine, I suggest starting your own blog, or this site will demote you to spam.
PLEASE DO NOT THREATEN, FLAME, OR TROLL.
Comments on a private blog are a privilege not a right.
Be polite and reasonable and do not engage in ad hominem and multiple posting of the same point.
Here is a link with an appreciation of James Beck : http://rictornorton.co.uk/michela.htm
Read “Michelangelo, Homosexuality, and the New Pope, ” by The Apologetics Group, which makes many of the points I made. And remember also that the claim that the poems were changed were first made by a gay activist in the 19th century. Longfellow, who translated the same texts, did not find them homosexual, as you call it.