Time Line 1500
- 1500's
Elena de Cespedes, a Spanish woman who lived as a man and married a woman, is discovered and immolated.
- 1513
Balboa, while exploring what is now Panama described homosexual activities among the natives he witnessed as "Abominable". He threw 40 of the offenders to his dogs. [AA]
- 1520, June 30
Inca Emperor Montezuma II dies at Tenochtitlan, Mexico. He is know to have cannibalized the boys he sodomized. [Greif 82]
- 1526
A Spanish historian wrote that Carib men also had lovers that they did not intend to smother in butter and spices. These lovers were distinguished by wearing "naguas" or short skirts and jewelry their lovers had given them.
- 1530
In an Inca town in northern Peru, shortly after being conquered by the Spanish, there were fifteen women for every man, the men had been burned for suspected homosexual activities. By 1580 the area was still known for its gay activity.
- 1533
The "buggery" law is passed in England decreeing a penalty of death. It also decreed any non-procreative sexual activity, a crime. This is the first time the offense is covered under civil, rather than church, law. [AA]
- 1541
The birth of the painter El Greco (death 1614) "His men are martyrs or conquerors; in their gaunt visages he traces the weariness and the final exhaustion of the body in surrendering to the mystical vision, or the savage meditation of those entrusted with the flagellation of Heretics."
- 1550 - 1555
Reign of Pope Julius III who, upon election as Pope, made his 17 year old lover a member of the College of Cardinals, and also appointed him Secretary of State. His orgies with teenage Cardinals were common knowledge. Most were horrified but the Archbishop of Benevento wrote a book, In Praise of Sodomy, dedicated to the pope.
- 1551, Sept. 19
Birth of Henri III, King of France. In the final years of his reign (he died at 37) he surrounded himself with handsome young men and abandoned himself to hedonistic joys. He took particular delight in flogging the backs of penitents marching in holy procession. [Greif 82]
- 1563
The Roman Catholic council of Trent concludes that sex is bad and denounces Apaintings calculated to excite lust." Pope Paul IV has clothes painted onto the naked figures in Michelangelo?s painting, Last Judgement, in the Sistine Chapel.
- 1564, Feb 26
Birth of English playwright Christopher Marlowe. "All they that love not tobacco and boys are fools." [Greif 82]
- 1570's
Rome: Montaigne reports that at the Church of St. John, Catholic priests perform same sex marriages. A contemporary historian reports that same sex couples married in St. John?s are burned in the city square.
- 1576
Brazil: Spanish explorers report that some native women "give up all duties of women and imitate men...Each has a woman to serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat each other and speak with each other as man and wife."
- 1580, April 1
The Netherlands: Civil Marriage is first established.
- 1583
The Third Provincial Council of Lima, in Peru, tells natives that Asodomy whether with another man, or with a boy , or a beast ...carries the death penalty, ...and the reason God has allowed that you should be so afflicted and vexed by other nations is because of this vice that your ancestors had and many of you still have." [AA]
- 1585
In one of the earliest recorded cases of masochism, Sister Mary Magdalene de Pazzi begs other nuns to tie her up and hurl hot wax at her. She also made a novice at the convent thrash her. [AA]
- 1590
In "Lectiones antique" Ludovicus Caelius Rhodiginus describes a man who needs to be whipped to have an erection. [wd]
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