Introduction: Florence and Sodomy; 1. Making Problems: Preoccupations and Controversy over Sodomy in the Early Fifteenth Century; 2. The Officers of the Night; 3. "He Keeps Him Like a Woman": Age and Gender in the Social Organization of Sodomy; 4. Social Profiles; 5. "Great Love and Good Brotherhood": Sodomy and Male Sociability; 6. Politics and Sodomy in the Late Fifteenth Century: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Abolition of the Night Officers; Epilogue: Change and Continuity in the Policing of Sodomy in the Sixteenth Century; Appendix A: Penalties Levied
Summary
This is a superb work of scholarship, impossible to overpraise ... It marks a milestone in the 20-year rise of gay and lesbian studies.--Martin Duberman, The Advocate The men of Renaissance Florence were so renowned for sodomy that "Florenzer" in German meant "sodomite." In the late fifteenth century, as many as one in two Florentine men had come to the attention of the authorities for sodomy by the time they were thirty. In 1432 The Office of the Night was created specifically to police sodomy in Florence. Indeed, nearly all Florentine males probably had some kind of same-sex experience as a
