Propter Sodomitarum crimen. Social control, surveillance, and sanctioning of same-sex sexuality in late antique Christian communities

Abstract

With the triumph of Christianity in the 4th and 5th centuries, a notable shift occurred as this religious doctrine increasingly fostered a fundamentally hostile approach towards same-sex sexuality, which differed from traditional Roman views. This transformation extended beyond theological discourses, manifesting not only in a harsher imperial legislation. More important for the daily lives of thousands of Christians were the preachers’ attempts of establishing a system of stricter social control over homosexual acts. Non-clerical Christians consequently played a pivotal role in monitoring, regulating, and reporting their peers and members of their own clergy suspected to be engaged in same-sex relationships to ecclesiastical authorities. Church sanctions, publicly administered and socially ostracizing, contributed to a self-reinforcing system that solidified the new normative guidelines around sexual norms and thus had a profound influence on the lives of a multitude of people living in the Christianising Roman world.