2Marta Powell Hartley, in her 1986 article, "Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Attis: Ovidian Lovers at the Fontaine d'Amors in Guillaume de Lorris's Roman de la rose," [PMLA, 110 (1986): 324-337] argues from Guillaume's use of Ovidian myths as well as from the ambiguity of Bel Accueil and the rosebud, that Guillaume is "consciously flirting with sexual ambiguity and homosexuality." (p. 333) Hers is the only analysis I have encountered thus far that argues for a homosexual reading of Guillaume's Roman. See Heather M. Arden, The Roman de la rose: An Annotated Bibliography (New York, Garland, 1993), passim.
3John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 1980)
43 Lateran Council (1179) Conciliorum oecumenicorum decreta, ed. G. Alberigo et al. (Freiburg, Herder, 1962), pp. 193-194; Decretales Gregorii IX, liber quintus, tit. XXXI, cap. iv; in Corpus Juris Canonici, II, col. 836. "Quicumque in incontinentia illa quae contra naturam est,...si clerici fuerint, ejiciantur a clero, vel ad poenitentiam agendam in monasteriis detrudantur;..."
5Vern L. Bullough, "The Sin Against Nature and Homosexuality," in Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James Brundage (Prometheus Books, 1982), p. 64, n. 58
6Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 1990):143
7The Institutes of Justinian, ed. and trans. Thomas C. Sanders (Longmans, 1922), Lib. IV, tit. xviii.4.11
8James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (University of Chicago Press, 1987): 472-73
9Boswell, p. 290, citing Les etablissements de Saint Louis accompagnes des textes primitifs et de textes derives (Paris, 1883), 1.90. and arguing that by 1200 the term "bougrerie" was understood to encompass homosexuality.
10Boswell, pp. 2889-290, citing Li livres de jostice et de plet 18.24.22, ed. Pierre Rapetti (Paris, 1890), 279-80. Boswell notes that these were private laws, i.e. not royal but specific to Orleans; so, however, was Justinian's law a private law.
11Gilles de Corbeil, Hierapigra, ed in C. Vieillard, Essai sur la societe medicale et religieuse au XIIe siecle: Gilles de Corbeil (Paris, 1909), 351-52; Alan de Lille, De planctu naturae, ed. Nikolaus M. Haring, Studi medievali 19 (1978), trans. James J. Sheridan, Alan of Lille: The Plaint of Nature (Pontifical Institute, 1980); J. Longere, ed., Alain de Lille, Liber Poenitentialis, Les Traditions Moyenne et Courte, Archives 32 (1965), pp. 169-242. A longer redaction, also edited by Longere, is Alain de Lille, Liber Poenitentialis, 2 vols., Analecta Mediaevalia Namurcensia 17, 18 (Louvain, 1965); Pierre de Poitiers, Summa de confessione, ed. Jean Longere, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaevalis 51 (Turnholt, 1980). For a discussion of the treatments of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, see Bullough, "The Sin against Nature and Homosexuality," pp. 64-66.
Gilles de Corbeil was physician to Philip II.
12Verbum Abbreviatum 138 in PL 205: 333-35, and appendix 2. See the discussion in John Baldwin, The Language of Sex (University of Chicago, 1994): 44-45; translation of the short version in Boswell, 375-78.
13Thomas de Chobham, Summa confessorum, ed. F. Broomfield, Analecta mediaevalia Namurcensia 25 (Louvain, 1968), 398-403.
14Richards, p. 142. William of Auvergne would repay more study on this question. His views on knowledge and on the soul have been studied, and his role in the debates with the friars and over the introduction of Aristotelianism has been noted. But his social/sexual views have not been studied; nor has his role in the confiscation of Jewish sacred books in 1240-42 been much investigated.
15Baldwin, p. 46.
16David Hult, "Language and Dismemberment: Abelard, Origen and the Romance of the Rose," in Rethinking the Romance of the Rose, pp. 101-130.
17Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Married Priests and the Reforming Papacy: The Eleventh-Century Debates (New York, The Edwin Mellon Press, 1982), esp. 112-14, 134-36; for the debate as it extended into the early thirteenth century, see John Baldwin, The Language of Sex, passim. See the discussion of Gilles de Corbeil in Ziolkowski, Alan de Lille's Grammar of Sex, pp. 68-69; an anonymous late twelfth-early thirteenth century poem Nos uxorati, trans. in Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, p. 398. Boswell (p. 278, n.29) thinks that poems attacking clerical celibacy became more acrid in the thirteenth century. Thomas of Chobham, Summa 7.2.16.1, ed. Broomfield, pp. 379-78 strongly attacked the policy of clerical celibacy; see another early thirteenth century poem in Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 402. Wright, Latin Poems, p. 171; Wright, The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists , vol. 2 (1872), p. 209.
18Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, 311-15 and the poem of Ganymede and Helen, trans. in Boswell, 381-89.
19Karl Uitti, "Cele (qui) doit estre Rose clamee: Guillaume's Intentionality," in Rethinking the Romance of the Rose, 40.
20Jan Ziolkowski, Alan of Lille's Grammar of Sex (Medieval Academy of America, 1985), p. 70
21Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, p. 385.
22Michel Zink, "Bel-Accueil la Travesti du 'Roman de la Rose' de Guillaume de Lorris et Jean de Meun a "Lucidor" de Hugo von Hofmannsthal," Litterature 4 (1982): 32.
23 'Sanz droiture' suggests, perhaps more accurately, that the God of Love is talking about a love that is either without rectitude or without right (possibly in a legal sense) rather than against nature.
24Harley, "Narcissus, Hermaphrodite and Attis," p. 334.
25This reading of the poem, which does not emphasize the unconsummated and hence unfinished relationship between the Lover and the Rose, works well with those who have argued for Guillaume's artistry and completion of the work. See, for example, David Hult, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: Readership and Authority int eh First Roman de la Rose (Cambridge University Press, 1986)
26Roman de la rose vv. 3506-7.
27Hult, Fulfilling Prophecies, p. 51.
28Roman de la rose v. 12237.
29Roman de la rose vv. 12624-30.
30Does this suggest that unnatural loves can be miraculously changed? Perhaps they cannot be. In the Roman de la rose, the feminine always remains problematic, while the masculine (in the person of Bel Accueil) always remains attractive and an object of desire.