Bathhouses and Riverbanks: Sodomy in a Renaissance Republic

Bathhouses and Riverbanks carries out, for the first time in English, a thorough examination of the criminal records dealing with sodomy in the Republic of Lucca from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. It does this by analysing the work and activities of the Office of Decency, the magistracy entirely devoted to the disciplining of sexual non-conformity. The great tableau that emerges depicts a reality marked by conflicts and contradictions.

Diving deeply into the everyday life of people from all social levels, this book provides new insights into early modern men who were sexually attracted to men, debunking the myth of pederasty as the only form of homoeroticism expressed in early modern societies. It also offers one of the richest discussions so far of early modern male-female sodomy. In examining these records, Grassi’s research raises a fresh new perspective on the religious conflicts that shook Italy in the sixteenth century when the control of sexual behaviour became a bone of contention between State and Church and the debates revolving around its regulation anticipated the themes of mature eighteenth-century jurisdictionalism.

Umberto Grassi is a Marie Skłodowska Curie global fellow at the Research Centre PoliTeSse (Politics and Theories of Sexuality, Università di Verona) and at the Department of History of the University of Maryland (College Park). He is also an honorary research fellow at the Centre for the History of Emotions at the University of Western Australia. Grassi is the author of Sodoma. Persecuzioni, affetti, pratiche sociali (2019) and many articles on the history of sexuality, religious dissent, and emotions.

“With this meticulously researched and provocative book Umberto Grassi makes an important contribution to the history of sodomy in early modern Italy and, more generally, Europe.” — Cristian Berco, Bishop’s University

“Bathhouses and Riverbanks: Sodomy in a Renaissance Republic is an utterly moving, deeply researched, and meticulously contextual urban history that deserves pride of place among the most outstanding books in sexuality studies.” — Helmut Puff, University of Michigan

“This fascinating book offers an important corrective to the widely accepted claim that male/male sex in the premodern world was merely a practice unrelated to perceptions of identity, especially sexual. Here instead we have in vivid details drawn from criminal records of Renaissance Lucca revealing accounts of the ways in which it often entailed deeper relationships, self-perceptions, and even a more spiritual vision of love.” — Guido Ruggiero, University of Miami

“This is a rich and nuanced book, ranging far beyond a statistical analysis of its main source in the records Office of Decency. It aims both to present a picture of the realities of life, especially for the humbler sections of society, and also to interpret these in the light of recent researches into queer theory and the history of emotions. […] It deserves comparison with Michael Rocke’s Forbidden Friendships or Guido Ruggiero’s The Boundaries of Eros and should join them as classic studies of the realities of non-regular sex in Renaissance Italy.” — Christine Meek, review in Cultural and Social History

“Umberto Grassi’s fascinating monograph explores the relationship among rules about sexual activity, the authorities that created them, and the messy reality of everyday sexualities in the late medieval and early modern periods. […] Grassi’s insights are valuable for historians working not only in the histories of sexuality and emotions, but also the family, law, and religious culture in the medieval and early modern periods.” — Roisin Cossar, review in Speculum

“Umberto Grassi has written a most impressive work on sodomy in the Republic of Lucca. […] Grassi deftly combines elements of queer theory, cultural history, social history, and the history of emotions to provide a very fine and provocative study.” — Jeffrey R. Watt, review in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance