The Michelangelo Code

Something leads me to believe that sooner or later, someone is going to want to see my footnotes (and this a blog, mind you!), so I’ve posted the entire text (with citations) that I use in the film, here below:

Text of the Michelangelo Code as read in the December 1, 2006 YouTube posting

We were in Rome back in August, and went to the Vatican, and made the long snaking route through the museum to the Sistine Chapel. So we’re looking up at the ceiling, and I’m listening to the audioguide: this is God separating light from darkness, and this is God creating the Sun and the Moon…Creating the Sun and the Moon. And then I’m looking around at the rest of the ceiling. [ignudi] that’s right, Michelangelo was supposed to be Gay. In fact, he’s really gay. In fact…I don’t know if you’ve been to the Vatican Museum, but it’s basically some rooms by Raphael, the Sistine Chapel, and then acres of naked Classical sculpture. And I’m like, yeah, those Classicals they were kinda gay too. And, you know, the one actually inspired the other. The Popes started the cult of digging up statuary from antiquity, and basically began art collecting in its modern sense. And it was this cult for all things classical that fueled the Renaissances obsession with the human body. So I’m thinking…if the elite of Greece and Rome were gay, and Michelangelo was gay, then where were all the gay men in the intervening 1200 years. I mean where did all the gay men go when the Classical world collapsed?

So this essay is only gonna make sense if you believe people are genetically born gay. If you don’t believe in the gay gene, but instead think that homosexuality is sinful behavior brought on by bad-upbringing, then you’re probably gonna think this is all a bunch of nonsense. My personal theory is that a tendency to homosexuality began appearing in the new urban societies of the Mediterranean in the first millennium BC. It may possibly have been a response the to no longer pressing need for population growth, since these city states were already densely populated. I thought that was a really neat theory, but then I found out that Aristotle had postulated something pretty much the same.[1] Now the important thing to remember about Hellenic civilization is not that they created the foundations of western civilization, and literature, theatre, philosophy, they figured out that a²+b²=c² and that if you made a column a little bit fat that it looked straight…that they did all this…oh and they happened to be gay…THEY DID THIS BECAUSE THEY WERE GAY! The Greek miracle was produced by 45,000 men over 6 generations in a handful of city-states.[2] And how did it happen?: Pederasty. Sexual relations between man and adolescent. These men weren’t just having sexual relations with these lads, they were also teaching them all of the inherited wisdom and knowledge from ancient civilization…at a time before formal education.

I don’t want to say anything too inflammatory, but Classical civilization (the Greeks and the Romans) was essentially a highly cultured gay elite supported on a superstructure of millions of enslaved heterosexuals, whose job was to produce and reproduce. And for its first two centuries Christianity was in large part a liberation movement for the heterosexual slaves.

Now the question I asked at the beginning seems rather pertinent because right now the Vatican is grappling with the “problem” homosexual priests. And let me stress before I begin, that my agenda is not pro or anti-gay, nor is it pro- or anti-catholic. My only agenda is try to determine what happened, and to understand it for its full complexity.

In 2005 the Vatican issued a new set of guidelines for seminarians studying to be priests.

• The Catechism distinguishes between homosexual acts and homosexual tendencies.
• while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practice homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called “gay culture”.
• Different, however, would be the case in which one were dealing with homosexual tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem - for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded. Nevertheless, such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate.[3]

Well I’ve got news for the Vatican…I call it the Michelangelo Code…and you know what, the code is this simple: [Celibate = Gay]. Or perhaps I ought better to rephrase that. As an answer the question I asked earlier, about where all the gay men went with the collapsed of the Classical World…well, I believe they hid in the clergy of the Catholic Church. In order to explain my theory, I’ve made this chart:

If you’re gonna be priest, you can be…

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste

Now the ideal candidates are over here.

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
↑

Problem is that these guys, very often end up over here,

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
→	↑

and leave the priesthood.

Such is the case with Father Al who taught us church history in Sophomore year. He ran off with our English teacher, Ms. W., who he later married as his wife. Or my uncle Ronny who spent 7 years as a monk in a Trappist monastery speaking to nobody, then he decided to take a little break from the cloistered life, met an ex-nun named Betty, and moved to Denver and became flaming atheist, then a Unitarian Universalist, then Shaklee Salesman, then an Armenian Orthodox, he liked the chanting.

My theory is that through much of it’s history, the clergy of the catholic church, has been stocked largely from over here.

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
		↑	↑

The concept of celibacy having a kind of holiness, dates from before Christianity, and I do not propose that this was originally a conscious conspiracy on the part of late classic gay elite. Rather it would one of history’s great unintended consequences. A regime of celibacy generation after generation succeeds in recruiting young men who consider a life without female copulation perfectly enjoyable, and once they reach the seminary or the monastery, only then do they realize their attraction to men. This does not mean that there were not also millions of those who were of these categories.

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
↑	↑

But I believe that time and again the institutions of the church would fall under the sway of this kind of clergy.

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
		↑	↑

This does not mean that I am saying that because these men were gay, they were not also holy. I’m not saying that they didn’t generously care for the laity and give them comfort in their lives. And most importantly, I am not saying that these men did not provide the people with what to them was the most accurate description of divinity possible. All I’m saying is that I think a majority of them were gay. Whether here

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
		↑

or here.

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
			↑

And it does not mean that many of them were not here

Straight	Straight	Gay	Gay
Chaste	Unchaste	Chaste	Unchaste
		↑

Precisely because they saw their homosexuality as sinful, and, at great effort and will, resisted that sin. I call my theory the Michelangelo Code, because it is Michelangelo who outs the clergy. He’s doing so because he represents a new model for Gay men. He shows them a new route. They no longer have to be priests…they can be…get this…artists.

Michelangelo was part of a large migration of Florentine masters brought to the court of the Vatican. Another thing they brought with them was a secular gay lifestyle.[4] From the 14th Century on, Florence had been a center for the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, as well as the applied arts^: goldsmiths, gilders, framers, printers, jewelers, and cabinetmakers all of them organized on the guild method with large numbers of artistically-oriented young apprentices and journeymen inhabiting close quarters. And… surprise, surprise, you had a serious outbreak of gay culture. Situation was so bad in the 1430s that the city opened free brothels (brothels with women prostitutes) to try to counteract the persistent plague of sodomites.[5]

Here’s how I read what Michelangelo is saying. [Creation of Adam] This…to me…is Pederasty: Older man passing love and knowledge to the younger man. This describes the origin of Classical civilization. [Expulsion from the Garden] Eve here represents the burden of the heterosexual lifestyle: child-rearing, food producing. Here is Noah preparing a sacrifice, this is the old Hellenistic Religious millieu. The Flood - the destruction of the Classical World, and gay men are fleeing to the Ark of the Catholic Church. And here we have the drunkenness of Noah. His sons mock at him because he is naked and drunk. The liberties of antiquity are at an end and we are under the new asceticism of the Christian Regime.

I focus on the early 16^th Century because its one of those moments when the lid pops off history and you a chance to see events from multiple angles. Interesting to note…1510…same time that Michelangelo is painting the Sistine Chapel…who else is Rome? Martin Luther. Luther was an Augustinian Monk sent to Rome on official business. He was to negotiate with the future head of Augistians in Rome, regarding disputes between the German Branch of the Augustians and Roman headquarters. The man he met there was Giles of Viterbo.[6] This humanist scholar who advised on the ideological layout for the Sistine Chapel.[7] I believe he probably proudly showed of the creation to Luther, but what caught Luther’s attention was these guys. So here’s my second bombastic statement of the evening: I think one of the reasons Martin Luther split from the Church was because the clergy as superfluous and gay. You see, all the major heresies from 11th Century on, attack in some way on the privilege of the celibate/homosexual priest class. The Cathars, the Albigensians, the Lollards, the Hussites, the Waldensians, and finally the Reformation itself. In each case the heresy posits the idea that there be no formal priest class, but rather married heterosexual preachers coming from the laity. Martin Luther was simply thinking, thank you very much you gay/celibate priests, but we straight Germans can read our own bible and practice Christianity for ourselves. And in that he was following a line of thought developed by the Jan Hus and the Hussites in Bohemia, and Jan Hus was getting many of his ideas from John Wycliff, a 14th century English theologian who shared Luther’s contempt for the elitist religious orders and promoted reading the bible in the vernacular. He made the first translation in to English. His followers were lay preachers, who often couldn’t read Latin, and were called Lollards. In 1395 the movement represented a growing challenge to Papal authority and in that year, they presented their 12 Conclusions of the Lollards to the English Parliament. Now, this is their 3^rd Conclusion on Clerical Celibacy:

The Third Conclusion, sorrowful to hear, is: That the law of continence [that is celibacy] annexed to priesthood, that in prejudice of women was first ordained, induces sodomy in Holy Church.[8]

They’re saying it in plain words. The Lollards knew it in 1395. I believe Martin Luther knew it. I definitely think John Calvin knew it when he wrote in Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book 4, Chapter 12 Section 23.

Of the celibacy of priests…In one thing they are more than rigid and inexorable, - in not permitting priests to marry. trusting to their vile celibacy, they have become callous to all kinds of iniquity. The prohibition, however, clearly shows how pestiferous all traditions are, since this one has not only deprived the Church of fit and honest pastors, but has introduced a fearful sink of iniquity, and plunged many souls into the gulf of despair.[9]

To me, it is clear that Calvin refers to the sin that shall not be named.

So what was the Papacy like in the Renaissance? Well according to Noel I. Garde, in Jonathan to Gide: The Homosexual In History the following renaissance popes were gay: Paul II (r. 1464-1471), Sixtus IV (r. 1471-1484), Alexander VI (r. 1492-1503), Julius II (r. 1503-1513) and Leo X (r. 1513-1521), Julius III (r. 1550-1555).[10] Oh and if you think that the non-Gay clergy didn’t know what was going on, then consider Adrian VI (r. 1522-23), the short lived exception ruling less than a year. He like, the current pope was northern Germanic, grew up in Utrecht, and he knew exactly what he was up against. He cancelled most of the artistic projects of the period, and spat out a burst of profanity upon looking at Leo X’s beloved Laccoon.[11] He would not celebrate mass in the Sistine Chapel, because it was “a bathhouse full of nudes.”[12] Well, he lasted only one year before he was either poisoned, or succumbed the Roman malaria.[13] The subsequent Pope, Clement VII (r. 1523 to 1534), was more of the previous vein, interested in secular pursuits and artistic production. The Goldsmith Cellini tells us that Clement had a confidant, Cavalierno, who, though no more than a simple horsegroom, “had served faithfully, and the Pope had embraced him, enriched him, and confided in him as oneself.”[14] Or more bluntly, in 1527, a street preacher named Brandano, interrupted Clement during the Holy Thursday blessing from the balcony of St. Peters, shouting: “Bastard Sodomite, because of your sins Rome will be destroyed.”[15] And, well, in fact, Rome would very nearly be destroyed later that year when Lutheran German mercenaries in the emperor’s army sacked the city, and killed nearly half its inhabitants, plundered its artworks, smashed its relics, and defiled its churches. It brought an end to the glorious milieu of early 16^th Century Rome, the school of Raphael dispersed or killed. Michelangelo fled back to Florence.

I bring up this period of the early 16^th Century because it shares so much with our own. For the first time since Adrian VI, the short-lived reformer, we have again a German Pope, Benedect XVI, and also one who intends to de-gayify the clergy. Now any attempt to study gay men in the clergy from a historical perspective obviously involves the very subjective tool of archaeological gaydar. And the problem is no less complicated by the fact that few of these men left us written records of their feelings on the subject of their sexual orientation and activity. About the best we can do very accurately is consider is our present, and the very recent past. If the Vatican’s own inquiry in to the state of Seminaries, wasn’t enough of an alarm bell, I turn to the recent year 2000 publication of Fr. Donald Cozzens, The Changing Face of the Priesthood. Cozzens argues that American Seminaries were attracting larger and larger numbers of gay students and that “should our seminaries become significantly gay, and many seasoned observers find them to be precisely that, the priesthood of the twenty-first century will likely be perceived as a predominantly gay profession.”[16] I agree with Fr. Cozzens assessment of the present, but I think he’s mistaken in thinking this is a new phenomenon. I believe it’s always been this way, since the 4^th Century.

Now there are some interesting studies that give us insight into the recent past, as well. In 1966, The School of Nursing of the Saint Vincent’s Hospital in NY performed psychological tests on candidates for the priesthood, and found that:

Perhaps the most troublesome and most frequent appearing sociopathic features or disturbances in assessment work concern the high incidence of effeminancy, heterosexual retardation, psychosexual immaturity, deviations or potential deviations of the homosexual type…. A recent study of 107 male candidates, for example, shows that 8% of these were sexually deviant, whereas 70% were described as psychosexually immature, exhibiting traits of heterosexual retardation, confusion concerning sexual role, fear of sexuality, effeminacy, and potential homosexual dispostions.[17]

According to the way I read those findings, that’s 78%.

I also refer to research by an ex-priest, Michal Maher, who does a study of the rules governing seminarians at the Saint Louis Catholic Seminary in the 1950s. They contained all kinds of curiosities: “Particular Friendships” were banned; Seminarians were never allowed to see each other nude, not even in the showers; Seminarians were not allowed to visit one another in each other’s rooms, except with special permission; and then the door had to stay open; and they were never allowed to sit on one another’s bed. In comparison, the nearby, equally all-male, Lutheran Concordia Seminary had none of these rules. Interestingly, Maher interviews a more recent graduate of St. Louis Seminary, Fr Bob, who attended in the 1980s, when most of these rules no longer existed, and homosexual activity among the students was wide-spread.[18]

In fact a rule prohibiting something is sometimes a historian’s best indication of a social trend. St. Benedict, wrote in his Rule in the 6^th Century that: ” All monks are to sleep in separate beds….If possible, they should sleep in one room…Let a candle burn throughout the night. They will sleep in their robes.” He also forbid close friendships among the brothers.[19]

Let me stress that in my research, I’ve been most often assisted by the writings and webpages of conservative traditionalist Catholics. I’ve also been expecting sooner or later that Dan Brown moment, when someone says that I’ve stolen their idea.[20] Within academia, I would say that is Mark D. Jordan, who published Silence of Sodom in 2002. Outside the academic world, I would say the person who’s already close to my own conclusion is Randy Engel, author of the self-published, Rite of Sodomy, Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church.[21] In the book, she describes the recurring infestation of homosexuality within the church, and the unwillingness of the hierarchy to do much about it. And it was she who alerted me to the single best source of all, which St. Peter Damian, who in the 11^th century, wrote a long letter to Pope Leo IX, called the Book of Gomorrah, describing the widespread infestation of homosexuality among the clergy. He described in great detail the variants of the vice with precise categorization from masturbation to sodomy. He especially fiercely denounces those bishops who “commit these absolutely damnable acts with their spiritual sons”.[22]

Who can expect the flock to prosper when its shepherd has sunk so deep into the bowels of the devil … Who will make a mistress of a cleric, or a woman of a man? … Who, by his lust, will consign a son whom he spiritually begotten for God to slavery under the iron law of Satanic tyranny.[23]

Curiously, here was Leo IX’s response:

In light of divine mercy, the Holy Father commands, without contradiction, that those who, of their own free will, have practiced solitary or mutual masturbation or defiled themselves by interfemoral coitus, but who have not done so for any length of time, nor with many others, shall retain their status, after having “curbed their desires” and “atoned for their infamous deeds with proper repentance.”[24]

Peter Damian’s work caused significant outrage among the church hierarchy, and eventually, Damian had to protest again to the Pope that nothing had been done about the scandal.

Often the reason I am finding my best information from conservative traditionalist webpages is because, like Mrs. Engel, they frantically trying to expose homosexuality among the clergy, and are frustrated because little is done to punish the sinners. For example Roman Catholic Faithful posted full screenshots from the St. Sebastian’s Angels webpage, a chat room for gay priests. I added the black bars. And then they were appalled that the priests they had caught red-handed continued to hold their positions.[25]

Finally, Fr. Robert Hoatson wrote a long letter to the Renew America website (this website belongs to the right-wing pundit Alan Keyes) and here’s what Fr. Hoatson say:

This is what happens in a “celibate-challenged” culture. Those who are living the vows are anathema, while the sexual actors are promoted to higher offices. Sex is open, available, and even recommended in many clerical circles today. Priests couple off now and live “married” sexual lives in vacation houses they purchase together or in rectories they share together.[26]

He goes on to say:

Why do bishops look the other way, deny, and cover-up for sexual activities of priests? The answer is simple: they are violators of celibacy themselves. And, very often they have reached their positions because they “slept around” or compromised their promise to live a celibate life. Violators recommend other violators for positions of leadership, and less than honest men (and women) join the hierarchy and further taint the organization.[27]

So if this is our image of the present and the recent past, then the only thing I’m really adding my theory is the notion that this is not a new phenomenon. It’s been this way for 17 centuries: The straight guys have been fighting a losing battle with the gay guys for control of the church. St. Peter Damian describes a similar situation in the 11^th Century. Why should we assume that the intervening centuries were different?

I do stress this is a theory, it’s a hunch, but I can tell you that the more I look at the question, it is so obvious to me. Right about now Benedict should be receiving the results from his investigations of American seminaries that was begun in 2005. We have heard nothing of the results from the inquiry, but my own suspicion is that I think his Holiness and I are, in some ways, on the same page on this subject. He realizes that if you take the gay priests out of the church…you may not have much of a church left.

---

[1] William Armstrong Percy III, in Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece shows how Aristotle and his students traced the origins of homosexual behavior back Minoan civilization’s attempt to control population growth. [2] Percy. This is actually taken from the “From the Publisher” section : “Pederasty was from the beginning both physical and emotional and, Percy believes, were responsible for the rise of Hellas and the “Greek Miracle.” In two centuries the population of Attica, a mere 45,000 adult males in six generations, produced an astounding number of great men who laid the enduring foundations of Western thought and Civilization..”
[3] These are selected from Section 2. Homosexuality and the Ordained Ministry in “Instruction Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders“.
[4] For a fuller examination of the Florentine Millieu, Michael Rocke, makes a excellent study based on legal records: Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (Studies in the History of Sexuality). Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1996. Rocke also stresses in his book that we should not see this phenomenon in terms of a modern gay culture. Many of the sodomites did not see themselves in any way concurrent with our contemporary notions of gay.[5] Paul Halsall. “The Experience of Homosexuality in the Middle Ages.” Fordham University 1988. and he is drawing his source from: Trexler, R.C.: “La Prostitution Florentine au XVe Siecle: Patronage et Clienteles” in Annales ESC 36:6 (1981), pp. 983-1015.

[6] Böhmer, Heinrich. Luthers Romfahrt. Leipzig. A. Deichertsche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Werner Scholl, 1914. pp. 36-76. This is the most of comprehensive attempt to piece together Luther’s formative experience in Rome in 1510. Böhmer speculates on the likely meeting with Giles (also referred to as Egidio da Viterbo and Egidio Canistro).

[7] Gordon Dotson, Esther. “An Augustinian Interpretation of Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling.” The Art Bulletin, Vol. 61. No. 3 (Sept. 1979) p. 405.

[8] The full 3^rd conclusion reads: “The Third Conclusion, sorrowful to hear, is: That the law of continence annexed to priesthood, that in prejudice of women was first ordained, induces sodomy in Holy Church; but we excuse us by the Bible, for the suspect decree that says we should not name it. Reason and experience prove this conclusion. For delicious meats and drinks of men of Holy Church will have needful purgation or worse. Experience for the privy assay of such men is that they like not women. The corollary of this conclusion is that the private religions, beginners of this sin, were most worthy to be annulled but God, for his might, of privy sin send open vengeance.” The full 12 conclusions are available here.

[9] Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion: Book 4, Chapter 12 Section 23.

[10] Garde, Noel I., Jonathan to Gide: The Homosexual in History. New York: Vantage Press, 1964. As a source, Garde’s work has achieved wide-spread dissemination on the internet, but it also shows the pitfalls of Archaeological Gaydar as many of his claims can be disputed.

[11] This event was portrayed in Chastel, André. The Sack of Rome, 1527. Bollingen Series XXXV. 26. Princeton: Princeton University Press. and Chastel attributes it to: P. Giovio, De Vita Hadriani VI in Vitarum illustrium aliquot virorum libri X, vol. 2, Basel, 1577, p. 128

[12] Vasari, Giorgio. Le Vite de’ piú eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori (1568). Ed. G. Milanesi. Florence, 1878-85; reprinted 1906. 5:240-41.

[13] “Das Ende Adrian VI (2. Marz 1459-14. September 1523) ein medizinische-historischer Versuch.” Medizinische Monatsschrift. 1959 May. Describes the potential causes of Adrian VI’s death.

[14] Cellini, Benvuto La Vita da lui medesimo scritta (ca. 1559-1562). Ed. G. D. Bonino, Turin, 1973. Book I. Chapter 7.

[15] The passage on Brandamo’s outburst, I take again from Chastel’s The Sack of Rome, 1527. Chastel’s note is as follows: Pastor, Histoire des papes, 9:288ff. Brandano’s true name was Bartolomeo Carosi. There is an unpublished biography by Camillo Turci: see D Orano, Marcello Alberini, p. 246, n. 2; G. B. Pecci, La Brandaneide, Lucca 1757; P. Picca, “Il Sacco di Roma,” pp. 234ff.

[16] Fr. Donald B. Cozzens. The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reflection on the Priest’s Crisis of Soul. Liturgical Press, 2000. p. 103

[17] W. J. Coville, “Basic Issues in the Development and Administration of a Psychological Assessment Program for the Religious Life,” In Coville, W. J., D’Arcy, P. F., McCarthy, T. N. & Rooney, J. J. (eds.) Assessment of Candidates for the Religious Life: Basic Psychological Issues and Procedures, (Washington, D. C.: Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, 1968). For this source, I am also grateful to Michael J. Maher (see ensuing footnote).

[18] Michael J. Maher. “Openly Addressing the Reality: Homosexuality and Catholic Seminary Policies.“ Religion & Education, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Fall 2002) Copyright © 2002 by the University of Northern Iowa.

[19] I draw the translations of Benedict from J. Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980), 187-188. Boswell is in many ways the pioneer in this field, and again I am grateful to Maher for guiding me to him.

[20] In so far as any academic has approached my conclusions, I point to The Silence of Sodom by Mark D. Jordan, a professor of theology at Emory University.

[21] Engel, Randy. Rite of Sodomy, Homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church. New Engel Press, 2006. which can be ordered directly from: http://www.riteofsodomy.com/

[22] Owen J. Blum, O.F.M., Peter Damian, Letters 31-60, part of the Fathers of the Church - Medieval

Continuation series issued by the Catholic University of America Press, Washington, D.C., 1990. p.15

[23] Ibid. p.15.

[24] Ibid. p. 5.

[25] If you really must see the whole thing, it’s here.

[26] Here’s the full text of Fr. Hoatson’s letter on the Renew America website.

[27] Ibid.