Peter the Chanter’s Vito Sodomitico

Peter the Chanter greatly influenced the Lateran Council of 1215 and several of his demands or calls that he made change or alter the rules of the church where answered. Peter commented that, “just as the apostles and early martyrs preached the faith to an unbelieving world so modern preachers should circulate to encourage good works and repress evil.” The Lateran council then issued a statement from Pope Innocent II that commanded all bishops “to institute diocesan preachers to work among the faith by word and deed.” This statement started the movement of the mobilization of preachers that was seen at the beginning of the 13th century and increase after the Pope statement.

The De Vitio Sodomitico convinced the Lateran Council of 1215 to start actively punishing those who have committed sodomy. These punishment although written in law were not enforced since no one was convicted of Sodomy from the years 1226-1314 in France and there was only one trial and execution close to a hundred years later in France However, these were not the first counsel to address sodomy. Both the Councils of Paris is (1212) and Rouen (1214) discussed the issue of sodomy within the clergy however unlike Lateran council they did not discuss the punishment of the layman.

Peter the Cantor opens his texts with a verse from Ezekiel 16:49. Ezekiel was a Hebrew prophet who wrote the book of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is this section is describes the Sodom the younger sister of Jerusalem as, “she lived with her daughters in the lap of luxury—proud, gluttonous, and lazy. They ignored the oppressed and the poor. They put on airs and lived obscene lives. And you know what happened: I did away with them.” Peter the Chanter believed that the sin of sodomy was di...

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...urson, Peter’s student, “declared that Peter the Chanter was accustomed to assert that a general council should be convened to restore the church to its primitive state and to revoke the vows of continence for sacred orders.”

However, Baldwin could not be further from the truth about his concept of medieval homosexuality. Homosexuality was becoming a trend in twelfth century past accord to William Burgwinkle, with it’s center in Paris close to a hundred years before Peter the Chanter wrote Di Vito Sodomictio Henri De Marcy, Abbot of Clairvaux, “announced that the ancient Sodom had been reborn from its ashes in the school towns of his century.” This trend continued through the thirteenth century when Jacques de Vitry reported on the sexual deviance of his students, which led to the expulsion of several scholars from the university of Paris on charges of sodomy.