All this month on the History Hit family of podcasts, we've been marking LGBT plus history

month and I don't want not just the tutors to be a dishonorable exception.

So let me tell you a story.

In 1581, Michelle de Montagne, the famed French-essiest, visited Rome.

In his travel journal, he reported something that had happened a few years earlier.

That the ancient basilica of San Giovanni Alporta Latina, certain Portuguese men had entered

into a strange brotherhood.

They married one another, male to male, at mass, with the same ceremonies with which we

perform our marriages, read the same gospel service, and then went to bed and lived together.

His report wasn't quite accurate.

Of the men involved, we know that six were in fact Spanish, one Slavic and one Portuguese,

and there's many who's nationality we don't know.

But broadly speaking, Montagne had his facts right.

To explore the nature of these marriages, the same sex community that engaged in these

rituals and notions of gender and punishment in the period, today I'm speaking to Dr. Giuseppe

Macocci.

Dr. Macocci is associate professor in Iberian history and fellow at extra college at the University

of Oxford and the chair of the Oxford Centre for European History.

He's the author of the book The Globe on Paper, writing histories of the world in Renaissance

Europe and the Americas.

And his journal article is this love, same sex marriages in Renaissance Rome, is the

basis for our discussion today.

...