In the 16th and 17th centuries and beyond, certain sexual acts were criminalised. In England,

for example, under Henry VIII, Sodomy, which, as we'll see, was a capacious category that

covered all sorts of things, became a capital crime in 1542. Waterlord Hungerford was the

first to be convicted of it. In France, at the same time, which is where we're going

to be talking about today, Sodomy was also illegal, even though France actually in 1791

became one of the first countries in the world to make homosexual acts between men legal.

Now, obviously, given that we're talking about sex and crime, the language and descriptions

get a little fruity at times in today's podcast, and I thought I warned you in case you're

a bit squeamish or you happen to be listening to this whilst you're eating. But I think it's

worth listening to, because it's shed so much light on what both authorities and ordinary

people thought about sexuality.

My guest today is Dr. Tom Hamilton. Tom is an assistant professor in early modern social

and cultural history at Durham University. He obtained his doctorate from New College

Oxford and was previously a research fellow at Trinity College Cambridge in his book, Pierre

de Lestoy and his world in the Wars of Religion came out with OUP in 2017. And he's out in

paperback this August. But today we're drawing on Tom's work that's published in two journal

articles. And as we're talking about Sodomy and Crime in early modern France, I think we

probably need to start Tom with talking about definitions. What were the range of uses

of the term Sodomy in 16th and 17th century France?

It's a very interesting time. It's a very complex one. It's one that has a different meaning

in the 16th and 17th centuries, depending on who is speaking or who is writing. In a sense,

it's a word that belongs to theology and the law in a way it's a moral crime. All sorts

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