[74] Witry, "Notes Historiques sur l'Homosexualité en France," Revue de l'Hypnotisme, January, 1909.
[75] In early Teutonic days there was little or no trace of any punishment for homosexual practices in Germany. This, according to Hermann Michaëlis, only appeared after the Church had gained power among the West Goths; in the Breviarium of Alaric II (506), the sodomist was condemned to the stake, and later, in the seventh century, by an edict of King Chindasvinds, to castration. The Frankish capitularies of Charlemange's time adopted ecclesiastical penances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries death by fire was ordained, and the punishments enacted by the German codes tended to become much more ferocious than that edicted by the Justinian code on which they were modelled.
[76] Raffalovich discusses German friendship, Uranisme et Unisexualité, pp. 157-9. See also Birnbaum, Jahrbuch für sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. viii, p. 611; he especially illustrates this kind of friendship by the correspondence of the poets Gleim and Jacobi, who used to each other the language of lovers, which, indeed, they constantly called themselves.
[77] This letter may be found in Ernst Schur's Heinrich von Kleist in seinen Briefen, p. 295. Dr. J. Sadger has written a pathographic and psychological study of Kleist, emphasizing the homosexual strain, in the Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens series.
[78] Alexander's not less distinguished brother, Wilhelm von Humboldt, though not homosexual, possessed, a woman wrote to him, "the soul of a woman and the most tender feeling for womanliness I have ever found in your sex;" he himself admitted the feminine traits in his nature. Spranger (Wilhelm von Humboldt, p. 288) says of him that "he had that dual sexuality without which the moral summits of humanity cannot be reached."
[79] Krupp caused much scandal by his life at Capri, where he was constantly surrounded by the handsome youths of the place, mandolinists and street arabs, with whom he was on familiar terms, and on whom he lavished money. H. D. Davray, a reliable eyewitness, has written "Souvenirs sur M. Krupp à Capri," L'Européen, 29 November, 1902. It is not, however, definitely agreed that Krupp was of fully developed homosexual temperament (see, e.g., Jahrbuch f. sexuelle Zwischenstufen, Bd. v, p. 1303 et seq.) An account of his life at Capri was published in the Vorwärts, against which Krupp finally brought a libel action; but he died immediately afterward, it is widely believed, by his own hand, and the libel action was withdrawn.
[80] Madame, the mother of the Regent, in her letters of 12th October, 4th November, and 13th December, 1701, repeatedly makes this assertion, and implies that it was supported by the English who at that time came over to Paris with the English Ambassador, Lord Portland. The King was very indifferent to women.
[81] Anselm, Epistola lxii, in Migne's Patrologia, vol. clix, col. 95. John of Salisbury, in his Polycrates, describes the homosexual and effeminate habits of his time.
[82] Pollock and Maitland, History of English Law, vol. ii, p. 556.
[83] Coleridge in his Table Talk (14 May, 1833) remarked: "A man may, under certain states of the moral feeling, entertain something deserving the name of love towards a male object—an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from appetite. In Elizabeth's and James's time it seems to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a feeling. Certainly the language of the two friends Musidorus and Pyrocles in the Arcadia is such as we could not use except to women." This passage of Coleridge's is interesting as an early English recognition by a distinguished man of genius of what may be termed ideal homosexuality.