We have authentic details concerning Le Vice in Peru and its adjacent lands, beginning with Cieza de Leon, who must be read in the original or in the translated extracts of Purchas (vol. v. 942, etc.), not in the cruelly castrated form preferred by the Council of the Hakluyt Society. Speaking of the New Granada Indians he tells us that “at Old Port (Porto Viejo) and Puna, the Deuill so farre prevayled in their beastly Deuotions that there were Boyes consecrated to serue in the Temple; and at the times of their Sacrifices and Solemne Feasts, the Lords and principal men abused them to that detestable filthinesse;” i.e. performed their peculiar worship. Generally in the hill-countries the Devil, under the show of holiness, had introduced the practice; for every temple or chief house of adoration kept one or two men or more which were attired like women, even from the time of their childhood, and spake like them, imitating them in everything; with these, under pretext of holiness and religion, their principal men on principal days had commerce. Speaking of the arrival of the Giants[[414]] at Point Santa Elena, Cieza says (chap. lii.), they were detested by the natives, because in using their women they killed them, and their men also in another way. All the natives declare that God brought upon them a punishment proportioned to the enormity of their offence. When they were engaged together in their accursed intercourse, a fearful and terrible fire came down from Heaven with a great noise, out of the midst of which there issued a shining Angel with a glittering sword, wherewith at one blow they were all killed and the fire consumed them.[[415]] There remained a few bones and skulls which God allowed to bide unconsumed by the fire, as a memorial of this punishment. In the Hakluyt Society’s bowdlerisation we read of the Tumbez Islanders being “very vicious, many of them committing the abominable offence” (p. [24]); also, “If by the advice of the Devil any Indian commit the abominable crime, it is thought little of and they call him a woman.” In chapters lii. and lviii. we find exceptions. The Indians of Huancabamba, “although so near the peoples of Puerto Viejo and Guayaquil, do not commit the abominable sin;” and the Serranos, or island mountaineers, as sorcerers and magicians inferior to the coast peoples, were not so much addicted to sodomy.
The Royal Commentaries of the Yncas show that the evil was of a comparatively modern growth. In the early period of Peruvian history the people considered the crime “unspeakable:” if a Cuzco Indian, not of Yncarial blood, angrily addressed the term pederast to another, he was held infamous for many days. One of the generals having reported to the Ynca Ccapacc Yupanqui that there were some sodomites, not in all the valleys, but one here and one there, “nor was it a habit of all the inhabitants but only of certain persons who practised it privately,” the ruler ordered that the criminals should be publicly burnt alive and their houses, crops and trees destroyed: moreover, to show his abomination, he commanded that the whole village should so be treated if one man fell into this habit (Lib. iii. cap. 13). Elsewhere we learn, “There were sodomites in some provinces, though not openly nor universally, but some particular men and in secret. In some parts they had them in their temples, because the Devil persuaded them that the Gods took great delight in such people, and thus the Devil acted as a traitor to remove the veil of shame that the Gentiles felt for this crime and to accustom them to commit it in public and in common.”
During the times of the Conquistadores male concubinage had become the rule throughout Peru. At Cuzco, we are told by Nuno de Guzman in 1530, “The last which was taken, and which fought most couragiously, was a man in the habite of a woman, which confessed that from a childe he had gotten his liuing by that filthinesse, for which I caused him to be burned.” V. F. Lopez[[416]] draws a frightful picture of pathologic love in Peru. Under the reigns which followed that of Inti-Kapak (Ccapacc) Amauri, the country was attacked by invaders of a giant race coming from the sea: they practised pederasty after a fashion so shameless that the conquered tribes were compelled to fly (p. [271]). Under the pre-Yncarial Amauta, or priestly dynasty, Peru had lapsed into savagery and the kings of Cuzco preserved only the name. “Toutes ces hontes et toutes ces misères provenaient de deux vices infâmes, la bestialité et la sodomie. Les femmes surtout étaient offensées de voir la nature frustrée de tous ses droits. Elles pleuraient ensemble en leurs réunions sur le misérable état dans lequel elles étaient tombées, sur le mépris avec lequel elles étaient traitées. * * * * Le monde était renversé, les hommes s’aimaient et étaient jaloux les uns des autres. * * * Elles cherchaient, mais en vain, les moyens de remédier au mal; elles employaient des herbes et des recettes diaboliques qui leur ramenaient bien quelques individus, mais ne pouvaient arrêter les progrès incessants du vice. Cet état de choses constitua un véritable moyen âge, qui dura jusqu’à l’établissement du gouvernement des Incas” (p. [277]).
When Sinchi Roko (the xcvth of Montesinos and the xcist of Garcilazo) became Ynca, he found morals at the lowest ebb. “Ni la prudence de l’Inca, ni les lois sévères qu’il avait promulguées n’avaient pu extirper entièrement le péché contre nature. Il reprit avec une nouvelle violence, et les femmes en furent si jalouses qu’un grand nombre d’elles tuèrent leurs maris. Les devins et les sorciers passaient leurs journées à fabriquer, avec certaines herbes, des compositions magiques qui rendaient fous ceux qui en mangeaient, et les femmes en faisaient prendre, soit dans les aliments, soit dans la chicha, à ceux dont elles étaient jalouses” (p. [291]).
I have remarked that the Tupi races of the Brazil were infamous for cannibalism and sodomy; nor could the latter be only racial as proved by the fact that colonists of pure Lusitanian blood followed in the path of the savages. Sr. Antonio Augusto da Costa Aguiar[[417]] is outspoken upon this point. “A crime which in England leads to the gallows, and which is the very measure of abject depravity, passes with impunity amongst us by the participating in it of almost all or of many (de quasi todos, ou de muitos). Ah! if the wrath of Heaven were to fall by way of punishing such crimes (delictos), more than one city of this Empire, more than a dozen, would pass into the category of the Sodoms and Gomorrahs” (p. [30]). Till late years pederasty in the Brazil was looked upon as a peccadillo; the European immigrants following the practice of the wild men who were naked but not, as Columbus said, “clothed in innocence.” One of Her Majesty’s Consuls used to tell a tale of the hilarity provoked in a “fashionable” assembly by the open declaration of a young gentleman that his mulatto-“patient” had suddenly turned upon him, insisting upon becoming agent. Now, however, under the influences of improved education and respect for the public opinion of Europe, pathologic love amongst the Luso-Brazilians has been reduced to the normal limits.
Outside the Sotadic Zone, I have said, Le Vice is sporadic, not endemic: yet the physical and moral effect of great cities where puberty, they say, is induced earlier than in country sites, has been the same in most lands, causing modesty to decay and pederasty to flourish. The Badawi Arab is wholly pure of Le Vice; yet San’á the capital of Al-Yaman and other centres of population have long been and still are thoroughly infected. History tells us of Zú Shanátir, tyrant of “Arabia Felix,” in A.D. 478, who used to entice young men into his palace and cause them after use to be cast out of the windows: this unkindly ruler was at last poinarded by the youth Zerash, known from his long ringlets as “Zú Nowás.” The negro race is mostly untainted by sodomy and tribadism. Yet Joan dos Sanctos[[418]] found in Cacongo of West Africa certain “Chibudi, which are men attyred like women and behaue themselves womanly, ashamed to be called men; are also married to men, and esteem that vnnaturale damnation an honor.” Madagascar also delighted in dancing and singing boys dressed as girls. In the Empire of Dahomey I noted a corps of prostitutes kept for the use of the Amazon-soldieresses.
North of the Sotadic Zone we find local but notable instances. Master Christopher Burrough[[419]] describes on the western side of the Volga “a very fine stone castle, called by the name Oueak, and adioyning to the same a Towne called by the Russes, Sodom, * * * which was swallowed into the earth by the iustice of God, for the wickednesse of the people.” Again: although as a rule Christianity has steadily opposed pathologic love both in writing and preaching, there have been remarkable exceptions. Perhaps the most curious idea was that of certain medical writers in the middle ages: “Usus et amplexus pueri, bene temperatus, salutaris medicina” (Tardieu). Bayle notices (under “Vayer”) the infamous book of Giovanni della Casa, Archbishop of Benevento, “De laudibus Sodomiæ,”[[420]] vulgarly known as “Capitolo del Forno.” The same writer refers (under “Sixte iv”) to the report that the Dominican Order, which systematically decried Le Vice, had presented a request to the Cardinal di Santa Lucia that sodomy might be lawful during three months per annum, June to August; and that the Cardinal had underwritten the petition “Be it done as they demand.” Hence the Fæda Venus of Battista Mantovano. Bayle rejects the history for a curious reason, venery being colder in summer than in winter, and quotes the proverb “Aux mois qui n’ont pas d’ R, peu embrasser et bien boire.” But in the case of a celibate priesthood such scandals are inevitable: witness the famous Jesuit epitaph Ci-gît un Jésuite, etc.
In our modern capitals, London, Berlin and Paris for instance, the Vice seems subject to periodical outbreaks. For many years, also, England sent her pederasts to Italy, and especially to Naples whence originated the term “Il vizio Inglese.” It would be invidious to detail the scandals which of late years have startled the public in London and Dublin: for these the curious will consult the police reports. Berlin, despite her strong flavour of Phariseeism, Puritanism and Chauvinism in religion, manners and morals, is not a whit better than her neighbours. Dr. Gaspar,[[421]] a well-known authority on the subject, adduces many interesting cases especially an old Count Cajus and his six accomplices. Amongst his many correspondents one suggested to him that not only Plato and Julius Cæsar but also Winckelmann and Platen (?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg, to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew, “Je puis vous assurer, par mon expérience personnelle, que ce plaisir est peu agréable à cultiver.” This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an “experience” and found it far from satisfactory. A few days afterwards the latter informed the Sage of Ferney that he had tried it again and provoked the exclamation, “Once a philospher: twice a sodomite!” The last revival of the kind in Germany is a society at Frankfort and its neighbourhood, self-styled Les Cravates Noires in opposition, I suppose, to Les Cravates Blanches of A. Belot.
Paris is by no means more depraved than Berlin and London; but, whilst the latter hushes up the scandal, Frenchmen do not: hence we see a more copious account of it submitted to the public. For France of the xviith century consult the “Histoire de la Prostitution chez tous les Peuples du Monde,” and “La France devenue Italienne,” a treatise which generally follows “L’Histoire Amoureuse des Gaules” by Bussy, Comte de Rabutin.[[422]] The head-quarters of male prostitution were then in the Champ Flory, i.e., Champ de Flore, the privileged rendezvous of low courtesans. In the xviiith century, “quand le Français à tête folle,” as Voltaire sings, invented the term “Péché philosophique,” there was a temporary recrudescence; and, after the death of Pidauzet de Mairobert (March, 1779), his “Apologie de la Secte Anandryne” was published in L’Espion Anglais. In those days the Allée des Veuves in the Champs Elysees had a “fief reservé des Ebugors”[[423]]—“veuve” in the language of Sodom being the maîtresse en titre, the favourite youth.
At the decisive moment of monarchical decomposition Mirabeau[[424]] declares that pederasty was reglementée and adds, Le goût des pédérastes, quoique moins en vogue que du temps de Henri III. (the French Heliogabalus), sous le règne desquel les hommes se provoquaient mutuellement[[425]] sous les portiques du Louvre, fait des progrès considérables. On sait que cette ville (Paris) est un chef-d’œuvre de police; en conséquence, il y a des lieux publics autorisés à cet effet. Les jeunes gens qui se destinent à la profession, sont soigneusement enclassés; car les systèmes réglementaires s’étendent jusques-là. On les examine; ceux qui peuvent être agents et patients, qui sont beaux, vermeils, bien faits, potelés, sont réservés pour les grands seigneurs, ou se font payer très-cher par les évêques et les financiers. Ceux qui sont privés de leurs testicules, ou en termes de l’art (car notre langue est plus chaste que nos mœurs), qui n’ont pas le poids du tisserand, mais qui donnent et reçoivent, forment la seconde classe; ils sont encore chers, parceque les femmes en usent tandis qu’ils servent aux hommes. Ceux qui ne sont plus susceptibles d’érection tant ils sont usés, quoiqu’ils aient tous ces organes nécessaires au plaisir, s’inscrivent comme patiens purs, et composent la troisième classe: mais celle qui préside à ces plaisirs, vérifie leur impuissance. Pour cet effet, on les place tout nus sur un matelas ouvert par la moitié inférieure; deux filles les caressent de leur mieux, pendant qu’une troisième frappe doucement avec des orties naissantes le siège des désirs vénériens. Après un quart d’heure de cet essai, on leur introduit dans l’anus un poivre long rouge qui cause une irritation considérable; on pose sur les échauboulures produites par les orties, de la moutarde fine de Caudebec, et l’on passe le gland au camphre. Ceux qui résistent à ces épreuves et ne donnent aucun signe d’érection, servent comme patiens à un tiers de paie seulement.[[426]]