Northern Europe: broad patterns

Abstract

Abstract Historians have assumed that the pattern of age-differentiated male–male sex found in the Mediterranean region existed equally in Northern Europe; this has blinded them to major differences between the two regions. The quantitative evidence, drawn from trial statistics, differs by an order of magnitude; this is very evident in England, where judicial records are abundant and well studied. To maintain the assumption that the underlying sexual behaviour was the same, some historians have sought to explain the relative lack of Northern trials, but their claims that some special factors were unique to North or South are unconvincing. Torture, used in Southern Europe, was also applied in most of the North; the death penalty was common to both; so was a degree of reluctance to generate publicity. Significantly, sodomy cases greatly outnumbered bestiality cases in most of Southern Europe, while the opposite was true in most of the North.