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From the Introduction

In the city of Rome in the year 1578, a small cadre of Portuguese and Spanish men came forward to be married to one another by a Catholic priest in a public ceremony in the Church of St. John at the Latin Gate.2 It is reported that the priest married them “male-to-male” in the belief that, since marriage consecrates the union between male and female, it must also consecrate unions between two people of the same gender. Whether these men had hit upon a brand-new idea or were harking back to the well-known rite of ritual brotherhood that had flourished in the church in theMiddle Ages, we do not know.3What we do know is that the men, having thus had their relationships consecrated through the ministry of the church, consummated their unions and began cohabiting. However, when the city authorities discovered what had happened, they arrested the men and summarily imposed on them what was then the penalty of choice for same-gender sexual offenses: they were burned alive at the stake.