| Title: | Sodomy |
| Original Title: | Sodomie |
| Volume and Page: | Vol. 15 (1765), p. 266 |
| Author: | Antoine-Gaspard Boucher d'Argis (biography) |
| Translator: | Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. [Colorado College]; Jeffrey Merrick [University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, [email protected]] |
| Subject terms: |
Grammar
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| Original Version (ARTFL): | Link |
| Source: | Jeffrey Merrick and Bryant T. Ragan, Jr., eds., Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 155. Used with permission. |
| Rights/Permissions: |
This text is protected by copyright and may be linked to without seeking permission. Please see http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/terms.html for information on reproduction. |
| URL: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.037 |
| Citation (MLA): | Boucher d'Argis, Antoine-Gaspard. "Sodomy." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. and Jeffrey Merrick. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2003. Web. [fill in today's date in the form 18 Apr. 2009 and remove square brackets]. <http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.037>. Trans. of "Sodomie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 15. Paris, 1765. |
| Citation (Chicago): | Boucher d'Argis, Antoine-Gaspard. "Sodomy." The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project. Translated by Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. and Jeffrey Merrick. Ann Arbor: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.did2222.0000.037 (accessed [fill in today's date in the form April 18, 2009 and remove square brackets]). Originally published as "Sodomie," Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 15:266 (Paris, 1765). |
Sodomy is the crime of those who commit lewdness against the order of nature itself. This crime derived its name from the city of Sodom, which was destroyed by fire from heaven because of this abominable disorder, which was common there.
Divine justice pronounced the penalty of death against those who soil themselves with [this] crime. They will be put to death , Leviticus 20.
The same penalty is pronounced by the antiheretic. So that they not be made dissolute.
The law Cum vir in the [Julian] code on adultery requires that those who are convicted of this crime be burned alive.
This penalty was adopted in our jurisprudence. There has been another example of it in the execution of the sentence of 5 June 1750 against two individuals who were burned alive in the place de Grève.
Women, minors are punished like other guilty people.
Some authors, such as Menochius, however, claim that the penalty should be mitigated for minors, especially if the minor is under the age of puberty.
Ecclesiastics, monks, given the example of chastity, of which they have taken a specific vow, should be judged with the greatest severity when they are guilty of this crime. The least suspicion suffices to have them removed from every function or job that has something to do with the education of the young. See Du Perray.
Under the term "sodomy" is included that kind of lasciviousness that the canonists call mollitude and the Romans masturbation , which is the crime that one commits upon oneself. When it is detected (which is quite rarely outwardly), it is punished by service in the galleys or banishment, depending on whether the offense is more or less great.
Those who teach the young to commit such lewdness are also punished with the same penalty. In addition, they are subjected to exposure in the pillory with a sign bearing these words, "Corrupter of the young." See Novellae 77 and 141; Du Perray, On Canonical Pleas , chapter 8; Menochius, Of Uncertain Cases , case 329, note 5; M[uyart] de Vouglans, in his Institutes of Criminal Law , page 510.