Fornicating Foreigners: Sodomy, Migration, and Urban Society in the Southern Low Countries (1400–1700)

Abstract

During the early modern period, it was commonplace to represent sodomy as a phenomenon that particularly prospered abroad and could infect the native society through contact with foreigners. Immigrants therefore proved vulnerable to local distrust and defamations, which is illustrated by the high numbers of accused foreign sodomites in early modern court records in Southern Europe. A systematic analysis of the bailiff accounts of Bruges, Ghent, Ypres, Antwerp, Louvain, Malines and Brussels shows that this was also the case in the Southern Netherlands. In general, one out of four convicted sodomites was not born in the city in which he was convicted. Although these numbers should not be neglected, they do seem to provide a realistic picture of the social composition of urban society in the Southern Netherlands, bearing in mind that the mentioned cities proved attractive to migrants throughout the early modern period. This article suggests that foreigners were more vulnerable to sodomy accusations, not because of their origin in the strictest sense, but because of their fragile social position that complicated a successful integration in urban society.