An Easter Miracle

Happy Easter.

For practising Christians, the biggest miracle of all was the Resurrection of Christ. Miracles and miraculous events have become part of human culture and feature in every community, whether real or imagined. Here’s an Easter miracle you might like.

Christians have long celebrated Easter with a big feast, long before they celebrated Christmas. It was to mark the end of the period of fasting called Lent. For one medieval Irish abbot the Easter feast led to a truly life-changing miracle.

We only know about this abbot from one source, the “Book of Fermoy”, or “Leabhar Fhear Mai” in Irish Gaelic. This is a collection of poems, genealogies, histories and fables written in Ireland during the mid-15th century. The book gets its name from the home of the Roche family who feature many times throughout the book.

The story of the abbot appears about halfway through the book, sandwiched between an account of the Roman Emperors and a retelling of the Old Testament story of Enoch and Elias. It’s a short story, but will need a bit of explaining to comprehend its relevance.

The story goes like this (and I’ll keep referring to the character as abbot and not abbess, which I’ll explain later):

The protagonist of the tale is a young man who was the Abbot of Drimnagh near Dublin. One day, as preparations were being made for the Easter celebrations, he wanders out to a nearby hill to rest. He puts his sword down beside him and falls asleep. When he wakes the abbot is startled to find that she has become a beautiful woman. Even her sword has changed. It is now a distaff, a spindle for spinning, the occupation traditionally associated with unmarried women (hence an unmarried woman is often called a spinster).

Before she has fully come to terms with her change, and ugly old crone approaches her. The crone listens to the abbot’s story, and she says it is not safe for a young woman like her to be out on the hill as night approaches. Wild animals will attack her. The abbot decides she cannot return to her abbey and seeks shelter in the neighbouring monastery at Crumlin.

On entering the grounds she meets a handsome young man, the monastery’s chief administrator, who immediately falls in love with the abbot. The abbot offers no objection, and very soon the couple are married. Yes, abbots could get married in those days. In fact, this transgender abbot is already married, which will be revealed later.

This unusual couple are married for seven years and they have seven children. Then, as their eighth Easter together approaches, the young monastery administrator is invited to the celebrations in Drimnagh Abbey. The man gathers his entourage together and, with his wife, travels over the hill to Drimnagh.

On top of the hill the abbot feels very sleepy and persuades her husband and the entourage to continue, and she’ll follow them later. She then falls asleep.

A short while later the abbot awakes. Another shock awaits, as he realises he has turned back into a man. Instead of being relieved he is quite distressed. How can he explain himself to his husband and their children? How is he going to explain his seven year absence from his abbey?

Fortunately, the monks at the abbey accept his explanation and he steps back into his role as abbot without question. But what about his husband? Also, what about his own wife? When the abbot explains his long absence to her, his wife can’t understand what he means, because as far as she is concerned he’s only been away for one hour!

The abbot tries to explain to his husband what has happened. His husband seems to accept the situation. He remembers all of their seven years together, and that the abbot is the mother of their children. Again, fortunately, an amicable resolution is achieved, and they agree to let the abbot raise three of their children.

And that’s the end of the story. Firstly, the reason why I chose not to refer to the abbot as an abbess during her transition is to do with monastic governance. Some male monastic institutions could be headed by a woman, usually if there it also includes a separate community of nuns. This would be set out in the institution’s foundation charter. The fact that this character changed into a woman does not negate the terms of his abbey’s foundation charter. Only the head of the monastic order could stop her from being called an abbot, which didn’t happen in this story.

It is clear that this story was not historical but apocryphal. It’s what medieval literature termed a “fool story”. “Fool” in this context means “humble” and refers to what we would call a fable. Some historians think it may be based on real events. The abbot’s children may refer to seven pieces of land a real abbot owned, and that it deals with the division of that land into three and four parts between two monasteries. But, we’ll never know.

However, there are other elements which illustrate early medieval monastic practice. Medieval abbots didn’t have to be celibate. They could marry. There were hereditary abbots in Celtic Christianity who were usually lay members of the religious institution, quite often local aristocracy (perhaps descended from the original founder). One famous hereditary abbot is King Duncan I of the Scots (murdered by Macbeth in Shakespeare’s play) who was the hereditary Abbot of Dunkeld.

The story also contains several examples of medieval fairy lore. Hills have often been regarded as magical locations, particularly in Celtic mythology where they are often said to be the homes of fairies. The ugly old crone is the tale is also a common disguise for a fairy, as is indicated by her meeting the abbot on the fairy hill.

There have been a lot of commentaries of this story in recent years which centre on the transgender element and gender identity. Although these may have some validity in the mind of the commentator, modern transgender and identity attitudes shouldn’t be applied to ones that didn’t exist when the story was written. The medieval audience would no more understand the concept of transgender than they would about chocolate or digital technology. There are many stories of magical gender transformation in legends around the world. I’ve written about some of them on this blog. Unlike modern transgender issues, not one of them is the result of a personal choice to change gender (or species) without any supernatural means.

Another common folk motif is time distortion. Even though the abbot’s wife and the monks only think he’s been away for an hour, he and his husband remember seven years together. This time distortion is a common feature of tales involving people falling asleep on a fairy hill.

So, did you like this fable of a medieval Easter miracle? There’s still a lot in it which is difficult for historians to explain, but perhaps they shouldn’t try too hard. Like modern literature and media, the story meant something to the people who wrote it and the people who first heard it. There are clues in there which historians have yet to find, but in the end it’s simply a story. It doesn’t need to be fully explained to be enjoyed.

Homohoax: Pranking Penguins

There can be no better day than today – April Fools day – to present another Homohoax, one of the many hoaxes, pranks, fakes, imposters, conspiracy theories and confidence tricks perpetrated by or upon the lgbt community.

One of my favourite all-time April Fool jokes was the one the BBC pulled off in 2008. They made a short film promoting a non-existent documentary about flying penguins migrating from Antarctica to Australia. With this in mind I thought I’d write about a hoax involving both penguins and Australia.

The homohoax is known as the Ern Malley Hoax, and was carried out in Australia in 1944 by James McAuley (1917-1976) and Harold Stewart (1916-1995), the latter being regarded today, on the internet at least, as Australia’s first gay poet, although he was not out publicly in his lifetime

Let’s begin with the penguins.

There was an art movement in Australia in the 1940s called Angry Penguins, which took its name from the title a journal edited by a modernist surrealist poet called Max Harris (1921-1995). The name “Angry Penguins” came from a line in one of his poems, "as drunks, the angry penguins of the night". Other modernist poets and artists allied themselves to the movement and they became known collectively as the Angry Penguins.

The Angry Penguins were anything but conservative and traditional. Harold Stewart and James McAuley, however, were definitely conservative, and they hated modernism.

Harold Stewart was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. His father was a health inspector with a keen interest in Asia, an interest that he would pass on to his son. Harold showed early promise as a poet when he was a teenager at school. James McAuley was at the same school, and both received the school’s poetry prize, McAuley in1933 and Stewart in 1935

In school Stewart also became aware of his homosexuality, though the prevailing social conventions at the time were very homophobic and he remained in the closet for the rest of his life. It was only revealed in public in 1996, the year after he died. Stewart's school poetry had homoerotic subject matters, which subsequently helped to earn his the title of Australis’ first gay poet. Most of his friends were probably unaware of his sexuality.

After leaving school Stewart studied teaching at Sydney University but found it quite dull, and he abandoned his studies to become a poet. He spent hours in the public library, reading and copying poems, searching for his own poetic identity. He also met with friends around Sydney to recite and discuss their poems with each other.

During World War II, Stewart and McAuley worked in Army Intelligence (in the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs) in Melbourne. In 1943, while in the army barracks, in just one day, they created the Ern Malley Hoax, a fictitious poet and entire body of work. The poems were deliberately written to be bad, exaggerating the modernist symbolism to the point of ridicule. They actually just wrote down the first thing that came into their heads, whether it made sense or not. They also had a pile of reference books, dictionaries and phrase books from which they lifted words and phrases at random. At the end of the day Stewart and McAulay had written 17 poems and a complete fake biography of Ern Malley.

So, what did Stewart and McAuley come up with for their biography of Ern Malley?

Ernest “Ern” Lalor Malley was born in England on 14th March 1918. His father died when Ern was 2, and his mother migrated to Sydney, Australia, with her two children Ern and Ethel. At the age of 17 Ern moved to Melbourne and had several jobs. In the early 1940s he was diagnosed with Graves' disease. Although not necessarily fatal, this is a serious autoimmune disease that particularly affects the thyroid gland which enlarges and produces hormones causing skin, heart, and muscle problems and, in the most well-known effect, the bulging of eyes. Malley refused treatment and he returned to Sydney to live with his sister in March 1943. He died a few months later on 23 July.

After Ern’s death, Ethel found some poems he had written. She wrote to Max Harris and asked for his opinion of them. Ethel was, of course, actually Stewart and McAuley. Harris was excited. He showed them to his Angry Penguin friends, and they fell for the hoax hook, line and sinker, just as Stewart and McAulay had hoped. They all agreed that Malley was a genius. Harris decided to rush out a special edition of the “Angry Penguins” journal and commissioned noted Australian artist Sidney Nolan to paint the cover illustration based on one of Malley's poems.

While the modernist poets praised Malley and his poems, the University of Adelaide’s student newspaper ridiculed the poems, suggesting that Harris had written them as a hoax. Then the Adelaide Daily Mail expressed the same opinion. The next week the “Sunday Sun” ran a front page story correctly alleging that the Malley poems had been written by McAuley and Stewart.

Then things turned serious. The police impounded the special “Angry Penguins” issue and prosecuted Harris for publishing obscene material. Several distinguished expert witnesses were called to defend Harris, but he was found guilty. His fine by today’s standard was pretty light - £5.

Understandably, the whole Malley hoax effected the course of the modernist and surrealist movement in Australia. Support of the Australian modernist and surrealist movement took a blow, and the “Angry Penguins” journal lost readership and soon went out of business. However, Max Harris later took advantage of the affair, and in the mid-1950s he published another literary magazine called “Ern Malley's Journal”. He was always adamant that Malley’s poems, even though he knew they were fake, still had merit and he republished them in 1961. He wrote, "Sometimes the myth is greater than its creators." His opinion was influential. Even today, over 70 years later, the Malley poems are regarded as legitimate surrealist poems. They have inspired many other poems and artists. In fact, the artist Sidney Nolan said the Malley poems inspired him to create his “Ned Kelly” series of paintings.

In 1974 there was an exhibition of Sidney Nolan’s art called "Ern Malley and Paradise Garden" at the Art Gallery of South Australia's Adelaide Festival Exhibitions. More recently an exhibition called "Ern Malley: The Hoax and Beyond" was mounted at the Heide Museum of Modern Art in 2009. The “Washington Post” has gone so far as to call the Ern Malley Hoax as the greatest literary hoax in the 20th century (I would challenge this – the Hitler Diaries had a more global effect).

After the hoax, Stewart worked in a Melbourne bookshop and collected many Eastern books, as his late father’s interest in Asia began to become a bigger part his own life. He began to study and pursue Japanese Buddhism and haiku poetry.

He first visited Japan in 1961. He was almost ordained as a Jōdo Shinshū priest in 1963 but changed his mind at the last minute. From 1966 Stewart became a permanent resident in Japan, becoming an expert on the history, culture and art of Kyoto. He wrote a series of poems with prose commentaries on Kyoto’s history in 1981. Earlier, in the 1960s, he published two translations of haiku poetry which proved popular.

Harold Stewart died in Kyoto on 7th August 1995 after a short illness. His body was cremated and his ashes scattered in the Higashiyama mountains.

One of the ironic twists is that the Ern Malley poems have become the most well-known poems by Harold Stewart, more so than the poems he wrote under his own name. I wonder if that qualifies as a hoax that backfired.

80 Gays Around the World: Part 6) Greek Beauties

Last time on “80 Gays”: 15) Father Markus Furhman (b.1971) became the first openly gay Franciscan “bishop” after ministering in Cologne, home of the alleged relics of the Three Kings, 16) Caspar, 17) Melchior, and 18) Balthazar, the latter’s gift to the Baby Jesus traditionally being myrrh, an aromatic resin from a plant named after the mother of 18) Adonis.

The name of 18) Adonis has become a byword for male physical beauty. With the ancient Greeks putting so much emphasis on same-sex activity in the training of athletes and soldiers, it comes as no surprise that Adonis was the sexual partner of both male and female deities.

As a young teenager Adonis was the lover of two Greek gods with many gay connections of their own – Apollo (who features many times on this blog), and Dionysos (also featured several times).

Perhaps Adonis’s most well-known lover was the goddess 19) Aphrodite. It may seem strange that the goddess of love and feminine beauty should have some queer connections, but in this other “Star-Gayzing” entry I point out the dual nature of Aphrodite’s sexuality. There I explain how her birth from the severed genitals of Uranus led her to become a kind of patron goddess of same-sex couples.

At the beginning of this series of “80 Gays” I commented that a lot of botanical connections cropped up. Last time I mentioned how Adonis’s mother Myrrha gave her name to the plant myrrh. Another plant connection comes in one of the annual festivals in Athens called Adonia, which was named after him. This was a female-only festival. Women would go up onto their rooves, singing and dancing, mourning the death of Adonis. On the roof they planted lettuce and fennel seeds into pottery sherds (both plants were considered to be aphrodisiacs – there’s Aphrodite’s name again), which they called Gardens of Adonis. The women then went down into the streets and formed a procession which went to the sea shore (or a stream, it varied depending on how far away they lived from the sea), and buried, or planted, the “gardens” along with little effigies of Adonis.

Aphrodite’s floral connection also involves a garden. This time it comes in the form of one of her patronages. Aphrodite was the patron god of vegetation and fertility, and thus she was known as Aphrodite of the Gardens. There was a shrine and sanctuary to her under this name near the Acropolis in Athens. There were two statues of her, one of which was a herm.

Herm is the term given to a tall square or rectangular column with a carved head (and sometimes a torso) at the top, with a carved penis at the proportional height sticking out of the square column. The Aphrodite herm had her head at the top and a penis further down. There’s a herm statue of Aphrodite in the national museum in Stockholm, Sweden, which depicts her as fully female from the waist upwards. She is holding her dress up to reveal a square column underneath with a penis.

It is from herm statues like this that Aphrodite evolved into a separate deity – 21) Aphroditus.

Historically, Aphroditus was probably based on an earlier deity in Cyprus. Once the cult of Aphroditus made it to Greece it was assimilated into that of Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of spiritual love. What makes things more complicated is that some modern websites confuse Aphroditus with the more familiar 22) Hermaphroditus,

The more I read about both Aphroditus and Hermaphroditus the more I realise that they are not the same. I think that the confusion comes from “herm” in Hermaphrodite, and the fact that the name Aphroditus was first used in reference to herm statues of Aphrodite. Hermaphroditus seems to be a later addition to the pantheon of Greek deities. I wrote about both Aphroditus and Hermaphroditus several years ago (see here), so I won’t go into it in detail here. Suffice it to say that in the later Roman period the image of Hermaphroditus as intersex developed from Greek myths about him being the son of Aphrodite and Hermes, a god not really “invented” until a century or two after the first herm statues of Aphrodite were made. If you’re not already confused, Hermes got his name from originally being a herm statue.

But let’s get back to Aphrodite. As well as two statues of her near the Acropolis as Aphrodite of the Gardens (one of which had male genitalia, remember), the goddess had another temple and shrine in Athens dedicated to her as Aphrodite Urania, the goddess of spiritual love.

The temple was in the agora, the inner-city public square and meeting place. In the sanctuary was a statue of her made by a famous sculptor called Phidias (no. 8 in the 2020 “80 Gays” series). I’ll return to Phidias in a later entry in this current series.

Whenever ancient Athens is mentioned Adonis and Aphrodite are not the first names that spring to mind, Athena is, of course. Another thing that springs to mind is the founding of Greek democracy. So it is not surprising that on the other side of the agora there were once statues of the couple who are regarded as being the people who inspired the creation of Athenian democracy. They were 23) Harmodius and 24) Aristogeiton.

Next time: We carry a torch against tyranny, untangle a gay “incestuous” dynasty, and remove a few statues.

City Pride - Sydney

Following on from the Venice carnival we arrive at the actual day of Mardi Gras. For those who are unfamiliar with the origin of Mardi Gras, perhaps a little information may help. In medieval times Christians put aside several weeks of fasting and abstinence before important Christian festivals like Easter and Christmas. The most common terms for these periods are Lent and Advent respectively. Lent begins tomorrow, the day after Mardi Gras. In preparation, Christians would eat up all the food that they were going to deprive themselves of all the way up to Easter, especially meat. They would also celebrate with carnivals. Actually, “carnival” comes from a 15th century Italian term meaning “remove meat”, which implies the word was created specifically for Christian Mardi Gras celebrations. Today people have generally dropped the fasting element.

Perhaps the most famous Mardi Gras carnivals take place in Brazil and New Orleans, but undoubtedly the most famous lgbt+ Mardi Gras is that held in Sydney, Australia. This year’s Sydney Mardi Gras finished this past weekend. So, as a belated celebration, here is the latest entry in my “City Pride” series about Sydney.

The area I’ve concentrated on is just south of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Because Sydney has so much lgbt+ history it has been difficult to narrow it down to just 12 locations. Most of them may be known to a lot of Sydney citizens, but I have, as always, tried to find some lesser known locations, people or events that show the diversity of the lgbt+ culture in Sydney.

First of all, the area covered is in the Sydney Electoral District (except for a tiny bit of the bottom left hand corner of the map). The current MP for the Sydney electoral district in the New South Wales parliament is Alex Greenwich (b. 1980, into a princely dynasty from Georgia – the country, not the US state), who has been the representative since 2012. He was the first openly gay elected member.

The locations are listed from north to south.

1) Speaker’s Corner, The Domain

John Webster (1913-2008) was a regular speaker at Speaker’s Corner for over 30 years. His distinctive voice is remembered by many older Sydney citizens of all political ideologies, genders and faiths. His opinion on all these issues evolved over the years. Briefly married twice, he is also known to have had gay relationships. His ashes were scattered around the Speaker’s podium.

2) St. James’s Church

In the summer of 1836 Rev. William Yate (1802-1877), a British missionary fresh from New Zealand, was appointed chaplain to this church. It was while he was here that reports were made to the authorities of his homosexual activity with sailors and Maori youths. Yate protested his innocence, and no evidence of actual sodomy was proven. Nevertheless, he was dismissed and was sent back to the UK by December. He took with him Edwin Denison, the Third Mate he “befriended” on the ship that brought him to Sydney. He died as chaplain of the Mariners Church in Dover.

3) Sydney Town Hall

One of the locations that were part of the demonstrations that took place in Gay Pride Week 1973. On 15 September activists marched to the hall. Among the banners they carried was what I consider to be the world’s first lgbt+ community flag – a black flag with a pink triangle in the centre. Previous flags had belonged to specific organisations, but in Sydney this flag was adopted by all sections of the community. I write in more detail about the use of this flag here.

Currently, there are a record four lgbt+ elected members on the city council, Zann Maxwell, Matthew Thompson, Mitch Wilson and Adam Worling, all elected last October. Zann Maxwell was appointed the city’s Deputy Mayor.

This year is the 25th anniversary of the Sydney Olympics. At the end of each day of the torch relay there was a ceremony involving the lighting of a “community cauldron”. On the night before the opening ceremony the final leg of the relay went from Sydney Harbour Bridge and down George Street to the Town Hall. The last torch bearer was the world’s top female golfer at the time, Australia’s Karrie Webb, who lit the community cauldron.

4) St. Andrew’s Cathedral

One of the few non-political Australian state funerals took place here in 1986. It was to honour the Australian ballet dancer and choreographer Sir Robert Helpmann (1909-1986). He is most famous for his role as the Child Catcher in the film “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (a character invented for the film). Helpmann was the first in a long line of openly lgbt+ performers to play this character in its many theatre productions. These include Stephen Gately, Wayne Sleep, Paul O’Grady, Richard O’Brien, and The Vivienne.

5) Junction of William Street and College Street, Australia Museum

During WorldPride 2023, hosted by Sydney, many artistic expressions of lgbt+ culture were on display. One of the most unusual, located outside the museum entrance, was the Progress Shark, a huge life-size model of a great white shark dressed in a Progress Flag-inspired lycra swimsuit. Created by Sydney-based artist George Buchanan, the shark quickly became a tourist attraction and icon of WorldPride. Like many artworks created for the occasion it was taken down afterwards.

6) 110 Bathurst Street

This is currently a modern multi-storey building home to various businesses, but back in the 1920s it was a residential area. This address was, for a couple of years, the art studio and salon of Australian sculptor and artist Dora Ohlfsen-Bagge (1869-1948) and her partner Baroness Helene von Kügelgen (d.1948). Although they lived in Rome most of the time, Dora revisited Sydney and produced many works for Australian clients. These included designing the ANZAC medal, and many sculptures that are now lost or destroyed.

7) 29 Pelican Street

In 1948 this address became the home of Iris Webber (1906-1953), described by local newspapers as “the most violent woman in Sydney”. She is a perfect subject for one of my “Extraordinary Lives” series. Condensing her life down to a few sentences has been difficult, but here goes. Iris was married twice and had at least two female partners. She shot three men (including her first husband, and killing another) but was acquitted each time. She was either arrested or convicted of assault at least 4 times (twice with a tomahawk). She was arrested many times for busking and begging, illegally selling alcohol, and robbery (with her then partner Vera). Iris’s last court appearance was for contempt of court in 1952.

8) National Art School, formerly Darlinghurst Gaol.

This old jail once housed several notable lgbt+ prisoners, the most well-known being the bushranger known as Captain Moonlite (Andrew Scott, 1842-1880). Born in Ireland, Scott can be said to have been a bit of an adventurer, travelling the world fighting as something of a mercenary before arriving in Australia in 1867. While living as a lay reader in a church in the gold fields, he was masquerading as Captain Moonlite, robbing a local bank agent. Caught and convicted, Scott met James Nesbit in jail and the two formed a relationship. After release he struggled to find work, and attacked a cattle station with his gang. Nesbit was killed, but Scott was captured and later hanged in the jail.

The current art school opened in 1921 has had many lgbt+ alumni and has hosted many exhibition by lgbt+ artists.

9) Green Park – LGBT Holocaust Memorial

This monument, designed by Jennifer Gamble and Russell Rodrigo, commemorates the many lgbt+ victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust. The pink triangle that gay prisoners were forced to wear has become an iconic symbol of gay rights in the 1970s. The Jewish Museum is located across the road to the north on Burton Street. In this year when we remember the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II it is essential we recognise diversity of opinion by people on all sides, without anger, hatred, or violence.

10) 301 Forbes Street – Qtopia

Sydney’s first permanent lgbt+ museum, said to be the world’s biggest, opened here in February 2024 in buildings that were originally Darlinghurst’s police station. As the police station it was where people arrested on homosexual charges were held in custody. This included a large number of participants in Sydney’s first Mardi Gras in 1978, people who proudly sport the name of The 78ers. Sadly, a sign of the times included police brutality against those in custody. The museum also has sections on AIDS, and a reconstructed AIDS ward from the neighbouring St. Vincent’s Hospital where many AIDS patients were treated.

11) Junction of Campbell Street and Little Bourke Street

On the night of 31 March 1962, the body of Frank McLean was discovered several metres south of this junction. He was one of several gay victims of William MacDonald, whom the media labelled as “The Mutilator”. MacDonald picked his victims up in gay venues, took them to a private location and murdered them, slashing their bodies and severing their genitals. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in 2015.

12) Taylor Square – The Rainbow Crossing

Sydney’s famous crossing was first established in 2013 for that year’s Mardi Gras. However, due to concerns that people standing on it to take selfies put them in danger of being run over, the city removed it. This sparked as spate of graffiti chalk rainbow crossing popping up across the city in protest. Thankfully, the city council realised the importance of such a statement of identity and repainted crossing in 2019.

Queer Carnival Cats

Carnival season is with us, and in Venice they celebrate in spectacular form next week.

Last year, in “24 for’24”, I mentioned that one specific mask worn by Venetian carnival goers traditionally indicated that the wearer was a gay man. That mask and the person wearing it is called a gnaga.

To tell the full story we have to go back to the early years of the Venice carnival. Carnivals have been held across Christian Europe for centuries to celebrate the start of Lent, a tradition borrowed from the Jewish festival Purim.

In some places carnival season begins just after Christmas. In fact, there is evidence that the Venice carnival once ran from December 26th until Easter. In medieval times, Traditional carnivals only occurred during Lent. Other similar masquerade festivals were not confined to a particular season, month, occasion or religion. If you had the means to travel and knowledge of where to go (not to mention the stamina), you could go around Europe and visit a carnival or other masquerade festival on most weeks throughout the year.

A major component of carnival as it developed over the centuries was the introduction of masquerades. In essence, masquerades were very much like the medieval Feast of Fools held in winter, or the solstice celebrations in summer, in that social roles were reversed (also something not confined to a particular season, month, occasion or religion). The idea behind wearing masks, in whichever carnival you attended, was to remain anonymous, allowing wearers to get away with things they couldn’t in everyday life.

There were various laws across Europe which governed which class of society was entitled to wear which type of clothing and which type of material. During masquerades these laws were relaxed. In Venice, people were allowed to wear anything at the carnival, as long as they also wore a mask. No mask, and you could be breaking the law if you were wearing the wrong type of clothes.

Even though the Venice carnival had been going for over a century, it wasn’t until 1268 that the wearing of masks was recorded. It is also recorded that masked men would go around throwing eggs filled with rosewater at women, someone the man had a crush on. Being masked, however, meant that the men could not be arrested or punished.

While wearing a mask you were playing a character. You weren’t playing yourself. You couldn’t be arrested for playing a character, which is how gay men exploited a loophole in the law.

Venice took a stand on opposite sides regarding homosexuality and prostitution. Like the UK before 1967, homosexuality in Venice itself wasn’t illegal, just immoral. What was illegal was gay sex, or soliciting for gay sex. Men found guilty of having gay sex were hanged in St. Mark’s Square and their corpses burned.

In the 15th century the council of Venice decreed that two noblemen should be elected to monitor gay sex activity. Physicians were required to report any injury or condition in their male patients that implied gay sex was involved.

So, you can understand why gay men took advantage of the loophole in Venetian law which allowed them to solicit for sex in public without being arrested and executed. All they had to do was put on the gnaga cat mask and women’s clothing and go to the Venice carnival as a gnaga.

No-one really knows why gay men began wearing gnaga masks, but it is recorded that they would make meowing noises and speak in a high voice. So, whether the mask came first or the imitation of a cat is open to debate. If the gnaga were feeling particularly dedicated in their portrayal they might also carry a basket full of fluffy little kittens to attract attention.

There’s one known instance of one gnaga who went a bit too far. It is recorded that on 4 May 1710 a gnaga began teasing a group of Turkish visitors to the carnival. They weren’t happy with his “catty” remarks and began to raise their guns. Startled by this, the gnaga turned and ran out of the city. The record doesn’t say if the man stopped to remove his mask and costume, or that he ever came back.

All went well for the first centuries of the carnival, but the loophole enjoyed by gay men and male prostitutes soon began to worry female sex-workers.

While homosexuality was punishable by death, prostitution was seen as a necessary vice, an immorality that was tolerated. In 1360, some houses near the Rialto market were designated as a kind of state-sanctioned red light district. Sex-workers had to live in houses under the management of guardians, who distributed the earnings equally at the end of the month. The women weren’t allowed to leave their house during the most important holy days, or after dusk.

By the 1400s the sex-workers were worried about the many gay men and male prostitutes that had been attracted to Venice and were becoming a bit too successful in attracting male clients, especially during the carnival. The women appealed to the authorities to do something to protect their livelihoods. The solution was quite novel and imaginative.

Bearing in mind that gay men and male sex-workers often dressed as women, female sex-workers were allowed to stand at their windows or on their balconies with their breasts exposed. This would reveal if the sex-worker was female or not. Some were even paid to line up on a bridge with their boobs out for all to see. This bridge soon earned itself new a name – the Ponte della Tette, meaning the Bridge of Tits. The surrounding area also acquired similar names – the Fondamenta de la Tette, and the Calle de la Tette. The bridge still exists, though you’re not likely to see (knowingly) any sex-workers.

Back to the carnival. After Venice came under the control of the Holy Roman Empire (based in Germany and Austria) in the 18th century, the carnival and its masks gradually fell out of popularity and virtually disappeared. It wasn’t until 1979 that the full carnival was revived. The traditional masks were recreated, and the gnaga cat mask has proved to be very popular. However, the link to gay men and male prostitution is largely disregarded and wearing it is not necessarily worn to go cruising for sex. Nor is wearing of the gnaga mask confined to gay men anymore.

With the revival came a new competition to choose the best costume and mask of the carnival. This competition has been held every year (except 2020, the covid year). Among the people who have won this competition several times is the openly gay German designer Horst Raack (7 times between 2009 and 2021, that last occasion was an online carnival due to covid).

I’ll end with two images. On the left is an 18th century illustration of a gnaga by Venetian artist Giovanni Grevembroch (1731-1807). On the right is one of Horst Raack’s winning designs from his entry “The Children of Light” in the 2019 Venice carnival. You can see more of his fantastic costumes on his Facebook and Instagram pages.

25 for '25

Here are 25 facts, figures and trivia about lgbt people and places to celebrate LGBT History Month UK 2025.

1) It is traditional in the West, when heterosexual couples marry, for the wife to adopt the husband’s surname. Same-sex couples can choose to adopt either or both family names. Footballers Tanya Kalivas and Martha West took a unique approach. They organised a football match between members of their families. Whichever family won the match would be the family name the couple adopted. The match ended in a 1-1 draw! Tanya and Martha have kept their own surname names, though they plan to have another football match should they have children to decide their children’s family name.

2) Neuschwanstein Castle in Bavaria, built by the gay King Ludwig II, is one of the most recognised castles in the world due to its appearance in “Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang”. It has also been painted and photographed many times. In 2015 a watercolour painting of the castle was sold for £71,000. It was painted by Adolf Hitler.

3) Dr. Tina Smilkstein, Professor of Electrical Engineering at Cal Poly State University, USA (silver medallist in table tennis at the 1994 Gay Games) was a world record holder at the age of 13. On 2nd June 1974 she broke the world record for the most consecutive jumps on a pogo stick without falling off. She jumped 36,218 times in 5 hours and 15 minutes. The record was beaten 4 months later.

4) Shudō was a form of homosexual relationship common in Japanese samurai society up to the 19th century. It was similar to the practice in ancient Greek in which male athletes and soldiers chose a younger male partner for regular sex. In shudō the elder partner was called a nenja (not to be confused with ninja), and the younger partner was called a wakashū.

5) Jacc Batch (b.1985) of Kettering, England, held the world record for the most items of Silvanian Families memorabilia. In 2018 he had over 5,000 items. Sadly, he sold the entire collection in 2023.

6) Same-sex marriages have taken place on all 7 continents. The last was Antarctica, when the first same-sex wedding on that continent took place on 22nd April 2022 between Eric Bourne and Stephen Carpenter.

7) Following on from that, the first female same-sex wedding on Antarctica took place on 14th February 2023 between Sarah and Jane Snyder-Kamen.

8) Sodomite is a well-known word used in the past as a derogatory term for a gay man. It derives from the Biblical story of the two cities Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a less well-known derogatory word for a gay man which derives from Gomorrah – gomorrhean. It appears in “Glossographia Anglicana Nove: Or a Dictionary”, published in 1719.

9) A sequel to Fact 2 on the “24 for ‘24” list about the entrance gate to Freddie Mercury’s home Garden Lodge being sold, the entire property (which has its own Wikipedia page) went up for sale in February 2024. The auctioneers accepted no offers lower than £30 million ($38 million). As of January 2025 it had not been sold.

10) Figures published by the UK Government in February 2024 showed that there were 268 inmates who identifes as transgender in UK prisons. That’s 71 more than the previous figure published in 2021. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s the same 268 inmates – some will have been released and others imprisoned since 2021.

11) Anthony Morley (b.1972) was voted the very first Mr. Gay UK in 1993. In 2008 he was convicted of murdering and partially eating his boyfriend and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

12) Charles Hawtrey (1914-1988) was the first gay actor to play a parody of James Bond 007 in “Carry On Spying” (1963). His character was originally going to be called James Bind, but the Bond film producers thought this was too close to 007’s name and threatened legal action. The character was renamed Charles Bind.

13) The distinctive national flag and coat of arms of Trinidad and Tobago were both designed by gay artist Carlisle Chang (1921-2001) when the country became independent.

14) Lgbt+ descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims who “landed on Plymouth Rock” (to quote the song by gay songwriter Cole Porter) include 9/11 hero Mark Bingham; politician Peter Buttigeig, actors Jodie Foster, Vincent Price and Matt Bomer; Olympic figure skater Toller Cranston; and alleged murderer Lizzie Borden.

15) “Caper in the Castro”, a murder mystery adventure, was the first lgbt+ video game. It was created in 1989 by transgender artist and computer programmer C. M. Ralph and was originally sold to raise funds for AIDS support charities.

16) Gay YouTuber Lukas Cruikshank (b.1993) was the first person to reach a million subscribers on a YouTube channel in 2009. The channel is called FRED and was set up with his cousins in 2006 when he was 13.

17) Genderfluid is claimed as modern concept, but back in antiquity the Greek physician and philosopher Hippocrates (c.460 BC-c.370 BC), after whom the Hippocratic Oath taken by doctors is named, referred to sex and gender as being fluid over 2,000 years ago.

18) An ancestor of acclaimed gay actor Sir Ian McKellen (b.1939) invented the weekend. McKellen’s great-great-grandfather Robert Lowes (1817-1874) campaigned for workers to be given Saturday afternoon off work. Until then, only Sunday was a day that workers were allowed off. In later years workers were allowed Saturday morning off work as well.

19) The Portuguese word for deer, “veado”, is used as a slang term in Brazil for a gay man. It derives from the false assumption that deer regularly engage in homosexual acts.

20) Although exact figures are impossible to determine, the biggest Pride events to have taken place so far are World Pride 2019 in New York City and São Paulo Pride, Brazil, 2011. Both claim 4 million attendees. However, the Mayor of New York in 2019, Bill de Blasio, claimed there were 5 million who attended World Pride.

21) The oldest known gay graffiti is a carving of two erect phalluses and an erotic poem of gay sex between two men called Nikastimos and Timiona carved onto a rock on Astypalaia, a Greek island. The carving is 2,500 years old. It is not known if either of the men made the carving.

22) Gay composers Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) and Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) were among those invited to compose a national anthem by the newly independent Malaysia in 1957. Neither of their compositions were chosen.

23) In 2022 a species of trilobite, a fossil closely related to horseshoe crabs and woodlice, was named after gay singer Boy George. The species is called Agerins boygeorgie. The trilobite fossil was first found in Nevada, USA, and is over 443 million years old.

24) Lgbt+ individuals who have asteroids named after them include writers Simone de Beauvoir and Marcel Proust, astronomer Mike Wong; and the entertainer Eddie Suzie Izzard.

25) To celebrate the London 2012 Olympics, an organisation called Team Dorset (a county in England) published a list of 1,000 facts about their county. Fact 25 said that actor Laurence Olivier lived in Dorset and died in a motorcycle accident. Unfortunately, neither was true. Someone confused the bisexual Laurence Olivier with the gay adventurer Lawrence of Arabia who did live in Dorset and did die in a motorcycle accident (on a bike he bought from a company not a mile away from where I’m sitting right now).

Advent 4: Some Basil for the New Year

Of around a hundred Christmas gift-bringers I have researched over the past four years one of the more well-known is St. Basil (c.330-379). He is the gift-bringer to the Greek nation and the millions of people of Greek heritage around the world. Basil delivers his gifts on New Year’s Night, because his feast day is January 1st. Those of Greek heritage will know more about the traditions associated with him than I do.

Recently, historians has looked at Basil’s close relationship with St. Gregory Nazianzen (c.329-390). An increasing number suggest their relationship was homosexual but platonic. I’m very wary about adding people to my files just because someone said he or she was lgbt+. But, as with St. Francis of Assisi, there might be a grain of truth in this case.

A lot of people in the lgbt+ community, and elsewhere, don’t really understand the concept of Christian love and its written expression. Its not sex. With Saints Basil and Gregory it is pure Christian love – soul-mates without all the baggage of sex. Basil and Gregory may be the perfect patron saints of same-sex couples.

Both were born into wealthy families in what is now Turkey. St. Basil is variously named as Basil of Caesarea or Basil the Great. Many members of his family also became saints – his parents and all of his siblings. St. Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nazianzus, or Gregory the Theologian, was about the same age and, like Basil, both of his parents became saints.

Both were among the first generation of Christians to be born after the Roman Emperor Constantine’s conversion to Christianity in 312 and his decree of religious tolerance of all faiths. This meant that they grew up without the threat of persecution and murder.

Part of their privileged education took place in Caesarea in Cappadocia, now Kayseri in Turkey. It is there that the two saints are thought to have first met just about the time they were approaching 20 years old. They then continued their education in Constantinople, named by and after the emperor. After that they then went to Athens.

In 356 they went their separate ways for a while. Basil travelled around before returning to Caesarea to practice law. Gregory remained in Athens before returning to Nazianzen, the town near his birthplace, after which future historians named him.

Gregory’s father was Bishop of Nazianzen and he ordained his son. Gregory was rather reluctant to accept. It wasn’t because he wasn’t a Christian. Legend says that on the ship sailing to Athens a few years earlier a huge storm threatened to sink the vessel. Gregory prayed that if the ship reached Athens intact he would dedicate his whole life to God. What he had in mind was life as a solitary monk, not an ordained minister in the community. But now that he had accepted ordination his father was now his boss. Years later Gregory wrote that his father’s actions were an “act of tyranny”. Anyway, Gregory did what he thought was best. He ran away.

Meanwhile, Basil gave up the law and, like Gregory, decided on an ascetic, monastic life. However, he soon discovered that solitary living wasn’t for him. He gave away his inheritance and returned to his family estates at Annesi and gathered a few like-minded followers in a monastic commune, which included several members of his family. There Basil wrote extensively on monastic life which became the blueprint for monastic rules in the Greek Orthodox Church. It was to Annesi that Gregory retreated to after he ran away.

Basil attended the Council of Constantinople in 360. This is a significant event in Christian history because it was called to settle a dispute among theologians. Some said that Christ was similar to God the Father but was not God the Son (putting it oversimply). Basil agreed, but by the end of the council he had changed his mind. From this council the current Christian doctrine which developed into the Holy Trinity was formulated. St. Patrick famously illustrated the concept of the Holy Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit) by pointing out that a single shamrock leaf has three separate parts but is still one leaf.

The main supporters of the “losing” side at the council were called the Arians (nothing to do with Aryans and the Nazis) and they were declared heretics. The debate, however, didn’t go away. Both Basil and Gregory were to spend years opposing the Arian supporters. They even agreed to take part in a public debating contest against Arian theologians. They absolutely trashed the Aryans with their arguments and eloquence and were declared victors of the contest.

By 373 Basil had become Bishop of Caesarea and he consecrated Gregory as Bishop of Sasima. Gregory was, again, reluctant to accept and it led to some tension in their friendship. Gregory later told Basil that he was not to be used as a pawn in Basil’s own power play. Despite this, their close relationship remained intact. They had their separate lives, but they lived together on and off, collaborating on various theological treatises or living in communes.

St. Basil died in 329 or 330, on either 1st or 2nd January. No-one knows for certain. This is why both of these dates were chosen as his feast days. He also has several others throughout the year depending on the Christian denomination. In Greek culture his gift-giving day is January 1st.

St. Gregory preached at St. Basil’s funeral, in which he said: “We became everything to each other; we shared the same lodging, the same table, the same desires, the same goal. Our love for each other grew daily and deeper… We seemed to be two bodies with one spirit”.

I’ve read expressions of Christian love, but St. Gregory expressed it far deeper than many of them. Surely, there was more than just Christian love and a bromance between them.

St. Gregory died in January 390. Like Basil he has several feast days throughout the year. The first of these is on January 2nd, on which he is commemorated with St. Basil. Because of their important writings on Christian doctrine and monastic life, as well as their defence against the Aryans, Basil and Gregory were declared Doctors of the Church.

For all his importance as a Christmas-time gift-bringer I cannot find any image of anyone dressing up as St. Basil in the same way that people dress up as Santa Claus in shopping malls or waving at crowds in Christmas parades. I can’t find out why. Perhaps someone else knows and can tell us.

Above is a video which goes into Basil in more detail. I includes stories I haven’t had room to cover, like his influence on your own health – Basil invented hospitals (his hospital is one of the “7 Gay Wonders of the World”, an article I’m preparing for next year).

I’m taking a break in January and will be back on 1st February, so a Joyful Holiday, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year to you all.