Dwelling in Probabilities

This article concerns one of a number of female sodomy trials in the Low Countries in the 17th century, a time and place where there was an unusual level of concern for the topic. This interest can be connected to the increasing preoccupation with the role of the clitoris in sex and beliefs about its role in gender identity and same-sex activity. However the detailed testimony in the trial is also interesting for suggesting an unexpected self-consciousness by the defendants about their own same-sex desires—a topic for which evidence is difficult to find. Their testimony contrasted sharply with the theories about same-sex activity presented by other witnesses, which included abnormal physiology and witchcraft. This document points up the hazard of taking dominant discourses at face value with respect to how queer people in history thought about themselves.

The trial was held at Bruges in 1618 and concerned two women, Mayken and Magdaleene, and was sparked by an act of spite by Mayken’s husband. Having just been convicted of horse theft and sentenced to hang, his response was to accuse Magdaleene—whom he claimed to be a “hermaphrodite”—of having seduced his wife, Mayken, and convinced her to abandon him a year previously. To try to retrieve his wife, the man even went to a practitioner of magic and had him do a finding ritual that was supposed to locate her. He claimed that Magdaleene had similarly seduced other women and had been banned from at least one town because of it.

The night before his execution, the man was given the opportunity to “relieve his conscience” by providing more detailed testimony. He told how he had heard panting from the attic of the place he and his wife worked, and had gone up to find her lying together with Magdaleene who claimed they had simply been playing around tickling each other. He told his wife to stay away from her but later the two women were seen running naked together and bathing in a ditch near their workplace. Shortly thereafter, the two women disappeared. He also accused Magdaleene of having given his wife a potion to cause a miscarriage. None of this saved him from hanging, but it inspired a follow-up investigation by the town aldermen.

Witnesses included a parish priest who, six years earlier, had seen Magdaleene and an unnamed spinster “lying in bed and playing.” He also took a confession from a woman (unclear if it was the same one) who said she had a “carnal conversation” with Magdaleene who displayed “great affection and lust” and whom she said used “a rod” in this context and produced a quantity of cold semen. This last item invoked the image of how the devil was supposed to have cold semen when engaging in sex with human women.

The list of possible crimes was growing: being a hermaphrodite, sodomy with an instrument, being a poisoner or at least an abortionist, and engaging in witchcraft.

A month after the charges were first raised, Magdaleene and Mayken were located and brought in for testimony. Magdaleene was a widow and had an adult son. She used a variety of aliases and moved a lot, due to being followed by legal troubles. But she denied the charges brought against her.

Mayken testified that she’d left her husband because she was tired of his thieving and his threats to kill her. She hadn’t known about Magdaleene’s past legal troubles when they left together, but she did know that Magdaleene had committed adultery with her own husband—something he had neglected to mention in his final confession. The two women had traveled together across the Low Countries, though with one brief separation. Both women testified that there had been no abortion as Mayken hadn’t been pregnant, and the only potion involved was for a fever, after which that angle of questioning was dropped.

While various witnesses said that Magdaleene was a hermaphrodite, possibly caused by the devil, Mayken testified that her partner was “a woman like any other” with no physical abnormalities that she’d ever seen. Mayken reported that Magdaleene said she’d rather have sex with women than “with seven men” and that women begged her for it, and said further that there were more women who felt the same way she did. Mayken wasn’t always as eager for sex as Magdaleene was, at which the latter would list other women who had been more willing in the past.

Mayken reported on their sexual activity in some detail, describing that Magdaleene had “lain on her and had carnal conversation with her as if she was a man…doing her duty with great force,” but that she had never “felt something that would have been male” and although there would be some wetness when Magdaleene climaxed, it wasn’t much and she couldn’t say whether it was hot or cold.

While the trial pursued several lines of questioning related to potential witchcraft, other theories of the offense were pursued at the same time, and there was interest in how Magdaleene had begun this sexual career.  She said she first became aware of female same-sex possibilities at age 9 when she saw several other girls engaging in intercourse together. Now confronted with Mayken’s testimony, she confessed to having had sex with her “on Mayken’s body, but not in her folds as men would communicate with women.”

As was usual for that era, Magdaleene’s testimony was confirmed under torture, where she confessed to sleeping with one of the other named women and “tasting her” but not going further because the woman was ill. [Note: This may possibly refer to oral sex, but I’d say it isn’t unambiguous.]  She described another sexual encounter with a woman who’d asked Magdaleene if she was a man or a woman, but who was convinced she was a woman after they had sex. She continued to deny ever having performed witchcraft and evidently the investigators believed her and the torture was concluded.

Mayken was order to pray for forgiveness and was banned from Bruges for 10 years. Magdaleene was held in jail for another 2 years before sentencing. The final charges were restricted to abandoning her husband [note: but I thought she was a widow?], seducing women away from their husbands, and teaching them dishonor by libidinous acts. Her sentence was being banned from Flanders for life under penalty of death, beginning 3 days after sentencing.

The article continues with a survey of female sodomy charges in 17th century Europe, noting the unusual number in the southern Netherlands in the 15-16th centuries, often involving death sentences. This unusual rate of convictions fell off at the end of the 16th century, possibly due to shifts in popular knowledge about the sexual possibilities. In Mayken and Magdaleene’s trial, the word “sodomy” is never used, whereas it commonly appears in earlier records. One factor in this context is that sodomy had come to be defined narrowly in terms of penetration, therefore trials of women tended to focus only on cases where an artificial phallus had been used—something Magdaleene denied. Nor had Magdaleene cross-dressed or expressed anything resembling a masculine identity—other potentially aggravating factors in cases of f/f sex.

One factor in Mayken’s lesser sentence might be due to her testimony situating her more passively. She “endured” the sex and sometimes refused it, though she did not present herself as a victim.

The prevalent medical discourse around the role of the clitoris in female same-sex activity led the authorities to raise this issue strongly, hoping to ascribe Magdaleene’s desires to pseudo-masculine anatomy, although her partners rejected this framing. [Note: At this point in the article, the author discusses how the use of the term “tribade” specifically meant “a woman who uses an enlarged clitoris for sex” but I’ve been coming to strongly question this attribution, especially when projected back prior to the 16th century anatomists. But that’s a subject for a separate discussion.] In the 17th century, anatomical examinations were becoming an inherent part of accusations of female sodomy. The article digresses into explaining the Galenic theory of sexual development, popular ideas about spontaneous physical sex-change, and conflicts between medial and religious ideas about female sodomy, with several case studies listed. There’s an extensive discussion of the theories of demonologists about what types of sex devils preferred or avoided and the potential role of curses in the experience of same-sex desire.

The accusations that Magdaleene had abnormal physiology were discussed at various points in her trial, but her initial accuser was the only person who ever used the word “hermaphrodite” and at no point is there mention of a formal medical examination, suggesting that this was not a strong concern. But “hermaphrodite” didn’t have a narrow physiological definition at this time and could refer to any person who overturned gender roles, especially a woman perceived as dominant over men.

In all, the various discourses present in the trial demonstrate the variety of ideas and models of female same-sex desire that were prevalent at the time, whether in different parts of the population or existing as simultaneous beliefs. But what stands out as significant was how articulate and conscious Magdaleene was of her personal preference for engaging in sex with women and her awareness of other women with similar preferences.