Sexual crime and political conflict: An Alsatian nobleman is burned to death with his male lover in 1482

[Extract] In medieval and early modern Europe, ‘sodomy’ could refer to any sexual contact that intentionally resulted in non- procreative ejaculation, including but not limited to contact between men. Although sodomy had been progressively criminalized as a capital offense since the twelfth century, the prosecution of homosexuals as sodomites was rare. Homosexuality was sometimes quite public, in bath houses, for example, and there is little evidence that gay people formed a hidden social group. Gay sex could be routinely indulged, and when sexual persecution did occur, its context was broadly political, as illustrated by the execution of Richard Puller of Hohenburg, an Alsatian nobleman.