Sanudo Diaries: July 29, 1516: (22: 386-87)

Update!! Tom Tomorrow has Ted Cuccinelli on the case!

Francis I, the new pope says he has no right to judge people who are gay, but doesn't condone female priests , according to Reuters. The regular media in the US ran with and repeated this all day today. Getting states to recognize marriages from other states (NPR four minute audio here) and repealing the Defense of Marriage Acts (DOMA) enacted in state houses across the country becomes the next set of court cases revolving around LGBT rights expansion this year.
Also in Italy, today, there were floods in and around Napoli, a literal train wreck far in the north has injured at least forty, and a court's decision on whether or not to ban Silvio Berlusconi from public office, is due tomorrow. Rough summer without talking about the economy.

In Venice, on this day, in 1516, a bill was announced of a motion the previous night by the Council of Ten. It would pay, for the next eight days, any active agent in the act of sodomy some 300 ducats to also inform against the receiver of such acts. And while doing this they could also be absolved from charges of wrongdoing, if these accusations proved true against the passive partner's submission. This was a further step in the City's acknowledgement of the widespread practice, but was also aimed at gaining complicity from agents of homosexuality against the passive parties, and those recalled for over the last five years. This willingness to go after the passive actors by the state and reward the active agents, all in order to stop the willingness among 'those men', who had submitted to this practice and restore the rightful order of things, seems preposterous today.
Yet they had a different set of basic elements in how they viewed things and had to deal with them than we do. In some ways. Starting with the premise that the guilty parties were the passive parties,  rather than the active ones, the Council had agreed they would pay the 'snitch fee' if the passive accused partners did not themselves have the 300 ducats. Of course this was done at a time of war for Venice and just a year after the creation of the new loan scheme for paying public debt. But in spite of all this, or as they saw it, because there was so much public sin, something had to be done to make real gains against the scourge of passive homosexuals.

Sanudo Diaries: July 29, 1516: (22: 386-87); "This bill was of great importance and gave great attention to the city. When it was announced, I was at Rialto and heard it, and many foreigners laughed about it, saying that the old men have themselves worked over [dicendo li vechii si fano lavorar.] Thus this news will travel all over the world. Nevertheless, the most excellent Council of Ten decided it, so one must obey it and praise it."

Here, our helpful editors explain that it was difficult to certify acts that had been presumed to occur.
Editor's note: "Those involved were divided into the agents, or initiator (agenti), and those who permitted the act upon themselves, the passive parties (pacienti). In 1516 the "agents" were to be induced by promises of absolution and monetary rewards to identify their passive partners which led to some ribald mockery by foreigners in Venice....  Responses to this law did not always lead to conclusive guilt...." [p. 136]

All quotes as Sanudo Diaries or Editor's notes or Editor's Footnotes from Venice, Cita Excellentissima, Selection from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo translated by Linda L Carroll,  editors: Patricia H LaBalme and Laura Sanguineti White, published by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008