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Genders and Sexualities in Histor y

New Approaches in History and

Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire
EDITED BY MARK D. CHAPMAN
AND DOMINIC JANES
Genders and Sexualities in History

Series Editors
John Arnold
King’s College
University of Cambridge
Cambridge, UK

Sean Brady
Birkbeck College
University of London
London, UK

Joanna Bourke
Birkbeck College
University of London
London, UK
Palgrave Macmillan’s series, Genders and Sexualities in History, accom-
modates and fosters new approaches to historical research in the fields
of genders and sexualities. The series promotes world-class scholarship,
which concentrates upon the interconnected themes of genders, sexuali-
ties, religions/religiosity, civil society, politics and war.
Historical studies of gender and sexuality have, until recently, been
more or less disconnected fields. In recent years, historical analyses of
genders and sexualities have synthesised, creating new departures in his-
toriography. The additional connectedness of genders and sexualities
with questions of religion, religiosity, development of civil societies, poli-
tics and the contexts of war and conflict is reflective of the movements in
scholarship away from narrow history of science and scientific thought,
and history of legal processes approaches, that have dominated these
paradigms until recently. The series brings together scholarship from
Contemporary, Modern, Early Modern, Medieval, Classical and Non-
Western History. The series provides a diachronic forum for scholarship
that incorporates new approaches to genders and sexualities in history.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15000
 Mark D. Chapman · Dominic Janes
Editors

New Approaches in
History and Theology
to Same-Sex Love
and Desire
Editors
Mark D. Chapman Dominic Janes
Ripon College Keele University
University of Oxford Keele, UK
Cuddesdon, UK

Genders and Sexualities in History

ISBN 978-3-319-70210-0 ISBN 978-3-319-70211-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70211-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017959080

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
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The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
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exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
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Cover illustration: Simeon Solomon, The Bride Bridegroom and Sad Love (1865). © Paul
Fearn/Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Series Editors’ Preface

New Approaches in History and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire is

a genuinely groundbreaking collection, where international and inter-
disciplinary new scholarship explores the relationship between religion
and same-sex desire. The collection re-evaluates the history of same-sex
relationships in the churches, as they have been understood in different
periods of history and in various contexts. Recent marriage equality legis-
lation in many countries has meant that churches of all types have found
themselves forced to address questions on same-sex marriage and queer
lives, for which they are often ill-prepared. The collection reveals the
hidden queer histories of the Church and its theologies, and the many
counter-currents through history that question the dominant, negative
understanding of same-sex relationships in the contemporary churches.
The authors tell unexpected stories. Some in the churches have been at
the vanguard of legislative and social change affecting queer lives. Some
churches have offered safe queer spaces. The essays offer new interpreta-
tions and original research into the history of sexuality that inform the
contemporary debate in the churches as well as in the academy. The col-
lection provides new perspectives and approaches that enrich the histori-
ography of sexuality and of religion. In common with all volumes in the
‘Genders and Sexualities in History’ series, New Approaches in History

v
vi    Series Editors’ Preface

and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire presents a multifaceted and

meticulously researched scholarly collection, and is a sophisticated contri-
bution to our understanding of the past.

John Arnold
Joanna Bourke
Sean Brady
 Contents

1 Introduction: Same-Sex Love and Desire—A Time

for New Approaches 1
Mark D. Chapman and Dominic Janes

2 Theological Amnesia and Same-Sex Love 11

Adrian Thatcher

3 Sexuality as a Guide to Ethics: God and the Variable

Body in English Literature 29
Chris Mounsey

4 The Tradition of Homophobia: Responses

to Same-Sex Relationships in Serbian Orthodoxy
from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day 55
Nik Jovčić-Sas

5 Sexual Ethics in the Shadow of Modernism: George

Tyrrell, André Raffalovich and the Project
that Never Was 79
Philip Healy

vii
viii    Contents

6 ‘Pope Norman’, Griffin’s Report and Roman Catholic

Reactions to Homosexual Law Reform in England
and Wales, 1954–1971 93
Alana Harris

7 Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People

in Australian Anglicanism 117
David Hilliard

8 ‘The Ecclesiastical Wing of the Lavender Revolution’:

Religion and Sexual Identity Organising in the USA,
1946–1976 139
Heather R. White

9 Christ and the Homosexual: An Early Manifesto

for an Affirming Christian Ministry to Homosexuals 161
Bernard Schlager

10 ‘Homosexual Practice’ and the Anglican Communion

from the 1990s: A Case Study in Theology
and Identity 187
Mark D. Chapman

11 How Queer Can Christian Marriage Be?

Eschatological Imagination and the Blessing
of Same-Sex Unions in the American Episcopal Church 209
Rémy Bethmont

12 Setting the Table Anew: Queering the Lord’s Supper

in Contemporary Art 227
Mariecke van den Berg

13 The Queerness of Saints: Inflecting Devotion

and Same-Sex Desire 249
Donald L. Boisvert

Index 265
 Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Mark D. Chapman is Vice-Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon,

Professor of the History of Modern Theology at the University of
Oxford and Canon Theologian of Truro Cathedral. He is an Anglican
priest and member of General Synod of the Church of England. He has
written widely on the history and theology of Anglicanism. Among his
many books are Anglican Theology (2012) and Anglicanism: A Very Short
Introduction (2006).
Dominic Janes is Professor of Modern History and Director of the
History Programme at Keele University. He is a cultural historian who
studies texts and visual images relating to Britain in its local and inter-
national contexts since the eighteenth century. Within this sphere
he focuses on the histories of gender, sexuality and religion. His most
recent books are Picturing the Closet (2015), Visions of Queer Martyrdom
(2015) and Oscar Wilde Prefigured (2016). He has been the recipient
of a number of research awards including fellowships from the Arts and
Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.

ix
x    Editors and Contributors

Contributors

Rémy Bethmont is Professor of British History and Culture at the

University of Paris 8 and head of the TransCrit research group. His work on
the history and theology of Anglicanism has focused on homosexuality in
recent years. He is the author of L’Anglicanisme: un modèle pour le christian-
isme à venir (2010) and the co-editor with Martine Gross of Homosexualité
et traditions monothéistes: vers la fin d’un antagonisme? (2017).
Donald L. Boisvert (Ph.D., University of Ottawa) is a retired Affiliate
Associate Professor in the Department of Religions and Cultures at
Concordia University in Montréal, Canada, where he also taught in the
sexuality studies programme. In addition to numerous articles and book
chapters, he is the author of Out on Holy Ground: Meditations on Gay
Men’s Spirituality (2000) and Sanctity and Male Desire: A Gay Reading
of Saints (2004). He co-edited the two-volume collection Queer Religion
(2012, with Jay Emerson Johnson) and The Bloomsbury Reader in
Religion, Sexuality and Gender (2017, with Carly Daniel-Hughes). He is
also a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada.
Alana Harris is a Lecturer in Modern British History at King’s College
London. Her research interests encompass the transnational study of
Catholicism, gender history, sexuality and the history of emotions, iden-
tity and subjectivities—including the practice of oral history and mate-
rial culture. Recent publications include: Love and Romance in Britain
1918–1970 (2014), co-edited with Timothy Willem Jones; Faith in the
Family: A Lived Religious History of English Catholicism (2013); and an
edited volume exploring shifting religious attitudes to birth control in
the 1960s, The Schism of ’68: Catholicism, Contraception and ‘Humanae
Vitae’ in Europe, 1945–75 (Palgrave, 2018).
Philip Healy is Emeritus Fellow, Kellogg College, Oxford University.
From 2000–2010 he was Director of Public Programmes at Oxford
University’s Department for Continuing Education. His research inter-
ests are in late-Victorian and Edwardian literature and religion and
sexuality. Among his publications are editions of John Gray’s Park: A
Fantastic Story (1984) and Frederick Rolfe’s The Desire and Pursuit of
the Whole (1986). With Nancy Erber, William A. Peniston, and Frederick
S. Roden he prepared a translated edition of Marc-André Raffalovich’s
 Editors and Contributors    xi

Uranism and Unisexuality: A Study of Different Manifestations of the

Sexual Instinct (Palgrave, 2016).
David Hilliard was Associate Professor in History at Flinders
University, Adelaide, and since 2002 has been an adjunct associate pro-
fessor. His research and publications have focused on the history of
Christian missions in the Pacific Islands, the social and religious history
of Australia and the history of Anglicanism.
Nik Jovčić-Sas has a BA in Theology from King’s College London and
is a human rights activist working in the United Kingdom and Eastern
Europe. His work focuses on interactions between Eastern Orthodox
Christianity and the LGBTQ+ rights movement.
Chris Mounsey worked for several years in theatre before an accident
and four months’ immobility, in which reading was the only possible
occupation, led to an academic career. Degrees in philosophy, compara-
tive literature and English from the University of Warwick followed, and
a doctorate on Blake founded an interest in the literature of the eight-
eenth century. He is Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature
at the University of Winchester. He is the author of several books includ-
ing Christopher Smart: Clown of God (2001), Being the Body of Christ
(2012) and The Birth of a Clinic (forthcoming).
Bernard Schlager, Ph.D. is Executive Director at The Center for
LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS) at Pacific School
of Religion (PSR) and Associate Professor of Historical and Cultural
Studies at PSR and member of the Core Doctoral Faculty at The
Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. The co-author of
Ministry Among God’s Queer Folk: LGBTQ Pastoral Care (2007; revised
edition expected in 2018), he has published articles in the areas of his-
tory and queer studies in the journals Theology and Sexuality, Viator, and
the Greek Orthodox Theological Review as well as in several print collec-
tions of essays. He is currently working on a book-length study of the
cult of Saint Sebastian from the Black Death to the AIDS pandemic.
Adrian Thatcher (MA, D.Phil.) is currently Honorary Professor in
the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Exeter,
UK. Prior to that he was Professor of Applied Theology at Exeter
(2004–2011), and at the University of St Mark and St John, Plymouth
xii    Editors and Contributors

(1995–2004). His most recent books are Redeeming Gender (2016),

The Oxford Handbook of Theology, Sexuality and Gender (editor, 2015),
Thinking about Sex (2015), God, Sex and Gender (2011), and The Savage
Text—The Uses and Abuses of the Bible (2008). He is an active Anglican.
Mariecke van den Berg studied Theology (BA) and Gender Studies
(RMA) at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She holds a Ph.D. in
Public Administration from the University of Twente. As a post-doctoral
researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, she participated in the
NWO-funded research programme ‘Contested privates: the oppositional
pairing of religion and homosexuality in public discourse’. She is cur-
rently working at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
at Utrecht University as a post-doctoral researcher in the NWO-funded
research programme ‘Beyond religion versus emancipation: gender and
sexuality in women’s conversion to Judaism, Christianity and Islam in
contemporary Western Europe’.
Heather R. White is Visiting Assistant Professor in Religion and Queer
Studies at the University of Puget Sound, in Tacoma, Washington. She is
a specialist in American Religious History with a research focus on sexu-
ality, gender and twentieth-century social movements. She is the author
of Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (2015) and
is co-editor, with Gillian Frank and Bethany Morton, of Devotion and
Desires: Histories of Religion and Sexuality in the Twentieth Century
United States (forthcoming). She serves on the advisory board of the
LGBT Religious Archive Network and is a steering committee member
of the Queer Studies in Religion group of the American Academy of
Religion.
 List of Figures

Fig. 12.1 Elisabeth Ohlson, Palm Sunday, 1998 232

Fig. 12.2 Elisabeth Ohlson, Calvary, 1998 238
Fig. 12.3 Elisabeth Ohlson, The Last Supper, 1998 240

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Same-Sex Love and Desire—A

Time for New Approaches

Mark D. Chapman and Dominic Janes

The relationships between diverse forms of religious and sexual identities

have been widely contested in the media since the rise of the lesbian and
gay liberation movement in the 1970s. One of the key images that often
appears in public debate is that of ‘lesbians and gays in the church’ as
a significant ‘problem’. On the one hand, many members of faith com-
munities have remained hostile to physical expressions of same-sex
desire, whilst on the other hand many lesbian and gay activists have
been suspicious of various forms of religion. The compromise that has
been reached over church exemptions from the obligation to perform
same-sex marriage ceremonies in England indicates that many people do
continue to find interactions of religion and homosexuality to be prob-
lematic. At the same time, research over the past forty years or so into
queer theology and the history of same-sex desire has shown that such
issues have played an important role in the story of Christianity over

M. D. Chapman (*)
University of Oxford Ripon College, Cuddesdon, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
D. Janes
Keele University, Keele, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. D. Chapman and D. Janes (eds.), New Approaches in History
and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire, Genders and Sexualities
in History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70211-7_1
2 M. D. CHAPMAN AND D. JANES

many centuries. John Boswell’s ground-breaking books Christianity,

Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) and Same-Sex Unions in Pre-
Modern Europe (1994) created considerable controversy because they
argued that the early and medieval Church was not inherently hostile to
same-sex desire and that this was really only a development of the later
Middle Ages.1 The contributors to this volume have all been inspired by
the challenges of such revisionist study to explore religion and same-sex
desire as fields of opportunity for investigation and debate. They come
from a wide variety of backgrounds and from different stages of their
careers both within and beyond higher education. Many of the chapters
look back to the gospels and the later traditions of the Church in order
to think in broader terms about practices and truths in modern culture.
This book is an inter-disciplinary attempt to offer a range of evalu-
ations of the history of same-sex relationships in the churches as they
have been understood in different periods of history and in various con-
texts. In addition, we have sought to encourage authors to engage with
‘theological’ questions and assessments especially as these relate to con-
temporary questions in the churches. As we have noted, with the recent
legislation in many countries that has allowed for same-sex marriage,
churches of all types have found themselves having to address ques-
tions for which they were often ill-prepared. The speed of change has
meant that there has been little leisurely debate; instead there are often
panicked reactions and ill-thought-out statements. Although there is
now a highly developed literature on queer theology, few church lead-
ers had engaged with it—it was considered far too risky as it questioned
the traditional teachings on marriage and sexuality in which the churches
had a huge ethical investment. Churches were consequently frequently
caught off guard as legislation changed and they often found themselves
at odds with wider society. A further complexity is created by the fact
that in many churches, especially those like the Anglican Communion
or the Lutheran World Federation that have a wide global spread, issues
around sexuality have been the focus for a range of issues, many of which
relate to the history of mission and colonialism. This has meant that for
many churches it has been difficult to engage dispassionately with issues
in human sexuality.
In response to such questions, what the essays seek to do in the pre-
sent volume is to uncover some of the hidden histories of the Church
and its theologies; there are many counter-currents through history that
question the dominant understanding of same-sex relationships in the
 1 INTRODUCTION: SAME-SEX LOVE AND DESIRE—A TIME FOR NEW … 3

contemporary churches. They tell sometimes unexpected stories, many

of which invite serious further attention. It is quite clear through his-
tory that some in the churches have been at the vanguard of legisla-
tive and social change. Similarly, some churches have offered safe queer
spaces. What is also clear is that the wider society was not always quite
as hostile to same-sex relationships as might have been believed. Overall,
these essays offer new interpretations and original research into the his-
tory of sexuality that might help inform the contemporary debate in the
churches as well as in the academy.
Adrian Thatcher in his chapter (‘Theological Amnesia and Same-Sex
Love’) argues that recent generations have suffered from a loss of col-
lective memory regarding how we reached the current and prolonged
culture wars about sex. He contends that the pervasive belief in the
existence of two opposite sexes is an early modern assumption that has
persisted into the twenty-first century. Both heterosexuality and homo-
sexuality, he contends, are recent constructions based upon it. His chap-
ter continues by arguing that the churches have nothing to fear from the
replacement of the modern sex binary by a continuum that embraces
gender, sex and orientation. Theological amnesia is also a key element
addressed in Chris Mounsey’s contribution (‘Sexuality as a Guide to
Ethics: God and the Variable Body in English Literature’) makes an
explicit link between past and contemporary changes in religious atti-
tudes. His focus is on early modern Britain and the writings of Aphra
Behn and Jonathan Swift who understood their own lives and developed
their own sexualities, not by following the changing moral codes of the
old and the new churches, but by following the devices and desires of
their own bodies. He argues that the rise of Protestantism can be consid-
ered in relation to the concept of fashion or ‘lifestyle choice’. The notion
that the acceptance of homosexuality in recent decades is also a choice
is one that has been advanced by various strands of conservative opin-
ion. But Mounsey contends that such contemporary moral re-fashioning
should be taken as seriously as the changes that took place in the course
of the Reformation. Matters of taste and culture have always played a
role in processes of religious and moral change.
Nik Jovčić-Sas (‘The Tradition of Homophobia: Responses to Same-
Sex Relationships in Serbian Orthodoxy from the Nineteenth Century
to the Present Day’) presents a case study of amnesia and hostility from
Eastern Europe. He argues that over the past two decades Serbia has
earned a reputation as one of Europe’s most intolerant nations towards
4 M. D. CHAPMAN AND D. JANES

the LGBTQ+ community. His chapter explores the ways in which

nationalism and Serbian Orthodoxy can be located at the heart of the
current climate of homophobic discussion and how this discourse has
developed. Building on the thesis proposed by John Boswell in his afore-
mentioned Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (1994), Jovčić-Sas
looks at Serbia’s history of brotherhood rituals or ‘Pobratimstvo’ and
how they declined after Serbian independence from the Ottoman Empire
with the influx of Western European views on sexuality.
With the contribution from Philip Healy (‘Sexual Ethics in the Shadow
of Modernism: George Tyrrell, André Raffalovich and the Project That
Never Was’) we move from orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism in order
to explore a case study of the challenges facing those attempting to build
bridges between traditional forms of religion and the cultural forms of
modernity. Healy’s focus is on the writer André Raffalovich (1864–1934)
who, in 1896, converted to Roman Catholicism and published his trea-
tise Uranisme et unisexualité.2 In this book, Raffalovich argued that
homosexuality was neither a disease nor a crime. His book also set out
an ethics of homosexuality. In the following year George Tyrrell (1861–
1909) published Notes on the Catholic Doctrine of Purity for circula-
tion among his fellow Jesuits.3 This was a pastorally sensitive attempt to
deal with the laity’s scruples in the area of sexual thoughts and desires.
Raffalovich and Tyrrell were drawn together by their interest in sexual
ethics in particular and in contemporary theology more generally. Tyrrell
became the leading British exponent of what came to be called ‘modern-
ism’ and was condemned as heretical by Pius X in 1907. Tyrrell wanted
to interpret traditional Christian doctrine in the light of contemporary
thought and believed that Raffalovich was well placed to undertake a
similar project for sexual morality. Although Raffalovich declined to do
so, Tyrrell’s letters to his friend indicate what that project might have
looked like.
It was not until the post-war period that the hierarchy of the Roman
Catholic Church in Britain attempted to frame a position on (male)
same-sex desire as Alana Harris explains (‘“Pope Norman”. Griffin’s
Report and Roman Catholic Reactions to Homosexual Law Reform in
England and Wales, 1954–1971’). Using the virtually unknown ‘Griffin
Report’—a Catholic submission to the Wolfenden Committee on sexual
law reform in England—as a starting point, this chapter explores progres-
sive Catholic reactions to homosexual law reform from the time of the
publication of the Wolfenden Report (1957) through to the passing of
 1 INTRODUCTION: SAME-SEX LOVE AND DESIRE—A TIME FOR NEW … 5

the Sexual Offences Act (1967). Alongside exploration of the separation

of sin and crime advocated by this Catholic group, the chapter evalu-
ates the theologically informed, jurisprudential writings of the prominent
Catholic politician and polemist, Norman St-John Stevas (1929–2012).
Both case studies illustrate the growing capacity and confidence of
an educated, middle-class Catholic elite to formulate new theologi-
cal positions and interrogate traditional teachings on love and sexuality.
Through this lens, culminating in St John-Stevas’ co-sponsorship of Leo
Abse’s bill in 1966, the surprising and counter-intuitive contributions of
a liberal Catholic milieu to the evolution of modern sexual subjectivity
can be reappraised, alongside an alternative rendering of the place of reli-
gion in politics in the ‘long 1950s’.
David Hilliard (‘Some Found a Niche: Same-Sex Attracted People in
Australian Anglicanism’) explores another context in which prejudice and
intolerance mingled with more positive responses to the development
of modern forms of sexual identity politics. His contribution surveys
the relationship of same-sex attracted people to the Anglican Church
in Australia from the nineteenth century to the present and how they
sought to reconcile their sexuality with their religious faith. He argues
that the subject of homosexuality as a moral problem or pastoral issue
was almost totally absent from public discussion within the Anglican
Church before the 1960s. However, there is evidence from the mid-
nineteenth century onwards that some same-sex attracted people,
although secretive about their sexuality, were able to find spaces within
Anglicanism where they obtained emotional and spiritual fulfilment and,
in some cases, met partners and maintained clandestine social networks.
Men were often drawn to cathedrals in the capital cities and to inner-
urban Anglo-Catholic churches, teaching in church schools and theo-
logical colleges, bush brotherhoods and religious communities, overseas
missionary work, and ministry to young people. Single women who were
same-sex attracted might be drawn to teaching in church girls’ schools or
to full-time church work as missionaries or deaconesses. From the 1970s,
same-sex attracted Anglicans became more visible in the Church. Some
became active in the emerging gay-rights movement, formed groups for
mutual support and urged the Church to reconsider its negative view of
same-sex relationships.
The process by which ‘lesbian and gay positive’ religious groups
emerged during the post-war decades in the United States is the sub-
ject of Heather Rachelle White’s chapter (‘The Ecclesiastical Wing of
6 M. D. CHAPMAN AND D. JANES

the Lavender Revolution: Religion and Sexual Identity Organising in

the USA, 1946–1976’). She finds that in America religion, and particu-
larly Christianity, was a visible and important part of the lesbian and gay
liberation movement that emerged in the wake of the 1969 Stonewall
Riots in New York City. Like post-Stonewall radicalism the ‘gay church’
phenomenon was also not completely new; both were indebted to ear-
lier efforts at reform. Her essay traces religious involvement as an inter-
twined element of the history of politicised sexual identity that began
to coalesce in the United States after World War II and became visible
to the American mainstream in the 1970s. She argues that focusing on
Christianity in relation to this history counters the implicit and explicit
ways that queer histories are often told without attention to religion.
Next, Bernard Schlager (‘Christ and the Homosexual: An Early Manifesto
for an Affirming Christian Ministry to Homosexuals’) points to the work
of a particular individual as having played an important role during this
period. Schlager discusses how the American minister Robert Wood pre-
sented his fellow Christians with a view of homosexuality in his book
Christ and the Homosexual (1960) that was revolutionary. Wood argued
that homosexuals held a rightful place in Church and society and that
they should abandon neither Christianity nor the Church. More specifi-
cally he called for the advancement of civil rights for homosexuals; the
construction of pro-homosexual theologies; the education, ordination,
and career placement of ‘out’ homosexuals; and marriage equality for
same-sex couples. Schlager situates these topics within Wood’s lifelong
ministry of promoting the full acceptance of homosexuals in American
society through his own denomination, the United Church of Christ.
The final set of chapters focus upon debates from the late twentieth
and early twenty-first centuries. The first of these contributions looks at
some of the challenges in bringing about change within major denomi-
nations as opposed to achieving forms of self-expression within new
movements. Mark Chapman (‘“Homosexual practice” and the Anglican
Communion from the 1990s: A Case Study in Theology and Identity’)
discusses the ways in which the Anglican Communion has redefined itself
around the issue of the legitimacy of same-sex relationships, especially
among the clergy, since the 1980s. Chapman offers a political interpreta-
tion of the ways in which opposition to homosexuality has become what
Murray Edelman calls a ‘condensation symbol’, which brings together
a set of wider issues that have emerged between the different provinces
of the Communion, especially between Global South and North. The
 1 INTRODUCTION: SAME-SEX LOVE AND DESIRE—A TIME FOR NEW … 7

first section of the chapter traces the history of debates from the gradual
liberalisation of the approach to homosexual relations in the American
Episcopal Church from the 1970s to the divisions following the 1998
Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops that stated that ‘homosexual
practice was incompatible with Scripture’. Divisions were heightened
after the election of a bishop in a same-sex relationship in the American
Church as well as the issuing of liturgies for same-sex blessings in the
Canadian Diocese of New Westminster. The second part of the chapter
discusses the issues between the provinces of the Communion, especially
those in Africa, where many claim that homosexual practice is ‘unAfri-
can’. The discussion then moves on to explore the symbolic language of
theological debate in the Anglican Communion. Chapman suggests that
although there are efforts to reconcile the different factions where con-
densation symbols have been rendered sacred, there is little chance that
there will be the humility sufficient for major compromises or changes to
be made.
Same-sex marriage has been one of the most controversial issues in
recent cultural and religious debate. It is fitting, therefore, that this book
continues with Rémy Bethmont’s exploration of the theological under-
pinnings of queer marriages (‘How Queer can Christian Marriage Be?
Eschatological Imagination and the Blessing of Same-Sex Unions in
the American Episcopal Church’). He argues that the pace of change
in many Western countries over same-sex issues in the last couple of
decades and the successful outcome of political campaigns for mar-
riage equality has had a considerable impact on the development of the
Christian LGBTQ movement. The (American) Episcopal Church’s deci-
sion to call same-sex unions ‘marriage’ at its 2015 General Convention
is seen as being of great importance. The provisional liturgy of bless-
ing authorised by the previous General Convention in 2012 purpose-
fully eschewed the term marriage in relation to same-sex couples and
inscribed them within the broader notion of covenanted households,
putting them on the same plane as married heterosexual couples and
monastic communities. The result was to leave a certain degree of ambi-
guity in the way in which same-sex relationships were imagined either
as friendships or marriages. It was the changing American secular con-
text and the language of rights that led to the inclusion of same-sex cou-
ples in holy matrimony in a move that was questioned by many members
of the clergy and laity. The adoption of a marital terminology in 2015
seemed to signal the end of the friendship template for Episcopalian
8 M. D. CHAPMAN AND D. JANES

queers yet Bethmont argues that both the friendship and the marriage
templates in fact share a similar approach.
The final two chapters explore queer possibilities in relation to
Church life and personal belief and practice. Mariecke van den Berg
presents a case study of the possibilities for not merely accommodat-
ing the LGBTQ community within mainstream churches but of queer-
ing theological beliefs and liturgical practices (‘Setting the Table Anew:
Queering the Lord’s Supper in Contemporary Art’). She explores the
queer potential of the exhibition Ecce Homo (1998)—and in particular
the work The Last Supper—by Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson.
Ecce Homo merges biblical imagery with the symbolism of contempo-
rary queer (sub-)cultures. It evoked much debate when it was held in
the cathedral of Uppsala, which is widely regarded as Sweden’s ‘religious
capital’. Ecce Homo was predominantly understood as an embrace of an
‘inclusive Jesus’ that implied a critique of (Christian) homophobia and
an invitation to the Church of Sweden to take a more LGBTQ-friendly
stance. Van den Berg investigates the queer potential of The Last Supper
by bringing into dialogue the ‘ordinary theology’ of the participants in
the debate and queer theological insights that were developed in the
two decades since the exhibition was first shown.4 She argues that Ecce
Homo’s queer potential lies in a mixture of specifying queer suffering and
the embrace of kitsch and parody. She sees this mixture exemplified in
The Last Supper, where Jesus dines on crisps and wine in the company
of cross-dressers and a dog. As Ohlson makes ‘repetitions with a critical
difference’ to the food, the guests, the Host and the table of the Last
Supper, possibilities for a queer re-reading of the Biblical narrative and its
present-day sacramental enactment emerge.5
The potential queerness of Christian devotion is the subject of
Donald L. Boisvert’s contribution (‘The Queerness of Saints: Inflecting
Devotion and Same-Sex Desire’). In the Roman Catholic context—and
to a more limited extent in Anglicanism—saints and holy persons occupy
a central place in devotional culture. He presents what he sees as this
robust devotional culture as inviting not only expressions of deep fer-
vour and piety but also manifestations of physical and erotic desire.
Furthermore, he regards saints and other sacred or holy figures as often
characterised by their inherent ‘queerness’. Boisvert argues that they
transgress any number of boundaries and fixed identity categories. His
chapter examines devotion to saints as a means of queer affirmation
in the Christian tradition and aims to question the all-too-common
 1 INTRODUCTION: SAME-SEX LOVE AND DESIRE—A TIME FOR NEW … 9

perception of religion, and especially of Catholic Christianity, as being

inherently opposed to, or dismissive of, same-sex desire. While it is true
that many churches, both in their theological posturing and their public
discourse, employ homophobic and even anti-body rhetoric, it is equally
accurate to claim that their rich ritual life makes possible an interest-
ing array of queer opportunities and strategies for the active expression
and display of same-sex yearnings. The chapter discusses two exam-
ples of saintly figures drawn from examples from the author’s own life:
St. Dominic Savio (1842–1857) and St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811–
1868). These are presented and analysed as sites of queer rhetoric and
performance. In an echo of the opening chapters of this book it can be
argued that hope lies in discovering the queerness present in Christian
traditions that challenge normative secular mores. The contributors to
this volume seek to advance such new approaches in history and theol-
ogy to same-sex love and desire in order to better understand the past
and to prepare us for the challenges of the world to come.

Notes
1. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People
in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth
Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) and The Marriage
of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard,
1994).
2. Mark André Raffalovich, Uranisme et unisexualité: étude sur différentes
manifestations de l’instinct sexuel (Paris: A. Maloine, 1896).
3. George Tyrrell, Notes on the Catholic Doctrine of Purity (Roehampton:
Manresa Press, 1897).
4. Jeff Astley, Ordinary Theology: Looking, Listening and Learning in Theology
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
5. Elisabeth Stuart, Gay and Lesbian Theologies: Repetitions with a Critical
Difference (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003).
 CHAPTER 2

Theological Amnesia and Same-Sex Love

Adrian Thatcher

For twenty-five years I have been writing about theology and sexuality.
Two principal issues have been the possibility of the accommodation of
women’s bodies in masculine sacral and sacramental space (the ordina-
tion of women), and the possibility of the accommodation of same-sex
desire within the modern two-sex binary (homosexuality). They have a
common yet often unnoticed root: gender. More recently the visibility
and audibility of intersex and transgender people have tested this strug-
gling two-sex binary still further. I have come to see there is widespread
amnesia in the churches about these matters. There is little hope for a
lessening of disagreement if there is no agreement about how we got
to where we are. In the first section I develop the charge of theological
amnesia—the loss of collective memory regarding how we reached the
present and prolonged culture wars about sex. I show that the pervasive
belief in two opposite sexes is a modern assumption, and that heterosex-
uality and homosexuality are both modern constructions based upon it.
In the second part I suggest that the churches have nothing to fear from
the replacement of the modern sex binary by a continuum embracing
gender, sex, and orientation (and perhaps libido as well). The argument

A. Thatcher (*)
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2018 11

M. D. Chapman and D. Janes (eds.), New Approaches in History
and Theology to Same-Sex Love and Desire, Genders and Sexualities
in History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70211-7_2
12 A. Thatcher

as a whole is developed in much more detail in my book Redeeming

Gender.1

The Roots of Amnesia

Anyone suspicious of the assumption that people in biblical times
thought about matters to do with sex, reproduction and the body much
as we do today, would do well to read Thomas Laqueur’s 1990 book,
Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Laqueur argues
that for most of our history in the West, there has been one sex, not
two. ‘For thousands of years it had been a common place that women
had the same genitals as men except that, as Nemesius, bishop of Emesa
in the fourth century, put it: “theirs are inside the body and not outside
it”’.2 Galen (c.130–c.210 CE), he continues, ‘demonstrated at length
that women were essentially men in whom a lack of vital heat—of per-
fection—had resulted in the retention, inside, of structures that in the
male are visible without’. Men and women constitute a single sex with
similar reproductive equipment in which ‘the vagina is imagined as an
interior penis, the labia as foreskin, the uterus as scrotum, and the ovaries
as testicles’.3
In a medical school where I teach part-time (the Plymouth University
Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry) I discovered a second
edition of a rare tome, by a French doctor, Francois Mauriceau (1637–
1709), The Diseases of Women with Child, and in Child-Bed.4 The first
edition was published in 1668; the second edition in 1683. The work
lends the full authority of the emerging science of anatomy to the stand-
ard belief that women, being men, have testicles; it describes what female
testicles do; why these testicles are inferior to men’s; and why women
need to have an orgasm (or orgasms) to conceive. In 1668, then, the
one-sex theory is alive and well in the medical schools of Europe. ‘Every
Woman’, declares Mauriceau, ‘hath two Tefticles as well as Men, being
alfo for the fame ufe, which is to convert into fruitful Seed the Blood
that is brought to them by the Preparing Veffels…; but they differ from
thofe of Men in feituation, figure, magnitude, fubftance, temperature,
and compofition[sic]’.5
The second edition of Mauriceau’s work, forty-five years later, con-
tains a commentary by the editor, Francois Chamberlen. This com-
mentary is especially useful for understanding how, in the short period
between the first and second edition, the one-sex theory was already
 2 THEOLOGICAL AMNESIA AND SAME-SEX LOVE 13

being challenged. Chamberlen frankly disagrees with Mauriceau. ‘Our

Author’, he chides, in a dissenting footnote, is ‘lying under a Miftake’.
Women, he proclaims (in 1683), do not have testicles at all. They have
Ovaria. They do not make seed. There are not any spermatic vessels for
conveying it to the womb. Women have eggs, which get impregnated by
the sperms of men:

We find that the Tefticles of a Woman are no more than, as it were,

two clufters of Eggs, which lie there to be impregnated by the fpir-
ituous Particles, or animating Effluviums,…And as he is miftaken in the
Tefticles, fo is he likewife in an Error in his acceptation of the Woman’s
Seed: For indeed there is none fent forth by the Ejaculatory Veffels (by us
called Fallopius’s Tubes) in coition, there being no Seed in the Ovaria, or
Tefticles….6

The arrival of incommensurable sexual difference in the middle of the

seventeenth century is announced in these discoveries. It takes at least
another century before it is widely adopted. Under a one-sex theory
the inferiority of women had been guaranteed by the assumption that
women were deficient versions of the default male body. Now that
women constituted a new and ‘opposite sex’ how could the older patriar-
chy be sustained? The problem was heightened by new developments in
philosophy. Natural rights theories and theories influenced by Cartesian
dualism, then contemporary, were incompatible with gendered superior-
ity and inferiority. If there are human rights, all humans have them. If
humans are fundamentally souls, as Descartes thought, the sex of bodies
attached to them is irrelevant to their status. What happens, as Londa
Schiebinger has shown,7 is a new two-sex ideology that preserves patriar-
chy by other means. The bodies of women are deemed utterly different
from the bodies of men, made for pregnancy, childbirth and nurturing;
their brains too small for doing science or philosophy; their bodies too
delicate for sport; their passions (located in the uterus) too strong to
escape the calming of male control. Their role is maternal, their place is
domestic, their social position remains subordinate to men. The ‘oppo-
site’ sex arrives.
Laqueur’s thesis has its critics. They want to say that he rides rough-
shod over contrary evidence, and is overly discursive.8 But the changes
in the medical understanding of sexed bodies in the seventeenth cen-
tury signals a radical development from past theories, whatever they
14 A. Thatcher

were. Michael McKeon names the new ideology ‘The seventeenth- and
­eighteenth-century sexuality hypothesis’,9 which, I think, stands whether
or not Laqueur’s claims about previous centuries are over-simplified.
This hypothesis holds that in early modernity, the

one-sex model of anatomy was incompletely challenged and replaced by

the modern two-sex model, according to which the difference between
men and women is not a matter of distinction along a common gradient
but a radical separation based on fundamental physiological differences.
Women are not an underdeveloped and inferior version of men; they are
biologically and naturally different from them—the opposite sex.10

Schiebinger shows how the new sciences were enthusiastically deployed

in order to maintain the gendered status quo. Two sex theories quickly
became orthodoxies, and they came in two versions: one version assumes
inequality, the other kind assumes equality. I trace inequality in the
exemplars of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel
from many more that could be chosen.11 My exemplars of the equality
version of two sexes are Francois Poullain de la Barre, John Stuart Mill
and Mary Wollstonecraft.12 The former, inequality, version was generally
favoured by the churches until the second half of the twentieth century.
There is one obvious place where traces of the one-sex theory survive
more or less intact, down to the present day. These are the expressive
practices of Christianity in liturgy, hymnody and public proclamation,
and in official Vatican documents. Many theological students (and their
teachers) in the 1970s and 1980s utilized the new and disparaging term
‘sexism’ to identify, remove and replace terms such as ‘man’, ‘men’,
‘mankind’, ‘fellowship’, and so on, when these same terms were intended
to include women and children, but without saying so. We railed against
the masculine nomenclature at the basis of Christian God-language, and
tried not to use ‘He’, ‘Him’, ‘His’, ‘Himself’ when preaching and hymn-
singing. (In my home church we still confess to ‘our heavenly Father’
that ‘we have sinned against you and against our fellow men’).13 But we
completely failed to understand the origin of this masculinist language.
We had yet to learn that masculinist language provided massive, primary
evidence of the unaltered continuation of the one-sex theory into the twen-
tieth century, and now well beyond it. Since women are men (albeit infe-
rior and all that males are not), it is obvious that to speak of ‘men’ is to
speak of men and women. That is what the Church has always done.
 2 THEOLOGICAL AMNESIA AND SAME-SEX LOVE 15

Since perfection and likeness to God appear as masculine qualities at

the masculine end of the one-sex continuum, it is obvious that women,
thus stigmatized, will be unable to represent the perfect Christ. The
Roman Catholic arguments of say, Inter insigniores14 are all analyzable
in terms of the masculinism of the one-sex theory. A one-sex theologi-
cal anthropology is then mixed with that modern bastardized concept—
complementarity. Complementarity has a triple parentage: the ravings of
Rousseau, Einstein’s theory of light, and a literal reading of Genesis 1
(without Genesis 2 and 3). The rise and rise of complementarity as an
accepted theological term is astonishing. First used in official Catholic
writing in Familiaris Consortio in 1981, by 2003 the Anglican House of
Bishops declared, contrary to a mass of evidence, that ‘a belief in com-
plementarity has always been a part of orthodox Christian theology’.15
The bishops even elevate it to the status of an Anglican ‘core belief’.16
Complementarity re-runs the frisson between rival eighteenth-century
theories about whether two sexes are equal or not. In some evangeli-
cal thought complementarity is affirmed just because it does not deliver
any sense of equality between women and men, and is set against liberal
‘egalitarianism’, which does.17 It is a late religious equivalent of the secu-
lar theory of two unequal sexes exemplified by Rousseau. Other evangeli-
cals have wisely moved beyond complementarity preferring to find their
model for human relationships in the Persons of the Trinity.18
It is prima facie odd that Church documents of all denominations,
while foregrounding scripture ostentatiously, rely so heavily on the
nomenclature of modernity—sexuality, heterosexuality, homosexual-
ity, orientation and so on—and more recently ‘complementarity’. They
sound like modernists! There has to be an historical reason why con-
servative Christians do this, and there is. Ever since the invention of
heterosexuality in 1892,19 the authority of science has been invoked to
render it compulsory, and alternatives to it as deviant. Complementarity
is the new natural theology, as flawed as the one it replaces, but sound-
ing modern and respectably scientific. As biblical appeals to Sodom and
Gomorrah and ‘going after strange flesh’ (Jude 7, AV) sound increas-
ingly unconvincing, a doctrine emerges that marginalizes gay, lesbian and
bi- people, supports heterosexual marriage, and requires its supporters to
forget, or falsify, or deny altogether the being of intersex, third sex and
transgender people.
The adoption of the language of heterosexuality brought a challenge
to the churches’ procreative understanding of sex in the second half of
16 A. Thatcher

the nineteenth century. It signalled the replacement of the procreative

principle within sexual ethics by a new pleasure principle:

In the United States, in the 1890s, the ‘sexual instinct’ was generally iden-
tified as a procreative desire of men and women. But that reproductive
ideal was beginning to be challenged, quietly but insistently, in practice
and theory, by a new different-sex pleasure ethic. According to that radi-
cally new standard, the ‘sexual instinct’ referred to men’s and women’s
erotic desire for each other, irrespective of its procreative potential.20

The churches were confronted with a dilemma. On the one hand, the
new understanding of sex began to introduce a pleasure ethic they were
not yet able to accept. On the other hand, heterosexuality conveniently
contrasted with its opposite, ‘homosexuality’, and the new language
made the condemnation of some non-procreative sexual acts (those
between same-sex partners) easier. As the emphasis on the importance
of sexual pleasure for men and women grew in the twentieth century,
the churches were able to accommodate and incorporate it (albeit within
marriage). That heterosexuality was about the pleasure principle was qui-
etly forgotten: that heterosexuality was about marginalizing homosexu-
ality was gratefully seized on and extended. The normalization of this
modern nomenclature across the wide spectrum of theological and eccle-
sial opinion in the last fifty years, without regard to its origins, indicates
a disabling amnesia at the basis of many modern pronouncements about
homosexuality and heterosexuality.
On the one hand, the preservation of the ancient one-sex theory
contrives to exclude women from priesthood and devalues women in
millions of Protestant homes. On the other hand, the insertion of the
two-sex theory into popular theology, validated not just by science but
by the male God, contrives to exclude sexual minorities from full accept-
ance and visibility, and from marriage where appropriate and desired.
Roman Catholic theology requires the one-sex theory in order to con-
fine ordination to men. But it also requires the two-sex theory to accord
to women the unconditional dignity and respect that is due to them as
the baptized children of God (albeit with the restrictions that belong to
‘female nature’). I call this the ‘modern mix’,21 an incompatible blend of
theories that constitutes the best the churches can do with sex/gender.
I, therefore, think it fair to speak of theological amnesia since there
is little sign of awareness of these matters as the churches continue to
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 AMIENS
LIBRAIRIE EDGAR MALFÈRE
7, RUE DELAMBRE, 7

1924
Seizième mille.
DU MÊME AUTEUR:
1º Ouvrages publiés:
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Fleurs du Désert.
II. Prose: Apologie pour les Nouveaux Riches. Mienne, roman.
III. Traductions: Jean Second: Le livre des Baisers.
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Musée: La touchante aventure de Héro et Léandre.
Rufin: Épigrammes.
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 A MADAME CHARLES COUSIN
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à Henry Malherbe
 CHAPITRE PREMIER

PRISONNIER

(9 mars 1916).
Deux soldats du 85ᵉ Saxon me conduisaient à travers champs vers
l’intérieur des lignes ennemies.
J’ouvrais de grands yeux. Les feldgraù[A] se démenaient autour de nous.
Ils couraient en déroulant des fils téléphoniques, jurant, soufflant, braillant;
d’autres, pliés en deux sous le sac ou par la peur, l’arme à la main, se
dirigeaient, en colonne par un, vers notre tranchée conquise, pour l’occuper
ou pour tenter d’aller plus loin; d’autres revenaient en hurlant: des blessés.
Car l’Allemand qui souffre pousse des cris. Je marchais lentement vers
l’arrière, leur arrière, tout étonné de passer sans accident au milieu du flot
de balles par quoi nos unités de soutien limitaient le succès des vainqueurs.
Ainsi j’arrivai au bord d’un ravin très encaissé et fort boisé: le ravin du
Bois-Chauffour.
C’était le 9 mars 1916, près du village de Douaumont.
Toute la pente du ravin était creusée de trous individuels ou de trous
pouvant contenir quatre ou cinq hommes. De légers toits de branchages et
de toiles à tentes les transformaient en frêles gourbis où du moins l’on
pouvait s’abriter contre la neige de ce jour-là. De la fumée sortait de
quelques-uns de ces gourbis: les réserves allemandes se chauffaient. Deux
mitrailleuses étaient braquées vers le ciel, attendant qu’un avion français
entrât dans leur champ de tir.
Par un escalier taillé à pic en pleine pente raide, je descendis.
Des soldats, de gros cigares blonds à la bouche, me regardaient avec
joie.
—Offizier? demandaient-ils.
—Ia, répondait l’un ou l’autre de mes gardiens.
—Offizier! répétaient-ils d’un air ébloui, comme si j’eusse été un général
de bonne prise.
Mais pas un ne m’adressa la parole.
 Mes gardiens me conduisirent à un jeune feldwebel coiffé de la
casquette. Il parlait français.
—Officier?
—Oui, répondis-je.
—Artilleur?
—Non, chasseur à pied.
—Ah! Vous partirez ce soir. Maintenant, nous n’avons pas le temps, et
puis il y a du danger.
Il me quitta et mes gardiens, m’ayant salué, me laissèrent.
Une cabane de branchages, à l’entrée de laquelle flottait un petit drapeau
blanc à croix rouge, servait de poste de secours. Un médecin, à lunettes
d’or, légèrement ventru, nu-tête, procédait aux premiers pansements et à
l’évacuation des blessés. Les hommes faisaient queue devant la porte. Ils
étaient nombreux. Je perçus nettement cette odeur qu’on trouvait dans les
tranchées allemandes et dont garderont le souvenir ceux qui furent à une
attaque victorieuse; car l’Allemand a une odeur particulière. Les blessés
légers, munis d’une étiquette, partaient à pied et seuls. Les grands blessés
étaient placés sur une toile de tente ou sur une capote, et quatre hommes
valides les emportaient. Pour cette besogne on employait surtout des
Français—chasseurs ou soldats—qu’on venait de capturer. Et tous
s’enfonçaient dans le bois, gravissant l’autre pente du ravin, vers les
Chambrettes, où éclataient nos 75 avec des claquements de rage. Les
blessés français, peu nombreux à cause du massacre qui en avait été rude,
amenés ici par des brancardiers allemands, étaient couchés le long du poste
de secours, dehors. Le médecin à lunettes ne s’occupait d’eux que lorsqu’il
n’avait plus d’Allemands à soigner.
Devant la cabane de la Croix-Rouge, il y avait un cimetière. Une
centaine de tombes alignées, avec des croix de bois peintes en noir,
surmontées d’un casque recouvert du manchon gris, ou d’une calotte de
campagne à bandeau rouge. Sur quelques-unes, des fleurs. Quelques
inscriptions, un nom, un numéro de régiment, une date. Deux soldats
creusaient hâtivement de nouvelles fosses.
Par groupes accrochés à la pente du ravin, au milieu des gourbis,
d’armes brisées, de vieux papiers et d’ordures, qui me rappelaient certains
campements du temps de la Marne, les soldats allemands et les prisonniers
français s’essayaient à une conversation faite d’un peu de petit-nègre et de
beaucoup de gestes. Ces Allemands n’avaient pas l’air féroce. Est-ce parce
qu’ils étaient Saxons, et la légende est-elle vraie qui présente les Saxons
comme moins âprement sauvages que les Prussiens ou les Bavarois? Peut-
être. Ils étaient au repos, en réserve, et leur aménité ne leur venait peut-être
aussi que du contentement qu’ils éprouvaient à n’être pas allés à l’assaut ce
jour-là. Plusieurs portaient avec désinvolture le réservoir métallique où se
détachait, en gros caractères, ce mot affreux: «Flammenwerfer». Mais tous
se montraient humains pour l’instant. Aux prisonniers ils offraient des
cigares, et du pain quelquefois.
—Pain K.K.? demandait un chasseur.
—Ia, Ia, répondait un grand gaillard. Gùt, Gùt. (Bon, Bon).
—Noir, reprenait l’autre, dégoûté.
—Ia, Ia.
Et ils ne se comprenaient pas.
Malgré le froid, une odeur de pourriture et de suint qui traînait partout,
écœurait.
J’interrogeais les chasseurs que je trouvais.
—Qu’est devenu le lieutenant D*** de la 3ᵉ?
—Tué, mon lieutenant.
—Tué? Comment?
—Enterré par une grosse marmite.
—Et le lieutenant P***?
—Tué, et aussi les deux frères Ch***. Le plus jeune, qui venait de la
cavalerie, est mort sur le parapet de la tranchée, sabre en main. Il n’y a plus
d’officiers à la 3ᵉ, ni à la 4ᵉ.
Tué, aussi, le lieutenant G***, de la 5ᵉ compagnie, par une balle à la
tempe. Pressentant sa destinée, il était monté en ligne en mettant sur sa
capote la croix de la Légion d’honneur et la croix de Guerre où luisaient
quatre palmes. Tué, aussi, le lieutenant S***, de la 4ᵉ.
—Et le capitaine V***?
—Il était blessé au moment de l’attaque.
—Je sais. Il était près de moi quand un éclat d’obus l’a touché à la
cuisse. Mais qu’est-il devenu?
—Ils ont dû le tuer.
 Dans un coin—déjà,—quelques prisonniers travaillaient pour les
Allemands. On leur avait fourni des pelles et des pioches, et ils creusaient
de nouveaux trous pour de nouveaux gourbis dans le flanc du ravin. Ils
baissaient la tête, et peinaient en silence.
Je rencontrai le lieutenant T***, de la 5ᵉ compagnie. Il avait des larmes
aux yeux. Il saignait de l’oreille. Son casque était défoncé. La section du
lieutenant T*** s’était vigoureusement battue à la grenade.
Nous nous serrâmes les mains.
—Et le capitaine V***?
—Je ne sais pas. Il doit être tué. G*** est tué. Je l’ai vu mort. R*** aussi
sans doute, car c’est lui qui a reçu le premier choc, sur la droite, et pas un
homme de sa section n’est revenu vers nous.
Malgré ses protestations, je le menai au poste de secours. Correct, le
médecin à lunettes d’or, qui parlait français, lui fit un pansement sommaire.
On apportait sur un brancard un soldat allemand, qui avait les deux
jambes broyées un peu plus haut que le genou. On l’étendit sur le sol, à côté
d’un énorme tas de fusils cassés. Il respirait à peine, les yeux clos.
Rapidement le médecin l’amputa sans plus de cérémonie, lui enveloppa de
linges blancs ce qui lui restait de jambes, et s’occupa d’un autre blessé. Ce
fut si simple, si bref, que nous fûmes stupéfaits. Nous regardions l’homme.
Les linges blancs étaient vite devenus rouges. L’homme achevait de mourir
là, comme un chien, sans exciter d’autre pitié que celle de deux officiers
français.
Le feu de notre artillerie croissait en violence et menaçait directement le
fond du ravin. On nous fit monter le plus loin possible sur la contre-pente
couverte de gourbis, point mort pour les 75. Des arbres s’écroulaient avec
fracas. Des éclats d’acier sifflants volaient jusqu’à nous, cassant des
branches. Le bois était ébranlé de craquements. Un obus tomba à une
vingtaine de mètres du poste de secours. Les deux fossoyeurs continuaient
hâtivement leur besogne. Seuls ils restaient dehors, et les prisonniers
français. Les soldats allemands s’étaient réfugiés dans leurs niches fragiles.
Il neigeait. Il faisait froid. J’avais la fièvre. J’avais soif. Je grelottais. Notre
artillerie s’acharnait. Une pensée nous vint, et l’espoir avec elle: était-ce le
prélude d’une contre-attaque? Si elle réussissait, si elle nous délivrait, si
seulement elle amenait le désarroi chez l’ennemi, si nous pouvions en
profiter pour nous échapper et regagner nos lignes à la faveur de la nuit, si...
 Ce ne fut pas la contre-attaque. Elle ne se produisit que plus tard,—trop
tard pour nous.
Sous les arbres, les prisonniers transis se serraient l’un contre l’autre.
Dans le trou où nous attendions, le lieutenant T*** enterrait, en se cachant,
une grenade qu’il avait découverte au fond de sa musette.
Vint l’accalmie. Les soldats allemands sortirent de leurs cahutes. Avec
les nôtres, ils parlaient tant bien que mal de la guerre. Ils la trouvaient
longue. Ils enviaient sans détour le sort des prisonniers, qui du moins ont la
vie sauve.
—La guerre est finie pour vous, disaient-ils. Finie. Vous serez bien en
Allemagne. Oui, oui, gùt, gùt.
Puis, ils questionnaient.
—Croyez-vous que nous prendrons Verdun?
Un autre, plus lyrique, affirmait:
—Dans deux semaines, Verdun kapùt. (C’en est fait de Verdun.)
—Ia, Ia, et après, la guerre est finie. Ce sera la paix.
—Ia, Ia, répétaient-ils en chœur: Verdun, et la paix.
Ils en étaient persuadés. Sans doute leur avait-on enfoncé ce fol espoir
dans le cœur pour les pousser à des assauts qui devaient être les derniers.
Dans tous les groupes, c’était la même chanson.
—Verdun kapùt, la guerre est finie.
Soudain, un coup de sifflet.
Les groupes se disloquent. Des hommes sortent précipitamment de leurs
abris, s’équipent, mettent le casque, chargent le sac, prennent le fusil et
grimpent dans la direction des tranchées: une compagnie part en renfort.
Cependant, nous n’avons pas vu un seul officier depuis que nous errons
dans le bivouac. Où se cachent-ils? Qui conduit les troupiers?
Vers 17 heures, le lieutenant T*** s’écrie:
—Voilà le capitaine!
Là-haut, en haut de l’escalier taillé dans le flanc du ravin, le capitaine
V*** est arrêté, debout, gigantesque, appuyé sur son ordonnance. Il regarde
d’un air surpris, comme nous l’avons regardé nous-mêmes, le spectacle
inattendu qu’il domine.
 Nous allons au-devant de lui. Nous le saluons. Il nous serre
affectueusement la main. Il ne trouve rien à nous dire. Nous ne trouvons
rien à lui dire. Il est encadré par deux Allemands, et suivi par l’adjudant
Ch***, qui est blessé à la figure et au poignet gauche.
Comme nous nous étonnons de les voir vivants:
—J’en suis aussi étonné que vous, dit le capitaine. Figurez-vous que,
pendant que j’étais étendu dans le petit boyau, blessé comme vous savez, un
enragé se jette sur moi, la baïonnette droite. Je pare le coup. Il revient, me
porte un autre coup sur le casque, essaye encore de me piquer. En vain. Je
parais tant bien que mal, et quand je ne parais pas assez tôt, mon
ordonnance paraît pour moi. Et nous n’avions comme armes que nos mains
nues. Alors, pour en finir, mon enragé charge son fusil. Cette fois, me dis-
je, je suis perdu. Non, car au même instant—et tout cela s’est passé en
quelques secondes,—un officier allemand survenait, qui écarta l’homme.
C’est ainsi que je ne suis pas mort. L’officier, un leùtnant, s’est installé dans
mon P. C. et m’a gardé auprès de lui jusqu’à présent. Quand il s’absentait,
un soldat restait auprès de moi, avec l’ordre de me protéger.
—Très curieux, fis-je.
—Bien plus! continua le capitaine. Nous avons causé. Il est très correct.
Apprenant que j’étais marié, le leùtnant m’a demandé l’adresse de ma
femme. Il m’a promis de lui écrire, par l’intermédiaire de la Croix-Rouge,
pour lui donner de mes nouvelles, dès ce soir, s’il n’est pas tué lui-même,
car je vous assure qu’il ne fait pas bon dans notre tranchée, maintenant que
notre artillerie l’arrose.
Nous fûmes d’accord pour trouver de l’élégance au geste de cet officier
allemand.
Mais je m’empresse d’ajouter que madame V*** n’a jamais reçu la
lettre promise. Le leùtnant fut-il en effet tué avant d’avoir pu tenir sa
parole? Peut-être. Sa lettre s’est-elle perdue en route? Peut-être. Toutefois,
la complaisance de l’officier en question n’était peut-être que de
commande. C’est une chose que j’ai souvent observée par la suite: afin
d’édifier et tromper en même temps les prisonniers, militaires ou civils, les
Allemands employaient tous les moyens pour paraître aimables, pour
montrer qu’ils étaient incompris ou calomniés. Ils voulaient prouver qu’ils
ne sont pas des barbares. Aussi ne disaient-ils jamais non. Ils acquiesçaient
à toutes les demandes. Ils allaient même quelquefois au-devant de nos
désirs, comme c’est ici le cas. Mais nous n’obtenions jamais en réalité ce
qu’ils nous avaient accordé si facilement d’avance en paroles. Faiblesse de
caractère, ou raffinement de cruauté? Étrange attitude, qui déconcerte
d’abord et dont on finit par n’être plus dupe.
Le capitaine poursuivait:
—J’ai subi notre tir de barrage. Ils ont pris quelque chose, je vous le
jure. En traversant tout à l’heure l’emplacement de la cinquième pour venir
ici, j’ai rencontré au moins autant de cadavres à eux qu’à nous. Quant à
progresser au delà de notre tranchée, ils ont dû y renoncer. Des mitrailleuses
les tenaient en respect. Au débouché, juste devant le trou d’obus qui me
servait de dépôt de fusées, il en est tombé une quinzaine. Ils n’ont pas
insisté.
On nous conduisit enfin à un officier, à un major[B], lequel, sortant d’un
confortable gourbi, ne nous dit presque rien.
—Vous êtes officiers?... Combien?... Capitaine?... Ah, capitaine... et
lieutenants?... Ah, lieutenants... et adjudant?... Ah! capitaine, active?
réserve?... Votre tranchée est prise? Vous avez beaucoup de pertes?...
Et, sans écouter nos réponses, il regagna son terrier.
Un tout jeune leùtnant, pimpant, coiffé de la casquette et décoré de la
croix de Fer de je ne sais quelle classe, officier d’état-major sans doute, à en
juger par son uniforme trop propre, ajouta quelques mots aux paroles du
major.
—Vous êtes blessés?... On vous soignera... Vous êtes fatigués?... On va
attendre encore un peu, parce qu’il fait encore trop clair et qu’on est vu de
votre artillerie sur la crête, et on vous conduira au colonel.
Il s’exprimait parfaitement en français.
Il nous demanda si nous pensions qu’ils prendraient bientôt Verdun, et,
la nuit venant, il nous emmena.
Au dernier moment, il nous dit:
—Est-ce que vos ordonnances sont dans les prisonniers?
—Oui, deux sont ici. Est-ce que nous pouvons les garder?
—Oui, oui, bien sûr. Les ordonnances ne quittent pas leurs officiers,
c’est l’habitude en Allemagne.
Et nous partîmes.
 La neige était épaisse et molle, la pente assez raide. Le capitaine boîtait
bas, sa blessure à la cuisse le gênait. L’un derrière l’autre, nous suivions le
leùtnant. Sur la crête, à la corne du Bois-Chauffour, il nous dit encore:
—L’endroit est dangereux. Votre artillerie tape beaucoup par ici. Il
faudrait courir. Est-ce que vous pourrez?
En effet, notre artillerie tape beaucoup par ici. Les explosions se
succèdent formidables et drues. Nous rencontrons des cadavres nombreux.
Des équipements traînent dans la neige, des fusils, des paniers à munitions,
des marmites de campement, des toiles de tente, des casques. Nous
traversons un important réseau de fil de fer: ouvrage allemand? ou, plutôt,
vieille défense française? Les obus n’éclatent pas loin de nous. Le jeune
leùtnant se montre assez crâne. Nous dépassons des blessés qui s’en vont
seuls vers l’arrière, ou que des prisonniers français soutiennent ou
transportent.
Pour renforcer un groupe de brancardiers las, le leùtnant prend un de nos
chasseurs.
Nous essayons de protester:
—Vous nous avez dit que les ordonnances...
—Un instant seulement. Pour porter les blessés jusqu’à l’ambulance.
C’est à la ferme des Chambrettes, et c’est là que nous allons aussi. Il nous
retrouvera là-bas.
Dans un boqueteau, une batterie lourde tonne. De grandes lueurs sortent
des fourrés.
Nous longeons des fils téléphoniques. Il y en a trois lignes, posées sur le
sol, à deux ou trois mètres d’intervalle.
Le leùtnant, à qui nous ne demandons rien, éprouve le besoin de nous
éblouir en nous expliquant que, chez eux, un officier d’artillerie marche
avec les vagues d’assaut de l’infanterie, suivi d’une équipe spéciale, et que,
sitôt arrivé sur la position conquise, il a à sa disposition son téléphone
personnel.
Tout en donnant ces détails d’un air dégagé, le leùtnant appelle le dernier
chasseur qui nous restait, pour renforcer un nouveau groupe de brancardiers
fatigués.
—Un instant, fait-il.
 Et le chasseur tend tristement à son capitaine le havre-sac qu’il avait
sauvé du naufrage. Il ne semble pas croire qu’il nous rejoindra, mais nous
lui rendons confiance sans être trop rassurés nous-mêmes.
Nous ne sommes plus que trois officiers et un adjudant quand nous
parvenons à la ferme des Chambrettes.
Il fait nuit complète, mais la neige la rend moins obscure.
Nous considérons les défenses de la ferme. Elles sont admirables:
tranchées clayonnées, redans et courtines, réseaux de fil de fer, dépôts de
claies, de gabions, de chevaux de frise, d’étoiles, d’araignées, rien ne
manque. Est-ce un travail récent du vainqueur d’hier, ou le travail ancien de
nos territoriaux, quand la ferme des Chambrettes était en arrière de nos
lignes?
Nous laissons à droite la ferme qui paraît à peu près intacte, nous entrons
dans un bois, et nous voici devant un formidable gourbi souterrain, à deux
entrées, couvert de plusieurs rangées de rondins et couches de terre
alternées, émergeant d’au moins deux mètres au-dessus du sol, entouré d’un
sentier de caillebotis,—gourbi somptueux, digne d’un général de division.
Le leùtnant nous précède, pour nous annoncer. Par un couloir en pente
douce terminé en escalier coudé, nous pénétrons dans une vaste chambre
solidement étayée.
C’est le poste de commandement du colonel.
Au fond, des lits de camp: bas-flanc, matelas et couvertures. A droite,
une table et des chaises. Deux officiers, habillés de gris. Ils se lèvent, et
nous saluent. Le leùtnant dit quelques mots en allemand, si vite et si bas que
nous ne comprenons rien. On nous invite à nous asseoir. Au mur un appareil
téléphonique. Dans un coin, un poêle allumé. Sur la table, un autre appareil
téléphonique, quelques papiers, une boîte de cigares, et une grande carte du
secteur.
Le plus âgé des deux officiers allemands est l’oberst[C] commandant le
36ᵉ régiment saxon d’infanterie. Il grisonne. Il parle lentement et
difficilement le français, mais enfin il le parle. Il a le regard terne. Il est
courtois. C’est le moindre de ses devoirs de nous interroger. Il nous pose
donc les ordinaires questions, mais sans conviction. L’oberst a l’air gêné.
—Où avez-vous été pris?
 En même temps, il nous indique, sur la carte déployée devant lui,
l’emplacement exact de notre tranchée. Il continue:
—Par qui?
... Avez-vous eu beaucoup de pertes?
... Beaucoup de prisonniers?
... A quel effectif étiez-vous?
... Avez-vous beaucoup de réserves devant Verdun?
Ils savent que nous ne répondrons que ce que nous voudrons laisser
perdre et que nous ne leur livrerons rien qui puisse leur être utile. Le vieil
oberst aux yeux vides semble bien ne nous interroger que pour la forme.
Là-dessus, il est embarrassé. Il nous demande si nous avons faim et si
nous avons soif. Il nous offre du café, du cognac, des cigares. Et il ne peut
se retenir de nous poser la question que nous attendons:
—Croyez-vous que nous prendrons Verdun?
C’est leur grande inquiétude nationale.
Le capitaine réplique sans broncher:
—Vous auriez pu prendre Verdun, le premier ou le deuxième jour de
votre offensive, oui, peut-être. Mais maintenant il est trop tard, vous ne
l’aurez pas.
Le vieil oberst nous regarde attentivement, et sourit. Mais je ne saurais
démêler s’il sourit parce qu’il a pitié de ce qu’il considère comme notre
sottise, ou parce qu’il nous approuve.
Après un court conciliabule, le jeune leùtnant d’état-major qui nous a
conduits transmet un ordre au téléphone.
Le vieil oberst nous dit:
—Un cuirassier va venir vous chercher. Il vous mènera au quartier
général de la division, à Villes.
Puis, sans hésitation:
—Pourquoi votre artillerie vous a-t-elle tiré dessus hier?
Et il ajoute un jugement cruel sur nos artilleurs.
Mais le capitaine répond:
—Notre artillerie nous a tiré dessus hier, c’est vrai, comme votre
artillerie a tiré sur vos fantassins, avant-hier et ce matin. Ce sont les
inévitables accidents du travail.
 L’oberst penche la tête pour acquiescer.
A son tour, le capitaine pose une question.
—Un de nos camarades a été tué, tout à l’heure, au cours du combat. Il
est resté dans la tranchée. C’était un magnifique soldat. Est-ce que vous ne
pourriez pas lui faire donner une sépulture décente, pour que sa famille
puisse avoir son corps, après la guerre?
L’oberst penche encore la tête et répond:
—C’est très facile, et c’est une chose naturelle. Voulez-vous nous fournir
les renseignements nécessaires?
L’un des deux officiers adjoints fait semblant de prendre en note les
indications du capitaine.
L’oberst ajoute:
—Votre camarade sera enterré convenablement.
Nous n’avons jamais su si la promesse de l’oberst a été mieux tenue que
la promesse du leùtnant correct de la tranchée, qui devait écrire à Mᵐᵉ
V***.
Mais le cuirassier s’est présenté.
On lui remet un papier. Il prend livraison de sa marchandise. Nous
saluons et nous sortons.
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