Richard’s famous encounter with the hermit is also cited by those who’ve accepted J. H. Harvey’s premise. Again, if we place a modern interpretation upon the hermit’s warning, we conclude that Richard was being accused of sodomy. Yet this reading disregards the fact that the “destruction of Sodom” had a wider meaning in the Middle Ages, often used to refer to the apocalyptic nature of the punishment, not the nature of the offense. Even the term “sins of Sodom” referred to a broad spectrum of sins, not just sodomy, some not even sexual. The French chronicler Guillaume Le Breton declared that Richard had brought about his death at Chalus because he’d offended against the “laws of nature.” But he was referring to Richard’s war against his own father. Dr. Gillingham has an interesting discussion of all this in his biography of Richard. Not all historians agree with this reading of the “destruction of Sodom,” of course. So were there any suggestions made during Richard’s lifetime to indicate he was homosexual or bisexual? The answer is no.
Both of the chroniclers who accompanied Richard on crusade believed that he’d desired Berengaria long before he’d married her, Ambroise even describing her as his “beloved.” I thought that was sweet, but unlikely, for medieval marriages were matters of state, and I don’t think Richard had a romantic bone in his entire body. Their comments do show, though, that they believed his sexual tastes were “conventional,” as Dr. Gillingham put it. Legend had it that Richard demanded women to be brought to him on his deathbed, thus hastening his death; Guillaume Le Breton reported that Richard had preferred the “joys of Venus” to “salubrious counsel”—the advice of his doctors. Like so many of Richard’s legends, this seems improbable, for gangrene is fast-acting and he’d have known very soon that he was doomed. Eleanor was one hundred forty miles away at Fontevrault, and for her to have reached him in time he must have sent for her within a day or so of his wounding. So I very much doubt that a man in such severe pain would have been carousing with camp whores. Yet the French chronicler’s comment does tell us that he, too, assumed Richard’s sexuality was “conventional.”
Even more tellingly, the Bishop of Lincoln took Richard to task for adultery, not sodomy, and St Hugh was famed for his blunt speaking and strong sense of morality. The bishop’s lecture actually occurred in 1198, but I was unable to dramatize it in the chapter for that year and I had to move it back to Chapter 26 in 1195. So Richard’s repentance and reconciliation with Berengaria after his sudden illness in 1195 did not last long, and he was soon straying from his marriage bed again.
Sadly, I think some of the criticism directed against Richard hints at an anti-gay bias. Accusing him of being irresponsible and careless echoes the stereotype that many who are homophobic have of gay men.
I tend to agree with the British historian Elizabeth Hallam, who concluded that what little evidence there is paints Richard as a womanizer, if not on the epic scale of his father and brother John. When considering Richard’s sexuality, we must always place it in the context of his times, though. I am proud to live in one of the sixteen states in which same-sex marriage is now legal. They were not as enlightened in the Middle Ages, and the Church taught that a man who bedded other men was guilty of a mortal sin. And this makes the utter silence of the French chroniclers highly significant.
Philippe’s court historians, Rigord and Guillaume Le Breton, did all in their power to portray Richard as the Antichrist. They accused him of murdering Conrad of Montferrat, of poisoning the Duke of Burgundy, of sending Saracen Assassins to Paris to kill Philippe, of taking bribes from the Saracens, and even of betraying Christendom by a secret alliance with Saladin. Yet they never accused Richard of sodomy, a sin that would have stained his honor and damned his immortal soul. If they’d had such a lethal weapon at hand, I cannot believe they would not have used it. But I suspect that this debate will continue, for it is the Age of the Internet, people enjoy speculating about the sex lives of celebrities, and we can never be utterly sure of another person’s sexuality, especially one who has been dead for over eight hundred years.
The term “post-traumatic stress disorder” is a new one, only dating from 1980, but PTSD has always been with us. In my Acknowledgments, I cite a book, Achilles in Vietnam, whose author makes a convincing case that Homer understood the psychological damage wrought by war and the impact combat and imprisonment could have upon men, more than twenty-five centuries before PTSD was even diagnosed. He also shows that William Shakespeare recognized it, too, for his Hotspur in Henry IV suffers from many of the symptoms of those afflicted with PTSD. But few of us have the insight of a Homer or a Shakespeare. While chroniclers like Ralph de Coggeshall were aware that Richard had come home from his German imprisonment a changed man, they would not have understood why.