“Our Marriages”? Male to Male / Like Husband and Wife

Abstract

This chapter examines the testimony that comes from a dispatch of the Venetian ambassador in Rome, Antonio Tiepolo. It talks about Tiepolo's dispatch that illustrates a sizable network of men who met together on more than one occasion, raising the issue of how these men were apprehended as their activities have become visible to the point of triggering their denunciation. It also emphasizes the agreement between Tiepolo and Michel de Montaigne that the men in Rome performed some kind of wedding ceremony. The chapter elaborates how Tiepolo affirmed that the men got married but he did not specify whether they followed the ritual of a typical wedding between a man and a woman. It includes Tiepolo's statement that the marriage between two men defiled the name of holy matrimony with “alcune lor cerimonie” and by joining together like husband and wife.