s,
chiefly as a heresy and out of religious zeal that homosexuality was so
violently reprobated and so ferociously punished.

In modern Europe we find the strongest evidence of the presence of what
may fairly be called true sexual inversion when we investigate the men of
the Renaissance. The intellectual independence of those days and the
influence of antiquity seem to have liberated and fully developed the
impulses of those abnormal individuals who would otherwise have found no
clear expression, and passed unnoticed.[55]

Muret, the Humanist, may perhaps be regarded as a typical example of the
nature and fate of the superior invert of the Renaissance. Born in 1526 at
Muret (Limousin), of poor but noble family, he was of independent,
somewhat capricious character, unable to endure professors, and
consequently he was mainly his own teacher, though he often sought advice
from Jules-Cesar Scaliger. Muret was universally admired in his day for
his learning and his eloquence, and is still regarded not only as a great
Latinist and a fine writer, but as a notable man, of high intelligence,
and remarkable, moreover, for courtesy in polemics in an age when that
quality was not too common. His portrait shows a somewhat coarse and
rustic but intelligent face. He conquered honor and respect before he died
in 1585, at the age of 59. In early life Muret wrote wanton erotic poems
to women which seem based on personal experience. But in 1553 we find him
imprisoned in the Chatelet for sodomy and in danger of his life, so that
he thought of starving himself to death. Friends, however, obtained his
release and he settled in Toulouse. But the very next year he was burnt in
effigy in Toulouse, as a Huguenot and sodomist, this being the result of a
judicial sentence which had caused him to flee from the city and from
France. Four years later he had to flee from Padua owing to a similar
accusation. He had many friends but none of them protested against the
charge, though they aided him to escape from the penalty. It is very
doubtful whether he was a Huguenot, and whenever in his works he refers to
pederasty it is with strong disapproval. But his writings reveal
passionate friendship for men, and he seems to have expended little energy
in combating a charge which, if false, was a shameful injustice to him. It
was after fleeing into Italy and falling ill of a fever from fatigue and
exposure that Muret is said to have made the famous retort (to