queer masculinities

48 Queer Masculinities, 1550–1800
A substantial inquiry which did not, however, lead on to a full trial,
was the case of a butcher from the village of Malpica, near Castelo
Branco. In the initial denunciation forwarded in 1796 the octogenarian
commissioner recalled an earlier scandal in 1781 when the same
butcher, Lopes, nicknamed the cudgel (cacheira) was denounced for his
enticements of the two sons of a man now dead. It was assumed that
he must have some physical disorder in his genitalia, and particularly
to have female organs, to wish sexual commerce with males: ‘as it was
presumed that he was a hermaphrodite the judge ordered him to be
examined, but it was found that he only had the masculine sex’.
Now a tailor came forward to denounce him again for his passion for
young men. The priest reported that Lopes had done this:
… with João Tiago with the one as incubus and the other as
sucubus, and that for the same sin he invited, and had invited the
majority of the youth of this place of whom many are married and
that he had not made this revelation despite having heard the Edict
of the Holy Office because he did not know what was the ‘abominable
crime’ and sodomy. This is the case which has spread and is
spreading in this place of Malpica … 32
Clearly the priest was making a lame excuse for not having earlier
denounced the butcher so keenly interested in Malpica’s youths. The
commissioner pleaded various ailments to be excused from carrying out
more investigations into the more than 15 years of sexual enticements
by the butcher to local bachelors. Lisbon sent out a questionnaire for
the investigating commissioner to use, of which question three asked:
If it was known, or had heard say, that somebody committed the
abominable crime of sodomy in such a depraved manner and so
publicly that by this horrible crime had caused public scandal in the
place where the individual lived and among the persons that know
the individual, enticing for this aim some persons and whether of
both sexes.
This produced informative replies that show how in a semi-rural
setting Lopes conducted himself. A 40-year-old married peasant
(lavrador) born and brought up in the same village with Lopes
described him as: