If you wish, see their catalogue in that same Bale. “Girls,” he says, “could not sleep in their beds because of the necromantic friars.” If such things occurred among vowed religious, monks and saints—those consubstantial beings, forsooth—what would you suspect went on in the marketplace or at court, among nobles or in brothels? What foulness, what filth would be absent?

Meanwhile I pass over those shameful practices of the monks, unfit even to be mentioned: their masturbations—Rodrigo de Castro calls them “masturbators”—and those who whip one another to arouse sexual desire; male prostitutes, women who take the receptive role, flute girls, and those lustful little women, the tribades, who rub themselves against one another and, besides eunuchs, use artificial penises to satisfy their desire.

Indeed, more astonishing still, not long ago in Constantinople a woman fell desperately in love with another woman. She dared something scarcely credible: changing her clothes and passing herself off as a man, she opened negotiations for marriage and was soon married. But consult the author himself, Busbecq.

I pass over those Egyptian embalmers who have intercourse with the bodies of beautiful women, and the insane lust of people who even fall in love with statues and images. The story of Pygmalion in Ovid is well known, as is that of Mundus and Paulina in Hegesippus’s Jewish War, book 2, chapter 4.

Pontius, a legate of Gaius Caesar—whom I suspect to be the man who crucified Christ—was so inflamed with lust for pictures of Atalanta and Helen, Pliny reports in book 35, chapter 3, that he wished to take them away, had the nature of the plaster permitted it. Another man fell in love with a statue of Good Fortune—Aelian, book 9, chapter 37—and another with the Good Goddess. No part is left free of disgrace.

“Abductions for sexual violation,” as that author says, “and not even the mouth is exempt from lust.” Elagabalus received lust through every opening of his body, according to Lampridius’s Life of him.

A certain Hostius had mirrors made and arranged so that, while being penetrated by a man, he could face away and see every movement of his stallion in the mirror, delighting in the falsely magnified size of the man’s penis as though it were real. At the same time he submitted to a man and a woman—foul and abominable even to describe.

So what Gryllus charged against Ulysses in Plutarch may well be true: “Down to this day, among us no male has loved a male, nor female a female, as many memorable and celebrated men have done among you. To leave the common people aside, Hercules deserted his friends while pursuing a beardless companion,” and so forth.

“Your lusts cannot be confined within nature’s own bounds: like an overflowing river, they breed hideous foulness, disorder and confusion of nature in sexual matters. For men and women have coupled with goats, pigs and horses, burning with mad love of beasts; hence Minotaurs, Centaurs, woodland spirits, Sphinxes and the rest.”

But lest by refuting these things I teach them, or publish matters that it is not fitting for everyone to know—for I intend these words only for the learned, as Rodrigo does for a similar reason—and lest I give frivolous minds and depraved spirits knowledge of the foulest crime, and so forth, I do not wish to soil anyone further with this filth.

I come at last to that heroic love which belongs specifically to men and women, is a frequent cause of melancholy, and deserves to be called burning lust far more than to bear so honourable a title.

There is, I admit, an honourable love which is natural: “a hidden snare that captures men’s hearts, so that they cannot be separated from women”—a secret snare to capture men’s hearts, as Cristóbal de Fonseca demonstrates; a strong attraction with a most compelling, hidden, magnetic quality and powerful force, which no living man can escape.

“And he who does not feel the force of love is either a stone or a beast.” He who has not felt its power is no man but a block, a very stone, “either a god or a Nebuchadnezzar”; he has a gourd for a head and a melon for a heart. A rare creature indeed, one in an age,

Who has never burned with love for a girl he has seen.

For “we have all been mad once”: we become infatuated either young or old, as the poet said; none are exempt except Minerva and the Muses. So Cupid complains to his mother Venus in Lucian that, alone among all the rest, they could not be pierced by his arrows.

But this married love is a common and honourable passion: people loving with marriage in view. “As matter desires form, so woman desires man.” You know that marriage is honourable, a blessed calling instituted by God himself in Paradise. It produces true peace, tranquillity, contentment and happiness: “No union is, or ever was, more sacred,” as Daphnaeus in Plutarch could readily prove, “and it provides immortality for the human race”—when the couple live without quarrelling or scolding, lovingly, as they should.

Three times happy, and more, Those held by an unbroken bond, whose love, Untorn by any quarrels, Releases them no sooner than their final day.

Three times happy, and more than that, Are those whom love’s bonds hold so firmly That, free from quarrels until death parts them, Their love remains unbroken and never dies.