Thomas Aquinas — "If a man commits the sin of sodomy, he is to be put to death."
If a man commits the sin of sodomy, he is to be put to death.
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More from Thomas Aquinas
"Women are by nature 'deficient and misbegotten.'"
"The intellect is perfected by truth, and the will by good."
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"The punishment of the wicked is for the good of the just."
"The proper act of justice is to render to each one what is his own."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
The statement declares that men who engage in same-sex sexual acts deserve execution. In medieval moral thinking, this wasn't merely a religious opinion but a legal and civil claim: that certain acts so violate natural order that they forfeit the actor's right to life. It reflects a worldview where divine law, natural law, and civil law were considered unified and mutually reinforcing.
Relevance to Thomas Aquinas
Aquinas built his moral theology around natural law — the idea that human reason can discern God's purposes through nature. He categorized sodomy as a 'sin against nature,' more serious than fornication or adultery, because it corrupted the procreative end of sex itself. His Summa Theologica treats this as philosophically grounded, not merely scriptural — Aristotelian teleology applied directly to human sexuality.
The era
In 13th-century Christendom, church and civil law were deeply intertwined. Sodomy was a criminal offense across Christian Europe, and capital punishment for it had Roman legal precedent — the Justinian Code prescribed death. Aquinas wrote during active Inquisition campaigns; theological deviation and moral disorder were treated as civic threats. Death for sodomy was legally standard, not fringe, in his time.
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