Abstract

The article considers the attitudes of the Church regarding homosexuality in the Middle Ages and the early Modern period, against the background of the anthropological concepts of those times. In the light of several important documents of those periods, it examines critically the interpretations most popular today in the area of gay-his- tory - that of the homophobia of the Church, that of early tolerance, that of the late development of the homosexual identity - and it demonstrates the unilateral nature of these interpretations. Through a Thomistic reading of the Aristotelian texts on homosexuality, the article considers the significance of the categories of homosexual condition and homosexual person used in moral theology, introducing a reflection on the relationship between natural condition and sinfulness in the homosexual orientation.