Introduction:
It is not surprising in a day and age when homosexuality is widely accepted among moderns, that many liberal (and often anti-Biblical) scholars have attempted to read their desires into the historical figures of the past. For many of them, George Washington was a Deist, the early Christian persecutions before the fourth century were exaggerated by Christian accounts, and Christopher Columbus was a savage white supremacist that wanted to enslave and abuse the indigenous peoples of America. Some of these same scholars argue as James Reston Jn, author of Warriors of God, has, that Richard the Lionheart was devoid of straight sexual love. Considering scripture's warning to believers that ''to the wicked all things are wicked (Titus 1:5)'', it should come as no surprise to true Christians about how the modern left is out to destroy the Christian heritage of western society.
Today, I would like to discuss the debate over Richard I's sexuality. Considering that Richard Plantagenet has always been a colorful figure in historical books, it should come as no surprise that scholars have had different views of his person throughout history. To many of the medieval French chroniclers, for example, Richard was guilty of the rape of women; the English tradition, however, associated Richard with the legends of Robin Hood, and to him, attributed an icon image unequaled by no other king of England.
While good debates of the past should be encouraged among academia, however, no true scholar should read into the past his own prejudices or desires. Unfortunately, this has happened repeatedly with the modern left. In order to make themselves feel less insecure about their sinful and unnatural desires, many of them have attempted to change history to fit their agenda. Indeed, some of them will go so far as to treat past historical persons as guilty of the same sins that they are guilty of. By doing the devil's work in these regards, they not only briefly satisfy their earthly lusts but normalize their behaviors to modern society.
A number of historians since the twentieth century have written about Richard the Lionheart's sexuality. I do not intend to cover them all here. However, I would like to discuss the thoughts of four primary historians on Richard I: James Reston Jr, Geoffrey Regan, John Gillingham, and Jean Flori. The former two write ''popular histories'' and lack PhDs. The latter have PhDs and are/were academic historians. Before I go into the first category, however, let me discuss the arguments made by some historians that Richard Plantagenet was homosexual.
The primary Arguments for Richard's alleged homosexuality:
1. Richard the Lionheart and Philip Augustus had a close relationship as described in the medieval chronicles. They slept together and sometimes kissed. The chronicles seem to agree that they had a very close relationship.
2. Richard delayed his marriage to Alice, the princess of France. Most of the chronicles (though certainly not all of them) claimed that Richard lacked romantic interest in his wife, Berengaria.
3. Richard left no heir. He did have an illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac. To some, the name of his son implies that he loved Philip Augustus in a homosexual manner.
4. At his coronation, Richard forbid women from coming. To some, this means that he lacked interest in them.
5. It is sometimes claimed that Richard had a unique interest in monks.
6. Richard was warned of the sin of sodomy by the friar, Roger of Howden. To many, this confirms that Richard was homosexual.
7. Henry II expressed concerns about his son's relationship with Philip Augustus.
Throughout this paper, I will be discussing these claims, but will especially do so near the end of this thesis. When carefully considered and addressed in their historical contexts, I do not believe a single argument presented so far confirms that Richard the Lionheart was ''gay.'' Likewise, I also do not believe that any of the arguments that I'm aware of are built on sufficient proof to believe that Richard was not sexually straight.
Historians of Popular History on the Sexuality of Richard I:
Before I proceed to the academic historians, I would like to discuss the views of two historians of Popular history: James Reston Jr and Geoffrey Regan. The former argues for Richard's homosexuality, while the latter argues against it.
By sharing the views of both authors, it allows the reader (as I will also do with academic historians) to hear out my final arguments at the end of this post. Before we get to my conclusions, however, let us see their own.
The Arguments for Richard's homosexuality according to Reston:
James Reston Jr. is more of a lay historian than an academic one. Holding a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Reston authored Warriors of God. In the book, he argues for Richard the Lionheart's homosexuality.
I find Reston's popular history of Richard and Saladin to be comical at best, and blatantly dishonest at worst. He starts off assuming a homosexual attraction between Richard Plantagenenent and Philip Augustus based on little evidence other than Roger of Howden's (a medieval chronicler) discussion of their fondness for each other and frequent closeness (more on that soon). He later talks about them being close (James Reston, Warriors of God, 107) and repeatedly calls Richard ''homosexual'' with no evidence. Later, Reston even claims that Richard confessed to homosexuality (something that I've never seen in a medieval account.)
Considering that Reston wrote articles for a pornographic magazine, it's hardly surprising that his historical claims are far from the work of a true scholar. His quickness to see homosexuality among the ranks of the kings of England and France is something that I also find suspicious towards his person. To me, the fact that Reston had no arguments from original texts to back his arguments (and the shady past of his writings in anti-women magazines) brings a question to his authenticity as a historian.
The Arguments against Richard's homosexuality by Geoffrey Regan:
Like Reston Jr, Geoffrey Regan has never been a university professor. Holding an MA from the University of Kent, Regan, however, has different conclusions on Richard I than Reston.
To military historian Geoffrey Regan, there is no evidence that Richard ever enjoyed a homosexual relationship with any men or boys in his book (Geoffrey Regan, Lionhearts: Richard I, Saladin, and The Third Crusade, 15). Likewise, Regan observed that Richard's alleged homosexual relationship with Philip Augustus is mostly claimed based on their sharing a bed together. To him, however, this provides little evidence for Richard fitting this modern description. Concerning Richard's lack of desire to find a wife, Regan believes this at most contributes to a lack of sexual desire on the part of the lionheart king (144). The respected military historian also does not claim that no one in Richard's court was devoid of homosexuality. In fact, Regan believed William Longchamp, the former bishop of Ely, to be homosexual ( 227), but Richard himself to not be one.
On the other hand, Regan also writes that there is no evidence of any mistresses in Richard's life (144). Without giving way to homosexuality, perhaps it should be naturally assumed that Richard was more interested in his wars of conquest than in personal affairs. In many regards, this would fit Richard's character as the Cour de Lion lacked much interest in his residence in England. Indeed, his entire reign was spent almost exclusively on crusade in the Holy Land or in France while fighting against Philip Augustus.
Academic Historians on the Sexuality of Richard I:
Now that I have analyzed some of the arguments of Reston and Regan, let me proceed to those of academic historians. I would be evaluating the thoughts of my two highly respected medieval historians. One of them is John Gillighman, an Emeritus professor of Medieval History at the University of London. He is renowned as a world expert on Richard I. Gillingham argues that Richard was unlikely homosexual.
Jean Flori was one of the most respected historians of chivalry in the world. A director of the National Center for Scientific Research, Flori argues in his works that Richard was bisexual.
I would like to start with Gillingham's views, then show Floris' own which were partially in response to the English historian.
John Gillingham's arguments against the alleged homosexuality of Richard I:
Earlier, I listed seven objections used by modern historians to Richard's sexuality being straight. I hope to respond to them now by referencing Gillingham's work.
Concerning the first point, it should not be assumed that kissing between medieval princes was anything erotic. Sexually straight men such as Henry II and William Marshal slept with one another. While chivalry did sometimes encompasses a very close relationship between several men, this was often understood as a close brotherhood in the Middle Ages. Sleeping together was not seen as the origin of sexual desires as it may seem today. Frequently, in fact, would princes express their brotherhood with a kiss or by celebrating their victories in a banquet. As John Gillingham has written, not a single reference to Richard being homosexual existed in medieval times (John Gillingham, Richard the Lionheart, 7). In fact, all of the accounts of the thirteenth century understood him to be straight. While all of this may seem strange to those in the twenty-first century, I do believe that is because many humans today have been exposed to homosexuality. In times past, men such as Shakespeare could write love poems to another man without anyone thinking that this mean that Shakespeare was homosexual. At the origin of many of liberal misconceptions about homosexuality concerning the past is that they equate any sort of love between the same sex as implying lust or romance (if not both). However, it was very normal for men in ages past to have a brotherhood love that was not seen as erotic or anything in that direction.
Concerning the second point, it is true that Richard delayed his potential marriage to Alice of France. He also did not spend intimate time with Berengaria, his later wife. However, none of this points to homosexuality. Richard was king of England for ten years, and for almost his entire reign, he was concerned with spreading the borders of the Angevin Empire. I believe that Gillingham's work provides evidence of this.
Concerning the third point, it is unclear why Richard named his illegitimate son ''Philip.'' It could be because he loved his friend king of France as a dear brother and wished to honor him. However, that is speculation. Regardless, though, Richard's attention to naming the boy ''Philip'' has little evidence to portray the lionheart king as a homosexual one. The fact that he may have named his son after the French king because he considered Philip a very close friend, does not mean that Richard saw Philip in an unnatural sense. While I'm not sure if Gillingham said anything about this particular point, I think that he would agree with me.
Concerning the fourth point, it is true that Richard banned women from his coronation. There has been debate among some historians as to how common this was. For me, though, I don't see this as evidence for homosexuality. Many English princes of the past often spent time alone with each other or their allies. Similar to my comments above, I don't see this as good proof of Richard's alleged homosexuality. As Gillingham noted, for this to imply homosexuality would be to imply that every English king before Richard I was also homosexual as Geoffrey of Monmouth, a medieval chronicler, recorded that this had been the common practice of English coronations (John Gillingham, Richard I, 266). While Flori has argued that Geoffrey's intention was not this, to me, the lack of women at the event has little to do with Richard's sexual orientation.
Concerning the fifth point, Richard's interest in monks has little to do with homosexuality. Why would he go after those sworn by the church to condemn this sin? Unlike today, it was not accepted for church clergy to embrace homosexuality (those that did were severely practiced by the church). I think that it would be more historically accurate to say that Richard took interest in the orders, practices, and commands of the Catholic Church (even though he broke church laws on practicing jousting). This is another issue that I'm unaware if Gillingham has covered. However, I also think that he would agree with me on this.
The sixth point will be dealt with more below. As far as the seventh point is concerned, I see no reason to believe that Henry II saw his son as homosexual. However, Henry had been an enemy of Philip Augustus. Was this the real reason that he feared his son's friendship with the king of France?
Now that I have covered six out of the seven points above, let me elaborate on Gillingham's reasons. For the English historian, there is simply no evidence to believe that Richard I was anything but straight. I have read extensively on this topic from several of his books, and in all of them, he concludes that this is a modern theory with little backup. I believe that his work has been careful not to make any rash judgments (without strong evidence) as to what would have been accepted concerning medieval sexuality.
Now, the sixth point I mentioned above is a more complicated one. I will celebrate that point more with Gillingham as I discuss Jean Flori's claims that Richard I was homosexual.
Jean Flori's arguments for the homosexuality of Richard Plantagenet:
To his credit, Flori does not believe many of the reasons above justify Richard's homosexuality. However, he does argue that Richard was bisexual. He argues, for example, that Richard was homosexual because the chronicles were more condemning of Richard's sexual sins before he married Berengaria than they were that of his father, Henry II. However, his primary objection to Gillingham's claims is based on Roger of Howden's warning to Richard the Lionheart about the consequences of sodomy (Richard the Lionheart, 387).
Problems with Flori's Reasoning:
Jean Flori writes well. On several points, I give him credit for a good scholarship. However, his arguments for Richard Plantagenet's alleged homosexuality, I find to be extremely faulty.
While Flori rightly identifies many of the claims about Richard I being homosexual to be historically inaccurate (such as the lack of women at Richard's coronation, Richard and Philip's close relationship, and other issues), he does argue for Richard being bisexual. While believing Richard to have had a primary interest in women, Flori believes that Richard did have homosexual actions (or at least desires), but his argument for this being the case is largely different than the reasons that Reston argued for.
For the French historian of the Middle Ages, Richard was primarily homosexual based on the evidence of one medieval account. This was the work of Roger of Howden.
Roger of Howden was an important contributing historian to the events of his times. On one occasion, he reported a hermit challenging Richard, calling for the king to repent of Richard's sexual absence from Berengaria of England (Richard's wife). Roger, likewise, reports of Richard hearing of the dangers of sodomy and illicit acts from this same hermit. What did he mean by these things?
For Flori, sodomy often implies homosexuality in scripture. I agree with Flori in this case. In several passages of the Bible (as Flori shows) sodomy clearly meant homosexuality. Even when sodomy did not refer to homosexuality, it did refer to other natural sexual sins between a man and a woman (more on that soon). Flori is aware of this latter situation as well. He presents this as a case against Gillingham's argument that Richard was straight.
At the same time, however, is Gillingham's right that homosexuality is not equated with the judgment of Sodom. To Gillingham, Roger was warning more about the consequences of Sodom like judgment regardless of Richard's sexual orientation (John Gillingham, Richard the Lionheart, 161). Furthermore, Gillingham never denied that the judgment of Sodom in the Old Testament dealt with homosexuality, but rather, he claims that in most situations of the texts it actually deals with other sins.
Why did Roger of Howdon warn Richard the Lionheart of sodomy? Was the king of England guilty of homosexual lust? Had Richard engaged in unnatural desires that were contrary to both scripture and the teachings of the Catholic Church? For some, Richard's confession of ''sodomy'' in 1195 simply means to some present medievalists as it meant as did to many medievals: any sexual sin.
One of the main problems for me with Jean Flori's arguments is that Roger of Howdon never accused Richard of sodomy. He warned the English king of it. To Roger, it was not fitting that English kings apart from his wife (many medieval priests even ensured the sexual union between husband and wife after marriage). While the illicit acts that Roger speaks of implying that the king was sinful in the eyes of the church, what these sins were are not recorded. I think that it is quite the assumption of Flori to insist that any of this refers to Richard's homosexuality. Instead, perhaps the friar simply felt compassionate that Richard was likely to sin sexually by refraining from his own wife. To me, the latter seems a more natural conclusion from the text. The fact that Roger warned Richard does not automatically prove to me (as it seems to do for Flori) that Richard was homosexual. I find this reasoning to be faulty.
Furthermore, the illicit acts that Roger warned Richard about, could refer (as John Gillingham noted) to another sexual sin other than homosexuality. To Gillingham, this could refer to adultery. Sodomy also referred to anything in the eyes of the Catholic Church that was an unnatural form of sex.
Flori, however, argues that the sins that Roger claims Richard to have engaged in have been much worse than fornication. His reasons for this include the fact that the chronicles condemned Richard more for these ''illicit acts'' than they did for Henry's alleged fornication with women. Does Flori have a point?
Again, I think that Flori is reading into the historical record more than he should. Unlike Gillingham, he is not taking the texts and face value and is assuming that they mean something more. While I'm not sure why the medieval chronicles were modern condemning of Richard for these ''illicit acts'' than those of his father, I don't conclude (as Flori does) that this automatically refers to homosexuality. Could it be that Roger of Hovedon was more condemning of Richard because the lionheart king had no heir whereas Henry II had conceived one?
Flori argues that Gillingham has attacked those who hold to Richard's homosexuality. I found his description of Gillingasm's arguments in Richard the Lionheart by Jean Flori to come off as slightly defensive (perhaps I am mistaken). While Flori is nothing short of a scholar (though a liberal one), his persuasiveness in these arguments I found was much more smooth than his English counterpart. Ultimately, Gillingham assumed (as we should) that in twelfth-century society, homosexuality was extraordinarily rare. Because of this, we should not be quick to assume Richard's sexuality to be anything other than straight unless further evidence is provided.
Additionally, whatever sin Richard was guilty of, Roger was comforted that the English king did penance over before his death. While other chroniclers do not record Richard giving penance before his death, Roger's is the most relevant here as his account is the one used for the alleged homosexuality of Richard I.
Whatever ''sin'' or potential sin Roger had warned Richard of, Richard died with penitence according to the former's account. For this reason, I believe that it would be unjust to describe Richard's sexual orientation as anything other than what he sought forgiveness for. Flori, Reston, and other liberal historians who portray Richard as homosexual, conveniently ignore the emphasis that Richard trusted in the church's judgment of what was seen as sinful and attempted to correct himself of it. Just as we shouldn't identify a person whose penance has forbidden them from returning to a past sin, so the same standard should be given to the lionheart king.
If we are to be faithful to the study of the Middle Ages, then it is important that we read their timeline as they would have read it. The medievalist must in a sense, become a medieval, in order to understand what the society of the Middle Ages was like. Of course, at the heart of society, was medieval religion. Since the theological teachings of the Catholic Church were strongly condemning of homosexuality in the Middle Ages, since Richard the Lionheart was a faithful Roman Catholic, and since no evidence (in my view) supports the view that Richard was homosexual, then we ought to conclude that he was no different than most medieval kings of England concerning his sexual orientation. Likewise, Richard I was recorded in the chronicles to have studied the scriptures; he would have known Biblical teachings to be contrary to the practice or desire of homosexuality.
Final Thoughts:
I have never seen a single issue pushed in my life like I have that of homosexuality. It is pushed in schools, colleges, textbooks, TV, movies, art, and music. There is a reason for this: the more that the modern left can make Christians doubt the rare peculiarities of it, the more they can convince people that it's natural (which scripture teaches otherwise). Many of the mainline churches have given into these false narratives of the past as they do not base their beliefs off of scripture. Tragically, more young people than ever are being taught these anti-God/anti-Christian myths and fables, and for many of them, statistics show that they will fall away from the faith before or after they graduate from a secular college.
Popularized by the novel, The Lion in Winter, many have come to read about Richard the Lionheart's alleged homosexuality. If not through the reading of the book, others have learned about this view from watching the films based on the work. Whether or not we realize it, the arts that we give our attention to will daily influence our worldview of everything else. The characterizations of history in movies, books, or art do not go unnoticed by the observers. If Roger of Howden (or Hovedon) had thought this, he could have easily said it.
Considering the piety of Richard the Lionheart toward crusading, his great interest in field warfare, and his time era (which rarely saw homosexuality exercised), I consider no legitimate reason yet to believe that Richard the Lionheart was homosexual. Likewise, while occasional modern historians do correct the misconceptions of those in the past, I find it did (as Gillingham observed) that not a single text before 1948 ever made this claim about Richard I. Only one text earlier than this has been used by this theory; an eighteenth-century text by a French Huguenot that is ambiguous as to its meaning concerning Richard's sexuality. As Gillingham has noted, if this Huguenot believed Richard to be ''gay'' then it would seem that other historians of his era would have made this claim. Furthermore, as Gillingham also has rightly noted, if Richard I was homosexual then Gerald of Wales, the welsh friar would likely have written about this considering that Gerald wrote about nearly every corruption that he was aware of (Richard the Lionheart, John Gillingham, 283).
For years, I have dedicated various posts to defending the Christian heritage of the past against the offenses of those who hate orthodoxy. Having studied the life of Richard I since 2010, I have been waiting to write this post for many years to clear his character in a scholarly manner from the falsehoods of various atheists, false Christians, and secularists. At the end of my research on this topic, I felt that I had provided strong evidence to counter liberal claims about Richard. At the same time, however, I feel disappointed. I feel disappointed because I wonder how liberal scholars can dedicate so much time of their lives to their research, and often, do a very poor job at arguing for their liberal positions.
Further Sources:
Gillingham, John Richard I.
Gillingham, John Richard the Lionheart. (1978). Times Books.
Gillingham, John Richard Coeur de Lion. (1994). The Hambledon Press.
Regan, Geoffrey. Lionhearts: Richard I, Saladin, and The Third Crusade. (1998). Walker and Company.
Reston, James Jn. Warriors of God. Doubleday. (2001).
Flori, Jean. Richard the Lionheart. (1999). Praeger.
