Michel Foucault suggested in his pathbreaking, The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, that sexual identity was really a modern phenomenon: a product of the deployment of sexuality in the discourses of modern disciplines developed across the span of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. That suggestive idea, part of a potent discursive move on Foucault's part to problematize modern notions of sexuality and open up the possibilities of totally rethinking the issues involved in any history of sex, has been picked up and reified into virtually a given in the field. Recently, however, a number of scholars have begun to reconsider the issue of premodern sexual identity, arguing that what has become the Foucault paradigm is too limiting for the complexities of the premodern period. This paper takes a local focus, looking closely at renaissance Venice, to argue that there was, in fact, a sense of sexual identity in that city in the 15th and 16th centuries; needless to say, it was not a modern sense of identity, but it is argued that it was a significant component of what identified a person at that time socially and to a degree even internally.

Starting with a discussion of a simple game played in Venetian polite society involving birds, figs and sexual identity, the paper essays how sexuality identified men and women in different ways at various stages of their lives. For women this identification was closely tied to the most significant markers of their identity in the renaissance; so much so that the intertwining of sexual identity and life cycle was immediate and powerful -- and perhaps masking of more subtle associations. For men the matter was less clear -- and as many of the followers of Foucault have focused almost exclusively on the sexuality of men in the period this may help explain why the anti-identity position has gained such strength.

Each perceived stage of a woman's life in renaissance Venice had a profound sexual connection, starting with childhood which in many ways was identified by the marker that young girls were not yet capable of sex as identified at the time: being "man incapable." But once puberty was reached a woman's status changed immediately, essentially she became marriageable and "man capable." And normally she was quickly married to reach full adult status as a sexually functioning wife on the way to child-bearing. The crucial rites of passage that surrounded this transition stressed the sexual identity of the bride, virgin becoming sexual. Widowhood was often portrayed as a dangerous period of sexual possibility, until, with age, a woman returned to a safer non-sexuality again. Even women who did not follow this expected renaissance path of development were closely tied to their sexuality: nuns were seen as brides of Christ and that sexual relationship created fascinating discourses of its own; zitelle unmarried women were closely scrutinized to assure that they maintained their correct sexual status -- sexually capable, but sexually inactive. Finally, of course, illicit categories of woman also focused heavily on sexual characteristics with prostitutes and concubines, being the two main perceived deviant postures of women in renaissance Venice. In the end, at each stage of life women were seen as sexually passive and this was carefully evaluated in social settings dominated by discourses of honor, morality, sin, and gender.

For men such a clear identification of life cycle and identity did not exist primarily because of a long period of gioventù that could stretch at the upper levels of Venetian society up to twenty years. Essentially young boys were also seen as asexual until they reached the age of twelve or so. But once they reached their early teens, they entered an amorphous period of sexuality where they could be viewed as sexually passive, active or both at once. This long period has also contributed to the perception that there was little sense of sexual identity for males, given the range and flexibility apparently allowed them in gioventù. But clearly the Venetian case suggests that there was an ideal trajectory that males were expected to follow across this period of life moving from a passive sexuality to an active one as they approached adult status; thus although modern expectations about sexual identity did not obtain, there were real renaissance expectations that were played out in a host of renaissance discourses that grew up around the problematics of this long period of transition. And in the end, youths in Venice became men once again at a moment that was carefully measured sexually: when they married. Bedding rituals, examination of bedsheets, and magical practices to assure marital sexual performance all underline how central active sexual functioning was to the correct identity of an adult male. In turn the penalties involved in dealing with the "sex crimes" of those who did not display the correct sexual identity, including burning alive for adult men who continued to engage in sodomy, suggest that correct sexual identity was no small concern. As adults married men were expected to be, evaluated as, and known as active sexual partners with their wives or their mistresses; again the discourses of honor, morality, sin and gender turned on this.

Crucially, however, much of this identification was carried out in a more public arena. Honor in a way required it [although for time reasons the long discussion of honor and its close ties to sexual identity has been cut from the paper that will be presented], social perceptions and family reputation turned on it, and government, church, neighborhood and social networks evaluated it. Still, Venetian sexual identity in the renaissance may not have been entirely public and social, literature, some crime documentation, and the very dynamic of developing sexual identity for females and especially males suggests that there were also perceived internal evaluations of sexual identity. For example, the heavy emphasis on virginity as a key to honor and marriageable status in the renaissance made this potentially a matter of private and perceived inner concern for women; in turn, for men achieving their correctly active status sexually with adulthood also seems clearly to have evoked significant personal concerns as well as public ones.

This paper uses primarily three kinds of documentation: crime documents, inquisitional material, and literature written in Venice. Those wanting to have a fuller discussion of each and the issues involved in interpreting them might refer to: History from Crime, eds. Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994); Guido Ruggiero, Binding Passions: Tales of Magic, Marriage, and Power at the End of the Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 1993); and Lauro Martines, An Italian Renaissance Sextet, Six Tales in Historical Context (Marsilio, 1994). The literary text most used in the paper and perhaps most revealing on the topic is the comedy "Il marescalco" by Pietro Aretino, readily available in an English translation as "The Stablemaster" in Five Italian Renaissance Comedies, ed. Bruce Penman (Penguin, 1978).

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