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Renaissance sexual ideas were also distinct to the era. In Florence which was famous as a capital of "sodomy" where records suggest over 50% of men had both male and female sexual partners at different times, & many male-male relationships were quite public (thread) #renfacts
Michael Roche's brilliant book "Forbidden Friendships" looks at Renaissance sexual attitudes, but I see it whenever I read primary sources. It's extremely rare for me to read collected letters or an autobiography from the Renaissance & not see male-male relationships come up...
Yet the norm was for men in male-male relationships to have heterosexual ones too, & associates tend to describe people's sexuality as unusual mainly when they were interested in only one sex (Michelangelo) or in neither sex (Leonardo) rather than the standard both (Machiavelli).
Machiavelli's profile is fairly typical: married yet patronizing prostitutes of both sexes, and comfortable discussing sexuality in letters & giving sex/romance advice to friends treating heterosexual and male-male relationships as coequal so long as marriage isn't involved.
Marriage was considered completely different and entirely aromantic - as in much of the Middle Ages, Renaissance romance was expected to arise in extramarital affairs, not marriages.
Sodomy remained illegal & male prostitutes & their clients were subject to busts & fines (details in Roche book) but gov't responses (as in Venice for example) were more often to state-subsidize & incentivize female prostitutes to try to hurt the business of male counterparts.
Documents suggest what made Renaissance people most uncomfortable (& was subject to stricter fines) was if a male-male pair had the elder partner in the passive role - age hierarchy was strict & people found it unnatural/disruptive for an older man to be penetrated by one younger
In sum, just as Shadi said of antiquity, Renaissance sexual categories/expectations were complex & very different from our own, & show how, while some parts of sexuality are genetic/biological, each culture assigns different meanings/judgments/expectations to different roles/acts
So while it's invaluable to examine the past through such lenses as homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality etc., we must always remember that those cultural categories are modern constructions radically different from past cultural understandings of similar acts/relationships.
