Why do you want your only one to die, who as you know, loves you with soul and body, who sighs for you every hour at every moment, like a hungry little bird... as the turtle-dove, having lost its mate, perches forever on its little dried up branch, so I lament endlessly... you are the only woman I have chosen according to my heart.
That text is from a 12th Century letter from a woman to another lamenting their separation
it bears testimony to is the reality of lesbian relationships going back into the medieval period
contemporaries couldn't quite believe in sex without penetration- women were the passive receivers of sexual attention and aggression, not the instigators of it. Indeed one medieval text argued that a mannish woman turned in either of two ways- if filled with lust she became an active seductress, if totally bereft of human feeling, she became a Lesbian
Women though were punished for being Lesbians
a woman was drowned in Geneva for a 'detestable and unnatural' relationship
clipped from: gracchii.blogspot.com