This, according to Hermann Michaelis,
only appeared after the Church had gained power among the West Goths; in
the Breviarium of Alaric II (506), the sodomist was condemned to the
stake, and later, in the seventh century, by an edict of King
Chindasvinds, to castration. The Frankish capitularies of Charlemange's
time adopted ecclesiastical penances. In the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries death by fire was ordained, and the punishments enacted by the
German codes tended to become much more ferocious than that edicted by the
Justinian code on which they were modelled.
[76] Raffalovich discusses German friendship, _Uranisme et Unisexualite_,
pp. 157-9. See also Birnbaum, _Jahrbuch fuer sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, Bd.
viii, p. 611; he especially illustrates this kind of friendship by the
correspondence of the poets Gleim and Jacobi, who used to each other the
language of lovers, which, indeed, they constantly called themselves.
[77] This letter may be found in Ernst Schur's _Heinrich von Kleist in
seinen Briefen_, p. 295. Dr. J. Sadger has written a pathographic and
psychological study of Kleist, emphasizing the homosexual strain, in the
_Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens_ series.
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