The Visigoths
The Germanic peoples had little tolerance for both passive homosexuality and women, whom they considered on the same level as "imbeciles" and slaves, and glorified the warrior camaraderie between men. However, there are reports in Scandinavian countries of feminine and transvestite pastors, and the Nordic gods, the Æsir, including Thor and Odin, obtained arcane recognition drinking semen.
In the Early Middle Ages, attitudes toward homosexuality remained constant. There are known cases of homosexual behaviour which did not receive punishment, even if they weren't accepted. For example, king Clovis I on his baptism day confessed having relationships with other men; or Alcuin, an anglosaxon poet whose verses and letters are impregnated with homoerotism. However, slowly but surely Christian morality, which was highly tied to sexuality and based in the Jewish idea that the only purpose of sex was reproduction, started to form a complex web of canonical dispositions which strongly influenced contemporary law.
One of the first legal corpus that considered male homosexuality a crime in Europe was the Liber Iudiciorum (or Lex Visigothorum). The Visigoth law included in that code (L. 3,5,6) punished the so-called sodomy with banishment and castration. Within the term "castration" were included all sexual crimes considered unnatural, such as male homosexuality, anal sex (heterosexual and homosexual) and zoophilia. Lesbianism was considered sodomy only if it included phallic aids.
It was king Chindasuinth (642–653) who dictated that the punishment for homosexuality should be castration. Such a harsh measure was unheard of in Visigoth laws, except for the cases of Jews practising circumcision. After being castrated, the culprit was given to the care of the local bishop, who would then banish him. If he was married, the marriage was declared void, the dowry was returned to the woman and any possessions distributed among his heirs.
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