https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/pwh/gaymidages.asp

The above link is to a graduate research thesis on homosexuality in the Middle Ages from Fordham University, which I’ll be using as an addendum for my own conclusions about homosexuality in medieval monastic settings.

Many of the stances taken on the issue are ambivalent because there isn’t too much evidence for either side, due to the fact that monasteries simultaneously were overwhelmingly the only network publishing treatises on the human condition (an example of which would be homosexuality, which was strictly condemned by the Nicean-Catholic [early MA] and Catholic [Middle and high MA]). Because of this condemnation, monks practicing homosexuality would likely have self-policed and presented an anti-homosexual agenda in publications while practicing the opposite in private.

So there aren’t many formal sources identifying this behavior in our traditional tome of medieval knowledge. Shocker.

However, personal correspondence such as love letters and lightly veiled writing indicated a very different atmosphere.

http://rictornorton.co.uk/medieval.htm

Above is a link to a page with accounts written by clergy members to their lovers or “brothers,” a term signifying the union of “brother-making,” which was another way of veiling matrimonial union among same sex couples by using biblical passages which stated that essentially, God is present in every relationship among every person, and therefore the love of two (typically) men was divinely sanctioned. This however is by no means ubiquitous, and more likely was not a widespread practice. It indicates however that there was in fact homosexual interaction between the clergy, and likely monks, who lived their whole lives in the cloisters among other men.

We’ll likely never know just how widespread monastic homosexuality was, but it certainly existed in the ecclesiastical structure, and with hundreds of thousands of monks having lived in the Middle Ages, based on current trends there were very likely many closeted homosexual monks, secretive lovers, etc. I think the quote may be a little aggressive by implying that it was a sexual free for all of some sort in the cloisters, but certainly it did exist and could very likely have been just as Follett describes it.

Also - great choice of books! I’m in Column of Fire right now. Ken Follett’s a great writer and though he writes historical fiction, the historicity of his books is verifiably dependable, and I don’t doubt that he would have had a reason to say that. Hope this helped!