I've attended several sessions of papers at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo that discussed the overtly sensual and erotic language included in male ecclesiastical correspondence, particularly of the medieval period. When discussing male clergy of, for example, 12-14th century France, one can triangulate on the relationship between texts that strike the modern ear as decidedly homoerotic and larger social discussions and concerns regarding sexual relations between men either in monasteries or among the clergy. Robert Mill's Seeing Sodomy in the Middle Ages discusses that larger context for men. But differences in how people viewed women's sexuality, in the greater opprobrium for male homosexuality, and in the political consequences of having "favorites" based on a sexual relationship, mean that there isn't the same larger context of discussion for understanding women's homoerotic correspondence. (Not that there was no larger context, but it isn't as extensively documented.) This can make it more difficult to examine letters like the one discussed in this article with an eye to determining whether they did express--or would have been considered to have expressed--a relationship that had romantic and erotic components, as opposed to using the language of romance simply as a form of literary expression.
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