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Church of Saint Francis 'al Prato', Via S. Francesco, 4, 06123 Perugia PG
Francesco Beccuti (April 6, 1509 – August 19, 1553) known as Il Coppetta was an Italian poet. Born to a noble family in Perugia, Beccuti held public office and lived the uneventful life of a provincial literary figure there; he died and was buried (in the church of San Francesco al Prato) in his native city. The interest of his poetry, which did not develop far beyond the contemporary models of Petrarch and Francesco Berni, lies not so much in its considerable formal quality as in its content. Beccuti profited from the enormous tolerance of homosexuality, which existed in Italy just before the start of the Counter-Reformation, to discuss his own homosexual loves with a frankness which would become unthinkable only a few decades later. Suffice it to say that among his poems number two long compositions on the ‘pros’ and ‘cons’ of homosexual sodomy. A reading of his poems reveals the ‘outing’ of an entire generation of the upper classes of Perugia in this period; even if the names are disguised, the fact that the true identity of the persons of whom he speaks has come down to us implies that in Beccuti's time they were not a mystery.
For instance, a composition published under the title ‘Contro la pederastia’ (1545– 1553) was a plea to Francèsco Colòmbo (‘ Il Platòne’), a professor at the University of Perugia, to abandon his sexual relations with men; however, the final verse says: ‘But I know I am wasting my time and this sheet of paper as well’. ‘In lode della pederastia’ was addressed to a certain Bino (who has been identified as Captain Baldino Baldinèschi), asking him to come to his senses and break off a relationship with a woman, since such a (heterosexual) love was against his true nature. To convince Bino to do so, Coppetta vaunted the beauty of the youth of Perugia – Boncambio, Crispoltino, Contino, Valeriano, Turno, Alcide and Francesco Bigazzini (with whom Beccuti himself was in love). Two further sonnets addressed to Baldinèschi then warned him not to fall too much in love with a certain Pietro, a handsome youth, but with a diamond-hard heart. A comic sonnet chided one Bernàrdo Giùsti for his excessive ‘kindness’ (which in the comic slang of the time meant ‘preference for passive sodomy’).
Although three sonnets from around 1553 lauded the virtue and the beauty – more the beauty than the virtue – of a Berardino Alfàni, most of the homosexual verse of Beccuti concerns his love for Bigazzini (whom he called ‘Alessi’), which lasted from 1547 to 1553. It is noteworthy that in a time in which it was understood that homosexual love would be pedophilic, Beccuti fell in love with a young adult – one of the sonnets celebrates Bigazzini's twenty-third birthday. The great interest of this ‘songbook’, which is written in a Petrachian style, is the way in which Beccuti chronicles the phases of his relationship: Beccuti's approaches and Bigazzini's rejection – he was heterosexual and did not appreciate the declarations of Coppetta's ‘chaste’ love – through rivalry with other homosexuals (Agnolo Felìce Mansuèti, Pellìno Pellìni, Fàbio Stràtta), right to the end. Every phase is presented in explicit terms (though Beccuti was indeed married). The verses constitute a social, personal and even anthropological document, as well as a literary work, which is practically unique in its genre, and merit a detailed study from the point of view of homosexual history.
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