WHEN LOVE COULD GET YOU BURNT

This tale takes us back to a time when there were very strict rules about who you could love, and Luca paid the ultimate price for breaking them. Today, on the Maltese islands, everyone can marry whoever they wish, even persons of the same sex. They can live their lives openly. But this wasn’t always true. Same-sex love only became legal in Malta in 1973.

For many centuries years, most people believed that loving someone of the same gender was both unnatural and against the will of God. The laws were so harsh that the Holy Roman Emperor made a law that said anyone found guilty of this could be burned to death. This was the fate Luca Lo Pogio, a man from Genoa living in Birgu, met after a shocking trial that would become infamous. On December 20, 1608, after a long and challenging six-day trial, Luca was found guilty of sodomy (the old word used for homosexuality), a crime punishable by death. His crime? Being too close to a young man from Sicily named Vincenzo. Witnesses claimed they saw Luca and Vincenzo together many times, from taverns in Birgu to the streets of Palermo in Sicily. Some people even said they saw the two blowing kisses and singing to each other in public!

Strangling at the stake

When questioned, Luca insisted that Vincenzo was his natural son and that they always slept in separate beds, but no one believed him. His reputation for not telling the truth didn’t help him either  Eventually, Luca confessed—though it’s important to note he was tortured to make that confession.

On the same day the Castellania (court of the Knights of St John) found him guilty, Luca was led to the gallows in Valletta for his execution. Normally, people got a few days to prepare for their death, but Luca didn’t. His punishment was a brutal spectacle meant to show the power of the state. He was paraded through the streets, and then strangled before his body was burned to ashes. The public display was intended to send a message of fear, warning others against stepping out of line.

Vincenzo, however, seemed to vanish into thin air. His name appears only briefly in the trial records, and there’s no evidence he was ever caught. Some believe he fled, terrified that he might share the same fate as Luca. His story remains a mystery, leaving historians to wonder what really happened between the two men.

Luca Lo Pogio’s tragic story reminds us of how dangerous it once was for people to love someone society didn’t approve of. Back then, the world was much intolerant than it is today.

Castellania, Valletta. Source:  Continentaleurope