OutSpotlight CVIII

Going a little Colonial today since Thursday was Thanksgiving. For a long time there wasn't something called coming out. 1868 is looked upon as the first time someone publicly stated in print that they were homosexual, that was Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, who dropped his pseudonym and used his real name. But that is not to say that there weren't men and women writing about their feelings long long before then, even when then were unable to come out.

Today's OutSpotlight is Micheal Wigglesworth. A Puritan minister from the Massachusetts colony, Wigglesworth struggled with the conflict between his religious beliefs and his sexuality, setting his feelings down in the encoded pages of his diary.

At the time, religious ideas shaped the law, the European colonies of North America, which set harsh penalties for homosexual activity. Yet as they settled, the Spanish, French, and British encountered native cultures that allowed for expressions of same-sex love. And within the colonies as well, there is evidence of same-sex activity despite the violence of the law, which is included beatings and even death.

Michael Wigglesworth born in England in 1631, his father Edward,arrived in New England with his family in 1638, and in October of that year moved from Charlestown Massachusett to New Haven,CT. Michael returned to Massachusetts to attend Harvard College, graduating in 1651. A fellow and tutor in the college from 1652 to 1654, as he continued his studies toward becoming a minister. Like many Puritan clergymen, he kept a diary for recording his daily life, meditations on faith, and his battles with lust and temptation. For Wigglesworth, however, these feelings took a form that seemed dangerous to record even in his private papers.

Wigglesworth was plagued by his attraction to his male students, many of who were close to his age. The passages in his diary about these attractions are written in a secret code, allowing him to be explicit about his feelings and his fears.

On April 5, 1653, he wrote, "I find my spirit so exceedingly carried with love, that I can't tell how to take up my rest in God." On July 4, 1653, he struggled with "filthy lust" inspired by "my fond affection for my students while in their presence." Marrying in 1655, his attraction to men continued. The day after his marriage Wigglesworth confessed to his diary: "I feel stirrings and strongly of my former distemper even after the use of marriage --which makes me exceeding afraid." In 1656, he became minister of the church in Malden, Massachusetts.

In 1663 he made a voyage to Bermuda in search of health, and during his absence an associate minister was ordained at Malden. His health prevented him from officiating in the pulpit for about twenty years, during which time he studied medicine and became a skillful physician. In 1686 he resumed his pulpit labors, continuing to practice as a physician.

In 1662, Wigglesworth published an epic poem about the Last Judgment called The Day of Doom. The first 1800 copies sold out within a year, and the poem quickly became the most widely-read and frequently-memorized text of the age. The poem he pictured in vivid colors the terrors of the judgment-day and the awful wrath of an offended God. Thus the poem recommended itself to the sternest of the Calvinists as well as to their children. Excerpts from the poem are often used in college courses now to illustrate the grim and fiery tone of New England Puritanism in the 1600s. Wigglesworth's private torment, however, is seldom, if ever, mentioned in considerations of his work. Knowing Wigglesworth's private fears gives added resonance to the descriptions of the eternal torment of damnation in his writing.

Several stanzas of The Day of Doom refer to the futility of attempting to keep a secret from God:

"No hiding place can from his Face sinners at all conceal,
Whose flaming eyes hid things doth spy, and darkest things reveal."

Later he adds: "Deeds of the night shunning the light, which darkest corners sought,
To fearful blame and endless shame are there most justly brought."

No matter what Wigglesworth did to conceal his desires from his contemporaries, he felt sure that the truth would out, and damn him forever, when it really mattered.

His carefully encoded confessions were not revealed until the 1960s, when historian Edmund Morgan decoded the passages and published a full version of the diary. Wigglesworth seems to have taken his secret with him to the grave. However, a passing comment made by another minister upon his death reveals how important his decision to encode his thoughts had been. When he died in 1705, the son of one of his former students--the renowned minister Cotton Mather--preached the sermon at his funeral. In the published edition of the funeral sermon, Mather wrote that he could attest to Wigglesworth's great love and concern for his students, since he had read about it in the teacher's "reserved papers."