It is very doubtful whether he was a Huguenot, and whenever in his works he refers to pederasty it is with strong disapproval.

But his writings reveal passionate friendship for men, and he seems to have expended little energy in combating a charge which, if false, was a shameful injustice to him.

It was after fleeing into Italy and falling ill of a fever from fatigue and exposure that Muret is said to have made the famous retort (to the physician by his bedside who had said: "Faciamus experimentum in anima vili"): "Vilem animam appellas pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori."[56] A greater Humanist than Muret, Erasmus himself, seems as a young man, when in the Augustinian monastery of Stein, to have had a homosexual attraction to another Brother (afterward Prior) to whom he addressed many passionately affectionate letters; his affection seems, however, to have been unrequited.[57] As the Renaissance developed, homosexuality seems to become more prominent among distinguished persons.

Poliziano was accused of pederasty.

Aretino was a pederast, as Pope Julius II seems also to have been.