Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Paperback)

by John Boswell (Author)
Key Phrases: intellectual change, speculo caritatis, selective inference, Middle Ages, New York, Old Testament (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Truly groundbreaking work. Boswell reveals unexplored phenomena with an unfailing erudition." - Michel Foucault "What makes this work so exciting is not simply its content - fascinating though that is - but its revolutionary challenge to some of Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions." - Jean Strouse, Newsweek"

Product Description
John Boswell's highly acclaimed study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, bishops and even canonized saints. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. The product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, this book opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.

"What makes this work so exciting is not simply its content--fascinating though that is--but its revolutionary challenge to some of Western culture's most familiar moral assumptions." --Jean Strouse, Newsweek

"Truly groundbreaking work. Boswell reveals unexplored phenomena with an unfailing erudition." --Michel Foucault

"[Boswell] has mastered one of the rarest skills: the ability to write about sex with genuine wit. Improbable as it might seem, this work of unrelenting scholarship and high intellectual drama is also thoroughly entertaining." --Paul Robinson, New York Times Book Review

John Boswell (1947-1994) was the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History at Yale University and the author of The Royal Treasure, The Kindness of Strangers, and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 442 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (November 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226067114
• ISBN-13: 978-0226067117
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #189,094 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #16 in	Books > Health, Mind & Body > Sex > Sex & Religion > Christian Sexual Ethics
  #42 in	Books > History > Europe > Ireland > Medieval
  #46 in	Books > Gay & Lesbian > History

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A scholarly plea, July 14, 2003

By	FrKurt Messick "FrKurt Messick" (Bloomington, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

I have been the teaching assistant for a course entitled 'Theology of the Welcoming Church'; we have had wonderful diverse groups of students, from traditional/conservative to liberal in background, multi-denominational in affiliation. It always promises to be a good course and provide dialogue for better understanding even if it does not resolve the issue for all in one way or the other. Just for the record -- I am trying to stay as objectively neutral as I can be; I have my biases too, but given that I don't have the answers either (how do I reconcile scripture and tradition with the experience of people I know?) I guess mostly what you'll read here are my fumblings in the dark.

Boswell's book 'Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality' is an early scholastic contribution to the history of how homosexuality has been treated by the Christian church establishment from the beginning of the Christian era to about the fourteenth century. It won the American Book Award for History in 1981. Boswell (now deceased) was a professor at Yale; I have a friend on faculty at the IU Music School who went to high school with him.

Perhaps Boswell's argument can be summed up fairly easily in that, through examples in contemporary literature and records (legal, theological, literary, etc.), homosexuality was not recognised in the same way that it is today, and therefore that it also was not condemned in the way that it is today by much of the church. Friendships and close relationships often developed into sexual ones; these were not considered unusual. There was a variation from culture to culture, but the widespread condemnation of homosexuality didn't begin until thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when tolerance (not only of this, but of religious opinions in general) ceased to be the rule, as the church (a dominant military, political, and social force as well) attempted to consolidate power.

Boswell's research is extensive and impressive, but his interpretations have remained hotly debated for the 20 years since this book was first published. One scholar-friend of mine who knew Boswell said that his psychological motivation for writing the book (this is a theme that was not designed to win favour in academia at that point in time) was to confront the Catholic church, in which he as a gay man did not feel welcome. And, there is probably some truth to that. Knowing that framework, it is interesting to re-read passages to see where objective scholarship slips into subtle reframing.

Nonetheless, this book provides an excellent historical framework, and cannot be ignored in the current debate. I encountered this book first many years ago when my church was undergoing a discernment process, and it was useful in many ways. Boswell claimed to know of isolated communities and continuing strands where such tolerance continued to the present. He promised on a few occasions (at least semi-publicly) that he would reveal these in the next volume, Same Sex Unions, produced many years later, and an even more controversial text.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for members of a diverse society, November 12, 1998

By	Bryan Walker "ddd257" (Berkeley, California) - See all my reviews

I not only had the pleasure of reading this book--surely one of the best works of historical scholarship in the twentieth century--I also had the privilege of taking courses with Professor Boswell. Prof. Boswell demonstrates with convincing scholarship that Christian attitudes toward homosexuality have _always_ been interpretive, and that the interpretations have varied greatly across time. This sharply undercuts the modern American conception, pushed by certain groups, that homophobia is an immutable constant in Christianity. For that reason alone, the book is a must-read for Americans wrestling with the issue of homosexuality. But at the same time, it is a pity that the book is often seen in those terms. The political nature of the issue today means that reactions to Prof. Boswell's work are politicized. But the book can be read by history students as a inspirational primer on method as well. Whether your field is late modern Chinese economic history or Roman military history, this book is a shining example of what historical scholarship is all about.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading But Not The Final Word, January 1, 2007

By	Brendan Ross (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This impressive book, winner of the National Book Award, is an incisive, passionate piece of advocacy scholarship concerning the development of anti-homosexual attitudes in the pre-modern era. It's required reading mostly because of the arguments that it lays out (many of which are regrettably stretched too thin), the sources that deploys and explicates, and the fact that it was the book that really got the ball rolling on further discussion of these issues.

Boswell's main thesis is that intolerance of homosexuality began in earnest only in the 12th Century, and that homosexuality was both common and tolerated by Christianity and the Christian states prior to that time. Boswell was a convert to Roman Catholicism, and appears to have struggled mightily as a scholar to disconnect the anti-homosexual teachings of the (current) church of his day from what he perceived to have been different attitudes in the pre-medieval church -- essentially in an attempt to drive a wedge between "early" Christianity, on the one hand, and intolerance of homosexuality, on the other. The thesis suggests that such intolerance only came later, and therefore was not intrinsic or important in the earlier periods of the church (and therefore was something that could also be discarded by the church of today as something it did not view as essential in an earlier time).

Unfortunately, Boswell, in his zeal to demonstrate his ideas, regrettably either downplays most of the contra evidence, or interprets it in what can mostly be described as rather tendentious, strained and unconvincing ways. If one is looking at history more or less objectively, without a preconceived attempt to "rehabilitate" the reputation of the early church vis-a-vis homosexuality, it's very hard to accept Boswell's thesis. History records that the early Christian Fathers like Tertullian and Clement railed quite a bit against homosexuality, common as it was in the Hellenistic world of late antiquity. After the adoption by the Empire of Christianity, history again records that statutes punishing homosexuality with death or castration almost immediately began to appear in Roman legal codes, and began to be enforced. St John Chrysostom preached some of the most virulently anti-homosexual sermons in the history of Christianity already in the late 4th Century, and the Emperor Justinian instituted extremely harsh penalties against homosexuals. The historical record, viewed objectively, is reasonably clear: institutional Christianity was hostile to homosexual activity from a very early point.

Of course, this doesn't mean that Christianity, as a belief system, must be anti-homosexual. But for Boswell, that kind of thinking was not good enough because he was interested not in rehabilitating Christianity as a belief system, but in rehabilitating institutional Christianity (particularly the Catholic Church that he so loved) from its anti-homosexual history. Unfortunately, to do so, much history has to be ignored, downplayed or interpreted in very strained ways. And ultimately, this is the undoing of Boswell's thesis. When reading this book -- which glitters with erudition and scholarship -- one can't help rooting for Boswell. You *want* his thesis to be right .... but ultimately, it just doesn't convince. An objective view of history -- while remaining aloof from the question of whether anti-homosexuality is intrinsic to Christianity as a matter of faith (that's an issue for the theologians) -- clearly demonstrates that institutional Christianity has been profoundly anti-homosexual from the time it became "institutional".

Nevertheless, the book is required reading for anyone interested in these topics, mainly because it highlights the issues, frames the debate and (undoubtedly) reflects the work of a brilliant mind.