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

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

Editorial Review

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.

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
• Excellent Read even 27 years later
  John Boswell's work still stands as one of the foundational works of social history in the last three decades. While subsequent scholarship has further illuminated the topic, I still feel the breadth and depth of this work makes it time well spent. As Boswell notes:
  "Tracing the course of intolerance reveals much about the landscape it traverses, and for this reason alone it deserves to be studied...On the other hand, the social topography of medieval Europe remains so unexplored that studies of any... more info
• 3.5 Stars for a Good, But Not Excellent Start Into the Issue
  I read the 1981 edition of the 1980 book. With 448 pages the book appears to be exhaustive. However, subtract the bibliography etc. and the 67 p appendixes of quoted and/or translated historic documents and we are left with 338 pages. These in turn have to get halved, because of the extensive footnotes, leaving some 170 regular text pages - a rather thin book, actually.
  As was the science book standard at the time, the author shows off his education with copious use of Latin, Old Greek and occasional... more info
• Whatever..
  Whatever side of the fence you sit, or, indeed, whether on the fence, one thing is certain -- you'll either love or hate this work. It is a thesis. It is a mind-opening presentation of facts and ideas. It is worth reading and begs owning. Whether for or again', you'll only regret not picking it up. Whatever..
• Required Reading But Not The Final Word
  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... more info

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