A brief comment on John Boswell's 'Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality'

A BRIEF COMMENT ON JOHN BOSWELL’S CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE AND HOMOSEXUALITY: GAY PEOPLE IN WESTERN EUROPE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

The history of minorities is quite a recent one. The 20^th century saw the unearthing of many of the social taboos of earlier periods and hundreds of works and studies were published on these minorities after the 1960’s. The women’s turn was the first, and they, although not a numerical minority had been indeed a historical non-entity until the liberation movement gave them a voice. Women were to be followed by the

blacks, the children, the elderly… At about the same time, homosexuality also started to call for attention after the gay movement[1] took shape during the 1970’s. It was within this atmosphere of ‘scholar renaissance’ that Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality was published in 1980.

Boswell’s work is an exhaustive study of homosexuality in the Middle Ages within the context of the Christian tradition that has so affected views on this sexual orientation in later times. But the extent of Boswell’s thorough research goes even further than that. As he states in the preface of his book, ‘a historian who wishes to present an alternative explanation must examine the force of the previous tradition in minute detail’[2]. This he absolutely accomplished through the pages of his book for, not only he unravelled his arguments in different chapters with a logical arrangement, he also peppered the text with explanatory footnotes that could constitute an independent volume in themselves. After the aforementioned preface, in which he discloses his intention of rereading the tradition and the difficulties attached to the task, Boswell divided the book in four different main chapters. In the first one, called Points of Departure (pp. 3-87), he opens with an introduction briefly explaining the position he takes towards dichotomies such as gay/homosexual, natural/unnatural or urban sexuality/rural sexuality. This chapter is followe

d by another one dealing with the definitions and terms chosen for the book and a third one in which he explores the Ancient views on sexuality. The other three main chapters deal respectively with his views on what early Christian writings and mindsets have to tell us about homosexuality (The Christian Tradition, pp. 91-166), with how there was a limping revival of homosexuality in the Early Middle Ages (Shifting Fortunes, pp. 169-266), and with the decline of homosexual behaviour as a result of the hard-line taken by the authorities against it (The Rise of Intolerance, pp. 269-334). Christianity also counts with useful appendixes to some texts that Boswell uses throughout the book.

A word must be said, however, on Boswell’s life before we get into the details. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1947, he was of a perfect age to engage in the discussions that took place at the time regarding freedom of thought, speech, and, of course, sexuality. Being a gay man himself, and a devout Roman Catholic, it becomes apparent that Boswell understood what he was talking about. The moment was also ripe for such a book to be published. The sixties – during which time Boswell had been a student in The College of William & Mary in Virginia[3] – had witnessed the birth of many social movements seeking to liberate minorities from oppression or rejection: the Black Power, anti-Vietnam war, hippie, May 68, and Women’s Liberation movements all inspired the radicalisation of hitherto timid gay activists. Moreover, the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York triggered the Gay Liberation Movement[4], which was active throughout the seventies. More importantly, Christianity was published in the

auspicious pre-AIDS era, just before the pandemic killed thousands of homosexuals in the West during the eighties and the early nineties; among which Boswell himself, who died from the disease in 1994. The book absolutely reflects the enthusiasm of the gay activist movement of the sixties and seventies. It predated the dark period in which gay people were singled out as carriers of a terrible and incurable disease that was a clear sign of God’s wrath for many. Even after AIDS took over, however, Christianity was a comforting work, as it reminded that the last word had yet to be said on religion and homosexuality.

Christianity was warmly welcomed by a big sector of society because it came in a moment of need for recognition and acceptance on the part of the gay community. Furthermore, John Boswell was also a sympathetic character, appearing with a handsome and smiling face and a partially unbuttoned shirt in a picture included in the first edition of the book. This image prompted one of his readers to declare in a private letter to the author: “I see from the... photo that you are also very hot. Most academics aren’t”[5]. Most people felt the same about him, even if not in such a physical way. He was gay, he was open about it, he was a devout Catholic, he dedicated the book to his parents, his students adored him, and he published Christianity at thirty-three, the age at which Jesus is said to have been crucified. This was a fact that most Christian readers of his book, whether homosexual or not, must have noticed. His public persona was, thus, appealing, but the book was nevertheless criticised, even during his lifetime, and certainly not without reason.

There are five main theses in Boswell’s work:

1) Homosexuality, or ‘gay relationships’, were almost unanimously and unequivocally tolerated, and even praised and favoured, in Greece and in Rome, at least until the arrival of Christianity.

2) There is no clear criticism or rejection of homosexuality in the Scriptures but for one reference in Leviticus. He dismisses Saint Paul’s allusions to it as circumstantial and claims that the account of Sodom (Genesis 19) was directed at the inhospitality towards strangers shown by the inhabitants of the city.

3) There is a rise of intolerance starting in the sixth century that endures with ups and downs until the tenth. These changing attitudes towards homosexuality were provoked because of ‘autocratic oppression and increasingly rural ethics’[6] in society. Thus, he puts the blame of the persecution in the shift in mores and the decadence of the cities during the Early Middle Ages, diminishing the role the Church might have had in it.

4) There is a flourishing ‘gay subculture’ accompanied by a powerful and creative ‘gay literature’ until the twelfth century as a response to the rising tide of intolerance and as a result of the revitalisation of the cities.

5) After 1150 there is a new wave of general hostility towards homosexuality, and this time it will persist. Boswell states that the urban/rural dichotomy does not seem to have played a part this time[7]. As the driving forces behind this new shift, he proposes the rise of absolute government, the xenophobia developed with the crusades, and an increasingly conforming society.

The first problem that we encounter is the terminology used by Boswell. He devotes a whole chapter[8] to make a statement on why he makes such a choice. Even then, his reasons remain unconvincing. He explains the difficulty of establishing the exact difference or similitude between the terms ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual’. About the former, he claims that there is no scholarly work on the origins of ‘gay’[9] and he also stresses the inconvenience of the latter because of its recent coinage in the late nineteenth century and its even more recent introduction into the English language at the beginning of the twentieth[10]. Moreover, he states, the word ‘homosexual’ is a Greek-Latin hybrid, whilst the word ‘gay’, he argues – not entirely convincingly – can be traced back to the old Provençal word ‘gai’[11].

Boswell chooses ‘gay’ to describe people who indulge in same-sex relations, even if his arguments are driven from periods of time as separated from our own times as Ancient Greece or fourteenth century Spain. However well-intentioned and for all his enthusiasm, Boswell fails to make his point at a conceptual level. His rather liberal use of terms such as ‘gay subculture’ or ‘gay literature’ throughout his work seem unfit to describe the world and writings of a group of scattered people devoid of a sense of community awareness and whose sexual and love preferences were described by their society as ‘unnatural acts’[12] and included in the category of ‘sodomy’ along with many other ‘unnatural’ practices as diverse as fornication, oral sex, both homosexual and heterosexual anal sex and hiring the services of a prostitute. It was, shortly, another word for non-procreative intercourse, although it would later be exclusively used as a label for people engaging in homosexual relationships, particularly in anal sex[13]. Eric Christiansen, on his review of Christianity, points out that Boswell has chosen ‘gay’ as a ‘neutral and inoffensive’ word and that, as a ‘peacemaker’, his work should not be dismissed on account of just one word[14]. Boswell himself explains his choice of terms:

The word ‘homosexual’ implicitly suggests that the primary distinguishing characteristic of gay people is their sexuality. There does not seem to be any evidence that gay people are any more or less sexual than others, and from the historian’s point of view, tacitly suggesting such a thing is unwarranted. ‘Gay’ allows the reader to draw his own conclusions about the relative importance of love, affection, romance, eroticism, or overt sexuality in the lives of the persons so designated. Sexual interest and expression vary dramatically in the human population, and a person’s sexual interest may be slight without precluding the realization that he or she is attracted to persons of the same gender and hence distinct in some way from the majority.[15]

This being true, it is however regrettable that Boswell should have chosen such an anachronistic and misleading term, turning the reader’s attention away from issues more important to the subject – and central in the Middle Ages – such as the natural or unnatural status of same-sex relationships. He does discuss these concepts in a chapter dedicated to the theological mindset that influenced early Christian rejection of homosexuality[16], but he tends to diminish the relevance of these key issues in favour of his more sensational and rather naive idea of a medieval ‘gay subculture’. The use of the word ‘sexuality’, which he also uses frequently, is more pertinent because, as Ruth Karras has pointed out:

Many scholars would argue that it is anachronistic even to talk about sexuality with regard to medieval Europe, but this is not the case. It may not be a concept that medieval people had (...) but nor is there any word that translates precisely to ‘political culture’ or ‘affective piety’ or ‘patriarchal family’ or a host of other terms we have no problem using to describe the Middle Ages.[17]

An illustrating example on this matter is that of Baudri of Bourgueil’s poetry, whom Boswell claims to be the epitomiser of ‘the transition from the ascetic passions of the monastic love tradition (...) to the baldly erotic poetry more characteristic of the eleventh and twelfth centuries’[18]. Even though Boswell states that ‘in many of these verses the passion implied is clearly not related to physical attraction’[19], he keeps referring to them as an example of the Medieval ‘gay subculture’ that he claims to have recognised. The examples set forth by Boswell are not even erotic by any standards besides, perhaps, Baudri’s reconstruction of correspondence between Florus and Ovid:

It is not you who teach the age but the age which instructs you:

. . . . . . . . .

Venus knew how to love without your verses.

God made our natures full of love;

Nature teaches us what God taught her.

. . . . . . . . .

What we are is a crime, if it is a crime to love,

For the God who made me live made me love.[20]

Although in this case reference is being made to the love between two men, it would be safer to assume that these poems express an intimate friendship, rather than a sexual love or desire. There is even a whiff of wishful reading, as the reader feels that there has been an irresponsible extrapolation: Medieval terms and ideas being read with a modern eye. It is true, however, that some of the poems by Baudri (‘Other self, or myself, if two spirits may be one / And if two bodies may actually become one’[21]) and others do hint on a sexual attraction or relationship, and failing to recognise these poems as, at least, ambiguous, would have been prudish and irresponsible on Boswell’s part.

Coming back to his naivety – or wishful reading – we have to refer to the way in which John Boswell examines his voluminous evidence. We can briefly summarise his methods with an explanatory example: that of his reading of Saint Paul’s message and his interpretation of the saint’s terminology[22].

According to Boswell, the Epistle to the Romans has been misinterpreted regarding several points. Firstly, he believes that Paul’s censorship is aimed at the sexual behaviour of the Romans because he associates it to orgiastic pagan rites that honour false gods[23]. Thus, Paul is not censoring homosexuality in itself, but rather as part of a pagan practice. In Boswell’s eyes, homosexuality is not ‘the crux of the argument’, but ‘simply a mundane analogy to this theological sin [temple prostitution and pagan rites]’[24]. He further states that what Paul is discussing is not ‘gay “persons” but only homosexual “acts” committed by heterosexual persons’[25], using as a piece of evidence that there was no notion of ‘nature’ as an universal moral order in Paul’s time. Although this point appears to be true[26], Richard B. Hays considers that Boswell’s argument that ‘the activities in question were beyond nature in the sense of “extraordinary, peculiar” ’, cannot be supported exegetically[27]. Hays also draws our attention to Boswell’s conclusion that ‘Paul says nothing here about persons who are “naturally” of homosexual orientation’[28]. Hays acknowledges that this is a true statement, but points out that Boswell fails to recognise the key purpose of Romans 1, which is ‘neither a general discussion of sexual ethics nor an explicitly prescriptive admonition about the sexual behavior appropriate for Christians’, but a proclamation of the ‘wrath of God’, which reveals itself when the gospel of his righteousness goes unheeded[29].

Boswell’s methodology in the reading of Paul is, albeit thorough, wrongly directed. This can also be clearly perceived in his interpretation of 1 Timothy 1:10[30]. The King James Version Bible renders it as: ‘For whoremongers, for them that defile themselves with mankind [my italics], for menstealers, for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine’[31]. The problem in the passage lies in the translation of the Greek word ἀρσενοκοίταις, rendered in the KJV as shown above and otherwise translated as variously as ‘sodomites’ (Revised Standard Version and Carey Bible), ‘those who are immoral with boys or with men[32]’ (Jerusalem Bible), or ‘sexual perverts’ (New American Bible)[33]. The word is also interpreted as having homosexual connotations in other versions and in another passage of the Bible (1 Corinthians 6:9)[34]. Earlier on in the book, Boswell contradicts himself when he tells us:

The best evidence, however, suggests very strongly that it [the word ἀρσενοκοίταις] did not connote homosexuality to Paul or his contemporaries but meant ‘male prostitute’ until well into the fourth century, after which it became confused with a variety of words for disapproved sexual activity and was often equated with homosexuality.[35]

Since, statistically at least, men have traditionally been greater consumers of prostitutes – whether homosexual or heterosexual – than women, there is no reason to believe that if the word ἀρσενοκοίταις really meant to Paul and his contemporaries ‘male prostitute’ it would not imply, at the same time, a reference to homosexuality. Thereby, if Paul was criticising male prostitution as something despicable, he would also be, at least by association, criticising homosexuality in itself, an argument that Boswell fails to recognise. His well-intentioned approach and his mounting excitement while he makes his exegesis of Paul is patent, but one cannot help but feel that he is – unintentionally – quote mining the saint’s writings.

Another example of Boswells ‘naivety’ can be found in the story of Hroswitha, a German nun who lived in the tenth century and wrote a poem about Pelagius, a young Christian from Galicia who was martyred by the caliph of Cordoba because of his refusal to submit to the ruler’s advances. After relating the facts of Hroswitha’s account, Boswell goes on to say that, although she refers to the Muslim caliph as ‘corrupted by the vice of the sodomites’, she ‘does not suggest that homosexual acts are either praiseworthy or especially despicable’[36]. This way of interpreting the evidence has to be the result, again, either of naivety or wishful reading on the part of the author. Hroswitha may not be suggesting anything per se, but she is certainly implying that homosexuality is indeed despicable by associating it to the caliph’s corrupted, vicious ways.

Notwithstanding some of its flaws, Christianity is praiseworthy on many accounts. First of all, the author’s erudition is palpable throughout the book. This is not only evidenced by the hundreds of texts he presents and discusses, but also by how obviously comfortable he is while doing so. This proves a rare familiarity with the subject and a laudable level of expertise in the studying and unearthing of useful medieval documents that support his case.

Another matter of admiration is the freshness of Bothwell’s views. So much more after homosexuality had been ostracised in society for centuries and there were many preconceived views on the matter even as Boswell was writing and among his fellow historians and coreligionists[37]. His enthusiasm is bewildering and contagious, and even some issues discussed in his book that would strike us as odd and difficult to believe – as many are – seriously tempt us to agree with the author against our own better judgement. For example, the way in which he discharges the Early Medieval Church from most of the blame put on her for homosexual rejection and persecution is particularly enthralling and, although inaccurate, a positive point of departure for future revisitations of the subject.

Boswell also made an interesting overture to the history of lesbianism. Although the evidence used in the study of ‘gay women’ throughout Christianity is scarce and some of it even mistaken or inconsistent[38], Vanderbosch’s ironic remark that ‘the author considerately has provided them [homosexual women] with one prefatory remark, a number of assumptions, and two footnotes’[39]; is unfair. As she admits, Boswell himself apologises for the lack of evidence found on women[40], so the book should not to be found ‘offensive’[41] by either homosexual women or women in general. Despite this fact, it is true that while reading Christianity, one becomes aware that lesbian women might have been widely left out of the picture. Under this light, Vanderbosch’s[42] and Matter’s[43] accusations of veiled ‘misogyny’ are more understandable. It seems apparent that Boswell has struggled to include the female point of view – the poem in the Codex Parisiensis[44] and the love letter published by Dronke[45] being particularly interesting – in his history of Christianity and homosexuality, but the truth is that men figure prominently in his book. Perhaps a bit more research on the subject – and the moment was certainly ripe for it – would have been welcomed.

His interpretation of the rise of intolerance towards homosexuality as a consequence of the ruralisation of society is very interesting. To accept it as truthful would mean to assume that his thesis that urban versus rural =liberal versus conservative is correct. This is one of Boswell’s main theses and it is sadly tainted with conceptual inaccuracy and, in some cases, inconsistencies on the author’s part. However, it is certainly a coherent point of departure of a subject which is still very much open to debate and, even if flawed, has nevertheless been used as explanatory material elsewhere[46].

Furthermore, the book has been a major reference work for later historians on the topic, and it has been quoted in lots of monographs and other studies[47] as well as in countless articles and forums across the Internet[48]. His work was a breeze of fresh air, and its incursion into the exploration of realities hitherto as antagonistic as ‘Christianity’, ‘social tolerance’, and ‘homosexuality’ attracted thousands of readers, the media, and academic institutions, even prompting the idea – later dropped – of turning the book into a television mini-series[49]. In 1981 the book won a major prize and it was eventually translated into French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese[50]. Even if he recognised that it was ‘flawed by serious shortcomings’, James Brundage admired its erudition and its purpose[51] This is John Boswell’s most valuable legacy: the undertaking of a revisionist approach in subjects as controversial and problematic as homosexuality and Christianity in the Middle Ages are. He did so with a conciliatory mind – even if at the same time polemic –and an enthusiastic spirit and, even if only for these reasons, historians interested in sexualities should be grateful for his achievement. Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality is a stimulating and refreshing account of great erudition and even greater expectations that, with all its faults, and to conclude with Brundage, “should provoke discussion and further re-examination”[52]; even more than it has already done.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

Boswell, John, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, (London, 1981).

Carroll, Robert, and Prickett, Stephen (eds), The Bible: Authorized King James Version With Apocrypha, (Great Britain, 1997).

Secondary Works

Brundage, James A., Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, (London, 1987).

Brundage, James A., Review: ‘Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century’, The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 1, (1982).

Cage, Ken, Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens: A History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa, (Houghton, South Africa; 2003).

Christiansen, E., Review: ‘Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality’, The English Historical Journal, vol. 96, no. 381, (1981).

Crompton, Louis, Homosexuality and Civilization, (United States of America, 2003).

Cruikshank, Margaret, The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement, (London, 1992).

Dinshaw, Carolyn, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern, (Durham and London, 1999).

Gay Christian Movement Watch, ‘John Boswell: a wasted gift of intellect’, [http://gcmwatch.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/john-boswell-a-wasted-gift-of-intellect/, July 2007], accessed Jan 2011.

Halsall, Paul, ‘People With a History, An Online Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans History: John Boswell Page’, [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/index-bos.html, 1997], accessed Jan 2011.

Hays, Richard B., ‘Natural and Unnatural: A Response to John Boswell’s Exegesis of Romans 1’, The Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 14, no. 1, (1986).

Karras, Ruth Mazo, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others, (Abingdon, 2005).

Matter, E. Ann, Review: ‘Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 13, no. 1, (1982).

Vanderbosch, Jane, ‘Comment on John Boswell’s “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality” ’, Signs, vol. 7, no. 3, Feminist Theory (1982).

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[1] Nowadays, the gay movement has many different ramifications and for the same reason it is now referred to as the LGBT social movements.

[2] John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, (London, 1981), p. XV.

[3] There he received his undergraduate degree. He would later move on to Harvard University, where he received his doctorate in 1975, joining thereafter the Yale University history faculty.

[4] Margaret Cruikshank, The Gay and Lesbian Liberation Movement, (London, 1992), pp. 69-70.

[5] Carolyn Dinshaw, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern, (Durham and London, 1999), p. 28.

[6] Boswell, Christianity, p. 124.

[7] Boswell, Christianity, p.270.

[8] Boswell, Christianity, ‘Definitions’, pp. 41-59.

[9] Boswell, Christianity, p. 43. It must be remembered that he was writing in 1980. Since then there has been further discussion on the origins of the words ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual’. Some of them trace back the origins of the former to the twelfth century German word ‘gahi’, which meant ‘hurried’ or ‘imperious’. See Ken Cage, Gayle: The Language of Kinks and Queens: A History and Dictionary of Gay Language in South Africa, (Houghton, South Africa; 2003), pp. 3-6.

[10] Boswell, Christianity, p. 42.

[11] According to Boswell, it was used to refer to the ‘art of poetry’, to a ‘lover’, or to an ‘openly homosexual person’ and it dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Ibid, p. 43n6.

[12] Western Christian societies used the differentiation between natural and unnatural with ambiguity and inconsistency. They use animal example, that is, of what occurs in ‘nature’, as an example both of what is desirable and what is undesirable in human sexual relationships; see James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe, (London, 1987), p. 7.

[13] Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others, (Abingdon, 2005), p. 134.

[14] Eric Christiansen, Review: ‘Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality’, The English Historical Review, vol. 96, no. 381, (1981), 852.

[15] Boswell, Christianity, p. 45.

[16]Boswell, Christianity, ‘Theological traditions’, pp. 137-166.

[17] Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, p. 5. See Karras’s interesting discussion about ‘The study of sexuality’ in the same place, pp. 5-9.

[18] Boswell, Christianity, p. 244.

[19] ibid.

[20]Boswell, Christianity, p. 247-247n16.

[21] Boswell, Christianity, p. 244-244n4.

[22] Boswell, Christianity, pp. 106-117, 335-353.

[23] Boswell, Christianity, p. 111.

[24] Boswell, Christianity, pp. 108-109.

[25] Boswell, Christianity, p. 109.

[26] Richard B. Hays, ‘Natural and Unnatural: A Response to John Boswell’s Exegesis of Romans 1’, The Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 14, no. 1, (1986), 187.

[27] Hays, ‘Natural and Unnatural’, 186-195.

[28] Hays, ‘Natural and Unnatural’, 186.

[29] Hays, ‘Natural and Unnatural’, 186-189.

[30] The author of this review admits to his lack of knowledge of the ancient Greek language, which will consequently influence the rendering of his own interpretation.

[31] Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett (eds), The Bible: Authorized King James Version With Apocrypha, (Great Britain, 1997).

[32] I would like to remark that, in relation with sex between men and boys, it is John Boswell’s view that, the only consistent universal criticism towards homosexuality from Antiquity until the fourteenth century was directed towards the passive role and men who forced boys into having sex.

[33] Boswell, Christianity, p. 338.

[34] Boswell, Christianity, pp. 106-7, 338.

[35] Boswell, Christianity, p. 107.

[36] Boswell, Christianity, p. 198-199.

[37] Prejudices that sadly, although greatly surpassed, still exist nowadays

[38] His views on the story of Saints Perpetua and Felicitas might be incorrect, as it has been pointed out that the former was a Roman matron and the latter gave birth while in prison, making it plausible that the kiss exchanged when martyred was a liturgical act. See E. Ann Matter, Review: ‘Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 13, no. 1 (1982), 116.

[39] Jane Vanderbosch, ‘Comment on John Boswell’s “Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality” ‘, Signs, vol. 7, no. 3, Feminist Theory (1982), 722.

[40] Boswell, Christianity, p. XVII.

[41] Vanderbosch, ‘Comment’, 723.

[42] Vanderbosch, ibid., 724.

[43] Matter, ‘Review’, 116.

[44] Boswell, Christianity, p. 185-185n58.

[45] Boswell, Christianity, p. 220-21.

[46] Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, (United Stated of America, 2003), p. 130.

[47] See the bibliography for the works already mentioned by Dinshaw, Hays, and Brundage. To learn about the controversy created by Boswell’s last book, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (1994), see Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, p. 147.

[48] For a thorough catalogue with information relating to Boswell, see Paul Halsall, ‘People With a History, An Online Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans History: John Boswell Page’, [http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/pwh/index-bos.html, 1997], accessed Jan 2011. For a different and interesting but terrifyingly intolerant view of Boswell’s contribution, see Gay Christian Movement Watch, ‘John Boswell: a wasted gift of intellect’, [http://gcmwatch.wordpress.com/2007/07/24/john-boswell-a-wasted-gift-of-intellect/, July 2007], accessed Jan 2011.

[49] Dinshaw, Getting Medieval, p. 25-6.

[50] Dinshaw, Getting Medieval, p. 24.

[51] James A. Brundage, Review: ‘Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century’, The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 68, no. 1, (1982), 62-64.

[52]Brundage, Review, 64.