Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell

In contrast, at the same time, abbots, bishops and saints were writing love poetry to their same sex ‘friends’ which would later go on to form the seed of the medieval courtly love tradition.īoswell acknowledges that there is no way of knowing whether sex featured in these passionate friendships, but he points out that the society of the time made no distinction between passionate friendships which did include sex, and those which did not. They are against sexual pleasure in any form. But Boswell picks these influences apart and shows that though Christianity took on board a Stoic distain for earthly pleasures, a Manichean distrust of the flesh and various other philosophies which valued chastity over sexuality, none of these sources are particularly homophobic.

At this early date, in the process of formation, Christianity is being influenced by many different, conflicting, strands of thought, and – of course – is reflecting a society in Rome quite unlike our own. That complication persists and increases when Christianity enters the picture. As is often the case when human beings are involved, everything is much more complicated than it initially seemed.Įven in the society where we think we have the gay relationship pinned down to a socially acceptable model – the ‘classic’ Greek relationship of older lover with younger beloved – Boswell unearths numerous exceptions which disprove the rule. And it turns out that the picture is nothing like what we expected. For the first time in the debate over homosexuality, John Boswell has gone back to the sources and combed through an immense amount of writings by Latin, Greek and Early Medieval authors to find out what they really had to say. This is rightly called ‘a truly ground-breaking work’. Intellectual Change: Men, Beasts, and “Nature”

The Triumph of Ganymede: Gay Literature of the High Middle Agesġ1. Whitney Griswold Professor of History at Yale University and the author of The Royal Treasure, The Kindness of Strangers, and Same-Sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe.ĩ. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: (Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century), by John Boswell.Īuthor bio: John Boswell (1947-94) was the A.

Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality by John Boswell