Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
by Boswell, John
- Used
- Fine
- Paperback
- Condition
- Fine/No Jacket
- ISBN 10
- 0226067114
- ISBN 13
- 9780226067117
- Seller
-
Medford, Oregon, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality is a study by Medieval Studies Professor John Boswell. It examines the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the early Christian West, and makes the case that homosexual behavior was relatively accepted until quite recently. Stonewall Book Award (1981) , National Book Critics' Circle Award Nominee (1980)
Reviews
In 1980, the AIDS virus was being diagnosed and a holocaust in small was getting under way; gay visibility was increasing and with it homophobia was getting a fresh lease on life. Into the left field of this situation John Boswell, a little-known Yale scholar of European history, dropped, if not a bomb, than certainly something of a hand grenade: his study CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE AND HOMOSEXUALITY: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. It was a work of obvious erudition, drawing on a dozen languages and literatures; it was published with full scholarly dressing by a university press (Yale); it cited and discussed such household names as Aelred of Rievaulx, Valerius Maximus, Baudri of Bourgeuil and Abu’l-Qasim az-Zahrawi; its bibliography barely escaped being “uselessly massive”; and it announced its specific payload right in the title. In it, Boswell took the popular perceptions of Christianity’s attitude towards homosexuality (in a word: BAD) and opened up long historic avenues of complexity: the inheritance of classical stances on the subject; the difficulties and ambiguities of moving from the classical languages to expressing Biblical assumptions and attitudes (an entire appendix is devoted to “Lexicography and Saint Paul”); the effects of the rise and ebb of urbanization; the handing-on and snowballing of various chance and influenced translations. The final result was the upending of a lot of the old simplicities: word-meanings shifted, pockets of acceptance surfaced, old certainties were shown to be resting on swampy ground. Boswell’s grasp of the historical context and the languages was such that probably only other scholars would be able to dispute his arguments, but the book left the scholarly sales circles and got tackled by a lot of non-specialist readers, and its tone of calm helped to make the old hysterias and hostilities look vulgar and unsustainable. “What will strike some readers as a partisan point of view is chiefly the absence of the negative attitudes on the subjects ubiquitous in the Modern West; after a long loud noise, a sudden silence may seem deafening.” The real silences, of course, were in the old majority-rule histories, what Matthew Arnold called “the huge Mississippi of falsehood,” in which gay people figured stereotypically or not at all, as with all minorities—just those silences that the postwar revisionist histories have begun to break open. Boswell, by his own claim, was doing just a first scratching of the surface of the topic; but after thirty years no book has bettered his discussion. With insight, intelligence and, every so often, a nose- tweaking sense of impudence, he has brought these people out of their forgotten and unhonored graves and given them voice. A phrase from the AIDS years: “Silence is death.”
(Log in or Create an Account first!)
Details
- Bookseller
- Village Books and Music (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 1309007
- Title
- Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
- Author
- Boswell, John
- Format/Binding
- Soft cover
- Book Condition
- Used - Fine
- Jacket Condition
- No Jacket
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0226067114
- ISBN 13
- 9780226067117
- Publisher
- Univ of Chicago Pr
- Place of Publication
- Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
- Date Published
- 1981
- LCCN
- 79-11171
- Bookseller catalogs
- Religion/Metaphysics/Spirituality; History;
Terms of Sale
Village Books and Music
Full payment required before shipping a book/item. Checks must clear before shipping item. For Credit Card orders, we require billing address for card used if different than shipping address. Purchases may be returned for a refund (minus S&H fees) within 10 days of customer's receipt of ordered item, only if item received was not as described in our online listing. Books subject to previous sales. Seller not responsible for books/items lost in transit unless insurance has been purchased by buyer. International purchases not eligible for insurance. International shipments at buyers risk. Shipping charges may be adjusted up or down depending on actual shipping costs.
About the Seller
Village Books and Music
About Village Books and Music
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Copyright page
- The page in a book that describes the lineage of that book, typically including the book's author, publisher, date of...
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...
- Shelf Wear
- Shelf wear (shelfwear) describes damage caused over time to a book by placing and removing a book from a shelf. This damage is...
- Edges
- The collective of the top, fore and bottom edges of the text block of the book, being that part of the edges of the pages of a...
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...