John Boswell’s National Book Award–winning study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the early Christian West was a groundbreaking work that challenged preconceptions about the Church’s past relationship to its gay members—among them priests, bishops, and even saints—when it was first published thirty-five years ago. The historical breadth of Boswell’s research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history.

Now in this thirty-fifth anniversary edition with a new foreword by leading queer and religious studies scholar Mark D. Jordan, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality is still fiercely relevant. This landmark book helped form the disciplines of gay and gender studies, and it continues to illuminate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.

CONTENTS:

Illustrations
Abbreviations
Foreword to Thirty-Fifth Anniversary Edition
Preface

Part I: Points of Departure
1. Introduction
2. Definitions
3. Rome: The Foundation

Part II: The Christian Tradition
4. The Scriptures
5. Christians and Social Change
6. Theological Traditions

Part III: Shifting Fortunes
7. The Early Middle Ages
8. The Urban Revival
9. The Triumph of Ganymede: Gay Literature of the High Middle Ages

Part IV: The Rise of Intolerance
10. Social Change: Making Enemies
11. Intellectual Change: Men, Beasts, and “Nature”
12. Conclusions

Appendix 1. Lexicography and Saint Paul
Appendix 2. Texts and Translations
Frequently Cited Works
Index of Greek Terms
General Index

AUTHOR:

John Boswell (1947-94) 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.