John
Boswell's revolutionary 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, and even bishops and 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. Christianity, Social
Tolerance, and Homosexuality, the product of ten years
of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages,
opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate
the origins and operations of intolerance as a social
force.
