.gif)
John Boswell (historian)
Encyclopedia
John Eastburn Boswell was a prominent historian and a professor at Yale University
. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of homosexuality and religion
, specifically homosexuality and Christianity
.
in 1947 into a military family, Boswell earned his undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary
, where he converted to Roman Catholicism. A gifted medieval philologist
, he worked in, among other languages, Catalan
, Old Church Slavonic
, Ancient Greek
, Arabic
, and Latin
. Boswell received his doctorate from Harvard University
in 1975 and joined the Yale University
history faculty, where his colleagues included John Morton Blum
, David Brion Davis
, John Demos, Peter Gay
, Hanna Holborn Gray
, Michael Howard
, Donald Kagan
, Howard R. Lamar
, Edmund S. Morgan, Jonathan Spence
, Robin W. Winks, and C. Vann Woodward
. Boswell was made full professor in 1982. In 1987, Boswell helped organize and found the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale, which is now the Research Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies. He was named the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History in 1990, when he was also appointed to a two-year term as chair of the Yale history department. Boswell was a gifted and devoted teacher. His undergraduate lectures in medieval history were renowned for their organization, erudition, and wit, with the course often making the "top 10" for highest enrollment. To enhance the novelty and high interest in his classes, the multi-talented Boswell would often pen his comments on student papers in perfectly executed italic script
.
Muslims in Aragon
in the 14th century.
Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) is a ground-breaking and controversial work which, according to Chauncey et al. (1989), "offered a revolutionary interpretation of the Western tradition, arguing that the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned gay people throughout its history, but rather, at least until the twelfth century, had alternately evinced no special concern about homosexuality or actually celebrated love between men." Scholarly reactions varied. More importantly, the book brought forward a fresh emphasis on the crime of rape being the actual sin of Sodom, rather than the homosexual acts themselves. This idea calls into question any connection between gay people today and the Biblical Sodomites. The book was crowned with the American Book Award
for History and the Stonewall Book Award
in 1981, but Boswell's leading thesis was criticized by Warren Johansson, Wayne R. Dynes and John Lauritsen
, who believed that he had attempted to whitewash the historic crimes of the Christian Church against gay men.
The Kindness of Strangers: Child Abandonment in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (1988) is a scholarly study of the widespread practice of abandoning unwanted children and the means by which society tries to care for them. The title, as Boswell states in the Introduction, is inspired by a puzzling phrase Boswell had found in a number of documents: aliena misericordia, which might at first seem to mean "a strange kindness", is better translated "the kindness of strangers."
The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (New York: Villard, 1994) argues that the adelphopoiia liturgy was evidence that the attitude of the Christian church towards homosexuality
has changed over time, and that early Christians
did on occasion accept same-sex relationships.
Rites of so-called "same-sex union" (Boswell's proposed translation) occur in ancient prayer-books of both the western and eastern churches. They are rites of adelphopoiesis
, literally Greek
for the making of brothers. Boswell, despite the fact that the rites explicitly state that the union involved in adelphopoiesis is a "spiritual" and not a "carnal" one, argued that these should be regarded as sexual unions similar to marriage. This is a highly controversial point of Boswell's text, as other scholars have dissenting views of this interpretation, and believe that they were instead rites of becoming adopted brothers, or "blood brothers". Boswell pointed out such evidence as an icon
of two saint
s, Saints Sergius and Bacchus
(at St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai
), and drawings, such as one he interprets as depicting the wedding feast of Emperor Basil I
to his "partner", John. Boswell sees Jesus
as fulfilling the role of the "pronubus" or in modern parallel, best man.
Boswell made many detailed translations of these rites in Same-Sex Unions, and claimed that one mass gay wedding
occurred only a couple of centuries ago in the Basilica of St John Lateran, the cathedral seat of the Pope
as Bishop of Rome.
Boswell's writings touched off detailed debate in The Irish Times
, and the article that triggered off the debate, a major feature in the "Rite and Reason" religion column in the paper by respected Irish historian and religious commentator Jim Duffy, has been reproduced on many websites.
Although some of Boswell's books became best-sellers, he made few concessions to the popular market. His books have many footnotes, most of which are more than references to other works but actually add information and insight to the main text. He quotes several ancient and modern languages (notably Greek
) in their own alphabets, although he does transliterate Arabic
with diacritical marks.
with his faith.
In "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories" (1982, revised), Boswell compares the constructionist–essentialist
positions to the realist
–nominalist dichotomy. He also lists three types of sexual taxonomies
:
's writings led to the emergence of a social constructivist view of human sexuality which emphasised the historical and cultural specificity of sexual identities such as 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual'. Despite Boswell's friendly relations with Foucault, he remained adamantly opposed to the French theorist's views, which he characterised as a reemergence of medieval nominalism
, and defended his own strident essentialism
in the face of changing academic fashions. Since his death, Boswell's work has come under criticism from medievalists and queer theorists
, who—while acknowledging his personal courage in bringing the issue of sexuality into the academy—have pointed out the anachronism of speaking of 'gay people' in premodern societies and have questioned the validity of Boswell's conclusions. Several other scholars, including Terry Castle and Ruth Vanita, have followed in Boswell's footsteps, building up the field of lesbian and gay studies (as distinct from queer theory
), and demonstrating that categorizations of humans by sexual predilection much predate the nineteenth century (where Foucault and his followers wrongly place it), both in the West (as in Plato's Symposium) and in other cultures (e.g., India).
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of homosexuality and religion
Homosexuality and religion
The relationship between religion and homosexuality can vary greatly across time and place, within and between different religions and sects, and regarding different forms of homosexuality and bisexuality...
, specifically homosexuality and Christianity
Homosexuality and Christianity
Christian denominations hold a variety of views on the issues of sexual orientation and homosexuality, ranging from outright condemnation to complete acceptance. In accordance with the traditional values of Abrahamic religions, most Christian denominations welcome people attracted to the same sex,...
.
Biography
Born in BostonBoston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
in 1947 into a military family, Boswell earned his undergraduate degree from the College of William and Mary
College of William and Mary
The College of William & Mary in Virginia is a public research university located in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States...
, where he converted to Roman Catholicism. A gifted medieval philologist
Philology
Philology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
, he worked in, among other languages, Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic
Old Church Slavonic or Old Church Slavic was the first literary Slavic language, first developed by the 9th century Byzantine Greek missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius who were credited with standardizing the language and using it for translating the Bible and other Ancient Greek...
, Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
, Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, and Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. Boswell received his doctorate from Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1975 and joined the Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
history faculty, where his colleagues included John Morton Blum
John Morton Blum
John Morton Blum was an American political historian, active from the 1950 to 1991. He lived in New Haven, Connecticut and died at the age of 90.-Life:...
, David Brion Davis
David Brion Davis
David Brion Davis is an American historian and authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He is the Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and founder and Director Emeritus of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He is a...
, John Demos, Peter Gay
Peter Gay
Peter Gay is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and former director of the New York Public Library's Center for Scholars and Writers . Gay received the American Historical Association's Award for Scholarly Distinction in 2004...
, Hanna Holborn Gray
Hanna Holborn Gray
Hanna Holborn Gray , is a historian of political thought in the area of the Renaissance and Reformation, and an emerita professor and former President of the University of Chicago.-Biography:...
, Michael Howard
Michael Howard (historian)
Sir Michael Eliot Howard, OM, CH, CBE, MC, FBA is a British military historian, formerly Chichele Professor of the History of War and Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, and Robert A...
, Donald Kagan
Donald Kagan
Donald Kagan is an American historian at Yale University specializing in ancient Greece, notable for his four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War. 1987-1988 Acting Director of Athletics, Yale University. He was Dean of Yale College from 1989–1992. He formerly taught in the Department of...
, Howard R. Lamar
Howard R. Lamar
Howard Roberts Lamar is a historian of the American West, and a former president of Yale University.-Biography:He was born in 1923 in Tuskegee, Alabama, U.S., and was drawn into history in part by his rich family history which includes two United States Supreme Court justices and the second...
, Edmund S. Morgan, Jonathan Spence
Jonathan Spence
Jonathan D. Spence is a British-born historian and public intellectual specializing in Chinese history. He was Sterling Professor of History at Yale University from 1993 to 2008. His most famous book is The Search for Modern China, which has become one of the standard texts on the last several...
, Robin W. Winks, and C. Vann Woodward
C. Vann Woodward
Comer Vann Woodward was a preeminent American historian focusing primarily on the American South and race relations. He was considered, along with Richard Hofstadter and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., to be one of the most influential historians of the postwar era, 1940s-1970s, both by scholars and by...
. Boswell was made full professor in 1982. In 1987, Boswell helped organize and found the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale, which is now the Research Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies. He was named the A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History in 1990, when he was also appointed to a two-year term as chair of the Yale history department. Boswell was a gifted and devoted teacher. His undergraduate lectures in medieval history were renowned for their organization, erudition, and wit, with the course often making the "top 10" for highest enrollment. To enhance the novelty and high interest in his classes, the multi-talented Boswell would often pen his comments on student papers in perfectly executed italic script
Italic script
Italic script, also known as chancery cursive, is a semi-cursive, slightly sloped style of handwriting and calligraphy that was developed during the Renaissance in Italy...
.
Books
The Royal Treasure (1977) is a detailed historical study of the MudéjarMudéjar
Mudéjar is the name given to individual Moors or Muslims of Al-Andalus who remained in Iberia after the Christian Reconquista but were not converted to Christianity...
Muslims in Aragon
Aragon
Aragon is a modern autonomous community in Spain, coextensive with the medieval Kingdom of Aragon. Located in northeastern Spain, the Aragonese autonomous community comprises three provinces : Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel. Its capital is Zaragoza...
in the 14th century.
Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (1980) is a ground-breaking and controversial work which, according to Chauncey et al. (1989), "offered a revolutionary interpretation of the Western tradition, arguing that the Roman Catholic Church had not condemned gay people throughout its history, but rather, at least until the twelfth century, had alternately evinced no special concern about homosexuality or actually celebrated love between men." Scholarly reactions varied. More importantly, the book brought forward a fresh emphasis on the crime of rape being the actual sin of Sodom, rather than the homosexual acts themselves. This idea calls into question any connection between gay people today and the Biblical Sodomites. The book was crowned with the American Book Award
American Book Award
The American Book Award was established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation. It seeks to recognize outstanding literary achievement by contemporary American authors, without restriction to race, sex, ethnic background, or genre...
for History and the Stonewall Book Award
Stonewall Book Award
Sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association , the Stonewall Book Award is for LGBT books...
in 1981, but Boswell's leading thesis was criticized by Warren Johansson, Wayne R. Dynes and John Lauritsen
John Lauritsen
Not to be confused with the television news reporter in Minnesota of the same name.John Lauritsen is a retired market research analyst. He is an author and activist. Lauritsen wrote for the New York Native and was an early skeptic of the theory that HIV causes AIDS. He covered the debate over the...
, who believed that he had attempted to whitewash the historic crimes of the Christian Church against gay men.
The Kindness of Strangers: Child Abandonment in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (1988) is a scholarly study of the widespread practice of abandoning unwanted children and the means by which society tries to care for them. The title, as Boswell states in the Introduction, is inspired by a puzzling phrase Boswell had found in a number of documents: aliena misericordia, which might at first seem to mean "a strange kindness", is better translated "the kindness of strangers."
The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (New York: Villard, 1994) argues that the adelphopoiia liturgy was evidence that the attitude of the Christian church towards homosexuality
Homosexuality and Christianity
Christian denominations hold a variety of views on the issues of sexual orientation and homosexuality, ranging from outright condemnation to complete acceptance. In accordance with the traditional values of Abrahamic religions, most Christian denominations welcome people attracted to the same sex,...
has changed over time, and that early Christians
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
did on occasion accept same-sex relationships.
Rites of so-called "same-sex union" (Boswell's proposed translation) occur in ancient prayer-books of both the western and eastern churches. They are rites of adelphopoiesis
Adelphopoiesis
Adelphopoiesis, or adelphopoiia from the Greek , derived from "brother" and "I make", literally "brother-making" is a ceremony practiced at one time by various Christian churches to unite together two people of the same sex...
, literally Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
for the making of brothers. Boswell, despite the fact that the rites explicitly state that the union involved in adelphopoiesis is a "spiritual" and not a "carnal" one, argued that these should be regarded as sexual unions similar to marriage. This is a highly controversial point of Boswell's text, as other scholars have dissenting views of this interpretation, and believe that they were instead rites of becoming adopted brothers, or "blood brothers". Boswell pointed out such evidence as an icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...
of two saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
s, Saints Sergius and Bacchus
Saints Sergius and Bacchus
Saints Sergius and Bacchus , were third century Roman soldiers who are commemorated as martyrs by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches...
(at St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai
Mount Sinai , also known as Mount Horeb, Mount Musa, Gabal Musa , Jabal Musa meaning "Moses' Mountain", is a mountain near Saint Catherine in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. A mountain called Mount Sinai is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah and the Bible as well as the Quran...
), and drawings, such as one he interprets as depicting the wedding feast of Emperor Basil I
Basil I
Basil I, called the Macedonian was a Byzantine emperor of probable Armenian descent who reigned from 867 to 886. Born a simple peasant in the Byzantine theme of Macedonia, he rose in the imperial court, and usurped the imperial throne from Emperor Michael III...
to his "partner", John. Boswell sees Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
as fulfilling the role of the "pronubus" or in modern parallel, best man.
Boswell made many detailed translations of these rites in Same-Sex Unions, and claimed that one mass gay wedding
Same-sex marriage
Same-sex marriage is marriage between two persons of the same biological sex or social gender. Supporters of legal recognition for same-sex marriage typically refer to such recognition as marriage equality....
occurred only a couple of centuries ago in the Basilica of St John Lateran, the cathedral seat of the Pope
Pope
The Pope is the Bishop of Rome, a position that makes him the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church . In the Catholic Church, the Pope is regarded as the successor of Saint Peter, the Apostle...
as Bishop of Rome.
Boswell's writings touched off detailed debate in The Irish Times
The Irish Times
The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...
, and the article that triggered off the debate, a major feature in the "Rite and Reason" religion column in the paper by respected Irish historian and religious commentator Jim Duffy, has been reproduced on many websites.
Although some of Boswell's books became best-sellers, he made few concessions to the popular market. His books have many footnotes, most of which are more than references to other works but actually add information and insight to the main text. He quotes several ancient and modern languages (notably Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
) in their own alphabets, although he does transliterate Arabic
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
with diacritical marks.
Faith and sexuality
Boswell was a Roman Catholic, having converted from the Episcopal Church of his upbringing at age 16. He remained a daily mass Catholic up until his death, despite his differences with the church over sexual issues. Although he was orthodox in most of his beliefs, he strongly disagreed with his church's stated opposition to homosexual behavior and relationships. To a certain degree much of the work and research Boswell did regarding the Christian church's historical relationship with homosexuality can be seen as an attempt to reconcile his sexual orientationSexual orientation
Sexual orientation describes a pattern of emotional, romantic, or sexual attractions to the opposite sex, the same sex, both, or neither, and the genders that accompany them. By the convention of organized researchers, these attractions are subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality,...
with his faith.
In "Revolutions, Universals, and Sexual Categories" (1982, revised), Boswell compares the constructionist–essentialist
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
positions to the realist
Philosophical realism
Contemporary philosophical realism is the belief that our reality, or some aspect of it, is ontologically independent of our conceptual schemes, linguistic practices, beliefs, etc....
–nominalist dichotomy. He also lists three types of sexual taxonomies
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is the science of identifying and naming species, and arranging them into a classification. The field of taxonomy, sometimes referred to as "biological taxonomy", revolves around the description and use of taxonomic units, known as taxa...
:
- All or most humans are polymorphously sexual ... external accidents, such as socio-cultural pressure, legal sanctions, religious beliefs, historical or personal circumstances determine the actual expression of each person's sexual feelings.
- Two or more sexual categories, usually, but not always based on sexual object choice.
- One type of sexual response [is] normal ... all other variants abnormal.
Death
Boswell died of complications from AIDS in the Yale infirmary in New Haven, Connecticut, on December 24, 1994, at age 47.Legacy
Although Boswell's earlier works did much to break down the taboo surrounding the serious study of homosexuality in American academia, by the end of his life Boswell was out of step with the main current of scholarly opinion. During the late 1980s, the influence of Michel FoucaultMichel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
's writings led to the emergence of a social constructivist view of human sexuality which emphasised the historical and cultural specificity of sexual identities such as 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual'. Despite Boswell's friendly relations with Foucault, he remained adamantly opposed to the French theorist's views, which he characterised as a reemergence of medieval nominalism
Nominalism
Nominalism is a metaphysical view in philosophy according to which general or abstract terms and predicates exist, while universals or abstract objects, which are sometimes thought to correspond to these terms, do not exist. Thus, there are at least two main versions of nominalism...
, and defended his own strident essentialism
Essentialism
In philosophy, essentialism is the view that, for any specific kind of entity, there is a set of characteristics or properties all of which any entity of that kind must possess. Therefore all things can be precisely defined or described...
in the face of changing academic fashions. Since his death, Boswell's work has come under criticism from medievalists and queer theorists
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
, who—while acknowledging his personal courage in bringing the issue of sexuality into the academy—have pointed out the anachronism of speaking of 'gay people' in premodern societies and have questioned the validity of Boswell's conclusions. Several other scholars, including Terry Castle and Ruth Vanita, have followed in Boswell's footsteps, building up the field of lesbian and gay studies (as distinct from queer theory
Queer theory
Queer theory is a field of critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of LGBT studies and feminist studies. Queer theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorisation of 'queerness' itself...
), and demonstrating that categorizations of humans by sexual predilection much predate the nineteenth century (where Foucault and his followers wrongly place it), both in the West (as in Plato's Symposium) and in other cultures (e.g., India).
Works
- The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities Under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (1977)–Online
- Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (1980)
- Rediscovering Gay History: Archetypes of Gay Love in Christian History (1982)
- The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (1989)
- Homosexuality in the Priesthood and the Religious Life (1991) (co-author)
- Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (1994), Villard Books, ISBN 0-679-43228-0
See also
- AdelphopoiesisAdelphopoiesisAdelphopoiesis, or adelphopoiia from the Greek , derived from "brother" and "I make", literally "brother-making" is a ceremony practiced at one time by various Christian churches to unite together two people of the same sex...
- Homosexuality and the Bible
- Queer studiesQueer studiesQueer studies is the critical theory based study of issues relating to sexual orientation and gender identity usually focusing on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people and cultures. Universities have also labeled this area of analysis Sexual Diversity Studies, Sexualities...
- Queer theology