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The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Edited by Matthew Kuefler. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2006. Pp. viii, 348. $75.00 clothbound; $27.50 paperback.)
The publication in 1980 of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality (hereafter CSTH) by John Boswell marked the beginning of radical changes that persist to the present in the ways that historians, especially medievalists, deal with same-sex relationships. The sixteen chapters that make up The Boswell Thesis seek to assess some of the ways that Boswell's work has continued to roil historical scholarship during the past quarter of a century.
The opening essay by the editor, Matthew Kuefler, outlines the central tenets of Boswell's argument. In brief, Christianity, according to Boswell, emerged in a Mediterranean world where intimate relations between persons of the same sex were widely tolerated, if not invariably condoned. Neither the Christian Scriptures nor the early church Fathers, Boswell maintained, expressed blanket...