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Dyan Elliott, The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy (Philadelphia, Pa: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). viii + 378 pp. ISBN 978-0-8122-5252-1. $45.00.
This is an exceptionally important and deeply disturbing book, which addresses the evidence of extensive, and largely tolerated, sexual predation involving young boys throughout the Middle Ages, and calls out the ongoing legacy of that practice, along with the arguments deployed by clerics to conceal it.
Elliott begins with how, in the fourth century, churchmen began to distinguish themselves from layfolk through augmented claims to holiness, with an emphasis on physical purity. This involved the advocacy of clerical celibacy, eventually mandated by the Second Lateran Council. Becoming progressively sensitive to sexual scandals, the Church developed sophisticated techniques of concealment, misdirection, and deflection. Rather than curbing the abuses going on within the walls of male institutions, it launched bitter attacks on the wiles of women, the clamour of misogynistic polemic contrasting with the silence surrounding 'the sin not fit to be named'. Alternatively, blame...