Born in Boston 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, whereupon he joined the Yale University history faculty as its rising star; he 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. The multi-talented Boswell would pen his comments on student papers in perfectly executed italic script.
Books
The Royal Treasure (1977) is a detailed historical study of the Mudéjar 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. The book was crowned with the American Book Award for History and the Stonewall Book Award in 1981, but Boswell's leading thesis was severely 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. Homosexuality, Intolerance, and Christianity: A Critical Examination of John Boswell's Work
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."
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. PEOPLE WITH A HISTORY: John Boswell Page
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". Theodore of Sykeon - Adelphopoiia Reviewing Boswell Boswell pointed out such evidence as an icon of two saints, 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. CHRISTIANGAYS.COM: When Marriage Between Gays Was a Rite
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.
Faith and sexuality
Boswell was a devout 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 orientation 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:
- 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.
