Author: John Boswell Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0804150958 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 466
Book Description
Both highly praised and intensely controversial, this brilliant book produces dramatic evidence that at one time the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches not only sanctioned unions between partners of the same sex, but sanctified them--in ceremonies strikingly similar to heterosexual marriage ceremonies.
Author: John Boswell Publisher: Villard ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 456
Book Description
The author traces same-sex unions from Platonic Greece, to Rome, to Christianized Europe, including Catholic and Orthodox liturgies to bless same-sex unions.
Author: Gary Ferguson Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 1501706551 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
From the tenor of contemporary discussions, it would be easy to conclude that the idea of marriage between two people of the same sex is a uniquely contemporary phenomenon. Not so, argues Gary Ferguson in Same-Sex Marriage in Renaissance Rome. Making use of substantial fragments of trial transcripts Gary Ferguson brings the story of a same-sex marriage to life in striking detail. He unearths an incredible amount of detail about the men, their sex lives, and how others responded to this information, which allows him to explore attitudes toward marriage, sex, and gender at the time. Emphasizing the instability of marriage in premodern Europe, Ferguson argues that same-sex unions should be considered part of the institution's complex and contested history.
Author: Claudia Rapp Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0195389336 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of ecclesiastical and legal control. Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known aspects of Byzantine society.
Author: Louis Crompton Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 9780674030060 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 652
Book Description
How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan. Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World. Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of sodomites in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great. Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece. Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.
Author: Stephen Morris Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476622140 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
In the world of early Byzantine Christianity, monastic rules acknowledged but discouraged the homosexual impulses of adult males. What most disturbed monastic leaders was adolescent males being accepted as novices; adult men were considered unable to control their sexual desires for these "beautiful boys." John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople (397-407), virulently denounced homosexuality, but was virtually the only Byzantine cleric to do so. Penances traditionally attached to heterosexual sins--including remarriage after divorce or widowhood--have always been much more severe than those for a variety of homosexual acts or relationships. Just as Byzantine churches have found ways to accommodate sequential marriages and other behavior once stridently condemned, this book argues, it is possible for Byzantine Christianity to make pastoral accommodations for gay relationships and same-sex marriage.
Author: Andrew Sullivan Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0307490424 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 412
Book Description
With same-sex marriage igniting a firestorm of controversy in the press and in the courts, in legislative chambers and in living rooms, Andrew Sullivan, a pioneering voice in the debate, has brought together two thousand years of argument in an anthology of historic inclusiveness and evenhandedness. Among the selections included here: - The 2003 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in support of same-sex marriage - Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion and Justice Scalia’s dissent in the 2003 landmark Supreme Court decision striking down anti-sodomy laws - President George W. Bush’s call for a Federal Marriage Amendment - John Kerry’s Senate speech urging defeat of the Defense of Marriage Act - Harvard historian Nancy F. Cott's testimony before the Vermont House Judiciary Committee - Reverend Peter J. Gomes on the distinction between civil and religious marriage - Stanley Kurtz on the politics of gay marriage - Evan Wolfson on the popularity of the right to marry among lesbians and gay men - New York Times op-ed columnist David Brooks’ conservative case for same-sex marriage - Excerpts from Genesis, Leviticus, and other essential biblical texts - Aristophanes’s classic theory of same-sex love, from Plato’s Symposium - Hannah Arendt on marriage as a fundamental right - Camille Paglia’s skepticism Representing the full range of perspectives and the most cogent and arresting arguments, Same-Sex Marriage is essential to a balanced understanding of the most pressing cultural question we face today.
Author: Mathew Kuefler Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 9780226457406 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 360
Book Description
Few books have had the social, cultural, and scholarly impact of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality. Arguing that neither the Bible nor the Christian tradition was nearly as hostile to homoeroticism as was generally thought, its initial publication sent shock waves through university classrooms, gay communities, and religious congregations. Twenty-five years later, the aftershocks still reverberate. The Boswell Thesis brings together fifteen leading scholars at the intersection of religious and sexuality studies to comment on this book's immense impact, the endless debates it generated, and the many contributions it has made to our culture. The essays in this magnificent volume examine a variety of aspects of Boswell's interpretation of events in the development of sexuality from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages, including a Roman emperor's love letters to another man; suspicions of sodomy among medieval monks, knights, and crusaders; and the gender-bending visions of Christian saints and mystics. Also included are discussions of Boswell's career, including his influence among gay and lesbian Christians and his role in academic debates between essentialists and social constructionists. Elegant and thought-provoking, this collection provides a fitting twenty-fifth anniversary tribute to the incalculable influence of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and its author.
Author: Kim M. Phillips Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0745637264 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 236
Book Description
Sexuality in modern western culture is central to identity but the tendency to define by sexuality does not apply to the premodern past. Before the 'invention' of sexuality, erotic acts and desires were comprehended as species of sin, expressions of idealised love, courtship, and marriage, or components of intimacies between men or women, not as outworkings of an innermost self. With a focus on c. 1100–c. 1800, this book explores the shifting meanings, languages, and practices of western sex. It is the first study to combine the medieval and early modern to rethink this time of sex before sexuality, where same-sex and opposite-sex desire and eroticism bore but faint traces of what moderns came to call heterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbianism, and pornography. This volume aims to contribute to contemporary historical theory through paying attention to the particularity of premodern sexual cultures. Phillips and Reay argue that students of premodern sex will be blocked in their understanding if they use terms and concepts applicable to sexuality since the late nineteenth century, and modern commentators will never know their subject without a deeper comprehension of sex's history.
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Author: John Boswell
Author: John Boswell
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Author: Andrew Sullivan
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Author: Mathew Kuefler
Author: Kim M. Phillips