Date:         Sun, 25 Dec 1994 21:38:25 -0500
Reply-To: DENLEWIS@delphi.com

John Boswell, who created a stir earlier this year by writing a book that
argued that the Catholic Church blessed same-sex unions in the Middle Ages,
has died of complications from AIDS, according to The New York Times. Here is
his obit, as it ran in the Times' National Edition on Dec. 25, 1994.
(Reprinted w/o permission).

                          +++++++++++++++++++++++++++

         John E. Boswell, 47, Historian of Medieval Gay Culture, Dies

                              By David W. Dunlap
                              The New York Times

    John Eastburn Boswell, a Yale University historian who upended medieval
scholarship by find not only that homosexuality was tolerated in the Middle
Ages but that same-sex unions were celebrated liturgically, died yesterday in
the Yale infirmary. He was 47 and lived in New Haven.
    The cause was complications from AIDS, a friend, Jerry Hart, said.
    "I regard him as one of the major innovative figures in gay and lesbian
scholarship," said Martin Duberman, founder and executive director of the
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York. "John
was very brave and pioneering. And very brilliant."
    He was also controversial. Some scholars and tehologians disputed his
findings, which gained wide notice in 1980 with the publication of
"Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western
Europe From the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century"
(University of Chicago Press).
    "I would not hesitate to call his book revolutionary," Paul Robinson, a
Stanford University historian, wrote in The New York Times Book Review, "for
it tells of things heretofore unimagined and sets a standard of excellence
that one would have thought impossible in the treatment of an issue so large,
uncharted and vexed." It won the American Book Award for history in 1981.
    One major aim of his work, Dr. Boswell wrote, was "to rebut the common
idea that religious belief -- Christian or other -- has been the *cause* of
intolerance in regard to gay people."
    Among his findings was that there had been, from about 1050 to 1150, "an
efflorescence of gay subculture, with a highly developed literature, its own
argot and artistic conventions, its own low life, its elaborate responses to
critics."
    Last June, Dr. Boswell again captured attention -- and provoked much
debate -- with "Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe" (Villard Books), based
on the study of more than 60 manuscripts from the 8th to the 16th century.
    By the 12th century, Dr. Boswell wrote, the ceremony of same-sex union
had become a "full office" which involved burning candles, placing the
parties' hands on the Gospel, binding their hands or covering their heads
with the priest's stole, saying the Lord's Prayer, receiving communion,
kissing and sometimes circling the altar.
    As to whether the ceremony celebrated a "relationship between two men or
two women that was (or became) sexual," Dr. Boswell wrote, "Probably, some-
times, but this is obviously a difficult question to answer about the past,
since participants cannot be interrogated."
    He was far more confident in declaring that the ceremony was "unmistak-
ably a voluntary, emotional union of two persons," one that was "closely
related" to heterosexual marriage, "no matter how much some readers may be
discomforted by this."
    James Brundage, a professor of history and law at the University of
Kansas, said in an interview last summer that "the mainstream reaction was
that he raised some interesting questions, but hadn't proved his case."
    And Brent D. Shaw of the University of Lethbridge in Alberta argued in
The New Republic that the ceremonies Dr. Boswell described were more akin to
the "ritualized agreements struck between members of the Mafia or other 'men
of honor' in our own society."
    Scholars were not the only ones wrestling with this matter. At least two
newspapers withheld the comic strip "Doonesbury," by Garry Trudeau, in which
the character Mark Slackmeyer described the "gay marriages" uncovered by Dr.
Boswell: "They were just like heterosexual ceremonies, except that straight
weddings, being about property, were usually held outdoors. Gay rites, being
about love, were held *inside* the church!"
    Dr. Boswell's other major work was "The Kindness of Strangers: The
Abandonment of Children in Western Europe From Late Antiquity to the
Renaissance" (Pantheon Books), published in 1989.
    "Marred though it may be by interpretive excesses, this is a pioneering
work of large importance," Mary Martin McLaughlin, a historian, wrote in The
New York Times Book Review. She added that it was "the first to map out and
explore a tanlged, mysterious region of human experience."
    Dr. Boswell was born in Boston. He attended the College of William and
Mary and Harvard University, from which he received his master's degree and
doctorate. Among the 17 languages he read or spoke, Dr. Boswell counted
Church Slavonic, Old Icelandic and some classical Armenian, Syriac and
Persian.
    He joined the Yale faculty in 1975 as an assistant professor, was
appointed a full professor in 1982 and named the A. Whitney Griswold
Professor of History in 1990, when he began a two-year term as chairman of
the history department.
    In 1987, Dr. Boswell helped organize the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center
at Yale, which is now the Research Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
    He is survived by his parents, Col. Henry Boswell Jr. and Catharine, of
Grand Junction, Colo.; a sister, Patricia, of Greensboro, N.C.; and two
brothers, Wray of Virginia Beach and Henry 3d of Chapel Hill, N.C.