The Marriage of Likeness; Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
London: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995. Large octavo (9 1/2 inches tall), original black cloth, gilt spine, russet endpapers, original dust jacket. Very slight bump to head of spine, else Fine. Item #1400
"PAIR-BONDING BETWEEN MALES WAS CONSIDERED THE NOBLEST FORM OF HUMAN CONTACT"
Early British edition of John Boswell's final book—an investigation of medieval Christian liturgies used for Same-Sex Unions. The dust jacket depicts the seventh-century icon of the Saints Serge and Bacchus, "as joined by Christ."
Published a year earlier in the United States as "Same Sex Unions," the research for this scholarly study occupied the Yale medievalist (a teenage convert to Catholicism) for over a decade. With a brief Preface acknowledging the distortion of his preliminary findings and frustration with the "number of critiques of or disagreements with a work that did not yet exist. Such comments are to informed criticism and disagreement what the modern American vulgarism 'preboarding' is to boarding a plane." Boswell introduces "paired saints," which seems to have pre-Christian origins in the fraternal bonds among Greek and Roman soldiers. The text is illustrated with a photo insert which includes a "Trio of High and Late Medieval depictions of Christ and Saint John, suggesting...affection and intimacy."
Boswell describes how "moral ambivalence towards sexuality of any kind gradually gave way to intolerance." The Epilogue wryly concludes "while simple friendship is always a possible interpretation of any particular same-sex relationship, heterosexuals will be more inclined to assume this as the most likely interpretation while gay people will only consider it one of two distinct possibilities." The text is supplemented with an Index and series of Appendices, including The Passion of SS. Serge and Bacchus. The book received a mixed reception with conservative and liberal critics alike disputing both the methodology and the conclusions. Boswell's work was shadowed by the spectre of the AIDS epidemic as the brief Preface and touching Dedication demonstrate. Boswell himself died of AIDS on Christmas Eve, 1994, shortly after the book was published.
Price: $65.00