John Boswell papers

The American philologist and historian John Eastburn Boswell (1947- 1994) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 20, 1947. He attended the College of William and Mary, graduating in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts in history, and Harvard, earning a doctorate in history in 1975. His dissertation was published as The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). In 1975 Boswell began teaching in the History Department at Yale. Five years later he published his second book, the pioneering Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). In 1988 Boswell published The Kindness of Strangers: Child Abandonment in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon Books). Boswell was named A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History in 1990, when he began a two-year term as Chairman of the Yale History Department. In the last year of his life, Boswell published the groundbreaking and controversial Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994).

John Boswell was the second child of Catherine S. Eastburn and Colonel Henry Boswell, Jr. As a child in a military family, he spent his early years in Georgia, at West Point, in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and abroad in Ankara, Turkey, as well as Spain and West Germany. Boswell was raised as a Quaker and then became an Episcopalian before converting to Catholicism at age fifteen. Boswell’s Catholicism quickly became central to his ethos, and would exert a profound influence on his scholarship, as well on as his personal life. Indeed, in the years ahead, colleagues would often skeptically call upon him to explain how someone so profoundly learned and rational could also be deeply religious.

Boswell attended the College of William and Mary where, as a National Merit Scholar, he became a member of the honorary fraternities Phi Eta Sigma, Pi Delta Epsilon, Eta Sigma Phi, and Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts as an Outstanding Graduate in History. A few years later, Boswell began an intimate relationship with Jerone R. Hart, a relationship that lasted until Boswell’s death.

In 1970 Boswell entered the graduate program in history at Harvard, where he was awarded both Woodrow Wilson and Graduate Prize fellowships and earned a master’s in 1971 and a doctorate in 1975. His dissertation, written under the supervision of Giles Constable and Jocelyn Hillgarth, comprised a social study of the relationships between the Muslim subject minority and the dominant Christian society in medieval Spain. This work was published as The Royal Treasure: Muslim Communities under the Crown of Aragon in the Fourteenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977). In 1975 Boswell began teaching at Yale as Assistant Professor of History. In 1978 his students voted him one of the eleven best teachers at Yale.

Boswell studied many foreign languages over the course of his life: Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Latin, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Russian, Church Slavonic, Aragonese, Provençal, and Old Icelandic/Norse, as well as some classical Armenian, Syriac, and Persian. He often remarked to colleagues that his practice was to teach himself one new language each year.

Ten years of research, begun while in graduate school and conducted alongside his dissertation, led to the publication of Boswell’s second book, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). It should be noted that Boswell often remarked that he had been warned by friends and colleagues not to publish this book for fear that such a controversial publication would destroy his academic reputation, and that he savored the irony that the work instead considerably enhanced his career. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality immediately garnered high praise: The New York Times Book Review selected it as one of eleven best books of 1980; it was one of five non-fiction nominees for National Book Critics Circle Award; and it won the American Book Award for History and a Melcher Award in 1981. The success of this book resulted in Boswell's promotion at Yale from Associate Professor to Professor of History in 1982. The book was eventually translated into French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Also in 1982, Boswell was honored with the William Clyde DeVane Medal for Teaching and Scholarship. Moreover, he authored the pamphlet (based on the Fifth Michael Harding Memorial Address) Rediscovering Gay History: Archetypes of Gay Love in Christian History (London: Gay Christian Movement, 1982) and the article "Revolutions, Universals, Categories" in the journal Salmagundi. The latter was eventually reprinted with revisions in Martin Bauml Duberman et al., eds., Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (New York: NAL, 1989). From 1984 to 1986 he served as Director of Graduate Studies for the Yale History Department. In 1987 Boswell helped organize the Lesbian and Gay Studies Center at Yale, which by the mid-1990s became the Research Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies.

In 1988 Boswell published The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pantheon Books). This book was eventually translated into Dutch, French, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish. Also in 1988 Boswell became Director of Special Programs in the Humanities (until 1990) and Chair of Medieval Studies at Yale. In 1989 he was appointed as one of thirteen associate editors of the new Journal of the History of Sexuality (University of Chicago Press) and as Advisory Board Member for History of Columbia University Press's Gay and Lesbian series. He was named A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History in 1990, when he began a two-year term as Chairman of the Yale History Department.

In the fall of 1991 Boswell was diagnosed with what his doctors initially thought was Lyme disease, and complications from this ailment led to spinal meningitis. By early 1992 Boswell was diagnosed with Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML), a rare and deadly brain disease. It was later discovered that the so-called Lyme disease Boswell had contracted was actually AIDS, and that the spinal meningitis and PML were both AIDS-related.

In the last year of his life, Boswell published Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York: Villard Books, 1994). Boswell died of complications from AIDS in New Haven on 24 December 1994. At Yale Commencement in 1995 he was posthumously awarded the Harwood F. Byrnes/Richard B. Sewall Teaching Prize in recognition of his instruction of undergraduates.