Historical, Legal, and Cultural Contexts

Bouquets and Brickbats:
Reactions to John Boswell's book,
Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe

by Ralph Hexter

The following text is based closely on a talk given by Ralph Hexter on November 16, 1994, at the Koenig Alumni Center of the University at Colorado at Boulder. It was sponsored by CU-Boulder's GLB Resource Center and its LesBiGay Alumni Association.

The author has lightly edited his own script of the talk only for clarity to readers (as opposed to the listeners present on that evening), in some cases where the editing would have cut too deep, leaving traces of that original oral presentation—for example, references to "discussion" or "questions" after the talk.

In a very few spots he added, in brackets and noted "rjh 2003," brief reflections inspired by the immediate context of the time of this final editing, December 19, 2003. That date, it is worth recalling, is but five days shy of the ninth anniversary of John Boswell's death, so that with a shock he realized that at the time of the talk itself, John had some five more weeks to live.

Let me begin with a disclaimer. I have been a friend of John Boswell for some twenty years. I have worked closely with him, and he has been my most important teacher. As some of you know, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality (henceforth CSTH) was dedicated to me for my help, and I have served as critical first reader of many of his publications. The same goes with Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (henceforth SSU). There I had a major part in proofreading, as in earlier publications. So this is not an objective critique. I am openly, and publicly partisan—as I said in the opening of my response to the New Republic review by Brent Shaw. [rjh, 2003: Shaw's review and my response, from the New Republic of July 18 and 24 and then October 3, 1994, is reprinted, slightly shortened, in Andrew Sullivan, ed., Same-Sex Marriage: Pro and Con. A Reader (New York, 1997), pp. 7-21] I hope I am not blindly partisan. What I want to do this evening is give a quick overview of the basic argument of the book, and then comment generally on what I think may be going on in the press. Most of all, I want to have plenty of time to respond to your questions at the end.

It seems to me that the basic argument of the book is that there has been a long history of same-sex unions in Europe, and that at least male-male unions, from Classical times into the European Renaissance, have been recognized by society at large. That recognition has taken a variety of forms—from honor to parody, from legal and liturgical celebration to burning. It is this range that Boswell wants to explore. Central of course, and most controversial, is the Christian ceremony he presents—in multiple texts in Greek, multiple again in an appendix of translations, and based on a table of some sixty-four manuscripts dating from the eighth to the sixteenth or seventeenth century. This he calls a liturgy for same-sex union.

The argument, both its various parts and the center piece, rests on texts, contexts, and the historical record. Let me turn to context first, because this is one of the hallmarks of all Boswell's studies, so it seems to me. In his view, for us to consider union, life partnership, or, to use the m-word, "marriage," we can't just go at data from other societies, distant in time, place, or both, with our own preconceptions about what marriage is. That is pretty obvious—even sophomore history majors understand it—though it seems too sophisticated for some of the journalists or self-styled experts who have flamed the book in print. In any event, Boswell begins by getting his readers to consider how different some ancient marriages are. And this he does, I think brilliantly, and with his customary wit and understatement, by asking readers to consider an example chosen from, of all books, the Bible.

Nor was the longue durée of Judeo-Christian matrimonial tradition anywhere near consistent. In the twentieth century, many Christians who would rabidly insist on this or that aspect of "moral matrimony" (e.g., procreative purpose in the view of the Roman Catholic hierarchy—but probably not the average Catholic layperson; sexual fidelity for most Protestants) casually accept the fact that Solomon was "married" to seven hundred women while he also maintained three hundred concubines. [1Kings 11:3] Although they would doubtless not approve if one of their contemporaries engaged in such behavior, they have little trouble applying the term "marriage" to such relationships. Aside from the moral questions this episode raises, it throws the deeper meaning of "marriage" in a historical context into lively uncertainty. What did it mean to be one of the seven hundred women "married" to Solomon, who also had three hundred concubines? How much of a commitment could there have been on either side? Indeed, how often could the one thousand women who belonged to the king through marriage or concubinage even have had casual intercourse (social or sexual) with him? ["Introduction," pp. xx-xxi; emphasis in original].

Note the phrase "it throws the deeper meaning of marriage into...lively uncertainty." I think this is an excellent, and characteristically elegant, way of describing Boswell's own heuristic method of putting our assumptions into question, and in terms all readers can understand. This is the mark of the teacher.

The first chapter focuses on the issue of language and translation. As Boswell has insisted in all his work, issues of lexicography are inevitably part of our perceptual apparatus - one might say "obviously" except for the fact that the significance of vocabulary often escapes people's notice—as is translation, since most people are not capable of reading the material in the original. And even those who are able to do so tend, most of the time at least, to think of the Greek, Latin, Hebrew or Old Church Slavonic words in terms of their most common lexical equivalents. He discusses again—following the format of CSTH—the problematic vocabulary of love. Above all he addresses the issue of how to translate the name most commonly given the ceremony itself—adelphopoiesis, or "literally," the making of brothers. Now as I myself said to Brent Shaw in the New Republic, who wanted a more literal translation of this, if you really want to get literal—and believe me, no one can get more literal than I—in that case, only your parents could make you a brother. I suppose you could do so yourself, if you're up for a little incest and would accept half-siblings, or do so unknowingly, like Oedipus. But such "literal" cases aside, we are talking figuration even at the level of "making of brothers." The relevant questions are: What does it figure? What does it mean?

There are many other examples. Indeed, as any student of medieval Greek knows, and as any reader of SSU learns, in Greek "to crown" in certain contexts meant "to marry," just as—to use Boswell's own example—French baiser actually means "to have sexual intercourse," not "to kiss," whatever your Cassell's and your tenth-grade teacher taught you. In context, then, and with some lexical parallels, Boswell argues, one could translate "ceremony of adelphopoiesis" as "ceremony of same-sex union," and in fact, he thinks it is the most accurate and responsible translation.

To fortify that context, and to help us see through more adequate lenses, Boswell devotes chapters 2 and 3 to a survey, first, of heterosexual matrimony or partnerships in the Greco-Roman World, and then same-sex partnerships. There is a lot of data and history here, but the main purpose, I think, is to make the idea of formalized unions appear strange, to "defamiliarize" it, to use a word familiar to some students of literature and theatre. This is just another heuristic tactic that enables us to look at a phenomenon with fresh eyes. To begin with the case of heterosexual unions, and following on the famous (or infamous) example of King Solomon, cited above, Boswell reminds readers that there was a whole range of possible accommodations, from concubinage to full-scale marriage with the passage of rights over the woman and her property to the man. The issue of affection, and of sex, played a different role in different types of unions.

As a striking, and again defamiliarizing, example for same-sex unions, he evokes the sacred band of Thebes—a ferocious platoon made up solely of male-male couples—the strongest defense that Greece could throw against the advancing Macedonians, since it was thought, if you will permit this anachronism, that these "gays in the military" would fight to the death rather than be shamed in front of their lovers. And fight to the death they did. Philip, Alexander's father, wept over them after his soldiers had massacred them. This sets up as well the theme of paired soldier saints that eventuate in early Christian examples of Serge and Bacchus, whose life he translates, for the first time, in another appendix, and Polyeucte and his friend Nearchos. Many of these soldier-saints show up in the text of the liturgy, suggesting an ongoing consciousness of a tradition of male bonding. And in at least two of the "Greek novels," you have a clear pairing of man-man and man-woman couples. (Alas the one that has a lesbian couple—the Babyloniaca—exists only in tatters; even its summary is textually vexed.)

The fourth chapter, "View of the New Religion," in other words, of Christianity, defamiliarizes what Christianity thought about marriage. In other words, it's not what most readers today would assume. Among less familiar Christian positions on marriage that John highlights, again as in CSTH (and perhaps more briefly here because of the lengthy discussions in the 1980 book), is the ascetic or anti-sexual, even anti-marital stance of many important figures in the early Church. Many major Christian texts and authors privilege abstinence over sex; love without sex (often we call this friendship) over love with sex; abstinence within marriage over consummation; or if consummation, then without passion over with passion. How different from our views today. Compare Augustine's famous remark that, rather than take your own wife in passion, it is better to have recourse to a prostitute; in this, he follows a traditional Roman outlook. How strange it seems, and yet Augustine is a saint. ! [rjh, 2003: today I certainly would have said "our Viagra®-induced views." One can only imagine what Boswell, much less Augustine, would have had to say about the "naturalness" of this marital aid.]

It is, as John says—Boswell, not the evangelist—in the context of a religion of love for one's brothers that it is perfectly explicable that a ceremony grew up that solemnized or hallowed friendship. This was, after all, the religion of the teacher who described friendship as the highest love. [x; citations on p. 194]

I'm not going to go through the technicalities involved in his tracing of the roots of the ceremony or its various parts. I have distributed a copy of one of the briefer translations. [rjh, 2003: readers should consult the Appendix of Translations, SSU, pp. 283-344, which contains translations of multiple forms of the ceremony in question as well as of a selection of texts to which Boswell compares the ceremony.] But a further defamiliarization for many, especially Christian readers, is that a sacrament such as "marriage" even has a history. Indeed, formalization of unions came very late, and even now a considerable number of states recognize common law marriages without a ceremony. Heterosexual ceremonies were cobbled together at some point. And at a time when they were in flux and in some areas non-existent or infrequently used, what was to determine a union?

It is in this context that we have the text of the ceremony for same-sex union, this metaphorical "making of brothers." It involves a priest, prayers, a grasping of hands, and a kiss. The language is chaste, but then it is so for heterosexual ceremonies. Granted, the prayer to bless a marriage with offspring implies that the two will have to have intercourse, but no marriage ceremony says, "Go forth and screw." Other words that those who are dubious or outright incredulous point to—"unashamed," "spiritual"—we might want to discuss in the Question-and-Answer session, along with the question I get asked most often, "Did they or didn't they?" As if I should be the only one, like the proverbial hairdresser, who knows for sure.

In terms of the history, there are perhaps not as many examples as we would like. There never are, not infrequently the case when subsequent authorities have reason to squelch earlier evidence or, equally likely, have come profoundly to misunderstand them. But there are two I wish to mention. The first has to do with Basil, who became emperor of Byzantium.

While Basil was still in the service of Theophilos, they made a trip together to Greece. A wealthy widow in Achaia showered him with gifts of gold and dozens of slaves. In return for her generosity she asked nothing but that Basil should enter into ceremonial union with her son, John. At first he refused, because he thought it would make him look "cheap"..., but at length she prevailed and he agreed. "I seek and ask nothing from you," she assured him, "except that you love and deal kindly with us." A surviving medieval illustration of this incident shows Basil and John being united before a cleric in church, with the Gospel open before them and John's mother looking on. An accompanying frame depicts Basil, John, and Danelis (John's mother...) at a table—doubtless the artist's conception of the feast that would usually follow such a ceremony.

When he subsequently became emperor Basil immediately "sent for the son of the widow Danelis, honored him with the title protospatarius, and granted him intimacy with him on account of their earlier shared life in ceremonial union." The widow herself—now too elderly to ride—came to the emperor on a litter, but rather than requesting any munificence from him, she brought more extravagant gifts "than nearly any other foreign ruler had up to that time ever bestowed on a Roman emperor." In addition, she "who was worthy to be called the emperor's mother" made a large gift of her patrimony in the Peloponnese to her son and the emperor together... [234-35, original emphasis].

Of course we will want to discuss the complex and often indeterminable role of eroticism behind these unions. But contemporaries must have imagined it could play a powerful role. The chroniclers quite openly emphasized Basil's physical attractions. I quote Boswell again: this Basil next entered the service of Theophilos, who, in the words of one chronicler "had a great interest in well-born, good-looking, well-built men who were very masculine and strong," and when he saw how exceptional Basil was in these respects he appointed him his protostratorius (chief equerry). Basil "was loved by him more and more with each passing day." Basil was thus what modern Americans would call a "hunk," and he made the most of the appeal this exercised for some of his contemporaries, both male and female. [234]

More sober, and very near the end of our history, is a sixteenth-century account by none other than Michel de Montaigne. Boswell writes:

The ceremony remained technically licit from the thirteenth century on, even in the eyes of the Roman Catholic church, which probably failed to recognize its actual significance, although Montaigne seems to describe having seen it in Rome itself in 1578, and suggested that Roman ecclesiastics realized perfectly well what it entailed, even to the point of legitimizing homosexual activity: ...the Church of Saint John of the Latin Gate, in which some Portuguese some years before had entered into a strange "brotherhood." Two males married each other at Mass, with the same ceremonies we use for our marriages, taking Communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together. Roman experts said that since sex between male and female could be legitimate only within marriage, it had seemed equally fair [juste] to them to authorize [these] ceremonies and mysteries of the Church.

The increasing discrepancy between the (largely inexplicable) hostility of the masses and the general equanimity of the church is highlighted in this episode, also relayed in the dispatches of the Venetian ambassador. Montaigne apparently regarded the incident as an amusing oddity, but the Venetian ambassador described it as "horrifying wickedness," and Roman authorities (presumably civic) executed many of those involved by burning, which in the ambassador's opinion "they deserved." [pp. 264-65]

* * *

I turn now to the reception—not the wedding reception, but the reception of the book—in which John Boswell's celebrity plays a role. It had been known for some time that John was working on this book, and a very few times he gave in to requests and spoke about it. Pirate tapes, one transcript, and even one video circulate. The book was scheduled for publication June 18, 1994. About three weeks earlier, we heard the totally unexpected, even incredible news that it was already being referred to in Gary Trudeau's cartoon, Doonesbury. Now this was not the first time Boswell's work had made the 'toons. Shortly after CSTH came out, there appeared in Christopher Street a single frame in which one man asks another—the setting is a gay bar—whether he'd like to go back to his "place for a little Christianity, social tolerance and homosexuality." This time the book entered into the life of the comic for several days. For it was the case that just at this time, Gary Trudeau was having one of his characters come out. Still tentative, and pretty inept, he apparently approached a straight man in a bar and was brusquely turned down by this man, who was "married." At this point, "Mike" (if I remember correctly) mentions, somewhat defensively, that just now a "Yale professor"—and Trudeau often played up the Yale connections of his characters—was publishing a book showing that there had been "gay marriage ceremonies" blessed by the Catholic Church all through the Middle Ages.

This was picked up by an observant LA Times editor and the paper's religion writer was dispatched to find out what he could. He immediately found out that Gary Trudeau was referring to SSU—Gary having been sent word of the book by an editor in Detroit who correctly guessed he'd be interested in the matter generally, and specifically, given the Yale connection.

And so the cartoons and the press defined the issue from the start as a "gay marriage ceremony." Many people were interviewed, I among them, since at the time John himself could, for reasons of ill health, give no interviews. Many other newspapers, even Time and Newsweek, followed the LA Times down the same trail. They of course also sought opinions—in the way of press "objectivity"—from all sorts of Church or New Testament scholars, who had obviously not read the (as yet unpublished) book and either commented on the inherent implausibility of such a ceremony existing or recapitulated their positions on CSTH. One was even quoted to me as claiming that CSTH was largely dismissed by the "scholarly community." The reporter was hoping to start a fight he could report, but I responded merely that this so-called "expert" obviously belonged to a different scholarly community than I did.

It is interesting that every one of these articles raised questions about Boswell's objectivity—"Does he have an agenda?" reporters asked me and others. "Isn't he an activist historian?" At the same time it was considered out of bounds to ask the same question of spokesmen, less frequently (if ever) spokeswomen, for this or that denomination or hierarchy. "Mightn't they too have agendas and turfs?" I asked back. Some of them are even paid by their hierarchies, and so could hardly be "objective." This was of course considered an "outrageous" question.

Among the difficulties most readers, whether on the payroll of institutions or not, have with SSU is that it is, to make use of a current distinction, archeology, not history. Institutions—and ideologies—construct their own institutional histories, which are notoriously teleological in the sense that they are "how so stories"—stories of how things came to be the way they are now, which is just they way they were supposed to turn out. The present is the predetermined "fulfillment" of the past. So, to give an easy example, history of Christian doctrine records how a certain doctrine developed, citing the positions of the fathers that led to the clear promulgation of a particular orthodox teaching. These "in-house" histories never tell you that in the preceding or following paragraph Augustine, say, or Aquinas, espoused opinions now, or even then, considered heretical. Or that certain teachings have been completely rejected or revised, like "ensoulment," various positions on lending at interest, the culpability or salvability of Jews, or limbo.

In all his work, Boswell the historian has always attempted to give readers a true sense of the contemporary context of any opinion, the place it had, in other words, in its own time. As he often reminded me, it is important not to confuse "accuracy" and "truth." It may be accurate to say that same-sex contact was a "sin" in the age of the penitentials, but you have not told readers the truth until you have also pointed out that everyone expected everyone, themselves and others, to be sinners, in other words, to sin from time to time, and that to judge from the penances, there were much more enormous "sins" than even same-sex genital context.

John continues this approach in SSU, and by doing so, he has upset many nice stories. A range of negative positions have organized themselves. Proponents of the official Catholic/Orthodox position argue, teleologically, that since the Church is now against same-sex activity of all sorts, much less marriages, it must have been so consistently in the past. Q.E.D. And in fact when I was doing research and reading Latin manuscripts in the Vatican Library this June, I heard that seminars were being set up to refute the book. In the autumn one high-ranking American Catholic sent out a circular in which he both condemned the book's findings and frankly admitted that he hadn't even read it. As they say, "Please don't confuse me with the facts."

Most non-religious opponents seem to be taking the position that marriage must be and must always have been heterosexual by definition, seemingly for no other reason than that it is so today. If there are some true conservatives out there who are so consistent that they believe government should get out of the business of deciding which couples are legitimately married, which not, I'd love to hear from them. [rjh, 2003: given the debate that has begun to swirl, and especially with talk of a constitutional amendment, I am compelled to add a reflection on this point from today's vantage point.

One could imagine a very logical position in which the government, at all levels, didn't link its conferral or refusal of benefits to "marriage," which it was the sole authority of religions or other private organizations to perform, recognize, dissolve, according to their own rules, but, instead, recognized a form of "civil union" (available to same- and different-sexed couples alike) on the basis of which treatment in areas such as taxation, immigration, Social Security, and such like, would be decided - to the extent the government at any level had both the authority and desire to differentiate access to this or that benefit on the basis of couplehood. This would be in fact consistent with separation of church and state. It is also precisely how matters work current with divorce, which is a civil category. As is well known, the Roman Catholic Church does not recognize divorce but has its own process for the dissolution of a marriage, which it calls "annulment." Civil authorities, for their part, do not recognize "annulment," requiring those individuals to follow civil procedures if they want the termination of their union to have force of law. The Church maintains its own rules concerning "annulment"; a Catholic couple divorced but whose marriage had not been annulled could remarry civilly - and enjoy all rights and responsibilities of this status - but not be married by a priest in a Roman Catholic church, at least not until they had their first marriage annulled. Nothing would prevent civil authorities to grant automatic recognition of a religious marriage in terms of civil union status, but the latter would be available to all couples, straight or gay, who, for whatever reason, could not or did not wish to solemnize their union via a (religious) marriage ceremony.]

The gay community presented a more complicated reaction, and, of course, there is no single organized "gay community." (I'm reminded of the quip attributed to Will Rogers, "I don't belong to an organized political party. I'm a Democrat.") Permit me, though, to caricature a couple of positions. Some are of course unabashedly supporters and cheerleaders—although even this positive response is less than honorable historically. This group feels the book will help win respectability for gay marriage today. Indeed, the book was quickly requested to be sent to Hawaii, where discussion of gay marriage has reached official levels and arguments.

Gay "naysayers" seem to approach from two angles. The one, the tired but still present troops from previous battles, argue that there can be no history of gay people before homosexuality was invented about 1870, and a fortiori no history of "gay marriage." (Note again the repetition of that phrase, the stuff of cartoons and journalism.) Others are disturbed lest Boswell seem to support those who argue that gay people are "ok" only insofar as they toe straight norms. This group believes that gay people shouldn't even try to emulate such norms such as fidelity and monogamy, which they regard as purely heterosexual (note the circularity), and they would rather not hear of earlier instances that might be read as so unliberated.

Much of the response of course occurs at levels that cannot even be articulated crudely as argument-based. One astute friend (and faculty member of the History Department at CU-Boulder) has suggested to me that the main reason why the book has run into so much negative criticism is that it doesn't give readers clear answers. He makes the trenchant observation, and true, that by being difficult, and frankly so, the book frustrates and disappoints anyone seeking one, simple, clear and unambiguous answer. They seem to be saying, "Now John, can't you provide us with medieval marriage invitations for the wedding of Erkembald and Hugo, a menu from the reception, with a list of the gifts the two men registered for at the castle commissary? Oh yes, and a dirty sheet, too." Since such ironclad evidence is lacking, most people, even potentially sympathetic ones, seem unprepared to accept something unexpected, something counterintuitive (given their intuitions). They certainly don't want to hear about complexities, different attitudes in different times and places, of possibilities and probabilities.

Others advance theories that involve professional envy—how many medieval historians get the kind of public attention John Boswell has, from Newsweek to People Magazine to coast-to-coast cartoons? Indeed, how many get tenure at Yale, whether cute blonds or not? Who is to say that some of the many disgruntled less fortunate tillers of the fields of academe aren't gunning for him? I have heard still others point out that Boswell "got off easy" with the reviews of CSTH, as if there were some balance sheet by which the community of reviewers set out to offset the one with the other.

To my mind, however, the most important difference has to do with the tenor of the times. These are much harsher times than 1980 intellectually, if that's the right word. Most public discourse now assumes that conservatives and liberals are born, or once made, toe a rigid line. To listen to the public debate, you'd think that no one pursued research with a curious and inquiring mind, or with skepticism or agnosticism on any issue. "Inquiring minds" want to know, and we know where they turn! In gauging reactions to SSU, then, one should reflect on the predigested tabloidized responses accorded some of the other controversial books of 1994, from the very recent Prisoners of Hope, which describes the delusions of those who still believe in American POW's in Vietnam, to the hysterically received Bell Curve.

All this is not to say that the book is not open to criticism. Boswell may have complicated matters himself by attempting so broad a historical trajectory. He includes so much by way of "classical background" that he seems to be suggesting a set of origins, a clear genealogy. A mutual friend of both John and me, an excellent medieval historian, wrote me in response to an inquiring email: I do continue to wish that J[ohn] had cast his argument somewhat differently than he does. Despite the historical sensitivity of J[ohn]'s discussion of translation problems, there are still places in the book that lend themselves to what I regard as a very non-historical "was it or wasn't it a gay marriage ceremony" argument. One expects that [many] like Shaw will confuse the origins of a ceremony with its "nature" or "real meaning." The argument I wish Jeb had made more forthrightly—that the origins of this ceremony are lost in the mists of time, but that it comes to be adapted and adopted to a very wide variety of same-sex relationships that range from political alliances between enemies all the way up to loving relationships that clearly are recognized and regarded by society as marriages, and that it is precisely the adaptability of this ceremony to such a wide spectrum of human experience (and the social toleration that such adaptability demonstrates) that constitutes its historical importance and interest—that argument would have made it harder for [people] like Shaw to attack. I'm not sure about those enemies, but the point is, I think, well taken.

Confronting the difficulties people have with SSU has made me realize just how hard it is for our contemporaries to grasp another key characteristic of the medieval context. John doesn't articulate it himself in quite this way, nor is it an easy concept to get even history students to grasp. But as I have learned in a number of contexts, the early middle ages, and in some cases the high and late medieval periods as well, were able to deal with massive doses of what we might now call "cognitive dissonance." At the risk of seeming to talk about "the medieval mind," let me nonetheless claim that there was an astonishing capacity for unclarity, even contradiction; like the famous character from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, they believed multiple impossible—and let me add—contradictory things before breakfast. I first learned this lesson at the beginning of my own medieval studies, when I wrote on Equivocal Oaths and Ordeals and Medieval Literature (1975). Despite the fact that chapter and verse could be cited against the practice of Christians staging ordeals, tradition, the continuation of practices handed down, involved so much momentum, that in fact no one did effectively cite those verses until the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. Such was the inertial momentum of the system that even after 1215 both practice and above all representations of ordeals continued for several centuries.

My point—and this I think should be added to any discussion of CSTH as well as SSU—is that it is the height of anachronism to rush backwards with current expectations for systemic consistency, to flail our Bibles and say "this goes against scripture" and therefore earlier believing Christians couldn't have countenanced it. Of course they could. What we need to consider is that the so-called Age of Faith is not marked by its consistent adherence to the letter, even the spirit, of the scriptures. Faith itself helped bridge the gaps that were noticed—and as often as not, they weren't even noticed. It is our age, the age of unfaith—particularly among many of the most outspoken and self-proclaiming Christians—that can't handle seeming contradictions. Neo-Pharisees, believers in the body and the letter, they have, indeed the modern world by and large has completely lost an understanding of transcendence and true faith. But then again, blindness to inconsistencies may not be a characteristic of just the medieval mind. What is that saw about the mote and the beam?

* * *

When I was recently visiting the University of California at Berkeley, a medievalist there said he had read SSU, as he had read John's earlier works, and was not convinced. But he treasured how reading the book sparked his own disagreements and resistances, creating a dialogue with Boswell. It was, he said, as if you were in a seminar with a "maddening teacher" who provoked one debate after another, all of them worth having, and made you think hard. It's that way, I think, that we should read SSU—as a course by a master teacher, whose real aim is to get us involved in the material, in challenging him and above all, our own assumptions. He has by no means ended debate. Rather, he has, as he intended, only initiated it. Which I, too, hope to have done this evening.

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