John Boswell's revolutionary study of the history of attitudes toward homosexuality in the Christian West challenges received opinion and our own preconceptions about the Church's past relationship to its gay members, among whom were priests, and even bishops and canonized saints. The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, the product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.