Crompton Louis. Homosexuality & Civilization

The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 2003. — 640 pages.How have major civilizations of the last two millennia treated people who were attracted to their own sex? In a narrative tour de force, Louis Crompton chronicles the lives and achievements of homosexual men and women alongside a darker history of persecution, as he compares the Christian West with the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, Arab Spain, imperial China, and pre-Meiji Japan. Ancient Greek culture celebrated same-sex love in history, literature, and art, making high claims for its moral influence. By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World. Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of sodomites in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin’s Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters—Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio—often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great. Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece. Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, Homosexuality and Civilization is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.Книга прослеживает роль гомосексуализма в общественной жизни, культуре и искусстве на протяжении длительного исторического периода: начиная с архаической Греции и Иудеи и заканчивая XIX веком. Авторы рассматривают, как изменялось общественное отношение к феномену гомосексуализма в различных обществах. Книга содержит очень большой фактический и библиографический материал. Будет одинаково интересна как специалистам гуманитариям, так и непрофессионалам.Early Greece 776 – 480 BCE
A Millennium of Greek Love.
Homer’s Iliad.
Crete, Sparta, Chalcis.
Athletics and the Cult of Beauty.
Sappho Alcaeus, Ibycus, Anacreon.
Theognis of Megara
Athens’ Rulers.
The Tyrannicides.
Judea 900 BCE – 600 CE
The Judgment of Leviticus.
The Threat to Population
Sodom’s Gold.
Who Were the Kedeshim?
Philo of Alexandria.
The Talmud.
Classical Greece 480 – 323 BCE
Pindar’s Odes.
Greek Tragedy.
Phidias.
The Comedies of Aristophanes.
Plato’s Symposium.
The Phaedrus and the Laws.
Xenophon.
Aristotle’s Dicta.
Zeno and the Stoics
Aeschines’ Against Timarchus.
The Sacred Band of Thebes
Philip and Alexander.
Rome and Greece 323 BCE – 138 CE.
Sexuality and Empire. Cicero and Roman Politics.
Greek Love in the Aeneid.Meleager and Callimachus.
Catullus and Tibullus.Theocritus and Corydon
Horace. Ovid’s Myths. Lesbianism
Petronius’ Satyricon. Suetonius and the Emperors
Statius, Martial, Juvenal.Hadrian and Antinous.
Christians and Pagans 1 – 565 CE.
The Gospels.
Intertestamental Judaism and Paul
Moses and the Early Church.
Greek Love in Late Antiquity
Plutarch’s Dialogue on Love.
The Lucianic Affairs of the Heart.
Two Romances and an Epic.
Roman Law before Constantine.
The Edicts of 342 and 390.
Sodom Transformed
Saint John Chrysostom.
The Persecutions of Justinian.
Darkness Descends 476 – 1049
The Fall of Rome.
Visigothic Spain Church Councils and Penitentials.
The Carolingian Panic
Love in Arab Spain.
The Growth of Canon Law.
The Book of Gomorrah.
The Medieval World 1050 – 1321
The Fortunes of Ganymede. Scandal in High Places.
The Theological Assault. The Inquisition and Its Allies.
The Fate of the Templars.
Secular Laws: The Sowing
The Harvest Begins.
Poets for the Prosecution
Dante’s Admirable Sinners.
Imperial China 500 BCE – 1849
A Peach, a Fish, and a Sleeve.
The Han Emperors
Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism.
Poets and Lovers
From Tang to Song.
Ming China: The West Reacts.
Feng Menglong’s Anatomy of Love.
Fiction and Drama.
The Qing Dynasty.
The Peking Stage.
Italy in the Renaissance 1321 – 1609.
A New Ethos and an Old Repression in the Italian City States.
Death in Venice.
Florence: The Price of Love. Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo.
Michelangelo: Love, Art, and Guilt.
Sodoma and Cellini
Rome and Caravaggio.
Spain and the Inquisition 1497 – 1700
The Spanish Inquisition.
Subcultures in Valencia and Madrid.
The Inquisition in Portugal.
Spain and the New World.
France from Calvin to Louis XIV 1517 – 1715
Outings, Protestant and Catholic
Calvinism and Repression.
Henry III and the Mignons.
The Poets’ Revolt.
Louis XIII, The Just-Monsieur and Madame.
Six Generals.
Les Lesbiennes.Queen ChristinaEngland from the Reformation to William III 1533 – 1702.
Silence and Denial.
Monasteries and the Law.
Elizabethan Literature.
Christopher Marlowe.
The Tragedy of Edward I.
Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
James VI and I.
Francis Bacon.
Puritanism and the Restoration.
Between Women.
William III in England.
Pre-Meiji Japan 800 – 1868
Europe Discovers Japan.
The Buddhist Priesthood-
Samurai and Shoguns.
No Drama and Kabuki.
A Debate and an Anthology.
Saikaku’s Great Mirror.
Tokugawa Finale.
Patterns of Persecution 1700 – 1730.
Policing Paris.
Reforming Britain Souls in Exile.
Witch Hunt in the Netherlands.
Sapphic Lovers 1700 – 1793.
Law and Religion.
Romance and Innuendo.
A Nun and an Actress.
An Ill-Fated Queen.
The Enlightenment 1730 – 1810.
Montesquieu and Beccaria.
Frederick the Great.
The Vagaries of Voltaire.
Diderot and Sade
Toward Reform.
Bentham vs. Blackstone.Notes.Illustration Credits.