Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (UK title: The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe) is a historical study written by the American historian John Boswell and first published by Villard Books in 1994. Then a professor at Yale University, Boswell was a specialist on homosexuality in Christian Europe, having previously authored three books on the subject. It proved to be his final publication, released in the same year as his death. Boswell's primary argument is that throughout much of medieval Christian Europe, unions between figures of the same sex and gender were socially accepted. Outlining the problems with accurately translating Ancient Greek and Latin terms regarding love, relationships, and unions into English, he discusses the wider context of marriage and unions in the classical world and early Christian Europe. The book attracted widespread academic and popular attention on publication. Reviews in academic, peer-reviewed journals were mixed, with some scholars arguing that Boswell's translation of key terms was incorrect. The book was also widely reviewed in the mainstream media and the Christian media, with some conservative reviewers claiming that it was written to support the "gay agenda".
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  audience. In the International Gay and Lesbian Review, Elisabeth J. Davenport positively reviewed Boswell's book, remarking that it "appears to leave no imaginable ground upon which his accusers can challenge him." Noting that the book had been criticised before it had even been published by those opposed to its findings, she states her belief that while the case he presents is not infallible, the evidence "leans in his favour". Praising his use of footnotes, she considered it meticulously researched, and ultimately notes that it "adds both liveliness and dignity to the debate" regarding same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe, as such providing a "fitting memorial" 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  In the introduction, Boswell highlights the subjectivity of marital unions, which differ between societies in their function and purpose. He explains his use of "same-sex unions" over "gay marriage", outlining the epistemological problems of the latter in a historical context. Noting that same-sex unions have been ethnographically and historically recorded in Africa, Asia and the Americas, he remarks that there is no reason why they should not have been found in Europe. He acknowledges that the book focuses on male same-sex unions, explaining that the historical evidence from pre-modern Europe predominantly discusses men, the socially dominant gender of the time.  Chapter one, "The Vocabulary of Love and Marriage", highlights 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  In 2003, The Friend by the scholar Alan Bray was published. Continuing Boswell's line of research, it served as a defense of his thesis, confirming that, "[f]or a very long period, formal amatory unions, conjugal, elective and indissoluble, between two members of the same sex were made in Europe, publicly recognised and consecrated in churches through Christian ritual."
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  be very important for showing how "social arrangements and processes can shape and sometimes bend normative perceptions of the boundaries between friendship, affection, and love." Concluding his review, he praised the book as "an admirable, challenging, seminal work", although he lamented that it did not make use of sociology. The classicist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn, himself openly gay, published a scathing and detailed review of Boswell's book in the scholarly journal Arion. According to Mendelsohn, judged as a work of philology Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe is a "bad book", and "its arguments are weak, its methods unsound, its conclusions highly questionable". Mendelsohn argued 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  whose disingenuousness verges on fraud." The sexologists Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog reviewed Same-Sex Unions for The Journal of Sex Research, noting that Boswell was clearly aware of the social repercussions of his work for contemporary lesbian and gay people. They believed that its direct effect on American political and social thought would be its greatest influence, far beyond that which it had within medieval scholarship. Although stating that they were not convinced by all of Boswell's arguments, and were unqualified to judge many others, they thought that the book constituted a "major work of historiography" by bringing many neglected primary sources to a 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  By July 1994, the book had gone through four printings and sold 31,000 copies, something far in excess of most works on medieval history. General media reviewing the book in 1994–95 included The New Yorker, The Economist, People Weekly, The Spectator, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune, The Times Literary Supplement, The Washington Post, The New Republic, the New Statesman & Society, The New York Times, and Newsweek. The book was also widely reviewed within Christian media in the United States. Writing in The Christian Century magazine, the historical theologian Philip Lyndon Reynolds expressed "profound problems" with Boswell's positions, which he 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  Speculum, the journal of the Medieval Academy of America, published a review by the historian Joan Cadden of Kenyon College, in which she described the book as a monument to Boswell's "prodigious accomplishments", providing an opportunity to celebrate his life and mourn his death. Although largely positive of it, she thought that Boswell's choice of the term "same-sex union" was unsuccessful, because in its usage it became a "transparent euphemism" for "homosexual marriage", the very term that Boswell sought to avoid. She also thought he was unwilling to deal with the views of theorists of social construction, as evidenced by his description of the 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  rest largely on "ambiguity and equivocation" and "conceptual slipperiness". He is particularly critical of Boswell's use of "same-sex unions" as a translation of terms like adelphopoiesis, believing that this was an "ill-chosen and dangerously slippery term" because it has been widely interpreted in the media as an innuendo for "gay marriage" and therefore lacks neutrality. He also rejects Boswell's argument that the same-sex ceremonies were found in Western Christianity as well as Eastern Christianity, stating that the "heterogeneous bits of evidence" assembled to argue for this position were insufficient. Reynolds wrote: "Buried in this very muddled book is an interesting and plausible thesis, which goes 
Title: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe
Content:  classical Europe, he discusses Nero's union with Sporus, Martial's description of a male–male "marriage" in the early second century, and a female–female union in Lucian's Dialogues of the Courtesans. Boswell argues that these same-sex unions were not "imitative" of mixed-sex marriage, but perhaps represented an attempt by same-sex couples to "participate in" the wider culture. He subsequently deals with the introduction of legal prohibitions against such same-sex unions in the late Empire. Chapter four, "Views of the New Religion", looks at the influence of early Christianity on relationships. Noting that the faith encouraged asceticism and celibacy, he discusses the devalued role of marriage in Christian society, and the 

Question: Who is the author of Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe?
Answer: John Boswell.
John Eastburn Boswell.