BROOTEN: Love Between Women

Brooten, Bernadette

Love Between Women

Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism

Univ of Chicago Press, 1998

412 pages

Christian, Church History, Lesbian

"Love Between Women" examines female homoeroticism and the role of women in the ancient Roman world. Employing an unparalleled range of cultural sources, Brooten finds evidence of marriages between women and establishes that condemnations of female homoerotic practices were based on widespread awareness of love between women. "An extraordinary accomplishment. . . . A definitive source for all future discussion of homoeroticism and the Bible".--Mary Rose D'Angelo, "Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review" "[Brooten's] convincing analysis . . . not only profoundly reshapes our understanding of the past, but it should also shape the way in which that past, particularly the early Christian texts with their immense normative weight, will be used for the future".--Anne L. Clark, "Journal of Lesbian Studies" " "Love Between Women" gives contemporary debates on sexuality a carefully delineated past. It boldly insists upon a different future, one informed by history but not tyrannized by it".--Susan Ackerman, "Lambda Book Report" "Fascinating, provocative and lucid. . . . Brooten has made a fundamental contribution to women's and gender studies, gay and lesbian studies, and classics".--Elizabeth A. Castelli, "Women's Review of Books" Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Studies Book, 1997

BRAY: The Friend

Bray, Alan

The Friend

1994

380 pages

Catholic, History, Same-sex Unions, Lesbian & Gay.

Recommended, but academic in tone: not always easy reading.

From Google Books:

"In the chapel of Christ's College, Cambridge, some twenty years ago, historian Alan Bray made an astonishing discovery: a tomb shared by two men, John Finch and Thomas Baines. The monument featured eloquent imagery dedicated to their friendship: portraits of the two friends linked by a knotted cloth. And Bray would soon learn that Finch commonly described his friendship with Baines as a connubium or marriage.

There was a time, as made clear by this monument, when the English church not only revered such relations between men, but also blessed them. Taking this remarkable idea as its cue, The Friend explores the long and storied relationship between friendship and the traditional family of the church in England. This magisterial work extends from the year 1000, when Europe acquired a shape that became its enduring form, and pursues its account up to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ......

Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Friend is a book rich in suggestive propositions as well as eye-opening details. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the history of England and the importance of friendship in everyday life. "

— History Today’s "Book of the Year, 2004"

“Bray’s loving coupledom is something with a proper historical backbone, with substance and form, something you can trace over time, visible and archeologicable. . . . Bray made a great contribution in helping to bring this long history to light.”

James Davidson, London Review of Books

Contents:

Editor’s note

Introduction

1. Wedded Brother
2. Friend to Sir Philip Sidney
3. Families and Friends
4. The Body of the Friend
5. Friends and Enemies
6. Friendship and Modernity
7. Coda: the Lickey Hills, August 1890

Afterword: Historians and Friendship