The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy

How scandal-averse policies in conjunction with the requirement of clerical celibacy resulted in the widespread sexual abuse of boys from late antiquity through the later Middle Ages

In the fourth century, clerics began to distinguish themselves from members of the laity by virtue of their augmented claims to holiness. Because clerical celibacy was key to this distinction, religious authorities of all stripes—patristic authors, popes, theologians, canonists, monastic founders, and commentato...