Orsi, author of History and Presence, This is a powerful and important book. It is also a major step in the dismantling of the Catholic closet.'-Robert A. Elliott's deeply learned and unflinching account of the sexual privileges accorded priests and prelates from antiquity through the later middle ages-enshrined in theology and law and protected by secrets, silence, and lies-is an essential contribution towards a new history of Catholic sexuality. The Corrupter of Boys exposes once and for all the moral and intellectual emptiness of this claim. The lens through which Elliott reads the history of Latin Christianity-as a history of the 'ever expanding scope of clerical privilege' that enabled and shielded clerical abusers-is not just persuasive but must now be central to how we write Western medieval church history., 'When the contemporary Catholic clergy sexual abuse crisis first broke in the 1980s, church officials in the United States and Rome pointed to the immorality of secular modernity as its cause. The Corrupter of Boys offers an unflinching account of sexual abuse within the medieval church, underscoring the exploitative potential of a male clerical culture that normalized corporal punishment, defined boys as naturally sinful and even sexually precocious, and claimed divine authorization for ecclesiastical hierarchies. Doyle, J.C.D., C.A.D.C., This is a difficult, important, and heartbreaking book.

It is a remarkable and invaluable book.'-Thomas P. In The Corrupter of Boys Dyan Elliott shows us the evident parallels between the medieval and modern periods.

Among the greatest failures of the hierarchical leadership of the Catholic Church has been the abysmal ignorance of the Church's own unrevised history, the unwillingness to entertain the validity of the events of the past when they are presented, and the inability to learn from that past. 'In my work as a court expert and consultant worldwide, I have been involved in more than one discussion with Church apologists who assert that the sexual violation of boys is a new phenomenon.

The Corrupter of Boys by Dyan Elliott