Many obituaries have been written for John Boswell since his death at age 47 last Christmas Eve, and many eulogies read. I don't intend to write another; I did not know Professor Boswell well enough to catalogue his life's achievements or enumerate his many virtues. But as a gay man and as a Yale student, I have been doubly aware of Boswell's achievements.

No scholar has done more than Boswell to cast light on the status of gay people throughout the sweep of Western history. With the publication of Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality in 1980, he almost single-handedly convinced the academy that lesbian and gay studies could, should, and indeed must be pursued by serious historians. In last year's Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe he took an audacious argument and crafted a stunning scholarly work that goes to the heart of not only historical questions but current debates about gay rights as well. Its success reminds scholars that their work can have a powerful impact on the lives of everyday people far from the academy.

Indeed, only a handful of Yale professors during my time here have received as much widespread public interest for a scholarly work--after all, not even Harold Bloom's mass-market The Western Canon made it into Doonesbury . And that comparison is vital: at a time when talk of "Western civilization" can seem like a code word for "reactionary retrenchment," Boswell's life and work are a crucial reminder for Yale and the wider world that progressive multicultural scholarship can and does rise even from studies of European antiquity. While virtually everyone knows about Boswell's work on homosexuals, fewer realize that his early work and much of his teaching at Yale focused on relations between Christians, Muslims, and Jews in the Middle Ages. And although his scholarly outlook was rooted in an essentialist philosophy (that sexuality reflects not a cultural construction but a trans-historical biological fact) he revealed the ways that various medieval societies could allow diverse people to transcend differences and make room for each other. In this way, as members of a society wracked by mutual intolerance, we all have a huge stake in Boswell's work.

All of my understanding of the importance of Boswell the scholar is centered around my awe of his truly incredible personality. I had the chance to interview him for two stories I wrote for this magazine last school year. But it felt more like a relaxed tutorial than an interview. The subjects of instruction ranged widely, casually. Somehow, he seemed a bit more than human, an unimaginably wise, warm, and witty angel. It's one thing to meet a genius, but quite another to be genuinely welcomed and put at ease by one of the great minds of one's time.

So the interview fell away and a wonderful chat ensued, filling perhaps only 20 minutes of his busy November day but making an indelible mark on my memory. He had provided the only intelligent voice in a bizarre Harper's Magazine symposium on university rules prohibiting student-professor sex, so I opened with those questions. He began with a highly-reasoned moral explanation of why such relationships were "a bad idea, not terrible, not like molesting your own children or something, but not well-advised," and continued by relating stories about the times students had hit on him. (Who could blame them? Even though he was obviously ill at the time of our interview, he still possessed the handsome charm of the young scholar-rebel who smiles up from the back of his books.)

He fleshed out the details of the story, mentioned in Harper's, of the gorgeous jock who wandered into his office hours to chat one cool fall day clad only in tiny running shorts. "It was obvious that he wanted to provoke me," said Boswell judiciously, sighing. "And he didn't." He went on to tell of a female student who had made a habit of coming in for extra help. "She would come in and I would sit on one side of the desk and she would always say, 'Why don't I come around there and show you?' And she'd lean on me," he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. "Did this person not have a clue? I'm probably the most well-known gay man at Yale. I mean, how hard is it to figure out--that won't work."

Of course I knew Boswell as a gay icon here--and elsewhere--and wanted his thoughts on the "one in four, maybe more" controversy. He explained that his time at William and Mary and at Harvard had convinced him that Yale was no more gay than many other schools, just more open of late about homosexuality. But many gay alumni he met felt differently; he talked about some friends of his, Manhattan attorneys who graduated from Yale in the 1970s, who insist that Old Blue is really quite pink. "Of course they think it's a gay school," he laughed, "because they had a great time."

My list of questions exhausted, I thanked him profusely, smiled, shook his hand, and left. I never saw John Boswell again, but I wept at his February 3 memorial service as friends and colleagues from all over the world gathered to pay their respects. It was my first memorial service for someone who died with AIDS, but I will always remember it as the second time I had the privilege to sit in John Boswell's presence.

He was there during the reading of scriptures from his Christian faith and from the Islamic and Judaic texts he spent his life studying. He was there as his teachers and students praised his contributions to the study of history and of gay and lesbian people's place in it. He was there as loved ones praised his courage, his warmth, his friendship, and his devotion to teaching as an essential part of scholarship. He was there as a mournful trumpet played "When You Wish Upon a Star" in homage to the love of all things Disney that inspired his yearly pilgrimage to Orlando. And he was there almost palpably as his sister struggled to read from C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, the children's books whose Christian allegorical tales her brother read to her when they were young. She told us that Boswell, near the close of his life, used Narnia to comfort her, to explain how God could allow the presence of evil. Referring to Aslan, the Christ-figure of Narnia, he said, "Remember--He's no tame lion."

And John Boswell was there as we filed out of Battell, knowing that it was right to mourn his untimely death but perhaps more right to celebrate his abiding contributions. Many who were there hope in some way to contribute to the scholarly mission he helped found; all would do well to live up to the standards of courage and humanity he set. But even more in death than in life, John Boswell seems to me a little more than human: he was no tame lion, either.

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