Failed Attempt to Rewrite History: Against the Myth of the Byzantine Gay Marriage Rite

Writing the history of a religious institution involves understanding concepts and language within their historical and cultural context. Yale professor John Boswell's book purports to find precedents for homosexual marriage, particularly in Eastern Orthodoxy during the late Byzantine period. His main contention is that the Byzantines regarded the rite of adelphopoiesis, a Greek term translated as "same-sex union" by Boswell, as a form of marriage contracted between two males and blessed by the Church.

It is beyond dispute that there are rites for adelphopoiesis contained in Byzantine manuscripts dating from the ninth to the 15th century. The ceremony was conducted by a priest for two males in church, and contained symbols common to Byzantine marriage rites including holding candles, joining hands, receiving Communion, and processing three times around a table used in the celebration. Prayers used for the sacerdotal blessing referred to God establishing "spiritual broth­ers" (pneumatikous adelphous) and contained references to sainted pairs, including most no­tably SS Sergius and Bacchus, who were famous for their friend­ship. The order of the service var­ied, but appeared to possess a simple structure, usually includ­ing petitions followed by the cen­tral prayer(s) of benediction and a dismissal.

In order to evaluate whether this service was equivalent to a marriage ceremony, it is necessary to understand how marital unions were formed in late Byzantium, and then to compare the rites. Our concern in this analysis will not be to examine the content of the prayers involved in the rites, as has already been accomplished in sev­eral reviews of Boswell's work, but to focus on the context in which the rites were used and described in late Byzantine society.

Read the rest here.

HT: Pravoslavie