Claudia Rapp, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium. Monks, Laymen, and Christian Ritual, New York: Oxford University
Press, 2016, 368pp.
Among medieval Christian societies, Byzantium is
unique in preserving an ecclesiastical ritual of adelphopoiesis, which
pronounces two men, not related by birth, as brothers for life. It has its
origin as a spiritual blessing in the monastic world of late antiquity, and it
becomes a popular social networking strategy among lay people from the ninth
century onwards, even finding application in recent times. Located at the
intersection of religion and society, brother-making exemplifies how social
practice can become ritualized and subsequently subjected to attempts of
ecclesiastical and legal control.
Controversially, adelphopoiesis was at the center of a
modern debate about the existence of same-sex unions in medieval Europe. This
book, the first ever comprehensive history of this unique feature of Byzantine
life, argues persuasively that the ecclesiastical ritual to bless a
relationship between two men bears no resemblance to marriage. Wide-ranging in
its use of sources, from a complete census of the manuscripts containing the
ritual of adelphopoiesis to the literature and archaeology of early
monasticism, and from the works of hagiographers, historiographers, and legal
experts in Byzantium to comparative material in the Latin West and the Slavic
world, Brother-Making in Late Antiquity and Byzantium examines the fascinating
religious and social features of the ritual, shedding light on little known
aspects of Byzantine society.
