Download PDF | Brother Making In Late Antiquity And Byzantium Monks, Laymen, And Christian Ritual Oxford University Press, USA ( 2016)
369 Pages
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has grown over a long period that included a transatlantic move from Los Angeles to Vienna. It was begun in earnest in 2008-9, when I was fortunate to spend a year as a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and concluded in fall 2014, when I was a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College. The congenial surroundings and spirit of inquisitiveness that I have come to associate with Oxford for three decades have been an inspiration on both occasions.
In the course of these six years, my work has benefited from the encouragement, advice, and assistance of countless people and numerous institutions. Although I would like to thank them all, Ican mention only a few here and in the footnotes. Malcolm Choat deserves special thanks for reading and commenting on chapter 3, as does Daniel Galadza for reading chapter 2. For generous assistance in the study of the manuscripts, I thank Father Justin Sinaites, Archbishop Aristarchos at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate in Jerusalem, and Stefano Parenti. Special thanks are due to Christine Angelidi, Wendy Bracewell, Philip Booth, Peter Brown, Liz Carmichael, Angelos Chaniotis, Maria Couroucli, Maria Efthymiou, Giinter Fuchs, Fiona Griffiths, Gelina Harlaftis, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Michael Herzfeld, Dirk Hoerder, Mayke de Jong, Nigel Kennell, Derek Krueger, Krystina Kubina, Peter Mackridge, Paul Magdalino, Charis Messis, Arietta Papaconstantinou, George Rousseau, Robert Romanchuk, Christodoulos Papavarnavas, George Rousseau, Vicenzo Ruggieri, SJ, Andreas Schminck, George Sidéris, Robert Taft, SJ, Allan A. Tulchin, Ingrid Weichselbaum, and Robin Darling Young.
Research on parts of this work was carried out during a Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and while holding a Visiting Professorship in the Department of Medieval Studies at the Central European University in Budapest—both institutions extending generous hospitality. A research stay at the Max-Planck-Institut fiir Europaische Rechtsgeschichte in Frankfurt facilitated focused research on the Byzantine legal tradition. The Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation sponsored a lecture tour that enabled me to discuss my work in the early stages with audiences at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, as well as at Harvard University and at the Hellenic College and Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Three institutions have sustained me intellectually and supported my research: UCLA, my academic home for almost two decades, and my new alma mater, the University of Vienna. In addition, the Division of Byzantine Research of the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Science has provided a context of focused enquiry.
Over the years, I have presented aspects of this work in lectures and at conferences, discussed it at dinner tables with friends or in ecclesiastical settings with clergy, monks, and nuns. Often, I was pointed in new directions or provided with additional references. Countless times, I encountered people with roots in the Mediterranean cultures or in the areas of Orthodox Christianity who knew a family member or a friend who was joined in ritual brotherhood in one way or another. Their perspective has enriched my appreciation of the vast spectrum of meaning that brother-making can evoke.
Discharging a debt of gratitude, as a wise person once said, is the only debt that makes one richer. The following pages are a small recompense for the generosity of spirit that I have encountered in the course of this project. If they appear deficient, I hope they will at least present enough material for others to carry the study of this fascinating phenomenon further.
Oxford, on the Feast of Saint Catherine, November 25, 2014
SPELLING AND TRANSLITERATION
Consistence in rendering into English personal names and place names that originally appeared in Greek is impossible to achieve without causing offence to eye and ear of any but the most specialized readership. I have used anglicized forms when they are common (Basil, not Basileios; Heraclius, not Herakleios; Athens, not Athena), and transliterated forms otherwise (Nikolaos, Niketas).
For the transliteration of words or sequences of words, I have adopted the intuitive system of “Greeklish,”' with the further addition of a circumflex for long vowels (6 for omega, é for eta). The only exception is adelphopoiesis, which is treated as an anglicized word. On this basis, it will be easy to reconstruct the original Greek for those who are familiar with the language, while those who are not will at least be able to read and recognize relevant words and expressions.
Introduction
The entry point for this study is the prayers for brother-making (adelphopoiesis), a uniquely Byzantine way to create a relation of ritual kinship. They are first attested in a manuscript of the late eighth century and remain a prominent feature in the liturgical tradition of medieval Byzantium and beyond. Brother-making of this kind, performed by a priest in a church, was commonly practiced among Byzantine men, sometimes also between men and women and between women and women, at all levels of society, not just at the court and among the aristocracy. Yet, there was some degree of uncertainty and unease about this relationship. Church leaders and imperial legislators, while aware of its popularity and fully cognizant of their own collusion, made every effort to distance themselves from it.
This raises an interesting set of questions that take us to the inner workings of Byzantine society. The purpose and application of adelphopoiesis can be studied within three large, and partially overlapping, contexts: within the context of male-male emotional and sexual relations, as a way to formalize a partnership; within the context of ritual kinship strategies, as a way to expand one’s family circle; and within the context of Byzantine Christianity, as a way for the church to exercise influence and control. All of these considerations will come to bear, to varying degrees, in the following pages.
Since this material has the potential of becoming a minefield for scholarly disagreement, it may be wise to spell out my own interest in the subject rather than leave it to others to second-guess my motivations. In the twenty years since I first paid attention to the ritual, my own approach to the topic has somewhat evolved. At that time, my abiding interest in the role that living holy men and spiritual leaders, as opposed to dead saints, played in the creation and shaping of communities led me to investigate the role of the baptismal sponsor as a spiritual guide and companion of the new Christian-in-the-making during the early centuries, when baptism was sought by adults as a result of personal conversion. I was particularly curious about the responsibility and obligations that went along with baptismal sponsorship, whether in the spiritual realm, in the form of assistance to help a penitent sinner regain the path of virtue, or in the social role of the godfather, after child baptism had become the norm. In the Byzantine tradition, the godfather is known as the “coparent” (synteknos) of the biological father, and godparenthood (synteknia) was, after marriage, the second important strategy to expand one’s kin group in a way that was recognized by the church. Analogous considerations were at work in brother-making, which was a third strategy of ritual kinship, the least onerous of the three with regard to the way it was concluded and the consequences for the next generations. I argued this case in a paper presented in December 1994, at the American Philological Association meeting in Atlanta, entitled “A Different Kind of Parenthood: Baptismal Sponsorship in Late Antiquity.” John Boswell’s book Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe (UK title: The Marriage of Likeness: Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe) had appeared just a few months earlier, and it seemed clear to me that the evidence he had assembled for adelphopoiesis in Byzantium offered ample scope for more detailed study. It emerged that Brent Shaw, a Roman historian, who was also present at the conference in Atlanta, and Elizabeth Brown, a historian of medieval France, were at that time also working on ritual brotherhood in their own areas of specialization, and the result of our extensive collaboration was the “Symposium” of three articles, with a long introduction, in the journal Traditio, published in 1997.'
Since its publication, Boswell’s book has become something of a beacon for some, and a lightning rod for others, in the current discussion over the legal institution and church blessings of gay marriage. The number of responses among scholars and by the concerned and interested public has been accordingly extensive. Tracing them would be a task in its own right, a task that others have made theirs.’
Among the general flurry of reviews and responses that Boswell’s book generated, I was not alone in concluding that the adelphopoiesis ritual in Byzantium was not created with the purpose of sanctioning and sanctifying homosexual relationships, as he seemed to suggest, although I stand firm in my conviction that this evaluation of the historical evidence does in no way undermine the legitimacy of seeking recognition for same-sex partnerships in current societies.
In recent years, my attention has been captured by the ecclesiastical ritual and the need to explain its existence. Why was it created in the first place? What are the possible antecedents for prayers to invoke God’s blessing on a relationship of two men? Just as the context of spiritual guidance, including baptism, led to the establishment of the role of the baptismal sponsor, which later developed into the social role of the godfather, was there perhaps a similar pattern for adelphopoiesis? This led me back to the social world of early monasticism, where recent studies, augmented by archaeological evidence, have shown that, in addition to living as a hermit or ina large organized community, living arrangements for two or three people were not uncommon. This third option, identified as semi-eremitic or semi-anchoritic monasticism, offers the obvious context for the development of prayers to bless two men as they embark on their spiritual journey with mutual support.
The structure of this book is determined by this line of inquiry. It is divided into six large chapters.
The first chapter gives a brief introduction to social structures in Byzantium, beginning with kinship and the family and the possibilities for the extension of kinship through marriage, godparenthood, or adoption. The focus then moves to male-male relations cast within the framework and language of brotherhood. The second part of the chapter deals with friendship both as a social institution and as an affective relationship, and its interpretation by Christian authors. It concludes with a discussion of homosociability in Byzantium and the history of the study of homosexuality inasmuch as it is relevant to the present study. Throughout this chapter, comparative material from other Christian medieval societies is adduced as necessary in order to highlight the particular features of Byzantine brother-making.
The second chapter, augmented by Appendices 1 to 3 at the end, presents the manuscript evidence for the brother-making ritual beginning with the late eighth century, and elucidates the context of its use based on the history of the manuscripts up to the sixteenth century. The prayers were equally available in Constantinople as the countryside, in parish churches as well as monasteries, and seem to have found particular resonance among orthodox Christians in Southern Italy, perhaps as a way to cement friendly relations with neighbors of other faiths. Further insights about the intent of the ritual—or rather, its lack of similarity with the marriage ritual—are gleaned from a discussion of the liturgical gestures and from an analysis of the prayers.
The third chapter addresses the core issue, the question of the origin of the church ritual for adelphopoiesis. It makes a case for early monasticism of the fourth to seventh centuries as the original context for the practice of blessing a bond between two men, making them “brothers.” This entails a detailed study of the different aspects of a close relationship between two monastic “brothers”: living arrangements, prayer assistance, and the sharing of spiritual capital in the process of penance, as well as emotional perils and sexual temptations. Here, the first of four case studies, on the Life of Symeon the Fool, is inserted. It depicts the relationship, told by a hagiographical master narrator of the seventh century, between two casual acquaintances who became monks together and were joined to each other through a prayer ritual. Such brotherhoods of two men continued to be a feature of Orthodox monasticism throughout the Byzantine centuries and beyond, as the conclusion of this chapter shows.
The fourth chapter investigates the practice of adelphopoiesis among men of the world. It begins by tracing the expansion of adelphopoiesis beyond the immediate social context of monasticism, based on a cluster of hagiographical texts of the seventh century. The use of adelphopoiesis by monks to generate connections to the outside world was regarded with great concern by monastic reformers. By the middle Byzantine period, adelphopoiesis between laymen was well entrenched as one of several available social networking strategies to expand one’s kin group. A second case study presents the relation between the future emperor Basil I and John, the son of the wealthy lady Danelis, in the mid-ninth century, as an example for the employment of the ritual for the purpose of social advancement.
The fifth chapter moves from the description of individual relationships to a study of the prescriptions regarding adelphopoiesis by imperial law-givers and ecclesiastical rule-makers. They are unanimous in acknowledging the widespread practice of adelphopoiesis through the participation of priests, yet signal their awareness of the dangers it represents, in their view, for the crossing of boundaries between kin groups, social classes, gender, ethnicities, and religions. This is brought to the fore in the third case study, the legal rulings and advice of a bishop-administrator in thirteenth-century Epiros, Demetrios Chomatenos, which shows how men and women of the late Byzantine period interpreted the ritual through their own use.
The sixth chapter presents by way of a postscript further, select evidence for the use of adelphopoiesis as a boundary-crossing strategy in post-Byzantine times in the regions of Orthodox Christendom. It is here that the thesis of the book becomes most apparent: Byzantine adelphopoiesis was motivated by Christianity and depended on the collaboration of priests, yet did not enjoy official recognition by the church. It can thus serve as an example of a social institution that owed its existence to the people who engaged in it. Institutional control followed behind social practice and was largely confined to first offering and then monitoring the ceremonial.
This book, then, is a very deliberate attempt to treat adelphopoiesis within a particular explanatory context. While I make no apologies for that, I have tried to present all the evidence available to me at this point. Others will no doubt draw their own conclusions or add further facets to the picture presented here. My hope is, at the very least, to have contributed to the exploration of Byzantium as a society whose dynamism was to a substantial degree anchored in Christian belief and practice.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق