Book summary “Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe”: summary

Introduction

You live in a culture that assumes romantic love and marriage are inextricably linked. You likely view historical marriage as a universal template for heterosexual romance.

John Boswell spent twelve years tracking down manuscript versions of same-sex union ceremonies across European libraries. He discovered that premodern societies often institutionalized same-sex unions through recognized liturgical rites.

You will explore how premodern vocabulary, classical marriage, and medieval liturgies reveal a lost history of solemnized same-sex partnerships. This book answers several questions.

• How did premodern societies define love and marriage?
• What role did classical marriage play before romance became central?
• How did early Christianity view sexuality and devotion?
• What do medieval manuscripts reveal about union liturgies?
• Why did western societies eventually obscure these historical practices?

1. Vocabulary of Love and Marriage

Translating ancient vocabulary for love is extremely hazardous because ancient terms were largely interchangeable and lacked rigid modern distinctions between friendly and erotic feelings. John Boswell explains that classical and biblical writers used words like eros, philia, and agape interchangeably. You might misread these terms as precise categories, whereas actual ancient usage shows immense semantic overlap.

Premodern vocabulary for love and marriage was fluid, using interchangeable terms and sibling designations that modern readers frequently misinterpret.

Plato referred to the archetypal Attic lovers Harmodius and Aristogiton using both eros and philia interchangeably within a single sentence.

Premodern marriage arrangements cannot be easily mapped onto modern definitions because even terms for wedding, husband, and wife were highly ambiguous. The Greek gamos originally denoted the physical sexual act itself before extending to ceremonies. Common words for husband and wife were simply the nouns for man and woman.

Jesus uses the ambiguity of the word for men when speaking to the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4:18, noting she has had five men and the one she currently has is not her man.

Premodern texts frequently used sibling designations such as brother to describe romantic partners. Because modern English strictly separates familial and erotic bonds, translating terms like frater as literal brothers misleads you. Sibling terminology frequently carried romantic, contractual, or erotic overtones while primarily emphasizing equality.

Walt Whitman used brother in homoerotic contexts, and modern personal ads frequently use terms like kid brother to seek sexual partners.

In preindustrial societies, becoming brothers meant establishing a joint socioeconomic and legal unit akin to modern marriage. Preindustrial brothers were economically dependent, held joint legal responsibilities, and shared households. Rituals of making brotherhood had material and juridical consequences much closer to modern marriage than to simple friendship.

Laban tells his nephew Jacob in Genesis 29:15 because thou art my brother, illustrating how familial terms applied to non-nuclear relatives and alliances.

Early modern and modern translators inserted terms like spiritual into the titles of same-sex union ceremonies to disguise their true nature. Historical editors labeled ancient offices as offices for spiritual brotherhood even though the word spiritual does not appear in a single original manuscript rubric.

Goar labeled the published ceremony Officium ad spiritualem fraternitatem ineundam, while actual Greek manuscripts used simple rubrics without any reference to spirit.

Premodern chastity did not mean the absence of sexuality, but rather its proper use within recognized social or union structures. Ordinary writers viewed marital sexuality as entirely compatible with chastity, provided it was governed by respect and responsibility.

Pseudocyprian in De singularitate clericorum deliberately juxtaposes the caritas of virgins and spouses to show how moral love operates across different states.

2. Heterosexual Matrimony in Antiquity

In classical antiquity covering Mediterranean heterosexual couplings from 400 B.C.E. to around 400 C.E., unions generally took four distinct forms:

• use
• concubinage
• marriage
• romance

Classical heterosexual marriage operated primarily as a property arrangement and dynastic alliance rather than a romance-based union.

Men exercised sexual access based on control or possession over slaves, servants, and captives without legal obligations. Concubinage was a long-standing personal union for sexual fulfillment with a social inferior, distinct from marriage which involved property alliances. Marriage was the only respectable status for women, while romantic relationships based on mutual attraction existed outside of these coercive structures. Alexander wrote to an acquaintance offering ten talents for a music-girl if the recipient was not in love with her.

Upper-class marriage in premodern societies operated primarily as a business deal and property arrangement centered on dynastic preservation. Families negotiated property transfers and dynastic alliances through formal betrothal ceremonies before weddings, subordinating personal and erotic desires to economic strategy. Martial criticized an acquaintance for spending his wife's dowry on male lovers, noting that the wife was nonetheless valuable because she was rich, noble, learned, and chaste.

Prosperous Greek and Roman males frequently maintained multiple types of sexual relationships simultaneously without incurring social disgrace. A prosperous male might have a wife for dynastic and economic reasons, alongside a concubine and slave women for sex or love, and even visit prostitutes. In Plautus' Menaechmi, a husband sharply asserts to his wife that his love life is none of her business.

Under the Roman Empire, marriage shifted from a system of absolute patriarchal ownership to a more partner-like union. Under the earlier republic, marriage was typically cum manu, meaning the wife was transferred into the husband's absolute ownership or familia. Under the empire, marriage sine manu became common, where the wife did not become the husband's property, creating a household semblance of equality and emphasizing the joining of two independent families.

Classical Roman law established that mutual consent and marital affection constituted a valid marriage rather than physical cohabitation. Legal marriage did not require physical consummation, children, or elaborate government participation, but rather the ongoing mutual intent and consent of the partners and their legal guardians. This foundational legal principle was largely inherited and adopted by the Christian Church.

Surviving papyrus contracts from Roman Egypt detail mutual behavioral restrictions and financial penalties within marriages. Marriage agreements negotiated restrictions on husbands regarding concubines and property, alongside stipulations regarding shared household maintenance and financial penalties for contract breaches. A 92 B.C.E. contract between Philiscus and Apollonia stated that the husband could not bring in another wife, concubine, or male lover, nor have children by another woman, under penalty of forfeiting the dowry. This copper money dowry was agreed upon at 2 talents 4000 drachmae.

Marriage contracts required specific behaviors:

• Supply necessaries, clothing, and proper maintenance for a spouse in proportion to means.
• Refrain from bringing in another wife, concubine, or male lover, or having children by another woman.
• Repay the simple dowry within ten days if the wife chooses of her own will to separate.

3. Greco-Roman Same-Sex Unions

Same-sex relationships in the Greco-Roman world between 400 B.C.E. and 400 C.E. broadly fell into four non-legalistic categories: exploitation, concubinage, affectionate lovers, and formal unions. Unlike heterosexual unions requiring strict legal distinctions for property and offspring, homosexual relationships remained largely fluid.

Same-sex relationships in antiquity ranged from informal associations to formal public ceremonies complete with traditional wedding rites.

Plato presented same-sex unions in his Symposium as permanent, exclusive attachments of coevals driven by innate sexual preferences originating from the splitting of primal double humans. Plato cited sections 191-92 of his Symposium detailing the myth of primal double beings. Plato cited the eagerness of Achilles to join his lover Patroclus in death as a parallel to a wife's willingness to die for her husband.

The Sacred Band of Thebes was an elite military unit composed entirely of pairs of male lovers whose mutual devotion inspired supreme martial valor. Created by Gorgidas in 378 B.C.E., the 300 men fought side by side to avoid disgrace before their loved ones. Philip of Macedon surveyed the fallen Sacred Band at Chaeronea in 338 B.C.E., wept, and praised their nobility upon learning they were a band of lovers.

Ancient Cretans practiced a ritual abduction ceremony that established a legal, socially recognized same-sex union complete with gifts, sacrifices, and a public confirmation of consent. An older lover would ceremonially abduct a youth after giving prior notice, take him to the country for feasting and hunting, and return him to the city.

You can observe the Cretan ritual through its established steps:

• The lover advises friends 3 or more days beforehand that the abduction is going to take place.
• The abductor and youth go to the country for a couple of months of feasting and hunting.
• The youth returns to the city bearing a military outfit, an ox, and a chalice as specified by law.
• The youth sacrifices the ox to Zeus and gives a feast for the accompanying witnesses.
• The youth states publicly at the banquet whether he is pleased with the relationship or seeks redress for forced use.

Scythian males formed lifelong formal unions by mixing their blood in a chalice and swearing solemn oaths of mutual devotion. Partners cut their fingers, let their blood run into a chalice, dipped the tips of their swords in it, and drank together. A Scythian speaker in Lucian's dialogue contrasted Greek courting with the Scythian blood chalice and solemn oath to establish an indissoluble bond, limited to a maximum of 3 such contracts in a lifetime.

Some same-sex couples in the Roman Empire solemnized their relationships through public marriage ceremonies complete with dowries, veils, and traditional rites. Authors like Martial and Juvenal documented public weddings where male partners played the bride's role, signed marriage tablets, and lived openly as spouses. The emperor Nero married a man named Sporus in a public ceremony with a dowry, a veil, and all the solemnities of matrimony between 54 and 68 C.E.

Romans also utilized collateral adoption, designating a partner as an adoptive brother or heir, as a legal mechanism to formalize same-sex unions. Emperors Diocletian and Maximian issued a rescript in 285 C.E. declaring an adoptive brotherhood invalid because one of the parties was a peregrinus lacking legal marriage rights.

4. Views of the New Religion

Expecting the imminent end of the world, early Christians regarded human pleasures as trivial in the sublunary world. Heterosexual marriage was treated as a concession to the material world rather than a spiritual ideal. Ecclesiastical authorities made little effort to regulate it until the tenth century, declaring it a sacrament only in 1215.

Early Christianity profoundly devalued earthly marriage, viewing it as a dangerous distraction and a compromise with the material world.

Celibacy emerged as the premier lifestyle for devout believers, offering personal freedom and a path to power. St. Augustine formulated the tripartite standard for marriage consisting of fides, proles, sacramentum, and also defended spiritual marriages where couples abstained from physical contact.

St. Augustine lived with a concubine for 15 years, fathered a son with her, and then dismissed her abruptly when seeking to marry an heiress to advance his ambitions.

Christianity deliberately replaced blood ties with sibling terminology, creating a complex overlap between spiritual brotherhood and romantic imagery derived from biblical archetypes. The New Testament used sibling referents to express affection among believers. Texts like the Book of Tobit and the Song of Songs provided influential archetypes where lovers addressed each other as brother and sister.

In the Book of Tobit, Tobias and Sarah prayed on their wedding night stating they married not for fleshly lust, but for the love of posterity, and addressed each other as brother and sister during a wedding celebration lasting 14 nights.

The early church struggled with the controversial practice of clerics cohabiting with dedicated religious women under the guise of purely spiritual relationships. Clerics often maintained households with single women devoted to the church, asserting that their relationship was entirely spiritual. This arrangement faced severe skepticism, prompting councils and emperors to issue strict prohibitions.

The First Council of Nicea in 325 decreed in its third canon that no member of the clergy could keep a woman in his residence unless she was a mother, sister, aunt, or above suspicion.

• Restrict clergy cohabitation exclusively to mothers, sisters, aunts, or women entirely above suspicion.
• Recite the blessings of Tobias and Sarah focusing on companionship and posterity.
• Address fellow believers using sibling terminology to emphasize spiritual unity.

Ancient Jewish and Christian texts contrasted transient heterosexual passions with the enduring love between David and Jonathan. Their covenant and David's public lament provided a powerful literary model for same-gender devotion. In the Mishnah, the love of Amnon and Tamar served as an example of love dependent on a material cause, whereas the love of David and Jonathan was cited as the supreme example of love not dependent on any such thing.

The fourth-century martyrdom of Polyeuct and Nearchos presented an impassioned same-sex bond between soldiers that transcended earthly family obligations. Described as brothers in affection, Polyeuct and Nearchos demonstrated a unity of soul where each felt they breathed in the other's body. Polyeuct explicitly rejected his wife, children, and worldly rank to embrace martyrdom and eternal union with Nearchos.

Polyeuct embraced death for the love of Nearchos, leaving behind a secret pledge and reminding Nearchos of their shared disposition before his execution.

Serge and Bacchus became the preeminent paired military saints of the Christian world, celebrated for an intense, devoted union that defied traditional gender roles. High-ranking Roman soldiers united in their faith and love, Serge and Bacchus were punished by an emperor who forced them to wear women's clothing and walk in heavy chains. Following Bacchus's death under flogging, his spirit appeared to Serge to promise that his ultimate heavenly reward would be Bacchus himself.

Serge was forced to run 10 miles in shoes with nails driven through the soles pointing into his feet, yet he prayed for his executioners before his death, later running an additional 9 miles after divine healing.

• Invoke SS. Serge and Bacchus as archetypes of male-male devotion and spiritual commitment.

Christianity deeply incorporated a military ethos, and the popular hunger for paired military saints led to the veneration and invention of numerous holy couples. Far from being pacifist, Christian literature and monastic organization were heavily infused with military language, discipline, and imagery. This admiration for masculine companionship fueled the widespread veneration of paired saints, including the two Theodores and the apostles Philip and Bartholomew.

The Byzantines invented a second Theodore, Theodore the General, to pair with Theodore the Footsoldier, depicting them embracing tenderly in art and invoking them as archetypes of male-male love.

5. Liturgical Evidence and Ceremonies

Medieval euchologions preserved distinct liturgical offices for solemnizing same-sex unions using traditional matrimonial symbols.

You can examine these rituals across numerous Greek, Italo-Greek, and Slavonic manuscripts spanning the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. The texts are translated into archaizing English to capture the sacred resonance, authority, and aesthetic weight of the original Koine Greek and Old Church Slavonic.

Tenth-century Greek euchologions contain specific offices for same-sex union emphasizing spiritual partnership, love, and biblical precedents. The service invokes divine sanction for two individuals joined not by nature, but by faith and the spirit.

The tenth-century Grottaferrata manuscript Γ.β. VII references Abraham bringing love to perfection under the oak of Mamre. It also notes how love rescued figures like Daniel from the lions' den.

Eleventh-century same-sex union liturgies involved placing hands on the holy Gospel and holding lighted candles. You can follow the precise rubrics recorded in the eleventh-century Grottaferrata manuscript Γ.B. II:

• Place the holy Gospel on the Gospel stand.
• Have the partners to be joined place their right hands on the Gospel.
• Require the partners to hold lighted candles in their left hands.
• Cense the couple and recite the appointed litanies and prayers.

The eleventh-to-twelfth-century Sinai Euchologion provides an Old Church Slavonic order for uniting two men with specific liturgical readings and psalmody. The priest takes the elder of the joined men by the hand, who in turn takes the younger by the hand, and leads them both while chanting verses about brethren dwelling together in unity.

The Italo-Greek office from 1147 in Vaticanus Graecus 1811 details a formal ritual for a same-gender union involving the Gospel and lighted candles. You perform the ceremony through these structured ritual actions:

• Place the holy Gospel on the Gospel stand.
• Have those to be joined place their hands on the Gospel while holding lighted candles in their left hands.
• Cense the participants and recite the prescribed litany and prayers.
• Conclude the ceremony by having them kiss the holy Gospel, the priest, and one another before dismissal.

A thirteenth-century Greek manuscript, Sinai 966, outlines an order for the solemnization of a same-sex union featuring mutual hand placement on the Gospel. A fourteenth-century Serbian Slavonic text provides a corresponding order featuring candles, crosses, and a procession around the sanctuary.

The sixteenth-century Greek manuscript Istanbul: Holy Sepulcher 615 outlines an office of same-sex union featuring hand placement on the Gospel, candle holding, and specific biblical prayers. The participants come to the sanctuary accompanied by a speaker, place their hands on the lectionary and Gospel, and receive Communion.

6. Comparison of Union Rites

Same-sex union liturgies shared nearly identical ritual structures, litanies, and visual gestures with traditional heterosexual marriage ceremonies.

You will find that both same-sex and heterosexual premodern union ceremonies developed primarily out of early Christian commemorations of apostolic peace and concord. In the first millennium, Christians did not expect marriage to satisfy emotional or sexual needs, but rather sought harmony, expressed by the Latin concordia or Greek homonoia. Liturgical formulas invoking apostolic love and the bond of peace became standard constants in marital liturgies of both genders.

An ancient liturgical commemoration from the sixth-century Dĕr-Balizeh papyrus prayed for love and brotherly affection in the bond of peace, a formula that evolved into standard eucharistic prayers and subsequent union rites. The opening litanies of same-sex union ceremonies are nearly identical to those used at the beginning of heterosexual marriage rites and are distinct from other liturgical services. In the early tenth-century Italian prayer book published by Passarelli, specific litanies such as number 166 for heterosexual marriage closely align with the opening of same-sex union liturgies.

You can observe several key visual similarities between these liturgical traditions:

• The binding of the couple's right hands with a stole or veil.
• The three-fold ritual circling of the altar accompanied by the hymn Holy Martyrs.
• The use of banquets to publicly announce a permanent living arrangement.

A primary structural similarity between same-sex and heterosexual union offices was the binding of the couple's right hands with a stole or veil. In a tenth-century heterosexual marriage office from Greek-speaking Italy, a covering was placed over the couple, matching the tying of right hands with a stole seen in same-sex union ceremonies. A twelfth-century illustration reproduces a wedding banquet held for two men, as recounted in an eleventh-century chronicle.

The joining of right hands was the single most critical, ancient, and universal gesture formalizing contracts and unions across both pagan and Christian traditions. Derived from the ancient Roman dextrarum junctio and recorded in the biblical Book of Tobit, the joining of hands symbolized concord and partnership. A late fourth-century sarcophagus depicts a husband and wife joining their right hands on top of a book, believed to be the wedding Gospel, with Christ holding crowns over them.

7. Historical Practice and Subsequent Developments

From the fourteenth century onward, Western Europe developed a fierce popular revulsion against homosexuality. The Catholic church never officially banned the same-sex union ceremony in its decrees because doing so would have recognized its traditional significance.

Same-sex unions persisted across medieval European societies until rising popular hostility in the West obscured their historical reality.

In 1578 in Rome, Montaigne and the Venetian ambassador reported on Spanish and Portuguese men who entered into a brotherhood ceremony at the church of Saint John of the Latin Gate. They married each other at Mass with nuptial liturgies. Civic authorities executed eleven of them by burning.

In Southeastern Europe, Slavic communities practiced public liturgical unions known as pobratimstvo and posestrimstvo. These rituals bound two individuals as half-brothers or half-sister in church settings. Alberto Fortis attended the union of two girls as posestre in the church of Perussich among the Morlaks.

You can observe the steps of this traditional Slavic ceremony in regional archives:

• Invite the priest and close relatives to the house.
• Sprinkle ashes from the hearth on two sides of a plank.
• Place the two men's right feet on the plank.
• Answer the priest's questions regarding the Trinity, the Gospel, fire, and the desire to be joined.
• Listen to the reading from the Gospel.
• Exchange bows, kiss the Gospel, the priest's hands, and each other's hands.
• Give gifts, exchange baptismal crosses, present a gift to the priest, and hold a feast.

Twentieth-century anthropologists systematically disguised same-sex union rituals using nonsexual terms like artificial kinship. Giovanni Tamassia published a volume in 1886 on l'affratellamento addressing it solely as a folk custom.

Conclusion

You can now see how premodern societies institutionalized diverse forms of human affection and partnership outside modern ideological frameworks. Historical definitions of family, marriage, and commitment were far more pluralistic than contemporary assumptions suggest. The documented evidence demonstrates that formal bonds between same-sex partners formed an accepted part of European religious and social life for centuries.

1. Reexamine historical texts without anachronistic bias to uncover forgotten social realities.
2. Acknowledge the documented persistence of ritual unions across various premodern cultures.
3. Appreciate the fluid boundaries of premodern terminology when evaluating interpersonal relationships.
4. Reject modern taboos when evaluating past social structures and religious practices.
5. Study original manuscript evidence directly rather than relying on later interpretations.
6. Look past scholarly obfuscations regarding artificial kinship and fictive brotherhood.
7. Understand the structural parallels between diverse union liturgies and traditional marriage rites.
8. Evaluate institutional practices within their proper historical and religious contexts.
9. Recognize the central role of apostolic peace archetypes in validating emotional bonds.
10. Embrace the vast pluralistic history of human relationships across the European past.

10 Key Ideas

1. Premodern vocabulary for love and marriage was fluid, using interchangeable terms and sibling designations that modern readers frequently misinterpret.
2. Classical heterosexual marriage operated primarily as a property arrangement and dynastic alliance rather than a romance-based union.
3. Same-sex relationships in antiquity ranged from informal associations to formal public ceremonies complete with traditional wedding rites.
4. Early Christianity profoundly devalued earthly marriage, viewing it as a dangerous distraction and a compromise with the material world.
5. Medieval euchologions preserved distinct liturgical offices for solemnizing same-sex unions using traditional matrimonial symbols.
6. Same-sex union liturgies shared nearly identical ritual structures, litanies, and visual gestures with traditional heterosexual marriage ceremonies.
7. Same-sex unions persisted across medieval European societies until rising popular hostility in the West obscured their historical reality.
8. Twentieth-century anthropologists systematically disguised same-sex union rituals using nonsexual terms like artificial kinship.
9. Historical definitions of family, marriage, and commitment were far more pluralistic than contemporary assumptions suggest.
10. The documented evidence demonstrates that formal bonds between same-sex partners formed an accepted part of European religious and social life for centuries.