Thread by @MalvagioMarco

Byzantium was a christian empire, and Christians Are Not Gay.
Therefore, their ritual union of two men in church to become lifelong companions was Not A Gay Thing.
🌈🌈A THREAD ABOUT THE TOTALLY-NOT-GAY-MARRIAGE IN THE EASTERN ROMAN EMPIRE🌈🌈

So, let's say you're the emperor of Constantinople. As any good roman emperor, you're of course gay.
But, you're also pretty much a cross between a president and a pope.
So, very christian, and very public.
What do you do?

Of course, you could pine in secret over your lover while secretly- lol, just kidding. You're the emperor, you do whatever the fuck you want.
But, marrying another man might be a tad too much. So, you enter *a deep, spiritual, fraternal bond with him*.

So how did the totally-not-gay-marriage work? It was a rite called "adelphopoiesis", literally "the making of brothers".
It was officially a spiritual bonding between two men (unclear whether it was *necessarily* two men). Even saints did it!
Pic: saintly bros

I speak of emperors because there's an especially blatant example, with emperor Michael not-at-all-marrying his absolutely-not-lover Basil, nominating him co-emperor soon after.
Basil promptly murdered him and became sole emperor, but hey, be gay, do crimes.🌈🗡️

But common people did it too! From church record, it looks like it was comparatively common at least from the Xth century.
We have better record for upper class people, but no reason to assume lower classes were any different.

The ritual included the two absolutely-not-gay-lovers holding candles, were tied together with a belt, walked to the altar, *embraced and kissed*, received a ritual blessing, and then lived together.
IS IT GAY TO KISS ANOTHER MAN ON THE ALTAR? According to many historians, no.

Of course, it was a spiritual and religious bonding, which did not necessarily entail any kind of - AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA YEAH OF COURSE IT WAS A GAY THING COME ON GUYS

Seriously, there's a great deal of debate about how the ritual was understood at the time.
Opinions range from historians straight-up calling it gay marriage and swearing it is "modern overinterpretation". Like, behold some totally unbiased interpretation:

For once, I don't think there's much to debate.
No doubt some people used it as a chaste spiritual blah blah. No doubt everyone at the time would swear blind (pun intended) it was not a sexual thing.
But there's "avoiding anachronism" and there's "kidding yourself"

Gay people always existed.
So if a ritual to bind two people of the same sex existed in a society, why would they *not* use it to live with their lovers in a socially accepted manner?
Come on. It might not be the reason the institute existed, but it *would* be used that way.

I'm all for debating the nuances of the past, but we should stop behaving like LGBTQ+ people were invented in 1990s and we need a huge burden of proof to admit they existed in the past, and wanted to live their best lives.

Ok, rant over. Back to roman gays.
People bound in adelphopoiesis were considered brothers for several purposes, like obligation to care for the other's children, and prohibition to the other's sister - because of course it was compatible with marriage, it was *not* a gay thing!

How did this very spiritual and het institution came to be? It's not clear.
It might have been a gaul custom which spread in the late empire. The gauls, who were no doubt all he, according to romans celebrated marriages between young men, "with one taking the role of the wife"

Several sources point at a religious origin for the practice instead - just saints being bros. It might well be.
Some of our few sources about homosexuality in the ERE, after all, come from the lives of saints (usually expressed as condemnation because saints suck):

(YEAH THIS PASSAGE SHOWS AT LENGTH HOW BEAUTIFUL THE EUNUCH IS, AND THEN HAS THE SAINT ACCIDENTALLY CALL DATES "THE FRUIT OF THE ASS", BUT I'M SURE THE AUTHOR WAS 100% ON THE SAINT'S SIDE, SARCASM WAS INVENTED IN 1973)

Adelphopoiesis probably got assimilated in a legal form similar to adoption, which was instead very common in ancient Rome - men adopted (usually) younger men to pick their heir, or for political favors.
Sometimes they adopted *older* men as sons for weird political reasons.

However, the only legal reference to the practice were edicts ruling that it was *not* valid for inheritance purpose.
But remember that for romans, marriage was only marginally (inheritance and such) the state's business.
Church archives regularly record adelphopoiesis.

Anyway, now you know about how byzantines men did not-quite-marry.
If you want to read BITTER arguments between historians, just google "adelphopoiesis" and click pretty much anything.
Seriously, researching this one was a wild ride.

Bonus: I found out that according to early christians, you were gay if you were born "when mercury is conjunction with Venus in the house of Saturn". I'll have to check my natal theme, maybe it works.

Boring note: I can find no clear answer on whether it could be between women, since 90% of papers are too busy explaining it was not a gay thing to say anything else about it (yeah I'm a bit bitter).
If anyone can find me a source about the matter I'd love it.

Further boring note: I hate throwing shade on historians, I'm not one and usually try to always follow the academic consensus.
But with LGBTQ+ history there's a huge blind spot and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.

I know there's more interest in the matter these days, but right now researching any LGBTQ+ matter is frankly disturbing for the vehement effort at denying it was even a thing.

Anyway, direct quotes from this paper:
jstor.org/stable/27831954
Plus some lecture notes I'm not sure were supposed to be online so I won't quote lol

If you enjoyed this, I have more! I collect my history threads here:
linktr.ee/Malvagio
plenty of romans and gays, have fun

Further addendum, since I'm really annoying: would you believe I read like three books about byzantine history before reading A SINGLE about this? One pop, two academic