The History of Same-Sex Marriage
By William Eskridge
.
PREMODERN WESTERN CULTURES
The early Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies that are considered important antecedents for Western culture apparently tolerated same sex relationships in their culture, literature, and mythology. Evidence that these societies recognized same-sex marriage is speculative. Later, however, one finds more tangible evidence of same-sex marriage in classical Greece, imperial Rome, and medieval Europe. Same-sex relations were met in the later cultures with a mix of tolerance and anxiety.
Ancient Civilizations (Egypt and Mesopotamia)
Because there are so few surviving records pertaining to family and sexual matters, we know little of the specific practices of the most ancient cultures, namely, those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and their environs. At the very least, one can say that the leading ancient cultures sometimes treated same-sex relationships similarly to marriages involving different-sex partners.
Information about Egyptian unions, whether partners were different or same sex, is indirect but suggestive. Some artifacts have depicted same-sex couples in intimate poses, suggesting that Egyptian society at some points in its history was accepting of same-sex relationships. For example, a tomb for two male courtiers of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2600 B.C.) includes bas-reliefs of the two men holding hands and embracing, with noses touching, poses that are strikingly more erotic than those seen in the depictions in Egyptian tombs of different-sex couples. Social historian David Greenberg argues that the men were lovers whose same-sex relationship was apparently accepted by the state, since the pharaoh provided their tomb. Indeed, the tomb of at least one pharaoh, the renowned Akhenaton (Ikhnaton), contains figures of the pharaoh and his male consort posed even more intimately
The most interesting evidence of same-sex unions in ancient Egypt is fascinatingly indirect. After living for several generations in Egypt, the Israelites (according to biblical tradition) fled that land, ultimately settling in Canaan near the end of the second millennium B.C. Their religion rejected many Egyptian mores. Chapter 18, verse 3 of the Old Testament Book of Leviticus admonished the Israelites to avoid the "doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt . . . neither shall ye walk in their ordinances." Verses 24 and 27 referred to those "doings" as "abominations" that defiled "the nations ' apparently Egypt and perhaps also Canaan. Verse 22 is more specific: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind. as with womankind: it is abomination."
The implication that same-sex intimacy was common in Egypt and Canaan is elaborated by the Sifra, a midrashic exegesis of Leviticus. The Sifra says of chapter 18:5
A. If "You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt . . . or of the land of Canaan:'
B. might one think that they are not to build their buildings or plant vineyards as they did?
C. Scripture says, "nor shall you follow their laws":
D. ''I have referred only to the rules that were made for them and for their father and their fathers' fathers."
E. And what would they do?
F. A man would marry a man, and a woman would marry a woman, a man would marry a woman and her daughter, a woman would be married to two men.
G. That is why it is said, "nor shall you follow their laws."
Given the parallel references to marriage by a man to a woman and her daughter and by a woman with two men, the author of this mid rash was using the term marry in its juridical sense. This evidence would suggest that same-sex unions at least functionally similar to marriages were accepted in Egypt and Canaan but not by the Israelites. Sifra is not, however, conclusive evidence of same-sex marriage in Egypt, because it was a biased account of Egyptian culture and was written long after the practices it describes. (Some scholars even doubt the accuracy of the Bible's account of the escape to Egypt.)
Mesopotamian mores pertaining to same-sex relationships are illustrated in the most celebrated of the Near Eastern myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Written through a collective process over several generations, the epic describes the relationship between Gilgamesh, the great powerful ruler of Uruk, and Enkidu, a male created by the gods to divert Gilgamesh from wreaking havoc in the world. Gilgamesh and Enkidu become comrades, friends, and lovers before Enkidu dim at the hands of the fates. Enkidu is often called Gilgamesh's "brother" (ahu), a term connoting family-like intimacy. Significantly, Gilgamesh's feeling for Enkidu is modeled on sexual attraction. In the two dreams chat presage the arrival of Enkidu, Gilgamesh takes pleasure in his vision of Enkidu as in a woman. The Assyrian version of the myth refers to Enkidu, "[I loved it, and like] a wife I caressed it."' When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh mourns for him as a widow (literally, "a wailing woman") would have mourned and veils his corpse as if it were a bride. Because the Epic of Gilgamesh was a collective project and achieved great popularity in ancient times, one might infer that same-sex relationships had some resonance in the cultures of ancient Babylonia and Assyria. This inference is supported by evidence that several Mesopotamian monarchs (notably Hammurabi, the great Babylonian lawgiver) openly enjoyed male lovers. Moreover, the Almanac of Incantations contained prayers favoring, on an equal basis, the love of a man for a woman, a woman for a man, and a man for a man.
Consider also Mesopotamian statutes, which, unlike Egyptian laws, have been preserved. None of Mesopotamia's early legal codes-the Laws of Urukagina (2375 B.C.), the Laws of Ur-Nammu (2100 B.C.), the Laws of Eshnunna (1750 B.C.), the Laws of Hammurabi (1726 B.C.) and the Hittite Laws (around 800 B.C.)-prohibited or disapproved of same-sex relationships, even though sex and marriage were otherwise heavily regulated. On the other hand, the legal codes contained no provision sanctioning same-sex marriages, with one possible exception. Table I of the Hittite Laws regulated marriage, specifically the husband's payment of a bride-price to the wife. While it was assumed that this regulation applied to the advantage of free Hittite citizens, special provisions in Table I afforded explicit legal authority for slaves to obtain brides in this way; otherwise, slaves apparently could not marry. For example, section 34 stated: "If a slave gives the bride-price to a woman and takes her as his wife, no-one shall [make him] surrender her." According to one translation, section 36 then stated: "If a slave gives the bride-price to a free youth and takes him to dwell in his household as spouse, no-one shall [make him] surrender him." There has for generations been legitimate controversy over the correct reading of section 36. If the quoted reading were correct, a male slave with money (the brideprice) to pay for a male spouse could acquire one and could expect that the transaction would be enforceable at law. If a slave were allowed to do this, it went without saying that a free Hittite citizen could do the same.
Classical Greece and Pre-Christian Rome
Classical Greek culture was keenly interested in and developed rich cultural norms for same-sex relationships, some of which were close to marriages. Plato's Symposium is the first recorded essay in "the praise of Love" (line 1 77E), with love and relationships between men being its primary focus. One of the speakers, Pausanias, delivers an impassioned defense of companionate same-sex relationships:
Those who are inspired by . . . Love are attracted to the male: they find pleasure in what is by nature stronger and more intelligent. But, even within the group that is attracted to handsome boys, some are not moved purely by this heavenly Love; those who do not fall in love with little boys; they prefer older ones whose cheeks are showing the first traces of a beard-a sign that they have begun to form minds of their own. I am convinced that a man who falls in love with a young man of this age is generally prepared to share everything with the one he loves- he is eager, in fact, to spend the rest of his own life with him. (Lines 181C-D)
Likewise, Phaedrus praises unselfish love (agape), citing as examples Alcestis' willingness to die for her husband Admetus (lines 179BC) and Achilles' willingness to die for his lover Patroclus (lines 181C-D). This analogy suggests both the companionate feature of same-sex relationships and the formal distinction drawn by the author between same-sex relationships and different-sex marriage.
Historians of classical Greece and its romantic institutions consider the Symposium a reflection of the attitudes toward samesex relationships prevailing in at least some of the Greek city-states. In Athens and, it appears, other major city states, no law prohibited same-sex relationships. They were, in fact, institutionalized for free male citizens, who were expected to court and have a relationship with a boy in their early adulthood. While historians have not ventured to consider these relationships to be marriages, they have demonstrated that they often followed the same courtship rituals as marriages. A closer link between same-sex relationships and marriage was a ritualized same-sex courtship in Crete. The ancient geographer Strabo described the "peculiar laws regarding love" followed on that island, whereby two men would become "partners" (or "companions") after the abduction of one by the other, followed by a feast where the partners announced their mutual intentions before witnesses. Several historians have characterized these Cretan abduction ceremonies as same-sex "marriages." Another Greek island, Lesbos, gave the Western world the concept of female same-sex relationships, which probably had broader currency. Eva Cantarella believes that some of the lesbian relationships arising out of female collectives (thiasoi) were "initiation marriages" similar to the male same-sex unions common in the city states.
The consensus among historians is that republican Rome, like classical Greece, was tolerant of same-sex relationships. imperial Rome considered some of them marriages. The best documented are the same-sex marriages of Rome's emperors. Roman historian Suetonius reported, disapprovingly, that the first-century emperor Nero "went through a wedding ceremony with [Sporus]-dowry, bridal veil and all-which the whole Court attended; then brought him home and treated him as a wife. He dressed Sporus in fine clothes normally worn by an Empress and took him in his own litter not only to every Greek assize and fair, but actually through the Street of Images at Rome, kissing him amorously now and then." Later, a freedman, Pythagorus, "married [Nero]-just as he himself had married Sporus-and on his wedding night he imitated the screams and moans of a girl being deflowered." Dio Cassius, a historian and contemporary of Suetonius, confirmed Nero's marriages to these men and also provided a reliable account of the same-sex and opposite-sex marriages of third-century emperor Elagabalus. Indeed, it was said that men seeking advancement in Elagabalus's imperial court rushed to marry other men to curry favor with the emperor. Second-century emperor Hadrian was renowned throughout the ancient world for his wise and moderate reign and for his love of the tragic youth Antinous. Though not Hadrian's spouse, Antinous attained the status of legend and was commemorated for generations through sculpture, architecture, painting, and literature.
Other evidence indicates that same-sex marriages were not limited to Rome's emperors. The satirists Martial and Juvenal sarcastically noted the casual way in which men married other men by the end of the first century. "I have a ceremony to attend tomorrow morning in the Quirinial valley," says the interlocutor in Juvenal's Satires. "What sort of ceremony?" he is asked. The reply: "Nothing special: a friend is marrying another man and a small group is attending." Martial described the marriage of "bearded Callistratus" to the "brawny Afer ' complete with torches, wedding veil, songs, and dower. The novel Babylonica, an early exemplar of the pulp romance, has a subplot involving the passion of Egypt's Queen Berenice for the beautiful Mesopotamia, who was snatched from her. After one of the queen's servants rescued Mesopotamia from her abductors, "Berenice married Mesopotamia, and there was war between [the abductor] and Berenice on account of Mesopotamia." These and other references do not exclude the possibility that same-sex marriages were culturally or legally distinct from different-sex marriages, but they confirm the acceptance of same-sex unions in imperial Rome. The marriages of emperors such as Nero stand as examples of publicly celebrated same-sex marriages in the same period.
Christian Rome and the Middle Ages
The late Roman Empire grew less tolerant of same-sex unions than either the republic or the earlier empire had been. In 342 A.D., Rome adopted a statute that seemingly-but perhaps facetiously- prohibited same-sex marriages:
When a man "marries" in the manner of a woman, a "woman" about to renounce men, what does he wish, when sex has lost its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed into another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the bows to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.
While the statute reinforces the impression that same-sex marriages were not uncommon in the Roman Empire, it also evidences an anxiety about same-sex unions that antedated the fourth century. For example, Plutarch's Moralia, written in the second century, includes a heated dialogue filled with comments both for and against same-sex relationships, which suggests that their propriety was a matter of controversy. A subsequent anonymous dialogue enticed Affairs of the Heart was sympathetic to same-sex relationships but sharply distinguished them from marriage.
Imperial Rome's anxiety about same-sex relations was related to the institutionalization of companionate marriage, in which husband and wife were friends and marital partners in the creation of the family unit. The rise of companionate marriage also involved the linkage of procreation with sexual partnership. There might also be a connection between the aforementioned statute of 342 A.D. and the increasing influence of Christianity during the late Roman Empire. Inspired in part by its Judaic heritage (recall Leviticus, quoted earlier), the early Christian tradition advocated companionate different-sex marriage that served procreative purposes, and was correspondingly ambivalent about same-sex relationships. The major philosophical traditions of the Late Empire-Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, and Manichaeanism, all of which influenced Christianity-were intolerant of most forms of sexual pleasure and equivocal about the merits of same-sex relationships. Some of the Manichaeans, for example, thought homosexual pleasures worse than heterosexual ones since they did not reproduce the race, though others viewed same-sex relations more leniency.
The collapsing Roman Empire grew increasingly inhospitable to same-sex unions, and after Rome's fall in 476 A.D. state attitudes toward such unions became more hostile. In the surviving Eastern Empire, the Justinian Code of 533 A.D. flatly outlawed same-sex intimacy, placing it in the same category as adultery, both of which violated the then entrenched ideal of companionate different-sex marriage. In the remains of the Western Empire, the Visigoth state in Spain criminalized same-sex intimacy around 650 A.D. though most of the other Germanic states showed lithe interest in either advocating or decrying same-sex relationships. At first glance, it appears that the same-sex unions of the earlier Roman Empire had all but died out during the early Middle Ages. A closer look reveals the story to be more complicated.
The complication owes much to the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches' ambivalent responses to same-sex unions. During the early and high Middle Ages, the Church was doctrinally critical of same-sex erotic intimacy because it could not result in procreation and constituted sex outside of marriage. On the other hand, the Church favored same-sex companionate intimacy; agape between brothers, such as the love of Sergius and Bacchus, was the Christian ideal. Church practice thrust the faithful into "homosexual" environments (schools, monasteries, nunneries) that were sure to engender what we would today deem sexual responses. Erotic feelings repeatedly arose between teachers and students, clerics and their fellows and acolytes, yearnings chat are documented in a proliferation of love letters, poems, and stories written in the Middle Ages.
In the early Middle Ages the Church developed institutions, memorialized in liturgies included in its formal collections, that combined the Church's spiritual commitment to companionate relationships with its members' desire to bond with people of the same sex. The existence of Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox rituals of "brother-making" or "enfraternization" has been known in the academic literature for decades and was brought to my attention by the Reverend Alexei Michalenko.' Ceremonies creating these brotherhoods were performed for same-sex couples (often male missionary pairs) from the fifth century onward. According to Church archives, these early liturgies were typically structured as follows:
¥ The couple stand in front of the lectern, on which are placed the Gospel and a cross. The older of the brothers stands to the right.
¥ The ceremony starts off with prayers and litanies celebrating earlier examples of same-sex couples or friends in the early Church. Sergius and Bacchus were the most frequency invoked precedent.
¥ The couple is girded with a single belt, signifying their union as one, and they place their hands on the Gospel and receive lit candles.
¥ The priest reads from one of Paul's episodes (1 Cor 12:27 £) and the Gospel (John 17:1016), which are followed by more prayers.
¥ The assembled are led in the Lord's Prayer, followed by Holy Communion, the Eucharist, for the couple. The priest leads the couple, who are holding hands, around the lectern while the assembled sing a hymn.
¥ The couple exchange a kiss, and the service concludes with the singing of Psalm 132:1 ("Behold how good and sweet it is for brothers to live as one").
Significantly, this early brotherhood liturgy was acted out in formal terms very similar to the liturgy later developed by the Church for the purpose of performing different-sex marriages.
The main difference between the brotherhood liturgy and the one originally used to wed different-sex couples is that the former emphasizes the companionate (see Psalm 132) rather than the procreative (see Psalm 127) nature of the relationship. Hence, rather than orating on procreation, one version of the enfraternization liturgy read as follows:
O Almighty Lord, you have given to man to be made from the first in Your Image and Likeness by the gift of immortal life. You have willed to bind as brothers not only by nature but by bonds of the spirit Your most celebrated Apostles Peter, the Chief of them all, and Andrew; James and John the Sons of Zebedee; Philip and Batholomew. You made as very brothers Your Holy Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus, Cosmas and Damien, Cyrus and John. Bless Your Servants united also that, not bound by nature, [they be] joined with bonds of love. Grant them a love mutual and without offense and a brotherhood upset by naught of hatred all the days of their lives, through the might of Your All-Holy Spirit and through the intercession of our All-Holy spotless ever-Virgin Lady....
The precise significance of these enfraternization liturgies remains mysterious. They may have simply been friendship ceremonies or send-offs for missionaries. Medieval historian John Boswell argues for a broader reading, however.
Expanding on earlier academic examinations of enfraternization liturgies and suggestions from Reverend Michalenko, Boswell uncovered a large variety of manuscript versions of Christian same-sex union liturgies in libraries and ecclesiastical collections throughout Europe. Although his earlier claim that these liturgies are identical to same-sex marriages was overstated, he has argued that there are tangible connections between the liturgies of same-sex unions and different-sex marriages. The same-sex union ceremonies are usually located right after different-sex marriage ceremonies in the liturgical collections Boswell consulted. As previous scholarship had established, the same-sex ceremonies are structurally and thematically similar to the different-sex ones, but Boswell insists on a more ambitious connection. "[I]n the case of the same-sex ceremony, standing together at the altar with their right hands joined (the traditional symbol of marriage), being blessed by the priest, sharing Communion, and holding a banquet for family and friends afterward all parts of same-sex union in the Middle Ages-most likely signified a marriage in the eyes of ordinary Christians." Critics contest this claim and find much of Boswell's argumentation "tendentious." Notwithstanding these criticisms, which strike me as fair but not conclusive, it seems likely that the Church did sanction these brotherhood ceremonies and that there is some likelihood that the brothers so joined enjoyed relationships of affinity and erotic possibilities.
PREMODERN WESTERN CULTURES
The early Egyptian and Mesopotamian societies that are considered important antecedents for Western culture apparently tolerated same sex relationships in their culture, literature, and mythology. Evidence that these societies recognized same-sex marriage is speculative. Later, however, one finds more tangible evidence of same-sex marriage in classical Greece, imperial Rome, and medieval Europe. Same-sex relations were met in the later cultures with a mix of tolerance and anxiety.
Ancient Civilizations (Egypt and Mesopotamia)
Because there are so few surviving records pertaining to family and sexual matters, we know little of the specific practices of the most ancient cultures, namely, those of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and their environs. At the very least, one can say that the leading ancient cultures sometimes treated same-sex relationships similarly to marriages involving different-sex partners.
Information about Egyptian unions, whether partners were different or same sex, is indirect but suggestive. Some artifacts have depicted same-sex couples in intimate poses, suggesting that Egyptian society at some points in its history was accepting of same-sex relationships. For example, a tomb for two male courtiers of the Fifth Dynasty (about 2600 B.C.) includes bas-reliefs of the two men holding hands and embracing, with noses touching, poses that are strikingly more erotic than those seen in the depictions in Egyptian tombs of different-sex couples. Social historian David Greenberg argues that the men were lovers whose same-sex relationship was apparently accepted by the state, since the pharaoh provided their tomb. Indeed, the tomb of at least one pharaoh, the renowned Akhenaton (Ikhnaton), contains figures of the pharaoh and his male consort posed even more intimately
The most interesting evidence of same-sex unions in ancient Egypt is fascinatingly indirect. After living for several generations in Egypt, the Israelites (according to biblical tradition) fled that land, ultimately settling in Canaan near the end of the second millennium B.C. Their religion rejected many Egyptian mores. Chapter 18, verse 3 of the Old Testament Book of Leviticus admonished the Israelites to avoid the "doings of the land of Egypt, wherein ye dwelt . . . neither shall ye walk in their ordinances." Verses 24 and 27 referred to those "doings" as "abominations" that defiled "the nations ' apparently Egypt and perhaps also Canaan. Verse 22 is more specific: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind. as with womankind: it is abomination."
The implication that same-sex intimacy was common in Egypt and Canaan is elaborated by the Sifra, a midrashic exegesis of Leviticus. The Sifra says of chapter 18:5
A. If "You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt . . . or of the land of Canaan:'
B. might one think that they are not to build their buildings or plant vineyards as they did?
C. Scripture says, "nor shall you follow their laws":
D. ''I have referred only to the rules that were made for them and for their father and their fathers' fathers."
E. And what would they do?
F. A man would marry a man, and a woman would marry a woman, a man would marry a woman and her daughter, a woman would be married to two men.
G. That is why it is said, "nor shall you follow their laws."
Given the parallel references to marriage by a man to a woman and her daughter and by a woman with two men, the author of this mid rash was using the term marry in its juridical sense. This evidence would suggest that same-sex unions at least functionally similar to marriages were accepted in Egypt and Canaan but not by the Israelites. Sifra is not, however, conclusive evidence of same-sex marriage in Egypt, because it was a biased account of Egyptian culture and was written long after the practices it describes. (Some scholars even doubt the accuracy of the Bible's account of the escape to Egypt.)
Mesopotamian mores pertaining to same-sex relationships are illustrated in the most celebrated of the Near Eastern myths, the Epic of Gilgamesh. Written through a collective process over several generations, the epic describes the relationship between Gilgamesh, the great powerful ruler of Uruk, and Enkidu, a male created by the gods to divert Gilgamesh from wreaking havoc in the world. Gilgamesh and Enkidu become comrades, friends, and lovers before Enkidu dim at the hands of the fates. Enkidu is often called Gilgamesh's "brother" (ahu), a term connoting family-like intimacy. Significantly, Gilgamesh's feeling for Enkidu is modeled on sexual attraction. In the two dreams chat presage the arrival of Enkidu, Gilgamesh takes pleasure in his vision of Enkidu as in a woman. The Assyrian version of the myth refers to Enkidu, "[I loved it, and like] a wife I caressed it."' When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh mourns for him as a widow (literally, "a wailing woman") would have mourned and veils his corpse as if it were a bride. Because the Epic of Gilgamesh was a collective project and achieved great popularity in ancient times, one might infer that same-sex relationships had some resonance in the cultures of ancient Babylonia and Assyria. This inference is supported by evidence that several Mesopotamian monarchs (notably Hammurabi, the great Babylonian lawgiver) openly enjoyed male lovers. Moreover, the Almanac of Incantations contained prayers favoring, on an equal basis, the love of a man for a woman, a woman for a man, and a man for a man.
Consider also Mesopotamian statutes, which, unlike Egyptian laws, have been preserved. None of Mesopotamia's early legal codes-the Laws of Urukagina (2375 B.C.), the Laws of Ur-Nammu (2100 B.C.), the Laws of Eshnunna (1750 B.C.), the Laws of Hammurabi (1726 B.C.) and the Hittite Laws (around 800 B.C.)-prohibited or disapproved of same-sex relationships, even though sex and marriage were otherwise heavily regulated. On the other hand, the legal codes contained no provision sanctioning same-sex marriages, with one possible exception. Table I of the Hittite Laws regulated marriage, specifically the husband's payment of a bride-price to the wife. While it was assumed that this regulation applied to the advantage of free Hittite citizens, special provisions in Table I afforded explicit legal authority for slaves to obtain brides in this way; otherwise, slaves apparently could not marry. For example, section 34 stated: "If a slave gives the bride-price to a woman and takes her as his wife, no-one shall [make him] surrender her." According to one translation, section 36 then stated: "If a slave gives the bride-price to a free youth and takes him to dwell in his household as spouse, no-one shall [make him] surrender him." There has for generations been legitimate controversy over the correct reading of section 36. If the quoted reading were correct, a male slave with money (the brideprice) to pay for a male spouse could acquire one and could expect that the transaction would be enforceable at law. If a slave were allowed to do this, it went without saying that a free Hittite citizen could do the same.
Classical Greece and Pre-Christian Rome
Classical Greek culture was keenly interested in and developed rich cultural norms for same-sex relationships, some of which were close to marriages. Plato's Symposium is the first recorded essay in "the praise of Love" (line 1 77E), with love and relationships between men being its primary focus. One of the speakers, Pausanias, delivers an impassioned defense of companionate same-sex relationships:
Those who are inspired by . . . Love are attracted to the male: they find pleasure in what is by nature stronger and more intelligent. But, even within the group that is attracted to handsome boys, some are not moved purely by this heavenly Love; those who do not fall in love with little boys; they prefer older ones whose cheeks are showing the first traces of a beard-a sign that they have begun to form minds of their own. I am convinced that a man who falls in love with a young man of this age is generally prepared to share everything with the one he loves- he is eager, in fact, to spend the rest of his own life with him. (Lines 181C-D)
Likewise, Phaedrus praises unselfish love (agape), citing as examples Alcestis' willingness to die for her husband Admetus (lines 179BC) and Achilles' willingness to die for his lover Patroclus (lines 181C-D). This analogy suggests both the companionate feature of same-sex relationships and the formal distinction drawn by the author between same-sex relationships and different-sex marriage.
Historians of classical Greece and its romantic institutions consider the Symposium a reflection of the attitudes toward samesex relationships prevailing in at least some of the Greek city-states. In Athens and, it appears, other major city states, no law prohibited same-sex relationships. They were, in fact, institutionalized for free male citizens, who were expected to court and have a relationship with a boy in their early adulthood. While historians have not ventured to consider these relationships to be marriages, they have demonstrated that they often followed the same courtship rituals as marriages. A closer link between same-sex relationships and marriage was a ritualized same-sex courtship in Crete. The ancient geographer Strabo described the "peculiar laws regarding love" followed on that island, whereby two men would become "partners" (or "companions") after the abduction of one by the other, followed by a feast where the partners announced their mutual intentions before witnesses. Several historians have characterized these Cretan abduction ceremonies as same-sex "marriages." Another Greek island, Lesbos, gave the Western world the concept of female same-sex relationships, which probably had broader currency. Eva Cantarella believes that some of the lesbian relationships arising out of female collectives (thiasoi) were "initiation marriages" similar to the male same-sex unions common in the city states.
The consensus among historians is that republican Rome, like classical Greece, was tolerant of same-sex relationships. imperial Rome considered some of them marriages. The best documented are the same-sex marriages of Rome's emperors. Roman historian Suetonius reported, disapprovingly, that the first-century emperor Nero "went through a wedding ceremony with [Sporus]-dowry, bridal veil and all-which the whole Court attended; then brought him home and treated him as a wife. He dressed Sporus in fine clothes normally worn by an Empress and took him in his own litter not only to every Greek assize and fair, but actually through the Street of Images at Rome, kissing him amorously now and then." Later, a freedman, Pythagorus, "married [Nero]-just as he himself had married Sporus-and on his wedding night he imitated the screams and moans of a girl being deflowered." Dio Cassius, a historian and contemporary of Suetonius, confirmed Nero's marriages to these men and also provided a reliable account of the same-sex and opposite-sex marriages of third-century emperor Elagabalus. Indeed, it was said that men seeking advancement in Elagabalus's imperial court rushed to marry other men to curry favor with the emperor. Second-century emperor Hadrian was renowned throughout the ancient world for his wise and moderate reign and for his love of the tragic youth Antinous. Though not Hadrian's spouse, Antinous attained the status of legend and was commemorated for generations through sculpture, architecture, painting, and literature.
Other evidence indicates that same-sex marriages were not limited to Rome's emperors. The satirists Martial and Juvenal sarcastically noted the casual way in which men married other men by the end of the first century. "I have a ceremony to attend tomorrow morning in the Quirinial valley," says the interlocutor in Juvenal's Satires. "What sort of ceremony?" he is asked. The reply: "Nothing special: a friend is marrying another man and a small group is attending." Martial described the marriage of "bearded Callistratus" to the "brawny Afer ' complete with torches, wedding veil, songs, and dower. The novel Babylonica, an early exemplar of the pulp romance, has a subplot involving the passion of Egypt's Queen Berenice for the beautiful Mesopotamia, who was snatched from her. After one of the queen's servants rescued Mesopotamia from her abductors, "Berenice married Mesopotamia, and there was war between [the abductor] and Berenice on account of Mesopotamia." These and other references do not exclude the possibility that same-sex marriages were culturally or legally distinct from different-sex marriages, but they confirm the acceptance of same-sex unions in imperial Rome. The marriages of emperors such as Nero stand as examples of publicly celebrated same-sex marriages in the same period.
Christian Rome and the Middle Ages
The late Roman Empire grew less tolerant of same-sex unions than either the republic or the earlier empire had been. In 342 A.D., Rome adopted a statute that seemingly-but perhaps facetiously- prohibited same-sex marriages:
When a man "marries" in the manner of a woman, a "woman" about to renounce men, what does he wish, when sex has lost its significance; when the crime is one which it is not profitable to know; when Venus is changed into another form; when love is sought and not found? We order the statutes to arise, the bows to be armed with an avenging sword, that those infamous persons who are now, or who hereafter may be, guilty may be subjected to exquisite punishment.
While the statute reinforces the impression that same-sex marriages were not uncommon in the Roman Empire, it also evidences an anxiety about same-sex unions that antedated the fourth century. For example, Plutarch's Moralia, written in the second century, includes a heated dialogue filled with comments both for and against same-sex relationships, which suggests that their propriety was a matter of controversy. A subsequent anonymous dialogue enticed Affairs of the Heart was sympathetic to same-sex relationships but sharply distinguished them from marriage.
Imperial Rome's anxiety about same-sex relations was related to the institutionalization of companionate marriage, in which husband and wife were friends and marital partners in the creation of the family unit. The rise of companionate marriage also involved the linkage of procreation with sexual partnership. There might also be a connection between the aforementioned statute of 342 A.D. and the increasing influence of Christianity during the late Roman Empire. Inspired in part by its Judaic heritage (recall Leviticus, quoted earlier), the early Christian tradition advocated companionate different-sex marriage that served procreative purposes, and was correspondingly ambivalent about same-sex relationships. The major philosophical traditions of the Late Empire-Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, and Manichaeanism, all of which influenced Christianity-were intolerant of most forms of sexual pleasure and equivocal about the merits of same-sex relationships. Some of the Manichaeans, for example, thought homosexual pleasures worse than heterosexual ones since they did not reproduce the race, though others viewed same-sex relations more leniency.
The collapsing Roman Empire grew increasingly inhospitable to same-sex unions, and after Rome's fall in 476 A.D. state attitudes toward such unions became more hostile. In the surviving Eastern Empire, the Justinian Code of 533 A.D. flatly outlawed same-sex intimacy, placing it in the same category as adultery, both of which violated the then entrenched ideal of companionate different-sex marriage. In the remains of the Western Empire, the Visigoth state in Spain criminalized same-sex intimacy around 650 A.D. though most of the other Germanic states showed lithe interest in either advocating or decrying same-sex relationships. At first glance, it appears that the same-sex unions of the earlier Roman Empire had all but died out during the early Middle Ages. A closer look reveals the story to be more complicated.
The complication owes much to the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches' ambivalent responses to same-sex unions. During the early and high Middle Ages, the Church was doctrinally critical of same-sex erotic intimacy because it could not result in procreation and constituted sex outside of marriage. On the other hand, the Church favored same-sex companionate intimacy; agape between brothers, such as the love of Sergius and Bacchus, was the Christian ideal. Church practice thrust the faithful into "homosexual" environments (schools, monasteries, nunneries) that were sure to engender what we would today deem sexual responses. Erotic feelings repeatedly arose between teachers and students, clerics and their fellows and acolytes, yearnings chat are documented in a proliferation of love letters, poems, and stories written in the Middle Ages.
In the early Middle Ages the Church developed institutions, memorialized in liturgies included in its formal collections, that combined the Church's spiritual commitment to companionate relationships with its members' desire to bond with people of the same sex. The existence of Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox rituals of "brother-making" or "enfraternization" has been known in the academic literature for decades and was brought to my attention by the Reverend Alexei Michalenko.' Ceremonies creating these brotherhoods were performed for same-sex couples (often male missionary pairs) from the fifth century onward. According to Church archives, these early liturgies were typically structured as follows:
¥ The couple stand in front of the lectern, on which are placed the Gospel and a cross. The older of the brothers stands to the right.
¥ The ceremony starts off with prayers and litanies celebrating earlier examples of same-sex couples or friends in the early Church. Sergius and Bacchus were the most frequency invoked precedent.
¥ The couple is girded with a single belt, signifying their union as one, and they place their hands on the Gospel and receive lit candles.
¥ The priest reads from one of Paul's episodes (1 Cor 12:27 £) and the Gospel (John 17:1016), which are followed by more prayers.
¥ The assembled are led in the Lord's Prayer, followed by Holy Communion, the Eucharist, for the couple. The priest leads the couple, who are holding hands, around the lectern while the assembled sing a hymn.
¥ The couple exchange a kiss, and the service concludes with the singing of Psalm 132:1 ("Behold how good and sweet it is for brothers to live as one").
Significantly, this early brotherhood liturgy was acted out in formal terms very similar to the liturgy later developed by the Church for the purpose of performing different-sex marriages.
The main difference between the brotherhood liturgy and the one originally used to wed different-sex couples is that the former emphasizes the companionate (see Psalm 132) rather than the procreative (see Psalm 127) nature of the relationship. Hence, rather than orating on procreation, one version of the enfraternization liturgy read as follows:
O Almighty Lord, you have given to man to be made from the first in Your Image and Likeness by the gift of immortal life. You have willed to bind as brothers not only by nature but by bonds of the spirit Your most celebrated Apostles Peter, the Chief of them all, and Andrew; James and John the Sons of Zebedee; Philip and Batholomew. You made as very brothers Your Holy Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus, Cosmas and Damien, Cyrus and John. Bless Your Servants united also that, not bound by nature, [they be] joined with bonds of love. Grant them a love mutual and without offense and a brotherhood upset by naught of hatred all the days of their lives, through the might of Your All-Holy Spirit and through the intercession of our All-Holy spotless ever-Virgin Lady....
The precise significance of these enfraternization liturgies remains mysterious. They may have simply been friendship ceremonies or send-offs for missionaries. Medieval historian John Boswell argues for a broader reading, however.
Expanding on earlier academic examinations of enfraternization liturgies and suggestions from Reverend Michalenko, Boswell uncovered a large variety of manuscript versions of Christian same-sex union liturgies in libraries and ecclesiastical collections throughout Europe. Although his earlier claim that these liturgies are identical to same-sex marriages was overstated, he has argued that there are tangible connections between the liturgies of same-sex unions and different-sex marriages. The same-sex union ceremonies are usually located right after different-sex marriage ceremonies in the liturgical collections Boswell consulted. As previous scholarship had established, the same-sex ceremonies are structurally and thematically similar to the different-sex ones, but Boswell insists on a more ambitious connection. "[I]n the case of the same-sex ceremony, standing together at the altar with their right hands joined (the traditional symbol of marriage), being blessed by the priest, sharing Communion, and holding a banquet for family and friends afterward all parts of same-sex union in the Middle Ages-most likely signified a marriage in the eyes of ordinary Christians." Critics contest this claim and find much of Boswell's argumentation "tendentious." Notwithstanding these criticisms, which strike me as fair but not conclusive, it seems likely that the Church did sanction these brotherhood ceremonies and that there is some likelihood that the brothers so joined enjoyed relationships of affinity and erotic possibilities.
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