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INTRODUCTION
By ELIZABETH A. R. BROWN
In 1985 Robin Darling Young and Susan Ashbrook Harvey, two American
professors working in Jerusalem, were joined in a ritual of siblinghood by a
Syrian archbishop there. 1 After the ceremony, the archbishop told them that their
1 In writing the following introduction I have profited from the counsel and support of Clau-
dia Rapp and Brent D. Shaw, who have been models of scholarly cooperation since we began
this project. In studying the history of scholarship on ritual brotherhood, as well as ceremonial
brotherhood in the late medieval West, I have incurred numerous debts. I would like to thank
the anonymous readers of this paper, and also Alan E. Bernstein, Alan Bray, Lucy L. Brown,
Ralph S. Brown, Jr., Michael Clanchy, Archimandrite Ephrem, John Gillingham, Maurice
Keen, Matthew Kuefler, Janet L. Nelson, Evelyne Patlagean, Susan Reynolds, Mary A. Rouse,
Alfred Soman, Charles T. Wood, and David F. Wright. Richard C. Famiglietti was particularly
generous in providing references and sage advice, as were Brian Daley and Elizabeth Parker.
I appreciate the comments and questions of the participants in a seminar held at Northwestern
University on 4 April 1995; I am particularly indebted to Richard Kieckhefer, Robert E. Lerner,
E. William Monter, and Barbara Newman. I profited as well from the remarks, written and
oral, of students (and their professor) in a seminar directed by Penelope Johnson at New York
University on 21 November 1995. I thank Thomas Ferrante and St. Mark's Library of the
General Theological Seminary in New York for their hospitality, and, as always, the staffs of
the New York Public Library; Columbia University's Butler Library, Law Library, and Rare
Books and Manuscript Library; and the Bibliotheque nationale de France. Each of the con-
tributors to this symposium presents an individual list of abbreviations employed in the paper
in an initial note. The following abbreviations are used in two or more of the articles:
Annales ESC = Annales: Economies - Societes - Civilisations.
Archimandrite Ephrem = Archimandrite Ephrem, review of Boswell, SSU, in Sourozh 59
(1995): 50-55.
Beck, Byzantinisches Gefolgschaftswesen = Hans-Georg Beck, Byzantinisches Gefolgschafts-
wesen, Sitzungsberichte der bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-
historische Klasse (1965), Heft 5; reprinted with original pagination in idem, Ideen und
Realitaeten in Byzanz: Gesammelte Aufsaetze (London, 1972), no. 11.
Boswell, SSU = John Boswell, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe (New York, 1994;
published in London in 1995 as The Marriage of Likeness).
Bray and Rey, "The Body of the Friend" = Alan Bray and Michel Rey, "The Body of the
Friend," forthcoming in English Masculinities, 1660-1800, ed. Tim Hitchcock and Michele
Cohen (London, probably 1999).
Chaplais, Piers Gaveston = Pierre Chaplais, Piers Gaveston, Edward II's Adoptive Brother
(Oxford, 1994).
Ciszewski, Kiinstliche Verwandtschaft = Stanislaus Ciszewski, Kiinstliche Verwandtschaft bei
den Siidslaven (Leipzig, 1897).
Contamine, Guerre, etat et societe = Philippe Contamine, Guerre, etat et societe a la fin du
Moyen Age. Etudes sur les armees des rois de France 1337-1494, Ecole Pratique des Hautes
Etudes, Civilisation et societes 24 (Paris and The Hague, 1972).
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union "was a sisterhood stronger than blood, confirmed in the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit"; as "a spiritual union, it would last beyond the grave"; no quarrels
should thenceforth mar their relationship. It was the archbishop who had sug-
David, "Sur les traces" = Marcel David, "Sur les traces rnedievales de la fraternite," in Histoire
et societe. Melanges offerts a Georges Duby, 4 vols., Textes reunis par les medievistes de
I'Universite de Provence (Aix-en-Provence, 1992) 1 (Le couple, l'ami et le prochain):
113-23.
Dmitrievskii, Euchologia = Alexei Afanasevich Dmitrievskii, Opisanie liturgiceskih rukopisej
hranjascihcja v bibliotekah pravosl. Vostoka, 3 vols. (Kiev and Petrograd, 1895-1917; repr.
Hildesheim, 1965), vol. 2 (Euchologia).
Du Cange, "Dissertation XXI" = Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, "Des Adoptions
d'honnevr en Frere, & par occasion des Freres d'armes. Dissertation XXI," in Histoire de
S. Lovys IX. dv nom Roy de France, ecrite par lean Sire de Ioinville Senechal de Champagne:
Enrichie de nouuelles Obseruations & Dissertations Historiques. Avec les Etablissemens de
S. Lovys, le Conseil de Pierre de Fontaines, & plusieurs autres Pieces concernant ce regne,
tirees des Manuscrits (Paris, 1668), 260-67; this and Du Cange's other Dissertations are
published in the eds. of his Latin Glossarium that appeared in 1840-50 (7:80-97) and 1883-
87 (10:67-81), but they are not included in the eds. of 1733-36 or of 1777-84.
Du Cange, Glossarium Grcecitatis = Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange, Glossarium ad Scrip-
tores media: & infima: Grcecitatis, in quo Grceca vocabula novato: significationis, aut usus
rarioris, Barbara, Exotica, Ecclesiastica, Liturgica, Tactica, Nomica, Jatrica, Botanica,
Chymica explicantur, eorum Notiones & Originationes reteguntur: Complures tevi medii
Ritus & Mores; Dignitates Ecclesiasticte, Monasticte, Palatirue, Politicce, & quamplurima
alia observatione digna, & ad Historiam Byzantinam prcesertim spectantia, recensentur ac
enucleantur. E libris editis, ineditis, veteribusque monumentis. Accedit Appendix ad Glos-
sarium media: & infima: Latinitatis, una cum brevi Etymologico Lingua: Gallicce ex utroque
Glossario, 2 vols. (Lyons, 1688).
Du Cange, Histoire = see above under Du Cange, "Dissertation XX!."
Durham, Some Tribal Origins = Mary Edith Durham, Some Tribal Origins: Laws and Customs
of the Balkans (London, 1928).
L'eucologio Barberini Gr. 336 = L'eucologio Barberini Gr. 336 (ff. 1-263), ed. Stefano Par-
enti and Elena Velkovska, Bibliotheca "Ephemerides Liturgicae," Subsidia 80 (Rome, 1995).
Evans-Pritchard, "Zande Blood-Brotherhood" = E. E. Evans-Pritchard, "Zande Blood-
Brotherhood," Africa 6 (1933): 369-401, reprinted in idem, Essays in Social Anthropology
(London, 1962), chap. 7.
Flach, "Le compagnonnage" = Jacques Flach, "Le compagnonnage dans les chansons de
geste," in Etudes romanes dediees a Gaston Paris le 29 decembre 1890 (25 e anniversaire
de son Doctorat es lettres) par ses eleves francais et ses eleves etrangers des pays de langue
francaise (Paris, 1891; repr. Geneva, 1976), 141-80.
Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order = Meyer Fortes, Kinship and the Social Order: The
Legacy of Lewis Henry Morgan, The Lewis Henry Morgan Lecture, 1963, at the University
of Rochester (Chicago, 1969).
Goar, Euchologion = Jacques Goar, Euchologion sive Rituale Grcecorum. complectens Ritus
et Ordines Divirue Liturgice, Officio rum, Sacramento rum, Consecrationum, Benedictionum,
Funerum, Orationum, &c. cuilibet persona; statui, vel tempori congruos, Juxta Usum Ori-
entalis Ecclesite. Cum selectis Bibliothecce Regia; Barberirue, Cryptce-Ferratce, Sancti Marci
Florentini, Tilliarue, Allatiance, Coresiarue, et allis probatis MM.SS. & editis Exemplaribus
collatum. lnterpretatione Latina, nee non mixobarbararum vocum brevi Glossario, ceneis
figuris, observationibus ex antiquis PP. & maxime Grcecorum Theologorum expositionibus
Illustratum, 2d ed. (Venice, 1730; repr. Graz, 1960).
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gested the ritual to the two women, who were (and are) friends and colleagues.
Having known nothing of it before, Young and Harvey "assumed that [it] was
some Christian descendant of an adoption ceremony used by the early church
Hamilton-Grierson, "Brotherhood (Artificial)" = P. James Hamilton-Grierson, "Brother (Ar-
tificial)," in Encyclopcedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings with John A. Selbie
et al. (New York, 1910) 2: 857-71.
Hellmuth, Die germanische Blutsbriiderschaft = Leopold Hellmuth, Die germanische Bluts-
briiderschaft. Ein typologischer und volkerkundlicher Vergleich, Wiener Arbeiten zur ger-
manischen Altertumskunde und Philologie 7 (Vienna, 1975).
Herman, Ritualized Friendship = Gabriel Herman, Ritualized Friendship and the Greek City
(Cambridge, 1987).
Jacob, "L'euchologue" = Andre Jacob, "L'euchologue de Porphyre Uspenski, Cod. Leningr.
gr. 226 [Xe siecle]," Le Museon: revue d' etudes orientales 78 (1965): 173-214.
Keen, "Brotherhood in Arms" = Maurice Keen, "Brotherhood in Arms," History 47 (1962): 1-17.
Kretzenbacher, "Gegenwartsformen der Wahlverwandschaft" = Leopold Kretzenbacher, "Ge-
genwartsformen der Wahlverwandschaft 'pobratimstvo' bei den Serben und im iibrigen Su-
dosteuropa," Grazer und Miinchener balkanologische Studien, part 2, Miinchener Studien
zu Geschichte und Volkskunde der Balkan-Lander, Beitrage zur Kenntnis Siidosteuropas und
des Nahen Orients 2 (Munich, 1967), 167-82.
Kretzenbacher, Rituelle Wahlverbriiderung = Leopold Kretzenbacher, Rituelle Wahlverbrii-
derung in Siidosteuropa. Erlebniswirklichkeit und Erziihlmotiv, Sitzungsberichte der baye-
rischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, philosophisch-historische Klasse (1971), Heft 1 (18
January 1971).
Kretzenbacher, "Serbisch-orthodoxe 'Wahlbriiderung' " = Leopold Kretzenbacher, "Serbisch-
orthodoxe 'Wahlverbriiderung' zwischen Glaubigenwunsch und Kirchenverbot von heute,"
Siidost-Forschungen. Internationale Zeitschrift fiir Geschichte, Kultur und Landeskunde Sii-
dosteuropas begriindet von Fritz Valjavec 38 (1979): 163-83.
La Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Memoires = Jean-Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte-Palaye, Memoires
sur l' ancienne chevalerie, Consideree comme un etablissement politique & militaire ...
Nouvelle Edition, Augmentee d'un Volume, 3 vols. (Paris, 1781). See also La Curne de
Sainte-Palaye, Memoires sur l'ancienne chevalerie, ed. Jean-Emmanuel-Charles Nodier, 2
vols. (Paris, 1826).
Lynch, Godparents = Joseph H. Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe
(Princeton, 1986).
McFarlane, "A Business-partnership" = K. B. McFarlane, "A Business-partnership in War
and Administration, 1421-1445," English Historical Review 78 (1963): 290-310.
McGuire, Friendship and Community = Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community:
The Monastic Experience, 350-1250, Cistercian Studies Series 95 (Kalamazoo, 1988).
Patlagean, "Christianisation" = Evelyne Patlagean, "Christianisation et parentes rituelles: le
domaine de Byzance," Annales ESC 33 3 (May-June 1978): 625-36; reprinted with original
pagination in eadem, Structure sociale, famille, chretiente a Byzance, IVe-Xle siecle (Lon-
don, 1981), no. 12; and translated as "Christianization and Ritual Kinship in the Byzantine
Area," in Ritual, Religion, and the Sacred: Selections from the Annales - Economies, So-
cietes, Civilisations, Vol. 7 (Baltimore, 1982), 81-94.
Pitt-Rivers, "The Kith and the Kin" = Julian Pitt-Rivers, "The Kith and the Kin," in The
Character of Kinship, ed. Jack Goody (Cambridge, 1973), 89-105.
Pitt-Rivers, "Ritual Kinship in the Mediterranean" = Julian Pitt-Rivers, "Ritual Kinship in
the Mediterranean: Spain and the Balkans," in Mediterranean Family Structures, ed. John
George Peristiany, Cambridge Studies in Social Anthropology 13 (Cambridge, 1976),
317-34.
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to solemnify a state - that of friendship - which comes highly recommended
in the Christian tradition."? Young notes that neither she nor Harvey "took the
trouble to investigate the subject," surely at least in part because the rite did not
fundamentally affect the relationship of collegial friendship they already enjoyed.
Had they inquired, they would have discovered that analogous rituals are and
have long been practiced in Christian and non-Christian societies, and that the
ceremony is more accurately described as one of "kinship" than of "adoption."
The rite in which Young and Harvey participated in 1985 had been celebrated
for at least twelve centuries and had been the subject of serious scholarly inquiry
for more than three hundred years before they became spiritual sisters. Young
was moved to recollect and recount the incident - and to discuss the history
of the rite - when, in 1994, John Boswell advanced a dramatic interpretation
of the ritual in his book Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. The central
topic of the book was the Eastern Christian ceremony that was the direct an-
tecedent of their rite, the office of adelphopoiesis (literally, "the making of
brothers" - or "sisters"). Boswell found versions of the ceremony in some sixty
Greek and Slavonic manuscripts dating from the eighth through the sixteenth or
seventeenth centuries; he published the texts of six of these in the original Greek
and in translation, together with translations of four similar rites.' In Boswell's
view, the ritual of adelphopoiesis functioned in the past "as a 'gay marriage
Puchner, "Griechisches zur 'adoptio in fratrem' " = Walter Puchner, "Griechisches zur 'adop-
tio in fratrem' ," Siidost-Forschungen. Internationale Zeitschrift fur Geschichte, Kultur und
Landeskunde Siidosteuropas begriindet von Fritz Valjavec 53 (1994): 187-224.
Shaw, New Republic = Brent D. Shaw, "A Groom of One's Own," The New Republic (16 and
25 July 1994),33-41.
Strittmatter, "The 'Barberinum S. Marci'" = Anselm Strittmatter, "The 'Barberinum S.
Marci' of Jacques Goar. Barberinianus graecus 336," Ephemerides liturgicae 47 (1933):
329-67.
Strittmatter, "Notes" = Anselm Strittmatter, "Notes on the Byzantine Synapte," Traditio 10
(1954): 51-108.
Tamassia, L'affratellamento = Giovanni [Nino] Tamassia, L'affratellamento (a8~A01toda).
Studio storico-giuridico (Turin, 1886); reprinted in idem, Scritti di storia giuridica, pubbli-
cati a cura della facolta di giurisprudenza dell' Universita di Padova, 3 vols. (Padua, 1964-
69) 3:329-78, no. 33.
Woods, "Same-Sex Unions" = Constance Woods, "Same-Sex Unions or Semantic Illusions?"
Communio 22 (Summer, 1995): 316-42.
Woodward, Newsweek = Kenneth L. Woodward, "Do You Paul, Take Ralph ... ," Newsweek
(10 June 1994): 78-79.
2Robin Darling Young, "Gay Marriage: Reimagining Church History," First Things 47
(1994): 43-48, at 43; this review essay treats John Boswell's book SSU.
3In an appendix (SSU, 372-74), Boswell lists offices in sixty-two manuscripts; cf. SSU, 258
("the nearly eighty manuscript versions of the ceremony consulted for this study"). His de-
scriptions of three of them lack folio numbers, which suggests that he was unable to examine
the original texts (SSU, 374). Boswell seems generally to rely on dates suggested by other
authorities, although paleographical and other criteria might have made it possible for him to
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ceremony' ," uniting two individuals who were erotically and romantically in-
volved (which was not true of Young's relations with Harvey before or after
their union)." Boswell denied that the bonds created by the ceremony had any
"structural similarity" to ritualized sibling ties found in many societies. He re-
jected the notion that such relationships could be considered "variations of a
single phenomenon." He charged that terms like "artificial kinship," "blood
brotherhood," and "collateral adoption" had been consciously employed to de-
scribe the bonds forged by the Eastern ritual in order "to obscure its more
troubling aspects" - the "emotional" and "erotic" nature of the participants'
relationship.' Boswell was not the first to believe that the ritual forged a rela-
tionship that sanctioned and/or promoted sexual intercourse between the same-
sex partners." Still, the fervor and densely argued detail with which he presented
his hypotheses have aroused widespread popular and scholarly interest in the
ceremony of adelphopoiesis in particular and the institution of ritual brotherhood
in general. His book is the inspiration for the symposium that follows.
What was the ritual of adelphopoiesis'I' The ceremony was performed by a
priest in church. It brought together two people who, according to the prayers
the priest intoned, were to be joined for their lifetimes in peace (eirener; ap-
ostolic, selfless love (agape), sometimes described as pneumatike or "spiritual.?"
assign the manuscripts to narrower time spans: see e.g., SSU, 178 n. 177, 372-74. The fifteenth
translated text, from a manuscript now in Belgrade (SSU, 335-41), Boswell identifies (SSU,
335) as of uncertain date but describes it as [written? copied?] "before the eighteenth century";
in his list of manuscripts, he dates it tentatively to the fifteenth century (SSU, 374). It would
have been helpful to have Boswell's views on where each of the manuscripts was copied, in
addition to the information he gives concerning current location. In SS U, 183-84, he indicates
that there are partial versions in Arabic, although he cites no specific sources; on 189, he says
that "[t]here is an example of the ceremony mentioning two women," but again he gives no
reference to his source. On Boswell's translations, see Woods ("Same-Sex Unions," 320-27),
and Archimandrite Ephrem, 51-55.
4 SS U, 280-81. .
5SSU, 258,271-72, 275-76,281-82.
"See Patlagean, "Christianisation," 628-30; Durham, Some Tribal Origins, 153-59 esp. 157;
Boswell, SSU, 270 n. 39, 277, and 279 (where he cites Thorkil Vanggaard, Phallos: A Symbol
and Its History in the Male World [London, 1972], 119, which none of the authors has been
able to locate).
7 The following discussion of ritual is based on work that Claudia Rapp and I have done
both independently and jointly. I act here as rapporteuse of our conclusions, and acknowledge
in the notes interpretations and bibliography that she contributed. We are both grateful to Brent
D. Shaw for his advice and suggestions, particularly as regards the significance of the term
skandalon. We also appreciate the help Gail Lenhoff gave Claudia Rapp with the Russian
Orthodox material.
8Goar translated the Greek title 'AKoAouSiu EiC; aDEA266 TRADITIO
sometimes as anupokritos or "sincere"; fidelity (pistis); and oneness of mind
(homonoia). They were to live thenceforth without hatred and without setting
traps for each other (askandalistoir" The prayers enumerate the ideal (and doubt-
less idealized) qualities expected to characterize the relationship being solem-
nized. They constitute the core of the ceremony as the euchologies record it.
Some of the more detailed offices give instructions for performing the ritual,
variously specifying that the couple place their right hands on, venerate, and
kiss the gospel; that they kiss each other; that they partake of presanctified
elements; and that a cross or crosses, lighted candles, and incense be used. Such
details vary, and most of the surviving offices provide only bare instructions
regarding performance. The fact that a practice is only rarely mentioned does
not mean that it was not employed - often, and even regularly - when the
ritual was actually celebrated. As Walter Puchner has emphasized, improvisation
and variation characterize all performances of the ritual that have been observed
and reported.'? Take, for example, the practice of the priest's binding the hands
of the participants with a stole, which is stipulated uniquely in a manuscript of
1522. 11 This may mean that the ritual first appeared in ceremonies of adelpho-
poiesis in the early sixteenth century. On the other hand, the practice (which is
commonly found in the Eastern marriage ceremony) may have been used before
in rituals of adelphopoiesis. Likewise, other acts, gestures, and movements com-
monly reported in narrative accounts of fraternal unions, Christian and non-
Christian, may have accompanied the ceremony: oath-swearing; the sharing of
food, drink - and blood; the exchange of gifts (including arms); the clasping
90 n the meaning of skandalon, see Gustav Stahlin, Skandalon. Untersuchungen zur Ge-
schichte eines biblischen Beg riffs , Beitrage fur Forderung christlicher Theologie, 2. Reihe,
Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Monographien 24 (Gutersloh, 1930), who examines both eccle-
siastical and secular usage. In his Latin Glossarium Du Cange provides a useful guide to the
word's significance in early medieval secular texts.
lOPuchner, "Griechisches zur 'adoptio in fratrem'," esp. 204, 210-11, 216.
II Dmitrievskii, Euchologia, 743 (Constantinople, Patriarchate 615 [757]); cf. Boswell, SSU,
331, 374. At one point Boswell seems to equate this practice with "placing a veil over the
spouses": SSU, 217 (saying that the ritual of adelphopoiesis shares this custom with the mar-
riage ceremony), but cf. ibid., 206-7 (where he distinguishes this custom from the practice of
"wrapping right hands in a stole"). Boswell says (SSU, 206) that the ritual of "the tying of the
right hands" appears "in many same-sex union ceremonies" and cites as examples the third,
fourth, twelfth, and fourteenth of his translations. The third source, however, consists simply
of prayers (ibid., 291-94); the fourth (ibid., 294-98) refers to no such practice; the twelfth
is the marriage ceremony in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, and hence irrelevant (ibid.,
323-26); the fourteenth is the ritual of 1522 to which we refer here. As Claudia Rapp has
discovered, the liturgical books of the Russian Orthodox church prescribe that two men being
united in brotherhood should be "bound with a belt" while holding each other's hands in front
of the tetrapodion. See, for example, Konstantin Nikol'skii's discussion of a sixteenth-century
text, in 0 slurhbakli russkoi tserkvi byvshikh v prezhnikn pechatnykh bogolushevnykh knigakh
(Saint Petersburg, 1885), 373, 376.
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or shaking of hands.'? On the other hand, it is dangerous to assume without
specific proof that any particular ritual was employed in any particular ceremony
- and, even more, that practices which are never attested were used in the rite."
12Boswell maintained (SSU, 199-217, esp. 217) that "the joining of right hands" was spec-
ified in the ritual of adelphopoiesis, as it was in the marriage rite; cf. his vivid description
(SSU, 191) of a couple participating in the rite of adelphopoiesis "standing together at the altar
with their right hands joined (the traditional symbol of marriage)"; and ibid., 206, where he
states that the joining of right hands appears "virtually always" in the ceremony of adelpho-
poiesis. My colleagues and I have found no trace of such a practice in any of these rites we
have been able to examine. Boswell also declared that "the use of a cross" (SSU, 206; cf.,
however, 217) and "occasionally the use of swords" (ibid., 206; cf., however, 211, 217) char-
acterized the rituals of both marriage and adelphopoiesis, but in the end he abandoned both
these hypotheses. Only one office of adelphopoiesis (in the twelfth-century manuscript Sinai
973) prescribes that the priest hold a ceremonial cross above the hands of the participants:
Dmitrievskii, Euchologia, 122; for the manuscript, Boswell, SSU, 373. However, in the Russian
Orthodox rite the participants exchange ceremonial crosses: Ulrich Bamborschke, Witold
Kosny, Helga Meyer-Harder, Wolf-Heinrich Schmidt, Klaus-Dieter Seemann (Forschungs-
gruppe "Altere slavische Literaturen" an der FU Berlin), Die Erriihlung tiber Petr Ordynskij.
Ein Beitrag zur soziologischen Erforschung altrussischer Texte, Veroffentlichungen der An-
teilung fur slavische Sprachen und Literaturen des Osteuropa-Instituts [Slavisches Seminar]
an der Freien Universitat Berlin 48 (Wiesbaden, 1979), 98-99. Claudia Rapp provided much
of the information included in this note.
13Boswell argues at one point (SSU, 207; cf., however, ibid., 217) that the custom of blessing
crowns was associated with the rite of adelphopoiesis. However, the eleventh-century manu-
script he cites as evidence is irrelevant, since the wedding prayer of Methodius mentioning the
removal of crowns is separated by a line from the immediately preceding ceremony of adel-
phopoiesis: Boswell, SSU, 345-47 CAKoAouSta EtC; aOEA268 TRADITIO
The surviving evidence must be approached with caution, skepticism, restraint,
and sensitivity .
Prayers in most of the offices allude to pairs of saints. The apostles Philip
and Bartholomew and saints Sergius and Bacchus figure most often and most
prominently, although Peter and Paul, Peter and Andrew, Zebedee's sons James
and John, Cosmas and Damian, and Cyrus and John also appear. The rituals
designate these couples as adelphoi ("brothers"), most often as brothers created
(literally "begotten") and linked not by nature but by faith and the Holy Spirit
(UbEARITUAL BROTHERHOOD: INTRODUCTION 269
brothers, God did not make them ritual brothers. To have done so would have
been to duplicate a tie that already existed. As sons of Zebedee, James and John
were naturally linked by bonds similar to those that were to unite those joined
in the ceremony. Thus it would have been redundant (and not in accordance
with God's management of human affairs) for them to be made spiritual brothers,
as were the two individuals participating in the ritual. The prayer thus acknowl-
edges the difference between "made" or "ritual" brotherhood, on the one hand,
and "unmade," "real," or "natural" brotherhood, on the other.
The paired apostles and saints appear in the prayers as models for the two
participants, and as testimony that throughout the ages God has sanctified re-
lationships like the one solemnized in the ceremony. One prayer implores God,
"as he bestowed his peace and love on his holy disciples and apostles," to grant
to the pair participating in the rite "all their petitions that are for salvation and
eternal life."!" Another asks God, who made Peter and Paul brothers according
to the Holy Spirit, to do likewise for the postulants." The two newly-made
brothers were expected to demonstrate toward each other the virtues of spiritual
love, fidelity, oneness of mind, absence of rancor, and also sophrosune (sound-
ness of mind, wisdom, self-control, prudence, temperance, and chastity)!" that
God's apostles and saints had manifested.
[plays] on the biological sense of adelphous genesthai, which," he believes, "usually has a
different meaning in these texts"; his translations invariably render the phrase as "be united"
without any allusion to "brothers." He believes that the words here may "[suggest] that the
union being performed should not be understood as parallel to biological brotherhood, or that
God reckons biological sibling relations little." Boswell comments on the paired saints Cosmas
and Damian (and Cyrus and John), in SSU, 181 n. 96; neither couple appears in any of the
rituals translated or edited in his book. Jean H. Hagstrum points out that oikonomia signifies
"God's plan of salvation for the whole world and creation," in Esteem Enlivened by Desire:
The Couple from Homer to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1994), 159.
17 Goar, Euchologion, 708-9 (from the eighth-century Barberini euchology).
18Goar, Euchologion, 708 (a prayer from the eighth-century Barberini euchology, and an
office included in the fourteenth-century manuscript, Grottaferrata, MS r B III, and also, as
Boswell shows, in a thirteenth-century manuscript from Mount Sinai and in two twelfth-cen-
tury manuscripts). See Boswell, SSU, 356 (section ix, translated on 317 as section viii); the
thirteenth-century ritual (ibid., 355 [section vii, translated on 316 as section vi]) also contains
a prayer saying that God "deemed fit to call brothers the holy apostles and heirs of the king-
dom." See also ibid., 350 (a twelfth-century prayer featuring Philip and Bartholomew, trans-
lated on 311-12).
190ne sixteenth-century prayer links the term sophrosune with eirene (peace) and agape
(love), applying them to the saints and apostles: Boswell, SSU, 361; cf. Boswell's translation
(SSU, 330; rendering sophrosune as "union"), and note his comment in n. 281. Helen North
discusses the various shades of meaning the word sophrosune possessed from the time of the
ancient Greeks through that of the Christian Fathers, in Sophrosyne: Self-Knowledge and Self-
Restraint in Greek Literature, Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 35 (Ithaca, 1966); see
also Woods, "Same-Sex Unions," 323-24 (discussing the similar Slavonic word tselomodrie;
Hagstrum, Esteem Enlivened by Desire, 74-75, and 136 (pointing out that the word had con-
notations of marital faithfulness). North notes (Sophrosyne, 318-19) the Christianization of
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The prayers show that the relationship is one of ritual kinship, in which two
biologically unrelated people are transformed into spiritual siblings. The term
adelphos signifies a bond that does not in fact exist between the participants.
Those united in the rite are not and do not literally become siblings; they are
admonished to treat each other as brothers are ideally expected to act towards
each other. The bonds that are thenceforth to link them encompass only the most
estimable and finest components of biological siblinghood, excluding emotions
of envy and jealousy. 20 The central element of the relationship is amity. The
litany envisions the establishment of enduring peace." The prayers' emphasis
on concord and harmony indeed suggests that the rite may often have been
intended to turn "capital enemies into friends and comrades, -joined by close
bonds of love," as a covenant concluded in France in 1395 is said to have done.?
Other obligations expected to ensue from the rite are unspecified, but it seems
the term in 1 Tim. 2: 15, where Saint Paul links it with the theological virtues pistis and agape
and with hagiasmos (holiness or purity) in describing the qualities husbands and wives should
cultivate.
2°Cf. David, "Sur les traces," 114. Meyer Fortes emphasizes that kinship is predicated on
amity, and that pacts of amity imply artificial kinship relationships, in "Kinship and the Axiom
of Amity," in Kinship and the Social Order, 237-41. Julian Pitt-Rivers discusses and expands
on Fortes's hypotheses in "The Kith and the Kin," 89-105, at 89-90,96, and esp. 98 (arguing
that ritual relationships "borrow the qualities attached to 'real' kinship in order to cement a
relationship initiated by nothing more than mutual agreement. It is only this which distin-
guishes the blood-brother from the bond friend"). E. E. Evans-Pritchard ("Zande Blood-
Brotherhood," 399) stresses that such ritual relationships exclude such ignoble feelings as
jealousy more rigorously than do biological ties.
21 In his Euchologion, Jacques Goar grouped the ritual of adelphopoiesis with other cere-
monies designed to achieve peace. Precisely why he did so is unclear. As Boswell shows (SSU,
186-87), the ritual appears in different contexts in the euchologies that he (and Goar) studied.
As Boswell pointed out, it is impossible to determine the reasons for the placement of specific
offices in euchologies, and thus it is perilous to invoke context within the prayer books as
evidence of a ritual's purpose.
22 "Dux Burgundie auctoritate regia ... retulit pacem, ipso mediante, inter ducem Britanie
et dominum Oliverum de Clichon confirmatam.... Ambo tamen domini, ex inimicis capita-
libus amici et consodales effecti, inde tanto glutino amoris conjuncti sunt, quod dux in Fran-
ciam disponens accedere ... ipsi Olivero uxoris, prolis et patrie custodiam commendavit":
Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le regne de Charles VI, de 1380 a 1422,
ed. Louis-Francois Bellaguet, 6 vols. (Paris, 1852) 2: 115-16 (bk. 14, ch. 15; describing a
settlement between Duke Jean IV of Brittany and his longtime adversary Olivier de Clisson,
arranged by Philip the Bold of Burgundy, which the author, Michel Pintoin, assigns to 1393-
94, but which was actually effected in January and February 1395); see John Bell Henneman,
Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France Under Charles Vand Charles VI, Middle
Ages Series (Philadelphia, 1996), 162-68, 190 (who does not discuss Pintoin's testimony).
Pintoin's phrase "amici et consodales" has long been interpreted as signifying that the two men
became brothers-in-arms, which may be stretching the evidence: see La Curne de Sainte-Palaye,
Memoires 1:277 (1826 ed., 1:237); Keen, "Brotherhood in Arms," 3,12 (both of whom accept
Pintoin's dating). The alliance that Clisson contracted with Bertrand du Guesclin on 24 October
1370 was explicitly fraternal, including as it did the phrase "Item garderons vostre corps anostre
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reasonable to assume that the participants and community expected the partners,
like the best of brothers, to protect each other and each other's interests, and
also the welfare of those cherished by or dependent on each of them."
This is the ceremony that inspired Boswell's research. The book he wrote
belongs to a scholarly tradition that is three and a half centuries old. Unlike
him, most of the scholars who have studied ceremonial brotherhood, Eastern
and Western, have generally treated the Eastern ritual as akin not only to practices
attested in the West, but also to customs involving fraternal ties in a variety of
cultures far distant from Europe." A few have linked the Eastern ritual with
homosexual practices, but most have not. Whether or not (or to what extent)
scholars have consciously avoided or distorted the issue out of prudery or because
they oppose gay sexuality is a question that I shall try to resolve in briefly
surveying the historiography of ritual brotherhood.
Since 1647, a text of the Eastern Christian ritual of spiritual brotherhood has
been widely available in the edition of the Eastern Orthodox euchology which
the Parisian Dominican Jacques Goar (1601-1653) published in that year. The
book was dedicated to an impeccable patron, Nicolas de Bailleul (royal councilor,
president of the Parlement of Paris, and chancellor of Anne of Austria); it was
approved and endorsed by numerous ecclesiastical authorities in France and
Rome. A second, corrected (and similarly approved) edition appeared in Venice
in 1730, and was reprinted in 1960. 25 The basis for Goar's edition was the
euchology published in Venice in 1638, which he collated with earlier printed
euchologies and various manuscripts, the oldest of which was the splendid eighth-
century prayerbook known as the Barberini euchology. In his edition Goar pre-
sented an office of adelphopoiia pneumatike (literally "the making [or creation]
of spiritual brothers"), which is there preceded and followed by prayers for
pooir comme nostre Frere": Du Cange, "Dissertation XXI," 266; and see below, Brown, "Ritual
Brotherhood," following nne 15 and 44. For general comments on the use of ritual brotherhood
to achieve peace, see Durham, Some Tribal Origins, 157-58, and, for a modern example, Patrick
Leigh Fermor, Mani: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (London, 1958), 93-94.
23 Rapp discusses possible implications of the distinction between a "greater" and "lesser"
brother, found in a fifteenth-century version of the ritual: see below.
24 Roger Aubenas provides a useful survey of works on brotherhood in his "Reflexions sur
les 'fraternites artificielles' au Moyen-Age," in Etudes historiques a La memoire de Noel Didier
publiees par La Faculte de Droit et des Sciences Economiques de Grenoble (Paris, 1960), 1-10.
25The first edition of Goar's Euchologion was published in Paris by Simeon Piget. On Goar
and his work, see Strittmatter, "The 'Barberinum S. Marci' ," esp. 330-31, 366, 367 (calling
for a special study of Goar's use of manuscripts); for the title of the first edition (almost
identical to that of the second edition), see ibid., 330 n. 2. Boswell's assessment of Goar's
work (SSU, ix-x esp. ix n. 2, 25-27, 180, 185 esp. n. 124, 192 n. 143, 209 n. 60, 267, 399)
contrasts with those given by Strittmatter and Patlagean ("Christianisation," 629); see also
Strittmatter, "Notes," 53, 61; and Jacob, "L'euchologue," 180). Goar was distinguished enough
to win a substantial notice in Louis Moreri, Le Grand Dictionnaire Historique ... , new ed.
Claude-Pierre Goujet and Etienne-Francois Drouet, 10 vols. (Paris, 1759) 5:237-38.
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effecting peace and amity between two men. According to the note that Goar
included, the office was "forbidden by ecclesiastical and imperial laws" but was
presented in the form "found in numerous other manuscripts." Goar reproduced
the office and gave variants from four manuscripts, including the Barberini
euchology."
Four decades after the publication of Goar's edition, the ritual was known
(probably through Goar's work) to Charles du Fresne, sieur du Cange (1610-
88). In 1668 Du Cange briefly discussed it in the twenty-first of the Dissertations
historiques appended to his edition of Joinville's Life of Saint Louis, which by
the middle of the nineteenth century were being reprinted at the end of the
various editions of his Glossarium media: et infima Latinitatis. Du Cange entitled
this Dissertation, "Des Adoptions d'honnevr en Frere, & par occasion des Freres
d'armes."27 Going back to the times of the Romans and barbarians and forward
to the late fifteenth century, Du Cange gave numerous examples of what he
26Goar, Euchologion, 706-9 at 706 (accurately rendering the Greek note as "Sciendum Of-
ficium prresens Ecclesiasticis Cresareisque legibus esse vetitum: illud tamen ut in plerisque
aliis codicibus inventum est, a nobis pnelo mandatur"); Goar (ibid., 709) discusses background,
the fraternal union entered into by the future emperor Basil I (867-86), and various legal and
ecclesiastical texts relating to the ritual. See Strittmatter, "The 'Barberinum S. Marci' ," 359
n. 238 (413); Boswell, SSU, 185. Although in 1933 Strittmatter announced (p. 329 n. 1) the
imminent publication of a facsimile edition of the Barberini manuscript, the text, edited by
Stefano Parenti and Elena Velkovska, has just appeared as L' eucologio Barberini Gr. 336, in
which see esp. 229-31. Archimandrite Ephrem of the Monastery of the Assumption, who has
reconstituted the full litany of the office printed by Goar, kindly provided me with his trans-
lations of Goar's text and his own reconstruction. Goar's variants are taken from the Barberini
euchology; the eleventh-century manuscript, Vatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana,
Barberianus 329 (which Goar refers to as "Barberinum 88"); and two manuscripts from Grotta-
ferrata, one dating from the twelfth or thirteenth century (MS rBI, which Goar calls "Cryp-
toferratense Bessarionis"; cf. Boswell, SSU, 350, 373), the other from the fourteenth century
(MS r B III, designated by Goar as "Cryptoferratense Falascre"). For discussion and dating
of these and other manuscripts used by Goar, see Strittmatter, "The 'Barberinum S. Marci' ,"
330-31 n. 4. In his list of 62 manuscripts containing ceremonies of ritual brotherhood, Boswell
includes the four manuscripts utilized by Goar (with two dates differing from Strittmatter's):
SSU, 372-74 (cf. 350); see also 180, 197.
27Du Cange, "Dissertation XXI", 263; see also Dissertations XXII ("Des Adoptions
d'honnevr en Fils, & par occasion de l'origine des Cheualeries," in Histoire, 268-76), and
XXIII ("Svite de la Dissertation precedente, touchant les Adoptions d'honneur en fils, ou deux
monnoyes de Theodebert I. et de Childebert II. Rois d' Austrasie sont expliquees," ibid., 276-
89). Du Cange also commented on the institution in his "Observations" (ibid., 35-36) on a
passage (ibid., 6) in which Joinville referred to Gilles "de Bruyn" (Ie Brun), constable of
France, as "mon frere." Having identified this individual as Gilles de Trasegnies, Du Cange
suggested that Joinville called him his brother, "en suite de quelque etroite ami tie qu'ils con-
tracterent ensemble a la Cour du Roy S. Louys, ou peut-estre parce qu'ils estoient Freres
darmes": he noted that they were not related by marriage, but he remarked that "aucuns,"
relying on the passage, had identified Gilles as the husband of Joinville's sister (and hence his
brother-in-law). In modern editions of Joinville's Life, Gilles is simply described as "mon-
seigneur Gilles le Brun" (rather than, as in Du Cange's edition, "mon frere, Sire Gilles de
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termed "adoptions honoraires en freres fondees sur cette amitie reciproque des
deux amis, qui s'entrainoient d'une bienueillance fraternelle." The examples he
cited were largely drawn from medieval Western sources, and he gave the texts
of two French compacts of brotherhood, one of which Boswell translated in his
appendix. He also quoted Western testimony showing the existence of ritual
brotherhood among the Cumans and the Saracens. He called special attention to
the Christian ceremonial "dans l' Euchologium," to which, he said, "[1]es Grecs
donnerent le nom d' adelphopistia," and he cited instances of "fraternite spiri-
tuelle, pneumatike adelphotes" found in Byzantine sources.
Ten years later, in 1678, Du Cange included in his Glossarium of medieval
Latin abundant varieties oifratres andfraternitates, and under the headingfratres
spirituales cited a number of Greek references to adelphoi pneumatikoi and to
pneumatike adelphotes, noting that in the twenty-first Dissertation he had ap-
pended to Joinville' sLife, he had treated that sort of spiritual relationship" co-
piose." In his Glossarium of medieval Greek, published in 1688, the last year
of his life, Du Cange explicitly cited Goar's Euchologion, referring to the work
in two of his eight entries relating to ritual brotherhood, which included adelphos
pneumatikos, adelphopoiia, and adelphopoiesis." Thus, more than three cen-
turies ago, Goar and Du Cange prepared the way for serious study of the ritual
known as adelphopoiesis, adelphopoiia, and adelphothesia, and other similar
and related practices in Eastern and Western Europe, and elsewhere.
The range of sources cited by Du Cange is impressive. His achievement chal-
lenged later scholars to attempt to swell the stock of examples he had collected.
Jean-Baptiste de la Curne de Sainte-Palaye (1697-1781) elected to focus on the
institution known es fraternite d'armes?" In his Memoires sur l'ancienne cheval-
Bruyn"); see Natalis de Wailly's edition of Joinville's Life of Saint Louis, in Joinville's (Euvres
(Paris, 1867), 18-21.
28 Du Cange, Glossarium Grcecitatis 1:23-24, where Du Cange again referred to his twenty-
first Dissertation, adding two examples to those he had given there. Du Cange included ad-
ditional sources regarding fraternitas in ibid., 2:96.
29La Curne examined the institution in his Memoires 1:225-33 (1826 ed., 1:191-97), and
in the notes to this section, ibid., 1:272-84 (1826 ed., 1:232-43), esp. 272-78 n. 28 (1826 ed.,
1:232-38); on 274 (1826 ed., 1:234), he noted the relationship between Gilles le Brun and
Joinville (see n. 27 above). La Curne's first two volumes were initially published by Duchesne
in 1759; the third volume, which contains various short pieces, was edited by Hubert-Pascal
Ameilhon (1730-1811) (for whose relations with La Curne, see Helene Dufresne, Erudition
et esprit public au XVI/Ie siecle. Le bibliothecaire Hubert-Pascan Ameilhon [1730-1811 J
[Paris, 1962],27,49,69, 107-8, 191,353); Duchesne's widow published it, and a reprint of
the first two volumes, in 1781. An English translation appeared in 1784: Memoirs of Ancient
Chivalry. To Which Are Added, The Anecdotes of the Times, from the Romance Writers and
Historians of Those Ages. Translated from the French of Monsieur de St. Palaye, by the Trans-
lator of the Life of Petrarch [Susannah Dobson] (London, 1784); see 211-29, for the freely-
translated section on brotherhood in arms, in which some of La Curne's notes are incorporated
into the text.
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lerie, published in 1759 and reprinted in 1781, he discussed some of the instances
of sworn brotherhood that Du Cange had given, and added further examples
drawn from literary and documentary sources, most of them related to the history
of France. The evidence he amassed showed that the institution was still alive
in the sixteenth century, and he noted that in his own time, in Poland and
Bohemia, the wordfrere continued to be used as a "terme damitie donne meme
a des inconnus d'un etat tres-inferieur," although, he commented, "[1]'union
fraternelle & I' interpellation de frere furent encore plus communes entre des
Gentilshommes qui avoient servi ensemble." An article on the subject by Louis,
chevalier de Jaucourt (1704-1780), which was largely based on, Du Cange, ap-
peared in mid-century in the Encyclopedic of Diderot and d' Alembert.?" La
Curne's interest in the institution's survival in his own times was shared by
eighteenth-century ethnographers who studied the customs of the southern Slavs.
Ritual brotherhood in Scandinavia, and especially the traces of it in the sagas,
also attracted scholarly notice."
In the nineteenth century anthropologists continued to study ritual brotherhood
(and sisterhood) in southern Slavic lands and elsewhere. Toward the end of the
century, the institution attracted the attention of a few historians, who were
interested in comparative institutions. Particularly important was the book on
adelphopoiesis that the Italian legal scholar Giovanni Tamassia published in
1886. Tamassia drew on two studies that had recently appeared: J. Kohler's
comparative survey of artificial kinship relationships found throughout the known
world, and Max Pappenheim's study of blood brotherhood in Scandinavia (which
utilized Saxo Grammaticus as well as the sagas)." Every example of non-
biological brotherhood was grist to Tamassia's mill; he analyzed the evidence
cited by Du Cange and added to it many other examples drawn from works of
literature, law, and history. While believing the institution virtually universal,
he considered Scandinavia and the Slavic lands particularly important as centers
of diffusion." Inspired in part by Pappenheim's work, Jacques Flach explored
30 Encyclopedic, ou Dictionnaire Raisonne des Sciences, des Arts et des Metiers, par une
Societe de gens de lettres, ed. Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d' Alembert (Paris, 1797),
7:290.
31 See the important inaugural dissertation of Ciszewski, Kiinstliche Verwandtschaft, esp. 30;
and Tamassia, L' affratellamento, 1 esp. n. 4, and 75. For work done by eighteenth-century
legal scholars on adoptive brotherhood in the Roman law, see Boswell, SSU, 100 n. 221.
32 J. Kohler, "Studien tiber die ktinstliche Verwandschaft," Zeitschrift fur vergleichende
Rechtswissenschaft 5 (1884): 415-40 esp. 434-40; Max Pappenheim, Die altdiinischen Schutz-
gilden. Ein Beitrag zur Rechtsgeschichte der germanischen Genossenschaft (Breslau, 1885),
18-54. Pappenheim was particularly interested in the relationship between blood brotherhood
and gilds, and acknowledged that the connection had first been suggested in 1780. Leopold
Hellmuth presents a useful discussion of blood brotherhood in the sagas and Germanic liter-
ature, in Die germanische Blutsbruderschaft, esp. 16-32.
33Tamassia, L'affratellamento, esp. 5-10, 29, 63, 70-77; see also ibid., 1 n. 1 (Tamassia's
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traces of ceremonial brotherhood in the chansons de geste. In a little-noticed
article, published in 1891, Flach aimed to show that personal ties between men
remained "un facteur essentiel de la societe" long after the time when relations
based on property were thought to have replaced them, and he presented a mass
of evidence establishing the importance of ritual brotherhood in numerous chan-
sons, including the Chanson de Roland and Amis et Amiles." Six years later, in
an inaugural dissertation dedicated to artificial ties of kinship among the southern
Slavs, Stanislaus Ciszewski exploited a variety of ethnographical, historical,
liturgical, and legal sources in his sweeping survey of the different sorts of non-
biological kinship ties that individuals could contract. 35 As to the rite of adel-
phopoiesis, different versions were edited during the nineteenth century, and in
1901 Alexei Afanasevich Dmitrievskii published a comprehensive collection of
euchologies (dating from the ninth or tenth through the sixteenth or seventeenth
centuries), many of which contained the ceremony."
use of Kohler, "Studien," and ibid., 434, for Kohler's description of the institution of ritual
brotherhood as "hochst universell"). On Tamassia's work, see Boswell, SSU, 100-101 nn. 221-
22, 271. Boswell's dismissal of Tamassia's views in ibid., 137 n. 123, 194 n. 151, seems to
me overly hasty. Tamassia (L' affratellamento, 13) discussed the same episode from the Gesta
romanorum that Boswell treated in SSU, 258; like Du Cange, he called attention (ibid., 31) to
the ritual described by Gerald of Wales on whose importance Boswell insists; see below,
Brown, "Ritual Brotherhood," at and following n. 24. For the work of German comparative
historians, see Tamassia, L'affratellamento, esp. 1, 5; and Ciszewski, Kiinstliche Verwandt-
schaft, esp. 12.
34"Le compagnonnage" (referring to Pappenheim's work on 146-48; examining artificial
brotherhood on 165-76, and treating Amis et Amiles on 176-79); for the various chansons de
geste that he discusses, see Brown, "Ritual Brotherhood," n. 50, below. Flach utilized his
findings in sections entitled "La fraternite fictive" and "Le compagnonnage parfait," in the
second volume of his Les origines de l'ancienne France, 4 vols. (Paris, 1886-1917; repro Burt
Franklin Research and Source Works Series 391, Selected Essays in History, Economics, and
Social Science 97; New York, 1969) 2:471-96; the second volume, entitled Les origines com-
munales: la [eodalite et la chevalerie, appeared in 1893. Ciszewski cited Flach's original
article, in Kiinstliche Verwandtschaft, 6-7; his is the only work I have encountered that refers
to it, although Roger Aubenas ("Reflexions," 6) cites Flach's discussion in Origines (rightly
calling the work an "ouvrage trop oublie de nos jours").
35 His descriptions of rituals practiced in Montenegro, Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, and Her-
zegovina are particularly valuable.
36In Euchologia, Dmitrievskii edited or cited 36 of the 62 rituals that Boswell lists in SSU,
372-74; in his editions, Dmitrievskii often gives just the incipits of traditional responses and
prayers found in euchologies that he or Goar edited in full. For Dmitrievskii's work, see Pat-
lagean, "Christianisation," 629; Strittmatter, "The 'Barberinum S. Marci,' " 336; and Archi-
mandrite Ephrem, 50. Boswell includes a translation of one of these ceremonies, dating from
1522, in SSU, 331-34 (cf. 374, D96; on the text, see Archimandrite Ephrem, 54); Boswell also
translated two adoption ceremonies published by Dmitrievskii (SSU, 341-42) and apparently
utilized Dmitrievskii's edition of the thirteenth-century office, which is published and trans-
lated in SSU, 314-17, 353-56; cf. ibid., 373 (D23); see Dmitrievskii, Euchologia, 215. Two
Slavonic rituals, one possibly dating from the fourteenth century, another later one, undated,
were published in 1885: see Woods, "Same-Sex Unions," 318, 319; Boswell includes trans-
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Ciszewski's work was one of the chief sources for an influential article on
artificial brotherhood published in 1910 in the Encyclopcedia of Religion and
Ethics." There P. J. Hamilton-Grierson reported the findings of historians as
well as anthropologists concerning artificial brotherhood, described the eccle-
siastical ritual used in the East, and pointed out analogous relationships of com-
radeship in arms among the native inhabitants of North America and in Afghan
tribes. Historians' interest in the institution persisted. In 1905 Eduardo de Hi-
nojosa presented evidence of many different forms of artificial brotherhood in
the medieval West, ranging from early Italian and Spanish arrangements for the
administration of churches, to English and French military alliances, to Spanish
compacts to ensure the preservation of family property, to an early-thirteenth-
century Portuguese pact intended to efface the hostility resulting from a hom-
icide. The sources he exploited were diverse, and reveal the existence of a variety
of institutions linked by the use of such terms as frater, germanus, fraternitas,
germanitas, or adfratatio, with reference to individuals who were not biologically
related." In 1933, the legal historian Roger Aubenas called attention to the
numerous economically motivated covenants of fraternitas concluded in
fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Provence and preserved in notarial archives.
Generally contracted between (and among) people who were, in fact, related
either biologically or by marriage, the compacts aimed to conserve the integrity
of, and increase, the contractors' landed and liquid fortunes." Almost thirty
lations, in SSU, 317-23, 335-41. Similarly, a ceremony in Slavonic found in the eleventh-
century Euchologium Sinaiticum, was edited in 1882, 1933, and again in 1941-42: see Cisz-
weski, Kiinstliche Verwandtschaft, 30; Woods, "Same-Sex Unions," 318 (who provides a
translation, ibid., 338-41, which should be compared with Boswell, in SSU, 300-306; cf. 372
n. 6). Grottaferrata, MS r B VII, which Gaetano Passarelli edited and published in 1982,
contains a version of the ceremony, dating from the tenth century, which is translated in Bos-
well, SS U, 291-94.
371n "Brotherhood (Artificial)," Hamilton-Grierson cites Du Cange, but does not refer to the
offices of adelphopoiesis contained in the edition of euchologies that Dmitrievskii published
in 1901.
38 "La fraternidad artificial en Espana," Revista de archivos, bibliotecas y museos, 3rd ser.,
vol. 9, no. 7 (July 1905): 1-18 (reprinted in idem, Obras, con un estudio de Alfonso Garcia
Gallo sobre Hinojosa y su obra, vol. 1, Instituto Nacional de Estudios Juridicos, Publicaciones,
ser. 6, Obras de caracter general, 1 [Madrid, 1948],257-78); see Boswell, SSU, 255-58.
39"Le contrat d"affrairamentum' dans le droit provencal du Moyen Age," Revue historique
de droit francais et etranger, 4th ser., 12 (1933): 478-524; the sole example of a contract
concluded between non-relatives is found on 508-9. On these associations, see also Charles
de Ribbe, La societe provencale d'apres des documents inedits (Paris, 1898), 386-91, 404-6.
I am grateful to Ivan Jurkovic for bringing to my attention similar acts concluded under the
pressure of Ottoman invasions at the end of the fifteenth century in what is now Croatia: see,
e.g., Monumenta historica nob. communitatis Turopolje olim "Campus zagrabiensis" dictae.
Povjesni Spomenici plem. opcine Turopolja nekoc "Zagrebacko polje" zvane, ed. Emilius La-
szowski, 4 vols. (Zagreb, 1904-8) 2:78 no. 59 (18 October 1491; "sese mutuo in fratres adop-
tivos et condivisionales, universorumque bonorum ipsorum tam mobilium quam immobi-
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