¹ In writing the following introduction I have profited from the counsel and support of Claudia 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, Évelyne 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 Bibliothèque nationale de France. Each of the contributors 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: Économies — Sociétés — Civilisations. Google Scholar

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² Young, Robin Darling, “Gay Marriage: Reimagining Church History,” First Things 47 (1994): 43–48, at 43; this review essay treats John Boswell's book SSU. Google Scholar

³ In 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 descriptions 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 Google Scholar

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 SSU, 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.Google Scholar

⁴ SSU, 280–81.Google Scholar

⁵ SSU, 258, 271–72, 275–76, 281–82.Google Scholar

⁶ See Patlagean, , “Christianisation,” 628–30; Durham, , Some Tribal Origins, 153–59 esp. 157; Boswell, , SSU, 270 n. 39, 277, and 279 (where he cites Vanggaard, Thorkil, Phallos: A Symbol and Its History in the Male World [London, 1972], 119, which none of the authors has been able to locate).Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar

⁸ Goar translated the Greek title ‘Ακολουθία εἰς ἀδελφοποιίαν πνευματικήν, presumably found in the euchologies he consulted, as “Officium ad spiritualem fraternitatem ineundam”; cf. Boswell, , SSU, 26, 267. See Woods, , “Same-Sex Unions,” 321, 338, 339, 341.Google Scholar

⁹ On the meaning of skandalon, see Stählin, Gustav, Skandalon. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte eines biblischen Begriffs, Beiträge für Förderung christlicher Theologie, 2. Reihe, Sammlung wissenschaftlicher Monographien 24 (Gütersloh, 1930), who examines both ecclesiastical and secular usage. In his Latin Glossarium Du Cange provides a useful guide to the word's significance in early medieval secular texts.Google Scholar

¹⁰ Puchner, , “Griechisches zur ‘adoptio in fratrem’,” esp. 204, 210–11, 216.Google Scholar

¹¹ 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 marriage 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 O sluzhbakh russkoi tserkvi byvshikh v prezhnikh pechatnykh bogolushevnykh knigakh (Saint Petersburg, 1885), 373, 376.Google Scholar

¹² Boswell maintained (SSU, 199–217, esp. 217) that “the joining of right hands” was specified 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 adelphopoiesis. 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) characterized 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 (Forschungsgruppe “Ältere slavische Literaturen” an der FU Berlin), Die Erzählung über Petr Ordynskij. Ein Beitrag zur soziologischen Erforschung altrussischer Texte, Veröffentlichungen der Anteilung für slavische Sprachen und Literaturen des Osteuropa-Instituts [Slavisches Seminar] an der Freien Universität Berlin 48 (Wiesbaden, 1979), 98–99. Claudia Rapp provided much of the information included in this note.Google Scholar

¹³ Boswell 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 manuscript 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 adelphopoiesis : Boswell, , SSU, 345–47 (’Ακολουθία εἰς ἀδελφοποίησιν); cf. his translation, ibid., 294–98 (“Office for Same-Sex Union”); his approach to this text is far more cautious in ibid., 347 n. 3, than in ibid., 296–97 n. 80. Further, Boswell's interpretation of the prohibition issued by the fourteenth-century jurist George Harmenopoulos (ibid., 209 esp. n. 59) confuses Harmenopoulos's reference to the holding of wedding crowns (i.e., serving as best man) with his reference to making adelphopoiia; Harmenopoulos (Epitome canonum, PG 150:124C-D) mentions these two practices — as well as acting as godparent — as acts forbidden to monks. Having the participants circle the tetrapodion (which Boswell describes as “the altar”; SSU, 206; cf. 210–11, 217) is prescribed in only two ceremonies of adelphopoiesis, one an early-fourteenth-century Serbian manuscript, the other a manuscript dated to the sixteenth or seventeenth century: for the first manuscript, see Boswell, , SSU, 322, 374 (identifying the manuscript, which he translated from the published ed. as “MS Belgrade 10,” and giving no folio numbers for the office; for the second text, in MS Athos, Kutlumusiu 341, see Boswell, , SSU, 210–11 n. 67, 374; and cf. Dmitirevskii, , Euchologia, 953, who gives the title but not the text of the ceremony. In SSU, 210 n. 66, Boswell imprecisely and incorrectly refers to Ritzer, Korbinian, Formen, Riten, und religiöses Brauchtum der Eheschliessung in den christlichen Kirchen des ersten Jahrtausends, Liturgiewissenschaftliche Quellen und Forschungen 38 (Münster, 1962), 146 n. 558, who merely notes the existence of the troparion hagioi martures in the thirteenth-century Patmos manuscript 104; see Dmitrievskii, , Euchologia, 156. Until the fourteenth century, when circling appeared in the marriage ritual and in the Serbian office of adelphopoiesis mentioned above, it was performed only at ceremonies of baptism and the consecration of deacons, priests, and bishops, from which it was probably adopted for rites of marriage and adelphopoiesis: Goar, , Euchologion, 208, 242, 291, 319 (cf. Boswell, , SSU, 210 n. 65); Gelsi, Daniele, “Punti di riflessione sull'ufficio bizantino per la ‘incoronazione’ degli sposi,” La celebrazione cristiana del matrimonio. Simboli e testi. Atti del II Congresso internazionale di Liturgia, Roma, 27–31 maggio 1985, ed. Famedi, Giustino, Studia anselmiana 93; Analecta liturgica 11 (Rome, 1986), 283–306, at 301. Again, Claudia Rapp provided the information presented in this note.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Goar, , Euchologion, 708 (eighth-century Barberini euchology); of Peter and Andrew, Zebedee's sons James and John, Philip and Bartholomew; of Sergius and Bacchus, Cosmas, and Damian, , Cyrus, and John, , ἀλελφοὺς γενέσθαι, οὐ δεσμουμένοις φύσεως, ἀλλ ἀγάπης τρόπῳ. See also Boswell, , SSU, 346 (eleventh-century office; of Philip and Bartholomew; of Sergius, and Bacchus, , ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι), 352 (order of 1147; of Philip and Bartholomew, ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι, οὺ δεσμουμένους φύσεως νόμῳ ἀλλὰ πυεύματος ἀγίου καὶ πίστεως τρόπῳ; of Sergius and Bacchus, ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι πνευματικούς), 354 (thirteenth-century office; of Philip and Bartholomew, ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι, οὐ δεσμουμένους φύσεως νόμῳ, ἀλλὰ πίστεως τρόπῳ; of Sergius and Bacchus, ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι, οὐ δεσμουμένους φύσεως νόμῳ, ἀλλὰ πνεύματος ἀγίου καὶ πίστεως τρόπῳ; of Peter and Paul [356], ποιήσας … κατὰ πνεμα ἃγιον ἀδελϕούς; 359–60 (sixteenth-century ritual; of Philip and Bartholomew, ἀδελϕοὺς γενέσθαι, οὐ δεσμουμένους ϕύσεως, ἀλλὰ πνεύματος ἀγίου κοινωνίᾳ; of Sergius and Bacchus, ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι).Google Scholar

¹⁵ Boswell, , SSU, 349 (prayers of 1027/1029), 350 (twelfth-century prayer), 352 (ritual of 1147), 355 (thirteenth-century office), 362 (sixteenth-century ritual). See the preceding note, for the phrases used in connection with the paired saints in the order of 1147, as well as in a ritual of the thirteenth century and in one of the sixteenth.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Boswell, , SSU, 360–61 κατὰ σάρκα σου οἰκονομίᾳ ’Ιάκωβον καὶ ‘Iωάννην υἰοὺς Ζεβεδαίου, οὐ κατηξιώσας ἀδελφοὺς γενέσθαι, ἀλλὰ μαθητὰς καὶ ἀποστόλους ἀναδείξας; cf. Boswell's translation on 329–30. Boswell suggests (SSU, 330 n. 274) that the passage “perhaps [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.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Goar, , Euchologion, 708–9 (from the eighth-century Barberini euchology).Google Scholar

¹⁸ Goar, , Euchologion, 708 (a prayer from the eighth-century Barberini euchology, and an office included in the fourteenth-century manuscript, Grottaferrata, MS Γ B III, and also, as Boswell shows, in a thirteenth-century manuscript from Mount Sinai and in two twelfth-century 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 kingdom.” See also ibid., 350 (a twelfth-century prayer featuring Philip and Bartholomew, translated on 311–12).Google Scholar

¹⁹ One 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 tselomqdrie; Hagstrum, , Esteem Enlivened by Desire, 74–75, and 136 (pointing out that the word had connotations of marital faithfulness). North notes (Sophrosyne, 318–19) the Christianization of 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.Google Scholar

²⁰ 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 distinguishes the blood-brother from the bond friend”). Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (“Zande Blood-Brotherhood,” 399) stresses that such ritual relationships exclude such ignoble feelings as jealousy more rigorously than do biological ties.Google Scholar

²¹ In his Euchologion, Jacques Goar grouped the ritual of adelphopoiesis with other ceremonies 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.Google Scholar

²² “Dux Burgundie auctoritate regia … retulit pacem, ipso mediante, inter ducem Britanie et dominum Oliverum de Clichon confirmatam…. Ambo tamen domini, ex inimicis capitalibus amici et consodales effecti, inde tanto glutino amoris conjuncti sunt, quod dux in Franciam disponens accedere … ipsi Olivero uxoris, prolis et patrie custodiam commendavit”: Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI, de 1380 à 1422, ed. Bellaguet, Louis-François, 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 Henneman, John Bell, Olivier de Clisson and Political Society in France Under Charles V and 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 de Sainte-Palaye, La Curne, Mémoires 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 à nostre pooir comme nostre Frere”: Du Cange, , “Dissertation XXI,” 266; and see below, Brown, , “Ritual Brotherhood,” following nn. 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, Fermor, Patrick Leigh, Muni: Travels in the Southern Peloponnese (London, 1958), 93–94.Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar

²⁴ Roger Aubenas provides a useful survey of works on brotherhood in his “Réflexions sur les ‘fraternités artificielles’ au Moyen–Âge,” in Études historiques à la mémoire de Noël Didier publiées par la Faculté de Droit et des Sciences Économiques de Grenoble (Paris, 1960), 1–10.Google Scholar

²⁵ The 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 Moréri, Louis, Le Grand Dictionnaire Historique …, new ed. Goujet, Claude-Pierre and Drouet, Etienne-François, 10 vols. (Paris, 1759) 5:237–38.Google Scholar

²⁶ Goar, , Euchologion, 706–9 at 706 (accurately rendering the Greek note as “Sciendum Officium præsens Ecclesiasticis Cæsareisque legibus esse vetitum: illud tamen ut in plerisque aliis codicibus inventum est, a nobis prælo 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 translations 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 Grottaferrata, one dating from the twelfth or thirteenth century (MS Γ B I, which Goar calls “Cryptoferratense Bessarionis”; cf. Boswell, , SSU, 350, 373), the other from the fourteenth century (MS Γ B III, designated by Goar as “Cryptoferratense Falascæ”). 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.Google Scholar

²⁷ Du 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 précedente, touchant les Adoptions d'honneur en fils, où deux monnoyes de Theodebert I. et de Childebert II. Rois d'Austrasie sont expliquées,” 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” (le 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 étroite amitié qu'ils contractérent ensemble à la Cour du Roy S. Louys, ou peut-estre parce qu'ils estoient Freres d'armes”; 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 “monseigneur Gilles le Brun” (rather than, as in Du Cange's edition, “mon frere, Sire Gilles de Bruyn”); see Natalis de Wailly's edition of Joinville's Life of Saint Louis, in Joinville's œuvres (Paris, 1867), 18–21.Google Scholar

²⁸ Du Cange, , Glossarium Græcitatis 1:23–24, where Du Cange again referred to his twentyfirst Dissertation, adding two examples to those he had given there. Du Cange included additional sources regarding fraternitas in ibid., 2:96.Google Scholar

²⁹ La Curne examined the institution in his Mémoires 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 Dufresne, Hélène, Érudition et esprit public au XVIII ^e siècle. Le bibliothécaire Hubert-Pascan Ameilhon [1730–1811] [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 Translator of the Life of Petrarch [Susannah Dobson] (London, 1784); see 211–29, for the freelytranslated section on brotherhood in arms, in which some of La Curne's notes are incorporated into the text.Google Scholar

³⁰ Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, par une Société de gens de lettres, ed. Diderot, Denis and Le Rond d'Alembert, Jean (Paris, 1797), 7:290.Google Scholar

³¹ See the important inaugural dissertation of Ciszewski, , Künstliche 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.Google Scholar

³² Kohler, J., “Studien über die künstliche Verwandschaft,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft 5 (1884): 415–40 esp. 434–40; Pappenheim, Max, Die altdänischen Schutzgilden. 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 literature, in Die germanische Blutsbrüderschaft, esp. 16–32.Google Scholar

³³ Tamassia, , L'affratellamento, esp. 5–10, 29, 63, 70–77; see also ibid., 1 n. 1 (Tamassia's use of Kohler, , “Studien,” and ibid., 434, for Kohler's description of the institution of ritual brotherhood as “höchst 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, , Künstliche Verwandtschaft, esp. 12.Google Scholar

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 fraternité fictive” and “Le compagnonnage parfait,” in the second volume of his Les origines de l'ancienne France, 4 vols. (Paris, 1886–1917; repr. 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 communales: la féodalité et la chevalerie, appeared in 1893. Ciszewski cited Flach's original article, in Künstliche Verwandtschaft, 6–7; his is the only work I have encountered that refers to it, although Roger Aubenas (“Réflexions,” 6) cites Flach's discussion in Origines (rightly calling the work an “ouvrage trop oublié de nos jours”).Google Scholar

³⁵ His descriptions of rituals practiced in Montenegro, Bulgaria, Turkey, Albania, and Herzegovina are particularly valuable.Google Scholar

³⁶ In 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 Patlagean, , “Christianisation,” 629; Strittmatter, , “The ‘Barberinum S. Marci,’ ” 336; and Archimandrite 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 translated 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 translations, in SSU, 317–23, 335–41. Similarly, a ceremony in Slavonic found in the eleventhcentury Euchologium Sinaiticum, was edited in 1882, 1933, and again in 1941–42: see Ciszweski, , Künstliche 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 Γ 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 Boswell, , SSU, 291–94.Google Scholar

³⁷ In “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.Google Scholar

³⁸ “La fraternidad artificial en España,” 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.Google Scholar

³⁹ “Le contrat d’ ‘affrairamentum’ dans le droit provençal du Moyen Âge,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 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 de Ribbe, Charles, La société provençale d'après des documents inédits (Paris, 1898), 386–91, 404–6. I am grateful to Ivan Jurković 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. općine Turopolja nekoć “Zagrebačko polje” zvane , ed. Laszowski, Emilius, 4 vols. (Zagreb, 1904–8) 2:78 no. 59 (18 October 1491; “sese mutuo in fratres adoptivos et condivisionales, universorumque bonorum ipsorum tam mobilium quam immobilium”), 120–21 no. 87 (21 November 1493), 144–45 no. 100 (19 March 1495). Contracts focused on the participants’ property resemble in some respects the Venetian fraterna, an economic alliance between or among biological brothers in which non-family members were only rarely involved: Lane, Frederic C., “Family Partnerships and Joint Ventures in the Venetian Republic,” Journal of Economic History 4 (1944): 178–96 (reprinted in idem, Venice and Its History: The Collected Papers of Frederic C. Lane, Edited by a Committee of Colleagues and Former Students [Baltimore, 1966], 36–55); Heers, Jacques, Le clan familial au Moyen Âge. Étude sur les structures politiques et sociales des milieux urbains, Collection Hier (Paris, 1974), 233–34. Marcel David (“Sur les traces,” 115) has called attention to Ulpian's statement in the Digest (17. 2. 63) that the societas (here “partnership” or “business association”) “jus quodammodo fraternitatis in se [habet],” and suggests that this reference to fraternitas may reflect the law of an earlier age, when the societas was composed of family members, and especially brothers. See also Du Cange's Latin Glossarium, s.v. affrayramentum, frateria, fratreia (defined as societates).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ Aubenas, , “Réflexions,” esp. 5–10. Jean Hilaire discusses contracts of affrayramentum between spouses, and between parents and recently married children, in Le régime des biens entre époux dans la région de Montpellier du début du XIII ^e siècle à la fin du XVI ^e siècle. Contribution aux études d'histoire du droit écrit (Montpellier, 1957), 249–305; note especially a contract of 1464 between a husband and wife which states that they “se associaverunt et affrayraverunt.” H. Forestier treats later fraternal proprietary compacts, in “L'intention fraternelle ou quasi-fraternelle dans l'acte de société, d'après les minutes notariales déposés dans les archives de l'Yonne (1511–1782),” Mémoires de la Société pour l'Histoire du Droit et des Institutions des anciens pays bourguignons, comtois et romands 11 (1946–7): 81–99.Google Scholar

⁴¹ See his study, “Brotherhood in Arms,” passim. Keen is reluctant to conclude that two knights (William Neville and John Clanvowe) who died near Constantinople in 1391 and whose arms are impaled on their joint funerary monument were necessarily “sworn brethren,” although Anthony Luttrell (citing Keen's earlier article) believes that the unusual form of the tomb was “technically indicative of brotherhood in arms”: Düll, Siegrid, Luttrell, Anthony, and Keen, Maurice, “Faithful Unto Death: The Tomb Slab of Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, Constantinople 1391,” The Antiquaries Journal 71 (1991): 174–90; Bray and Rey (“The Body of the Friend”) convincingly argue that the two were in all likelihood ritual brothers. I am grateful to Dr. Bray for providing me with a copy of this stimulating essay in advance of publication, and for bringing to my attention the work of Düll, Luttress, and Keen.Google Scholar

⁴² “A Business-partnership.” Google Scholar

⁴³ Guerre, état et société , 481–84.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ David, , “Sur les traces,” emphasizes the variety of medieval institutions that were termed fraternal, although in my view he neglects fraternal alliances created for economic purposes. Particularly interesting are examples found in the twelfth-century Historia Compostellana, which Brent D. Shaw brought to my attention. There germanitas is used to describe sworn unions of men, concluded for self-defense and mutual assistance, and for purposes both pacific and conspiratorial. See Historia Compostellana , ed. Rey, Emma Falque, CCCM 70, 85–86, 88–90, 92–93, 189–90, 199–217, esp. 190, 216. The Laws of Edward the Confessor and of William the Conqueror, and statutes of Henry I refer to the institution of sworn brotherhood in arms that bound the men of England to one another: Du Cange, , “Dissertation XXI,” 262, and his Latin Glossarium, s.v. Fratres Conjurati, Jurati ad arma. On ecclesiastical fraternities and confraternities, see ibid., s.v. Fraternitas (3) and (5); and Dormeier, Heinrich, Montecassino und die Laien im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert. Mit einem einleitenden Beitrag zur Geschichte Montecassinos im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert von Hartmut Hoffman, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 27 (Stuttgart, 1979), esp. 164–94; Wollasch, Joachim, “Kaiser und Könige als Brüder der Mönche. Zum Herrscherbild in liturgischen Handschriften des 9. bis 11. Jahrhunderts,” Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 40 (1984): 1–20; and the essays by Joachim Wollasch (“Die mittelalterliche Lebensform der Verbrüderung,” 215–32), and Herbert Edward John Cowdrey (“Legal Problems Raised by Agreements of Confraternity,” 233–54), in Memoria: Der geschichtliche Zeugniswert des liturgischen Gedenkens im Mittelalter , ed. Schmid, Karl and Wollasch, Joachim, Münstersche Mittelalter-Schriften 48 (Munich, 1984). On medieval lay confraternities, see the proceedings of a conference held in 1985, Le mouvement confraternel au Moyen Âge: France, Italie, Suisse. Actes de la table ronde organisée par l'Université de Lausanne avec le concours de l'École française de Rome et de l'Unité associée 1011 du CNRS “L'institution ecclésiale à la fin du Moyen Âge,” Lausanne 9–11 mai 1985, Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Lausanne 30; Collection de l’École française de Rome 97 (Geneva, 1987); and Terpstra, Nicholas, “Confraternities and Mendicant Orders: The Dynamics of Lay and Clerical Brotherhood in Renaissance Bologna,” The Catholic Historical Review 82 (1996): 1–22.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Pitt-Rivers opposes describing ritual brotherhood (or godparenthood [compadrazgo]) as fictive, since both relationships are distinctly different from and often contrasted with biological kinship: see his article “Pseudo-Kinship,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. Sills, David L. (New York, 1968) 8:408–13 at 410. In 1884 Kohler (“Studien,” 415) made a similar observation concerning ceremonial kinship relationships in general. See also Pitt-Rivers, who developed his ideas in “Ritual Kinship in the Mediterranean,” 320; and, for background, Lynch, , Godparents, 192–201.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Beck, , Byzantinisches Gefolgschaftswesen; Kretzenbacher, , Rituelle Wahlverbrüderung, utilizing material presented in his earlier article, “Gegenwartsformen der Wahlverwandschaft,” which appeared in 1967.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Patlagean, , “Christianisation,” 628–29; see ibid., 629–30, where she discusses manuscripts and the ritual itself.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Boswell, , SSU, 66–68, and 277 (saying that Patlagean “not only recognized the homosexual character of what she called l'affrairement, but even specifically linked it to the term ‘brother’ in the Satyricon”).Google Scholar

⁴⁹ Durham, , Some Tribal Origins, esp. 153–59 at 157–58. Durham reports examples of blood brotherhood (and ritual siblinghood) that she does not suggest involved any homosexual relationship. She notes that she herself was sought as a ritual relative by a man who, thinking her “a sister of the King of England, … believed a blood alliance with [her] would be for the good of the tribe.” Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Kretzenbacher, , “Serbisch-orthodoxe ‘Wahlverbrüderung’,” esp. 168–72, 174–78, and note particularly (facing 177) Kretzenbacher's photograph of the participants in a ceremony of ritual brotherhood performed in Serbia in 1977. Kretzenbacher discusses the work of Simić, published in Belgrade in 1968, ibid., 169–70.Google Scholar

⁵¹ Puchner, , “Griechisches zur ‘adoptio in fratrem’,” esp. 187–89, 194–203, 214–20, 222.Google Scholar

⁵² David, , “Sur les traces,” 116–17.Google Scholar

⁵³ Chaplais, , Piers Gaveston, 13–14 (terming the relationship “a biblical precedent” for medieval Western pacts of brotherhood); see 1 Kings (1 Sam.) 18, 20, 22, 23; 2 Kings (2 Sam.) 1:26. See also McGuire's discussion of David and Jonathan, in Friendship and Community, xvii–xix, 321–22. Boswell (SSU, 135–377 esp. n. 123) dismisses the possible links between the relationship of David and Jonathan and the ritual of adelphopoiesis. Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Presenting the issue in a broader context, Julian Pitt-Rivers commented in 1973 (“The Kith and the Kin,” 93) on the similarity between the ingestion of blood in ceremonies of blood brotherhood and the consumption of sacramental substances. On this question, see also Du Cange, , “Dissertation XXI,” 263; Hamilton-Grierson, , “Brother (Artificial),” 857–63, 869; Patlagean, , “Christianisation,” 629–30. For other instances of outsiders’ negative interpretations of unfamiliar practices, see the articles of Shaw and Brown, below.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ Nigel Ashford discusses recent literature on the subject, in his essay, “Anti-Gay Gays,” a review of Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy , ed. Bawer, Bruce, in The Times Literary Supplement 4913 (30 May 1997): 31.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ In a television interview in the fall of 1994, Boswell, remarked, “[T]here are people who believe in same-sex love, and would like to incorporate [the ceremony treated in the book] into a Christian lifestyle, and this would afford them the opportunity”: Woodward, , Newsweek, 78–79. Cf., however, Boswell's comments in SSU, xxvii, xxx, 280–82.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Shaw, , New Republic, 35, 38. Woodward commented (Newsweek, 78), “What Boswell chooses to translate from the Greek as ‘same-sex unions’ are, in the original, celebrations of ‘brotherhood’ or ‘fraternity’.” In his review, Shaw called attention to the important work of Gabriel Herman, in Ritualized Friendship. Since the inception of this project, Herman has supported and participated in it, and we hoped at one stage that he would contribute to the symposium. See his forthcoming essay, “Le parrainage, ‘l'hospitalité,’ et l'expansion du christianisme,” to be published in Annales ESC 53 (1998).Google Scholar