Nick Mayhew, ‘Banning Spiritual Brotherhoods and Establishing Marital Chastity in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Muscovy and Ruthenia’, Palaeoslavica 25/2 (2017): 80–108.
The prize committee writes: “This is an excellent article that looks at Bratotvorenie, a liturgical rite that united two unrelated men as ‘brothers’. Bratotvorenie stemmed from a Byzantine prototype known as adelphopoiesis, which was banned in the twelfth century. The rite survived, however, in the East Slavonic tradition, where it was practised from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries. The article mounts an extensive critical examination of John Boswell’s highly influential thesis, presented in his seminal 1994 study Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, in which it is argued that bratoverenie and similar rites were essentially a premodern form of same-sex marriage. The author has written a critical, thoughtful, provocative, and convincing analysis of the issues; what is most impressive is its careful engagement with the literature in the higly contentious field of sexuality and gender, and its presentation of bratoverenie in the terms used at the time, gently and effectively challenging the imposition of modern ideas of sexuality and gender on the past. The result is a subtle, source based analysis that reaches sensible conclusions after a close examination of a wide range of texts and challenging Boswell on a fundamental level, while accepting some of his conclusions; unlike Rapp, who has criticised Boswell’s account with regard to adelphopoiesis, and rejecting its association with marriage, the author argues that in Ruthenia and Muscovy it was associated with marriage, yet this does not of itself justify the interpretation placed upon it in Boswell’s work. The author takes the religious beliefs of the time seriously, which enables him to make subtle distinctions, and to reach persuasive conclusions regarding the reasons for banning bratotverenie in the seventeenth century by which time attitudes towards sexuality had shifted, and the rite had aroused suspicion among church authorities.”
