Ritual Brotherhood in Roman and Post-Roman Societies
A singular merit of John Boswell's provocative Same-Sex Unions has been to refocus the attention of a wide range of scholars from differing disciplines on the significance of manuscript sources for adelphopoiesis, a Christian ceremonial in the eastern Mediterranean for the ‘making of a brother&...
| Published in: | Traditio |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge University Press
1997
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| In: |
Traditio
Year: 1997, Volume: 52, Pages: 327-355 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | A singular merit of John Boswell's provocative Same-Sex Unions has been to refocus the attention of a wide range of scholars from differing disciplines on the significance of manuscript sources for adelphopoiesis, a Christian ceremonial in the eastern Mediterranean for the ‘making of a brother'. It seems fair to say that the balance of scholarly opinion has rejected his claim that these rites were, in effect, marriage ceremonials for men. The ceremonials seem to have been used to create a ritual brotherhood in which one man ‘adopted’ another as his ‘brother’. This still leaves a large question to be considered: precisely what kinds of social institutions or arrangements did these rituals seek to confirm? I propose to investigate this problem in the context of evidence relating to the social structures of Roman and post-Roman societies, both to elucidate the social bonds reflected in the rites of adelphopoiesis and to suggest why this peculiar type of personal attachment is strikingly absent from the annals of western Roman imperial society. |
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| ISSN: | 2166-5508 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Traditio
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0362152900012022 |