Celibate Marriages in Late Antique and Byzantine Hagiography: The Lives of Saints Julian and Basilissa, Andronikos and Athanasia, and Galaktion and Episteme by Anne P. Alwis (review)

Research of the last decades has greatly advanced our understanding of women and gender issues within the Christian context of the Middle Ages. Major databases now offer entry points for the study of primary sources and scholarly literature relating to the monastic experience of women in the Latin West (http://www.monasticmatrix.org) and to women’s life in general in the Greek East (http://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine/resources/bibliography-on-gender-in-byzantium). Still, we are only beginning to understand the complex relations among societal constraints, women’s agency, and their normative representation in male-authored literature. Any publication that speaks to these issues is a welcome addition and should be hailed, if not as a milestone, than at least as a mosaic tessera, as is the case with Anne Alwis’s dissertation-turned-book.

Celibate marriages, in which husband and wife come to a mutual agreement to abstain from sexual intercourse and to dedicate themselves to a Christian life of charity and asceticism, were the subject of comprehensive historical and literary study in the Latin West by Dyan Elliott in 1993.

Alwis’s aim is more modest—she presents three hagiographical tales composed in the fifth, sixth, and ninth/tenth centuries that offer different views of celibate marriage in late antiquity and Byzantium: Greek text (with some misprints), English translation (mostly accurate), very brief commentary (sometimes uneven, but commendable in its reference to patristic texts and papyrological evidence), preceded by an extensive introductory discussion (pp. 1–153) of the date and manuscript transmission of the texts, their literary features, and their depiction of celibate marriage. The bibliography has significant errors.

The Vita of Julian and Basilissa (BHG 970) depicts a couple in Antinoöpolis in Egypt during the Diocletianic Persecution who consent to marry to please their parents, but agree to maintain chastity on their wedding night. The remaining forty-nine chapters after Basilissa’s early death in chapter 15 deal with Julian’s miracles and bravery when faced with gruesome tortures and tell of his conversion of Kelsios, the son of his persecutor, who in turn brings his own mother to Christianity. It is a tale of shared conjugal purpose as well as filial bonds, embedded in an elaborate martyrdom narrative.

The Vita of Andronikos and Athanasia (BHG 123a, this version edited here for the first time) shows a wealthy couple from Antioch who, after the birth of two children, devote themselves to charitable deeds and, after the death of their offspring, decide to pursue the monastic life in Egypt in separate communities, Andronikos joining the circle of the sixth-century ascetic Daniel of Sketis. The two meet again on the way to Jerusalem and continue to live together as monastic “brothers,” Athanasia now appearing as an ascetically emaciated man. Her true identity is revealed only after her death. This tale shows some parallels to stories of the “transvestite nun,” a popular hagiographical motif in the fifth to seventh centuries.

The Vita of Galaktion and Episteme (BHG 665) is a tale of spouses who agree to a chaste marriage prior to consummation and go their separate monastic ways, until they are reunited in martyrdom during an unspecified time of persecution. As Alwis notes, this text with its emphasis on the reunification of separated lovers and its latent eroticism bears close resemblance to novels and romances, including the story of Paul and Thekla.

This book is a valuable study (including a first edition) of little-known Byzantine hagiographical texts. It is to be hoped that other studies will follow that throw additional light on the social and historical implications of celibate marriage in Byzantium.