Historians in the West regularly take their inspiration for research in the medieval world from contemporary issues. Globalisation, for example, has led to ‘global’ aspects of the Middle Ages, as in Peter Frankopan's The silk roads, or Johannes Preiser-Kapeller's Jenseits von Rom und Karl der Grosse. Like the feminist movement which inspired attention to medieval women and gay men, or the challenge of Islam that exposed the issue of religious images, a similar concern underlies Claudia Rapp's Brother-making in late antiquity and Byzantium.

Towards the end of the last century, the joyous energy released by the public celebration of same-sex marriage prompted John Boswell to identify particular liturgical texts preserved in the Greek Orthodox rite as an ancient but unacknowledged precedent of that ceremony. With great enthusiasm, he hailed this discovery in The marriage of likeness: same-sex unions in pre-modern Europe (London 1996). Claudia Rapp's timely study of brother-making, in Greek adelphopoiesis, disproves his assumption, though she emphatically states that her evaluation of the historical evidence ‘does in no way undermine the legitimacy of seeking recognition for same-sex partnerships in current societies’ (p. 3). Yet she admits to an element of working in a minefield, where the mines are these liturgical texts, sanctified by the Church, and cited to justify gay marriage. Her study is an eloquent analysis of the medieval prayers employed to ritualise such connections, although she concludes that they do not confirm Boswell's hopes.

Rapp begins by reviewing recent work on homosexuality and brother-making in the ancient and medieval worlds and proceeds to analyse the conditions of early Christian hermits and monks, who lived generally in an all-male world. She analyses the different monastic structures that evolved during the fourth century, distinguishing the coenobitic (communal) from the eremitic (solitary) and stressing the semi-anchoritic style of life usually shared by an elder and one or two disciples (pp. 93–5). It was in this small-group, ascetic environment, where the older monk would serve as the spiritual father and guide to a younger novice, that brotherhood rituals developed. Distinct monastic living quarters have been confirmed by archaeological investigation of sites such as Kellia in the western Nile Delta. Over an area of about 270 square kilometres, 1,600 individual dwellings have been excavated. In the sixth century some of these monasteries in the Egyptian desert were adapted to provide cells for two monks who appear to have lived together as equals (p. 98). The core of Rapp's book lies in this fundamental investigation of the monastic background to the prayers recorded for brother-making, in which she exercises an unmatched mastery.

The evidence for this ecclesiastical ritual is preserved in sixty-six manuscripts that date from the eighth to the sixteenth century, tabulated in Appendix 1 and translated in Appendix 3. These come from a variety of locations that served different communities and appear to reflect practices in Palestine and Syria as well as Constantinople; many were written in southern Italy and copied in the great monastery of St Nilus at Grottaferrata, others at St Catherine's on Mt Sinai. The prayer in the earliest manuscript (eighth century) cites the apostolic precedent for brotherhood and the holy martyrs, Sergius and Bacchus, Cosmas and Damian, and Cyrus and John, as examples to be followed by the two individuals who are bound not by nature but by faith and who seek the blessing of brotherhood. The second example, from the ninth century, stresses the spiritual love that brings the two men to seek the blessing. These two prayers are the most frequently copied in the collection of texts. The third example, from the first half of the tenth century, cites the superiority of spiritual brotherhood over brotherhood according to the flesh but is only found in two texts. Some of these prayers are lengthy, others very short. Most cite the motive of philadelphias (brotherly love) shared by the two individuals and pray, ‘Lord our God, give them love without suspicions, faith without shame and the light of understanding’ (p. 296). The idea that such suspicions and shame might hide a gay agenda is disproved by reference to similar phraseology in other prayers not connected with adelphopoiesis. While the normal pattern was for two men to dedicate themselves to mutual love and support for life, it seems that brother-making prayers might also be used to resolve tensions and enmities.

The extension of brother-making to the lay elite in Byzantium, however, made it an instrument for social advancement, skillfully used by young Basil the Macedonian in his ambition to rule the Byzantine Empire, one of the most fascinating of the case studies of particular brothers. Rapp attributes the new links between monks and lay men and women to the upheavals of the seventh to ninth centuries, when Byzantium was transformed and from which monasteries ‘emerged as a mainstay of society’ (p. 192). Many women, for instance, sought the advice of a holy man and dedicated themselves to a monastic spiritual father – the example of the widow Georgia, who endowed the monastery of St Andrew near Mount Athos in 897, is one of the earliest surviving records. But St Theodore, abbot of the Stoudion monastery in Constantinople, reproved monks who accepted such connections; he strictly forbade his own monks for entering into any spiritual associations with lay people, especially women (pp. 193–4). This prohibition extended to acting as godfather to a child or holding the marriage crowns at a wedding. Ritual kinship of this sort became linked with the dangers of leaving the monastery to eat a meal with lay people, participating in drinking parties and perhaps even leaving property to them. In 1406 Emperor Manuel ii Palaiologos prohibited these activities in an attempt to reform monastic habits on Mount Athos (p. 198). In a final chapter Rapp looks beyond Byzantium to the adaptation of the ritual in Russia and the Balkans, and to Kazantzakis, who illustrated its force in his story, Kapetan Michalis and Nuri Bey.

Rapp presents convincing evidence for brother-making as a shared liturgical dedication to an asexual Christian devotion, without the ritual movement and crowns associated with marriage ceremonies. None the less, she writes against the backdrop of Boswell's intervention in favour of gay marriage, stressing what she calls ‘the vast gray zone of male-male attraction’ (p. 138). Its abuse by men more sceptical about the purpose of these prayers could have been used by laymen and religious who wished to live together as if married. While stating that the prayers were not formulated with a view to include a sexual dimension, she adds that ‘it is difficult to see any further than that when the bedroom lights are out’ (p. 47). But in a society dominated by Christian attempts to suppress sex, with regulations concerning rape (chiefly ignored) and castration, it seems more likely that such brother-making might well have a sexual dimension, whether this was viewed as shameful or not.

Clearly, the transition from a monastic to a secular setting, which she dates to the seventh century, changed the character of brother-making and allowed it to develop in very different ways. By the early thirteenth century the great legal expert, Archbishop Demetrios Chomatenos of Ohrid, did not recognize it as officially sanctioned by the Church, but it continued regardless. In this study Claudia Rapp has demonstrated most brilliantly how meaningful the ritual of brother-making was not only in Byzantium but also farther afield. Throughout the Orthodox world, images of saintly brothers on icons and church walls constantly reminded the worshippers of that ideal.