Marriage in Byzantium : Christian Liturgical Rites from Betrothal to Consummation

Brings together ritual texts, visual representations, objects, and historical narratives to trace the social process of marriage formation in the pre-modern Mediterranean world. Recreates the colorful ceremonies employed and explores what they reveal about family ties, religious belief and practice, sexuality, law, and gender relations.

Across cultures, weddings have historically represented some of the most important and extravagant celebrations. This is the first comprehensive study of marriage rituals in the Eastern Mediterranean world of Byzantine Christianity. Using a large corpus of unedited liturgical manuscripts as well as other evidence from jewelry and law to visual representations and theological treatises, Gabriel Radle reconstructs the ceremonies used by the Byzantines to formalize the marriage process, from betrothal to rites of consummation. He showcases the meanings behind rituals of kinship formation and sexual relations and explores how the practice of Byzantine Christianity crossed fluid borders between the church and the domestic sphere. The book situates the development of Byzantine Christian marriage traditions alongside those of other religious communities and, in placing liturgical manuscripts at the heart of this study, paves new methodological paths for the use of ritual sources in the writing of Byzantine history.