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Full Description
The Byzantine Abbot Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) transgressed the homophobic norms of medieval Orthodox society. His longing for God was distinctly homoerotic, and he depicted union with the divine as a queer sort of marriage. His Orthodox theology of theosis, the deification of the entire person, meant that Symeon taught the salvation of all the parts of the body. But monks also desired the eradication of lust and the punishment of those who fell prey to it. Sermons and biblical commentary defined men who had sex with men as sodomites; and saints' lives warned of the consequences of same-sex desires. Those who renounced sex redirected their desire rather than eliminating it. Symeon's queer erotics shed light on other devotions distinctive to medieval Orthodoxy, including the veneration of saints and worship with icons. Monastic Desires makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of Christianity.
Contents
1. Loving God: the queer fantasies of Symeon the New Theologian; 2. The homophobia of George the Monk: an archeology of opprobrium; 3. The edge of yearning: deferred delights in Symeon's Hymns; 4. Homoeroticism and Byzantine monastic life: contexts and queries; 5. Andromania: homosexual panic in tenth-century hagiography; 6. The repenting sodomite: from penitential canons to the life of Nephon; 7. Of semen and tears: Niketas Stethatos on bodies and boundaries; 8. Icons of desire, bodies of devotion: Niketas Stethatos and the life of Symeon the New Theologian;Coda: glancing back at Sodom.
