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  3. Marriage in Byzantium
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
May 2025
Print publication year:
2025
Online ISBN:
9781009469548
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009469548
Subjects:
Area Studies, History, European Studies, European History 450-1000
Information

Book description

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.

Awards

Short-listed, 2025 First Book Prize, Ecclesiastical History Society

Reviews

‘‘Marriage in Byzantium’ is a study of the highest quality, and it should remain required reading for anyone interested in Byzantine or medieval marriage, family, liturgical studies and many others for years to come.’

Nathan Leidholm Source: Journal of Medieval History

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