Queerness in the Early Modern Russian Orthodox Church

Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church today often frame queer genders and sexualities as perverse deviations from ’tradition’. While historians often assume the Church has always condemned homosexuality, this book reassesses the supposed incompatibility of Russian Orthodoxy and queerness. Focusing on a range of primary sources from canonical texts to unpublished archival materials, it shows that the Russian Orthodox Church consistently permitted and celebrated non-normative genders and sexualities, including the veneration of transmasculinity in hagiography, the liturgical consecration of same-sex unions, and the Church’s broad lack of interest in policing homosexuality. Paradoxically, Queerness in the Early Modern Russian Orthodox Church highlights how patriarchy breeds queerness.

Nick Mayhew is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Glasgow, UK. His research explores queerness in Russophone and Church Slavonic cultures, and his publications have appeared in academic journals including Palaeoslavica, Slavonic and East European Review, Feminist Critique: East European Journal of Feminist and Queer Studies, Transgender Studies Quarterly, and The Medieval History Journal.