Adelphopoiesis: Difference between revisions - Wikipedia

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Alternative views<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.eskimo.com/~nickz/qrd-eastern_orthodox/adelphopoiia.some-responses |title=Some Responses and Rebuttals from Discussion on Orthodox List |date=1994 |access-date=March 18, 2021}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.melkite.org/Questions/M-4.htm |access-date=March 18, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030627040811/http://www.melkite.org/Questions/M-4.htm |title=Rite of Brotherhood |archive-date=June 27, 2003}}</ref> are that this rite was used in many ways, such as the formation of permanent pacts between leaders of nations or between religious brothers. This was a replacement for "[[Blood brother|blood-brotherhood]]" which was forbidden by the church at the time. Others such as [[Brent Shaw]] have maintained also that these unions were more akin to "blood-brotherhood" and had no sexual connotation.<ref name="Shaw">{{cite magazine |last= Shaw|first= Brent|author-link=Brent Shaw |date=July 1994|title= A Groom of One's Own?|magazine= [[The New Republic]]|pages= 43–48|url= http://www.learnedhand.com/shaw_boswell.htm |access-date= June 25, 2009|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20060507014622/http://www.learnedhand.com/shaw_boswell.htm |archive-date = May 7, 2006}}</ref>

Yet, explicitly contradicting the eros-excluding interpretations of the ritual is the Eastern Orthodox Church's own Book of Canon Law, the ''Pedalion,'' which, as reported by historian Franco Mormando, "acknowledges the frequently erotic nature of the relationship ritualized in the 'brotherhood by adoption' or 'wedbrotherhood' ceremony: in prohibiting the ceremony (in its chapter on marriage), the ''Pedalion'' states that wedbrotherhood 'merely affords matter for some persons to fulfill their carnal desires and to enjoy sensual pleasures, as countless examples of actual experience have shown at various times and in various places...'"<ref>Franco Mormando, ''The Preacher's Demons: Bernardino of Siena and the Social Underworld of Early Renaissance Italy'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 301-02, n. 154), quoting from "Concise and Accurate Instructions Concerning Marriages," chap.10, "Brothership by Adoption," ''The Rudder (Pedalion) of the Metaphorical Ship of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of the Orthodox Christians or All the Sacred and Divine Canons...,'' trans. D. Cummings (Chicago: Orthodox Christian Educational Society, 1957), p. 997; in the Index to the latter book, p. 1033, the ceremony is called "wedbrotherhoodwedbrothership."</ref>

Rites for "adelphopoiesis" are contained in Byzantine manuscripts dating from the ninth to the 15th century.<ref name=viscuso>{{Cite web |url=http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?print=1&did=1294-viscuso |title=Viscuso, Patrick. "Failed Attempt to Rewrite History", ''New Oxford Review'', December, 1994 |access-date=2014-05-27 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140527215143/http://www.newoxfordreview.org/reviews.jsp?print=1&did=1294-viscuso |archive-date=2014-05-27 |url-status=dead }}</ref>