Sergius and Bacchus - and other same sex couples

Various same sex couples are referred to in the Adelphopoiesis ceremony. Sergius and Bacchus are two. But so are Philip and Batholomew, the two Saints Theodore and Saints Peter and Paul.

Clearly Peter and Paul were not a couple - they are there to add status to same-sex partnership in much the same way as Abraham and Sarah are invoked in some mixed sex marriage ceremonies. Abraham and Sarah were far from good role models of heterosexual marriage.

Theodore was a real person, but the stories that accrued to him as his cult spread, diverged in two different geographical directions. By the time the two different sets of stories came together again, they described what sounded like two different but closely related saints, and the resulting two saints Theodore came to be revered as paired saints.

Boris and Gleb were very significant in Russian Church history and very many churches are dedicated to them. They were half brothers (as Abraham was Sarah's half brother) are seen by some as a same-sex couple. They come from a different geographical part of the church, so they were probably unknown to the communities that celebrated the adelphopoiesis rites that have survived. But their dedications and memorials indicate that a similar attitude to same-sex couples was more widespread than the surviving rites alone would suggest.

This image of Sergius and Bacchus comes from http://home.aol.com/DrSwiney/sergius.gif

And Sergius and Bacchus?

Well they were a very well respected couple, friends of the emperor Maximian and both taught in the School of the Gentiles.

The adelphopoiesis ceremony includes prayers that the couple will be free from jealousy, hatred and scandal, and Sergius and Bacchus seem to have fallen prey to just this same animosity. Once it became known that they were closet Christians, they were exposed to the Emperor. Although he refused to believe that his good friends could be so base, he eventually put them to the test, and was furious when they came out to him (as Christians). They withstood many extreme trials aimed at curing their secret vice, and the God intervened with miracles to steady their faith.

Bacchus died after a day of flogging and other tortures, and the voice of God was heard welcoming him.

Eventually the bereft Sergius was beheaded, praying for forgiveness for his tormentors.

Their full story runs to several pages, we have a short version that you can see if you click here. There are more details of Sergius and Bacchus there too.

The story is significant because it indicates attitudes from the time it was written, not because of its historical accuracy or otherwise.

Indeed there are number of problematic historical references, quite apart from the miraculous elements. But the full story allows, and possibly assumes, that they were a 'couple' as we today would use the word.

There are several words, phrases and circumstances in the story that might be describing them as, what we would call, a gay couple. But the visual imagery in which they were depicted is much stronger. They are depicted with the cameo of Christ's halo joining their two halos, both wearing torques and having almost identical features clothing and colours. These are typical of heterosexual marriage and of adelphopoiesis in the early centuries.