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IMC 2014: Sessions

Session 1708: Byzantine Gender: Men, Women, and Eunuchs

Thursday 10 July 2014, 14.15-15.45

Moderator/Chair:Shaun Tougher, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
Paper 1708-aClassical Roman Honor and 12th-Century Byzantine History: Ideal Masculinity in the Material for History of Nikephoros Bryennios
(Language: English)
Leonora Neville, Department of History, Catholic University of America, Washington DC
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Gender Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Learning (The Classical Inheritance)
Paper 1708-bThe Female Martyr and the Imperial Cohorts in the Menologion of Basil II (Vat. Gr. 1613)
(Language: English)
Mati Meyer, Department of Literature, Language & Arts, Open University of Israel, Raanana
Index terms: Art History - Painting, Byzantine Studies, Gender Studies
Paper 1708-cByzantine Eunuchs and Institutional Asceticism
(Language: English)
James J. M. E. Hooper, Forschungsstelle für Vergleichende Ordensgeschichte (FOVOG), Technische Universität Dresden / Institut für Byzantinistik und Neogräzistik, Universität Wien
Index terms: Byzantine Studies, Gender Studies, Historiography - Medieval, Religious Life
Abstract

Paper -a:
Historical memories of classical Roman constructions of proper masculinity and honorable behavior played a major role in 12th-century Byzantine conceptions of honor, as evidenced by the early 12th-century Constantinopolitan history written by the Caesar Nikephoros Bryennios, Material for History. Nikephoros's history of the 1070s evaluates soldiers and politicians according to how well their behavior aligns with a conception of honorable manhood Nikephoros derived from his engagement with classical Roman history, as recorded by the Greek historians of Rome. For Nikephoros, Roman identity was no antiquarian political accident, but a source for continuing ethical formation and moral exhortation for his contemporaries.

Paper -b:
Building on studies dealing with the concept of martyred female corporeality, the paper calls on theories of gender to study the representation of female martyrs in the Menologion of Basil, commissioned by Emperor Basil II (976–1025). I argue that the book's textual and visual interplay turns the female martyr into a 'masculine' body of sorts, whereby it assumes the gender role of the male martyr. The central problematic question of the paper is whether it is possible to see the violence perpetrated on the female body as a rhetorical device meant to reflect the imperial identity of the book's commissioner.

Paper -c:
Institutionally, Byzantine eunuchs were defined by their exclusion from the imperial throne, and marriage. This ensured a disproportionate presence of eunuchs in the state bureaucracy and monastic life, respectively. While some Byzantine writers identified eunuchs with the key ideal of 'apatheia' (Tougher, Salisbury), they were also a potentially discomforting presence, in a society which featured manliness as a synonym for virtue (Kuefler). This ambivalence was reflected in their treatment by monastic foundational texts. Some excluded eunuchs, while others existed solely for them, and various hagiographical texts attest to their regular participation in mixed monasteries. This paper will consider the place of eunuchs in formal monasticism, especially in light of recent contributions both to the history of asceticism, and gender.