Известия Уральского федерального университета. Серия 2: Гуманитарные науки (Dec 2015)
For Better or for Worse: Marriage in Byzantine Hagiography in the 8th –12th Centuries
Abstract
Referring to the women hagiography of the middle Byzantine period, the author considers the peculiarities of relationships between spouses and family conflicts. She analyzes the typical ideas of a Christian marriage, and the role of marriage in the hagiographic context. She demonstrates how the cultural and historical context influences the marriage-related plots in the hagiographic narratives of the epoch. It is established that, according to the authors of hagiographies, happiness or lack thereof in a marriage depended on mutual affection and liking, as well as on the reasons for getting married and the spouses’ idea of life values. The author concludes that the attention that is paid to the issues of married life in the hagiography of the period in question testifies to the fact that marriage played a significant role in the Byzantine society of the time and is conditioned by the general secularization of social consciousness.
