“Monastic Desires” – A Book by Derek Krueger on Homoeroticism and Homophobia in Medieval Orthodoxy

Cambridge University Press has published the book “Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and the Love of God in Medieval Constantinople”.

Its author is Derek Krueger, an American historian of religion and a specialist in Byzantine Christianity. He explores Byzantine monasticism as a space where the renunciation of sexual life did not eliminate desire, but redirected it into religion.

Krueger places Eastern Christian spirituality into the history of sexuality. He shows that the love of God, bodily discipline, the fear of same-sex desire, and male intimacy existed within a single system.

At the center of the study are the life and texts of Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022). He was a Byzantine abbot and one of the main authors of medieval Orthodox mysticism. He taught deification (theosis) – the idea that a person can unite with God, and in doing so, not only the soul is saved, but every part of the body.

Krueger shows that Symeon described the love of God using the language of homoerotics. In his texts, union with the divine looks like a “LGBT marriage” between men. Krueger reconstructs this experience through Symeon’s texts, penitential canons, monastic instructions, and hagiographical literature, including the works of John Climacus and Niketas Stethatos.

Leonora Neville, a historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, called the book a “magnificent achievement” and a “game-changing social history of queerness”. According to her, Krueger’s work is one of the finest examples of historical empathy. David Townsend of the University of Toronto noted that the study convincingly proves the historical significance of Symeon the New Theologian. According to the scholar, the book is important not only for historians of Christianity, but also for theorists of premodern LGBT identity.