Veranstaltung: Research Colloquium: Derek Krueger: Book Presentation and talk “Icon Veneration and Lived Religion: Non-elite Practices in Middle Byzantine Period”

“Beyond Canon_” Research Colloquium: this week's guest will be Derek Krueger, presenting first his most recent publication: "Monastic Desires
Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and the Love of God in Medieval Constantinople" (Cambridge University Press, 2026 (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)) and after that his most recent studies on "Icon Veneration and Lived Religion: Non-elite Practices in Middle Byzantine Period" at the Centre's seminar room in 3.14.

Book Description:
The Byzantine Abbot Symeon the New Theologian (949–1022) transgressed the homophobic norms of medieval Orthodox society. His longing for God was distinctly homoerotic, and he depicted union with the divine as a queer sort of marriage. His Orthodox theology of theosis, the deification of the entire person, meant that Symeon taught the salvation of all the parts of the body. But monks also desired the eradication of lust and the punishment of those who fell prey to it. Sermons and biblical commentary defined men who had sex with men as sodomites; and saints' lives warned of the consequences of same-sex desires. Those who renounced sex redirected their desire rather than eliminating it. Symeon's queer erotics shed light on other devotions distinctive to medieval Orthodoxy, including the veneration of saints and worship with icons. Monastic Desires makes a groundbreaking contribution to the history of sexuality and the history of Christianity.

The first sustained history of homoeroticism and homophobia in medieval Orthodox Christianity
Innovatively places medieval Eastern Christian monasticism and monastic spirituality within the history of sexuality, rather than outside it
Strong appeal to readers in church history, Byzantine studies, medieval studies, and gender and cultural history

Abstract to the Talk: 
Despite learned theological treatises defending worship in the presence of images and a wealth of miracle stories where supplicants interact with icons in times of extraordinary need, we know less than we might want about the bodily practices of ordinary Christians with respect to icons in the eighth to eleventh centuries. How central were icons to the piety of non-elites? What can we know about lay Christians' postures and interior dispositions as they interacted with images of Christ, the Theotokos, and the saints?

Online participation via Zoom (externer Link, öffnet neues Fenster)