Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Sociology
Episode: Derek Krueger "Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and the Love of God in Medieval Constantinople" (Cambridge UP, 2026)
Description: Derek Krueger Monastic Desires: Homoeroticism, Homophobia, and Love of God in Medieval Constantinople (Cambridge UP, 2026)
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...