BYZANTINE INTERSECTIONALITY

An art historian offers a fresh perspective on sexuality, gender, and race in the Byzantine Empire.

Betancourt’s refreshingly revisionist work opens with an exploration of the literary and artistic representations of the sixth-century Mary of Egypt. She was often described as a sex worker prior to her conversion and subsequent sainthood; the earliest manuscripts about her life emphasize, in her own words, her carnal desires, which turned her “lust into a free gift.” Her sexual past was often described at the time in lurid specificity, and her iconography in Byzantine art featured her body covered in hair similar to that of wild beasts. Drawing on contemporary intersectional theory, the author makes a convincing case that Mary (and her thematic counterpart, Mary Magdalene) represents a transmasculine depiction often ignored in the scholarship of the history of the Middle Ages. This intersectional approach to the period explores themes of “slut-shaming” women who defied Christian sexual norms alongside transgender monks and queer-coded representations of the Apostle Thomas. Betancourt also discusses race intersecting with gender, as in the legacy of the ancient Greek theory of racial difference in which trans monks were depicted as desexualized “Ethiopians” (a catch-all term denoting racial difference). The author also provides a compelling chapter-length survey of how notions of sexual consent entered into “the very heart of Christian ethics and theology,” as reflected in depictions of the Virgin Mary, whose consent to bear the Christ child became a central narrative component of her hagiography. With a doctorate from Yale in the history of art, Betancourt currently serves as Chancellor’s Professor of Art History at the University of California, Irvine. In this impressively researched book, backed by more than 500 endnotes that demonstrate a command of both Byzantine history and contemporary gender and race theory, the author makes a compelling case for the continued relevance of medieval history in present-day conversations about intersectional identities, histories, and depictions. The volume’s academic heft is counterbalanced by Betancourt’s accessible writing style, and the text is supplemented by photographs of historic art.

A well-researched, surprisingly relevant history of sexuality, gender, and race in the Middle Ages.