Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church today often frame queer genders and sexualities as perverse deviations from tradition . While historians often assume the Church has always condemned homosexuality, this book reassesses the supposed incompatibility of Russian Orthodoxy and queerness. Focusing on a range of primary sources from canonical texts to unpublished archival materials, it shows that the Russian Orthodox Church consistently permitted and celebrated non-normative genders and sexualities, including the veneration of transmasculinity in hagiography, the liturgical consecration of same-sex unions, and the Church s broad lack of interest in policing homosexuality. Paradoxically, Queerness in the Early Modern Russian Orthodox Church highlights how patriarchy breeds queerness.
