Practices of religious and social constructions of gender

In this chapter, the authors examine the theological underpinnings of Byzantine understandings of gender and how these played out in social hierarchies through exemplars from the liturgy, the imperial sphere, and family and religious life. The first part explores the body-soul dualism of Hellenistic philosophy and early Byzantine religious writings and its implications for a gendered hierarchy in Byzantine society. The second part investigates how these assumptions were manifest but also challenged in various Byzantine social units: the court, the Church, the ascetic religious community, and the family.