Petr and Fevroniia's Unorthodox Marriage

Abstract

The married couple Petr and Fevroniia were first canonized in 1547. In Russia today, they are celebrated as an example of supposedly 'traditional' Orthodox family values. Academic studies of the saints' early hagiographies often reinforce this idea, presenting them as idealized love stories or celebrations of Orthodox marriage. By contrast, this article argues that the first, sixteenth-century version of the saints' hagiography depicts a marriage that was unorthodox in its depiction of gender and sexuality. Although unorthodox features would later be removed from the text, there remains a gulf between contemporary and historical understandings of the saints' marriage.