Two Roman soldiers who died for refusing to abandon Christianity more than 1,700 years ago have become the center of a peculiar modern debate over whether one of Christianity’s most celebrated pairs of martyrs were also romantic lovers.
Saints Sergius and Bacchus are venerated by both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, but the extraordinary language used in some early Christian writings to describe their relationship has led a number of scholars and modern Christians to argue that their bond may have extended beyond friendship.
The strongest evidence comes from Christian texts themselves.
Where do we hear about Sergius and Bacchus first?
The Passion of Sergius and Bacchus, an account generally believed to have been composed after their deaths, describes the two men as virtually inseparable. It says they were “undivided from each other,” while presenting them as united by their Christian faith.
“They were not separated from one another, being bound together not by a natural relationship, but by the bond of faith.” (Greek: ἀλλήλων οὐκ ἐχωρίζοντο, οὐ σχέσει φύσεως, ἀλλὰ τρόπῳ πίστεως συνδεσμούμενοι.)
When Bacchus is tortured to death, the account describes Sergius as deeply distressed by his loss. Addressing him as his “brother and fellow soldier,” Sergius laments their separation in particularly emotional language:
“Ἀπεζεύχθης γάρ μου … καταλιπών με ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς μόνον, μεμονωμένον.” The passage can be rendered approximately as: “You have been separated from me … leaving me on earth alone, made solitary.” Boswell drew particular attention to the final word, μεμονωμένον, noting that it could literally be rendered “made single.”
The surviving Greek edition contains the combination of ἀπεζεύχθης, meaning being separated or “unyoked,” and μόνον, μεμονωμένον, emphasizing Sergius being left alone.
This wording has inevitably raised eyebrows among scholars and modern readers who see something more than friendship in the account. However, “made single” can sound more romantic in modern English than the Greek necessarily requires; μεμονωμένον can simply convey being left solitary or alone.
Even more striking is a later version of their story associated with the tenth-century Byzantine hagiographer Symeon Metaphrastes.
“ὁ γλυκὺς ἑταῖρος καὶ ἐραστής”
“His sweet companion and lover.”
The wording is considerably more provocative: erastes can straightforwardly mean “lover.” This particular word has a long history in the Greek language, from ancient times all the way to modern Greek, of referring to a lover, and was famously used in classical Greek discussions of male same-sex relationships.
The argument that Sergius and Bacchus were a couple
These passages became particularly important through the work of the late Yale historian John Boswell.
In his influential 1994 book Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe, Boswell argued that Sergius and Bacchus may have been understood by some early Christians as a romantic couple. He also connected their story with the Byzantine practice known as adelphopoiesis, or “brother-making.” This was a church ceremony establishing a formal bond between two people, normally men, something that doesn’t exist today.
Boswell controversially argued that at least some such ceremonies were closer to same-sex unions than simple declarations of friendship, as this was the closest these people could get to same-sex marriage at the time.
He even interpreted a famous sixth- or seventh-century icon of Sergius and Bacchus, in which Christ appears between the two saints, through this lens, suggesting that its composition could be understood in a way reminiscent of images of marriage.
His interpretation completely changed the saints’ modern image at a time when same-sex marriage was illegal around the world. Sergius and Bacchus have since become important figures for some LGBT Christians and are sometimes referred to as early Christianity’s “gay saints.”
Yet the historical case is far from settled.
Why many historians reject the romantic interpretation
One major problem is that the older surviving Passion does not actually call Sergius and Bacchus lovers.
Boswell’s own translation of the earlier Greek text describes them as “undivided,” but immediately explains their unity as being “not by the way of nature, but in the manner of faith.” The text repeatedly calls them brothers and fellow soldiers and surrounds descriptions of their relationship with explicitly Christian language about their shared devotion to Christ.
The provocative erastes wording comes from the later Metaphrastic tradition, not from the earliest surviving version. This distinction is important because popular claims that “the oldest account calls them lovers” considerably simplify the written evidence we have about these two Christian saints.
Boswell’s interpretation of adelphopoiesis has also faced substantial academic criticism. Classicist Brent Shaw argued that the evidence did not support treating such relationships as marriages, while later scholarship, particularly the work of Byzantine historian Claudia Rapp, has interpreted adelphopoiesis primarily as the creation of ritual or spiritual kinship that tries to make two people brothers rather than spouses. Additionally, there is also no surviving evidence demonstrating that Sergius and Bacchus themselves underwent such a ceremony.
However, probably the most fundamental argument against Sergius and Bacchus being romantic lovers is that the Passion is not a contemporary eyewitness account. The surviving text appears to have been written well after the period in which the martyrs are traditionally believed to have died, making it difficult to separate historical memory from later hagiographic tradition.
Saints of both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches
Whatever the precise nature of their relationship, their status within Christianity is not in doubt.
The Orthodox Church commemorates the Martyrs Sergius and Bacchus on October 7. Orthodox tradition remembers them as prominent Roman officers who refused to sacrifice to pagan gods. Bacchus was beaten to death, while Sergius was tortured and eventually beheaded.
They are also part of the Catholic tradition. While they were removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 due to a lack of historical documentation, they remain in the official Roman Martyrology. Furthermore, Eastern Catholic Churches and specific eparchies (such as the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Saints Sergius and Bacchus in Rome, recognized by Pope Francis) continue to heavily venerate them on October 7.
Neither Church’s traditional account, however, identifies them as a romantic couple.
The evidence therefore allows for a conclusion that depends more on the reader than either side of the modern argument often permits.
There is no historical proof that Sergius and Bacchus were lovers in the modern romantic or sexual sense, and describing them simply as a “gay couple” projects categories onto Late Antiquity that the surviving sources do not establish beyond any reasonable doubt.
Nonetheless and at the same time, dismissing their relationship as an entirely ordinary friendship also fails to capture the remarkable language with which Christian tradition remembered them. They are repeatedly portrayed together, their emotional attachment is unusually intense, and a later Byzantine author did employ the deeply suggestive word erastes.
What Sergius and Bacchus actually felt for one another may ultimately be impossible to know, but what survived across the centuries is the image of two men bound to one another with an exceptional love, sharing their deep Christian faith, persecution, and martyrdom, and, after all this, remembered together as saints by Christianity for more than 1,500 years.
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