ABSTRACT
One of the main problems for a Byzantinist faced with a search for desire and denial lies in the nature of the material with which which he or she must work. Faced with the aim of finding examples of 'real' desire in Byzantium, the difficulty is the reverse of the standard philosophical dilemma about the logical status of general rules; rather, the problem for Byzantinists is how to get back from the 'Ought' (the prescriptive literature, the rules laid down in the canons and so on) to the real Is' of Byzantium. Many of the contributors have accordingly set out to persuade us that Byzantium was not really the repressed and ascetic society it liked sometimes to think it was, but, if anything, the reverse, a culture as much governed by desire as any other, a civilization in which people behaved much as they always have and always will, some following the rules, others, and probably the majority, lapsing from time to time, or even ignoring them altogether. A highly prescriptive society, organized along traditional lines, and with a highly prescriptive religion, does not necessarily guarantee uniformly conformist behaviour. If anything, it might be said on this view that an excess of the 'Ought' in fact produces and encourages its opposite. Taking the simplest definition of desire as sexual desire, it is probably true to say that a significant proportion of Byzantine men and women were committed to lives of celibacy. Yet the rules were probably not generally obeyed, and the real impact of denial, and the licence allowed to desire, in Byzantine society remain hard to grasp.
