Adelphopoiesis, or adelphopoiia (from the Greek , derived from , , , and , , , literally 'brother-making') is a ceremony practiced historically in Orthodox-Christian tradition to unite together two people of the same sex (normally men) in a church-recognized relationship analogous to siblinghood. Such ceremonies can be found in the history of the Catholic Church until the 14th century and in the Eastern Orthodox Church until the early 20th century. Documented in Byzantine manuscripts from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, prayers established participants as 'spiritual brothers' () and contained references to sainted pairs, including most notably Saints Sergius and Bacchus as well as Saints Cosmas and Damian, who were famous for their friendship." In England, some scholars believe an adelphopoiesis may have also taken place between William Neville (Lollard knight) and John Clanvowe. In the late twentieth century, the Christian tradition gained notoriety as the focus of controversy involving advocates and opponents of secular and religious legalization of same-sex relationships. Adelphopoiesis in Christian tradition The Russian polymath scholar, priest, and martyr Pavel Florensky offered a famous description of adelphopoiesis in his monumental 1914 book The Pillar and the Ground of The Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters, which included an early bibliography on the topic.<ref>Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth', translated by Boris Jakim, Princeton 1997, p. 571-72.</ref> Florensky described traditional Christian friendship, expressed in adelphopoiesis, as "a community molecule [rather than an atomistic individualism], a pair of friends, which is the principle of actions here, just as the family was this kind of molecule for the pagan community," reflecting Christ's words that "wherever two or more of you are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of thee." Florensky in his theological exegesis of the rite described an overlap of Christian agapic, philic, and erotic love in adelphopoiesis. He defines erōs as "sensuous, passionate love," storgē as "love of kith and kin," agapē as "love of valuation, respect," and philia as "love of inward acceptance, personal insight, friendliness." He then says, "But in fact, none of these words expresses the love of friendship that we are considering in the present letter, a love that combines the aspects of philia, erōs, and agapē, a love the ancients attempted to express in some degree by the compound word philophrosunē." Were we to choose but one of these words, he says that