Like many a young man newly arrived in the big city, Basil the First didn’t know what to do when he moved to Constantinople sometime in the mid-800s. Thankfully, it wasn’t long before he met a kindly gentleman named Nicholas, who took him in, fed him, bathed him, and eventually, “going into the church established a formal union with him,” after which they “rejoiced in each other.”

Basil the First would go on to become the ruler of the Byzantine Empire from 867-886, and — according to historian John Boswell’s revelatory 1994 book, Same-Sex Marriage in Premodern Europe — this wouldn’t be his only marriage to another man.

After his station in life had improved, Basil met a man named John. Like many men approaching their second marriages, Basil had concerns, worrying that rushing into this new relationship might make him look “cheap.” But with the blessing of John’s family, the marriage went forward. According to Boswell, a “surviving medieval illustration of this incident shows Basil and John being united before a cleric in a church, with the Gospel open before them and John’s mother looking on.” The image at the top of this article is an illustration of John’s mother, the wealthy widow Danielis, coming to greet Basil the First. After Basil and John were joined together, she would be named “King’s Mother,” and she would name Basil’s son her heir.

Most of us, when asked to think about the history of same-sex marriage, will probably call up a few more recent milestones: Edie Windsor’s 2013 Supreme Court win, perhaps, or Goodridge v Department of Health, the 2004 case that legalized gay marriage in Massachusetts. This might be showing my age, but my mind always jumps to Baehr v Miike, the winding Hawaii case that stretched out through most of the 1990s, and infamously caused the University of Hawaii’s football team to change their name from “The Rainbow Warriors” to just “The Warriors.” When it seemed likely that the court might find that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples was, in fact, discrimination, Hawaii passed legislation to amend their constitution and define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Of course, the history of same-sex unions stretches back much further. Mabel Hampton attended a lesbian wedding in Central Park in the 1930s. Annie Hindle, the 19th century drag king, married at least two women (and one man). Rarely do we think of the medieval times when we consider the history of same-sex marriage, yet surviving evidence suggests that, at the very least, there were established rituals for church unions between men dating back to the time of Basil the First, if not earlier.

For instance, Gerard of Wales’ wrote about a late 12th or early 13th century tradition in Ireland, which involved two men carrying each other around a church three times and saying an oath in front of a priest, followed by a full Christian mass and a ceremonial exchange of blood.

Or consider the words of Michel de Montaigne (the 16th century French author who is widely considered the father of the essay form), who wrote that while in Rome in 1578, he watched as “two males married each other at Mass, with the same ceremonies we use for our marriages, taking Communion together, using the same nuptial Scripture, after which they slept and ate together.” (For more on that particular wedding, check out this essay by historian Gary Ferguson.)

Dealing with such old and often retold stories (which have passed through multiple translations), adds an obvious layer of uncertainty to these histories. Yet they can still offer some important lessons for thinking about same-sex relationships now.