A conversation with Maroula Perisanidi (University of Leeds) about the distinctive kind of masculinity that was fashioned by scholars and priests in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the challenges and deficits that it faced, and the masculine capital that men in those occupations tried to amass and then spend. The conversation is based on Maroula's just published book Masculinity in Byzantium, c. 1000-1200: Scholars, Clerics and Violence (Cambridge University Press 2024).