CASTRATION

Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture,

CASTRATION
from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding
harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers.
Metaphoric castration pervades a number of medieval literary
CULTURE
genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux – exchanges of power IN THE MIDDLE AGES
predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified

CULTURE
by genitalia – but the plain, literal act of castration and its
implications are often overlooked.

This collection explores this often taboo subject and its

implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe,
seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects
include archaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of
castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in

IN THE MIDDLE AGES

medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary
examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the
Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in
hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration
enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on
these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim
of castration in the middle ages, Abelard.

Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at

Longwood University.

Cover illustration: Illumination from the Romans de la rose of Origen castrating himself.
TRACY

© The British Library Board. All rights reserved. Egerton 881, f.132.
(ED)

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

EDITED BY LARISSA TRACY
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY14620-2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 1

CASTRATION AND CULTURE

IN THE MIDDLE AGES
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 2
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 3

CASTRATION AND CULTURE

IN THE MIDDLE AGES

Edited by Larissa Tracy

D. S. Brewer
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 4

© Contributors 2013

All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2013

D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 978–1-84384–351–1

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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website: www.boydellandbrewer.co.uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

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external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee
that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

Papers used by Boydell & Brewer Ltd are natural, recyclable products
made from wood grown in sustainable forests

Designed and Typeset by Tina Ranft, Woodbridge

Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 5

Contents

List of Illustrations vii

List of Contributors viii
Acknowledgements xi
List of Abbrevations xii

Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration 1

Larissa Tracy
1 Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 29
Kathryn Reusch
2 The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs 48
Shaun Tougher
3 Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and
Practice in Early Christianity 73
Jack Collins
4 ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of
Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary 87
Larissa Tracy
5 The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served:
Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law 108
Rolf H. Bremmer Jr
6 The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal
Subject 131
Jay Paul Gates
7 ‘Imbrued in their owne bloud’: Castration in Early Welsh and
Irish Sources 149
Charlene M. Eska
8 Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value
of Eunuchs 174
Mary A. Valante
9 ‘He took a stone away’: Castration and Cruelty in the Old
Norse Sturlunga saga 188
Anthony Adams
10 The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity
and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee 210
Mary E. Leech
11 Eunuchs of the Grail 229
Jed Chandler
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 6

vi Contents

12 Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in

Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose 255
Ellen Lorraine Friedrich
13 Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre’s
La Vieille 280
Robert L.A. Clark
14 The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration 295
Karin Sellberg and Lena Wånggren

Select Bibliography 315

Index 345
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 01/02/2013 07:23 Page 7

List of Illustrations

FIGURE 1.1 Skull of a castrate, demonstrating the small craniofacial

area and heavy mandible. Photo by Kathryn Reusch, printed
with permission of Musée Testut Latarjet d’Anatomie et d’Histoire
Naturelle Médicale, Lyon 37

FIGURE 1.2 Castrate pelvis, displaying the unusual shape of the ilia
and a typically male sciatic notch and subpubic angle. Photo by
Kathryn Reusch, printed with permission of Musée Testut
Latarjet d’Anatomie et d’Histoire Naturelle Médicale, Lyon 38

FIGURE 5.1 Pieter Breugel the Elder (c.1520/25–1569), published by

Hieronymus Cock (c. 1510–3 October 1570). Copper engraving by
Pieter van der Heyden (c. 1530–after March 1572): ‘The Seven Deadly
Sins: Luxuria [Lust]’ (1558, detail): monstrous man cutting off his
own penis. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Photo
provided by Studio Buitenhof, The Hague 120

FIGURE 12.1 Opening page of the Romans de la Rose, British Library,

MS Stowe 947 (f.1) depicting the dreamer in bed surrounded by
roses, and (on the right) encircled by rosebushes and holding a
mirror and a comb, Oiseuse. © The British Library Board,
MS Stowe 947 256

FIGURE 12.2 Detail of self-castrating beaver in the right-hand

marginalia of the opening page of British Library, MS Stowe 947
(f.1). © The British Library Board, MS Stowe 947 257
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 8

List of Contributors

ANTHONY ADAMS is Assistant Professor of English at Colby College,

specializing in medieval languages and literatures. He is completing his first
book, which examines sacrifice and violence in Middle English literature. He
has written on Old English and Carolingian poetry of war, medieval Latin,
Thomas Malory, the Middle English Charlemagne romances, Norse sagas,
Chaucer, and Beowulf, and published (with A.G. Rigg) the first complete
English translation and commentary of the ninth-century epic Latin poem
Bella Parisiacae urbis in the Journal for Medieval Latin.
ROLF H. BREMMER JR is Professor of English Philology and, by special
appointment, Professor of Frisian at the University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
He has published widely in both fields, most recently An Introduction to Old
Frisian: History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary (2009) and, as co-editor with Kees
Dekker, Practice in Learning: The Transfer of Encyclopaedic Knowledge in the
Early Middle Ages (2010).
JED CHANDLER is in the final year of his PhD at Swansea University,
researching gender identity in early romance literature, specifically the passing
man, a female-bodied person who presents a male social identity. He is partic-
ularly interested in the interactions between the passing man and Merlin, and
the antecedents of this episode in late ancient hagiographic literature. His other
interests include the Celtic analogues of the Merlin legend and the medieval
and contemporary associations of the grail legend with Glastonbury.
ROBERT L.A. CLARK is Associate Professor of French at Kansas State
University. He has published broadly on medieval theater, gender issues, illu-
minated manuscripts, and opera. With Kathleen Ashley, he is co-editor of the
volume Medieval Conduct.
JACK COLLINS currently lectures for the Department of Religion at the
George Washington University in Washington, DC. He earned his PhD from
the University of Virginia in 2011. His research interests include early Christian
and Jewish apocalyptic literature, with an emphasis on traditions related to the
biblical patriarch Enoch. He is currently adapting his dissertation, ‘Worthless
Mysteries: Forbidden Knowledge, Culture Heroes, and the Enochic Motif of
Angelic Instruction’, for publication.
CHARLENE M. ESKA is Assistant Professor in the English Department at
Virginia Tech. Her research focuses on medieval law codes from the British
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 9

List of Contributors ix

Isles, particularly Ireland. She is the author of Cáin Lánamna: An Old Irish Tract
on Marriage and Divorce Law (2010) and articles dealing with issues in early
Irish law, such as slavery, swine values, Sunday laws, and marriage. She is
currently editing the medieval Irish legal texts Recholl Breth, Di Thúaslucud
Rudrad and Anfuigell.
ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH is Associate Professor of Modern and
Classical Languages at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, USA,
and Book Review Editor for Romance Literatures for the journal Arthuriana.
She has published on Bel Acuel and an article on the Diex d’Amors (the God
of Love), in the Romans de la rose by Guillaume de Lorris. She is also the author
of book chapters on the scene at the fountain in the Chevalier de la charrette of
Chrétien de Troyes, and on the fabliau Les iiii souhais Saint Martin. She is
presently writing about Lancelot and Tristan in film.
JAY PAUL GATES is Assistant Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice-
City University of New York. He earned his PhD from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. His areas of specialization are Anglo-Saxon and
Old Norse-Icelandic literature and language and the effects of Anglo-
Scandinavian cultural contact, especially as represented in legal rhetoric.
MARY E. LEECH is a Lecturer at the University of Cincinnati. Her work
focuses on body metaphor as it is informed by the medieval understanding of
medical science. She has published two book chapters, one in Comic
Provocations: Exposing the Corpus of Old French Fabliaux (ed. Holly A. Crocker,
2006), and another in The English Loathly Lady Tales: Boundaries, Traditions,
Motifs (ed. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, 2007). She also has an article
on comedic violence in the inaugural issue of LATCH: A Journal for the Study
of the Literary Artifact in Theory, Culture, or History. She is president of the
Société Fableors, a professional society that encourages scholarship on the
wide-ranging influences of the fabliaux tradition in literature.
KATHRYN REUSCH is a fourth-year DPhil student at the School of
Archaeology, University of Oxford. She received her MSc in Palaeopathology
at the University of Durham, in which she investigated through a literature
review the social and physical effects of castration. She has presented several
papers on castration and archaeology at conferences throughout the UK. Her
main areas of interest include bioarchaeology, endocrinology, developmental
processes, and funerary archaeology.
KARIN SELLBERG is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in English Literature and
part-time lecturer in medical humanities for the medical school at the
University of Edinburgh, where she is also Co-Director of the Scottish
Universities’ International Summer School. She has published extensively on
the relationship to history and time in contemporary ideological academic
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x List of Contributors

movements, such as new historicism, cultural materialism, queer theory, and

feminist theory and conceptions of the body in the work of William
Shakespeare, Thomas Dekker, and Thomas Middleton.
SHAUN TOUGHER is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the Cardiff
School of History, Archaeology and Religion at Cardiff University, where he is
also co-director of the Centre for Late Antique Religion and Culture. He
specialises in late Roman and Byzantine political and cultural history. His most
recent publications include Julian the Apostate (2007) and The Eunuch in
Byzantine History and Society (2008). He is currently completing a study of
eunuchs in the Roman Empire.
LARISSA TRACY is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at Longwood
University. She is the author of Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature:
Negotiations of National Identity (2012) and Women of the Gilte Legende: A
Selection of Middle English Saints’ Lives (2003). She co-edited (with Jeff Massey),
Heads Will Roll: Decapitation in the Medieval and Early Modern Imagination
(2012). She has published articles on violence, comedy, hagiography, and Sir
Gawain and the Green Knight. She also co-organizes an annual regional under-
graduate research conference in medieval studies.
MARY A. VALANTE is Associate Professor of Medieval History at
Appalachian State University. She is the author of The Vikings in Ireland:
Settlement, Trade and Urbanization (2008), as well as articles on hagiography,
charters, and the Vikings in Ireland.
LENA WÅNGGREN is a Research Fellow in English Literature at the
University of Edinburgh, where she also teaches. While her main research
concerns questions of gender in late nineteenth-century literature and culture,
she also works on critical and feminist theory, and the history of medicine. She
has published on gender transgression, critical pedagogy, and late nineteenth-
century feminism.
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 11

Acknowledgements

There are many people to thank in a collection like this, and we are indebted
to our families for putting up with us during this process. Special thanks go
out to Kelly DeVries, Jeff Massey and Rikk Mulligan for their input and
editorial comments on various stages of the project. I am grateful to Asa Simon
Mittman, Valeria Finucci, David F. Johnson, Thomas D. Hill, and Bonnie
Wheeler for their advice and suggestions, and to Charles Insley for planting
the seed. My deepest gratitude goes to Boydell’s editorial board and conscien-
tious reader, and to Caroline Palmer for her encouragement and enthusiasm,
and for not shying away from such a topic. We are indebted to Rohais
Haughton, Anna Robinette and Annie Jackson for their diligence and hard
work. Our thanks to The Journal for the Study of the Literary Artifact in Theory,
Culture, or History for permission to reprint a revised version of Mary E. Leech’s
article ‘The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and
Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee’ which appeared in Vol. 1 (2008). We
also wish to thank J.C. Neidhardt and the Musée Testut Latarjet D’Anatomie et
D’Histoire Naturelle Médicale, Lyon; the British Library, London; and the
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam for permission to reproduce
select images and for the use of rare materials. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from STATIUS:
VOLUME 1, SILVAE, Loeb Classical Library Volume 206, translated by D.R.
Shackleton Bailey, pp. 217, 219, 221, 223, 225, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, Copyright © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard
College. Loeb Classical Library ® is a registered trademark of the President
and Fellows of Harvard College.

This volume would not have been possible without a sabbatical award from
Longwood University (Fall 2011).
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 12

List of Abbreviations

AB Annála as Breifne, ed. Éamonn De hÓir, Breifne 4.13 (1970).

AC Annála Connacht. The Annals of Connacht (AD 1224–1544), ed.
and trans. A. Martin Freeman. Dublin: Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies, 1996.
ACl The Annals of Clonmacnoise, being Annals of Ireland from the
Earliest Period to AD 1408 Translated into English AD 1627 by
Conell Mageoghagan, ed. Denis Murphy. Dublin: Royal Society of
Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896, repr. Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers,
1993.
AFM Annals of the Four Masters, s.a. 1247, ed. and trans. John
O’Donovan. Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and Co., 1854.
AI The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt. Dublin:
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988.
AL Ancient Laws of Ireland, ed. and trans. W. N. Hancock et al.
Dublin: A Thom, 1865–1901.
ALC The Annals of Loch Cé, ed. and trans. William M. Hennessy.
London: Longman and Co., 1871.
AT The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes, repr.
Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers, 1993.
AU Annala Uladh. The Annals of Ulster, otherwise Annala Senait,
Annals of Senait: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs from AD 431 to AD
1540, ed. and trans. W. M. Hennessy and B. Mac Carthy. Dublin:
A. Thom, 1887–1901.
AU2 The Annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt
and Gearóid Mac Niocaill. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced
Studies, 1983.
BnF Bibliothèque nationale de France
CIH Corpus Iuris Hibernici, ed. D. A. Binchy. Dublin: Dublin Institute
for Advanced Studies, 1979.
CS Chronicum Scottorum: A Chronicle of Irish Affairs from the
Earliest Times to AD 1135, with a Supplement Containing the
Events from 1141–1150, ed. and trans. William M. Hennessy,
Rolls Series 46. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1866.
DB Domesday Book: A Complete Translation, ed. Ann Williams and
G. H. Martin. London: Penguin, 2002.
EETS, os Early English Text Society, original series
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 13

List of Abbreviations xiii

FA Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Joan Newlon

Radner. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978.
GEIL Fergus Kelly. A Guide to Early Irish Law. Early Irish Law Series
3. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988.
HC Abelard, Historia calamitatum, in The Letters of Abelard and
Heloise, trans. Betty Radice. London: Penguin Books, 1974
JEGP Journal of English and Germanic Philology
Letter Personal Letters, in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise. Trans.
Betty Radice. London: Penguin
LgA Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea. The Golden Legend:
Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan, vols. 1 and
2. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
Misc. Ir. Miscellaneous Irish Annals (AD 1114–1437), ed. and trans. Séamus
Ó hInnse. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1947.
MGH SRG Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores rerum Germani-
carum 55, ed. Georg Waitz. Hanover, 1884.
PMLA Publication of the Modern Language Association
SEL The South English Legendary, Corpus Christi College Cambridge
MS 145 and British Museum MS Harley 2277, ed. Charlotte
d’Evelyn and Anna J.Mill. vol. 1, EETS os 235. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1956, rpt. 1967; and The Early South-English
Legendary or Lives of Saints, MS Laud 108 in the Bodleian Library,
ed. Carl Horstmann. EETS os 87. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1887; reprinted 2000.
Castration and Culture prelims_castration 28/01/2013 11:05 Page 14
Castration and Culture txt hebrew_castration 30/01/2013 09:35 Page 1

INTRODUCTION

A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration

Larissa Tracy

T he male body is a paradox – at once strong and resilient, yet fragile and
vulnerable, arguably even more vulnerable than the female form which
has its generative organs safely tucked up inside. Nations have been founded
on the virility and power of the male body, but if that virility is lost, empires
can be lost with it. Castration is therefore often a conversational taboo; refer-
ences to it elicit a cringe, a grimace, a protective stance and yet it has been part
of the bodily discourse as long as humans have communicated. In the modern
age, castration (surgical or chemical)1 is punitive, either a legal sentence for
unspeakable crimes or a violent, illegitimate action. In an era bombarded by
advertisements for Viagra, Cialis, and other ‘male enhancement’ products, the
male genitalia (particularly the penis) are treated as if sacred. Gary Taylor’s
study, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood, captures the
essence of this dialogue in a foray into all facets of emasculation (including his
own vasectomy) and its history from the dawn of time to Tori Amos. Taylor
argues that castration calls into question
the binary categories of human thought – the binaries of Augustine or
Claudian or Freud, obviously, but also our own binaries, the binaries that

1
Chemical castration, the administration of female hormones into the male body through
injection with substances like the birth control drug Depo-Provera to dampen sexual
urges, is a legal punishment for rape, child molestation, and other sex offenses in at least
eight US States. It has been used in other parts of the world including the UK, Australia,
Israel, and more recently Argentina and Russia. In 2011, Virginia State Senator Emmett
Hanger (Republican) introduced legislation that would require the state to investigate the
use of surgical castration to punish sex offenders as a cost-saving measure for state prisons.
‘Va. Senator Seeks to Castrate Sex Offenders’, Associated Press, Jan. 26, 2011, online at
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/01/26/va-senator-seeks-castrate-sex-offenders/
(accessed Dec. 9, 2011). Louisiana and Texas currently allow physical castration to be
used, and Hanger has lobbied for the use of surgical castration in Virginia since 2006.
‘Virginia Lawmaker Proposes Castration for Sex Offenders’, Brian Gillie, The Examiner,
Jan. 26, 2011, online at http://www.examiner.com/strange-news-in-national/virginia-
lawmaker-proposes-castration-for-sex-offenders (accessed Dec. 9, 2011).
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2 LARISSA TRACY

organize postmodernist academic discourse. The eunuch confuses not only

the categories of ‘male’ and ‘female,’ but the categories ‘nature’ and ‘accident,’
‘biology’ and ‘culture,’ ‘reality’ and ‘representation,’ ‘essentialism’ and
constructionism’.2

Modern responses to castration (or its threat) and all the incumbent implica-
tions are not so far removed from those of earlier people. Despite the current
tendency to view the Middle Ages as a barbaric time beset with violence, in
which torture and brutality abounded, medieval people were no more desen-
sitized to physical cruelty than are their modern counterparts.3 Just as today,
for late antique, medieval, and early modern societies castration (like torture
and brutality) was often the hallmark of savagery. It was reserved as a
punishment for some of the worst offenders – traitors and rapists – and even
then it was employed sparingly. Those who castrated others illegally were
punished, in some cases by being castrated themselves. Male genitalia were
highly valued – as attested by the numerous detailed injury tariffs that could
be levied in the event of an unfortunate wounding. Men had to prove the virility
of their members (occasionally in court, in front of witnesses) or be prohibited
from marrying or entering into ecclesiastical orders. Castration, though some-
times considered more merciful than death, was a means of cutting off rivals
or offenders from society – or later, as with the Italian castrati, of elevating
young men to the heights of stardom and sexual allure. In short, castration
meant many things to many societies, each of which placed a certain emphasis
on genitalia and its effect on constructions of masculinity.
Recently, there have been specialized studies on castration itself, usually in
reference to the position of eunuchs in a particular society. These generally
offer localized examinations of castration within a specific context or sweeping

2
Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and
London: Routledge, 2002), p. 175.
3
Johan Huizinga’s image of medieval Europe as a bloody and vicious time, first written in
1919 and translated into English in 1924, is the foundation for many twentieth-century
interpretations of the Middle Ages: Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages
(London: Penguin Books, reprinted 1990). Barbara Tuchman’s popular history solidified
that view for another generation of readers: Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The
Calamitous Fourteenth Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978). In the last thirty
years, several scholars, notably Edward Peters, have tried to dispel that image and view
medieval violence within its historical context. Most recently: Daniel Baraz, Medieval
Cruelty: Changing Perceptions, Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 2003); Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk, eds.,
‘A Great Effusion of Blood’? Interpreting Medieval Violence (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2004); Albrecht Classen, ed., Violence in Medieval Courtly Literature: A Casebook
(New York and London: Routledge, 2004); Robert Mills, Suspended Animation: Pain,
Pleasure, and Punishment in Medieval Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2005); John H.
Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancien Régime
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Larissa Tracy, Torture and Brutality in
Medieval Literature: Negotiations of National Identity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012).
Castration and Culture txt hebrew_castration 30/01/2013 09:35 Page 3

Introduction 3

studies encompassing two thousand years and a multitude of cultures – a truly

‘abbreviated history’. In his detailed and extremely informative article on the
history of castration, Mathew S. Kuefler calls for more comparative cultural
studies of institutionalized castration, and he argues that there is ‘no modern
synthesis of castration in Europe in the Middle Ages’.4 Kuefler’s own mono-
graph, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian
Ideology in Late Antiquity, which examines these issues from the start of the
third century to the middle of the fifth century, lays a firm foundation for
pursuing such a study.5 Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, edited by Shaun
Tougher, adds another layer to the cross-cultural study of early eunuchs in
antiquity, concentrating mainly on Greek evidence across the Persian, Greek,
Roman, and Byzantine worlds, but branching out to touch on the history of
the court eunuch in China and the influential role of castrati in music beyond
that of Italian singers of the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.6
However, castration itself – the act, the penalty, the cultural significance – is
only part of these very thorough discussions of eunuchs. Taylor’s Castration
wraps all the cultural concerns about castration throughout history into a pithy
and engaging discussion of the effect of castration on the male psyche, framing
his discussion around early modern texts like Thomas Middleton’s A Game at
Chess (1624). Valeria Finucci’s study on castration also focuses on the early
modern period, dealing specifically with the gender anxieties surrounding the
castrati.7 But there is a gap. Jacqueline Murray writes that despite both the
‘dominance of the masculine voice and the phallocentrism of the medieval
world view, we know very little about either masculinity or male sexuality in
the Middle Ages’.8 Much has been done since on medieval masculinity, but very
little has been done specifically on medieval castration, except as it reflects on
or carries over the ideas of antiquity into the Renaissance. The need for more
specialized study (as gruesome as it may seem) is clearly articulated by Murray
who argues that by ‘de-universalizing men’s voices and analyzing their expe-
rience with the methodologies and theoretical perspectives that have done so
much to reclaim women’s past, new insights are being gained into masculinity

4
Mathew S. Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism in the Middle Ages’, in The Handbook of
Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1996), pp. 279–306 at pp. 279, 280.
5
Mathew S. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian
Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
6
Shaun Tougher, ed., Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond (London: Classical Press of Wales
and Duckworth, 2002).
7
Valeria Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity and Castration in the
Italian Renaissance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).
8
Jacqueline Murray, ‘Hiding Behind the Universal Man: Male Sexuality in the Middle
Ages’, in The Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Bullough and Brundage, pp. 123–52 at
p. 123.
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4 LARISSA TRACY

and male sexuality’.9 But rather than focusing on the theoretical aspects and the
psychological analysis that often surrounds it, this collection examines the real,
literal act of castration (both testicular and penile) from late antiquity through
the early modern period, presenting complex and nuanced discussions of what
is often regarded as an offensive, or at least uncomfortable, subject. Throughout
history, a variety of social norms and prohibitions have been enacted on the
body and the essays in this volume concentrate on the most intimate inscriptions
of religious and secular power and their manifestations in chronicles, literature,
archaeology, and law. The purpose of this collection is to work from the classic
foundations, to fill in gaps in the sweeping studies, and to connect the dots of
the more localized discussions in an effort to contribute a comprehensive and
cohesive picture of castration in western Europe.

The History of Castration

Castration has been a feature of civilization for more than a thousand years.
Tied to notions of identity, masculinity, sexuality, and power, castration has been
used as a tool of oppression, slavery, purification, and religious observance. Vern
L. Bullough notes that the date of the first appearance of eunuchs ‘has been lost
to history, but castration of males whether animal or human is an old practice
dating from the time when humanity began to herd animals’.10 Medically
speaking, castration can either denote the removal of the testicles or of the entire
male genitalia – the visible signs of a man, according to Aristotle. There are three
medical possibilities in defining castration: removing or disabling the penis;
removing or disabling the testicles; and removing or disabling the entire geni-
talia.11 Many studies of castration (medieval and modern) proceed from the
premise of Freudian theory and take a psychoanalytical approach which privi-
leges the penis;12 however, in light of recent research, Murray questions the legit-
imacy of ‘applying this evaluation of the penis to the construction of male sexual
identity in the Middle Ages’.13 Most medieval medical cases of castration involve

9
Ibid., p. 123.
10
Vern L. Bullough, ‘Eunuchs in History and Society’, in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond,
ed. Tougher, p. 1.
11
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, p. 285.
12
Karin Sellberg and Lena Wånggren take on the Freudian critics and analyze the effect of
reading medieval and early modern castration narratives through a psychoanalytical
framework in their conclusion to this volume, ‘The Dismemberment of Will: Early
Modern Fear of Castration’, pp. 295–313.
13
Murray, ‘Hiding Behind the Universal Man’, p. 124. According to Murray, ‘given the
centrality of the penis to male sexual and psychological identity, there is a temptation to
evaluate male sexual violence as inherent and transhistorical. This perspective on the
meaning of the phallus to masculine sexuality and identity owes much to Sigmund
Freud’s ideas about the interplay between body and mind, libido and id in the male
psyche, a relationship which would not alter significantly across societies’ (p. 124).
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Introduction 5

only the testicles, and concerns regarding their removal had less to do with
sexual identity or ability, and more to do with the ability to propagate and sire
children. In seventh-century Byzantium, Paulus Aegineta described the different
castrative procedures that were widely practiced throughout the Byzantine
Empire, despite the danger of bleeding to death and infection.14 Kuefler writes
that ‘the opinion of ancient science that castration, despite its risks, could cure
or at least alleviate certain ailments also made its way into medieval medicine’.15
In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas ‘justified what had long been
medical practice, that castration was a permissible mutilation if used to save the
whole person’.16 Castration was seen as treatment for a variety of related and
unrelated diseases: satyriasis, elephantiasis, hernias, hair loss (in extreme cases),
leprosy, gout, varicose veins, and epilepsy.17
The generation of some of the staple figures of Greek and Roman mythology
– Aphrodite/Venus and the Furies (Erinyes) – rests with a violent act of castration
perpetrated by a son upon his father, Kronos/Saturn on Uranus/Caelus. In the
ancient rite of Cybele, recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the goddess’s lover
Attis castrates himself in a ritual performance. Charles B. Lewis argues this
may have been the origin for the May Pole and May festivities, popular
throughout medieval Europe, which often featured cross-dressed or sexually
ambiguous figures as part of the spectacle. As Lewis points out, Attis emascu-
lated ‘was neither man nor woman’; he was a called a ‘semi-woman’.18 Castration
was important in religious cults of the Great Goddess, ‘worshipped with her
son and consort under various titles and names in the syncretic atmosphere of
the later Roman Empire’.19 These rites were problematic for Christian writers
who strongly condemned them not only because they were pagan, but also
because ‘of the sexual practices and blurring of gender distinctions particular
to this religion. The condemnation of religious castration was an important
part of patristic polemics against pagan religion, and thus found its way into
the canon of medieval religious writings.’20 And yet, Christian theologians
resorted to this ‘pagan’ practice occasionally reconfiguring castration as a form
of spiritual purification.

14
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, pp. 285–6. Shaun Tougher examines the works of
Paulus Aegineta (Paul of Aegina) in his contribution to this volume, ‘The Aesthetics of
Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, pp. 48–72. See also Robert L.A. Clark,
‘Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre’s La Vielle’, in this volume,
pp. 280–94.
15
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, p. 286.
16
Ibid., p. 286.
17
Ibid.
18
Charles B. Lewis, ‘The Part of the Folk in the Making of Folklore’, Folklore 46.1 (March
1935): 37–75 at pp. 70–1.
19
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, pp. 281–2.
20
Ibid., p. 282.
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6 LARISSA TRACY

Eunuchs and the Ancient World

Eunuchs occupied an ambiguous sexual position in much of the ancient world,
and their ability to pass between gendered identities often put them in positions
of power. The history of eunuchs in medieval European society stretches back
much farther than the beginning of the medieval period, and studies of castration
‘must take into consideration the continuities of medieval society with the ancient
world’.21 The production and use of eunuchs in political and domestic spheres
was far more common in Byzantium than in Germanic Europe; ancient govern-
ments ‘depended on eunuchs in their bureaucracies, and literate persons in the
Middle Ages could read of them in ancient Greek and Roman histories’.22
Eunuchs were guardians of the marriage bed, ‘qualified for that social function
by being disqualified from a biological one’.23 Some were advisors, many ruled
behind the scenes, and several led on the battlefield. Kuefler cites forty-five
examples of eunuchs charged with military commands by the Byzantine
government, a ‘curiously masculine role for a group of men so frequently deni-
grated as unmanly’.24 But Byzantine law precluded the use of castration as a
punishment for any crime.25 Kuefler points out that ‘continuities with the ancient
world in the use of eunuchs are also very much apparent in the Muslim world,
and they influenced Christian Europeans whenever and wherever interactions
between these two cultures took place’.26 There was also literary continuity
between the ancient and medieval worlds regarding castration: religious texts,
including the Bible, provided examples of eunuchs; legal texts, especially after
the rediscovery of Roman law in the twelfth century, included castration, and
secular literature repeated the accounts of eunuchs found in classical works and
incorporated them as a motif in medieval romances.27
The Digest of Justinian suggests that Roman law was clearly opposed to
castration, however common it may have been in later Roman society.28 In the
Roman world, ‘notions of sexual difference relied heavily on the absoluteness
of the divide between male and female’.29 Kuefler writes,
Notions of moral character, of virtue and vice, were directly linked to sexual
difference, and social rights were expressed as deriving from masculine
superiority and feminine inferiority. Gender ambiguity of any sort was an
unsettling proposition, and as much as possible was explained away. The

21
Ibid., p. 280.
22
Ibid., pp. 280, 281.
23
Taylor, Castration, p. 33.
24
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, p. 281.
25
Ibid., p. 287.
26
Ibid., p. 280.
27
Ibid., p. 280.
28
Ibid., p. 287.
29
Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, p. 19.
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Introduction 7

gender ambiguity of the eunuch was not so easily erased, however, and the
presence of eunuchs therefore disturbed and challenged those notions of
the absolute divide between male and female.30

But medieval notions of gender identity could be fluid, and neither male nor
female identity was necessarily affected by castration.

Castration, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity

Several influential studies on the nature of medieval masculinity and sexuality
have been written in the last twenty years (though most of these only touch on
castration),31 and they all point to the complexity of gender definitions and the
fraught relationship between gendered categories. Miri Rubin argues that
medieval people ‘were worried by contradictions within their bodies and
between each other’ and challenges the ‘boundaries and integrity of bodies in
the Middle Ages’ in a way that renders any attempt at ‘grounding, at claiming
determinacy of them, not only impossible, but uninteresting’.32 Rubin further
suggests that medieval gender roles were made in a world which ‘possessed very
fluid notions of sexuality and of bodily contours. Thus gender is revealed as a
complex system, not grounded in biology, but made of attempts to impose upon
biological diversity a regulating dichotomy: feminine and masculine.’33 In her
extensive work on castration and masculinity, Murray asserts that ‘masculinities
reflect patriarchy back on itself. Masculinities naturalize and normalize patri-
archy and patriarchy imbues masculinities with the power and privilege that
underscore male experience and identity through so much of human history.’34
Castration both reinforces and threatens masculinity – wielded by foes or
political opponents it becomes a means of solidifying power (regardless of how
much the recourse to such brutality may destabilize that power). As a mode of

30
Ibid.
31
See Martha A. Brozyna, ed., Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages (Jefferson, NC:
McFarland Publishers, 2005); Conor McCarthy, ed., Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle
Ages: A Sourcebook (New York and London: Routledge, 2004); Ruth Mazo Karras, From
Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University
of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds., Becoming
Male in the Middle Ages (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000); Clare A. Lees, ed.,
Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994); Bullough and Brundage, eds., Handbook of Medieval Sexuality;
James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987).
32
Miri Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form: Medieval Challenges to Bodily “Order”‘, in Framing
Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1994), pp. 100–22 at p. 100.
33
Ibid., p. 101.
34
Jacqueline Murray, ‘Introduction’, in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men
in the Medieval West, ed. Murray (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), p. xi.
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8 LARISSA TRACY

punishment for rape or treason it acts (potentially or ideally) as a deterrent,

trusting that the desire to preserve manhood will outweigh any other felonious
desire, or as a contrapasso – suffering according to the crime.
Castration is an emasculating practice usually enacted upon men by other
men – men who either feel threatened or empowered enough to perform an act
that masculine sensibilities should decry. Masculine identities were ‘constructed,
consciously and unconsciously, in oppositional terms’.35 Few things seem as
contradictory as a man desiring – or even being willing – to emasculate another
man, whether through fear, anger, vengeance, religious fervor, legal requirement,
or accident. And yet men did – perhaps as a means of asserting their own virility.
In each of the castration scenarios discussed in this volume, violence is enacted
upon a male body (or in rare cases a female body) by other men that results in
devastating effects for the entire idea of medieval masculine identity. As Murray
notes, medieval society was largely homosocial; however ‘tense medieval man’s
relationship with women might have been, it was male/male relationships that
figured most prominently in a male’s life’.36 The act of castration removes men
from the male sphere and creates fluid boundaries between masculinity and
femininity – it raises questions of whether a castrated man is truly a man, or
whether he is female, and if he is now ‘female’, whether that makes certain activ-
ities or identities acceptable.
The practice of castration, which freely ‘remade’ male sexuality, ‘invited ques-
tions on what the input of socialization was in making a man a man and whether
beliefs in biological determinism were tenable’.37 In the case of the famous Italian
castrati of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the testicles were removed
before puberty to ensure retention of the angelic quality of a boy’s singing voice.
Castrati appear in Eastern church choirs as early as the fifth century; however,
earlier castrati were probably not specifically castrated for the choir as they
would be later in Italy and Spain.38 Finucci argues that the castrato ‘started to be
manufactured by surgeons and barbers for the sake of a voice uncannily and
studiedly feminine, not in the “decadent” seventeenth century but as early as
the middle of the supposedly manly sixteenth century’.39 Though genitalia ‘did
not constitute a clear-cut sign of difference, and a sex could always assume the
features and functions of the other: a man could, in effect, be constructed’.40
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler argue that biology is not irrelevant,
‘but making a boy out of a body born with a penis is a cultural process just as
complicated and life-long as “girling” a body declared female on the basis of her

35
Ibid. p. xi.
36
Ibid., p. xii.
37
Finucci, The Manly Masquerade, p. 6.
38
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, p. 287.
39
Finucci, The Manly Masquerade, p. 5.
40
Ibid.
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Introduction 9

vagina’.41 But literal castration has physical as well as cultural implications, and
medieval perceptions of masculinity (and femininity) were inextricably linked
to the biological aspects of sex – the genitalia – and sexual identity.42 This is not
to deny the intersection of feminism, queer theory, and masculinity – in fact,
castration often creates such an intersection – but the aim of this volume is to
consider actual physical acts of castration and genital mutilation in context, and
examine what castration meant to medieval societies and their men.
The physical removal of the testicles and/or the penis may, in some cultural
contexts, create a ‘woman’, or have a ‘queering’ effect; castration ties into homo-
phobic responses to sex, heteronormative concerns of domination, and
homosocial fears of violation. As Cohen and Wheeler attest, gender perform-
ances ‘mark not only private but also cultural constructs of power and power-
lessness, and frequently reveal individual and collective anxieties about identity
boundaries, about the Other in terms of sex, status, race, and religion’.43
Castration, as a form of brutality (legitimate and illegitimate), ‘others’ both the
castrated and the castrator. The castrated man becomes something ‘else’, while
those who enact such violence on his body become tyrants, often violating law
and social taboo in their cruelty. There is a paradox in ancient, medieval, and
early modern constructions and interpretations of castration. Christianity
demands bodily purity, which some interpreted as a call for castration – cutting
off sexual desire at its root. But as Western culture valued manhood and the
masculine ability to procreate, castration (especially self-castration) violated
social norms, and castrates were most often viewed as outsiders.

Emasculation and Purification

Castration as a means of purification or of curtailing sexual desires, specifically
in the Christian clergy, is enmeshed in interpretations of Matthew 19:12, as
many articles in this volume attest:
All men take not this word, but they to whom it is given. For there are
eunuchs, who were born so from their mother’s womb: and there are
eunuchs, who were made so by men: and there are eunuchs, who have
made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, he that can take, let
him take it.44

41
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, ‘Becoming and Unbecoming’, in Becoming
Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000),
pp. vii–xx at p. xix.
42
Murray, ‘Introduction’, p. xv.
43
Cohen and Wheeler, ‘Becoming and Unbecoming’, p. xiii.
44
Douay-Rheims version of the Holy Bible, with commentary by Bishop Richard Challoner
(1749–52) (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1971, photographic reproduction
of 1899 edition). Bishop Challoner’s commentary clarifies that this sentiment is not to
be taken literally.
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10 LARISSA TRACY

This passage was read literally by several early Christian theologians, most
famously, Origen (c. AD 185–254), whose autocastration is recounted by
Eusebius of Caesarea (c. AD 260–before 341) in his Ecclesiastical History as
‘Origen’s Daring Deed’.45 Eusebius qualifies the account with his own
commentary that ‘a deed was done by him which evidenced an immature and
youthful mind, but at the same time gave the highest proof of faith and conti-
nence’.46 Origen paid a surgeon to make him a eunuch and thus more acceptable
as a teacher of women and (presumably) to quell any lustful thoughts he might
harbor. His reputation grew after his castration, and he was elevated in the
Church hierarchy. But Origen’s example was not to be followed, however
earnest or sincere. The First Council of Nicaea (AD 325) suspended priests and
denied promotion to clerics who took it upon themselves to quench their
sexual desires through castration; only men who had been surgically castrated
for medical reasons, or were the victims of violence, could retain their ecclesi-
astical position.47
Many Eastern Christian writers in the early Middle Ages regarded eunuchs
as dangerous because of the potential sexual attraction for other men, and they
were considered licentious and without virtue.48 Kuefler writes that eunuchs,
‘despite their maleness, were often portrayed as the equivalent of women in early
medieval writings, and the stereotypes of their character are virtually the same
as those of women: carnal, voluptuous, wanton, irrational, fickle, manipulative,
deceitful’,49 though Tougher points out that some men were made eunuchs
specifically to preserve their youthful beauty.50 Others saw self-castration as the
ultimate sacrifice, a noble act that ‘allowed eunuchs to serve God without
worrying about accusations of sexual misconduct’.51 Yet that was part of the
appeal: despite the ‘extremity, illegality and moral condemnation of castration,
it continued to have an inescapable lure, both metaphorically and literally,
perhaps because it provided certainty in the face of unreliable and weak flesh,

45
Jack Collins examines the original Latin text of Eusebius’ account, in conjunction with
the Greek texts of Matthew and the Hebrew texts of the rabbinic tradition later in this
volume. See ‘Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in
Early Christianity’, pp. 73–86.
46
Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Caesarea, Church History from AD 1–324, Life of Constantine
the Great, Oration in Praise of Constantine, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, vol. 1, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace
(Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, second printing 1961), p. 254; excerpted in Brozyna,
Gender and Sexuality in the Middle Ages, p. 79.
47
Jacqueline Murray, ‘Mystical Castration: Some Reflections on Peter Abelard, Hugh of
Lincoln and Sexual Control’, in Conflicted Identities, ed. Murray, pp. 73–91 at p. 74.
48
Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others (New York and
London: Routledge, 2005), p. 39.
49
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, p. 291.
50
Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration’, pp. 48–72.
51
Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, pp. 39–40.
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Introduction 11

as well as incontrovertible evidence with which to silence accusations of impro-

priety’.52 However, autocastration was (in one sense) an easy way out because
spiritual salvation came from overcoming sexual temptation through sheer force
of will. Ruth Mazo Karras points out that castrating oneself ‘physically took a
one-time great act of will, but, once it was done, there was no further struggle
against temptation, whereas castrating oneself metaphorically was a constant
battle. (In fact castration after puberty may eradicate neither desire nor the
ability to have an erection, but medieval people believed that it did.)’53

Virginity, Castration, Circumcision and the Body of Christ

Castration figures prominently in early Christian discussions on the nature of
virginity and the inherent sinfulness of human flesh. There is a shift in
Christian attitudes towards castration in relation to rabbinic discussions that
focused not on questions of stamping out sexual desire, but on the ability to
procreate, as Jack Collins argues.54 Medieval Jewish tradition had its own
legends of men divinely castrated by angels, but in general it was prohibited by
ancient regulations and the Mishnah forbids eunuchs from entering Jewish
congregations.55 The Talmud delineates three different types of eunuchs:
‘castrated men, men who were wounded in the genitals, and men with disorders
preventing their genitals from developing at puberty’.56 Circumcision, required
by Jewish tradition, often ties into castration anxieties. The practice was
opposed by Christian authors partly because of its perceived relationship to
castration, ‘since Roman and medieval texts tend to regard it as a sort of half
castration’.57 Abelard (rather ironically) condemns circumcision as a practice
that makes Jewish men less sexually attractive to women, and would require
the artificial ‘awakening of mutual love’.58 Some early Christians (like Origen)
also saw circumcision, ‘not always disapprovingly, as occasioning a loss of virile
sexual energy’.59 Circumcision, like castration, was a paradox for Christian
theologians because Christ was circumcised: ‘From Christ himself came the
notion that a man could inhabit one physical body yet signify another abstract,
powerful corpus.’60

52
Murray, ‘Mystical Castration’, p. 75.
53
Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, p. 39.
54
Collins, ‘Appropriation and Development’, p. 75.
55
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, pp. 283, 284.
56
Ibid., p. 284.
57
Ibid.
58
Steven F. Kruger, ‘Becoming Christian, Becoming Male’, in Becoming Male in the Middle
Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler, pp. 21–41 at p. 23.
59
Ibid., p. 22.
60
D. Vance Smith, ‘Body Doubles: Producing the Masculine Corpus’, in Becoming Male in
the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler, pp. 3–19 at p. 3.
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12 LARISSA TRACY

The corporeality of Christ was highly contested – a debate that led to the
codification of transubstantiation by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 – a
question tied to physical relics (including Christ’s foreskin, which was
preserved after the Circumcision) that marked Christ as biologically male.
Murray points out that the body was central to the ‘most sustained, systematic,
and articulate discussions of medieval sexuality’, founded in the theological
discourse initiated by the patristic fathers which ‘developed throughout the
whole of the Middle Ages and even up to today’.61 Ambrose and Jerome both
saw the body as a point of weakness that had to be strictly controlled,62 but they
did not advocate literal castration. Augustine of Hippo, who only embraced
chastity later in his life, mitigated the condemnation of human sexuality
somewhat but still saw some aspects of it as problematic.63 As Murray asserts,
‘it is not surprising to find that a series of competing and conflicting beliefs
and behaviors pertaining to male sexuality could and did coexist in medieval
society’.64 More and more, Christian authors condemned castration, much as
the First Council of Nicaea did, as the practice of barbarians. Guibert of
Nogent, in his Gesta Dei per Francos (Deeds of God through the Franks), reports
that the Greek emperor commanded each family in his realm to make one
daughter a prostitute and one son a eunuch, a practice which he condemns
because castration ‘enervated and devirilized not just the individual but the
nation’.65 Guibert argues that the castration edict brought the enemy down upon
the Greeks and led to their defeat because castrating the sons rendered them
‘weak and effeminate, no longer fit for military service. Even worse, they were
cut off from producing progeny for the future, who might have been looked
for as aid against their enemies.’66 It is the loss of virility, the inability to produce
heirs, to repopulate depleted communities after famine, plague, and disease,
that drives many of the medieval laws prohibiting or sanctioning castration.

Abelard’s Calamitous History

One of the most famous (or infamous) episodes of medieval extra-judicial
brutality and barbarism is, of course, the castration of Peter Abelard
(1079–1142). Bound up in the intrigue of twelfth-century religious politics, the
affair and later marriage of Abelard and Heloise (c. 1101–64), and her uncle
Fulbert’s unsanctioned punishment of Abelard’s transgressions, captivated

61
Murray, ‘Hiding Behind the Universal Man’, p. 125.
62
Ibid.
63
Ibid., p. 126.
64
Ibid., p. 129.
65
Kruger, ‘Becoming Christian, Becoming Male’, p. 22. See also Guibert of Nogent, The
Deeds of God through the Franks, trans. Robert Levine (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997),
p. 38.
66
Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God through the Franks, p. 38.
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Introduction 13

contemporary audiences and enthralled others throughout the Middle Ages.

Abelard’s castration ‘is presented as a violation of an overpowered victim, not
as just punishment for Abelard’s own act of perceived violation’.67 Abelard may
have engaged in fornication but nothing justified this particularly heinous form
of vigilante justice meted out by Heloise’s uncle.68 The servants who carried out
Fulbert’s revenge were subjected to the same punishment they inflicted upon
Abelard, in addition to blinding.69 The unlawful castration of Abelard, and his
autobiographical account Historia calamitatum (History of Calamities),
disguised as Ad amicum suum consolatoria (A Letter of Consolation to a Friend)
(c. 1132), create a framework for discussing the taboo of male (and occasionally
female) genital mutilation – its reception, inception, legal boundaries, ancient
origins, and early modern legacies.70 Historia calamitatum is ‘a skilled, dense,
complex, and aggressive confession of a life and of a life’s work designed to
engage the sympathies of the reader – and not just the reader’s sympathy’.71 It
is within Abelard’s calamitous history that we ground our study on the culture
of castration from late antiquity through the sixteenth century.72 Abelard is the

67
Martin Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity, and
Remasculinization’, in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler,
pp. 87–106 at p. 96, also cited in Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 195.
68
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 208.
69
Abelard, Historia calamitatum, in Betty Radice, ed., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise
(London: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 75. Matthew Paris relates a similar tale in which
Godfrey de Millers, a knight of Norfolk, was seized in the house of John Brito where he
had gone with the intent of sleeping with John’s daughter. He was caught in a trap, hung
upside down by his feet from the beams, castrated, and then thrown out of the house
half-dead: ‘However, in this case, it was decided that this “punishment squad” had
exceeded the bounds of acceptable reaction, and all of those involved were prosecuted
and convicted’: Trevor Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe (Edinburgh: Pearson Education,
2001), p. 138.
70
Irvine explains that this title has been ascribed to the text by modern editors, and the
correct title is Letter of Consolation to a Friend: ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’,
p. 87. But since that is the title most familiar to modern audiences, we use it consistently
throughout the volume.
71
Bonnie Wheeler, ‘Origenary Fantasties: Abelard’s Castration and Confession’, in
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler, pp. 107–28 at p. 109.
72
Yves Ferroul makes a compelling argument that medieval people understood ‘castration’
only as the removal of the testicles, and ‘emasculation’ as removal of the penis. In this
vein he argues that Abelard was clearly only castrated and would have been able to
perform sexually and thus remain married to Heloise. ‘Abelard’s Blissful Castration’, in
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler, pp. 129–49, p. 135. But since
Abelard compares himself to Origen, and uses his castration as a justification for minis-
tering to the Paraclete and continuing to instruct women, he seems to imply that he is
no longer capable of intercourse. Murray agrees with Ferroul’s assessment and suggests
that why Abelard did not stay married to Heloise ‘has much to tell us about how Abelard
understood his sexual nature, both before and after he was castrated by Fulbert’s hit men’
(‘Mystical Castration’, pp. 76–7). However, as is most common in modern discourse, we
use these terms interchangeably.
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14 LARISSA TRACY

touchstone for many medieval discussions about castration, especially because

his injury was publicly debated not only during his lifetime, but long after. It
served as an enduring example of human frailty and sexual temptation in theo-
logical debates, it was held up as a romantic tragedy, it informed humorous
criticism of ecclesiastical philanderers in the fabliaux, and it exposed fractures
in legal structures that permitted castration in certain circumstances but
decried it in others.
Castration is a physical paradox, not in theoretical terms, but in historical,
contextual, and literary terms. Abelard embodies this paradox – he was
castrated because of his desire to embody everything, to be everything, to have
everything. He was a master theologian and teacher who wanted to retain his
intellectual status while engaging in a sexual and emotional relationship with
Heloise. He married her when she became pregnant (though she resisted the
marriage), but did not want to jeopardize his scholarly reputation by making
their union public. His refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of his wife and
child leads to the illegitimate punishment ordered by Fulbert. In Historia
calamitatum he describes the injury that was done to him one night as he slept
‘peacefully in an inner room’ of his lodgings. The perpetrators proceed like
thieves, bribing one of his servants to let them in. He writes that they ‘took
cruel vengeance on me of such appalling barbarity as to shock the whole world;
they cut off the parts of my body whereby I had committed the wrong of which
they complained’.73 The crime is widely known by morning, as ‘the whole city’
gathered in front of his house – a ‘scene of horror and amazement, mingled
with lamentations, cries and groans which exasperated and distressed’ him
(HC: 75). He suffers more from ‘their sympathy than from the pain of [his]
wound, and felt the misery of [his] mutilation less than [his] shame and humil-
iation’ (HC: 75). Once he is emasculated, Abelard again attempts to retain both
his intellectual status and his relationship with Heloise, but in different terms.
Sexual gratification is replaced by intellectual stimulation and a rhetorical
construction of castration, reaffirming not only Abelard’s masculine identity
but also his victimization.74 Abelard positions his castration in rhetorical terms,
constructing from the violent correction of his body a figure of intellectual

73
Peter Abelard, Historia calamitatum (HC), p. 75. Hereafter, page numbers in this edition
are given in parentheses in the text.
74
In reference to the ambiguous sexuality of Chaucer’s Pardoner, who is often thought of
as a castrated man, a cross-dressing woman, or the homosexual paramour of the
Summoner, Rita Copeland examines how ‘scientific or disciplinary classification in
antiquity and the Middle Ages constitutes one domain or category of the body, and how
notions of violent physical correction or “discipline” to be enacted on the human body
are transferred metaphorically to the realm of intellectual disciplines’. She argues that
gender and sexuality are part of ‘the political text of rhetoric’s institutional history’. ‘The
Pardoner’s Body and the Disciplining of Rhetoric’, in Framing Medieval Bodies, ed. Kay
and Rubin, pp. 138–59 at p. 138.
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Introduction 15

contrition and martyrdom. As Cohen and Wheeler write, ‘sundering sexuality

from gender, Abelard constructs masculinity as intellectual performance and
(in a brilliant inversion of expectation) he essentializes his gender, not his bodily
sexuality’.75
Abelard centers his grief not on his emasculation, but on the harm to his
reputation and position as a scholar, the very things he sought to preserve by
keeping his marriage to Heloise a secret. He writes,
All sorts of thoughts filled my mind – how brightly my reputation had
shone, and now how easily in an evil moment it had been dimmed or rather
completely blotted out; how just a judgment of God had struck me in the
parts of the body with which I had sinned, and how just a reprisal had been
taken by the very man I had myself betrayed. I thought how my rivals would
exult over my fitting punishment, how this bitter blow would bring lasting
grief and misery to my friends and parents, and how fast the news of this
unheard-of disgrace would spread over the whole world. (HC: 75–6)

He attempts to set himself up as an intellectual and physical martyr, appropri-

ating the terminology of hagiography in his account of his calamities. Unlike
the martyred saints, he tells his own tale, spinning the narrative to his own ends:
to explain both his arrogance and his continued contact with Heloise and the
sisters of the Paraclete, and to elicit sympathy for his continued troubles and the
condemnation of his scholarly work (which he portrays as even worse than his
physical wound). He writes: ‘I wept much more for the injury done to my repu-
tation than for the damage to my body, for that I had brought upon myself
through my own fault, but this open violence had come upon me only because
of the purity of my intentions and love of our Faith which had compelled me to
write’ (HC: 84–5). Through his castration – the violent removal of his vile
members – Abelard constructs his wounding as a necessary evil for achieving
salvation, if not sanctity. His acceptance of it as such, and his acceptance of all
his trials and tribulations, verify his holiness. For Abelard, ‘castration became a
positive act of divine grace that freed him from the sexual demands of his
imperfect male body and ensured his ability to lead henceforth a holy life’.76
But Heloise rejects his construction of martyrdom, as she does his
assumption of divine (purifying) punishment, and calls this act a crime, even
more insidious because it was done after they were married and were living
chaste, contemplative lives apart: ‘The punishment you suffered would have
been proper vengeance for men caught in open adultery. But what others

75
Cohen and Wheeler, ‘Becoming and Unbecoming’, p. xv.
76
Jacqueline Murray, ‘“The law of sin that is in my members”: The Problem of Male
Embodiment’, in Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe,
ed. Samantha J. E. Riches and Sarah Salih (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
pp. 9–22 at p. 18.
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16 LARISSA TRACY

deserve for adultery came upon you through a marriage which you believed
had made amends for all previous wrongdoing’ (Letter 3: 130).77 She takes
responsibility for being part of the cause of his castration, but she also urges
him to stop thinking that he deserved this. She sees a temporal crime, not
divine grace. Abelard tells Heloise to ‘accept patiently what mercifully befell
us. This is a father’s rod, not a persecutor’s sword’ (Letter 4: 153). Much as saints
defy their tormentors in medieval hagiography by constructing their continued
and excessive punishment as a gift from God that allows them to achieve
salvation faster, Abelard argues with Heloise that he too has been spiritually
healed through his physical wound. He writes:
The father strikes to correct, and to forestall the enemy who strikes to kill.
By a wound he prevents death, he does not deal it; he thrusts in the steel to
cut out disease. He wounds the body, and heals the soul; he makes to live
what he should have destroyed, cuts out impurity to leave what is pure. He
punishes once so that he need not punish forever. (Letter 4: 153)

He speaks of the crown of martyrdom that is reserved for her by his sacrifice
and by the suffering it continues to cause her; the many ‘greater sufferings of
the heart through the continual prompting of the flesh of your own youth he
has reserved for a martyr’s crown’ (Letter 4: 154). This crown can only be
achieved by continually striving against temptations, but he laments that ‘no
crown is waiting for me, because no cause for striving remains. The matter for
strife is lacking in him from whom the thorn of desire is pulled out’ (Letter 4:
154). In asking Heloise and the nuns to pray for him, to intercede on his behalf
as handmaidens of Christ, he constructs her in the image of female hagiography
– not a virgin martyr, but a repentant sinner whose voice should be heard.
But while he seems to deny himself the possibility of a martyr’s crown, he
shapes his account in Historia calamitatum in hagiographical terms, comparing

77
Whether castration was actually an acceptable punishment for adultery is somewhat
uncertain. French customary law states that any party who causes the loss of blood or
visible bruising, and is proved guilty by witnesses, is culpable for 60 sous in damages to
the judge and 15 sous to the plaintiff, and is responsible for the cost of the plaintiff ’s lost
days of work and having the wound healed (Customs of the Orléans District 2:24): The
Etablissements de Saint Louis: Thirteenth-Century Law Texts from Tours, Orléans, and Paris,
trans. F. R. P. Akehurst (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), p. 144. This
particular statute gives townsmen and commoners equal status in paying remuneration
for serious, but not-life-threatening, wounds unless amputation is involved: ‘But [the
judge] must look at where the blood came from, and if there is a serious wound [plaie
mortiex], he must pay the fine mentioned above, according to the practice of the Orléans
district; for townsmen and commoners pay no more than sixty sous as a fine, whatever
offense they have committed, except larceny, or rape, or murder, or treachery [traïson];
or unless there is some loss of limb, such as foot or hand, nose or ear, or eye, according
to the provisions of the charter, as it is stated above’(2:24). Even though castration is not
mentioned, it must have fallen under the provisions for graver bodily crimes like ampu-
tation (Tracy, Torture and Brutality, pp. 223–4 and n. 113).
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Introduction 17

himself as the ‘flea with the lion, the ant with the elephant’, and complaining
that his rivals persecuted him ‘with the same cruelty as the heretics in the past
did St Athanasius’ (HC: 93). His foes are so relentless that he considers exile: ‘I
was continuously harassed by these anxieties and as a last resort had thought of
taking refuge with Christ among Christ’s enemies’ (HC: 94). Abelard envisions
himself driven into the wild like many Latin saints, pursued by enemies, not
only those who tormented his body, but those who ripped apart his words and
his work at the Council of Soissons (1121). He accuses God, ‘constantly
repeating the lament of St Antony’, who faced temptation in the desert and
remained steadfast (HC: 84). He fears public derision as a monstrous spectacle
and is concerned that his injury will prevent him from serving in his vocation,
remembering that ‘according to the cruel letter of the Law, a eunuch is such an
abomination to the Lord that men made eunuchs by the amputation or muti-
lation of their members are forbidden to enter a church as if they were stinking
and unclean’ (HC: 76). Throughout his career, Abelard clearly ‘advanced a
performative model of masculinity: a man is he who acts like a man, using
superior intellect, the power of dialectic, and written discourse as the ultimate
tools of masculine power and self-definition’.78 Like the virgin martyrs who use
words as their weapons against their pagan persecutors, through his intellect,
Latinity, and rhetoric, Abelard was able to overcome the social liabilities, popular
ridicule, and marginalization that accompanied his very public mutilation.79
So much of Abelard’s identity is tied to the consequences of castration –
who he is as a man, a scholar, as Heloise’s husband, teacher, and the father of
their child. He uses theological rhetoric to condemn his punishment and to
suggest that it was deserved, that he is better off for it and that he is a hapless
victim who has withstood these torments for the greater glory of God.
Jacqueline Murray aptly asserts that as Abelard ‘mulled over the events of his
life, he came to see the hand of God in his mutilation. His evaluation of his
own castration evolved from an act of punishment, to one of human vengeance,
to a divine punishment, until he finally saw it as an expression of divine grace
that elevated him above his own human imperfection.’80 The violence of
Abelard’s castration and its rehearsal in his written works, the public sphere,
theological conversations in his lifetime, and its literary legacy long after his
death had a profound effect on medieval responses to castration.
Martin Irvine contends that ‘contemporary castration narratives and the
letters of his enemies reveal that Abelard’s social identity was thus marked by
the stigma of the feminized eunuch’.81 Fulco, Prior of Deuil, parodied Abelard’s
consolation epistle in 1118 (addressing it to him directly), turning the public

78
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 102.
79
Murray, ‘Mystical Castration’, p. 76.
80
Ibid., p. 77.
81
Ibid., p. 94.
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18 LARISSA TRACY

response to Abelard’s castration into a ‘mock-heroic satire with close affinities

to fabliau’.82 While many of Abelard’s critics reveled in his punishment (even
though it was contrary to law), others decried its savagery. It may have had an
unfortunate effect on the behavior of the community of nuns at Watton,
Yorkshire, who appear to have used Abelard’s punishment as an exemplar.
According to St Aelred of Rievaulx, in the mid-twelfth century the sisters chose
to punish the sexual indiscretions of a young nun who became pregnant by
beating her and forcing her to castrate her lover ‘with her own hands’.83 But by
the thirteenth century Abelard and Heloise had achieved mythic status.84 The
resonance of Abelard’s castration and its implications for medieval audiences
cannot be underestimated. He was remembered by later authors as a victim of
vigilante brutality.85 In her Book of the City of Ladies (c. 1405), Christine de
Pizan (1365–c. 1434) attacks Abelard’s suppression of Heloise while still
condemning his punishment and its cruelty. Jean de Meun’s continuation of
the Romans de la rose (c. 1275) ‘both extends twelfth-century discourse on
sexuality and charts the popular reception of Abelard in the thirteenth
century’.86 In the course of the narrative, which ‘reveals a fascination with
castration and dismemberment’,87 Jean inserts various exempla dealing with
the castration of Uranus and Origen as well as that of Abelard. Jean complains
bitterly in Abelard’s defense, and condemns the entire practice of castration:
Anyone who castrates [escoille] a worthy man does him very great shame
and injury. … It is a great sin to castrate a man. Anyone who castrates a
man robs him not just of his testicles [la coille], nor of his sweetheart whom
he holds very dear and whose fair face he will never see, nor of his wife, for
these are the least; he robs him especially of the boldness in human ways
that should exist in valiant men.88

82
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 92, also cited in Tracy, Torture and
Brutality, p. 208.
83
Sarah Salih provides a detailed account of this event, its implications for monastic virginity,
and the dangers of obligating children into religious life before they have or even under-
stand the idea of a vocation. Unlike Heloise who was delighted with the prospect of bearing
Abelard’s child, gave birth, but then gave the child to be raised by his sister, this nun had
a dream in which her child was taken away and she awoke to find all the signs of her preg-
nancy gone – though infanticide was suspected: Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late
Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 152–65.
84
Constant J. Mews, ed., The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue
in Twelfth-Century France, 2nd edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 42.
85
Ibid., p. 90, also cited in Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 208.
86
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body,’ p. 90.
87
Ibid. See Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, ‘Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration
Motif in Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose’, in this volume, pp. 255–79.
88
Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose, trans. Charles Dahlberg, The Romance of the Rose
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); lines 20007–44, pp. 329–30; quoted
in Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 90, also cited in Tracy, Torture and
Brutality, p. 208.
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Introduction 19

Abelard engages in a discourse of cultural anxieties by detailing these unfor-

tunate events himself. He manipulates audience perception of brutality by refo-
cusing the castration narrative, first accepting some of the blame for his actions
but then centering the true blame firmly upon Fulbert’s men (not Fulbert
himself) for acting outside the law. Abelard resigns himself to this justice, while
at the same time decrying its brutality and excess in his simple acknowl-
edgment of his own guilt. We thus understand and relate to the frailty of man
and are horrified at the events that unfolded.

Castration as Punishment
The use of castration as punishment for legal offenses, and the resort to it by
parties interested in vengeance rather than justice, continued to trouble the
discourse of physical purity and its ecclesiastical prohibition, both of which
were bound up in questions of masculine, and in some cases national, identity.
While dismemberment (including castration) and capital punishment do figure
in medieval jurisprudence to varying degrees, they were generally reserved for
the gravest offenses and served as part of the spectacle of punishment – they
were designed to horrify, to cow, to deter.89 Caroline Walker Bynum points to
chronicle accounts of dismemberment in capital cases which make it clear ‘both
that it was reserved for only the most repulsive crimes and that the populace
was expected to be able to read the nature of the offense from the precise way
in which the criminal’s body was cut apart and the pieces displayed’.90 Mitchell
B. Merback argues that medieval punitive justice was deeply rooted in a
‘magico-religious conception of the world’, a framework which allowed for its
‘smooth functioning as an assertion of political power and a tactic of social
control’.91 The rituals of punitive justice were intensely visual, and were ‘played
out in public and before the collective gaze, the drama of state-sponsored death
was a form of spectacle’.92
The execution of William Wallace in 1305 for treason in his guerilla enter-

89
William Ian Miller describes the very real effect of punitive spectacle, and rejects the
psychoanalytic tendency to read all forms of mutilation as castration: ‘Consider the
horror motif of severed hands, ears, heads, gouged eyes. These do not strike me as so
many stand-ins for castration. Castration is merely a particular instance of severability
that has been fetishized in psychoanalysis and the literary theoretical enterprises that
draw on it. Severability is unnerving no matter what part is being detached … [P]art of
death’s horror is that it too is a severance of body and soul and then, via putrefaction, of
the body’s integrity.’ Anatomy of Disgust (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997), p. 27.
90
Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the
Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 272, 276.
91
Mitchell B. Merback, The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle of
Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (London: Reaktion Books, 1999), p. 18.
92
Ibid., p. 18.
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20 LARISSA TRACY

prise against English rule in Scotland embodied this spectacle of punishment

that included castration. Timothy S. Jones describes the ‘gut-churning’
execution as ‘the most spectacular denouncement of an outlaw in medieval
England’.93 Wallace was hanged until partially strangled, taken down, emascu-
lated, eviscerated, and finally beheaded. The corpse was then quartered, his
head placed on a pike on London Bridge, and the four sections of his body sent
‘to four towns in Scotland as warning against rebellion’.94 The castration of
convicted traitors reinforces the genetic claim of the monarch to the throne.
Royal inheritance is based on masculine propagation and those who trespass
against that royal lineage must be wiped out. Literal emasculation becomes a
symbolic neutering of an opposing line, cut off to insure no further rebellion
or revenge. Castration as a punishment for miscegenation (either religious or
ethnic) serves a similar purpose: ‘Penetration symbolizes power. For men of
one group to have sex with women of another is an assertion of power over the
entire group.’95 The aim is, therefore, to remove the penetrative power of one’s
enemies, even post mortem. As Klaus van Eickels aptly points out, ‘Unmanning
was considered an appropriate punishment for treason because its connotations
were not necessarily sexual. A nobleman’s genitals were signifiers of his gender
and being male was a prerequisite for the warrior status he claimed.’96
According to Irvine, ‘narratives of emasculating mutilation abound in accounts
of the crusades, local wars, and revenge in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’,
reflecting social anxieties about this practice and its effect on the construction
of French masculinity.97 After his defeat and death at the battle of Evesham in
1265, the body of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the Anglo-French noble
who opposed Henry III, was mutilated. His testicles and his head were
presented to the wife of Roger de Mortimer, one of the king’s supporters.98 In
1326, for supposedly corrupting King Edward II and turning his affections
away from his wife (among other crimes), Edward’s favorite Hugh Despenser

93
Timothy S. Jones, Outlawry in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010),
p. 48.
94
Ibid., p. 48.
95
Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe, p. 25. According to Irvine, canon law also
prescribed castration for a Christian European found guilty of adultery with a Saracen
woman, and that other castration narratives ‘indicate that genital mutilation was often
used against clerics and monks for sexual crimes’: ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male
Body’, p. 88. But evidence in the French customary laws suggests it was not a widespread
practice.
96
Klaus van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for
Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England’, in Violence, Vulnerability and
Embodiment: Gender and History, ed. Shani D’Cruze and Anupama Rao (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2005), pp. 94–108 at p. 103.
97
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 88.
98
J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996),
p. 344.
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Introduction 21

was subjected to a traitor’s death similar to that of William Wallace.99 Michel

Foucault asserts that execution is ‘a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured
sovereignty is reconstituted’.100 But castration adds another dimension to
execution, revealing the sovereign fear of procreative opposition. Execution in
these instances is not enough, and the ‘injured sovereignty’ resorts to mutilation
as a further attempt to reaffirm what Elaine Scarry calls the ‘wholly illusory but,
to the torturers and the regime they represent, wholly convincing spectacle of
power’.101 Castration resists the goals of torture or execution as exercises of domi-
nance and power because it subverts accepted social ideas against genital muti-
lation, exemplified by its absence in the most brutal torture narratives and
customary laws of the period and its presence in Abelard’s construction of
sympathy.102 The desire to use castration as a way of stamping out foes under-
mines notions of inherited right and suggests a deeper instability within power
structures. Like torture, castration is a weapon employed by the weak: those
whose hold on power is tenuous or questionable. Ultimately, of course, the muti-
lation of William Wallace did not quell the rebellious spirit of Scotland, and if
nothing else, the added injury of their leader being castrated may well have
galvanized the Scottish nobles into further rebellion against Edward I, culmi-
nating in the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and resulting in England’s defeat.
Otherwise, castration seems to have been ordained as punishment only to
a limited degree in medieval Europe. As several articles in this volume argue,
legal references to it in annals and law codes do not necessarily indicate wide-
spread practice. French customary law does not mention castration, but ‘the
customs deal with the interesting exceptions rather than the mainstream law.

99
According to Jean Froissart in his Chronicles, though not in other sources, public
castration is exactly the punishment visited upon Hugh Despenser, Edward II’s favourite.
Jean Froissart, Chronicles, BnF Fr 2643, fol. 11. The graphic illumination of Hugh
Despenser being publicly disemboweled and castrated takes up a quarter of the left-hand
column. The following transcription is mine: ‘Quant it fut / ainsi loye on lui coupa tout
/ prennerement le vit & les / couillons pour tant quil / estoit heretique & sodomite/ … Et
pour ce auoit / le roy dechassee la royne de / lui & par son ennorteniet / Quant le vit &
les couil / lons furent de lui coupez on / les getta ou feu pour adroit / Et après lui fut le
aieur / coupe hor[es] du ventres et gette/ ou feu pour tant q’[i]l estoit / [fol.11v] faubo &
traytre de cuer et que/ par traytre conseil & enortement le roy.’ Lee Patterson, however,
cautions against taking Froissart entirely at his word. He points out that in later medieval
England castration as a punishment for any kind of crime is ‘very rare, if not entirely
absent’, and that while Froissart reports the castration of Hugh Despenser, ‘this is no
more historically verifiable than the claim that Edward was himself killed by having a
hot poker inserted in his anus’: ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner on the Couch: Psyche and Clio in
Medieval Literary Studies’, Speculum 76.3 (July 2001): 638–80 at p. 659.
100
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 48.
101
Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985), p. 27.
102
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 222.
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22 LARISSA TRACY

Everybody knew about the laws or customs that governed common or everyday
situations, so it was not necessary to write them down.’103 The customs of
Toulouse include an illustration of a public castration for a sexual crime,104 and
the castration of priests who engage in adultery features in two Old French
fabliaux, De Connebert and Du Prestre crucefié. However, it does not seem to
have been a legally prescribed punishment for adultery. Irvine notes the exis-
tence of ‘revenge narratives where men are castrated by other men offended
by discovered sexual intercourse, usually consensual, with a kinswoman’.105 He
further points out that castration was ‘a recognized punishment for adultery
in some regions, though the courts sought to control the application of the
penalty’.106 The cultural anxieties about bodily mutilation inherent in castration
suggest that public opinion was not uniform on the application of these
cruelties, and the representation of these acts and their analogues in fabliaux
and other literary genres are not merely a mimetic display of contemporary
practice, but rather a systematic condemnation of continuing them.107
There are only two sources that record the use of castration as punishment
for political crimes outside the Norman world (Normandy and later Anglo-
Norman England in particular), according to van Eickels.108 He writes that in
‘Carolingian and post-Carolingian Europe, castrating an enemy was considered
an atrocity only likely to occur on the borders of Latin Christianity’.109 The
Anglo-Saxons considered the maiming of aristocrats a ‘barbarian cruelty’, and
castration remained a punishment for sexual offenses alone – but only rarely,
as Jay Gates points out.110 According to van Eickels, castration and blinding as
punishment for treason were brought to Normandy by Scandinavian settlers
in the tenth century, who then brought the practice to England in 1066 during
the Norman Conquest, where it remained on the books until the thirteenth
century.111 Secular tribunals throughout Europe offered a choice of penalties
for rape, including the death penalty, exile, forfeiture of property, fines,

103
Akehurst, The Etablissements de Saint Louis, p. xxxvi.
104
Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, p. 138.
105
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 88.
106
Ibid.
107
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 208.
108
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, p. 99. Emily Zack Tabuteau counters this image of the
Normans and argues that they do not deserve their reputation for ‘punitive rigor and
harshness’. She writes that the ‘surviving evidence indicates that punishments not only
were relatively lenient but were often not rigorously enforced’: ‘Punishments in Eleventh-
Century Normandy’, in Conflict in Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and
Culture, ed. Warren C. Brown and Piotr Górecki (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 131–49
at p. 133.
109
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, p. 98.
110
Jay Paul Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’, in
this volume pp. 131–48.
111
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, pp. 100–1.
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Introduction 23

compensation for the victim or her family, imprisonment, flogging, or muti-

lation and ‘castration was an obvious favorite, although by the end of the thir-
teenth century it had begun to fade out of fashion’.112
This is the case in England as well. Compared to the Anglo-Norman and
Tudor periods, penal brutality was uncommon in England in the later Middle
Ages and despite the references in thirteenth-century legal treatises to
castration and blinding for rape or felonious wounding, in practice they had
probably ceased to be used by the turn of the fourteenth century.113 Corinne
Saunders traces the fluctuation in English penalties regarding rape, and posits
that the punishment diminished in severity as the status of women declined in
society and the crime of rape was relegated to one of trespass.114 In fact, there
is evidence that castration and blinding were only applied on one known
occasion – in 1222 – before the law changed the penalty to two years’ impris-
onment and a fine in 1275.115 Possibly because of population decline, authorities
recognized the need to propagate and so limited the application of castration
as punishment, especially for sexual crimes. According to Charles F. Briggs, in
England between 1300 and 1500 ‘roughly one quarter of families in the upper
nobility became extinct in the male line every twenty-five years’.116 But in
certain communities, stemming population growth was part of the point of
castration. In Iceland, beggars were castrated to limit their offspring, and in
Norway castration was a punishment for bestiality, but its use was prohibited
in all other cases.117 Castration by various ingenious means (like hanging by
the testicles) was also prescribed as a punishment for sodomy and sexual
deviance, especially in the second half of the thirteenth century, which
‘witnessed a sharp growth of legislation about homosexual relationships’,
including increased associations of homosexuality with heresy.118 However, the
mortality of the nobility, which led to a rising merchant class, fed fears about
infertility and succession, and perhaps explains heightened anxieties about
castration evident in the later Middle Ages. England’s fraught relationship with
interrogatory torture, and a popular interest in distancing thirteenth-century

112
Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 471.
113
John Bellamy, Crime and Public Order in England in the Later Middle Ages (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 181. Barbara A. Hanawalt notes that it ‘seems not
to have been practiced frequently’: ‘Of Good and Ill Repute’: Gender and Social Control
in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 126.
114
Corinne Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 49–67.
115
Dean, Crime in Medieval Europe, p. 83.
116
Charles F. Briggs, The Body Broken: Medieval Europe 1300–1520 (London and New York:
Routledge, 2011), p. 49.
117
Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995),
p. 66.
118
Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, pp. 472–3.
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24 LARISSA TRACY

English society from its recent Norman ancestors in favor of more distant
Anglo-Saxon ones,119 also explains the decline of castration, a barbaric tool that
threatened the stability and longevity of the masculine elite.
The accounts of castration in this collection construct a contextual portrait
of how that act shaped social images or conceptions of masculinity, femininity,
and gender, revealing how medieval and early modern people responded to
and reacted against physical threats that jeopardized carefully crafted social
constructions of gender identity. This collection explores this grave subject and
its implications for cultural mores and custom in western Europe and seeks to
demystify and demythologize castration. The articles in this volume include
archaeological studies of modern eunuchs, historical accounts of castration in
the Norse slave trade, and legal accounts concerning castration and genital
wounding in Anglo-Saxon England, Frisia, medieval Ireland, and Wales.
Several pieces focus on literary examples of castration as punishment or
comedy (as in the Old French fabliaux), as well as the prohibition against
genital mutilation in hagiography. Finally, the concluding essay interrogates
early modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan
stage, rejecting the psychoanalytic lens. The essays progress from very concrete,
tangible evidence of modern castration in archeological research (an untapped
area of study) to the medieval legal incidents of and prohibitions against
castration, the more interpretative accounts of actual castration as a literary
motif, and finally to the persistence of medieval attitudes towards castration
in early modern plays juxtaposed against medical texts.
The essays are arranged according to their primary focus, beginning with
the ground-breaking archaeological research of Kathryn Reusch, who examines
physical evidence found in modern Romanian castrate burials as the first step
in establishing how the physical difference of eunuchs reflected on their
cultural status. The first section is concerned with the body of eunuchs, what
remains to be found, and how they were idealized and fetishized in certain
communities. From this modern archaeological perspective, the essays proceed
chronologically from late antiquity to the sixteenth century. Because the study
of late antique and medieval castration is enmeshed in spiritual concerns about
the body and both religious practice and prohibition, the volume focuses next
on the situation of castration within religious discourse. From the adoration
of eunuchs in ancient Rome explored by Tougher, the essays turn to Judaism
and early Christianity including the implications of Origen’s self-castration,
and then to Abelard’s effect on accounts of brutality in medieval hagiography.
The next set of essays charts the legal requirements and ramifications of
castration and genital wounding across medieval Europe and finally the benefits

119
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, pp. 132–90.
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Introduction 25

of it in the Viking slave trade. The essays on historical accounts give way to
chapters focused on literary depictions that analyze castration as both comedy
and tragedy in a variety of texts, closing with a final word on how the early
modern era perceived castration in its own time.
In the first essay, Reusch examines the physical effects of prepubertal
castration on skeletons that may make it possible to locate castrates in the
archaeological record. She reviews recent studies on the physical remains of
modern castrates, as well as social, historical, and gender studies of castrates
and castration. Next, Tougher uses a variety of late antique evidence gleaned
from histories, biographies, poems, panegyrics, invectives, medical texts, legal
texts, and ecclesiastical texts, as well as material evidence, to explore how
Roman society valued eunuchs, the beauty that young castrated boys were said
to possess, and the part their presence played in Roman politics. The Roman
adoration of eunuchs was problematic for early Christian societies that saw
castration as both a physical mutilation and a necessary spiritual mortification.
Collins compares the practices and prohibitions of castration within Jewish
and Christian polemics and argues that castration imagery continued to play
an important role in Christian self-definition, whether to differentiate the Jesus
movement from the mundane concerns of other Jews, to defend against outside
criticism, to symbolize ideal behavior, or to denounce perceived heresy. The
collision of Greco-Roman ideals of manhood and fear of emasculation vying
with the Christian insistence on celibacy created an uncertain environment for
men of the era.
Abelard, whose iteration of his castration creates the framework for this
volume, struggled with Christianity’s contradictory polemic and attempted to
fashion himself as a martyr purified by his injury. His account left its mark on
subsequent castration narratives, and influenced the categorization of
castration as an acceptable mode of holy endurance. Despite the exceptionally
graphic depiction of torture in medieval English hagiography, castration is a
forbidden form of torture or punishment in hagiography. I juxtapose Abelard’s
rhetorical construction of his castration as a form of martyrdom against the
relatively rare scenes of castration in Middle English hagiography, explaining
that even though the thirteenth-century South English Legendary contains some
of the most brutal expositions of judicial torture that negotiate anxieties about
national identity, social boundaries of ‘acceptable’ violence expected in a genre
like hagiography do not go as far as castration and female genital mutilation.
But castration (and other forms of genital wounding) certainly played a part
in medieval law, even if it did not appear much in hagiography. Rolf Bremmer
addresses a number of problems in the Lex Frisionum, a Latin Carolingian
capitulary dated to c. 800, and later vernacular texts, including the unusual
occurrence of castration as a punishment in an ecclesiastical legal text and the
gendered distinction between male and female genital mutilation. Anglo-Saxon
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26 LARISSA TRACY

injury tariffs included payments for all manner of wounds. Gates examines the
social valuing of an individual and why the structure of Anglo-Saxon laws
suddenly shifts from a head-to-toe order to finish with a seemingly spasmodic
series of injuries to genitals, arm, shoulder, hand, rib, eye, shoulder, shin,
sinews, and tendons. Irish and Welsh annals record accounts of genital injury
as punishment, and Charlene Eska compares Irish annal accounts and legal
texts to laws imposed on societies by the Norman invasion, and argues that
while insular societies regarded groin wounds similarly to those on the
continent, in many ways the punishment of castration was a colonial invention.
The Norse slave trade offers an intriguing venue for castration. Mary Valante
examines the evidence of young boys and men, captured in Viking raids,
castrated and sold into service in the Greek and Arab world. Monks, literate in
the international languages of the day (like Latin and Greek) made some of the
most valuable eunuchs in the slave economy.
The historical incidence of castration in the Norse world is also articulated
in Old Norse/Icelandic literary sources. In northern literature, which has a
tradition of using the rhetoric of castration as an insult for enemies, castration
is part of the humiliation of unmanliness. The shame of it is an important
theme in Scandinavian sagas, but it was not necessarily widespread in practice
outside of slavery.120 Anthony Adams looks at the vengeful castration of family
blood feuds in Sturlunga saga and focuses on affective qualities of its very real
occurrence in literary and historical texts. While eunuchs were prized for their
learning and held in high esteem in some regions for their feminine demeanor,
the same did not apply to women who behaved like men. If a woman assumes
a ‘masculine’ identity, is castration an apt punishment for her, to return her to
her female state? Mary Leech investigates this conundrum, questioning the
comedy in fabliaux accounts of castration, with particular emphasis on the
‘gelding’ of the shrewish mother-in-law in La dame escolliee. Leech interrogates
the appropriation of masculinity in this shrew-taming tale and suggests that
the mother-in-law is not the only one gelded at the end.
Literary castration, implied in thigh wounds inflicted with withering effect,
could also construct a form of virginity necessary in chivalric pursuits – an
unmanning that produced unparalleled purity. Jed Chandler applies questions
of sexual ambiguity to the seemingly neutered gender of the Grail knights,
wounded in the groin as a means of purifying them and codifying their
virginity to make them worthy of fulfilling their quest. But there is a fraught
relationship between castration and courtliness. In his continuation of the
Romans de la rose, Jean de Meun vehemently defends castrated men (specifi-
cally Abelard) and many critics have commented that the castration motif is
Jean’s addition to the text. In her essay, Ellen Friedrich argues that the theme

120
Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism’, p. 291.
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Introduction 27

of castration is present in Guillaume de Lorris’s section of the Rose as well,

embodied in a marginal image of a beaver castrating himself, and that Jean
continues it in his defense of masculinity. She also examines the homoerotics
within the text that are partly articulated in this theme of castration. Robert
Clark uses the sterile eunuch as a focal point for a discussion of Jean Le Fèvre’s
La Vieille, ou les dernières amours d’Ovide (before 1376) and Jean’s source, the
thirteenth-century Pseudo-Ovidian Latin poem De Vetula, commonly
attributed to Richard de Fournival, arguing that the sterile eunuch is fertile
grounds for cultural considerations. He engages with the clever wordplay of
these authors, investigating the ‘grammatical monstrosity of eunuchry’. The
volume concludes with a synopsis of early modern castration motifs – literary,
theatrical, and medical; how they have been read in theoretical terms and what
they actually meant to Renaissance audiences. Fears of castration and gender
ambiguity are major tenets of the early modern stage. Karin Sellberg and Lena
Wånggren contextualize the fears of actual castration in William Shakespeare’s
Titus Andronicus and Antony and Cleopatra against fears of virtual effeminacy
and the tangible threat castration posed in early modern society.

This ‘history of calamities’ investigates castration’s role in shaping cultural atti-

tudes towards masculinity, femininity, and national identities. This work covers
several historical dimensions of castration from the eunuchs of antiquity to
laws and customs regulating castration as punishment in the Middle Ages
through the early modern period. It is the first extended study to examine
castration in the context of ancient, medieval, and early modern cultures
together, analyzing social taboos regarding the body in the framework of
modern anxieties about gender, torture, punishment, and identity. As much
as society (medieval and modern) may be horrified by accounts of castration,
as much as it may threaten constructions of masculinity (and at times femi-
ninity) in both past and present, as illegitimate as it may have become in legal
terms, there is still a morbid fascination with it. In 1993, America was
horrified and yet morbidly intrigued when news broke of Lorena Bobbitt’s
castration of her husband in retaliation for spousal rape and ongoing domestic
abuse (of which he was later acquitted), and the disposal of the severed penis
in a field.121 Bobbitt’s violence against her husband seemed to strike at the very
core of American masculinity – masculinity that has been perceived by some
to be under attack over the last generation. Taylor argues that ‘this is a specter
that has haunted men for centuries: the fear that manhood will become, or has
already become, obsolete, superfluous, ridiculous, at best quaint, at worst

121
Lorena Bobbitt was found not guilty in 1994 by reason of insanity, caused by post-trau-
matic stress brought on by the emotionally abusive relationship with her husband, though
he was also acquitted in 1994 of actually raping her.
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28 LARISSA TRACY

disgusting’.122 When Mel Gibson rewrote the story of William Wallace for his
1996 film Braveheart, he emphasized the virile masculinity of the Scottish rebel,
even going so far as having Wallace supplant the effeminate Prince Edward and
(inaccurately) impregnate Princess Isabella.123 The final punishment, designed
to strike at the very heart of that sexual and genetic usurpation, made audiences
(male and female) cringe as their imaginations filled in the visual gaps of that
final scene. Today we are fascinated and yet appalled at the thought or even
the concept of castration, a sentiment that seems to have been shared by
numerous facets of society across a span of centuries.

122
Taylor, Castration, p. 9.
123
Laurie Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, Cinematic Illusions: The Middle Ages on Film
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
Castration and Culture txt hebrew_castration 30/01/2013 09:35 Page 29

CHAPTER 1

Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration1

Kathryn Reusch

C astration is a topic that both repels and interests, provoking profound

feelings of horror and intrigue. Castrates have filled many roles: musician,
singer, clergyman, historian, inventor, warrior, general, and advisor. The
modern world has been shaped greatly by the influence of castrates, but most
people have little to no concept of a castrate’s life, especially when the common
belief is that in the modern period all forms of castration have disappeared.2
Castrates tend to be the butt of humorous anecdotes, the victims of vicious
invective, and the focus of righteous indignation and pity.3 Modern popular

1
My thanks to Dr. Shaun Tougher and Professor Richard Wassersug for reading and
commenting on this chapter in its early stages.
2
It is unclear whether the hijiras of India still practise castration, but these are not the only
instances of modern castration. Leslie F. Roberts and her colleagues have compiled
evidence of individuals who wish to be castrated to such a degree that they sometimes
attempt to castrate themselves or visit ‘underground cutters’ who will perform the oper-
ation for them. See Leslie F. Roberts et al., ‘A Passion for Castration: Characterizing Men
who Are Fascinated with Castration, but Have not Been Castrated’, Journal of Sexual
Medicine 5.7 (2008): 1669–80 at p. 1674; Thomas W. Johnson et al., ‘Desire for Castration
Is not a Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID): A Response’, Journal of Sexual Medicine
7.2, part 1 (2010): 853–5 at p. 855. There are also chemically castrated individuals who
are either undergoing medical treatment or are convicted rapists. See Gary Taylor,
Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and London:
Routledge, 2002); Nikolaus Heim and Carolyn J. Hursch, ‘Castration for Sex Offenders:
Treatment or Punishment? A Review and Critique of Recent European Literature’,
Archives of Sexual Behavior 8.3 (1979): 281–304; Michael William Aucoin and Richard
Joel Wassersug, ‘The Sexuality and Social Performance of Androgen-Deprived
(Castrated) Men throughout History: Implications for Modern Day Cancer Patients’,
Social Science and Medicine (1982) 63.12 (2006): 3162–73; Ross E. Gray et al., ‘The
Experiences of Men Receiving Androgen Deprivation Treatment for Prostate Cancer: A
Qualitative Study’, Canadian Journal of Urology 12.4 (2005): 2755–63.
3
As in the running joke about eunuchs in the Pirates of the Caribbean films, the furious
diatribes written from the Greek and Roman periods up to and including the modern
era, and the reactions of early modern European writers referring to castrati singers and
eunuchs in the Ottoman and Chinese empires.
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30 KATHRYN REUSCH

depictions of castrates and castration often attempt to present them humor-

ously, thereby nullifying the horror of castration. However, as the articles in
this volume attest, modern scholars are developing an interest in the factual
experiences of castration and the information these facts can provide about the
past. Castration can shed light on past mores, thought, and culture and is being
studied by a diverse range of academic disciplines, such as gender, history,
medicine, and music,4 but one field which has yet to undertake a study of
castration is archaeology.
Archaeology has much to offer the study of castration. History shows that
numerous castrates existed at varying times and in widely diverse areas of the
world; archaeology may substantiate their existence and numbers, confirming
historical accounts and elucidating further the cultures in which they existed.
As no written records of many cultural traditions exist, the study of castrates’
physical remains provides a foundation for filling in gaps in this knowledge.
The archaeological investigation of castration is currently under way through
the examination of castrates’ skeletons historical, social, and cultural affiliations,
material culture, and burial practices, creating a picture of castrate treatment in
life and in death, but there are many challenges facing its application.
To avoid the cultural associations attached to the terms eunuch5 (most

4
Gender: Elizabeth James, ed., Women, Men and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium (New
York and London: Routledge, 1997); Mathew S. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity,
Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001); Serena Nanda, ‘Hijras: An Alternative Sex and Gender Role in
India’, in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History,
ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: Zone Books, 1994), pp. 373–417; Kathryn M. Ringrose,
The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). Historical: Mary M. Anderson, Hidden
Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990);
Jane Hathaway, Beshir Agha (Oxford: Oneworld, 2005); Zia Jaffrey, The Invisibles: A Tale
of the Eunuchs of India (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996); Shaun Tougher, ed., Eunuchs
in Antiquity and Beyond (London: Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, 2002).
Musical: Nicholas Clapton, Moreschi: The Last Castrato (London: Haus, 2004); Laura E.
DeMarco, ‘The Fact of the Castrato and the Myth of the Countertenor’, Musical Quarterly
86.1 (2002): 174–85; Giuseppe Gerbino, ‘The Quest for the Soprano Voice: Castrati in
Renaissance Italy’, Studi Musicali 33 (2004): 303–57; Elisabeth Krimmer, ‘“Eviva Il
Coltello?” The Castrato Singer in Eighteenth-Century German Literature and Culture’,
PMLA 120.5 (2005): 1543–59; Anthony Milner, ‘The Sacred Capons’, Musical Times
114.1561 (1973): 250–2; Neil Moran, ‘Byzantine Castrati’, Plainsong and Medieval Music
11.2 (2002): 99–112; Todd P. Olson, ‘“Long Live the Knife”: Andrea Sacchi’s Portrait of
Marcantonio Pasqualini’, Art History 27.5 (2004): 697–722.
5
Oxford English Dictionary (Eunuch) ‘Forms: [ME eunuchus], ME enuke, 15–16 eunuche,
15– eunuch. Etymology: < Latin eunūch-us, < Greek εύνοΰχος, < εύνή bed + -οχ- ablaut-
stem of ἔχειν to keep; the literal sense is thus a bedchamber guard or attendant. n. a. (a)
A castrated person of the male sex; also, such a person employed as a harem attendant,
or in Oriental courts and under the Roman emperors, charged with important affairs of
state. Also fig. (freq. preceded by a descriptive adj.). (b) In the LXX. and the Vulgate the
Greek εὐνοΰχος, Latin eunūchus, following the corresponding Hebrew sārīs, sometimes
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 31

commonly seen as guardians of women and harems) and castrato6 (the church
and opera singers of the early modern period), all castrated individuals will be
referred to as castrates.7 The word liminal, as applied to castrates and defined
in the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology, refers to a social group
distanced from a main group of individuals in a society and a stage of cultural
progression, often a ‘rite of passage’.8 Castration, in a sense, is a ‘rite of passage’
in that it is a transformative process. It takes a boy or a man, excludes them from
their main social or cultural group, puts them in a liminal position (which lasts
at least for the duration of the castration and possibly for the rest of the castrate’s
life, depending on how their society viewed castrates), and then reincorporates
them into the social sphere, but not in the same cultural or social group from
which they had been removed. In some respects, the process of castration ‘freezes’
individuals into a liminal position – boy cannot become man, man cannot rejoin
the male fraternity – which may have led to the formation of the specific, liminal,
often gendered, social group of castrates. This liminality, and how a castrate’s
social or cultural group perceives it, is one of the most useful tools for the archae-
ology of castrates, as it may have contributed to special or unique social practices

designate palace officials who were not “eunuchs”, e.g. Potiphar (Genesis xxxix. 1, where
AV has “officer”). Hence the English word has occasionally been similarly used in discus-
sions of passages in which the meaning of the word is disputed. b. A male singer, castrated
in boyhood, so as to retain an alto or soprano voice. c. Used as adj.: Emasculated. Rare).’
http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/64995.
6
Oxford English Dictionary (Castrato): ‘Forms: Pl. castrati. Etymology: Italian; past
participle of castrare used substantively, < Latin castrāre to castrate. n. A male singer
castrated in boyhood so as to retain a soprano or alto voice.’ http://www.oed.com/view-
dictionaryentry/Entry/28620.
7
Oxford English Dictionary (Castrate): ‘Etymology: < Latin castrāt- participial stem of
castrāre to castrate, prune, expurgate, deprive of vigour, etc. v. 1. a. trans. To remove
the testicles of; to geld, emasculate. 3. a. transf. and fig. To deprive of vigour, force,
or vitality; to mortify. b. To mutilate, “cut down”. Obs. Etymology: < Latin castrāt-us
past participle of castrāre A. adj. Castrated. Obs. exc. in Bot. B. n. A castrated man,
a eunuch. arch. (= French castrat, Italian castrato).mortify. b. To mutilate, ‘cut down’.
Obs. Etymology: < Latin castrāt-us past participle of castrāre A. adj. Castrated. Obs. exc.
in Bot. B. n. A castrated man, a eunuch. arch. (= French castrat, Italian castrato),
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/28616).
8
‘Liminal: [Th] A state of being on the edge or margins of society, applied archaeologi-
cally in three interrelated ways. Physical liminality may be seen in terms of a place or
activity being detached from the centre of things (e.g. a cemetery placed on the
boundary of a territory) in a “liminal zone”. Social liminality may be seen in terms of
subcultures who are distanced from those who see themselves as the mainstream (e.g.
peripatetic workers who join a community for a while but then move on). Cultural limi-
nality refers to a stage in the progression through a “rite of passage” such as birth, initi-
ation, marriage, or death, which often follows a tripartite structure involving separation,
liminality, and reincorporation.’ The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology, ed,
Timothy Darvill. Oxford Reference Online (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t102.e4833
(accessed September 23, 2011).
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32 KATHRYN REUSCH

by or for castrates in both daily life and burial, allowing castrates to be distin-
guished in the archaeological record.
Castrates existed in large numbers in societies across the ancient world
throughout many periods of history. They were present in the imperial systems
of the Roman,9 Persian,10 Chinese,11 Vietnamese,12 Korean,13 Byzantine,14 and
Ottoman Empires,15 the Islamic caliphates,16 the early Christian Church,17 a
sect of Christianity from the late eighteenth century to the modern day,18 reli-
gious sects in India,19 and choirs and opera troupes of early modern Europe.20
Most of the cultures in western Europe from the fall of the Roman Empire to

9
Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978),
pp. 172–96; Orlando Patterson, ‘The Ultimate Slave’, in Slavery and Social Death: A
Comparative Study (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 299–333.
10
Piotr O. Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2001), pp. 81–2; Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Eunuchs and the Royal Harem in
Achaemenid Persia (599–331 BC)’, in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Tougher,
pp. 19–49 at p. 21.
11
Jennifer W. Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History: Castration, Marriage,
Adoption, and Burial’, Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire 28.3
(1993): 459–78; p. 460; Taisuke Mitamura, Chinese Eunuchs: The Structure of Intimate
Politics (Rutland, VT: C. E. Tuttle, 1970), p. 100; Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, p. 129.
12
Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History’, p. 462.
13
Ibid.
14
Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, pp. 64–7; Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, pp. 128–41; Scholz,
Eunuchs and Castrati, p. 81; Shaun Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs: An Overview, with
Special Reference to Their Creation and Origin’, in Women, Men, and Eunuchs: Gender in
Byzantium, ed. Liz James (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 168–84; Shaun
Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society (London and New York: Routledge,
2008), pp. 54–67.
15
Ronald Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora (New York: Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 2001), p. 109; Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, p. 188.
16
David Ayalon, Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols, and Eunuchs (London:
Variorum, 1988), pp. 67–124; David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in
Power Relationships (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1999), p. 13.
Shaun Elizabeth Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 31–54; Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, pp. 193–234;
Segal, Islam’s Black Slaves, pp. 23–34; Patterson, ‘The Ultimate Slave’, p. 299.
17
Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, pp. 159–92.
18
Eugène Pittard, La castration chez l’homme et les modifications morphologiques qu’elle
entraîne. Recherches sur les adeptes d’une secte d’eunuques mystiques: Les Skoptzy (Paris:
Masson, 1934); Jean D. Wilson and Claus Roehrborn, ‘Long-Term Consequences of
Castration in Men: Lessons from the Skoptzy and the Eunuchs of the Chinese and
Ottoman Courts’, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 84.12 (1999): 4324–31.
19
Vern L. Bullough, ‘Eunuchs in History and Society’, in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond,
ed. Tougher, pp. 1–17 at p. 2; J. B. Mukherjee, ‘Castration – A Means of Induction into
the Hijirah Group of the Eunuch Community in India’, American Journal of Forensic
Medicine and Pathology 1.1 (1980): 61–5; Laurence W. Preston, ‘A Right to Exist: Eunuchs
and the State in Nineteenth-Century India’, Modern Asian Studies 21.2 (1987): 371–87.
20
Bullough, ‘Eunuchs in History and Society’, pp. 8–9; Gerbino, ‘The Quest for the Soprano
Voice’; John S. Jenkins, ‘The Voice of the Castrato’, Lancet 351.9119 (1998): 1877–80 at
pp. 1878–9; Milner, ‘The Sacred Capons’; John Rosselli, ‘The Castrati as a Professional
Group and a Social Phenomenon, 1550–1850’, Acta Musicologica 60.2 (1988): 143–79;
Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, pp. 271–90.
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 33

the rise of the castrati did not practice castration on a large or consistent scale,
mostly using it as an extreme punishment for sexual or social disobedience. As
the majority of those castrated in these cultures were adults and were often the
only castrates in their immediate area, they cannot currently be studied archae-
ologically. The social and religious impact of several accounts of castration in
the Western late antique, early medieval, and medieval periods is the focus of
other essays here.21 Interestingly, castration appears not to have occurred in the
New World,22 though more archaeological work may alter this presumption.
The gender perceptions of and social allowances for castrates varied consid-
erably in each of these cultures, even in those that used castrates for similar
purposes. These differences will provide important and interesting information
about the cultures in which these castrates lived, especially as they may be
reflected not only in the historical records, but also in the material culture.
Castrates were generally perceived as feminine, submissive, and weak,
both physically and morally,23 despite the large number of warrior castrates.24

21
In Western Europe, most accounts of castration stop at the castration itself and exclude
any mention of the after-effects. Men like Peter Abelard, whose castration was widely
known in the medieval period thanks in large part to his own account in the Historia
Calamitatum, were rare. For a full account of Abelard’s castration in this volume, see
Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and
Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary’, pp. 87–107 and Introduction.
Medieval law texts in Ireland, Frisia, and England (both Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-
Norman) refer only to the monetary cost of castration or crimes for which it could be
used as a punishment; they infrequently deal with the social aftermath except in a man’s
ability to procreate. See Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband
She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’,
pp. 108–30; Jay Paul Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal
Subject’, pp. 131–48; and Charlene M. Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration
in Early Welsh and Irish Sources’ pp. 149–73 in this volume. Castration had humiliating
effects in Norse culture, but in ancient Rome eunuchs were venerated for their beauty
and often elevated because of it. See Anthony Adams, ‘“He took a stone away”: Castration
and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga’, pp. 188–209 and Shaun Tougher, ‘The
Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, pp. 48–72, in this volume.
22
There is one anecdote from the conquistador period in which a ship ran aground in the
Caribbean. When the natives rowed out to the ship to rescue the sailors, they apparently
took the sailors captive, castrated them, then fattened them to be eaten. The veracity of
the story is unclear. Pietro Martyr d’Anghiera, De orbe novo: Petri Martyris Anglerii
decades octo, diligenti temporum observatione et utilissimis annotationibus illustratae,
suoque nitori restitutae, labore et industria, ed. Richard Hakluyt (Paris: G. Auvray, 1587),
Second Decade, Book VI.
23
Kathryn M. Ringrose, ‘Passing the Test of Sanctity: Denial of Sexuality and Involuntary
Castration’, in Desire and Denial in Byzantium, ed. Liz James (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999),
pp. 124–125; Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, ‘Servants at the Gate: Eunuchs at the Court of al-
Muqtadir’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48.2 (2005): 234–52,
p. 245; Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries, pp. 40, 63.
24
Aucoin and Wassersug, ‘The Sexuality and Social Performance of Androgen-Deprived
(Castrated) Men Throughout History’; Lawrence Herbert Fauber, Narses, Hammer of the
Goths: The Life and Times of Narses the Eunuch (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1990); Xie
Zhu, Zheng He (Beijing: Sheng huo, du shu, xin zhi san lian shu dian, 1956).
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34 KATHRYN REUSCH

Throughout the duration of the Byzantine Empire, when castrates were likely
perceived not as boys but not as men,25 and marriage was intended only for
reproduction, castrates could adopt heirs but not marry.26 Gender appears
always to have been more fluid in China,27 where castrates were referred to in
male terms and were allowed to adopt children and to marry.28 In both of these
cultures, marriage and adoption would have had huge effects on the disposition
of property, as a castrate with heirs would do his best to ensure that any wealth
and power he had accrued would remain with his adoptive family rather than
return to the crown or the state. For the Skoptsy, an offshoot sect of Christianity
which began in Russia in the eighteenth century, spread to Romania due to
persecution, and likely ended in AD 1959, members voluntarily underwent
castration in order to preserve their chastity, removing the external, ‘dirty’
signifiers of sex and creating pure, sexless, and genderless beings.29 For the
hijiras, an Indian sect devoted to a mother goddess, castration creates a
powerful being which is at the same time neither male nor female and both
male and female.30 These differences would seem to widely separate these two
religious sects, but both groups tended to live fairly humble lives, the hijiras
normally begging and existing on land grants, and the Skoptsy living as drivers
of horse-drawn taxis and farmers.31
The wide-ranging geographical, temporal, and cultural use of castrates
suggests that there is the potential for much archaeological evidence, but that
potential has not yet been recognized. Clues may come from daily items such
as personal care objects, adornments, or insignia, or from funerary contexts
such as burial methods, grave goods, or epitaphs. Perhaps the best evidence
for castration in the archaeological record is the skeletons of the castrates them-
selves, as they provide evidence of castrates’ life histories – the records of their
health and diet. These allow a picture of the treatment of castrates in a
particular society to be developed. Therefore, if castrates are to be explored

25
Roger Freitas, ‘The Eroticism of Emasculation: Confronting the Baroque Body of the
Castrato’, Journal of Musicology 20.2 (2003): 196–249 at pp. 203–4; Catriona MacLeod,
‘The “Third Sex” in an Age of Difference: Androgyny and Homosexuality in
Winckelmann, Friedrich Schlegel, and Kleist’, in Outing Goethe and His Age, ed. Alice A.
Kuzniar (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 194–214 at pp. 200–2;
Kathryn M. Ringrose, ‘Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium’, in
Third Sex, Third Gender, ed. Herdt, pp. 85–110 at pp. 87–90.
26
Shaun Tougher, ‘Images of Effeminate Men: The Case of the Byzantine Eunuchs’,
in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. Dawn M. Hadley (London: Longman, 1999),
pp. 89–100 at p. 99.
27
Martin W. Huang, Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China (Honolulu: University
of Hawai’i Press, 2006), pp. 4, 91.
28
Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History’.
29
Pittard, La castration chez l’homme, pp. 68–114.
30
Nanda, ‘Hijras’, p. 373.
31
Pittard, La castration chez l’homme; Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’.
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 35

archaeologically, castration itself and its effects on the bodies of those castrated
must first be understood.
While the historical record provides some of the detail surrounding the
lives and social roles of castrates, it must be remembered that it is the physical
state of these individuals that makes them so remarkable. All too often, that
physicality is ignored, except as a passing remark in a social or historical study.
However, the investigation of the physical aspects of castration, especially those
which affect the bodies of castrates, may help to uncover new and interesting
areas of study. The different methods of castration have been discussed in depth
in both the introduction and elsewhere,32 and will only be summarized here.
Castration can be effected in one of two ways: the removal of only the testicles
and the scrotum (partial castration)33 or the total removal of the testes, scrotum,
and penis (complete castration).34 Other methods include crushing the testes
or severing the spermatic cords.35 Most modern works that refer to the physical
act of complete castration quote G. Carter Stent’s account of castration in
China.36 This method differs from the Nubian37 method of castration by
washing the wound in antiseptic solutions and bandaging it before letting the
patient heal over several days. However, by the time Stent recorded this
method, castration in China was a specialized skill handed down through
family lineages, leading to fewer fatalities and better healing.38 The Skoptsy
would either remove the testes and scrotum (called the Lesser Seal) or the
testes, scrotum, and penis (called the Greater Seal). It was considered most holy
to undergo the Greater Seal, but a man could work his way up to it by first
undergoing the Lesser Seal, with a later removal of the penis.39 While only the

32
Bullough, ‘Eunuchs in History and Society’, pp. 1–5; Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch
History’, p. 464; Wilson and Roehrborn, ‘Long-Term Consequences of Castration in Men’;
Chieh Ping Wu and Fang-Liu Gu, ‘The Prostate in Eunuchs’, EORTC Genitourinary Group
Monograph 10 (1991): 249–55.
33
Jenkins, ‘The Voice of the Castrato’; Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, p. 14.
34
Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History’, p. 464.
35
Rosselli, ‘The Castrati as a Professional Group’, p. 151.
36
Carter G. Stent, ‘Chinese Eunuchs’, Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic
Society, new series 11 (1876): 143–84.
37
This method was used in Nubia in the early modern period to supply castrates to the
Ottoman court and normally involved removing the penis, testicles, and scrotum in one
slice, followed by cauterization of the wound with a hot poker or burial in hot sand to
the waist for several days without food or water. After several days, the boy would be
unearthed, bandaged, and nursed, and complete healing would take three months. Due
to the lack of hygienic conditions, up to three-quarters of the boys who underwent this
procedure died. Peter Tompkins, The Eunuch and the Virgin: A Study of Curious Customs
(New York: C. N. Potter, 1962), pp. 12, 75.
38
Wilson and Roehrborn, ‘Long-Term Consequences of Castration in Men’, pp. 4325–6;
Wu and Gu, ‘The Prostate in Eunuchs’, pp. 250–1.
39
Wilson and Roehrborn, ‘Long-Term Consequences of Castration in Men’, p. 4325.
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36 KATHRYN REUSCH

surgical removal of the testes falls within the modern definition of castration,40
the removal of the penis was considered part of the process in many cultures
and the physical changes to the skeleton are similar no matter the method of
testicular ablation. Moreover, the method of ablation is invisible archaeologi-
cally, therefore it is prudent to refer to all individuals who display these skeletal
characteristics as castrates.
Most studies of castrates have focused on the soft tissue changes to the body,
as they are the most immediately noticeable and important for a living indi-
vidual.41 However, castration before puberty also affects the skeleton as it
develops,42 and it is these changes to the skeleton that are most important
archaeologically, as most human remains recovered are skeletons not
mummies. The lack of testosterone caused by the removal of the testes makes
the bones develop similarly to a female’s in that castrates do not attain as much
bone mass as an intact male. Testosterone promotes an increase in bone mass,
while oestrogen, which a small amount of testosterone becomes,43 ends bone
growth. Thus, a castrate who lacks enough testosterone to build heavy, robust
bones and enough oestrogen to stop bone growth in the late teens, develops
elongated, normally gracile, long bones, a phenomenon which sometimes
produces extreme height and body disproportions.44 The pelvis and skull,
which develop sexually dimorphic characteristics during puberty due to
oestrogen and testosterone, are also affected. They do not develop ‘female’ char-
acteristics, but they do not follow the typical course of male development

40
Oxford English Dictionary (Castration): ‘Etymology: < French castration, or < Latin
castrātiōn-em, n. of action < castrāre to castrate. The action of castrating, in various
senses. 1. a. The removing of the testicles, gelding. 3. Mutilation, “cutting down”. Obs.’
http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/28618?redirectedFrom=castration&print.
41
Soft tissue changes include soft, smooth skin, fat deposits over the hips, thighs, and
buttocks, a child-like, high voice due to the shortness of the vocal chords, lack of body
hair, and the growth of some pubic hair, following a female shape. Freitas, ‘The Eroticism
of Emasculation’, p. 226.
42
Castration after puberty will also affect the skeleton but not to the same extent as prepu-
bertal castration. J.T. Eng, Q. Zhang, and H. Zhu, ‘Skeletal Effects of Castration on Two
Eunuchs of Ming China’, Anthropological Science 118 (2010): 2–5; Wilson and Roehrborn,
‘Long-Term Consequences of Castration in Men’, p. 4328.
43
Anne M. Kenny and Lawrence G. Raisz, ‘Androgens and Bone’, in Androgens in Health
and Disease, ed. Carrie J. Bagatelle and William J. Bremner (Totowa, NJ: Humana Press,
2003), pp. 221–32 at pp. 223–5.
44
Melvin M. Grumbach and Richard J. Auchus, ‘Estrogen: Consequences and Implications
of Human Mutations in Synthesis and Action’, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism 84.12 (1999): 4679–83; Olaf Hiort, ‘Androgens and Puberty’, Best Practice
and Research Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 16.1 (March 2002): 31–41 at p. 32;
Dirk Vanderschueren, Steven Boonen, and Roger Bouillon, ‘Action of Androgens versus
Estrogens in Male Skeletal Homeostasis’, Bone 23.5 (1998): 392–3; Stephen J. Winters and
Barbara J. Clark, ‘Testosterone Synthesis, Transport and Metabolism’, in Androgens in
Health and Disease, ed. Bagatelle and Bremner, pp. 3–22 at pp. 16–17.
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 37

either.45 The bones of the face, which grow the most during puberty,46 develop
more slowly in castrates due to a lack of oestrogen, and so a castrate’s cranio-
facial area retains what is described as a small, child-like appearance.47 The lack
of development of the midface region in castrates can distort the appearance
of a castrate’s skull, making the mandible appear heavier and the nose deep-
set over a protruding maxilla (Figure 1.1). The pelvis develops the typical male
shapes in the sciatic notch and the subpubic angle (Figure 1.2),48 but the wings
of the ilia flare outwards.

FIGURE 1.1 Skull of a castrate, demonstrating the small craniofacial area (a) and
heavy mandible (b). Photo by Kathryn Reusch, printed with permission of Musée
Testut Latarjet d’Anatomie et d’Histoire Naturelle Médicale, Lyon.

45
Louis-Charles Lortet, ‘Allongement des membres infèrieurs du à la castration’, Archives
d’Anthropologie Criminelle 64 (1896): 361–4 at p. 363; Julius Tandler and Siegfried Grosz,
‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration auf den Organismus I. Beschreibung eines Eunuchen
Skeletes’, Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen 27 (1909): 35–45 at pp. 44,
49, 56–7, 59, 61.
46
Donald H. Enlow and Seong Bang, ‘Growth and Remodeling of the Human Maxilla’,
American Journal of Orthodontics 51.6 (1965): 459–62; Johannes Lang, Clinical Anatomy
of the Nose, Nasal Cavity, and Paranasal Sinuses, trans. Philip M. Stell (New York: Thieme-
Stratton Corp, 1989), pp. 31–85; Marion M. Maresh, ‘Paranasal Sinuses from Birth to
Late Adolescence: I. Size of the Paranasal Sinuses as Observed in Routine Posteroanterior
Roentgenograms’, American Journal of Diseases of Children 60.1 (1940): 64–71; Gert-
Horst Schumacher, ‘Principles of Skeletal Growth’, in Fundamentals of Craniofacial
Growth, ed. Andrew D. Dixon (New York: CRC Press, 1997), pp. 1–21 at pp. 11–14, 19;
Gerhard K. Wolf, Wolfgang Anderhuber, and Frank Kuhn, ‘Development of the Paranasal
Sinuses in Children: Implications for Paranasal Sinus Surgery’, Annals of Otology,
Rhinology and Laryngology 102 (1993): 705–11.
47
Freitas, ‘The Eroticism of Emasculation’, pp. 214, 218; Tandler and Grosz, ‘Über den
Einfluss der Kastration auf den Organismus I’, p. 44.
48
Maria Giovanna Belcastro et al., ‘Hyperostosis Frontalis Interna (HFI) and Castration:
The Case of the Famous Singer Farinelli (1705–1782)’, Journal of Anatomy 219.5 (2011):
633–4; Eng, Zhang, and Zhu, ‘Skeletal Effects of Castration’, pp. 5–6; Lortet, ‘Allongement
des membres’, p. 363; Tandler and Grosz, ‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration auf den
Organismus I’, pp. 48–50.
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38 KATHRYN REUSCH

FIGURE 1.2 Castrate pelvis, displaying the unusual shape of the ilia and a typically
male sciatic notch (a) and subpubic angle (b). Photo by Kathryn Reusch, printed with
permission of Musée Testut Latarjet d’Anatomie et d’Histoire Naturelle Médicale, Lyon.

Due to the obvious physical effects of castration, castrates’ skeletons should

be very apparent in a cemetery containing a mixture of non-castrate and
castrate burials, yet few skeletons of castrates have been reported. There are
several possible reasons for this. Potentially the skeletons do not survive the
burial environment; castration can cause early-onset osteopenia, leading to
osteoporosis, which makes skeletons more fragile.49 Castrates may also have
been too poor to afford burial in a cemetery, or the proper trappings for burial,
including coffins, which make survival of the remains more likely. There may
also have been specific cemeteries or areas within a cemetery set aside for
castrates, and as entire cemeteries are rarely excavated, these remains may not
be discovered. The most basic problem that can affect their detection is that it
is difficult to identify castrates during excavation through visual analysis. Most
of the height and body proportion differences that marked castrates in their
daily lives become unnoticeable in a burial context. Castrate skeletons laid
supine do not appear any more disproportionate than normal skeletons, and if
burial involved a position other than supine (such as crouched, flexed, or disar-
ticulated) or involved multiple inhumations, it would be next to impossible to
detect castrates in the ground. Detection must then come in the laboratory
when the skeletons are recorded for age, sex, and stature.50
At the end of the nineteenth century, Louis C. E. Lortet brought a eunuch’s
remains to Lyon from Cairo and published several papers on the skeleton,
discussing its characteristics and the common presence of castrates in Cairo at
the time.51 In the first decade of the twentieth century, Julius Tandler and Siegfried
Grosz (Austrian medical doctors) examined the remains of a castrate who had

49
Wilson and Roehrborn, ‘Long-Term Consequences of Castration in Men’, pp. 4328–30.
50
Megan Brickley and Jacqueline I. McKinley, eds., ‘Guidelines to the Standards for
Recording Human Remains’ (Institute of Field Archaeologists Paper No. 7, 2004); Jane
E. Buikstra and Douglas H. Ubelaker, Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal
Remains: Proceedings of a Seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History, ed. Jane E.
Buikstra (Fayetteville: Arkansas Archeological Survey, 1994).
51
Lortet, ‘Allongement des membres’.
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 39

died in Vienna52 and carried out studies on a group of five Skoptsy men in
Bucharest in order to further their understanding of the hormonal processes
driving the changes seen in castrate skeletons.53 Walter Koch examined and radi-
ographed thirteen Skoptsy men in Romania during World War I, focusing mainly
on the characteristics of their skulls.54 At the same time, Ferdinand Wagenseil (a
German doctor) was examining eleven Ottoman eunuchs, taking radiographs
and anthropometric measurements, and reporting enlarged pituitaries and
thinned cranial bones in two castrates.55 The last groups of castrates to be studied
and measured anthropologically were a group of Skoptsy who had emigrated to
a small village on the Black Sea coast in Romania (by Pittard) and a group of
Chinese eunuchs in Beijing (by Wagenseil) in the 1930s.56 Pittard carried out
typical anthropometric studies of the Skoptsy, noting that they were taller than
their uncastrated peers and that they had disproportionate limb to torso lengths.57
Wagenseil’s study involved measuring and classifying the eunuchs into groups
based on body shape and physical characteristics, and grouped measurements
according to these categories, averaging each group’s results.58
In the eighty years since the last medical investigation into castration, both
medical and anthropological techniques have developed which allow for
greater knowledge and understanding of the effects of castration. Doctors today
know more about endocrinology and have better imaging techniques, allowing
them to trace the development of the skeleton and other internal organs and
determine which parts of the body are being affected by hormonal imbalance
at specific points in the developmental process.59 Physical anthropology tech-
niques have also improved over the years, with the introduction of standards
for the recording of skeletons, giving researchers a common ground in land-
marks and acceptable tools, so that examinations may be repeated and verified.60

52
Tandler and Grosz, ‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration auf den Organismus I’.
53
Julius Tandler and Siegfried Grosz, ‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration auf den
Organismus II. Die Skopzen’, Archiv für Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen 28 (1910):
236–53.
54
Walter Koch, ‘Über die russisch-rumänische Kastratensekte der Skopzen’,
Veroffentlichungen Kreigs Konstitutionspathologie 7 (1921): 1–39.
55
Ferdinand Wagenseil, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntnis der Kastrationsfolgen und des Eunchoidis-
mus beim Mann’, Zeitschrift für Morphologie und Anthropologie 26.2 (1927): 264–304.
56
Pittard, La castration chez l’homme; Ferdinand Wagenseil, ‘Chinesische Eunuchen.
(Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Kenntnis der Kastrationsfolgen und der rassialen und körper-
baulichen Bedeutung der anthropologischen Merkmale)’, Zeitschrift für Morphologie und
Anthropologie 32.3 (1933): 415–468.
57
Pittard, La castration chez l’homme, pp. 132–136.
58
Wagenseil, ‘Chinesische Eunuchen’.
59
Stephen Plymate, ‘Hypogonadism in Men: An Overview’, in Androgens in Health and
Disease, ed. Bagatelle and Bremner, pp. 45–76; Kenny and Raisz, ‘Androgens and Bone’;
Winters and Clark, ‘Testosterone Synthesis, Transport and Metabolism’.
60
Brickley and McKinley, ‘Guidelines to the Standards for Recording Human Remains’;
Buikstra and Ubelaker, Standards for Data Collection.
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40 KATHRYN REUSCH

The improvement in imaging techniques has also benefited physical anthropol-

ogists, allowing them to examine previously difficult or complicated subjects
such as mummies and complete but pathological bones. Individuals with
specific physical and pathological skeletal characteristics are most likely to have
been castrated or intersex individuals. Standardized recording of skeletal traits
and improved imaging and osteological techniques will allow these individuals
to be identified more readily within larger skeletal populations.
Castrates were studied in the late 1800s and early 1900s in an effort to better
understand hormones and their effects on the body and its development.61 This
led to further investigations of hormones and the studies in the second half of
the twentieth century of those individuals with androgen-insensitivity syndrome
and primary hypogonadism.62 These investigations expanded into the field of
endocrinology, which has helped doctors better understand the effects of too

61
Ernst Alterthum, ‘Folgezustände nach Castration’, Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe und
Gynäkologie 2 (1899): 13; Philipp Becker, Der männliche Castrat mit besonderer Berück-
sichtigung seines Knochensystems (Freiburg im Breisgau: Kuttruff, 1898); Philipp Becker,
‘Über das Knochensystem eines Castraten’, Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie [anat.
Abth.] 1 and 2 (1899): 83; Frédéric-Guillaume Bergmann, Origine, signification et histoire
de la castration, de l’eunuchisme et de la circoncision (Palermo: L. Pedone Lauriel, 1883);
Alexander Ecker, Zur Kenntniss des Körperbaues schwarzer Eunuchen: Ein Beitrag zur
Ethnographie Afrika’s (Frankfurt am Main, 1865); Charles-Emile Félix, Recherches sur l’ex-
cision des organes génitaux externes chez l’homme (Lyon: L. Duc et F. Demaison, 1883);
Gaetano Fichera, ‘Sur l’hypertrophie de la glande pituitaire consecutive a la castration’,
Archives Italiennes de Biologie 43 (1905): 405–26; Hugo Lüthje, ‘Über die Castration und
ihre Folgen’, Archiv für experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie 48.3 (1902): 184–222;
Jean-Jacques Matignon, ‘La castration industrielle en Chine’, Gazette hebdomadaire des
sciences médicales de Bordeaux 17 (1896): 403; Richard Millant, Castration criminelle et
maniaque (étude historique et médico-légale) (Paris: Jules Rousset, 1902); Eugen Pelikan,
Gerichtlich-medicinische Untersuchungen über das Skopzenthum in Russland, with
historical notes by E. Pelikan, trans. from Russian into German by N. Iwanoff (Giessen: J.
Ricker, 1876); Ludwig Prochownick, Beiträge zur Castrationsfrage: nach einem am 6. April
1886 im ärztlichen Vereine zu Hamburg gehaltenen Vortrage (Leipzig: A. Th. Engelhardt,
1886); Conrad Rieger, Die Castration in rechtlicher, socialer und vitaler Hinsicht. (Jena:
Fischer, 1900); Jules Rouyer, ‘Des eunuques’, Gazette Médicale de Paris 14 (1859): 601–2,
606, 609; Hugo Sellheim, ‘Castration und Knochenwachsthum’, Beiträge zur Geburtshülfe
und Gynäkologie 2 (1899); Fr. N. Schulz and O. Falk, ‘Phosphorsäureausscheidung nach
Castration’, Zeitschrift für Physiologische Chemie 27.3 (1899): 250–254; Tandler and Grosz,
‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration auf den Organismus I’; Tandler and Grosz, ‘Über den
Einfluss der Kastration auf den Organismus II’; Julius Tandler and Siegfried Grosz, ‘Über
den Einfluss der Kastration auf den Organismus III. Die Eunuchoide’, Archiv für
Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen 29 (1910): 290–324; G. Tournès, La liberté par l’hu-
manité. Les eunuques en Égypte. Extrait des notes sur l’ Égypte (inédit) (Geneva: Vaney, 1869).
62
Robert P. Kelch et al., ‘Estradiol and Testosterone Secretion by Human, Simian, and
Canine Testes, in Males with Hypogonadism and in Male Pseudohermaphrodites with
the Feminizing Testes Syndrome’, Journal of Clinical Investigation 51.4 (1972): 824–30;
William A. Marshall, Human Growth and Its Disorders (London and New York: Academic
Press, 1977); Richard L. Weinstein et al., ‘Secretion of Unconjugated Androgens and
Estrogens by the Normal and Abnormal Human Testis Before and After Human
Chorionic Gonadotropin’, Journal of Clinical Investigation 53.1 (1974): 1–6.
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 41

much or too little testosterone, growth hormone, and the reasons that bodies
react and develop in the manner that they do.63 There has been a long hiatus in
the study of castrates’ physical bodies64 but this is changing. A report on the
physical remains of two eunuchs exhumed in China has recently been
published,65 and an Italian team based at the universities of Bologna and Pisa has
been working on the exhumed remains of the famous castrate Farinelli.66
However, both of these studies are case reports on only one or two individuals.
To better understand both the widespread and the specific changes to the skeleton
as affected by human variation, including ancestry, cemetery-wide examinations
of castrates must be undertaken, a project which is currently under way.
There is some evidence from animal bone studies that long bone dispro-
portion within a skeletal population will indicate the presence of castrates, but
this method has only been consistently utilized in sheep.67 This work is being
expanded to more mammalian species, in the hopes that long bone dispro-
portion will indicate castrates in all mammals, creating a simple and fast
method for checking for castrates in a skeletal population. If this can be accom-
plished, it will be relatively easy to identify the majority of castrates in a
cemetery population, allowing them to be studied and a better understanding
of castrate skeletal variation to be gained. This will give a better understanding
of what changes are unilaterally intrinsic to castration and which are modified
by external factors such as diet, ancestry, and health.
Castrates, in a similar manner to any other group of people throughout
history, have left traces in the archaeological record, traces which may allow a
deeper interrogation not only of castrates and their lives, but of the societies
which employed them. These traces may be ephemeral, such as written records
and organic materials; controversial, such as the purported castration clamps
discovered in England, Switzerland, and Germany;68 or as large and permanent

63
Hiort, ‘Androgens and Puberty’; Kenny and Raisz, ‘Androgens and Bone’; Plymate,
‘Hypogonadism in Men’; Constantine A. Stratakis et al., ‘The Aromatase Excess Syndrome
Is Associated with Feminization of Both Sexes and Autosomal Dominant Transmission
of Aberrant P450 Aromatase Gene Transcription’, Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism 83.4 (1998): 1348–57; Vanderschueren et al. ‘Action of Androgens versus
Estrogens’; Winters and Clark, ‘Testosterone Synthesis, Transport and Metabolism.’
64
Pittard, La castration chez l’homme; Tandler and Grosz, ‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration
auf den Organismus I’.
65
Eng et al., ‘Skeletal Effects of Castration’.
66
Belcastro et al., ‘Hyperostosis Frontalis Interna (HFI) and Castration’.
67
Simon J. M. Davis, ‘The Effect of Castration and Age on the Development of the Shetland
Sheep Skeleton and a Metric Comparison between Bones of Males, Females and
Castrates’, Journal of Archaeological Science 27.5 (May 2000): 382–6.
68
Alfred G. Francis, ‘On a Romano-British Castration Clamp Used in the Rights of Cybele’,
Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine 19 (1926): 95–110; Stijn Heeren, ‘New Views
on the Forfex of Virilis the Veterinarian: Shears, Emasculator or Twitch?’, Journal of
Archaeology in the Low Countries 1 (2009): 87–95; Alfons Kolling, ‘Römische
Kastrierzangen’, Archäologisches Korrespondensblatt 3 (1973): 353–7.
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42 KATHRYN REUSCH

as a monastery or stone memorial.69 Little to nothing is known about most

castrates’ daily lives. Most historical sources which discuss castrates tend to
describe their character (greedy, corrupt, cowardly, venal individuals who were
only loyal as long as they received excess compensation for their efforts and
who could bring down entire kingdoms)70 rather than the routine of day-to-
day living. A list of positions castrates could hold in the bureaucracy of the
Byzantine Empire71 gives some idea of the responsibilities given to this group
of men, as do the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century reports of Chinese
and Ottoman eunuchs written by Westerners,72 but these sources are frustrat-
ingly silent on the more mundane aspects of daily life. We hear about the vast
fortunes some castrates accumulated and the luxurious houses they then filled
with treasures, such as those of the Ming eunuch Feng Pao73 or the Byzantine
master of the palace eunuchs Euphratas,74 but this was only a tiny fraction of
the castrate population. We have little idea what life was like for those castrates
who never made fortunes and who spent their lives in low-level positions with
little or no real reward.
Most sources that hint at daily life for castrates tend to focus on small,
specific areas or time periods or are anthropological studies of isolated groups
of individuals. For example, the Skoptsy have received a lot of attention as a
group of castrated individuals,75 but their circumstances do not really reflect
the conditions of castrates in an imperial system. However, they may more
closely reflect the lives of unsuccessful castrati76 during the sixteenth through

69
Moran, ‘Byzantine Castrati’, p. 105.
70
Such as Charles D’Ancillon, Eunuchism Display’d. Describing All the Different Sorts of
Eunuchs; … Written by a Person of Honour, trans. Robert Samber (London: E. Curll,
1718), pp. 94–9; Procopius, The Secret History: with Related Texts, trans. Anthony
Kaldellis (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2010), pp. 19, 69, 71.
71
Rodolphe Guilland, ‘Les eunuques dans l’empire byzantin: Étude de titulature et de proso-
pographie byzantines’, Études Byzantines 1 (1943): 197–238.
72
Edmund Andrews, ‘The Oriental Eunuchs’, JAMA: Journal of the American Medical
Association 30.4 (January 22, 1898): 173–7; Lortet, ‘Allongement des membres’, p. 361;
Gustav Nachtigal, Sahara and Sudan: Wadai and Darfur, trans. Allan G. B. Fisher and
Humphrey J. Fisher (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 46, 121, 175–7;
Stent, ‘Chinese Eunuchs’, pp. 4–5; Rupprecht von Bayern, Reiseerinnerungen aus dem süd-
osten Europas und dem Orient (Munich: Kösel & Pustet, 1923).
73
Ray Huang, 1587, A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty in Decline (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 34–5.
74
Procopius, The Secret History, p. 126.
75
Laura Engelstein, Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom: A Russian Folktale (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1999); Pelikan, Gerichtlich-medicinische Untersuchungen;
Pittard, La castration chez l’homme; Tandler and Grosz, ‘Über den Einfluss der Kastration
auf den Organismus II’.
76
‘Unsuccessful’ castrate singers could be those individuals who did not manage to secure
either a place in a church choir or an opera role or those who lost their voice at puberty
and could not sing. These individuals often became teachers, government officials, or
clerks. See Naomi Adele André, Voicing Gender: Castrati, Travesti, and the Second Woman
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 43

twentieth centuries AD, who more than likely would have lived modest lives
integrated into a larger, mostly uncastrated, community. Hijiras, a group of
castrates living in colonial and modern India, have also received a lot of
anthropological attention,77 but are religious castrates, and therefore may not
be the best correlates for the majority of historical castrates, most of whom
tended to serve in imperial institutions. The accounts of Ottoman and Chinese
eunuchs provide interesting glimpses into the lives of imperial castrates, but
most accounts, even and especially that of Sun Yaoting,78 the last eunuch of
China, came at the very end of imperial dynastic control in their areas, which
may colour the accounts and their accuracy, making it difficult to take them
as models of the daily life of imperial castrates throughout Ottoman and
Chinese history.
Perhaps one of the most important times in a castrate’s life, the castration
itself, may also produce the best archaeological evidence. Bronze objects, which
may be castration clamps from the Roman period, have been recovered from
several northern European rivers.79 It is unclear whether the objects were used
as castration clamps or as a veterinary tool called a twitch, which is placed
around a horse’s lip to calm and control it.80 While there is still debate over the
actual use of these items, they may provide an interesting glimpse of the
castration process in the Roman period. If they are clamps, they would be
indicative of the medical knowledge of the time, and the understanding that
the process could be dangerous, that the wound needed to clot in order to heal,
and therefore needed to be stitched quickly and efficiently.81 These clamps

in Early Nineteenth-century Italian Opera (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006),

p. 37; Patrick Barbier, The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic
Phenomenon, new edn (London: Souvenir Press, 1998), p. 15; John Potter, ‘The Tenor–
Castrato Connection, 1760–1860’, Early Music 35.1 (2007), p. 99; Rosselli, ‘The Castrati
as a Professional Group’, pp. 151–3, 161, 165–6, 169–73, 176.
77
Anuja Agrawal, ‘Gendered Bodies: The Case of the “Third Gender” in India’,
Contributions to Indian Sociology 31.2 (1997): 273–97; Mukherjee, ‘Castration’; Nanda,
‘Hijras’; Serena Nanda, Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, CA:
Wadsworth, 1999); Preston, ‘A Right to Exist’.
78
Yinghua Jia, The Last Eunuch of China: The Life of Sun Yaoting, trans. Sun Haichan
(Beijing: China Intercontinental Press, 2008).
79
Francis, ‘On a Romano-British Castration Clamp’; Heeren, ‘New Views on the Forfex of
Virilis the Veterinarian’; Kolling, ‘Römische Kastrierzangen’.
80
Heeren, ‘New Views on the Forfex of Virilis the Veterinarian’, pp. 88–9.
81
As shown by the drastically different survival rates in China, where the majority of
castrates survived the process due to rapid staunching of the wound and clean bandaging,
and Nubia, where large numbers of the boys castrated died, mostly due to unsanitary
healing practices such as burial in river mud. See Stent, ‘Chinese Eunuchs’, pp. 170–1;
Wu and Gu, ‘The Prostate in Eunuchs’, p. 250; Andrews, ‘The Oriental Eunuchs’, p. 176;
A. Hickmet and Félix Régnault, ‘Les eunuques de Constantinople’, Bulletins de la Société
d’anthropologie de Paris 2.1 (1901): 234–40 at p. 234; and John O. Hunwick and Eve Troutt
Powell, The African Diaspora in the Mediterranean Lands of Islam (Princeton, NJ: Markus
Wiener Publishers, 2002), pp. 100–1.
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44 KATHRYN REUSCH

would hold the penis out of the way of the blade and secure the skin (which
has a tendency to roll up on itself), and the spermatic cords and vessels, which
would retract into the body, allowing for the fast treatment of the wound.82 It
is also possible that certain cultures, especially those in which castration was
performed for ritual purposes, utilized specific tools to castrate individuals.
Special knives or sharp implements may have been employed, and certain rites
may have been performed with the removed parts. In the hijira castration ritual,
the removed penis and scrotum are buried underneath a tree.83 The excised
penis and scrotum of Chinese eunuchs were kept preserved in jars of alcohol,
as a eunuch had to present them every time he was promoted, to prove he had
been castrated.84 These jars were then buried with the eunuch, so that they
could be complete men again in the afterlife. This means that in both India and
China, finding the buried remains of eunuchs’ genitals is possible, which (while
grisly sounding), would provide interesting information about the history of
the practices surrounding castration in these cultures and the material culture
used to carry them out.
As most historical records worldwide are chiefly concerned with elites and
governmental administration, and castration artefacts will only have affected
a castrate once in their lives, most information about the daily life of castrates
will have to come from the archaeological record. In societies such as China
and the Ottoman Empire, where most castrates’ lives centred on the ruler, many
of the palaces and institutional buildings have survived to the modern period,
making studies of servants’ living quarters and remaining artefacts possible.
However, for the majority of castrates, the places they once lived and the items
they once used are likely mixed in with the artefacts left by the rest of their
society. Few settlements are abandoned wholesale, and items are passed down,
thrown away, recycled, or otherwise destroyed before ever being deposited. As
an additional complicating factor, many complex societies tend to use mass-
produced items for most of their daily activities. Therefore, to confidently
identify an object as belonging to a castrate, it must be inscribed with the name
of a known castrate, be found with a castrate’s possessions or burial, or be an
item that would only be useful to a castrate.
Most likely the physical items in castrates’ daily lives would not have differed
greatly from those of their non-castrated contemporaries, but they do appear
to have differed greatly based upon a castrate’s culture, wealth, duties, and
reasons for castration. As in most hierarchical societies, those positioned in
closest proximity to the head of power benefited the most financially and mate-

82
Francis, ‘On a Romano-British Castration Clamp’, pp. 97–8.
83
Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Archaeology: Contesting the Past (London and New York:
Routledge, 1999), p. 59; Nanda, ‘Hijras’, p. 384.
84
Stent, ‘Chinese Eunuchs’, pp. 172–3
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 45

rially. A Chinese castrate serving an emperor or empress would have been

favourably positioned within court life and presumably would have used daily
items such as gold and silver plates and utensils, fine cloth for clothing, and
jewellery and other adornments of a far finer quality than a castrate who
worked in the imperial kitchens and never saw a member of the royal family.
The same holds true for any castrate in an imperial system. For castrates
involved in religious systems, such as the hijira and Skoptsy, where asceticism
is the ideal and where the majority of members tend to be from poorer classes,
it is likely that the material culture of daily life would have consisted of plain,
sturdy, not especially fancy items with one or two more elaborate items for
special occasions.
Ostensibly, castrates lived the same way as any other member of their social
class in their society. Thus, the burial environment will perhaps produce the
most evidence about them, especially as this is one area in which historical
sources are all but silent. This information could be derived from a mixture of
studies of funerary and burial customs and osteology. By identifying and then
studying prepubertal castrates, we will begin to gain an understanding of the
funerary practices for castrates within a society. This can then be applied to
postpubertal castrates, giving us a larger data set from which to draw conclu-
sions and allowing us to learn more about their social lives.
Little is known about how or where castrates were buried, whether there
were special funerary rituals prescribed for them, or if they were buried in the
same manner as other individuals in their society. Some of these questions will
be answered by a castrate’s place in society. A rich castrate will have a different
funeral from a poor one, but what of their extended social groups? Did castrates
form networks that allowed them to protect and prepare themselves for burial?
Did they have families (both birth and adopted) who would take care of a
funeral for them? There do seem to be trends in burial practices, from the little
that can be gleaned from modern archaeological studies. Castrates in south
and east Asia and Africa appear to have been buried in discrete cemeteries set
aside just for them, perhaps because of their place in society (the majority of
them having been involved in some form of institutionalized eunuchism).85 In
Europe and north-west Asia (or at least those parts of north-west Asia
containing Russia and the Byzantine Empire), castrates appear to have been
buried with the rest of the population.86 These instances are spread across a
wide geographical area and temporal scale, which may make this an inaccurate
observation, given how little data there is about castrate burial. However, it is

85
Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History’, p. 476.
86
Belcastro et al., ‘Hyperostosis Frontalis Interna (HFI) and Castration’, p. 633; Lucian, The
Syrian Goddess: Being a Translation of Lucian’s ‘De Dea Syria’: with a Life of Lucian, trans.
Herbert A. Strong (London: Constable, 1913), p. 85.
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46 KATHRYN REUSCH

worth considering whether there is a connection between burial practices in

these areas and overall perception and use of castrates, with those areas which
engaged in institutionalized eunuchism burying eunuchs in cadres and those
cultures in which castration was a more individual act burying the individual
with the rest of society.
Castrate burial customs seem to vary between cultures and time periods
within these larger geographic areas, given current knowledge of castrate burial
practices. In sixteenth- through twentieth-century AD Europe, the castrated
singers of the Catholic Church and opera stage may have been buried in church
cemeteries with the rest of the population, as Farinelli was,87 whereas a fourth-
century BC text recommended that Chinese eunuchs have a frugal funeral at
night with few or no mourners.88 Lucian, a rhetorician in the second century
AD, describes the burial of the Galli priests of Cybele, a process which appears
to have consisted of the body being carried to the cemetery, covered in stones,
and the exclusion of the priests from the temple for a week, which he says
differs from the normal Roman funerary ritual without describing in what
manner.89 These three anecdotes are the only knowledge we have of castrate
burials, and of them, one is a proscribed rite, which may not have been followed
all that closely, one is an extremely vague anecdote, and the last is a single indi-
vidual who was independently wealthy and able to provide for his chosen burial
method. Unfortunately, too little is known about the standard burial practices
of most cultures or about castrate burial itself to determine at this time how
castrate burial might have adhered to or differed from societal norms.
Beyond the type and location of burial, grave goods may also indicate
castrate status. It is unclear if castrates would have had specific burial goods,
but there is the possibility that certain items necessary to castrates in life may
have entered the burial environment. It is possible that the jars used to hold
the severed genitals of Chinese eunuchs (if not their contents) have survived
burial and could indicate castrate graves. If complete removal of the testes,
scrotum, and penis occurs, there is a strong possibility that the urethral
opening will heal shut, which quickly proves fatal. This was often avoided by
inserting some form of hollow tube or plug into the urethral opening.90 If this
plug or tube was made of material that was not considered valuable enough
to remove before burial, it might still exist in the burial environment. If such
plugs were found, they would not only help to identify castrate burials, but

87
Belcastro et al., ‘Hyperostosis Frontalis Interna (HFI) and Castration’, p. 633.
88
Hsun-tžu, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works, trans. John Knoblock
(Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), pp. 63–4.
89
Lucian, The Syrian Goddess, p. 85.
90
Jay, ‘Another Side of Chinese Eunuch History’, p. 464; Wilson and Roehrborn, ‘Long-
Term Consequences of Castration in Men’, pp. 4325–7.
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Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration 47

also identify the type of castrate, which would provide more information about
the use of castrates in that particular society and about the medical knowledge
of the time.
There is great potential for the use of archaeology to study castration. The
physical traces of castrates can add to the knowledge passed down through
historical sources, allowing for better and more complete pictures of social,
cultural, and gender roles in the past. The examination of the physical remains
of castrates can tell us about their diets, health, treatment in life, treatment in
death, and social groups, showing whether the myths which have accompanied
castrates through history have any basis in fact. Better understanding of each
cultural group of castrates will allow us to draw better conclusions about what
is common to all castrates, and what is contributed by the unique cultural and
social settings encountered by each group. This will in turn create a better
picture of castrates both within their specific societies and as one of the most
important and long-lasting human phenomena.
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CHAPTER 2

The Aesthetics of Castration:

The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs
Shaun Tougher

F or Romans, castration was a fact of life. Influenced by the Hellenistic East,

the Roman Empire began to consume castrated slaves – eunuchs – from at
least the first century BC.1 A rare account of the operation of castration is
provided by a late antique source, the medical encyclopaedia of Paul of Aegina
(himself a doctor) composed in the seventh century AD.2 In his Epitome of
Medicine, Paul describes two methods of castration, one by compression and
the other by excision. He writes:
compression is performed thus: children, still of a tender age, are placed in
a vessel of hot water, and then when the bodily parts are softened in the
bath, the testicles are to be squeezed with the fingers until they disappear,
and, being dissolved can no longer be felt. The method by excision is as
follows: let the person to be made a eunuch be placed upon a bench, and
the scrotum with the testicles grasped by the fingers of the left hand, and
stretched; two straight incisions are then to be made with a scalpel, one in
each testicle; and when the testicles start up they are to be dissected around
and cut out, having merely left the very thin bond of connexion [sic]
between the vessels in their natural state.3

Under the Roman emperors castrated favourites, such as Sporus under Nero
(AD 54–68) and Earinus under Domitian (AD 81–96), became infamous and
celebrated. Indeed eunuchs remained a desirable commodity into the later

1
For eunuchs in the Roman empire see, for instance, Peter Guyot, Eunuchen als Sklaven und
Freigelassene in der griechisch-römischen Antike (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1980), pp. 121–9,
and Shaun Tougher, The Roman Castrati: Eunuchs of the Roman Empire (forthcoming).
2
Paul of Aegina, Epitome of Medicine 6.68, trans. Francis Adams, The Seven Books of Paulus
Aegineta, vol. 2 (London: The Sydenham Society, 1846), pp. 379–80.
3
Adams, The Seven Books of Paulus Aegineta, pp. 379–80. In Roman and Byzantine society
eunuchs generally retained their penises, unlike in Chinese society, for instance.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 49

Roman Empire, when they became an institutional feature of the imperial

court, serving primarily in the capacity of chamberlains (cubicularii), a devel-
opment often associated with the emperor Diocletian (AD 284–305).4 The
eunuchs employed by the later Roman imperial court were typically products
of the slave trade, and thus of non-Roman extraction. Roman imperial legis-
lation declared that the only acceptable source of eunuchs was barbarians, and
the first-century Roman emperor Domitian was celebrated for having outlawed
castration within the empire.5 Of the later Roman court eunuchs whose origins
are known several hailed from Armenia, such as Eutropius, the grand cham-
berlain of Arcadius (AD 395–408).6 By the reign of Justinian I (AD 527–65),
according to the historian Procopius, most of the eunuchs found at the imperial
court in Constantinople were from Abasgia, on the eastern shore of the Black
Sea.7 It was not just the foreignness of the Abasgian boys which made them
suitable for castration; their physical appearance was also a consideration.
Observing that it was the two Abasgian kings themselves who castrated their
subjects, Procopius asserts that they ‘used to take such boys of this nation as
they noted having comely features and fine bodies [ἀγαθούς τε τὴν ὄψιν καὶ τὸ
σῶμα καλοὺς], and dragging them away from their parents without the least
hesitation they would make them eunuchs and sell them at high prices to any
persons in Roman territory who wished to buy them’ (Procopius, Wars 8.3.15).8
He continues that the fathers of such boys would also be killed so that they
would not seek to avenge their children, and concludes ‘the physical beauty
[εὐμορφία] of their sons was resulting in their destruction; for the poor
wretches were being destroyed through the misfortune of fatal comeliness
[θανάσιμον … εὐπρέπειαν] in their children’ (Wars 8.3.16–17).9 Thus Procopius
raises the question of the aesthetics of castration – the selection of candidates

4
For the court eunuchs of the later Roman empire, see Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and
Slaves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), pp. 172–96; Guyot, Eunuchen als
Sklaven und Freigelassene, pp. 130–76; and Shaun Tougher, The Eunuch in Byzantine
History and Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 36–53. For the
important office of grand chamberlain (praepositus sacri cubiculi), which brought with
it power and status, see for instance James E. Dunlap, ‘The Office of Grand Chamberlain
in the Later Roman and Byzantine Empires’, in Two Studies in Later Roman and Byzantine
Administration, ed. Arthur E. R. Boak and James E. Dunlap (New York and London:
Macmillan, 1924) 161–324; and Helga Scholten, Der Eunuch in Kaisernähe: zur poli-
tischen und sozialen Bedeutung des praepositus sacri cubiculi im 4. und 5. Jahrhundert n.
Chr. (Frankfurt and New York: Peter Lang, 1995).
5
See for instance Suetonius, Domitian 7.1, and Ammianus Marcellinus 18.4.5.
6
Claudian, Against Eutropius 1.45–9.
7
Procopius, Wars 8.3.17, trans. H. B. Dewing, Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars,
vol. 5 (London: Heinemann, 1928). Hereafter, citations to this work will be given in
parentheses in the text.
8
Trans. Dewing, p. 79
9
Trans. Dewing, p. 81.
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50 SHAUN TOUGHER

for eunuchization on the grounds of their physical attractiveness. This indicates

that consumers of eunuchs sought the quality of beauty in castrated boys, and
that castration was understood as a method of preserving youthful beauty.
Another late antique source, the famous author and ascetic Jerome, indi-
cates that buyers of eunuchs were motivated by aesthetic considerations, for he
wrote to one of his correspondents (Demetrias, an elite Roman woman)
advising her that she should select her eunuch personnel on the grounds of
their good morals, not their good looks.10 Beauty (and sex) also surface in
Claudian’s account of the early career of the famous grand chamberlain
Eutropius; Claudian asserts that the eunuch was the lover of a certain Ptolemy,
but eventually the latter ‘longo lassatus paelicis usu’ (tired of Eutropius’ long
service to his lusts) and dispensed with his services, at which the eunuch
lamented his fate, comparing himself to a widow and exclaiming ‘cum forma
dilapsus amor; defloruit oris gratia’ [‘Love perishes with my beauty; the roses of
my cheeks are faded] (Against Eutropius 1.61–77).11 Claudian also emphasizes
the youthful beauty and sexual allure of eunuchs when he observes that ‘the
Parthians employed the knife to stop the growth of the first down [lanuginis]
of manhood and forced their boys, kept boys by artifice, to serve their lusts by
thus lengthening the years of youthful charm [diu puerili flore]’ (Claudian,
Against Eutropius 1.342–5).12 Also telling is that the late antique poet
Prudentius assumes that the beautiful boy Antinous, the famous lover of the
emperor Hadrian (AD 117–38), was a eunuch.13 Thus a number of late antique
sources indicate that eunuchs could be thought beautiful and desirable. It
comes as some surprise, then, to read in two books published in the first decade
of this century concerned with the earlier Roman imperial period – and both
commenting on the case of Earinus, the eunuch of the emperor Domitian –
that ‘the eunuch was a constant figure of physical and moral repugnance in
Roman society’,14 and that in Rome ‘eunuchs are not normally praised with the
same palette as pretty boys’, but are usually presented in negative terms ‘as
hideously made-up and flabby, deformed even’, and that if they are considered
in sexual terms ‘it is usually as objects of derision and disgust rather than as

10
Jerome, Letters 130.13. See also Mathew S. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity,
Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2001), p. 246.
11
Trans. Maurice Platnauer, Claudian, vol. 1 (London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann
and Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 143-5. For Claudian’s invectives on Eutropius
see Jacqueline Long, Claudian’s In Eutropium: Or, How, When, and Why to Slander a
Eunuch (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
12
Trans. Platnauer, p. 165.
13
See Caroline Vout, Power and Eroticism in Imperial Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2007), p. 139.
14
Carole E. Newlands, Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), p. 106.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 51

objects of desire’.15 These assertions might suggest that there had been a shift
in the appreciation of the physical appearance of eunuchs by the time of the
later Roman Empire. However, closer examination reveals that such assertions
are in fact flawed and misleading, for they depend primarily on views of a very
particular set of eunuchs, the Galli, the self-castrating devotees of the mother
goddess Magna Mater (the Great Mother, also known as Cybele).16 Roman
sources which discuss slave eunuchs do typically characterize them as beautiful
and desirable, as far back as the second century BC and the first mention of
eunuchs in Roman literature in Terence’s play The Eunuch. In Roman society
there persisted a long-established view that eunuchs were physically attractive
and sexually desirable, a view that should not be minimized if the Roman
attitude towards eunuchs is to be properly understood.
Apart from the use of eunuchs at the imperial court in the later Roman
Empire there is one other major reason for the association of eunuchs with
Rome, and this is the role of eunuch devotees in the cult of the Magna Mater.17
The cult of this goddess was introduced to Rome from the Greek East in 204
BC, in the context of the Romans’ ongoing conflict with Hannibal and the
Carthaginians. The goddess was also known as the Idaean Mother for her
association with Mount Idaea near Troy, and she had a major shrine at
Pessinus in Phrygia. The story (as recorded by the historian Livy at the end of
the first century BC) runs that the Sibylline books foretold that if a foreign
enemy invaded Italy he could be expelled and conquered ‘if the Idaean Mother
should be brought from Pessinus to Rome’.18 Thus the senate despatched a
delegation to Attalus I (241–197 BC), the king of Pergamum, to seek his assis-
tance with the transferral of the goddess to Rome. The delegation received
further divine support for their mission on the journey when they visited the
oracle at Delphi in Greece. The goddess was duly despatched to Rome by ship.

15
Vout, Power and Eroticism, p. 198.
16
Auto-castration is the primary point of contention for early Christians as well, particu-
larly after the very publicized act of Origen, discussed by Jack Collins in this volume:
‘Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early
Christianity’, pp. 73–86.
17
For the Magna Mater and her eunuchs see Mary Beard, ‘The Roman and the Foreign:
The Cult of the “Great Mother” in Imperial Rome’, in Shamanism, History, and the State,
ed. Nicholas Thomas and Caroline Humphrey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
1994) 164–90; Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire, trans. Antonia Nevill
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 28–74; Lynn E. Roller, In Search of God the Mother: The
Cult of Anatolian Cybele (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999),
esp. pp. 263–325; and Hugh Bowden, Mystery Cults in the Ancient World (London:
Thames & Hudson, 2010), esp. pp. 93–104.
18
Livy’s account of the introduction of the cult of the Great Mother to Rome is found at
29.10.4–11.8 and 29.14.5–14, trans. Frank Gardner Moore, Livy, vol. 8 (London and
Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1949), pp. 245–9 and
259–63.
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52 SHAUN TOUGHER

She reached the imperial city via the port of Ostia, and was installed on the
Palatine in the temple of Victory, before being given her own temple there,
which was dedicated in 191 BC. The Megalesia, a festival celebrated every
April, was also established in her honour, in which participated her eunuch
devotees, usually known as the Galli (often referred to as priests of the
goddess, but now thought to be general adherents of the cult). These Galli are
depicted as expressing their devotion to the goddess by castrating themselves,
and it is thought that at least some of them did take this step even if it is obvi-
ously difficult to be certain. It is the existence of these Galli that contributed
to the rather lurid and hostile image of eunuchs that existed at times in Roman
society. As Mary Beard has remarked, the Galli, ‘[w]ith their flowing hair,
extravagant jewelry, and long yellow silken robes’, ‘stalk the pages of Roman
literature as mad, frenzied, foreign eunuchs’.19 The dress and appearance of
the Galli is portrayed as very distinctive, as is their behaviour. They wore their
hair long, dressed in non-Roman attire, begged for alms, played frenzied
music, and injured their bodies. In Roman literature Galli are depicted as large,
effeminate and ineffectual, unattractive and unappealing, as in the works of
the famous Roman satirists Juvenal and Martial, both active in the first century
AD. In his sixth satire (on Roman women as wives) Juvenal addresses the
superstitious nature of women, describing how a eunuch of the Great Mother
warns a woman of impending trouble ‘unless she purifies herself with a
hundred eggs and presents him with her old russet-coloured dresses’ (alluding
to the feminine attire of the Galli).20 Juvenal introduces the eunuch as alarming
and unattractive:
Look! In comes the troupe of frenzied Bellona and the Mother of the Gods,
along with an enormous eunuch [ingens semivir], a face his perverted
[obsceno] sidekick must revere. A long time ago now he picked up a shard
and cut off his soft [mollia] genitals. The noisy band [rauca cohors] and the
common drums [tympana] fall quiet in his presence and his cheeks are
clothed in the Phrygian cap. (Juvenal, Satire 6.511–16).21

Martial touches on eunuchs several times in his Epigrams, referring to their

size, softness, and effeminacy. He describes a certain Dindymus as ‘Spadone
cum sis eviratior fluxo, et concubine mollior Celaenaeo, quem sectus ululat
Matris entheae Gallus’ [more emasculate than a flabby eunuch, more womanish
than the catamite of Celaenae [Attis, the mortal consort of the Mother Goddess,
and a self-castrate], whose name the [gelded] priest of the mad Mother howls]

19
Beard, ‘The Roman and the Foreign’, pp. 164 and 174.
20
Juvenal, Satire 6.518–19, trans. Susanna Morton Braund, Juvenal and Persius (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 283. Hereafter, citations to this work will be
given in parentheses in the text.
21
Ibid.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 53

(Epigrams 5.41.1–3).22 The softness of Attis is also mentioned when he is

compared unfavourably with a beautiful boy called Cestus, to whom Martial
declares ‘te Cybele molli mallet habere Phryge’ [Cybele would rather have had
you than her womanish Phrygian] (Epigrams 8.46.4).23 The identification of
eunuchs with women is emphasized again in the short epigram which declares
that ‘Numa saw Thelys the eunuch [spadonem] in a gown [toga] and said he
was a convicted adulteress [moecham]’ (Martial, Epigrams 10.52).24 The eunuch
(whose name Thelys means ‘female’ in Greek) is being equated with women,
for women convicted of adultery had to dress in a toga like prostitutes. In
another epigram Martial depicts a eunuch as a very unsatisfactory sexual
partner for a woman, since he is not a man:
Eunuch [spado] Dindymus and an old man harass Aegle in common, and
the girl lies dry in the middle of the bed. Lack of strength makes the one,
length of years the other useless for the job; so each labours in fruitless
desire. She begs in supplication for herself and the two unfortunates,
Cytherea [Venus], that you make one of them young and the other a man
[virum]. (Martial, Epigrams 11.81)25

The gender identity of eunuchs was already a matter for discussion in Rome
by the first century BC. The poet Catullus, who was active in the middle of that
century, takes Attis as his subject.26 Famously, once he has castrated himself in
Phrygia, Attis becomes a she; Catullus changes the male pronoun to the female
pronoun.27 Catullus writes:
[G]oaded by raging madness, bewildered in mind, he cast down from him
with sharp flint-stone the burden of his members. So when she felt her
limbs to have lost their manhood, still with fresh blood dabbling the face
of the ground, swiftly with snowy hands she seized the light timbrel, your
timbrel, Cybele, thy mysteries, Mother, and shaking with soft fingers the
hollow oxhide thus began she to sing to her companions tremulously.28

Not only has Attis become feminized, but he has also become a leader of the

22
Trans. D.R. Shackleton Bailey, Martial, Epigrams, 3 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1993), vol. 1, p. 365. Note that there is a typographical error in
Shackleton Bailey’s translation, for it reads ‘gilded’ rather than ‘gelded’. Note also that he
translates ‘Gallus’ as ‘priest’.
23
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 195–7.
24
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 375.
25
Ibid., vol. 3, p. 69.
26
Catullus 63.
27
For comment see Marilyn B. Skinner, ‘Ego Mulier: The Construction of Male Sexuality
in Catullus’, Helios 20 (1993): 107–30.
28
Catullus 63.4–11, trans. F. W. Cornish, Catullus (London and Cambridge, MA:
Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1962), p. 91. Hereafter, citations to this work
will be given in parentheses in the text.
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54 SHAUN TOUGHER

Galli, exhorting them to follow him into the Phrygian forests of Cybele, ‘where
the noise of cymbals sounds, where timbrels re-echo, where the Phrygian flute-
player blows a deep note on his curved reed, where the Maenads ivy-crowned
toss their heads violently, where with shrill yells they shake the holy emblems’
(Catullus 63.21–4).29 Interestingly, when his frenzy has passed Attis reflects on
what he has done, and laments his former life and his status as a beautiful youth:
‘I, shall I from my own home be borne far away into these forests? from
my country, my possessions, my friends, my parents, shall I be absent?
absent from the market, the wrestling-place, the racecourse, the playground
[foro, palaestra, stadio et guminasiis]? unhappy, ah unhappy heart, again,
again must thou complain. For what form of human figure is there which
I had not? I, to be a woman – I who was a stripling [adolescens], I a youth
[ephebus], I a boy [puer], I was the flower [flos] of the playground, I was
once the glory [decus] of the palaestra [olei]: mine were the crowded
doorways, mine the warm thresholds, mine the flowery garlands to deck
my house when I was to leave my chamber at sunrise. I, shall I now be
called – what? a handmaid of the gods, a ministress of Cybele?’ (Catullus
63.58–68).30

Attis is no longer a beautiful boy, but a feminine servant of the Great Mother.
In fact, in this case, castration renders the subject not just feminine but female,
transforming a male youth into a woman. His identity as a beautiful boy has
been overridden. This was one way in Roman culture to understand the nature
of eunuchs.
An alternative view was to understand Galli and eunuchs as neither male
nor female but essentially as a ‘third gender’, as is seen in Valerius Maximus’
Memorable Doings and Sayings. This text is dedicated to the emperor Tiberius
(AD 14–37), but the salient episode is from the early first century BC, when
Mamercus Aemilius Lepidus was consul (77 BC). In a chapter concerning
rescinded wills, Valerius Maximus records:
And now, how weighty the judgment of Consul Mamercus Aemilius
Lepidus! A certain Genucius, a eunuch priest [‘a Gallus’] of the Great
Mother, had obtained an order from City Praetor Cn. Orestes restoring
to him the property of Naevius Anus, of which he had received
possession from the Praetor himself according to the will. Surdinus,
whose freedman had made Genucius his heir, appealed to Mamercus,
who cancelled the Praetor’s ruling, saying that Genucius, whose genital
parts had been amputated by his own choice, should not be reckoned
among either men or women [amputatis sua ipsius sponte genitalius
corporis partibus neque virorum neque mulierum numero haberi debere].

29
Ibid., p. 93.
30
Ibid., p. 95.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 55

A judgment appropriate to a Mamercus, appropriate to a Leader of the

Senate; it provided that magistrates’ tribunals should not be defiled by
Genucius’ obscene presence and tainted voice [obscena Genucii prae-
sentia inquinataque voce] under the pretext of seeking justice.31

Thus the Gallus Genucius was categorized as neither male nor female to inval-
idate the bequest made to him by the freedman of Surdinus. The Roman
distaste for such eunuchs is palpable; they fear defilement though his mere
presence and voice.
The repulsion that the Romans could feel for Galli can appear puzzling, for
these self-castrates are often closely associated with the figure of Attis, the beau-
tiful youthful consort of the Great Mother. The connections between the Great
Mother and Attis, and Attis and the Galli, are addressed (for instance) in Ovid’s
Fasti, a poem on the Roman calendar dating to the early first century AD. The
poem includes reflection on the April festival of the goddess, in which the muse
Erato answers the poet’s questions about aspects of the cult.32 Narrating the
story of Attis and the goddess, Erato reveals that Attis was a ‘facie spectabilis’
(good-looking) Phrygian boy who shares a ‘casto … amore’ (chaste passion)
with the Great Mother. He promises to always be a boy and guard her temple,
and that if he breaks his oath the love for which he did so will be his last.
However, he falls in love with the nymph Sargaritis, which brings down the
goddess’s revenge. She damages the tree of the Naiad (who thus dies) and Attis
goes mad, fleeing to the top of Mount Dindymus. There he swears that the
Furies are upon him, and he ‘mangled … his body with a sharp stone, and
trailed his long hair in the filthy dust; and his cry was, “I have deserved it! With
my blood I pay the penalty that is my due. Ah, perish the parts that were my
ruin”’; then he rid himself of his genitals ‘and of a sudden was bereft of every
sign of manhood [viri]’ (Ovid, Fasti 4.237–42).33 Amongst the questions Ovid
poses to Erato about the cult (Why does the goddess delight in a perpetual din?
Why do lions submit to her? Why does she wear a turreted crown? Where did
she come from? Was she always in Rome? Why does she collect money in small
coins? Why do people invite others to so many feasts and banquets at the time
of her festival? Why is the Megalesia the first games of the year in Rome? Why
are herbs offered to her?) is why do the Galli castrate themselves (as well as
why are they called Galli?) Erato’s response is that the Galli are imitating Attis:
“‘His madness [furor] set an example, and still his unmanly minsters [mollesque
ministri] cut their vile members [vilia membra] while they toss their hair’”

31
Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 7.7.6, trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey,
2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), vol. 2, pp. 177–9.
32
Ovid, Fasti 4.179–372. trans. J. G. Frazer, Ovid’s Fasti (London and Cambridge, MA:
Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1967).
33
Ibid., p. 207.
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56 SHAUN TOUGHER

(Ovid, Fasti 4.243–4).34 The very name of the Galli emphasizes the madness of
their (and Attis’) act, for it is derived from a Phrygian river, the Gallus, ‘a river
of mad water … Who drinks of it goes mad’ (Ovid, Fasti 4.363–6).35 Thus,
although Attis was a beautiful Phrygian boy, by self-castration he surrenders
his maleness (as already seen in Catullus and Martial), and the Galli by
imitating him become soft and unmanly too. Ovid also emphasizes their
frenzied and unmanly qualities. Addressing the nature of the festival he writes:
Eunuchs [semimares] will march and thump their hollow drums, and
cymbals clashed on cymbals will give out their tinkling noises: seated on
the unmanly necks of her attendants [molli comitum cervice], the goddess
herself will be borne with howls through the streets in the city’s midst.
(Ovid, Fasti 4.183–6)36

Further, when Erato describes the castrated attendants of the goddess in her
account of the arrival of the Magna Mater in Rome she observes that as the
goddess was brought into the city ‘[t]he attendants howled [exululant comites],
the mad flute blew, and hands unmanly [molles … manus] beat the leathern
drums’ (Ovid, Fasti 4.341–2).37
Thus the Galli play a key role in establishing a negative perception of
eunuchs in Rome as wild, feminized, unattractive beings. However, a
contrasting example – a eunuch praised for his beauty – is provided by Earinus,
famous for his association with the emperor Domitian. Earinus was celebrated
by the contemporary poets Statius and Martial. Statius’ Silvae, a collection of
occasional poetry, contains a 106-line poem commemorating the dedication
of Earinus’ hair at the temple of Asclepius in Pergamum, a poem apparently
commissioned by the eunuch himself and published in AD 93.38 Martial
features Earinus in six of his epigrams (all part of Book 9) which appeared in
AD 94.39 Apart from a reference to Earinus in the epitome of the third-century
history of Cassius Dio,40 these are the only sources that exist about Earinus,
and as Christer Henriksén observes, ‘Martial does not make any substantial
addition to our knowledge of Earinus’.41 Thus Statius’ The Hair of Flavius

34
Ibid.
35
Ibid., p. 215.
36
Ibid., p. 203.
37
Ibid., p. 213.
38
Statius, Silvae 3.4. The fact that Earinus commissioned the poem is revealed in the dedi-
cation of Book 3, lines 17–21: ‘Earinus, our Germanicus’ freedman, knows how long I
put off his request, when he asked me to dedicate in verse the hair that he was sending
to Pergamene Asclepius along with a jewelled box and mirror’, trans. D. R. Shackleton
Bailey, Statius, Silvae (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 175.
39
Martial, Epigrams 9.11, 12, 13, 16, 17, and 36.
40
Cassius Dio, Roman History 67.2.3.
41
Christer Henriksén, ‘Earinus: An Imperial Eunuch in the Light of the Poems of Martial
and Statius’, Mnemosyne 50 (1997): 281–94 at p. 282.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 57

Earinus is the crucial source for Earinus’ life and career, and it warrants
providing a full translation (by Shackleton Bailey):42
Go, locks, and speed, I pray, across a favouring sea, go,
lying softly on the garlanded gold, go! Gentle Cytherea shall
give you fair voyage and calm the south winds. Perhaps she
will take you from the perilous craft and lead you over the
waters in her own shell.
Accept, son of Phoebus, the lauded tresses that Caesar’s
lad presents to you; accept them gladly and show them
to your unshorn father. Let him compare them how they
shine, and long think they are from his brother Lyaeus.
Perhaps he in turn will sever the beauty of his own unfailing
hair and place it for you enclosed in other gold.
Pergamus, more fortunate by far than pine-clad Ida,
though Ida pride herself on the cloud of a holy rape –
for surely she gave the High Ones him [Ganymede] at whom Juno
ever looks askance, recoiling from his hand and refusing
the nectar: but you have the gods’ favour, specially commended
by your fair nurseling. You sent to Latium a
servant whom Ausonian Jupiter [Domitian] and Roman Juno [Domitia
Longina] alike
regard with kindly brow, both approving; and not without
the will of the gods is the lord of the earth so well pleased.
‘Tis said that as golden Venus was driving her soft swans
on her way from Eryx’ height to the Idalian groves, she entered
the Pergamene dwelling where the gentle god [Asclepius] is
present to aid the sick, their greatest helper, staying the
hastening Fates and brooding over his health-giving serpent.
She sees a boy, shining with star of peerless beauty, as
he plays before the altar of the very god. Deceived at first
for a little while by the sudden apparition, she fancies him
one of her many sons; but he had no bow and no shades
springing from his radiant shoulders. She wonders at his
boyish grace, gazing at his face and hair, and ‘Shall you go,’
she says, ‘to the Ausonian towers neglected of Venus? Shall
you bear a mean dwelling and common yoke of servitude?
Far be it! I shall give this beauty the master it deserves.
Come now with me, boy, come! I shall fly you through
the stars in my winged chariot to the leader, a gift of gifts.
No common bondage shall await you: you are destined to

42
Shackleton Bailey, Statius, pp. 217–25.
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58 SHAUN TOUGHER

serve dignity in the Palace [Palatino]. Nothing so sweet in all the

world have I seen or given birth to, I own it. The boys of
Latmos [Endymion] and Sangaris [Attis] shall freely yield to you, and he that a
vain image in a fountain and a barren love consumed [Narcissus]. The
cerulean Naiad would have preferred you [to Hylas] and seized your
urn in a stronger grip to drag you down. Boy, you are beyond
them all; more beautiful he only to whom you shall be
given.’
So saying, she lifts him by her side through the light
air and tells him to take a seat in the swan-drawn car. In a
trice, there are the Latian Hills and the home of ancient
Evander, that Germanicus [Domitian], renowned father of the world,
adorns with new masonry and levels with the topmost stars.
Then it becomes the goddess’ closer care how best to
arrange his locks, what dress is meet to kindle his rosy
countenance, what gold is worthiest on his fingers, what on
his neck. Well she knew the leader’s celestial eyes; she herself
had joined the marriage torches and given him his
bride with bounteous hand. So she decks the hair, so
drapes him with Tyrian raiment, gives him beams of her
own fire. Former favourites retire, the flocks of servitors;
he bears first cups to the great leader, weighty murrhine
and crystal, with a hand more fair. New grace enhances the wine.
Boy dear to the High Ones, chosen to sip first the reverenced
nectar and touch so often that mighty hand, the
hand the Getae seek to know, and Persians, Armenians, Indians
to touch! O born under a lucky star, greatly have the
gods favoured you. Once too your country’s god himself
left lofty Pergamus to cross the sea, lest the first down mar
your shining cheeks and darken your beauty’s joys. None
other was entrusted with the power to soften the boy, but
with silent skill Phoebus’ son [Asclepius] gently bade this body leave
its sex [de sexu transire], not shocked by any gash. Yet Cytherea is gnawed
by worry, fearing the boy might suffer. Not yet had the
leader’s noble clemency begun to keep male children
intact from birth. Now ‘tis forbidden to mollify sex [frangere sexum] and
change manhood; rejoicing Nature sees only those she
created. No more under an evil law do slave mothers fear
to bear the burden of sons.
You too, had you been born later, would now be a young
man, with shaded cheeks and limbs full-grown, stronger.
More gifts than one you would have sent rejoicing to
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 59

Phoebus’ shrine: as it is, let only the tress sail to your native
shores. The Paphian used to steep it in plenteous perfume,
a kindly Grace used to comb it. The severed lock of purple
Nisus will yield to it, and that which proud Achilles was
keeping for Sperchius. When first it was decreed to crop
your snow-white brow and unveil your gleaming shoulders,
the tender winged ones with their Paphian mother
run up and make ready your tresses and place a silken robe
over your breast. Then they cut the lock with linked arrows
and place it on gold and gems. Mother Cytherea herself
catches it as it falls and anoints it once again with her secret
essences. Then spoke a boy from the throng who had
chanced to carry in upturned hands the mirror resplendent
with jewelled gold: ‘Let us give this too. No gift will be
more welcome to his native temple; it will be more potent [potentius]
than the gold itself. Only do you fix a look therein and leave
your face there forever.’ So he spoke and shut in the mirror,
catching the likeness.
But the peerless boy, stretching his hands to the stars:
‘In return for these gifts, gentlest guardian of mankind,
may you long wish, if I have so deserved, to renew our
lord’s youth and preserve him for the world. The stars ask
this with me, and the waters and the lands. Let him, I pray,
pass through Ilian and Pylian years both, rejoicing that his
own home and the Tarpeian temple grow old along with
himself.’
So he spoke, and Pergamus wondered that the altars shook.

From the poem it appears that Earinus hails from Pergamum, and as a boy
came to Rome as a slave and ended up in the imperial household, where he
became a favourite of the emperor Domitian; in the poem he is Domitian’s
cupbearer. The poem indicates that only after coming to Rome was Earinus
castrated, a transformation which is presented as taking place before the
emperor’s anti-castration edict was issued. The occasion which led to the
writing of the poem was the cutting of Earinus’ hair (which echoes his
castration), which was dedicated to Asclepius at his temple in Pergamum, the
hair being despatched with a jewelled box and a mirror. How much further the
poem can be pushed to reveal facts is a moot point,43 but it certainly emphasizes

43
See the effort of Henriksén, ‘Earinus’, but note the comments of Vout, Power and
Eroticism, p. 205, n. 8. For an interesting discussion of the poem see also John Garthwaite,
‘Statius, Silvae 3.4: On the Fate of Earinus’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt
II.32.1 (1984): 111–24.
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60 SHAUN TOUGHER

the idea of the physical attractiveness of eunuchs. The poem conjures up an

intoxicating image of the alluring and sensuous beauty of Earinus. This is
conveyed in particular by Venus’ own reaction on first seeing the boy, ‘egregiae
praeclarum sidere formae’ [shining with star of peerless beauty] (Silvae
3.4.26–7) in front of the altar of Asclepius. Initially she mistakes him for one
of her own sons, a cupid, and considers that she has never seen anything so
sweet (dulce) and that he surpasses a clutch of youths celebrated for their
beauty: Endymion, Attis, Narcissus, and Hylas.44 She declares that such is
Earinus’ beauty that he is worthy of serving the emperor himself, who alone is
more beautiful than the boy.45 Other comparisons emphasize the physical
appeal of Earinus, revealing that eunuchs were appreciated for their youthful
beauty, which the texts on the Galli tend to obscure. Earinus’ hair is compared
to that of Apollo and his brother Lyaeus (Bacchus), of Nisus and of Achilles.
Most emphatic of all is the comparison of Earinus with Ganymede, the beau-
tiful Phrygian boy whom Jupiter abducted to be his cupbearer and catamite on
Olympus.46 The allusion to Ganymede points to the physical nature of the rela-
tionship between Domitian and Earinus, or at least the presence of sexual desire
in the relationship, revealing that the physical attractiveness of eunuchs could
elicit physical arousal, as does the patronage of the boy by Venus herself, the
goddess of love. Thus Earinus is compared to ideals of youthful male beauty
and is found exceptional. Interestingly, his castration itself is presented as a
means of securing eternal youthful beauty for him, suggesting that one of the
motivations for castration of boys was to prolong the physical attractiveness of
youth. Asclepius performs the operation (without leaving a wound on the
body) ‘ne prima genas lanugo nitentes carperet et pulchrae fuscaret gaudia
formae’ [lest the first down mar your shining cheeks and darken your beauty’s
joys] (Silvae 3.4.65–6). The poem alludes to the fact that it is only his head hair
that Earinus can dedicate; his castration means that he will not be able to grow
a beard and dedicate the clippings from his first shave, such a crucial ritual in
the transition from youth to manhood.47 It may be that Statius is lamenting the
fact that because of his castration Earinus will never become a man, but at the
same time his poem serves to preserve a snapshot of the eunuch at the peak of
his youthful beauty, just like the reflection of Earinus caught in the mirror that
was dedicated to Asclepius.

44
Statius, Silvae 3.4.29–30, 39–44.
45
Ibid. 3.4.34–5, 44–5.
46
Ibid. 3.4.12–15, 60–2. Note that it is emphasized that Domitian and his wife are the
earthly Jupiter and Juno: Silvae 3.4.18. For Jupiter and Ganymede see Craig A. Williams,
Roman Homosexuality, 2nd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. pp.
59–64. Williams describes Ganymede as ‘an archetype of the agelessly beautiful young
man literally swept off his feet by an older male lover’ (p. 60).
47
Statius, Silvae 3.4.78–81.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 61

There are also indications that (like the Galli) Earinus has become femi-
nized. The castration is referred to as a softening (mollire) of the boy, whose
body leaves its sex (corpus de sexu transire).48 When Earinus is having his hair
cut his brow is described as ‘snow-white’, and he is draped in a ‘silken robe’
(Serica … pallia),49 images which are suggestive of femaleness, as is his dedi-
cation of the mirror and the box.50 There is a feminine aspect to Earinus even
before his castration, however, for Venus is depicted preparing the boy for
Domitian as if he were a bride for the emperor, which also recalls the divine
gift of Pandora to man.51 This may simply be the inevitable consequence of
presenting a younger passive male partner of an older active adult male, but
the example of Ganymede and Zeus was also to hand and deployed by Statius.
Perhaps then Earinus’ destiny to become a eunuch has already shaped the
perception and presentation of him prior to his castration, endowing him with
a feminine aspect, but one that conveys and enhances his beauty too.
Nevertheless, in general Statius presents Earinus in a sensuous manner as a
beautiful and desirable eternal youth, and it is thus entirely appropriate that at
the end of the poem the eunuch prays for Domitian to have his youth renewed
(renovare iuventa).52
Martial also dwells on the beauty and allure of Earinus in his epigrams on
the eunuch (though unlike Statius he never makes explicit that Earinus is a
eunuch). Three of these also deal with the dedication of hair (9.16, 17, and 36),
but the other three concern Earinus’ name itself (9.11, 12, and 13), which
derives from the Greek word for one of the four seasons – spring. The poet
exploits the sweet and sensuous associations of that time of year in order to
celebrate such qualities of Earinus. Martial writes:
Name born together with violets and roses, by
which is named the best part of the year, which has
the flavour of Hybla and Attic flowers [honey] and the
fragrance of the proud bird’s [the phoenix] nest: name sweeter
than blessed nectar …
… that noble,
soft [molle], and dainty [delicatum] name I wished to put into polished verse.
(Martial, Epigrams 9.11./1–5, 10–11).53

48
Ibid. 3.4.68, 70–1. It is noted that Domitian’s anti-castration law means that it is now
‘forbidden to mollify sex and change manhood’ (frangere sexum atque hominem mutare
nefas): Silvae 3.4.74–5.
49
Ibid. 3.4.86, 89–90.
50
See also Vout, Power and Eroticism, p. 183. Perhaps the image in the mirror also recalls
Narcissus again.
51
Statius, Silvae 3.4.50–6.
52
Ibid. 3.4.101.
53
Trans. Shackleton Bailey, vol. 2, pp. 241–3.
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62 SHAUN TOUGHER

Martial also refers to Earinus’ name as announcing the ‘teneri … tempora’

(tender season).54 The beauty of Earinus is asserted directly too. He possesses
‘iuvenale decus’ (youthful loveliness),55 and the mirror (which is ‘beauty’s coun-
sellor’ – Consilium formae)56 keeps safe his ‘felix facies’ (blooming counte-
nance).57 The cut locks of his hair are themselves sweet (dulcisque capillos).58
Martial also adopts other strategies used by Statius to convey the beauty of
Earinus, perhaps suggesting that there were standard ways in Roman culture
to communicate the physical attractiveness of eunuchs. Earinus is associated
with Venus, who inscribes the boy’s name.59 Once again the eunuch is brought
into the company of other famous and beautiful boys, in this case just Attis and
Ganymede. Martial asserts that ‘Cybele’s boy and he who mixes the Thunderer’s
cups’ would rather be called by the name of Earinus (Martial, Epigrams
9.11.6–7).60 He claims that Pergamum would not prefer the hair of Ganymede
to that of Domitian’s favourite.61 Ganymede even takes centre stage in one of
the epigrams about Earinus:

The Phrygian boy, famed joy of the other Jupiter,

had seen the Ausonian page [ministrum] with his hair newly
shorn: ‘What your Caesar (look!) has allowed his
young man [ephebo], please allow yours, greatest of rulers,’
said he. ‘Already the first down [lanugo] lies hidden by my
long locks; already your Juno laughs at me and calls
me a man [virum].’ To him said the Heavenly Father:
‘Sweetest [dulcissime] boy, not I but the case itself denies you
what you ask. My Caesar has a thousand pages [mille ministros] like
yourself; the vast palace has scarcely room for so
many star-like youths [sidereos … mares]. But if shorn hair gives you a
manly look [vultus…viriles], whom else shall I have to mix the nectar?’
(Martial, Epigrams 9.36)62

In contrast to Statius, then, Martial does raise the prospect of Earinus

maturing (signified by the cutting of his hair), something Ganymede was
unable to do because without his long hair he would no longer have been an
appropriate person to serve as Jupiter’s cupbearer. Nevertheless, it emerges

54
Martial, Epigrams 9.12 (13).1, ibid., vol. 2, p. 243.
55
Ibid. 9.17.7, ibid., vol. 2, p. 247.
56
Ibid. 9.16.1, ibid., vol. 2, p. 245.
57
Ibid. 9.17.6, ibid., vol. 2, p. 247.
58
Ibid. 9.16.1, ibid., vol. 2, p. 245.
59
Ibid. 9.12 (13).4, and see also Epigrams 9.11.9.
60
Trans. Shackleton Bailey, vol. 2, p. 243.
61
Martial, Epigrams 9.16.6.
62
Trans. Shackleton Bailey, vol. 2, p. 263.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 63

clearly from both Statius and Martial that Earinus was considered beautiful
in the way that male youths were deemed beautiful as ‘pretty boys’. However,
both Caroline Vout and Carole Newlands see the praise of a eunuch’s beauty
as unusual, and thus suggest that the presentation of Earinus as a pretty boy
is an exception to the rule.63 They clearly see the hostile and mocking attitudes
expressed by Romans towards Galli as the norm, but their assumptions are
questionable; there are other indications that eunuchs were thought beautiful,
and the case of the Galli should be treated separately as a very particular
category of eunuch. The Galli were distinct from the slave eunuchs utilized
in Roman society, for the devotees of the Magna Mater embraced self-
castration voluntarily, when they had already attained physical maturity. For
Romans this was horrifying as it amounted to a conscious decision to freely
renounce one’s masculinity and potency, so vital for male identity in Roman
society. This affected how the Galli were presented by Roman authors. In
contrast, eunuch slaves were castrated against their will, before reaching
puberty, so could be appreciated and lauded for their physical beauty which
was associated with that of both male youths and women. Earinus is certainly
not an exception, indicating that in Roman society some eunuchs were valued
for their attractiveness and desirability. This had a long history in Roman
thought and reveals that there was a positive appreciation of eunuchs well
before the later Roman period.
Other sources certainly suggest that Romans deemed eunuchs beautiful
and desirable. Although late and condensed, the comments of Cassius Dio
about Earinus imply a more general appreciation of eunuchs. Cassius Dio (or
rather his epitomator) reports that Domitian issued his anti-castration edict
to spite the memory of his brother Titus (AD 78–81), who had had an especial
enthusiasm for eunuchs. The imperial biographer Suetonius, writing in the
reign of Hadrian, also refers to Titus’ penchant for eunuchs, observing that
he kept ‘exoletorum et spadonum greges’ [troupes of catamites and eunuchs]
(Titus 7).64 Another relevant imperial eunuch favourite is Sporus, who is
particularly associated with the emperor Nero.65 A key source for this eunuch
(and the one usually cited, though there are others) is Suetonius. He first
mentions Sporus in his biography of Nero when addressing the sexual activ-
ities of the emperor in general. He relates that the emperor had the boy Sporus
castrated and ‘in muliebrem naturam transfigurare conatus’ [attempted to
transform him into a woman] (Nero 28).66 Nero married him ‘with dowry and
bridal veil and all due ceremony’ after which he took him home (escorted by

63
See also Newlands, Poetics of Empire, p. 109.
64
Trans. Catherine Edwards, Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000), p. 276.
65
Sporus is also discussed by Vout, Power and Eroticism, pp. 136–66.
66
Trans. Edwards, p. 209.
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64 SHAUN TOUGHER

a large crowd of people), where he treated him as his wife. It is clear that this
event happened in Greece (which Nero toured in AD 66–7), for Suetonius adds
that Sporus (dressed as an empress and transported in a litter) accompanied
Nero ‘around the meeting places and markets of Greece and later, at Rome,
around the Sigillaria’, the emperor occasionally kissing the eunuch; such
treatment of Sporus has been labelled ‘demasculization’ by Craig Williams,
who comments that the ‘public flaunting’ of the wifely eunuch ‘may well have
been perceived as a significant threat to masculine privilege’.67 The subsequent
episodes featuring Sporus relate to the fall and suicide of Nero. One of the
portents foretelling the emperor’s end was the eunuch’s gift on New Year’s Day
(while Nero was taking the auspices) of a ring engraved with the rape of
Proserpina, who had been abducted by Pluto, the god of the underworld.68
When the emperor fled Rome for the villa of his freedman Phaon, Sporus was
one of the four attendants who accompanied him.69 As Nero contemplated
suicide in the villa he exhorted Sporus to lament and to wail.70 Sporus also
features several times in the condensed version of the history of Cassius Dio;
in fact he is mentioned more times than in any other source, which led Charles
Murison to remark that ‘Dio seems to have a slightly morbid interest in the
eunuch Sporus’.71 Notably Cassius Dio mentions an aspect of the eunuch’s
story, seen as critical by Caroline Vout but which is not spelt out by Suetonius
– Sporus physically resembled Nero’s dead wife, Poppaea Sabina, who died in
AD 65.72 Thus the castration of Sporus is presented as the result of the emperor
pining for his deceased partner and attempting to bring her back to life.73
Again Nero is said to have married the eunuch, and it is noted that the
Romans (and others) celebrated the wedding publicly. It is recorded that the
wedding occurred in Greece and Tigellinus (the praetorian prefect of Nero)
gave the ‘bride’ away.74 In their celebration of the marriage the Greeks are said
to have uttered ‘all the customary good wishes, even to the extent of praying

67
Williams, Roman Homosexuality, p. 286. The Sigillaria was a fair at which gifts for
Saturnalia were sold.
68
Suetonius, Nero 46.2.
69
Ibid. 48.
70
Ibid. 49.3.
71
Charles Leslie Murison, Rebellion and Reconstruction: Galba to Domitian. An Historical
Commentary on Cassius Dio’s Roman History Books 64–67 (AD 68–96) (Atlanta, GA:
Scholars Press, 1999), p. 57. Edward Champlin remarks that compared to the account of
Suetonius about Nero’s relationship with Sporus: ‘For once, Dio’s narrative is superior’.
Nero (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 145.
72
Note also that Plutarch, Galba 9, asserts that after Nero’s death Nymphidius (his prae-
torian prefect who had imperial aspirations) took possession of Sporus (having sent for
him while Nero’s body was still burning on the pyre), and treated him like his consort
and called him Poppaea.
73
Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.28.
74
Ibid. 62.13.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 65

that legitimate children might be born to them’, though presumably such

acquiescence may simply have been the result of pandering to the imperial
whims.75 The fact that Nero married Sporus in Greece is given as another
reason why the emperor called the eunuch Sabina, for it was also in Greece
that he had married the real Sabina. Once again Nero is said to have treated
Sporus as his wife, his ‘lady and empress and mistress’. Apparently, a certain
Calvia Crispinilla (a socially distinguished woman) was charged with the care
of the eunuch, as well as his wardrobe.76 In addition, Cassius Dio is interested
in what happened to Sporus after the death of Nero, and records that the
emperor Vitellius (AD 69) planned (as part of gladiatorial contests he was
organizing) to have Sporus put on stage ‘in the rôle of a maiden being
ravished’, but the eunuch ‘would not endure the shame and committed
suicide’.77 Sporus thus provides another example of a high-profile eunuch from
the early Roman Empire, one who owed his prominence to imperial favour.
He was clearly valued for his looks, though in his case the degree of his femi-
nization was extreme.
From the diverse information that exists about Sporus it appears that he
was a Greek slave at the court of Nero, and the emperor was motivated to
castrate the beautiful boy by his appearance, as was the case for Earinus.
However, it appears that Sporus was valued not so much for his attractions as
a pretty boy but for his feminine beauty since he was treated and dressed like
a wife and empress of Nero. Sporus thus takes on the aspect of a transvestite,
or even a transsexual, transformed from a boy into a woman, more akin to
Catullus’ Attis than Statius’ Earinus, but still valued for his physical appearance.
A late antique source, Sextus Aurelius Victor’s The Caesars (a brief history of
the rulers of Rome from Augustus to Constantius II, published in 360), declares
that Nero ‘spadone, quem quondam exsectum formare in mulierem tentaverat’
[had once tried to make [Sporus] into a woman by surgery] (The Caesars
5.16).78 But some critics have questioned whether desire is of any relevance to
the emperor’s castration of Sporus. Edward Champlin observes that Nero’s love
was for the dead Sabina, not Sporus himself, and wonders how the eunuch felt
about his master.79 David Woods has even suggested that there was a political
motive for the castration of Sporus (the emperor believed that he was of
imperial blood and thus a potential rival), and thus Nero’s actions were

75
Trans. Ernest Cary, Dio’s Roman History, vol. 8 (London and Cambridge, MA:
Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1925), p. 159.
76
Cassius Dio, Roman History 62.12.3–4.
77
Ibid. 64.10.1, trans. Cary, p. 237. Champlin, Nero, pp. 147 and 309, n. 5, argues that the
specific case of the rape of Persephone/Proserpina is meant.
78
Trans. H. W. Bird, Aurelius Victor: De Caesaribus (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press,
1994), p. 8.
79
Champlin, Nero, esp. p. 147.
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66 SHAUN TOUGHER

designed to neutralize and humiliate Sporus.80 Yet, whatever the true nature of
the relationship, it is clear that contemporaries did read it in terms of love and
desire, as is particularly evident in one of the orations of Dio Chrysostom.
Dio was a Greek from Prusa who lived from the middle of the first century
to the early second century AD. He studied and worked in Rome, though he
found himself exiled by the emperor Domitian. He comes to the subject of
Sporus (tellingly enough) in a discourse On Beauty.81 It seems that Dio wrote
this oration during Domitian’s reign, for he observes that everyone wishes Nero
was still alive (implying that the present emperor is worse).82 In the discourse
Dio proposes that masculine beauty is dying out and becoming unappreciated
(which he regrets), while feminine beauty is increasingly appreciated, an
attitude he associates with Eastern culture. He observes that the Persians
thought feminine beauty superior to masculine beauty, witness their making
eunuchs of beautiful males, motivated by lust (εὐνούχος ἐποίουν τοὺς καλούς
… διὰ τὸ μόνον τὰ ἀφροδίσια ἐννοεῖν).83 This brings him to Nero and Sporus.
He declares ‘we all know how in our time that [Nero] not only castrated the
youth whom he loved [τὸν ἐρώμενον], but also changed his name for a woman’s
[that of Poppaea Sabina]’, and that the eunuch ‘actually wore his hair parted,
young women attended him whenever he went for a walk, he wore women’s
clothes, and was forced to do everything else a woman does in the same way’.84
He adds that Nero even offered to reward with honours and money anyone
who managed to make Sporus a woman.85 Thus Dio Chrysostom indicates that
Sporus was originally a youthful lover of Nero, but was deliberately feminized
through castration, and by name, dress, and behaviour. Nevertheless this left
scope for beauty, a feminine beauty which he presents as being increasingly
appreciated, displacing traditional masculine beauty.
The Roman advocate and rhetorician Quintilian advances a similar thesis
in his Training in Oratory (Institutio Oratoria), which also dates to the reign of
Domitian. When discussing legal speeches he asserts that declamations
(rhetorical speeches) are now designed purely to give pleasure rather than being
a genuine form of sparring. He remarks:
declaimers are guilty of exactly the same offence as slave-dealers who
castrate boys in order to increase the attractions of their beauty [formae
puerorum virilitate excisa lenocinantur]. For just as the slave-dealer regards

80
David Woods, ‘Nero and Sporus’, Latomus 68 (2009): 73–82.
81
Dio Chrysostom, Oration 21.6–9. It is odd that Vout, Power and Eroticism, does not utilize
this oration, though Champlin, Nero, does.
82
Dio, Oration 21.10.
83
Ibid. 21.4.
84
Ibid. 21.6, trans. J. W. Cohoon, Dio Chrysostom, vol. 2 (London and Cambridge, MA:
Heinemann and Harvard University Press, 1939), pp. 277–9.
85
On this point see Champlin, Nero, pp. 146 and 309, n. 3.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 67

strength and muscle, and above all, the beard and other natural character-
istics of manhood as blemishes, and softens down all that would be sturdy
if allowed to grow, on the ground that it is harsh and hard, even so we
conceal the manly form of eloquence and power of speaking closely and
forcibly by giving it a delicate complexion [tenera … cute] of style and, so
long as what we say is smooth and polished, are absolutely indifferent as
to whether our words have any power or no.86

However, Quintilian is no fan of this fashion. He adds:

But I take Nature for my guide and regard any man whatsoever as fairer
to view than a eunuch, nor can I believe that Providence is ever so indif-
ferent to what itself has created as to allow weakness to be an excellence,
nor again can I think that the knife can render beautiful that which, if
produced in the natural course of birth, would be regarded as a monster.
A false resemblance to the female sex may in itself delight lust [Libidinem],
if it will, but depravity of morals will never acquire such ascendancy as to
succeed in giving real value to that which it has succeeded in giving a high
price … When the masters of sculpture and painting desired to carve or
paint forms of ideal beauty [corpora … speciosissima], they never fell into
the error of taking some Bagoas or Megabyzus as models, but rightly
selected the well-known Doryphorus, equally adapted either for the fields
of war or for the wrestling school [palaestrae], and other warlike and
athletic youths as types of physical beauty. Shall we then, who are endeav-
ouring to mould the ideal orator, equip eloquence not with weapons but
with timbrels [tympana]?87

Thus Quintilian expresses very similar ideas to the Greek Dio Chrysostom,
perhaps suggesting that there had been a change in cultural attitude towards
beauty in the early empire, possibly associated with the increasing use of
eunuch slaves in Roman society. Tellingly, Quintilian alludes to the Galli in his
rejection of the beauty of eunuchs, referring to timbrels so associated with
them, and citing the figure of Megabyzus, the name for a eunuch priest of the
goddess Artemis in Ephesus.88 The other eunuch he mentions, Bagoas, is

86
Quintilian, Training in Oratory 5.12.17–18, trans. H. E. Butler, The Institutio Oratoria of
Quintilian, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press and
Heinemann, 1960), pp. 307–9.
87
Ibid. 5.12.19–21, trans. Butler, p. 309.
88
E.g. Strabo, Geography 14.1.23, and Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.36.93 and
35.40.131–2. For the Megabyzoi see James O. Smith, ‘The High Priests of the Temple of
Artemis in Ephesus’, in Cybele, Attis and Related Cults, ed. Eugene N. Lane (Leiden: Brill,
1996) 323–35. Note that Smith thinks it unlikely that Quintilian is referring to a eunuch
priest when he uses the name Megabyzus, and perhaps has in mind some other famous
eunuch by that name (p. 325). Smith also doubts whether the Megabyzoi were eunuchs
(or that there was a priesthood by this name).
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68 SHAUN TOUGHER

extremely relevant for this is likely to be the Bagoas who was reputed to be the
eunuch lover of Alexander the Great (336–323 BC), king of Macedon and lord
of Asia, and made famous in the twentieth century by the second novel in the
Alexander trilogy of Mary Renault, The Persian Boy.89 In her study of Power
and Eroticism in Imperial Rome, Vout refers only in passing to the story of
Alexander and Bagoas, relegating the pair to a footnote without even naming
the eunuch.90 Her justification for doing so is that this case is distinct from the
issue of Roman sexual attitudes to eunuchs because it is in a Macedonian
context. However, there was resonance for Romans in the story of Alexander
and his eunuch. Probably in the first century AD (most likely either in the reign
of Claudius or that of Vespasian) Quintus Curtius Rufus wrote a Latin history
of the famous Macedonian monarch (indeed, the only life of Alexander in
Latin) that depicts him as a ruler who becomes corrupted and sinks into
tyranny.91 There is no doubt that the history is meant to speak to a Roman
audience about imperial rule, and the role of the eunuch informs this subject.
Not only is Bagoas presented as a physically desirable sexual partner of
Alexander but he also uses his intimacy with the king to bring about the
destruction of the satrap Orxines, who snubbed the eunuch. But it is the issue
of beauty that is of concern here, and Curtius certainly dwells on the sexual
attractiveness of Bagoas. He describes him as ‘specie singulari spado atque in
ipso flore pueritate’ [an exceptionally good-looking eunuch in the very flower
of his youth] (History of Alexander 6.5.23), and notes that the Persian king
Darius III (336–330 BC) had had a sexual relationship with him too. He empha-
sizes that it is the eunuch’s sexual hold over Alexander which gives him his
power, asserting for instance that he would slander Orxines while he was
having sex with Alexander.92 Curtius is in fact one of the key sources for Bagoas,
suggesting a Roman interest in the figure of the eunuch. The Greek biographer
Plutarch, who died early in the reign of Hadrian, also mentions the relationship
between Bagoas and Alexander in his biography of the Macedonian king.93
Describing an incident when Alexander attended singing and dancing contests
in which his favourite Bagoas was awarded the prize, he reports that the eunuch

89
Mary Renault, The Persian Boy (London: Longman, 1972). For exploration of her
depiction of the beautiful Bagoas see for instance Shaun Tougher, ‘The Renault Bagoas:
The Treatment of Alexander the Great’s Eunuch in Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy’, New
Voices in Classical Reception Studies 3 (2008), pp. 77–89.
90
Vout, Power and Eroticism, p. 211, n. 104.
91
For Quintus Curtius Rufus and his history of Alexander see for instance Elizabeth
Baynham, Alexander the Great: The Unique History of Quintus Curtius (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, 1998). For Alexander in the Roman world generally see
Diana Spencer, The Roman Alexander: Reading a Cultural Myth (Exeter: University of
Exeter Press, 2002).
92
Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander 10.1.29.
93
Plutarch, Alexander 67.3–4.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 69

then came and sat beside the king; the Macedonians applauded and urged
Alexander to kiss the winner, which he did while embracing him.94 This is
reminiscent of Suetonius’ assertion that Nero kissed Sporus in public, and thus
readers may have associated Sporus with Bagoas, suggesting that it is important
to bring the figure of Bagoas into discussions of Roman eunuchs. A consider-
ation of Bagoas supports the case for arguing that Romans did find eunuchs
physically attractive.
That Romans did consider eunuchs attractive and desirable is testified to
by another author from the late first century and early second century AD, the
historian Tacitus. In his (incomplete) Annals, a history of the Roman empire
from Tiberius to Nero dating to the end of his life, Tacitus mentions the eunuch
Lygdus, who served in the household of Drusus, the son of Tiberius (AD 14–37).
Tacitus remarks that the eunuch’s ‘aetate atque forma carus domino’ [years and
looks had won him the affection of his master] (Annals 4.10), and reports the
rumour that Tiberius’ praetorian prefect Sejanus corrupted the eunuch sexually
in order to have him poison Drusus.95 The desirability of eunuchs in the early
imperial period is also indicated by Pliny the Elder in his Natural History,
which again touches on the figure of Sejanus. He records that after the fall of
the praetorian prefect one of his eunuchs (Paezon) was bought by Clutorius
Priscus for 50,000,000 sesterces, a payment for lust, not beauty, in this case
(quam libidinis, non formae).96
However, the idea of the beautiful and desirable youthful eunuch survives
in a Roman source as early as the middle of the second century BC – the earliest
extant source in Roman literature to use the term ‘eunuch’. This is Terence’s
comedy, The Eunuch.97 The play was written and performed for the Megalesian
games in 161 BC, and was adapted from a (lost) Greek play of the same name
by the Athenian Menander, a leading figure in New Comedy who was active
in the late fourth and early third centuries BC. The play, set in Hellenistic
Athens, pivots around the conceit of a young Athenian gentleman (Chaerea,
the younger brother of Phaedria) gaining access to the house of Thais (a non-
Athenian courtesan, and lover of Phaedria) by disguising himself as a eunuch
(called Dorus, whom Phaedria had given to Thais as a gift) in order to seduce
Pamphila (a young girl who has been taken into Thais’ household as a slave,
gifted to her by another lover, the soldier Thraso). The play has much to say
about the roles that eunuch slaves played, as well as the contemporary percep-

94
Bagoas also surfaces in Plutarch’s How to Tell a Flatterer from a Friend 24, where his
influence with Alexander is asserted.
95
Trans. John Jackson, Tacitus, vol. 3 (London and Cambridge, MA: Heinemann and
Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 21.
96
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.39.
97
On Terence see John Barsby, Terence, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2001), esp. pp. 1–6.
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70 SHAUN TOUGHER

tions of eunuchs, including ideas about their appearance and attractiveness.

The proposition that Chaerea substitute himself for Dorus is first made by
Parmeno, a slave in the household of Chaerea’s father. Parmeno remarks to
Chaerea ‘“forma et aetas ipsast facile ut pro eunucho probes”‘ [‘you’re so young
and good-looking, you could easily pass as a eunuch’] (The Eunuch 375).98
When Parmeno presents Chaerea in the guise of the eunuch to Thais, he
declares ‘Here’s the eunuch for you. With the looks of a gentleman and in the
bloom of youth [quam aetate integra]!’.99 Thais exclaims that ‘Dorus’ is indeed
handsome (honestust), and Thraso, who is also present, is obviously moved by
desire, for he implies that he would like to fuck the eunuch even when sober.100
Of course, the joke is that in reality, they are both admiring Chaerea, but the
fact remains that eunuchs could be imagined as youthful, beautiful, and
desirable. It might be argued that these remarks say more about Greek attitudes
than Roman ones, given the Greek source of Terence and the Greek setting of
the play. However, these concepts clearly did enter Roman thought, and the
popularity of Terence’s play (it was performed twice in the same day and set a
financial record in terms of how much he was paid for it) suggests that Romans
were receptive to these ideas anyway.101 If this is the case it indicates that the
Roman view of eunuchs as attractive and desirable is much older and more
prevalent than one might otherwise guess, and it shows that the idealization
of Earinus as a beautiful youth is not an exception.
It has become clear, then, that Earinus is not a unique eunuch; in Roman
literature eunuchs could indeed be depicted as beautiful and attractive, as
archetypal pretty boys. It is evident that in the Roman Empire such ideas
stretch at least as far back as the second century BC, and continue into the later
Roman Empire and beyond.102 At the same time, there were Roman views of
eunuchs that were derogatory and hostile, but it is essential not to confuse
different types of eunuchs in the Roman Empire. Vout and Newlands obvi-
ously base their assertions of what constituted the typical Roman attitude to
eunuchs primarily on texts reacting to the Galli, but these eunuchs are quite
distinct from the castrated slave boys who fed the Roman markets. The Galli
were religious devotees of a Mother Goddess, who dressed and acted in
distinct ways for particular reasons. Further, the Galli chose to castrate them-
selves, and presumably usually took this decision when they had already

98
Trans. Barsby, p. 355.
99
Terence, The Eunuch 472–3, trans. Barsby, p. 367.
100
Ibid. 474 and 479. See also the comment of Thais’ maid Pythias: Terence, The Eunuch
681–2.
101
For the popularity and financial success of the play see Barsby, Terence, p. 307.
102
For the beauty attributed to eunuchs in the Byzantine empire see Myrto Hatzaki, Beauty
and the Male Body in Byzantium: Perceptions and Representations in Art and Text
(Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), esp. pp. 94–6.
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The Aesthetics of Castration: Roman Eunuchs 71

passed puberty. The Roman abhorrence of self-castration, the voluntary

renunciation of masculinity that was so central to Roman male identity, must
be appreciated, for it informs the revulsion Romans could feel for the Galli.
Depictions of the Galli emphasize their feminization and effeminacy, which
can apply to other eunuchs too, but could be presented in these other cases as
contributing to their quality of beauty, just as it could in cases of boys prized
for delicacy and youthfulness. It is vital to appreciate that different views of
eunuchs could co-exist in Roman society, and it is essential to be sensitive to
the reasons for this in order to understand Roman culture fully. However, the
beauty of eunuchs could be ephemeral. Eutropius was eventually cast off by
his lover Ptolemy, and Claudian goes on to present an horrific image of the
eunuch in old age:
And now his skin had grown loose with age; his face, more wrinkled than
a raisin, had fallen in by reason of the lines in his cheeks. Less deep the
furrows cloven in the cornfield by the plough, the folds wrought in sails
by the wind. Loathsome grubs ate away his head and bare patches
appeared amid his hair. It was as though clumps of dry barren corn dotted
a sun-parched field, or as if a swallow were dying in winter sitting on a
branch, moulting in the frosty weather … When his pallor and fleshless
bones had roused feelings of revulsion in his masters’ hearts, and his foul
complexion and lean body offended all who came in contact with him,
scaring children, disgusting those that sat at meat, disgracing his fellow-
slaves, or terrifying with an evil omen those that met him … then at last
they thrust him from their houses like a troublesome corpse or an ill-
omened ghost.103

This recalls, perhaps, the eventual fate of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray.
Interestingly, this contrast between the beautiful young eunuch and the
repellent old eunuch is also exploited in Terence’s The Eunuch. Chaerea poses
as an attractive youthful eunuch, but this is at odds with descriptions of the
real Dorus. Parmeno refers to Dorus disparagingly as ‘decrepito hoc eunucho’
[this decrepit eunuch] (The Eunuch 231),104 and Chaerea calls him ‘illum,
obsecro, inhonestum hominem … senem mulierem’ [a repulsive fellow and a
woman of [an old] man] (The Eunuch 356–7).105 When Pythias reports that
‘Dorus’ has made off after the rape, Phaedria comments ‘I’d be very surprised
if the useless creature [ille … ignavos] has got too far.’106 When the real Dorus
is brought before Pythias she is perplexed, and declares ‘Oh! There’s no
comparison between them. The other one was good-looking, a handsome

103
Claudian, Against Eutropius 1.110–31, trans. Platnauer, pp. 146–9.
104
Trans. Barsby, p. 337.
105
Ibid., p. 353.
106
Terence, The Eunuch 661–2, trans. Barsby, p. 389.
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72 SHAUN TOUGHER

fellow … This one is a shrivelled, lethargic, senile old man with the colour of
a weasel [hic est vietus vetus veternosus senex colore mustelino]’.107 Thus, despite
the appreciation they could have of the beauty of eunuchs, Romans were under
no illusion that castration was a guarantee of eternal youth. As Jupiter observed,
Ganymede had advantages over Earinus.

107
Ibid. 681–9, trans. Barsby, p. 391. This description of the shrivelled fossil of a eunuch
has elicited much comment, especially for its reference to a weasel. The late antique gram-
marian Aelius Donatus, who wrote a commentary on Terence in the fourth century AD,
remarked that Terence had here misunderstood the Greek of Menander, who had
described the eunuch rather as ‘a spotted lizard of an old man’, alluding to the freckled
skin of eunuchs: see for instance A. J. Brothers, Terence, The Eunuch (Warminster: Aris
& Philips Ltd, 2000), p. 191.
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CHAPTER 3

Appropriation and Development of Castration as

Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity
Jack Collins

When Peter Abelard (1079–1142) was castrated by the order of his wife’s uncle,
he turned to the example of Origen of Alexandria, a third-century Church
father who purportedly castrated himself in a fit of religious zeal. Abelard
argued that his own castration made him a more appropriate teacher for nuns,
because it alleviated his sexual tensions and temptations. While scholars
continue to debate the accuracy of the traditional account of Origen’s self-
castration, Abelard’s understanding of that tradition reflects an ongoing tension
within Christianity regarding the role of sexuality in Christian life. This tension
is evident in the ways early Christian perceptions of castration changed in
response to the shifting locus of sexual anxiety in Christian communities. The
‘eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’ of Matthew 19:12 probably
represent celibate, childless men, reflecting the Matthean community’s desire
to reconcile the commandment to be fruitful with an apocalyptic skepticism
about the value of marriage and reproduction. Such a reading is supported by
rabbinic discussions of castration, in which the primary concern is the eunuch’s
inability to produce offspring. But with the decline of eschatological expect-
ation, this characteristically Jewish exegesis was replaced in the gentile Church
by readings focused on earthly sexual immorality, intended both to condemn
illicit sexual practices within the Church and to defend the Church from accu-
sations of such practices from the outside.
Emerging as it did from the intersection of Jewish traditions and Greco-
Roman culture, the early Church struggled to reconcile the strong condem-
nation of castration in the Hebrew Bible with the development of Christian
asceticism, not to mention the ubiquitous (if ambiguous) presence of eunuchs
in the gentile world outlined by Shaun Tougher.1 The first reference to

1
See Shaun Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, in
this volume, pp. 48–72.
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74 JACK COLLINS

castration in Christian literature – and indeed the Ursprung of all early

Christian discourse on the topic – occurs in the original Greek of the Gospel
of Matthew (c. AD 70).
δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· οὐ πάντες χωροῦσιν τὸν λόγον [τοῦτον] ἀλλ’ οἷς δέδοται.
εἰσὶν γὰρ εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες ἐκ κοιλίας μητρὸς ἐγεννήθησαν οὕτως, καὶ εἰσὶν
εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνουχίσθησαν ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, καὶ εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι
οἵτινες εὐνούχισαν ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν. ὁ δυνάμενος
χωρεῖν χωρείτω.

But he said to them, ‘Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those
to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth,
and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there
are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the
kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.’ (Matthew 19:11–12)2

This passage has proved a stumbling block from the earliest days of the Church
because, if read literally, it advocates a level of sexual asceticism far beyond
even the deeply skeptical views of marriage expressed by Paul (1 Corinthians
7:1–9). The most common exegetical strategy has been to read it hyperbolically,
much like the commands to sever other offending appendages in Matthew
5:29–30.3 But there is more going on in this passage than simple hyperbole.
The logion comes in response to the disciples’ conclusion that it is better not
to marry than to risk divorce (Matthew 19:10), and Jesus prefaces it with a
warning that the teaching could only be accepted by a select few. This seems
an unlikely caveat for a general admonition.
A hyperbolic reading does not explain why Jesus draws a distinction
between two classes of involuntary eunuchs (congenital and manmade), on the
one hand, and those who castrate (εὐνούχισαν, lit. ‘eunuchize’) themselves ‘for
the sake of the kingdom of heaven’, on the other. This third classification –
invoking as it does the central motif of the Matthean kerygma – is particularly
puzzling to modern scholars, many of whom have drawn a connection to the
Galli, the priests of the syncretic cult of Magna Dea/Cybele, who were reputed
to castrate themselves as an act of ritual devotion.4 But these speculations
largely ignore the biblical context of the saying, and fail to fully apprehend its
specifically Jewish, specifically apocalyptic origins.

2
Greek New Testament from Barbara Aland et al., eds. Novum Testamentum Graece, 4th
edn (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1993) throughout. Translations from The Holy
Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989).
3
Mathew S. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian
Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 259–60.
4
Ibid., pp. 246–54. In this volume, Tougher fully explores the role of the Galli and the
Roman sources for eunuchs. See ‘The Aesthetics of Castration’, pp. 48–72.
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Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 75

Whatever the original source of the saying (which is unique to Matthew),5

the received text of Matthew clearly places it within a larger discussion of
marriage and divorce. More specifically, it comes after Jesus makes a decla-
ration forbidding divorce under most circumstances, in direct contradiction
of established Jewish law which allowed a man to divorce his wife if ‘he finds
something objectionable about her’ (Deuteronomy 24:1–3).6 Jesus challenges
the very foundation of the law, stating that Moses was making concessions to
the hard-heartedness of the Jews, not dictating God’s true will (Matthew 19:8).
It stands to reason that the author of Matthew understood the pronouncement
regarding eunuchs as a challenge to some aspect of the established order as
well, calling into question the basic Jewish understanding that marriage and
sexuality are inextricable from reproduction.
Reading Matthew 19 in dialogue with other Jewish sources relating to
castration and eunuchs – specifically the rabbinic legal debates and comment-
ary collected in the Mishnah and Talmud – further clarifies the nature of Jesus’
challenge. By the time of the redaction of the Palestinian Talmud and Tosefta
(c. AD 400), the Jewish attitude toward castration of any sort was categorically
negative. One rabbinic opinion even includes a prohibition of castration – both
of men and of animals – among the seven so-called Noachide Commandments
applicable to the entire human race.
More to the point, there is one discussion, attributed to rabbis of the first-
century AD (Mishnah Yevamot 8:4–6 || Bavli Yevamot 79b), that seems to
express much the same distinction made by Jesus between congenital eunuchs
(Heb. ‫ סריס המח‬, saris h.ammah, lit. ‘eunuch of the sun’) and those castrated by
humans (Heb. ‫ סריס אדם‬, saris ’adam, lit. ‘eunuch of man’):7
;‫ שהייתה לו שעת הכושר‬,‫ סריס אדם חולץ וחולצין לאשתו‬:‫ אני אפרש‬,‫אמר רבי עקיבה‬
,‫ רבי אליעזר אומר‬.‫ שלא הייתה לו שעת הכושר‬,‫וסריס חמה לא חולץ ולא חולצין לאשתו‬
‫ שיש לו רפואה; וסריס אדם לא חולץ ולא‬,‫ אלא סריס חמה חולץ וחולצין לאשתו‬,‫לא כי‬
.‫ מפני שאין לו רפואה‬,‫חולצין לאשתו‬

5
The logion is considered of probable authenticity both by the Jesus Seminar and by
Ulrich Luz; see Robert Walter Funk and Roy W. Hoover, eds., The Five Gospels: The
Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 221–2; Ulrich
Luz, Matthew: A Commentary, trans. Wilhelm C. Linss (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1989),
pp. 500–1.
6
Matthew 19:6–9. In this case, Jesus makes an exception for ‘unchastity’ (Matthew 12:9),
but parallel passages (Mark 10:11–12) do not.
7
The redaction of Talmudic material covers many centuries, of course, and the dates of
these traditions are notoriously difficult to fix, so even sayings attributed to first-century
rabbis cannot be taken as prima facie evidence of prevailing Jewish standards in Jesus’
time. The Mishnaic material, at least, can be safely dated to the third century or earlier,
however, and so the priorities expressed in these writings are useful insofar as they derive
from the same general cultural context as the Jesus movement.
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76 JACK COLLINS

Said R. Aqiba, ‘I shall explain. A eunuch castrated by man performs the

rite of halisah, and they perform the rite of halisah with his wife, because
there was a time in which he was valid [as a husband]. A eunuch by nature
does not perform the rite of halisah, and they do not perform the rite of
halisah with his wife, because there was never a time in which he was valid.’
R. Eliezer says, ‘Not so, but: A eunuch by nature performs the rite of halisah,
and they perform the rite of halisah with his wife, because he may be
healed. A eunuch castrated by man does not perform the rite of halisah,
and they do not perform the rite of halisah with his wife because he may
never be healed.’ (m. Yev. 8:4)8

This indicates that Jesus was adapting existing Jewish rhetoric regarding
castration to his own ends – rhetoric that would have been familiar to his
Jewish audience. If the two familiar categories of eunuch are distinguished by
their inability to father children, then Jesus probably intended for that quality
to be assumed in his third category.
Indeed, rabbinic discussions of eunuchs are most often directly related to
questions of procreation. The topic of the passage quoted above is Levirate
marriage, a custom whose very purpose is to insure the survival of the line of
men who die childless.9 The question of Levirate obligation depends upon
whether a saris can legitimately enter a marriage. Where the rabbis disagree
on the legal standing of the two types of saris, the disagreement hinges upon
whether the rabbi believes it is possible to cure a saris h.ammah, and thus render
him capable of procreation. Likewise, Bavli Shabbat 110b speaks of castration
– specifically medical treatments that lead to impotence or sterility – entirely
in terms of the ability of the eunuch to produce children. The Mishnah defines
the characteristics of a saris in direct parallel to those used to identify an ’aylonit
(‫ – )איילונית‬an infertile woman (Mishnah Niddah 5:9). Likewise, rabbinic discus-
sions of Leviticus 21:20 – which forbids one with crushed testicles from serving
as a priest – are couched in terms of the continuation of the priestly lineage
(b. Yev. 75a–76b). To be castrated, in the rabbinic viewpoint, is to be rendered
incapable of procreation, and thus incapable of fulfilling the first
commandment given by God to Adam and Eve (Genesis 1:28).10

8
Isadore Epstein, ed. Tractate Yebamoth (Hebrew–English edition of the Babylonian
Talmud, vol. 10; London: Soncino Press, 1984). Trans. Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A
New Translation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988), pp. 355–6.
9
Levirate marriage is the legal requirement that a man marry his brother’s widow if the
brother dies without fathering children, as a way of symbolically continuing the dead
brother’s line (Deuteronomy 25:5–6). The halisah mentioned in the quote is a ritual by
which the widow and her husband’s brother can nullify this legal requirement.
10
In later medieval laws, there is also a particular emphasis on the ability to procreate in
regulating compensation for a groin wound or castration. For a discussion for laws in
Frisia, Ireland and Wales, and Anglo-Saxon England, see Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The
Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital
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Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 77

The close relationship in the rabbinic mind between eunuchs and questions
of reproduction is further evident in two Talmudic terms that do not refer to
eunuchs per se, but to other individuals falling outside binary definitions of sex
and gender, akin to the idea of a ‘third gender’ explored in several articles in
this collection.11 These terms are tumtum (‫ )טומטום‬and androgynos (‫;)אנדרוגינוס‬
the latter is a simple Aramaization of the Greek term. Both terms refer to those
of ambiguous biological sex – intersexed persons, in modern parlance – with
the former word generally understood as a person born without clearly visible
sexual organs, and the latter possessing the organs of both sexes. In keeping
with rabbinic interest in unlikely cases relating to marginal legal status, these
two classifications allowed the rabbis to explore the foundations of legal distinc-
tions between genders by blurring those distinctions. Curiously, tumtum is
used in reference to Abraham and Sarah in their elderly, childless state, before
the miraculous birth of Isaac: ‘.‫ אברהם ושרה טומטמין היו‬,‫[ ’אמר רבי אמי‬Rabbi
Ammi said, Abraham and Sarah were tumtumin] (b. Yev. 64a).12 It seems
unlikely that this characterization is meant to be taken literally – Abraham does
successfully father Ishmael by Hagar without divine intervention.13 Instead, it
appears tumtum is used symbolically for childlessness, as if the two were iden-
tical in the minds of the rabbis.14 Indeed, this association between eunuchs and
the childless is reinforced by the fact that as b. Yev. 83b states that some (but
not all) tumtumin are also sarisim h. ammah.
It is thus likely that Jesus’ Pharisaic interlocutors in Matthew 19 shared their
rabbinic successors’ strong association between sexuality and procreation, and
conversely, between castration and the absence of offspring. The teachings of
Jesus (at least as they are portrayed by Matthew) thus not only undermine the
prevailing interpretation of the law, they also undermine the Jewish under-
standing of the very purpose of marriage. Jesus says nothing of procreation in
his polemic against divorce, instead focusing only on the marital union itself.
And when the disciples interpret this to imply that it is better not to marry,
Jesus does not rebuke them, but instead uses the ‘eunuchs for the sake of the
kingdom’ to illustrate that only some are capable of such a sacrifice. While Jesus

Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’, pp. 108–30; Charlene M. Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their
owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources’, pp. 149–73; and Jay Paul Gates,
‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’, pp. 131–40 in this
volume.
11
See Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration’, pp. 54–5; and Jed Chandler, ‘Eunuchs of the
Grail’, pp. 231, 253 in this volume.
12
Translation mine.
13
In its Talmudic context, the statement is used to explain why Abraham did not follow
the Mishnah’s requirement (Mishnah Yevamot 6:6) that a man take another wife if his
first wife fails to produce a child after ten years.
14
Bavli Yevamot 83b does speak of a class of tumtumin who are capable of fatherhood once
their genitals are freed from a membrane by surgery, but this only reinforces the link
between the condition of the tumtum and infertility.
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78 JACK COLLINS

avoids commanding his followers to be celibate, he opens the possibility of

celibacy as a legitimate, even preferable path for the righteous, something
unthinkable within mainstream Judaism.
The sentiment that sexual renunciation is, while desirable, beyond the
capacity of most is closely echoed by Paul’s words in his first letter to the
Corinthians:
καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ γυναικὸς μὴ ἅπτεσθαι διὰ δὲ τὰς πορνείας ἕκαστος τὴν
ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ἐχέτω καὶ ἑκάστη τὸν ἴδιον ἄνδρα ἐχέτω. τῇ γυναικὶ ὁ ἀνὴρ
τὴν ὀφειλὴν ἀποδιδότω, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ ἡ γυνὴ τῷ ἀνδρί. … θέλω δὲ πάντας
ἀνθρώπους εἶναι ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν· ἀλλὰ ἕκαστος ἴδιον ἔχει χάρισμα ἐκ θεοῦ,
ὁ μὲν οὕτως, ὁ δὲ οὕτως. Λέγω δὲ τοῖς ἀγάμοις καὶ ταῖς χήραις, καλὸν
αὐτοῖς ἐὰν μείνωσιν ὡς κἀγώ· εἰ δὲ οὐκ ἐγκρατεύονται, γαμησάτωσαν,
κρεῖττον γάρ ἐστιν γαμῆσαι ἢ πυροῦσθαι.

‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman.’ But because of cases of sexual
immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own
husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and
likewise the wife to her husband … I wish that all were as I myself am. But
each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a
different kind. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for
them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-
control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with
passion. (1 Corinthians 7:1–3, 7–9)

Paul’s acceptance of marriage (and marital sex) seems grudging at best. He

clearly considers celibacy the preferable path, but recognizes that not all share
his ‘particular gift’, just as Matthew’s gospel recognizes that only a few will make
themselves ‘eunuchs’.
The perception of marriage and celibacy in Matthew and Paul reflects the
overarching apocalyptic eschatology permeating the early Church, which led
believers to question the value of all aspects of their current existence. The
anticipation of an imminent end of the world precipitated a radical shift in the
priorities of Jesus’ followers, over against both mainstream Jews and Hellenistic
gentiles. Jesus’ seemingly hyperbolic pronouncements that people should
abandon their families (Luke 14:26) their livelihoods (Matthew 4:18–20), and
their possessions (Matthew 19:21–2), are quite consistent with the dualistic,
apocalyptic rejection of this world in favor of the coming Kingdom. Matthew
Keufler observes that Matthew 19:11–12 ‘echoes a passage from the Biblical
book of Isaiah in which the requirements of marriage would no longer be para-
mount in the future kingdom of Israel’.15
In a world approaching its end, procreation becomes unnecessary for the

15
Viz. Isa. 56:3–5; Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, p. 258.
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Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 79

continuation of the species, so marital relations – in stark contrast to the

rabbinic view – only function to curb the lusts of those not gifted with the
capacity for celibacy. The Essenes, also steeped in Jewish apocalyptic thought,
are similarly reported to have renounced marriage, at least according to
external reports from their contemporaries.16 Such celibates, by cutting them-
selves off from reproduction, become eunuchs from a Jewish perspective. Gary
Taylor even sees the subsequent verses of Matthew (‘Let the little children come
to me …’) as an acknowledgment of the necessity of adoption in celibate sects.17
Thus Matthew’s gospel inverts the Jewish perception of eunuchs as reproductive
dead-ends, and turns childlessness into a sign of faith in the nearness of the
Kingdom of Heaven.
This level of imminent eschatological expectation necessarily waned as the
decades passed, and the growth of Christianity as a primarily gentile institution
brought about changes in the Church’s understanding of manhood and
castration. In a world whose end could not be surely anticipated, the necessity
of some degree of procreation ceased to be a matter of debate within the
Christian proto-orthodoxy (although it was questioned by other Christian
groups). Instead, castration – as both a symbol and practice – came to be
applied to other points of sexual anxiety within the Christian world.
One such focus was apologetic, specifically to defend Christians from
accusations of sexual impropriety. Because of its integration of both male and
female members, and indeed its ‘love feasts’ and proclamation that there is ‘no
male or female’ in Christ (Galatians 3:28), the early Church was commonly
subject to allegations of sexual licentiousness.18 It also became a point of diver-
gence for Christian and non-Christian communities, as circumcision would
in later Christian discourse. For instance, the late second-century apologist
Athenagoras contrasts Christians living ‘in the state of an eunuch’ with the
pagans’ indulgence of ‘every kind of vile pleasure’.19 Symbolic castration,
therefore, functioned as a powerful rhetorical device for stressing Christian
sexual continence as a defining characteristic over against the wider Greco-
Roman culture.
These early sources generally eschewed a literal reading of Matthew 19, not
only for theological and hermeneutical reasons, but also out of skepticism

16
Josephus, De bello Iudaico 2.120–1, ed. Benedikt Niese (Berlin: Weidmann; 1895), but
cf. 2.160–1; Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia 5.15, ed. Karl F. T. Mayhoff (Leipzig:
Teubner, 1906).
17
Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and
London: Routledge, 2002), p. 196.
18
Minucius Felix, Octavius 9.1–7, ed. B. Kytzler (Leipzig: Teubner, 1992), preserves an
exaggerated version of these accusations as a straw man. Cf. Origen 6.27, Contra Celsem,
ed. C. de la Rue et al. (Berlin: Haude and Spencer, 1845).
19
Legatio 33–34, in Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 2:146–7, hereafter cited as ANF.
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80 JACK COLLINS

towards the physical and spiritual efficacy of castration as a shield against

sexual sin.20 Clement of Alexandria (AD 132–217) observes:
εὐνοῦχοι πολλοὶ καὶ οὗτοι μαστροποί, τῷ ἀξιοπίστῳ τοῦ μὴ δύνασθαι
φιληδεῖν τοῖς εἰς ἡδονὰς ἐθέλουσιν ῥᾳθυμεῖν ἀνυπόπτως διακονούμενοι.
Εὐνοῦχος δὲ ἀληθὴς οὐχ ὁ μὴ δυνάμενος, ἀλλ’ ὁ μὴ βουλόμενος φιληδεῖν.

Many are eunuchs; and these panderers serve without suspicion those that
wish to be free to enjoy their pleasures, because of the belief that they are
unable to indulge in lust. But a true eunuch is not one who is unable, but
one who is unwilling, to indulge in pleasure. (Paedegogus III, 4.26.221)21

So for Clement, the act of castration is meaningless, while the idea of castration,
of being like a eunuch for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven, remained a
powerful symbol. This is in keeping with Clement’s broader theme of distin-
guishing between the plain and spiritual meanings of scripture, or, indeed with
Paul’s distinction between circumcision of the flesh and the ‘true’ circumcision
of the spirit (Romans 2:24–9).22 Castration of the flesh then is (at best) an
imperfect type to the antitype of spiritual castration, viz. celibacy. At worst,
castration becomes a form of false piety, which can ape the appearance of ‘true’
Christianity, but lacks its spiritual foundation.
Most of the references to literal eunuchs in the second- and third-century
proto-orthodox sources come in polemics, either against pagan practices
(notably the aforementioned Galli),23 or against those of ‘heretical’ Christian
groups like the Marcionites and various so-called Gnostics. More fiercely dual-
istic even than apocalyptic Judaism, these groups ‘tended to denigrate the body
as the nagging link between the human soul and the evils they believed
inherent in the material world’.24 Escape from this corruption was not to be
found in a coming eschatological event, but rather through some sort of spir-

20
A common theme in late antique discourse about eunuchs is the fact (known to anyone
who has owned a neutered dog) that castration (or specifically orchidectomy) does not
necessarily render one incapable of intercourse or bereft of desire. Just as a hymen intacta
was understood to be a potentially false signifier of a woman’s chastity, the removal of
the testes was understood to have the potential to free a man from the inconvenient
sequellae of sexual congress (i.e., impregnation), without actually insuring purity of
thought or action. See Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, pp. 96–102; Peter Brown, The Body and
Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1988), p. 19.
21
Clement of Alexandria, Paedogogus, ed. Otto Stählin (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1905).
Trans. Roberts and Donaldson, ANF 2:278.
22
See Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, p. 264.
23
E.g., Tertullian, Ad nationones 1.20.4; 2.7.16, ed. August Reifferscheid and Georg
Wissowa (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1890); Minucius Felix, Octavius 21; Lactantius, Divinae
institutiones 1.21, ed. Samuel Brandt and Georg Laubmann (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1890).
24
Daniel F. Caner, ‘The Practice and Prohibition of Self-Castration in Early Christianity’,
Vigiliae Christianae 51.4 (November 1997): 395–415 at p. 404.
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Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 81

itual transcendence. It is unsurprising that many of these groups are said to

have rejected sexuality, marriage, and reproduction far more radically than
their proto-orthodox contemporaries.
One such sect, the Encartites, held ‘that Christ did not consider it possible
to conquer death as long as women gave birth’.25 The reports of Clement detail
several other heterodox Christian teachings, such as those of Julius Cassian
and Valentinus, which are ambiguous on the subject of castration, but seem to
imply the obsolescence of genital organs for the saved.26 In derision of the
Marcionite sanction against marriage, Tertullian (c. AD 160–220) writes, ‘Iam
et bestiis illius barbariei importunior Marcion. Quis enim tam castrator carnis
castor quam qui nuptias abstulit? Quuis tam comesor mus Ponticus quam qui
evangelia corrosit?’ [Marcion is more savage than even the beasts of that
barbarous region. For what beaver was ever a greater emasculator than he who
has abolished the nuptial bond?] (Adversus Marcionem 1.1).27 Tertullian
likewise ridiculed the Galli as ‘tertio sexu: illud aptius de viro et femina viris et
feminis iunctum’ [a third race in sex, and, made up as it is of male and female
in one, it is more fitted to men and women [for offices of lust]] (Ad nat.
1.20.4).28 Yet elsewhere, Tertullian still praises the idea of living like a eunuch,
lauding voluntarii spadones ‘voluntary eunuchs’ who renounce sexual relations
within a marriage (Ad uxorem 6.2). In his later, Montanist writings, he goes so
far as to call Jesus spado ‘a eunuch’, and describes Paul as castratus ‘castrated’
(De monogamia 3). As Walter Stevenson notes, ‘Tertullian is not using his terms
very consistently’.29 Rather, he appears to invoke castration imagery in whatever
manner best suits his particular argument, implying that the associations with
such imagery were far from fixed in Tertullian’s cultural context.
While Tertullian’s application of castration language runs the gamut of
conventional proto-orthodox approaches, from condemning it in the literal
sense to praising it in the figurative, there are a few exceptional examples in
Christian discourse where literal castration was used for the same apologetic
ends as metaphoric castration. Justin Martyr thus reports (writing c. AD 150)
of a young Christian who sought castration in order to demonstrate Christian
sexual purity:

25
Piotr O. Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener
Publishers, 2001), p. 165.
26
Walter Stevenson, ‘Eunuchs and Early Christianity’, in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond,
ed. Shaun Tougher (London: Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, 2002), pp. 127–8.
27
Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, ed. Emile Kroymann (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1906), trans.
ANF 3:272. For the legendary self-castration of beavers, see Ellen Lorraine Friedrich’s
chapter ‘Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris’s
Romans de la rose’ in this volume, pp. 255–79.
28
Trans. ANF 3:127. See Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, p. 249.
29
Stevenson, ‘Eunuchs and Early Christianity’, p. 126.
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82 JACK COLLINS

καὶ ἤδη τις τῶν ἡμετέρων,ὑπὲρ τοῦ πεῖσαι ὑμᾶς ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν ἡμῖν
μυστήριον ἡ ἀνέδην μίξις, βιβλίδιον ἀνέδωκεν ἐν Ἀλεξανδρείᾳ Φήλικι
ἡγεμονεύοντι ἀξιῶν ἐπιτρέψαι ἰατρῷ τοὺς διδύμους αὐτοῦ ἀφελεῖν·ἄνευ
γὰρ τῆς τοῦ ἡγεμόνος ἐπιτροπῆς τοῦτο πράττειν ἀπειρῆσθαι οἱ ἐκεῖ ἰατροὶ
ἔλεγον. καὶ μηδ’ ὅλως βουληθέντος Φήλικος ὑπογράψαι, ἐφ’ ἑαυτοῦ μείνας
ὁ νεανίσκος ἠρκέσθη τῇ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τῶν ὁμογνωμόνων συνειδήσει.

And that you may understand that promiscuous intercourse is not one of
our mysteries, one of our number a short time ago presented to Felix the
governor in Alexandria a petition, craving that permission might be given
to a surgeon to make him an eunuch. For the surgeons there said that they
were forbidden to do this without the permission of the governor. And
when Felix absolutely refused to sign such a permission, the youth
remained single, and was satisfied with his own approving conscience, and
the approval of those who thought as he did. (Apology 1.29)30
While this youth’s petition ultimately failed, and he chose instead to live a life
of voluntary chastity, Justin does not express the sort of disapprobation seen
in Clement or Origen. For Justin, it appears that at least the desire for castration
could function as a positive sign of Christian chastity. This model, however, is
frowned upon in later hagiographical texts – such as the thirteenth-century
Middle English South English Legendary examined by Larissa Tracy in this
volume – in miraculous accounts of self-castration and suicide. In those cases,
while the castrate is returned to life, he is not returned to virility – his members
are not restored.31
Perhaps the most notorious case of early Christian self-castration also seems
to fall into this category of apologetic demonstration, at least according to the
Church historian Eusebius (AD 263–339). Writing more than a century after
the fact, Eusebius reports that in a youthful fit of religious zeal, Origen of
Alexandria (AD 184–253) chose to castrate himself in response to a literal
reading of Matthew 19 (Historia ecclesiastica 6.8.1–3).
Ἐν τούτῳ δὲ τῆς κατηχήσεως ἐπὶ τῆς Ἀλεξανδρείας τοὔργον ἐπιτελοῦντι
τῷ Ὠριγένει πρᾶγμά τι πέπρακται φρενὸς μὲν ἀτελοῦς καὶ νεανικῆς,
πίστεώς γε μὴν ὁμοῦ καὶ σωφροσύνης μέγιστον δεῖγμα περιέχον. τὸ γάρ·
εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι οἵτινες εὐνούχισαν ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν
ἁπλούστερον καὶ νεα νικώτερον ἐκλαβών, ὁμοῦ μὲν σωτήριον φωνὴν
ἀποπληροῦν οἰόμενος, ὁμοῦ δὲ καὶ διὰ τὸ νέον τὴν ἡλικίαν ὄντα μὴ
ἀνδράσι μόνον, καὶ γυναιξὶ δὲ τὰ θεῖα προσομιλεῖν, ὡς ἂν πᾶσαν τὴν παρὰ
τοῖς ἀπίστοις αἰσχρᾶς διαβολῆς ὑπόνοιαν ἀποκλείσειεν, τὴν σωτήριον

30
E. J. Goodspeed, ed., Die ältesten Apologeten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1915); trans. ANF 1:172.
31
Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture,
and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary’, pp. 87–107 in this volume.
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Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 83

φωνὴν ἔργοις ἐπιτελέσαι ὡρμήθη, τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν ἀμφ’ αὐτὸν γνωρίμων
διαλαθεῖν φροντίσας. οὐκ ἦν δὲ ἄρα δυνατὸν αὐτῷ καίπερ βουλομένῳ
τοσοῦτον ἔργον ἐπικρύψασθαι. γνοὺς δῆτα ὕστερον ὁ Δημήτριος, ἅτε τῆς
αὐτόθι παροικίας προεστώς, εὖ μάλα μὲν αὐτὸν ἀποθαυμάζει τοῦ
τολμήματος, τὴν δέ γε προθυμίαν καὶ τὸ γνήσιον αὐτοῦ νῦν μᾶλλον
ἔχεσθαι αὐτὸν τοῦ τῆς κατηχήσεως ἔργου παρορμᾷ.

At this time while Origen was conducting catechetical instruction at

Alexandria, a deed was done by him which evidenced an immature and
youthful mind, but at the same time gave the highest proof of faith and
continence. For he took the words, ‘There are eunuchs who have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake’, in too literal and
extreme a sense. And in order to fulfill the Saviour’s word, and at the same
time to take away from the unbelievers all opportunity for scandal, – for,
although young, he met for the study of divine things with women as well
as men, – he carried out in action the word of the Saviour. He thought that
this would not be known by many of his acquaintances. But it was impos-
sible for him, though desiring to do so, to keep such an action secret. When
Demetrius, who presided over that parish, at last learned of this, he admired
greatly the daring nature of the act, and as he perceived his zeal and the
genuineness of his faith, he immediately exhorted him to courage, and
urged him the more to continue his work of catechetical instruction.
(Historia ecclesiastica 6.8.1–3)32

The veracity of this report has been debated for centuries; the most thorough
evaluation of the evidence, by Markschies, fails to come to a firm conclusion
beyond the fact that castration may have been practiced among some
Christians of Origen’s era.33 Regardless, Eusebius explicitly imparts an apolo-
getic motivation to Origen’s ‘daring deed’, saying it was done ‘to take away
from the unbelievers all opportunity for scandal’, scandal potentially aroused
by the fact that ‘he met for the study of divine things with women as well as
men’ (Historia ecclesiastica 6.8.2).34 In Origen’s (purported) case, his position
of catechetical teacher to both men and women placed him under suspicion
that could be alleviated by his castration.35 For Eusebius, at least, castration

32
G. Bardy, Eusèbe de Césarée. Histoire ecclésiastique (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1955). Trans.
from Eusebius Pamphili, Bishop of Caesarea, Church History from AD 1–324, Life of
Constantine the Great, Oration in Praise of Constantine, in A Select Library of Nicene and
Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, vol. 1, ed. Philip Schaff and
Henry Wace (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, second printing 1961), p. 254; Hereafter
cited as NPNF2.
33
Christoph Markschies, ‘Kastration und Magenprobleme? Einige neue Blicke auf das aske-
tische Leben des Origenes’, in Origenes und sein Erbe: Gesammelte Studien (Berlin: Walter
de Gruyter, 2007), pp. 15–34.
34
NPNF2 1:254.
35
Abelard evokes Origen to plead his case as a teacher of women, arguing that though his
castration was involuntary, he is now a more appropriate instructor for the Paraclete.
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84 JACK COLLINS

could function as an antidote (albeit excessive) to external perceptions of

sexual immorality.
With the exception of Justin Martyr’s testimony, the anxiety over the sexual
temptations inherent in Christian mixed-sex congregations seems more at
home within Eusebius’ fourth-century milieu than in Origen’s own. The
writings of Basil of Ancyra, the canons of the early councils, Palladius of
Galatia, and Eusebius himself all reflect a concern for such appearances, espe-
cially with regard to male Christian leaders mingling (and in some cases cohab-
iting) with female virgins.36 It is possible, therefore, that Eusebius, seizing upon
an unfounded rumor, projected the concerns of his own time onto Origen to
address the matter obliquely.
And it is in the fourth century that the most concrete condemnations of the
Christian practice of self-castration occur, most notably by the Council of Nicea
(AD 325), which declared:
Εἴ τις ἐν νόσῳ ὑπὸ ἰατρῶν ἐχειρουργήθη, ἢ ὑπὸ βαρβάρων ἐξετμήθη, οὗτος
μενέτω ἐν τῷ κλήρῳ. Εἰ δέ τις ὑγιαίνων ἑαυτὸν ἐξέτεμε, τοῦτον καὶ ἐν τῷ
κλήρῳ ἐξεταζόμενον, πεπαῦσθαι προσήκει· καὶ ἐκ τοῦ δεῦρο, μηδένα τῶν
τοιούτων χρῆναι προάγεσθαι. Ὥσπερ δὲ τοῦτο πρόδηλον, ὅτι περὶ τῶν
ἐπιτηδευόντων τὸ πρᾶγμα, καὶ τολμώντων ἑαυτοὺς ἐκτέμνειν εἴρηται·
οὕτως, εἴ τινες ὑπὸ βαρβάρων, ἢ δεσποτῶν εὐνουχίσθησαν, εὑρίσκοιντο δὲ
ἄλλως ἄξιοι, τοὺς τοιούτους εἰς κλῆρον προσίεται ὁ κανών.

If someone enjoying good health has castrated himself, this matter is

to be investigated, and his belonging to the clerical estate is to be at an
end, and in the future such persons must never be brought forward. But
since it is clear that this applies to those who do such a thing intentionally
and who dare to castrate themselves, it follows, then in regard to those
who have been made eunuchs by barbarians or by their masters, that the
canon admits such men as these, be they found worthy, into the clerical
estate.37

The necessity of a prohibition of self-made eunuchs in the clergy carries with

it a clear implication that such persons were numerous enough to be considered
a problem, as Scholz rightly notes.38 For example, Athanasius cited the case of
an Arian presbyter from Antioch:
Λεόντιος ὁ ἀπόκοπος, ὃν οὐδὲ ὡς λαικὸν κοινωνεῖν ἐχρῆν, διότι ἑαυτὸν

36
Caner, ‘Practice and Prohibition’, pp. 409–12.
37
Nicene Canon 1, from ‘Concilium Nicaenum I – Canones (Altera Lectio)’, Documenta
Catholica Omnia, online at http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0325-
0325,_Concilium_Nicaenum_I,_Canones_(Altera_Lectio),_GR.pdf, accessed September
19, 2012. Trans. from W. A. Jurgens, trans., The Faith of the Early Fathers (Collegeville
MN: The Liturgical Press, 1970), p. 282, quoted in Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, p. 171.
38
Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, p. 171.
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Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 85

ἀπέκοψεν ὑπὲρ τοῦ μετ’ ἐξουσίας λοιπὸν κοιμᾶσθαι μετὰ Εὐστολίου τινός,
γυναικὸς μὲν δι’ αὐτόν, λεγομένης δὲ παρθένου.

The eunuch Leontius, who ought not to remain in communion even as a

layman, because he mutilated himself that he might henceforward be at
liberty to sleep with one Eustolium, who is a wife as far as he is concerned,
but is called a virgin. (Historia Arianorum 28)39

Not long after this, Epiphanius of Salamis wrote a polemic against the
Valensians, an order of castrated desert ascetics (Panarion 2.1).40 The polemics
against castration in this period rarely make reference to the (mis)interpre-
tation of Matthew 19. Instead, they characterize the practice as misguided,
ineffective, or depraved.41 Based on this testimony, it seems likely that, rather
than existing as an ongoing, fringe practice from the earliest days of
Christianity, self-castration emerged at some point in the third century as a
response to sexual anxieties within the Christian community and became
enough of an issue in the fourth century to be formally condemned by the
emerging orthodoxy.
These later forays into literal self-castration notwithstanding, while most
early Christian sources used castration imagery to signify the same thing –
voluntary chastity – it cannot be assumed that this voluntary chastity itself had
the same significance for all. For the Jewish audience of the logion in Matthew
19, celibacy was synonymous with childlessness, and by extension, with a trans-
formation into a new, eschatological existence where the existing values
(including marriage and procreation) no longer applied. But for later
Christians, the meaning of chastity had less to do with rejecting the values of
this world than it did with redirecting them towards new ends. Tertullian, for
instance, speaks of chastity primarily within the confines of the marriage bond,
a concession perhaps to the entrenched social structures of Roman society.42
With regard to Origen’s own interpretation of Matthew 19, far from endorsing
the extreme asceticism he was later reputed to have practiced, it appears to be
designed, according to Stevenson, ‘to mould a Christianity that is not repulsive
to non-Christians’.43 Kuefler argues that by the fourth century, the ‘spiritual
eunuch’, the man who chooses sexual continence by will, subverted the Greco-
Roman ideal of manliness much as Matthew’s ‘eunuch for the sake of the
Kingdom’ (the man who forsakes fatherhood) did for the Jewish. The almost
militant rhetoric of Jerome and Ambrose in praise of male chastity takes the

39
H. G. Opitz, Athanasius Werke (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1940). Trans. NPNF2 4:279.
40
See Stevenson, ‘Eunuchs and Early Christianity’, p. 129.
41
Caner, ‘Practice and Prohibition’, pp. 406–7.
42
Kuefler, Manly Eunuch, pp. 267–8.
43
Stevenson, ‘Eunuchs and Early Christianity’, pp. 134–6.
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86 JACK COLLINS

manliest qualities of virtus and enkrateia, and attaches them to the least manly
figure in the ancient social lexicon, while equating lack of self-control with
physical weakness and literal emasculation.44 But where Matthew rejects the
entire value of marriage and procreation within the new, eschatological
Kingdom, these later Christian authors redefine the prevailing understanding
of manliness while retaining manliness as a cultural value.
The many functions served in early Christian discourse by symbols,
language, and practice related to castration and eunuchs reveal a complex
interplay between Jewish foundations, scriptural exegesis, identity formation,
and the structures and values of Greco-Roman society. The same images, the
same practices, often serve opposite purposes depending on the context, even
within the works of a single author. A figurative eunuch could be a paragon of
self-control, or a heretic who defies God’s design. And literal eunuchs could
be lascivious pagan priests or paragons of self-sacrifice in the name of faith.
But the eunuch in early Christian discourse always seems to appear at the soft
spots in Christian self-perception, be it differentiating themselves from pagans,
defending themselves against allegations of immorality, or developing a new
model of strength from a position of weakness.

44
See Ambrose, De viduis 13.75–7.
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CHAPTER 4

‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’

Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and
Anxieties of Identity in the South English
Legendary1
Larissa Tracy

C astration is a frequent feature of early Christian debates on the purity of

the body, but it remained a difficult issue in the pursuit of sanctity, partic-
ularly in accounts of male saints and martyrs. As Jacqueline Murray writes, ‘the
whole problem of the body was perceived to be located in the male genitals.
Once they were removed, it was believed that the problem of lack of control of
the flesh would simply disappear.’2 As a result of such (well-intentioned) logic,
self-castration was practiced among some early Christian theologians, most
notably Origen (c. AD 185–254) and Ignatius of Constantinople (AD 799–877);
however it was condemned by the First Council of Nicaea (AD 325) as an
excessive misinterpretation of the biblical verse Matthew 19:12 which ends with
the exhortation ‘there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the
kingdom of heaven, he that can take, let him take it’.3 Peter Abelard, in the

1
I touch on the relative lack of genital mutilation in hagiography in ch. 1 of Torture and
Brutality in Medieval Literature: Negotiations of National Identity (Cambridge: D. S.
Brewer, 2012); in my effort to flesh out that discussion I have synthesized some compo-
nents from that chapter in this essay. My original material from that work is cited where
used, and I have cited some of the same secondary sources.
2
Jacqueline Murray, ‘“The law of sin that is in my members”: The Problem of Male
Embodiment’, in Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe,
ed. Samantha J. E. Riches and Sarah Salih (London and New York: Routledge, 2002),
pp. 9–22 at p. 17
3
Douay-Rheims version of the Holy Bible, with commentary by Bishop Richard Challoner
(1749–52) (Rockford, IL: Tan Books and Publishers, 1971, photographic reproduction
of 1899 edition). In this volume, Jack Collins fully addresses the implications of Origen’s
action. See ‘Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in
Early Christianity’, pp. 78–86.
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88 LARISSA TRACY

twelfth-century account of his own castration (Historia calamitatum), lauds

Origen as a model (albeit excessive) for sexual restraint but constructs his own
forced, punitive mutilation as a form of martyrdom, a necessary trial to achieve
spiritual purity. Martin Irvine suggests that Abelard ‘will be able to imitate the
exemplary self-castrator, Origen, and other saints and martyrs who rejoiced to
be without genitals’.4 However, there are relatively few instances of castration
in hagiographical narratives; most occur as part of a miracle performed by the
saint. Even in the thirteenth century South English Legendary (SEL), which
contains some of the most graphic and most brutal depictions of torture in
hagiography, that line is not crossed. Despite the gruesome nature of its narra-
tives, the SEL condemns castration and sexual mutilation as taboo, especially
when self-inflicted, because such wounding diminishes the sanctity of the
inviolate body and contradicts the societal constructions of masculinity
embedded in the resistance to torture. As a result, the SEL rejects castration –
like that of Abelard – as an excessive brutality that endangers the holy
masculine ideal and disrupts English notions of national identity.
In Historia calamitatum and his letters to his wife Heloise, Abelard portrays
himself as a vainglorious and foolish young man, castrated (justly) on the order
of Heloise’s uncle Fulbert for his own sexual weakness, who has come to see
his mutilation as a divine test and form of martyrdom without ever relin-
quishing the rhetoric of victimization. He compares himself to Origen, whom
he accuses of having an ‘ill-formed zeal’ for God and charges with homicide
for his self-mutilation (Letter 4: 149).5 Abelard places Origen’s autocastration
in the context of popular castration miracles, suggesting that some believe
Origen acted either ‘at the suggestion of the devil or in grave error’ (Letter 4:
149) like the young men in prior narratives. But Abelard deems himself
fortunate: ‘in my case, through God’s compassion, it was done by another’s
hand. I do not incur blame, I escape it. I deserve death and gain life’ (Letter 4:
149). Bonnie Wheeler notes that Abelard’s narrative is ‘notoriously evasive’ in
claiming that his castration was appropriate, ‘yet he finds it acceptable for his
castrators to be punished’6 – but only those who actually carried it out. He
seems satisfied that only Fulbert’s servants were castrated and blinded for
inflicting his injury and not Fulbert himself. Their punishment is either that

4
Martin Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity, and
Remasculinization’, in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and
Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), pp. 87–106 at p. 93.
5
Peter Abelard, Letter 4, in The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, ed. and trans. Betty Radice
(London: Penguin Books, 1974), p. 75. Hereafter, text and page numbers in this edition
are given in parentheses.
6
Bonnie Wheeler, ‘Origenary Fantasties: Abelard’s Castration and Confession’, in
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New
York: Garland Publishing, 2000) 107–28, p. 112.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 89

of traitors (since that was one of the options for that crime), or simply the most
appropriate considering their illegitimate punishment of Abelard.
The effect of such a brutal action enacted on a prominent figure had serious
implications for medieval ideas of justice, law, torture, and punishment.7
Abelard’s very public castration – public in the sense that it was part of literary
and religious dialogue in his lifetime and in subsequent centuries – may have
actually triggered the response against such brutality in the Old French
fabliaux8 and influenced other texts that engage in discourses on castration like
the thirteenth-century Latin De Vetula and its fourteenth-century French trans-
lation, Jean Le Fèvre’s La Vieille.9 But in the centuries that followed, and in the
vast corpus of hagiography (both Latin and vernacular), castration seems to
have been rejected, particularly in the SEL, as one of the litany of torments to
which select male saints were subjected en route to achieving martyrdom. This
may partly be because of the influence of Abelard’s work and the impact his
literary construction of castration had on religious discourse and medieval
ideas of masculinity. In the SEL, castration is not a component of martyrdom
because it violates the purity of the body and undermines the masculinity of
the saints who serve a specifically English agenda.
In the course of enduring heinous tortures inflicted by illegitimate,
barbarian authority, male saints are rarely (if ever) castrated. Although a select
few male saints in the SEL are stripped naked and have their flesh ripped from
their bodies (even to the bone), castration is largely absent from these narra-
tives. Similarly, while female saints are subjected to a litany of tortures in their
martyrdom accounts, those torments rarely amount to genital mutilation; in
fact, female saints are – almost without exception – protected from rape or
sexualized torture (except for mastectomies)10 because in order to achieve

7
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 211.
8
See Mary E. Leech, ‘The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and
Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee’, pp. 210–28, in this volume.
9
See Robert L. A. Clark, ‘Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre’s
La Vieille’, in this volume, pp. 280–94.
10
Several female saints are subjected to breast ripping including Lucy, Agatha, Agnes, and
Christina and a few are threatened with rape and despoilment. Beth Crachiolo contends
that the nakedness of the female body is part of the virgin martyr legend, that ‘women
martyrs are routinely deprived of their clothes just before they are tortured’, which func-
tions as a facet of the torture and humiliation to which these women are subjected.
‘Female and Male Martyrs in the South English Legendary’, in’A Great Effusion of Blood’?:
Interpreting Medieval Violence, ed. Mark D. Meyerson, Daniel Thiery, and Oren Falk
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004) pp. 147–63 at p. 158. However, in most
instances when the judges attempt to strip the martyr they are unsuccessful; either the
clothes cling fast, the woman’s hair grows to cover her body, or she is shrouded in divine
light which blinds the pagan witnesses or strikes them down. The purity of the virgin
martyr must remain intact, her virginity and her modesty. Many artistic renderings of
these legends depict the martyrs in various states of undress that lends to the visual
aspects of the torture, but it is rarely a component of the narrative legends except in the
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90 LARISSA TRACY

sainthood they must remain intact as virgins, and any genital mutilation that
might border on sexual violation could threaten their purity.
The image of brutalized and tortured saints was a common one in the
Middle Ages, thanks in large part to Jacobus de Voragine’s thirteenth-century
Legenda aurea (LgA) (1255–66)11 which collected hundreds of vitae into one
Latin volume. The mutilated and torn bodies of saints were visible to the
average lay person on altars, in paintings, stonework, and stained glass, and
their stories were, ‘retold with gusto’; in the retelling, ‘horrors became more
horrible, even as triumph over pain, decay and fragmentation became more
impressive and more improbable’.12 For medieval audiences, ‘the relationship
between the body and holiness was tense, indeed, fraught, as they sought to
reconcile the inherent goodness of the body, as exemplified in the doctrines of
the Incarnation and the Resurrection of the Body, with the antimaterialist
critique proffered by dualism’.13 Nowhere is this relationship more fraught than
in the SEL, singular in its brutality, ‘which by far exceeds what we find in both
the Legenda aurea and in most contemporary vernacular legends’.14 But there
were limits to the level of brutality even in those narratives that capture the
most horrific physical punishments conceived by mankind. The vernacular
SEL negotiates anxieties of national identity in the torture of male and female
saints. By not including castration as one of the many horrific torments
inflicted on his saints, the author rejects this extreme form of punishment that
was only a tenet of English law because it was imported by Norman invaders.

South English Legendary. For further information on visual aspects of torture in medieval
art, see Robert Mills, Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure, and Punishment in Medieval
Culture (London: Reaktion Books, 2005). Karen Winstead has also edited and translated
a selection of virgin martyr legends from various English collections. See Chaste Passions:
Medieval English Virgin Martyr Legends, ed. Karen Winstead (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2000).
11
The LgA, of which some one thousand manuscripts survive, was translated into French
(Legende doreé, 1380–1480), and Middle English (the Gilte Legende, c. 1438), and later
printed by William Caxton as The Golden Legend (1483). Genevieve Hasenohr records
the popularity of the LgA and its French vernacular translation the Legende doreé in
northern France, in ‘Religious Reading amongst the Laity in France in the Fifteenth
Century’, in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530, ed. Peter Biller and Anne Hudson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 205–21. The Legenda aurea has been
translated and edited by both William Granger Ryan and Christopher Stace. See Jacobus
de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. and ed. William Granger
Ryan, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); and The Golden Legend,
ed. Christopher Stace with an introduction by Richard Hamer (London: Penguin Books,
1998).
12
Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the
Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), p. 269.
13
Murray, ‘“The law of sin that is in my members’”, p. 9.
14
Karen Winstead, Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Late Medieval England (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 73.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 91

In doing so, the SEL author establishes a clear idea of bodily sanctity that, while
not contingent on the body’s wholeness, must retain its sexual integrity.
The Middle English SEL (1270–80) evolved independently from continental
hagiography; it was assembled in the southwest Midlands during the second
half of the thirteenth century and was revised and supplemented around
1380–90.15 There are more than sixty extant SEL manuscripts, and its adap-
tation of Latin material is marked by a specific attention to native English saints’
lives, making it one of the best-represented works in Middle English, next to
Prick of Conscience, the Canterbury Tales, and Piers Plowman.16 These native
legends relate the history of the English Church from a time ‘when Christianity
was first brought to England by St Augustine [of Kent] up to the thirteenth
century when the SEL was composed’.17 The SEL collection is unique in its
concentration on the lives of English saints as well as more standard continental
ones, particularly in the oldest extant manuscript Bodleian Library, Oxford,
Laud Misc. MS 108, which also contains romances adapted from French
sources into Middle English. As Kimberly K. Bell writes, ‘the SEL shows a
vested interest in creating an overarching image of England that possesses a
singular type of holiness, a sanctity that is political and distinctively English’.18
The SEL engages with its contemporary English audience by providing
extensive details of local placenames, laws, death duties, the situation of the
poor, the rights of the Church versus the state, historical conflicts, particularly
between the Old English and the Danes, as well as accounts of Old English
kingdoms.19 In these highly localized accounts, the unique brutality of judicial
torture in the SEL takes on an additional, and decidedly national, agenda
because interrogatory torture was largely illegal in England throughout the
Middle Ages and many English texts reject its use as the practice of a barbarian

15
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 35. The torture of male and female saints in SEL is featured
in ch. 1, pp. 31–69.
16
Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, pp. 71–2.
17
Renee Hamelinck, ‘St Kenhelm and the Legends of the South English Legendary’, in
Companion to Early Middle English Literature, ed. N.H.G.E. Veldhoen and H. Aertsen
(Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1995), pp. 19–28 at p. 19.
18
Kimberly K. Bell, ‘“Holie mannes liues”: England and Its Saints in Oxford, Bodleian
Library, MS Laud Misc. 108’s King Horn and South English Legendary’, in the Texts and
Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English
Vernacular Narrative, ed. Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch (Leiden: Brill, 2011),
pp. 251–74 at p. 254.
19
Klaus P. Jankofsky, ‘National Characteristics in the Portrayal of English Saints in the
South English Legendary’, in Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate
Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp.
81–93 at p. 84. Also see Jill Frederick, ‘The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon Saints
and National Identity’, in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth
to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 57–73.
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92 LARISSA TRACY

‘Other’.20 In most hagiography the pagan authority functions as a sovereign

(judge and witness), but also as a ‘symbol of anti-Christian forces, of heresy, of
sadistic voyeurism, of government gone bad’.21 To an English audience the
tormentors are even more barbarous, even more alien, but they have a particular
resonance within the political contests of thirteenth-century England.22 While
the SEL author made the political decision to write in English, the wicked
judges use phrases like ‘bel ami’, ‘beu frere’ and ‘beu sire’, mimicking the aris-
tocracy whose primary court language was still French.23 Robert Mills writes
that the ‘use of such language places the tormentors within an Anglo-Norman
milieu and hints at another context for the [SEL’s] circulation’.24 The excessive
brutality of the Latin saints’ lives thus becomes a critique of perceived conti-
nental influence, especially in relation to emasculation. As noted previously,
castration was a feature of Anglo-Norman law, imported with the Conquest of
1066. It is possible that the author and compilers of the SEL deliberately rejected
castration as a hagiographical motif in order to distance thirteenth-century
England from its ruling class (descended as most of it was from invading
Normans), instead aligning it with Anglo-Saxon England. The absence of
castration among the catalog of vicious tortures so gruesomely depicted
throughout the SEL implies that not even barbarian tyrants would resort to
measures that rob male saints of their masculine identity.
In the SEL, the English vitae are ‘grounded in the specificity of English
history’.25 Those specifically English narratives often express anti-Norman (or
anti-Danish) sentiments and encode their male saints with a virile voice of oppo-
sition and resistance. Saint Wulfstan’s account of the Battle of Hastings, for
example, is a potent rejection of the Norman Conquest and its leaders.26 William
is described as the ‘Bastard’ who ‘þouзte to winne Enguelond: þoruз strencþe
and tricherie’ and ‘destruyde and nam al þat he fond: and þat folk sore aferde’
(SEL 20:64–8).27 The narrator complains bitterly that when William is made
king, ‘al enguelond bi-sette, / Ase he wolde, with straunge men’ (SEL 20: 101–2),
emphasizing the foreignness of the Normans as he relates the Arthurian-style

20
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, pp. 35, 132–90.
21
Martha Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death in the Huntington Library Legenda aurea’, in
Gender and Holiness: Men, Women and Saints in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Riches and
Salih, pp. 49–64 at p. 56.
22
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 35.
23
Robert Mills, ‘Violence, Community and the Materialisation of Belief’, in A Companion
to Middle English Hagiography, ed. Sarah Salih (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006),
pp. 87–103 at p. 100.
24
Ibid., p. 100.
25
Bell, ‘“Holie mannes liues”‘, p. 255.
26
Jankofsky, ‘National Characteristics’, p. 85.
27
The Life of Saint Wulfstan, in The Early South-English Legendary or Lives of Saints, MS
Laud 108 in the Bodleian Library, ed. Carl Horstmann, EETS, os 87 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1887; reprinted 2000), pp. 70–7.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 93

miracle of Wulfstan pulling his crozier from a stone in Edward the Confessor’s
tomb (SEL 20: 139–88). Such sentiment is echoed by several thirteenth-century
authors including Robert of Gloucester and Matthew Paris, who felt their
country was being overrun by outsiders. Robert of Gloucester specifically
reminds the audience of his metrical chronicle that their country has an
‘English past which predates recent Norman-usurped history, and which is,
into the bargain, a past enshrining values of good, and Godly, governance
which has, unhappily for the people, been corrupted’.28 Robert’s anxieties about
foreigners are directed against the people whom he describes as the French,
‘particularly because of the preferment given to them over the English; the
increase in their numbers is attributed by him solely to the royal family’.29 King
John (1199–1216), his son Henry III (1216–72), his grandson Edward I
(1272–1307), and great-grandson Edward II (1307–27) found themselves in
difficulty in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as questions of national
identity based on cultural inheritance and right to rule came to the fore.30
Robert of Gloucester’s chronicle narrates contemporary disturbances like the
barons’ rebellion, which essentially ended with the battle of Evesham (1265),
and further woes that were to be expected under Henry’s reign if it did not
return to the ‘gode olde law’ of the Anglo-Saxon past.31 The battle of Evesham,
and the post-mortem mutilation of the rebel leader Simon de Montfort, whose
severed head and testicles were sent as a trophy to Lady Mortimer, the wife of
Lord Roger Mortimer (one the king’s supporters), were a particular mark of
this perceived ‘Norman’ brutality.
The legend of St Dominic in MS Laud 108 incorporates a complimentary
statement about Simon de Montfort’s father, ‘a thinly veiled allusion to the son
himself ’.32 The younger de Montfort was a popular hero who epitomized
resistance to monarchical power and was venerated ‘as a saint-like figure’ after
his death at Evesham and so the sympathetic reference in certain versions of
the SEL ‘is in keeping with the anti-Norman sentiments expressed elsewhere
in the collection, since it points towards tensions between the monarchy and

28
Sarah Mitchell, ‘Kings, Constitution and Crisis: “Robert of Gloucester” and the Anglo-
Saxon Remedy’, in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons, ed. Scragg and Weinberg,
pp. 39–56 at p. 43. Mitchell explains that the ‘Robert of Gloucester’ chronicle is extant in
two recensions containing the same material until 1135, at which point they divide, the
first (longer) recension goes up to 1271; the second recension provides a lengthy account
of Stephen’s reign and ends with a brief account of the accession of Edward I in 1272.
The chronicle can be dated to the late thirteenth/early fourteenth century, the earliest
surviving manuscript of which is London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A.xi, dated
on palaeographical grounds to 1300–30 (p. 39, n. 3). Cited in Tracy, Torture and Brutality,
pp. 134–5.
29
Mitchell, ‘Kings, Constitution and Crisis’, pp. 43–4.
30
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 135.
31
Mitchell, ‘Kings, Constitution and Crisis’, p. 41.
32
Mills, ‘Violence, Community and the Materialisation of Belief’, p. 101.
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94 LARISSA TRACY

high nobility, characterized as foreign, and the broad ranks of English

baronage’.33 His castration, designed as a deterrent to other potential rebels,
stripped him of the symbols of masculine virility, adding to the indignity of
his death which left a smoldering resentment among his supporters. Portrayed
as a martyr, Simon embodies the enduring suffering of the English people
under Normanized rule. The SEL develops an idea of Englishness that is ‘not
limited to and does not depend on dynasty: by turning to the saintly past of
England before the Norman Conquest, it imagines an English Christian
identity that bypasses the crisis in dynastic authority and lineage’.34 Bell writes
that the SEL re-envisions the nation of England in its concentration on
vernacular English saints’ lives, constructing ‘a sense of English self-identity,
one that is sanctified, holy, and singular’,35 and ultimately masculine.
The native vitae thus recount the ‘historical’ brutality of invaders and
usurpers but avoid more popular accounts of miracles that include literal
castration as a motif. For example, William of Malmesbury’s twelfth-century
Vita Wulfstani (translated from Old English into Latin) recounts the miracle
of Thomas Elderfield. Castrated for injuring another man, Thomas protests his
innocence (while local teens kick his amputated testicles and eyes about); he
then appeals to the saint who restores him to health.36 It is possible that the
Latin version exaggerates the details of the castration and blinding, making it
public so that the miracle seems trustworthy,37 but the text states that castration
and blinding are merciful, a reprieve from the standard punishment of hanging.
Klaus van Eickels cites this episode as evidence that twelfth- and thirteenth-
century hagiographical texts ‘show how the sentence was executed in public’,
further arguing that ‘it is hardly conceivable that the author of a saint’s life
would depict an almost contemporary miracle in a way that departed far from
the common practice familiar to his audience’.38 In contrast, Mills argues that
these spectacular punishments, specifically in artistic renderings, do not reflect
‘realism’, because that would assume that medieval viewers witnessed compa-
rable scenes in real life when they usually did not.39 The episode in the Vita
Wulfstani seems to be a unique reference to castration in English hagiography.
It is not in the SEL version of Wulfstan’s vita, despite the inclusion of other

33
Ibid.
34
Catherine Sanock, Her Life Historical: Exemplarity and Female Saints’ Lives in Late
Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), p. 84.
35
Bell, ‘“Holie mannes liues”‘, p. 260.
36
William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, ed. R. R. Darlington (London: Royal Historical
Society, 1928): pp. 168–75 at p. 171. Cited in Klaus van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence:
Castration and Blinding as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman
England’, in Violence, Vulnerability and Embodiment: Gender and History, ed. Shani
D’Cruze and Anupama Rao (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 94–108 at p. 101.
37
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, p. 101.
38
Ibid.
39
Mills, Suspended Animation, p. 121.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 95

healing miracles performed by the saint. Two Latin versions of the vita of
Thomas Becket (by William of Canterbury and Benedict of Peterborough) also
relate a restorative miracle where the saint heals a man sentenced to castration
and blinding for breaking and entering, but it is not repeated in the SEL version
of Thomas’s life.40 Castration and blinding were legal punishments largely intro-
duced to England by the Normans, and while there are Anglo-Saxon references
to castration as punishment (as Jay Paul Gates explains in this volume),41 it
seems to have been a foreign practice before 1066. In fact, castration as a legally
sanctioned punishment had faded in northern Europe by the thirteenth
century.42 And while castration and blinding were a punishment for rape before
the reign of Edward I (1239–1307), according to the Mirror of Justices (1285–90),
in later medieval England castration as a punishment for any crime was
extremely rare.43 The omission of this specific miracle from the Middle English
Wulfstan suggests that either the author is reflecting a change in English
practice, or he is distancing his Anglo-Saxon patriot from the brutality of the
Norman invaders and Becket from the perceived tyranny of Angevin kings.
Castration as punishment for a crime (specifically treason) was a hallmark
of Norman changes to existing Anglo-Saxon law. William I brought a specifi-
cally Scandinavian flavor of justice to England when he invaded. As Corinne
Saunders writes, ‘loss of member and blinding are generally presented in the

40
William of Canterbury, Miracula sancti Thomae Cantuariensis, in Materials for the
History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, vol. 1, ed. James Craigie Robertson.
Rolls Series 67 (London: Longmans, 1875), pp. 156–8; and Benedict of Peterborough,
Miracula sancti Thomae Cantuariensis, in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, vol.
2, ed. Robertson (London: Longmans, 1876), pp. 173–82 at p. 177 (cited in van Eickels,
‘Gendered Violence’, p. 101). The SEL version in MS Laud 108 is quite long and gives
extraordinary detail about facets of Thomas’s life. The author chastises Henry II and his
sons, particularly John, who is described as having usurped the throne from his nephew
Arthur. St Thomas of Canterbury, in The Early South-English Legendary or Lives of Saints,
MS Laud 108 in the Bodleian Library, ed. Carl Horstmann, EETS, os 87 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1887; reprinted 2000), pp. 106–77. Ironically, John was urged by his
advisors to have Arthur blinded and castrated, rendering him unfit to rule (van Eickels,
‘Gendered Violence’, p. 100). Another account of Becket’s life relates that Geoffrey of Anjou
(father of Henry II) ordered the bishop of Séez and several of his clerics to be castrated
for electing a bishop without his approval (van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, p. 102); and
while the account exists in several versions it is possible that the repeated used of
castration for political purposes by the Angevin house and its forebears may function
more as a motif designed to paint Henry II and his people (enemies of Becket) as the
most cruel and wicked tyrants, rather than accurately depicting actual practice.
Hagiography was often constructed as political and religious propaganda.
41
Even then, it is only mentioned as punishment for a slave who rapes another slave and
is only able to make compensation through his castration. Gates, ‘The Fulmannod
Society’, p. 133 and Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”’, p. 155.
42
Peter Browe, Zur Geschichte der Entmannung: Eine religions- und rechtsgeschichtliche
Studie (Breslau: Müller & Seiffert, 1936).
43
Lee Patterson, ‘Chaucer’s Pardoner on the Couch: Psyche and Clio in Medieval Literary
Studies’, Speculum 76.3 (July 2001): 638–80 at p. 659.
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96 LARISSA TRACY

Leis Willelme as punishments most acceptable to William I’.44 Van Eickels argues
that castration, virtually unknown in France, Germany, and Anglo-Saxon
England, was ‘frequently employed in the Scandinavian north’ where it was used
to eliminate rivals who could not be killed because they were family.45 He further
suggests that the Scandinavians who settled Normandy in the tenth century
brought that legal practice with them: ‘Unlike other features, it survived the
process of cultural and linguistic assimilation, which otherwise integrated them
into post-Carolingian France within only three generations.’46 He cites evidence
of Anglo-Norman and French chroniclers who recount ‘a considerable number
of cases’ in which William I’s sons (William II and Henry I) have noblemen and
other political rivals castrated and blinded for conspiring against them.47 Most
notably, Henry I ordered the castration of all the financiers in England in 1125
for debasing the currency.48 However, frequent references to castration in chron-
icles do not necessarily mean it was as common in practice. In this volume,
Charlene Eska gives a detailed analysis of the commonality of the practice and
the effect the Norman laws regarding castration had on societies they invaded,
specifically Wales and Ireland. Van Eickels points out that ‘maiming or execution
was almost never inflicted upon members of the higher nobility’ in Anglo-
Angevin England.49 But the threat of death or mutilation seemed sufficient cause
for English barons opposing the king to seek safe haven in the French court as
‘the spheres of English and French rule overlapped on the continent’.50
The bodily sufferings of saints depicted in hagiography and in art were
reminiscent of those inflicted on accused criminals.51 Castration may have been
taboo in hagiography as a genre because the authors did not want to align their
saints with the criminals against whom the sentence was historically applied –
actual criminals convicted under law rather than holy innocents persecuted in
a pagan farce. The introduction of castration into English law by the Normans
may have been too reminiscent of castration rituals attributed to pagan practice
in the eyes of English hagiographers. The Normans could have been recast as
barbarians for employing such measures. But even the pagan persecutors in
these texts do not resort to castration, regardless of how much they may

44
Corinne Saunders, Rape and Ravishment in the Literature of Medieval England
(Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001), p. 49.
45
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, p. 100. See Anthony Adams, ‘“He took a stone away”:
Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga’ in this volume, pp. 188–209 for
a fuller discussion on castration in Scandinavian tradition.
46
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, p. 100.
47
Ibid.
48
He also had their right hands cut off – the Anglo-Saxon punishment – in an attempt to
synthesize the two legal traditions (ibid.).
49
Ibid., p. 101.
50
Ibid.
51
Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death’, p. 55.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 97

mutilate the body of a male saint for imagined crimes. In this context, the SEL
serves a specifically English, rather than Anglo-Norman, purpose. Of course,
this ‘English’ purpose was complicated by the diversity of a thirteenth-century
England populated by Anglo-Scandinavians of Danish descent, those of Anglo-
Saxon ancestry, Anglo-Normans in the ruling class torn between French and
English identities while also claiming descent from the Danes of Normandy,
and the Welsh, Scots, and Cornish.52 As Diane Speed explains, ‘the creative
literature of the latter part of the thirteenth century, as England ceased to
function as a colony in the control of an alien aristocracy, may specifically be
said to mark the clear emergence of English literature as the text of the nation’.53
Other texts of the SEL reflect not only the tensions of national identity
inscribed in omitting castration miracles of English saints, but the anxieties of
self-castration for spiritual purification enmeshed in the ecclesiastical discourse
of chastity and virginity. Anke Bernau cites an episode from the life of St Paul
Hermit where Paul witnesses the torture of a Christian man who is tied down
to a bed and fondled by a prostitute; as the man is moved to lechery, he fights
the sexual urges by biting off a piece of his tongue and spitting it at her – a
metaphorical castration.54 Mastering his unruly flesh this way highlights some
of the underlying attitudes to male sanctity.55 Male saints were venerated partly
for their self-control, for the ability to overcome the weaknesses of their bodies
and remain steadfast. Despite the self-control embodied by physical acts like
that of biting off the tongue to curb desire, castration, especially autocastration
(whatever the motive), is threatening because it violates the purity and sanctity
of the masculine body. In the SEL vita of St James, James restores a young
pilgrim to life who has been tricked by the devil into castrating himself and
committing suicide. However, James does not restore the severed organ: ‘His
menbres, þat he carf of: euer-eft he dude misse, / Bote a luytel wise зware-þoruз
he miзhte: зwane he wolde pisse’ (15: 380–1).56 The young man must live with
a dire and foolish action that renders him physically ‘female’ – he must now
squat to piss.
The same miracle is told by Guibert of Nogent,57 and is a central feature of

52
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, pp. 136–7.
53
Diane Speed, ‘The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance’, in Readings
in Medieval English Romance, ed. Carol M. Meale (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994),
pp. 135–57 at p. 139.
54
Anke Bernau, ‘Gender and Sexuality’, in A Companion to Middle English Hagiography,
ed. Salih, pp. 104–21 at p. 115.
55
Ibid.
56
All SEL quotations from Saint James the Great are in The Early South-English Legendary,
ed. Horstmann, pp. 33–45.
57
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 88. In his autobiographical memoirs
De vita sua, Guibert relates ‘castration anxiety nightmares’ as well as war stories with
graphic accounts of genital mutilation like that Thomas of Coucy who would hang his
enemies up by their testicles and penises until they ripped free (p. 88).
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98 LARISSA TRACY

the Spanish legend of Santiago de Compostela.58 In that legend, the pilgrim is

convinced to castrate himself by a devil in the likeness of St James, which
suggests that hagiographers see castration as the work (or at least by-product)
of devilish temptation rather than as a legitimate means of spiritual purification.
The sinner can only be induced to castrate himself if he believes St James urges
it, but he is woefully led astray because a true saint would never sanction such
an act. In short, castration was not a substitute for self-control.59 This episode
also reinforces the Christian prohibition against self-castration suggesting that
‘radical self-mutilation was not necessarily an acceptable method of bodily subli-
mation for ordinary Christians’60 – or extraordinary ones, for that matter. Where
female saints are often lauded for their ‘masculine’ defiance of torture, both
Guibert and the SEL author suggest that this kind of self-mutilation is feminizing
and degrading. According to Murray, the consequence was that
cushioned among the many assertions of masculine superiority, especially
with regard to the control of the flesh, there are also faint echoes of men’s
dis-ease with their own bodies and the chasm that separated their own lived
experience of a male body from the ideal of chastity and bodily control that
was established as an essential aspect for salvation.61

Castrating a male saint would destabilize the sanctity of the masculine body,
but also remove the male saint from a gendered (if not sexualized) existence.
Most male saints (with a few notable exceptions such as George and
Laurence) are not actually tortured or interrogated but are simply executed in
particularly gruesome ways – horrific and slow ends, pure exercises in judicial
brutality rather than systematic and repetitive cycles of torments and ordeals.
Torture is unnecessary for a man to achieve sanctity.62 Individual forms of
punishment inflicted on male saints do not seem as spectacular as the litany
of torments inflicted on the bodies of female saints. Beth Crachiolo argues that
this is because there is no spectacle of torture for male saints, only female ones;
torture in the vita of a male martyr is an event in which he is involved, while
torture in the vita of a female saint is a spectacle she must endure.63 Crachiolo

58
Ryan D. Giles, ‘The Miracle of Gerald the Pilgrim: Hagiographic Visions of Castration
in the Liber Sancti Jacobi and Milagros de Nuestra Senora’, Neophilologus 94 (2010):
439–50.
59
Jacqueline Murray, ‘Mystical Castration: Some Reflections on Peter Abelard, Hugh of
Lincoln and Sexual Control’, in Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in
the Medieval West (New York: Garland Publishing, 1999), pp. 73–91, p. 74.
60
Mills, ‘Violence, Community and the Materialisation of Belief’, p. 102.
61
Murray, ‘“The law of sin that is in my members”‘, p. 12.
62
Though there are certainly female saints like Paula and Elizabeth of Hungary whose piety
is enough to insure sanctity without being subjected to torture, virgin martyrs are the
most common female saints.
63
Crachiolo, ‘Female and Male Martyrs’, pp. 152, 153.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 99

further argues that there are two concerns in the life of a male saint: how the
saint deals with torture and who he is outside of the torture, neither of which
specifically focuses on the body.64 Male martyrs have identities unconnected
with their bodily suffering – archdeacon, deacon, bishop, knight, abbot – that
shift focus away from the tortured male bodies.65 But in the SEL, the torture of
male saints is as much a spectacle as that of the female saints because in these
narratives the gender boundaries are often blurred and frustrated. There is no
‘gendered’ torture for male saints, because they do not have physical markers
that can be removed without excising the defining feature of their gender. Many
of the male saints suffer as a form of imitatio Christi, which involves a physical
mortification of the flesh that, by the twelfth century, had been physically
defined as male. Many religious debates emphasized the ‘humanation’ of God,
of which ‘enfleshing’ Christ and ‘the full range of his members’, was a significant
part.66 As Caroline Walker Bynum points out, ‘growing out of a twelfth-century
concern for imitating the human Christ, the theme of humanation was present
in a wide variety of saints’ lives and devotional texts of the thirteenth and four-
teenth centuries’.67
The SEL version of St Laurence’s martyrdom emphasizes his courage and
steadfastness as he is stretched out on the gridiron, placed over burning coals
and turned with fire forks, but it also makes the point that he suffers:68
Þe tormentores stoden al-a-boute: and bleowen þat fuyr wel faste;
with Irene pikes huy pulten him: and schouen In faste a-boue.
Louerd, muche was þe pyne: þat he soffrede for þi loue!
Þat fuyr bi-neoþe rostede him: al quic mid flesch and blode,
And þe Irene pikes in is flesch: ful bitterliche huy wode.
(SEL 157–61)

Significantly, his genitalia are never mentioned. Nothing that is done to him
marks him as ‘male’; he is not tortured according to his gender – his masculine
body is not the central focus of his sanctity. Laurence curses his tormentors for
their brutality:
‘þov wrechche,’ seide þis holie man: ‘mi wille hath euere i-beo
For-to come to þis murie solas: þat ich here nouþe i-seo.

64
Ibid., p. 151.
65
Ibid., p. 156.
66
Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, p. 90.
67
Ibid.
68
This is a departure from female hagiography and certain iconographic representations
where saints specifically do not feel pain, and often taunt the tormentors to do their
worst. As Winstead notes, ‘Despite their graphic representation of torture and dismem-
berment, however, late medieval artists rarely suggest that the saints suffer. In this respect,
the iconography of martyrdom differs from the iconography of the Passion which was
so profoundly concerned with Christ’s agony’ (Virgin Martyrs, p. 88).
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100 LARISSA TRACY

Wel mo tormenz þane here beoth: to þe beoth i-mad al-зare

In þe pine of helle: зwane ich schal to þe Ioye of heue ne fare.’
(SEL 108–11)69

In contrast, the narrative of St George hinges on an accusation of treason.

Dacian brands him a ‘traytour’ and orders him to be punished as one:
he liet him hangi up an heiз: In one-manere rode
And þare-to him binde faste al naked: with ropes strongue and guode.
With kene Owles þer-under: þe tormentores stode
And to-drowen is holie lymes: þat faste huy ronne on blode;
Al huy to-teren is te[n]dre flesch: þe peces fullen to grounde.
(43:31–5)70

It is possible in the course of this brutal dismemberment – when the flesh is

torn off his body until it falls on the ground – that he is also castrated, but
the author makes no specific reference to his genitalia. The narrative certainly
does not lack detail. He is covered with burning oil, brought down and
scourged ‘and wounde op-on oþur made – / to þe bare bon þe scourgene comen’
(43:39–40), salt is rubbed into the wounds ‘and sethþe with a clout of here’
(43:42). The author interjects, bemoaning his suffering: ‘louerd, muche was þe
pine þat he hadde’ (43:43). George is cast into prison to sit out the night in
pain; unlike his female contemporaries, he is not miraculously healed but ‘he
lai al þe longue niзt: to oþur wo þat he hadde’ (43:49). A brass wheel of swords
is then constructed ‘þat þe swerdes scholden is bodi to-rende: and to-drawe
al-so’ (43:56) but the wheel bursts by God’s will so ‘þat þis holie man: harmless
þarof he was’ (43:59). Next Dacian makes a brass furnace, fills it with molten
lead, and tosses George in. Here, George’s response parallels that of female
saints like Christina who act as though boiling metal is nothing but a bath:
þare-Inne he sat wel softe a-doun: ase þei him noþing nere,
And leonede to þe brerde stille: ase þei he a-slepe were;
he lai ase þei he in reste were: for-to þat led atþe laste
was al in-to þe colde i-turnd: þat boylede er so faste.
(43:67–70)

Despite the brutality of the first set of punishments (and his evident pain),
George appears unharmed by the later ones much like the female saints whose
tender bodies remain miraculously unscathed, or are healed over and over until
the killing blow. Finally, frustrated in his efforts to hurt the saintly George,

69
All SEL quotations from Saint Laurence are in The Early South-English Legendary, ed.
Horstmann, pp. 340–5.
70
All SEL quotations from Saint George are in The Early South-English Legendary, ed.
Horstmann, pp. 294–6.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 101

Dacian orders his men to ‘drowen him þoruз-ovt al þe toun: for-to huy with-
oute come, / [& þat] huy smitten of his heued: with-oute þe toun atþe laste, /
And is bodi þare in sum foul place: to wilde bestes it caste’ (43:78–80). After
George prays for his feast day to be observed in April, and for those who
venerate him to be protected, his wish is granted by a heavenly voice and he is
beheaded.
George’s martyrdom is very much like a plethora of virgin martyr legends
and in resisting the torture inflicted on his body he takes on many aspects of
the female saint – especially in the emphasis on his virginity. But his tortured
body is naked, whereas most female saints cannot be stripped, no matter how
hard their tormentors try. According to Martha Easton, a naked martyr
‘particularly one who is depicted with ambiguous, androgynous physical
gender, suggests a rebirth into a state of grace in which gender is tran-
scended’.71 Mills suggests that the life of St George masks ‘a voyeuristic, erotic
subtext’ that places comparable emphasis on the ‘penetrative exploration of
the male martyr’s tender, naked flesh’ as similar texts do with female saints
like Margaret.72 Gender affects sanctity and sanctity affects gender: ‘Sainthood
often works by breaking with normal social values, and gendered identity may
be amongst these: constructing one’s gender identity differently may be a
marker of holiness.’73 Samantha J. E. Riches provides an eloquent and detailed
discussion of St George’s various narratives and the variety of punishments to
which he is subjected (including dismemberment, boiling, sawing in half),
arguing that he was a ‘borrower par excellence’ and his story appropriates many
of the torture methods found in female hagiography in an effort to focus on
his status as a virgin.74 In fact, several of the torments to which he is subjected
appear in the lives of other male and female saints.75 The legends of female
virgin martyrs are ‘both stories of Christian faith and tales of sexual denial
and frustration, with an emphasis on sexuality and physicality that is less
common in the lives of male martyrs’.76 Easton cites the example of St
Hippolytus who is stripped naked in an effort to humiliate and shame him,

71
Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death’, p. 53. She is referring specifically to the illuminated
images in the Huntington Legenda aurea in which ‘a fine line between the legs functions
as a generic stand-in for the genitalia of both sexes’.
72
Robert Mills, ‘“Whatever You Do Is a Delight to Me”: Masculinity, Masochism, and Queer
Play in Representations of Male Martyrdom’, Exemplaria 13.1 (2001): 1–37 at p. 8.
73
Riches and Salih, Gender and Holiness, pp. 1–8 at p. 5, cited in Tracy, Torture and
Brutality, p. 62.
74
Samantha J. E. Riches, ‘St George as a Male Virgin Martyr’, in Gender and Holiness, ed.
Riches and Salih, pp. 65–85 at pp. 68–9, 71.
75
Ibid., p. 71. Riches points out that George’s legend borrows the torment of the wheel
from St Katherine, but that he is less fortunate because for her, the wheel falls apart before
she can be tortured on it. It is worth noting that in the SEL, the wheel bursts as well,
aligning George even more firmly with the female virgin martyr.
76
Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death’, p. 59
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102 LARISSA TRACY

which he resists, arguing that he is clothed in heavenly bliss. Frustrated, Decius

orders him clothed again, but more richly.77 In the SEL version, Hippolytus
remains naked while with ‘scourges and with staues al-so: huy beoten him ase
huy weren wode, And al defouleden is holie bodi: þat is limes ronnen a-blode’
(SEL 67: 37–8). His holy body is defiled, drenched in blood, and then he is
clothed in rich raiment. The emperor appeals to his manhood, his masculine
identity as a knight in order to get him to worship the idols: ‘bi-þench þe wuch
a man þou art: and зwuch a knyзht þou hast i-beo, / Noble and hende, ase þou
зuyt schalt: зif þou wolt þe bi-seo; / bi-þench þe-of þat þou hast i-haued: of þi
noble dignete’ (67: 49–51). In denying the emperor, however, Hippolytus does
not deny his masculinity. He pronounces that he has become a new kind of
knight, with new battles to fight: ‘Godes knyзht of heouene ich am: and al mi
wille so is / Þat ich in his batayle be: sone i-martred, i-wis’ (SEL 67:54–6). In
response, the emperor tortures and beheads all the Christian men of
Hippolytus’ household, and finally has him tied to the tails of wild colts and
dragged to his death through a briar patch, much like George is dragged before
being beheaded.
Castration, besides being part of the discourse on bodily purity, was also
seen as a feature of pagan barbarity. Early Christian writers, without exception,
condemned the depravity of pagan religions by citing their castration rituals,
like that of Cybele and Attis.78 Lactantius, Tertullian, and Prudentius all crit-
icized the gender ambiguity that resulted from castration and Prudentius, in
particular, viewed the castration of pagan priests as proof of pagan violence.79
He went so far as to have the Christian martyr Romanus criticize pagan
castration in defense of martyrdom.80 Prudentius saw a sharp contrast between
‘the manly self-sacrifice of the Christian martyrs as soldiers of Christ and the
unmanly sacrifice of the eunuch priests’.81 The SEL rejects the dialogue about
spiritual, mystical, or literal castration altogether and although certain male
saints are subjected to physical harm, their manhood remains intact. Mills
argues that female saints’ lives produce their own disruptive effects in the
context of torture, because while male martyrs might be ‘divested of certain
signifiers of earthly masculinity’ during their torture, ‘the battles that female
virgin martyrs undergo to protect their chastity potentially associate them
with privileges that, in late medieval culture, were normally gendered male:
speaking eloquently, for instance, or thumping demonic entities with

77
Ibid.
78
Mathew S. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian
Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 249.
79
Ibid. See also Shaun Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman
Eunuchs’, in this volume, pp. 48–72.
80
Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, p. 250.
81
Ibid..
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Castration in the South English Legendary 103

hammers’.82 While their bodies are threatened, ripped, and torn, the only
gendered marker of their torture is the removal of their breasts, and while this
may be seen as extreme sexualized violence the saint ‘simultaneously remains
inviolate and sexually pure’, conveying an ‘essential and ubiquitous hagio-
graphic paradox: the juxtaposition of violence and virginal impermeability’.83
As Salih points out, ‘the virgins are most passionate when they are apparently
most vulnerable, as they suffer torture and death’, but it is important that ‘rape
is never really an option in these legends’.84 While there is no sexual rape, the
version of St Margaret’s life in the SEL is a notable exception to the standard
mastectomy motif because her womb is ripped out and her ‘deorne limes hi
totere’ (SEL 1:296).85 But Salih argues that Margaret’s body resists being seen
pornographically or even anatomically, as the ‘narrative does not see filth when
the virgins are torn open. It sees wounds and blood, but not unmediated, and
not for long.’86
Some critics have seen the physical torture of young female bodies as a
deliberate attempt on the part of hagiographers to either objectify the bodies
of female saints or to titillate themselves by reproducing images of disarticu-
lated and mutilated bodies.87 In general, ‘the images of the tortures of virgin
martyrs are often conceived in such a way that their punishments become
forms of sexual molestation. They are stripped and displayed, their breasts are
grabbed and mutilated, their bellies are penetrated with phallic swords.’88 But
more than a few male martyrs undergo the same kind of ‘prurient “body-
ripping” and phallic penetration’.89 Torture is a standard motif for saints: the
purer the virgin, the more innocent the body, and thus the greater the effect of

82
Mills, Suspended Animation, p. 173. Mills sees male saints as being ‘visually de-phalli-
cized’ by being decapitated, disembowelled, and flayed; and female saints such as Barbara
and Agatha as purportedly ‘de-sexed’ by having their breasts removed (p. 173). However
phallocentric the image of disembowellment or decapitation may seem to modern critics,
medieval audiences would not necessarily have read the torture of male saints as sexu-
alized in any way, except in the rare cases of castration; and female genital mutilation
was equally rare, the sexualization of torture for female saints is generally enacted in the
mastectomies. But in either case, the saints’ transcendence of physical abuse elevates
them from the corporeal world and lowers their persecutors.
83
Mills, Suspended Animation, p. 117.
84
Sarah Salih, Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,
2001), pp. 73, 89.
85
Saint Margaret, in The South English Legendary Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS
145 and British Museum MS Harley 2277, ed. Charlotte d’Evelyn and Anna J.Mill, vol. 1,
EETS, os 235 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956, rpt. 1967), p. 126.
86
Salih, Versions of Virginity, p. 93.
87
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 55.
88
Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death’, p. 57.
89
Mills, ‘“Whatever You Do Is a Delight to Me”‘, p. 7. Acts of castration evoke fears of
homosexuality in the heterosexual paradigm, which is why Abelard takes such pains to
inscribe his heterosexual relationship with Heloise, even though he has forsaken it.
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104 LARISSA TRACY

ripping it to shreds.90 To some extent the physical violation of the saint is a

necessary component of his or her sacrifice. Without the apparent objectifi-
cation of the victim of torture, there can be no response to the brutality of the
torture; torture objectifies both the saints and the tormentor.91 The saint is sanc-
tified, the tormentor is demonized and the use of torture resonates with the
audience as a tool of the barbarian Other.92 For audiences of the SEL who could
comfortably situate judicial torture outside the practice of their realm, relo-
cating acts of castration would be more difficult. In England, where castration
remained on the law books as a punishment for treason until the fourteenth
century,93 it was not the tool of foreigners or distant barbarians, but of English
jurisprudence that should have been more equitable and less brutal. More
importantly, in both the punishment of treason and rape, castration was
designed to remove the propagating ability of the offender; emasculation was
not about limiting the ability to have sex (necessarily) but about removing the
capacity for siring children – the defining feature of medieval masculinity.
Male saints who were constructed as chaste and virginal (even if they were
not actually virgins) retain that masculine capability as part of their defiance
against foreign tyranny. Salih argues that male virginity potentially involves
‘regendering’ because clerics are forbidden both marriage and fighting, ‘the
marks of secular masculinity’, but for male saints, sexual status is rarely the
‘locus of their sanctity’.94 For female saints, defiance rests in their vocal
resistance to authority – which generally begins when an authority covets the
body of the female saint and attempts to woo or force her into marriage. For
many of the female saints, their religion is secondary to their desire to retain
their virginity; Christianity is their primary defense for not wanting to submit
to the cruel and wanton desires of a pagan judge or prince. Their beliefs protect

90
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 55. There have been several valuable studies on female
saints and the male gaze, as well as the construction of female saints by male authors.
See Anne Clark Bartlett, Male Authors, Female Readers: Representations and Subjectivity
in Middle English Devotional Literature (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995);
Catherine M. Mooney, ed., Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999); Salih, Versions of Virginity;
Winstead, Virgin Martyrs; and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary
Culture c. 1150–1300: Virginity and Its Authorisations (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001).
91
Tracy, Torture and Brutality, p. 56.
92
Ibid.
93
Castration remained the punishment of record in England for rape until 1275. In 1234,
‘orders were given for the proclamation of regulations regarding the supervision of
hundred courts (in line with the revisions of Magna Carta that year) and in 1248, it was
decreed that the right to castrate another man as a punishment for fornication was to be
restricted to a husband in the case of his wife’s adulterer’: Anthony Musson, Medieval
Law in Context: The Growth of Legal Consciousness from Magna Carta to the Peasants’
Revolt (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), p. 225.
94
Salih, Versions of Virginity, p. 17.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 105

them from illicit pursuit and, through martyrdom, women could ‘leave behind
their culturally constructed gender roles’.95 Karen Winstead writes that virgin
martyr legends did not ‘simply embody tensions about changing gender roles
and relation’ but often show the disintegration of other traditional power rela-
tions, such as lordship and the patriarchal structure of authority.96 As such,
their bodies become the parchment upon which the discourse of female
virginity is written – the more they endure in defense of their bodies, the more
their bodies are torn, healed, and torn again, the more successful they are in
defying that authority.
The sexual difference of both male and female saints resides in the social
construction of their gender based, in part, on the preservation of their geni-
talia. Crachiolo asserts that the gendered difference of the violence in the SEL
depends on the degree to which the narratives focus on the body itself.97 In the
narratives of female virgin martyrs, rape is the area of unease because the texts
are not ‘prepared to contemplate the hymen regenerating itself as the other
wounds do, however theoretically possible this might be’.98 Salih writes that
however much the martyr legends ‘proclaim virginity’s imperviousness, they
are unwilling to put it to the test, or to challenge the fantasy of the intact
hymen’.99 With male saints, the penis and the testicles become the comparable
area of unease. Even though there are castration miracles in which a pious male
saint heals (although often without restoring the offending member) the self-
mutilated or wrongly castrated man, the body of the male saint itself must
remain genitally intact. Salih understands the torture scenes as a ‘virginity test’
that simultaneously produces and displays the virgin body; they are enacted
before an audience ‘because gender is a cultural construction which must be
read’.100 Male holiness ‘can be a kind of default position, due to male dominance
of the Church, but it may also demand a radical break from the secular norms
of masculinity’.101 In the cultural construction of masculinity, the holy male
body must retain that which the society signifies as male.
So much of the construction of male saints in the SEL rests in their specif-
ically masculine identity. They are less ambiguous or androgynous than saints
in the Legenda aurea or the Middle English Gilte Legende; they are marked out
as male in the display of their masculine bodies and in the construction of their
chivalric identity. Riches suggests that when George is divested of his armor
(as depicted in various visual and written accounts of his torture) ‘he has relin-

95
Easton, ‘Pain, Torture and Death’, p. 51.
96
Winstead, Virgin Martyrs, p. 109.
97
Crachiolo, ‘Female and Male Martyrs’, p. 151.
98
Salih, Versions of Virginity, p. 90.
99
Ibid.
100
Ibid., p. 96.
101
Riches and Salih, Gender and Holiness, p. 5.
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106 LARISSA TRACY

quished his masculine, heroic role and adopted the demasculinised status of
the tortured martyr’.102 But in the SEL, regardless of being stripped and beaten,
he is still St George, patron saint of England, who was most often depicted as
a splendid vision of ‘nobility, chivalry and masculinity’.103 His masculine
courage is equivalent to that ascribed to female saints who are rendered
‘masculine’ in their defiance of tyranny because women were believed to be
frailer, their weakness as women something to overcome. This is the dilemma
in hagiography – if female saints are ‘masculine’ in their resistance to torture,
and male saints are ‘feminized’ by being tortured, then social gender construc-
tions are subverted in either case, regardless of gender. The idea of the insta-
bility of the body ‘meshes nicely with the theory of social construction, even
as it troubles those with faith-based concerns about the complex relationship
between embodiment, morality and holiness’.104 Riches clarifies that George is
not feminized, but demasculinized, removed out of the masculine gender and
into a third, ‘indeterminate, perhaps virginal, gender’ and not made a pseudo-
female.105 But the ‘third gender’ also applied to eunuchs as well as male virgins,
as Jed Chandler points out in reference to the potentially neutered Grail
knights.106 And eunuchs were regarded with suspicion, even rejected by society,
hence Abelard’s fears post-castration.
The gender ambiguity of eunuchs (since early Christian centuries) sparked
an animosity toward them and the unmanliness that they represented.107 That
categorization would be troublesome for many medieval audiences who valued
valorized masculinity (in men or women) in hagiographic accounts of torture
and brutality. While male chastity was certainly a concern of medieval audi-
ences (as the debate over Origen’s autocastration, the ruling of the First Council
of Nicaea, and Abelard’s wounding reveal) it had to be constructed without
voluntary harm to the male body. Jerome voiced his concern about the integrity
of the human body, and argued that the genitals must be present in heaven so
that the victory over sexual desire inspired by them can continue for all eternity;
in attacking the Origenist Rufinus (AD 401) he explicitly states that ‘amputation
of members in the resurrection would mean we would all come to equality of
condition; the virgin would then be equal to the prostitute’.108 Thus, male saints
must achieve their martyrdom with their genitalia intact or be incomplete at
the Last Judgment. The emphasis on masculine chastity in those committed to

102
Riches, ‘St George as a Male Virgin Martyr’, p. 75.
103
Ibid., p. 68.
104
Murray, ‘“The law of sin that is in my members”’, p. 9.
105
Riches, ‘St George as a Male Virgin Martyr’, p. 75.
106
Jed Chandler, ‘Eunuchs of the Grail’, in this volume, pp. 231, 253.
107
Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch, p. 257.
108
Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 91.
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Castration in the South English Legendary 107

a holy (if violent) cause was solidified by the crusades which produced a new
brand of knight, the miles Christi (like the Templars) who embodied the
masculine traits of chivalry while remaining chaste. Bernard of Clairvaux
praised them as a ‘manly brotherhood, spurning the effeminate trappings of
wordly knights’ that included silks, curls, and rich clothing.109 This is the image
of George and Hippolytus offered in the SEL in conjunction with an English
rejection of torture and brutality as foreign practices. In order to maintain the
demeanor of masculine triumph, in order for the stripping and torture of these
male saints to avoid the categorization of the tortured body as ‘female’, they
cannot be castrated. As Katherine J. Lewis explains, these saints, and the men
and women who read and wrote about them, ‘lived within settings which did
assign specific meanings (social, cultural, ideological and other) to male and
female and to being man or woman’.110 While sexual activity and everything
tied to it (from sexual prowess to fathering children) are an important part of
manliness in medieval culture, the struggle against the enemy inherent in one’s
own sexual desire (for men or women) was manly too.111 The gendered aspects
of hagiography, while often fluid for women, do not extend to the male
members.112 Because the ‘possession of a gendering attribute mediates the
gender of the holder, the loss of such an attribute can also signify gender’.113
The emasculation of male saints would render them ‘female’ and would deni-
grate the sacrifice of the male saint – they would become the weakened, femi-
nized eunuchs that the Church (and much of male Christendom) reviled: an
identity against which Abelard struggled. And for male saints like George (an
emblem of national English identity), castration – like that perpetuated by the
ruling Normans of the thirteenth century – was unacceptable.

109
Jo Ann McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System,
1050–1150’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A.
Lees (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994), pp. 3–29 at p. 17.
110
Katherine J. Lewis, ‘Gender and Sanctity in the Middle Ages’, in Gendering the Middle
Ages, ed. Pauline Stafford and Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001),
pp. 205–14 at p. 209.
111
Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others (New York and
London: Routledge, 2005), p. 42.
112
However, in the fifteenth-century Stamford cycle of stained glass (c. 1450) in the chancel
of St George’s Church, Stamford, Lincolnshire, recorded in the seventeenth-century Book
of Monuments, George is tortured by being sawn in half with millstones around each
ankle. As Riches points out, he is wearing a loincloth out of modesty, but ‘the fact that he
is being sawn in half from the bottom up strongly implies injury to the genitalia’ (‘St
George as a Male Virgin Martyr’, pp. 72–3). This potentially sexualized scene seems to
be unique to the Stamford cycle.
113
Ibid., p. 73.
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CHAPTER 5

The Children He Never Had; The Husband

She Never Served: Castration and Genital
Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law
Rolf H. Bremmer Jr

F or most of the Middle Ages, the Frisians were a people who saw their lives
dominated by violence.1 At least, this is the impression gained by studying
their laws. Stretched out along the North Sea coast of present-day Netherlands
and Germany, their homeland was threatened by land-hungry powers from
without and by feuding from within. The first detailed view of the Frisians’ legal
traditions is the result of foreign occupation. In the second half of the eighth
century, the Franks had gradually managed to expand their territory to the north
at the expense of the Frisians, culminating in their complete subjection by
Charlemagne, around AD 785. As he had done for other conquered peoples in
his empire, Charlemagne required the Frisians to record their laws in writing.
The result of this policy is the Lex Frisionum, which, in all likelihood, was
presented at the Diet of Aachen in 802 where the laws of the recently subdued
Saxons and Thuringians were also formulated and imposed.2 The Lex Frisionum
is counted among the Leges barbarorum, the early medieval laws drafted in Latin
by or for the various Germanic peoples.3 Yet, the name of this Frisian legal record

1
I would like to thank my brother Jan for his helpful suggestions, Anne Popkema and
Mike Ruijsenaars for casting their expert eyes over a draft version of this paper, and Dirk
Jan Henstra for sharing with me his expertise in monetary matters.
2
Heiner Lück, ‘Der wilde Osten: Fränkische Herrschaftsstrukturen im Geltungsbereich
der Lex Saxonum und Lex Turingorum um 800’, in Von den leges barbarorum bis zum
ius barbarum des Nationalsozialismus: Festschrift für Hermann Nehlsen zum 70.
Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Gutmann, Hans-Georg Hermann, Joachim Rückert, Mathias
Schmoeckel, and Harald Siems (Cologne: Böhlau, 2007), pp. 118–31 at p. 118. On
monetary grounds, the origin of the text of the Lex Frisionum has been dated to the
period 785–793/794; see Dirk Jan Henstra, ‘Het probleem van de geldbedragen in de Lex
Frisionum’, in ‘Fon jelde’: Opstellen van D. J. Henstra over middeleeuws Frisia, ed. Anne T.
Popkema (Groningen: Barkhuis, 2010), pp. 47–70 at p. 69.
3
Lisi Oliver, The Body Legal in Barbarian Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2011), pp. 8–10, and the literature quoted there, esp. Patrick Wormald, ‘The Leges
Barbarorum: Law and Ethnicity in the Medieval West’, in Regna and Gentes: The
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 109

is somewhat of a misnomer, coined as it was by the first editor of the text, the
Basel scholar-printer Joannes Herold in 1557. Unfortunately, the manuscript on
which he based his edition has since disappeared, so that we cannot confirm
the correctness of Herold’s title. As it is, the Lex Frisionum was never given the
status of a law; rather, the text presents a survey of disparate rules and regula-
tions, including quite a few duplications and contradictions, from which a more
or less coherent law had to be made up. This final editorial phase did not mate-
rialize, however, and the code as it now exists would have hardly been suitable
for use in court. The major part of it consists of a long list of compensations to
be paid for injuries, both physical and social (including castration), inflicted on
others, similar to such enumerations found in, for example, Anglo-Saxon legal
sources.4 In addition, the Lex also contains rules for regulating the new social
life of the recently converted Frisians, such as curbing Sunday labor and
restricting the degrees within which marriage was permissible. Following the
main text is a considerable list of Additiones, compiled by the wise men (sapi-
entes) Saxmund and Wlemar. In view of its provisional nature, then, it is unlikely
that the Lex Frisionum was ever put into effect.5
In the later Middle Ages (c. 1250–1500), when it had de facto slipped away
from imperial power, Frisia consisted of a loose confederacy of autonomous
lands that were ruled not by a feudal nobility as elsewhere in Europe (with the
exception of Switzerland), but by free allodial landowners. For this period, there
is a considerable corpus of extant legal texts, by far the majority of which have
survived in the vernacular.6 Again, as in the Lex Frisionum, long lists of wounds
and injuries with their compensations – called ‘registers’ or ‘tariff lists’ – make
up a conspicuous part of the vernacular legal tradition. Because of the absence
of feudal officials (dukes, counts) who had elsewhere appropriated the
monopoly on violence, feuding was often resorted to in Frisia when the balance
of justice had been disturbed.7 These registers, therefore, were used as an aid

Relationship between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the
Transformation of the Roman World, ed. Hans-Werner Goetz, Jörg Jarnut, and Walter
Pohl (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2003), pp. 21–53.
4
Jay Paul Gates examines Old English injury tariffs in his article in this volume, ‘The
Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’, pp. 131–48.
5
An exhaustive and exemplary introduction is given by Harald Siems, Studien zur Lex
Frisionum (Ebelsbach: Rolf Gremer, 1980); also see Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, ‘Lex
Frisionum’, in Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde, 2nd edn, ed. Heinrich Beck
et al., vol. 18 (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2001), pp. 318–20; Nikolaas E. Algra, ‘The Lex
Frisionum: The Beginnings of a Legalized Life’, in The Law’s Beginnings, ed. Ferdinand J.
M. Feldbrugge (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 77–92.
6
Cf. my Introduction to Old Frisian. History, Grammar, Reader, Glossary (Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2009; corrected repr. 2011), ch. 1.
7
Paul N. Noomen, ‘De Friese vetemaatschappij: sociale structuur en machtsbases’, in
Fryslân, staat en macht 1450–1650, ed. Johan Frieswijk, Arend H. Huussen Jr, and Y. B.
Kuiper (Hilversum: Verloren, 1999), pp. 43–64.
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110 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

in establishing what damage had been done to life and limb, often elaborated
in minute detail, and what compensations had to be paid by the offender to
the aggrieved party in order to become reconciled, to restore the injured honor,
and to re-establish social harmony.8 The Frisian genre of injury lists has for a
long time been neglected by scholars, even though they figure (sometimes
prominently) in every legal miscellany. This disregard can be accounted for,
perhaps, by the terse style in which these tariff lists are composed, the some-
times rather boring enumerations of body parts, the possible wounds that could
have been inflicted, and the complexity of monetary systems – often a mixture
of amounts from different periods and in different values, as a result of
continuous copying – in which the amounts due are calculated. However, a
recent study by Han Nijdam has demonstrated how the Frisian compensation
registers can be turned into a welcome source of historical, cultural, and anthro-
pological information.9
When it comes to castration in the laws, distinction should be made
between castration as a form of punishment and emasculation as the result of
injury.10 The two forms of mutilation are indeed included in the Frisian laws,
both in the Lex Frisionum and in the vernacular laws. Castration as a
punishment is rare, essentially because corporal punishments were on the
whole alien to the Frisian legal system in which practically all offenses could
either be compensated by money or denied by oath. Understandably, therefore,
much more attention is given in the laws to genital injuries and their compen-
sations than to castration as a punishment. In what comes next, castration as a
punishment will be discussed first, to be followed by an analysis of the genital
injuries as they are recorded in the tariff lists.
In the Leges barbarorum, castration is not uncommonly mentioned as a
punishment, usually in connection with sexual misdemeanors, especially rape.
For example, in the Frankish Lex Salica castration is mandated for the man who
rapes a virgin in such a violent way that she dies; the Lex Ribuaria, the code for
the Ripuarian Franks who lived around Cologne, prescribes castration for
violating a slave girl.11 In both cases, however, the rapist is a slave – an unfree
man. Still, in both cases he can save his testicles by paying compensation if he
has the money or if his owner is willing to pay for him. On the other hand, in

8
Cf. Oliver, The Body Legal, p. 10.
9
Han Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht in middeleeuws Friesland. Een studie naar de Oudfriese
boeteregisters (Hilversum: Verloren, 2008); cf. Ernst Schubert, ‘Vom Wergeld zur Strafe:
die übersehene Bedeutung der friesischen Rechtsquellen zur Interpretation eines
epochalen mittelalterlichen Wandels’, in Tota Frisia in Teilansichten: Hajo van Lengen
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Heinrich Schmidt, Wolfgang Schwarz, and Martin Tielke (Aurich:
Ostfriesische Landschaft, 2005), pp. 97–120.
10
Annette Niederhellmann, Arzt und Heilkunde in den frühmittelalterlichen Leges (Berlin
and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 1983), ch. 4 ‘Kastration’, esp. pp. 142–3.
11
Susan Tuchel, Kastration im Mittelalter (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1998), pp. 77–8.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 111

Gothic Spain, the Lex Visigothorum also demanded castration for ‘those who lie
with males, or consent to participate passively in such act’; Jews and Christians
who had newly been circumcised or had circumcised somebody else were
threatened with the same punishment.12 All such cases are examples of a mirror
punishment, by which the part of the criminal’s body with which the crime was
committed is punished, a principle that is related to the familiar concept of
Mosaic law ‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’, the so-called lex talionis.
However, castration is also sometimes demanded for criminals who have
committed a crime that did not involve the usage of their ‘tools’. For instance,
according to the Lex Salica, a slave who has stolen something worth 40 denarii
can be punished with either castration or with a fine of 6 solidi. In such a case,
there is question neither of a mirror punishment nor of retaliation.13
There is only one instance of a regulation in the Lex Frisionum that stipu-
lates castration, but its special character has attracted considerable scholarly
attention because it concerns the execution of someone who has robbed a
pagan shrine:14
Hoc trans Laubachum. De honore templorum. Qui fanum effregerit, et ibi
aliquid de sacris tulerit, ducitur ad mare, et in sabulo, quod accessus maris
operire solet, finduntur aures eius, et castratur, et immolatur diis quorum
templa violavit.

This [applies to the region] across the River Lauwers. Concerning the
honor of temples. Whoever has broken into a pagan shrine and has carried
away from there any of the sacred objects, he shall be taken to the sea, and
on the sand that will be covered by the tide, his ears will be cut off, and he
will be castrated and sacrificed to the gods whose temples he has
dishonored.

This narrative ordinance, the very last of the wise man Wlemar’s additions to
the Lex, invites further analysis. First of all, the region for which this rule is in
force is recorded as being east of the Lauwers, the river that later marked the
border between West and East Frisia. The latter region had only recently been
introduced to Christianity through evangelizing efforts, especially those of the
York-trained Frisian Liudger (742–804; first bishop of Münster) and the
Northumbrian missionary Willehad (c. 740–89; first bishop of Bremen).
Certainly, at the time when the Lex was drafted, there would have been plenty

12
Niederhellmann, Arzt und Heilkunde, pp. 143–5; Louis Crompton, Homosexuality and
Civilization (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), p. 152.
13
Tuchel, Kastration im Mittelalter, pp. 77–8; cf. K. Berdolt, ‘Kastration’, in Reallexikon des
germanischen Altertums, vol. 16 (2000), pp. 326–7.
14
Lex Frisionum, ed. Karl August Eckhardt and Albrecht Eckhardt (Hanover: Hahn, 1982),
p. 102: Tit. XI §1 (Latin text with German translation).
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112 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

of first-hand knowledge about all kinds of aspects of the pagan life in Frisia
beyond the Lauwers. It is therefore very probable that before their conversion
the Frisians would have dealt with temple robbers in the way described in the
Lex: after the robber had been caught and sentenced (stages in the procedure
which are silently passed over), he was led, in all likelihood in a procession, to
the sea. The place of execution is clearly located outside the community, a
common place for such activities. The Israelites, for example, executed their
criminals ‘outside the camp’; accordingly, Jesus was crucified ‘outside the
gates’.15 In Frisia, quite understandably in view of its maritime location, the
execution is staged on the shore, notably on the part that is washed by the tide
– now dry, now flooded – thus marking the unstable boundary in the
dichotomy of land and sea: neither here nor there.16 Once this ambivalent space
had been entered, there was no way back for the victim. On this stretch of no-
man’s land, he was deprived of his extremities, ears first.
Cutting off ears is not otherwise recorded as a punishment in Frisian laws.
In classical times, however, this act of bodily mutilation was much practiced
in the Near East and from there it gradually spread to the west, usually
together with the disfigurement of the nose, in order to make the victims so
hideous to look at that they could no longer function normally in society:
losing their ears and noses this way implied losing their honor.17 In this special

15
Richard W. Johnson, Going Outside the Camp: The Sociological Function of the Levitical
Critique in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001),
pp. 74–5. For Ancient Greece, e.g., see Jan N. Bremmer, ‘Myth and Ritual in Greek
Human Sacrifice: Lykaon, Polyxena and the Case of the Rhodian Criminal’, in The Strange
World of Human Sacrifice, ed. J. N. Bremmer (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), pp. 55–80 at p. 57.
16
In later Frisian law, certain criminals (thieves) are sometimes to be executed wtor dike
‘outside the dike’. See Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Westerlauwerssches Recht I.
Jus municipale Frisonum, 2 vols (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), XVI.8
(‘Von Königssatzung’). At least six instances are known of gallows erected on the seaward
side of the dike. See Johannes A. Mol, ‘Gallows in Late Medieval Frisia’, in Advances in
Old Frisian Philology, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Stephen Laker, and Oebele Vries
(Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007), pp. 263–99 at p. 281.
17
Robert Rollinger, ‘Extreme Gewalt und Strafgericht. Ktesias und Herodot als Zeugnisse
für den Achaimenidenhof ’, in Der Achämenidenhof, ed. Bruno Jacobs and Robert Rollinger
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), pp. 559–666. For Rome: Amy Richlin, ‘Invective against
Women in Roman Satire’, in Latin Verse Satire: An Anthology and Critical Reader, ed. Paul
Allen Miller (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 377–89 at p. 382 and n. 19;
Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. Adalbert Erler and Eckehard Kauf-
mann, 5 vols (Berlin: Schmidt, 1971–98), I, s.v. Ehrenstrafe (W. Brückner). Late medieval
Europe: Valentin Groebner, ‘Das Gesicht wahren: Abgeschnittene Nasen, abgeschnittene
Ehre in der spätmittelalterlichen Stadt’, in Verletzte Ehre: Ehrkonflikte in Gesellschaften des
Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Klaus Schreiner and Gerd Schwerhoff (Cologne:
Böhlau, 1995), pp. 361–80. For the motivations underlying punitive mutilation see
Wolfgang Schild, ‘Der gequählte und entehrte Körper. Spekulative Vorbemerkungen zu
einer noch zu schreibenden Geschichte des Strafrechts’, in Gepeinigt, begehrt, vergessen.
Symbolik und Sozialbezug des Körpers im späteren Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, ed.
Klaus Schreiner and Norbert Schnitzler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1992), pp. 147–68.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 113

case, though, there was no question of a possible return to society; the forceful
removal of his ears rather marked a first step in the physical demolition of the
robber’s body. After his ears had been cut off, the next step was the removal
of his genitals, not as a punishment for offensively using them but as a dehu-
manizing act, turning him into a person of undeterminable sex – neither man
nor woman – reflecting the undeterminable spot he was standing on: neither
land nor sea. Finally, having thus been taken to pieces, he was ‘sacrificed to
the gods whose temples he had violated’. No further details are given of the
sacrifice, but we may assume, in view of the location, that he was drowned.18
To which gods the sacrifice was intended remains a mystery. Of course, spec-
ulations abound and one of these gods might have been Fosite, an otherwise
unknown Germanic god whose name and maritime sanctuary are mentioned
in Alcuin’s Life of St Willibrord.19
The greatest problem scholars have had with this rule in the Lex Frisionum
is how to interpret an obvious remnant of a pagan practice in which a criminal
is sacrificed to the gods (plural!) within the context of a set of law codes that
clearly bears a monotheistic Christian stamp. However, the robbing of pagan
temples in a time of religious transition can perhaps be accounted for: confis-
cating pagan sanctuaries, especially their valuables, seems to have been prof-
itable and the spoils were divided between the king and the missionary
according to an allocation formula.20 Robbery of pagan sanctuaries thus
implied a defiance of the highest authorities. But it is difficult to explain the
sacrifice to the (pagan) gods as a tolerable reality. Perhaps, the measure
presents an example of how pagans dealt with violators of sanctuaries, thus
silently urging Christians likewise to show no mercy on thieves who rob
churches; curiously, the Lex Frisionum contains no measures for church
robbery. All in all, however, a satisfactory solution to this problem has not yet
been found.21
The other instance in which castration plays a part is found in the Old West
Frisian Sendriocht, a collection of instructions for ecclesiastical jurisdiction
(send = ‘synod’), the surviving version of which seems to have received its
definitive form in the thirteenth century. However, in view of the unlimited
application of ordeals and duels, judicial instruments that were banned from

18
In later medieval Frisian law, drowning in the North Sea is recorded as a punishment
for traitors; see Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), A VIII.26 (‘Vermischtes’).
19
As suggested, e.g., by Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, ‘Spuren paganer Religiosität in den früh-
mittelalterlichen Leges’, in Iconologia Sacra: Mythos, Bildkunst und Dichtung in der
Religions- und Sozialgeschichte Alteuropas, ed. Hagen Keller and Nikolaus Staubach
(Berlin and New York: Walter De Gruyter, 1994), pp. 249–62 at pp. 255–56.
20
Siems, Lex Frisionum, p. 343.
21
Ibid. 350; B. Maier, ‘Gotteslästerung’, in Reallexikon des germanischen Altertums, vol. 12
(2001), pp. 483–85 at p. 484.
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114 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

ecclesiastical lawcourt procedures by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215,22

parts of this code must be older. The reference to baptizing pagans also points
to a date before the thirteenth century. In other words, the Sendriocht is a
collection of stipulations that was regularly updated and added to. Among its
ordinances is the following:23
Fan wildinghum dera schettena. Hweer soe en man Godes ewa ende Godes
riocht ende Octauianus riocht ende Moyses ewa britzen haet ende al der
wralde, dat hi scetten wildath haet, soe aegh him di riochter tre kerren ti
delane, als hi en eetmel alomme liuwet haet mey twam heldem spanned
ende hi dis alles biechte wert, dat hi dyn kerre habbe, her hi zijn machta
weer zijn lyf ofsnide ende sine sonda bettrie, soe dat ma anne kulc dele,
deer alle dat quick jn moege ende dat ma him al benida brenge, iefta dyn
tredda kerre, dat ma alle dat heer gaedrie of dera schettena sterten ende
meckie deerof en beynd ende byndene deermey ende bernene.

About sexual abuse of cattle. Whenever a man has broken God’s law and
God’s rules and Octavian’s rules and Moses’s law and [the law] of all the
world, [namely] that he has abused cattle,24 then the judge must sentence
him to choosing between three options, after he has remained tied with
two fetters for a full twenty-four hours and has been convicted of all this,
so that he has the choice either to cut off his genitals from his body and
amend his sins, or that a pit is dug big enough to put all the cattle in and
that he is put bottommost, or the third choice, that all the hair of the cows’
tails is gathered and a fetter is made of it and he is bound with it and burnt.

No decree in the corpus of Frisian laws formulates a breach of law so forcefully

and indignantly. No fewer than five authorities are adduced here to express
how utterly abject the author considered the act of sexual intercourse with
animals. Godes ewa is natural law, which, since Gratian compiled his Decretals
in the twelfth century, was commonly equated with divine law;25 Godes riucht
refers to canon law;26 the ‘right’ of Octavian (i.e. Emperor Augustus) means the
Lex Julia (i.e. Roman Law),27 while Moses’ law, of course, comprises the laws

22
In the eighteenth canon, known as the ‘Judgements of Blood’, see James Q. Whitman,
The Origins of Reasonable Doubt: Theological Roots of the Criminal Trial (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 48 and 126.
23
Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht I, IX.46 (‘Das Sendrecht’).
24
The stem of the noun weldighum and the verb wildath is the same as in German verge-
waltigen ‘to rape’.
25
Gratian, The Treatise on Laws: (Decretum DD. 1–20), trans. Augustine Thompson, with
The Ordinary Gloss, trans. James Gordley, and an introduction by Katherine Christensen
(Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1993), pp. xxi–xxvii.
26
Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch, s.v. Gottesrecht II; online at http://drw-www.adw.uni-
heidelberg.de/drw/, accessed October 20, 2011.
27
Crompton, Homosexuality and Civilization, p. 197.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 115

of the Old Dispensation. To ensure that no legislative authority was possibly

omitted, the author clinches the matter with an appeal to everybody’s sense of
justice wherever in the world they are.
The vehemence with which the author formulates his indignation is an indi-
cation of the time when it was codified, viz. the thirteenth century. Bestiality
was not considered to be a crime by the ancient Romans nor is it listed as such
in the Leges barbarorum. In the early medieval Irish Cummean Penitential,28
having sex with animals was treated rather mildly, on the same level as mastur-
bation, as if the act of bestiality were a form of solosex:29 the perpetrator had
to do penance for a year. But there were also mitigating circumstances: If a man
living on his own had had sex with an animal, the penance was downsized to
three times forty days. No word is said about the animal.30 The penitentials
suggest that the act was approached with increasingly more severity in eccle-
siastical circles from the seventh century onwards,31 partly inspired by Mosaic
Law which forcibly condemned sex with animals, for men and women alike,
because it was a ‘confusion’ (AV, Leviticus 18:23), i.e. sex with animals trans-
gressed the boundary between human and non-human32 (Exodus 22:19;
Leviticus 18:23; 20:15–6; Deuteronomy 27:21; the perpetrator was either cursed
or sentenced to death, the animal killed).
Gradually, as in Mosaic Law, the animal involved was no longer seen as
irrelevant in the deed, but was considered to be a participant that needed to be
killed and destroyed to prevent it from reminding people afterwards of the
horrible sin in which it had been involved.33 Twelfth- and thirteenth-century
schoolmen dealt extensively with the sin of bestiality in their summae. The
Franciscan Alexander of Hales (c. 1185–1245) called it ‘the most grievous kind
of unnatural sex crime’,34 while his fellow-countryman Thomas of Chobham
(c. 1160–1233/6) in his Summa confessorum categorized bestiality as the most
heinous of all sins against nature.35 Of the four kinds of unnatural vice (those

28
Charlene M. Eska gives a full account of Irish and Welsh laws regarding castration and
genital injury in her essay in this volume, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration in
Early Welsh and Irish Sources’, pp. 149–73.
29
Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2011), p. 72.
30
Joyce E. Salisbury, ‘Bestiality in the Middle Ages’, in Sex in the Middle Ages. A Book of
Essays, ed. J. E. Salisbury (New York: Garland, 1991), pp. 173–86 at pp. 177–8.
31
Rob Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek: overlevering en betekenis van vroegmiddeleeuwse
biechtvoorschriften (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994), p. 561.
32
The Council of Ancyra in 314 marked the boundary as one between rational and irra-
tional, cf. Salisbury, The Beast Within, p. 70.
33
Ibid. pp. 73–4.
34
James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 473.
35
Piers Beirne, Confronting Animal Abuse: Law, Criminology, and Human–Animal
Relationships (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), p. 105.
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116 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

not aimed at procreation), Thomas Aquinas (1225–75) ranked bestiality first

in his Summa theologica, before homosexuality, intercourse in any other than
the proper way (i.e. the ‘missionary position’), and masturbation. Thomas’s
censure, more than that of Alexander of Hales and Thomas of Chobham, highly
influenced subsequent legislators,36 and it is against this background that the
ecclesiastical jurist who drafted this Frisian regulation, most likely no earlier
than the middle of the thirteenth century, must be viewed.37 Finally, it should
be noted that, unlike in the proscription of animal sex in Leviticus 18 and 20,
the deed is here imagined to be a male affair only.
Next, the Sendriocht regulation introduces the judge, without any further
indication of who he is and how the court session has to proceed.38 On the
other hand, two detailed conditions are given to insure that the procedure
cannot be frustrated by a capricious accusation. The suspect has to remain in
custody for the full cycle of a day and a night, apparently in order to prevent
any over-hasty actions. Moreover, the detailed stipulation of tying him with
precisely two – not one or three – fetters is probably intended to express the
care with which his custody is to be executed.39 In other words, there is to be
no abuse or torture before his execution. Finally, full evidence must have been
put forward to make certain that the suspect has not been falsely accused. Once
it is clear that the authorities in charge have complied with these prescriptions
and the suspect has admitted his guilt, the judge comes to a verdict that leaves
the choice of punishment to the perpetrator.
Presenting the convict with alternative measures is not uncommon in
Frisian law, the simplest choice being that between paying the compensation
and swearing innocence, or, alternatively, between paying and, if the defendant

36
Anthony Musson, Boundaries of the Law: Geography, Gender and Jurisdiction in Medieval
and Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 106–7; Etienne Gilson, The
Christian Philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas, trans. Edward Bullough (Salem, NH: Ayer,
1983), p. 298.
37
In Sweden and Norway, bestiality also became an ecclesiastical and legal concern from
the late twelfth century onwards. At best, the Scandinavian perpetrator of the ‘sin against
nature’ was sent on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, at worst he was castrated and outlawed; the
animal was driven out to sea and drowned. See Anne Irene Riisøy, Sexuality, Law and
Legal Practice and the Reformation in Norway (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 47–8; Kari Ellen
Gade, ‘Homosexuality and Rape of Males in Old Norse Law and Literature’, Scandinavian
Studies 58 (1986): 124–41 at pp. 127–9.
38
The text uses riochtere, the generic word for ‘judge’, whereas elsewhere in the Sendriocht
it is usually the bishop or dean who functions as judge in the ecclesiastical court. On the
whole, clerics could not be involved in the spilling of blood, including branding, muti-
lation, or execution; see note 22 above and James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law
(London: Longman, 1994), p. 92.
39
On the proclivity of Frisian legal discourse for concrete details, see Daniel P. O’Donnell,
‘The Spirit and the Letter: Literary Embellishment in Old Frisian Legal Texts’, in
Approaches to Old Frisian Philology, ed. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Thomas S. B. Johnston, and
Oebele Vries (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), pp. 245–56.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 117

refused to swear an oath of innocence, being subjected to an ordeal. But not

infrequently, the choice is between three punishments. Perhaps the best-known
example is provided by the legend of Charlemagne and the Twelve Asegas. After
he had occupied Frisia, so the narrative tells, Charlemagne ordered the asegas
(highest legal experts) to choose new laws for the Frisians. When they prove
to be unable and reluctant to do this, Charlemagne offers them the choice
between decapitation, serfdom, or being cast adrift at sea in a rudderless boat,
without rope and rigging.40 Another example: When a woman has been
accused of adultery and her husband does not exonerate her by oath, he may
choose between having her scourged or decapitated by the sword under which
she passed when she got married,41 or he can take her back (but then he runs
the risk of being the subject of neighborhood gossip). A last example: If one of
two spouses, who have no children, happens to kill the other with a stick or a
pole or a sharp weapon and is convicted of murder, the guilty one is offered
the choice between being burnt, having a stick driven through their heart from
the front so that it comes out at the back, or being blinded followed by exile
and doing penance for their sins. Usually, therefore, when a choice is given in
such cases, there is at least one with a touch of mercy that gives the convict a
possibility to emerge from the process with their life intact, if not their body
and their honor.42 In the present case, too, the convict is presented with an
opportunity to escape alive, for the choice is one between castration, interment,
or burning. As for the last two options, the choice seems to be that between
the devil and the deep blue sea.
Being buried alive as a punishment for bestiality is also found in the thir-
teenth-century English legal treatise Fleta, ‘provided that they [sc. homosexuals
and those that commit bestiality] be taken in the act and convicted by law and
open testimony’, but it does not include the burial of the animal(s), as in the
Frisian case.43 However, burying the animal involved in the sex act is in line
with Mosaic Law which stipulates that it be killed (Leviticus 20:15). The case
in the Sendriocht prescribes the perpetrator to be buried al benida ‘completely
beneath’, as far away removed from the face of the earth as is possible and, with
the cows on top of him, visually carrying the heavy burden of his lust objects
on his shoulders. Burning, too, implies destruction and erasure of the criminal’s

40
The last punishment being a case of exposure (German ‘Aussetzung’), see Karl von Amira,
Die germanischen Todesstrafen. Untersuchungen zur Rechts- und Religionsgeschichte,
(Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1922), pp. 144–7.
41
Cf. H. R. Ellis Davidson, ‘The Sword at the Wedding’, Folkore 71 (1960): 1–18 at pp. 2–3.
42
The three examples can be found in Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht I, IV.3 (‘Die
Sage von König Karl und Redbad’), IX.50 (‘Das Sendrecht’), and XVIII.9 (‘Das
Rudolfsbuch’), respectively. See also Rudolf His, Das Strafrecht der Friesen (Leipzig:
Dieters’che Verlagbuchhandlung, 1901), pp. 169–70.
43
Allen J. Frantzen, Before the Closet: Same-sex from Beowulf to Angels in America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), p. 255.
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118 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

body. Burning as a punitive measure for unnatural sex (as it was defined then)
is found elsewhere in the Frisian laws, in an enumeration without context of
the various crimes that merit capital punishment: ‘Thene kattere barnma jefta
siuth ma, jd est eum qui peccat contra naturam’ [The homosexual, that is he
who sins against nature, should be burnt or boiled].44 Burning a man convicted
of unnatural sex is also encountered elsewhere in northwestern Europe,45 but
remarkable to the Frisian case is that before ascending the stake, the culprit
must be bound with a fetter made of all the hair collected from the tails of the
cows involved.46 In agricultural societies like that of medieval Frisia, no part
of a butchered animal was considered useless; indeed, cow hair was not uncom-
monly used in the medieval period for making threads and cords, but cow-
hair ropes are rarely, if ever, recorded.47 Its application here is therefore not an
instance of how cow hair was employed, but rather a visual and symbolic
expression of how the convict was sinfully tied to the cow: if he behaved like a
beast, the rope was made to fit the crime. Whether the cows were burnt along
with their abuser is not mentioned, but they would certainly have been killed.
Perhaps, as an alternative to incineration, their meat was thrown to the dogs,
as was stipulated for such cases, for example, by the Poenitentiale Parisiense
compositum, a late eleventh-century penitential composed in northern France.48
Only the first of the three options given by the judge shows some degree of
mercy to the convict, to the extent that he is allowed to live on albeit with the
loss of his manhood. If castration as a punishment in later medieval Frisian
law is unique, what makes this case even more special is that the act of severing
the genitals from his body is left to the convict himself. Autocastration as such
was not unknown, and was practiced in antiquity in the pagan Syrian cult of
the goddess Atargatis, as well as in certain ascetic circles in the early Christian

44
Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das Fivelgoer Recht (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, 1972), XVI.24. The word kattere derives from ‘Cathar’, a religious group that
flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose members were often accused
of homosexual activities; hence, the verb ketzern ‘to have anal intercourse’ was coined in
Middle High German. See Birgitte Spreitzer, Die stumme Sünde: Homosexualität im
Mittelalter (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1988), pp. 57–8.
45
Rudolf His, Das Strafrecht des deutschen Mittelalters. II: Die einzelnen Verbrechen
(Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1935), pp. 166–8; for burning the animal lover; von Amira,
Die germanischen Todesstrafen, p. 197, conjectures Roman influence by way of Frankish
legal practice.
46
The phrases ‘all dat quick’ [all the cattle] and ‘alle dat heer … dera schettena sterten’ [all
the hair … of the cows’ tails] suggest that the culprit had subjected more than one cow
to his lusts; alternatively, the man’s entire stable was executed to make sure that no cow
stayed alive that might possibly have been abused; cf. note 33 above.
47
I thank Professor Gale Owen-Crocker for this information; see also Elizabeth Coatsworth
and Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Medieval Textiles of the British Isles 450–1100 (Oxford:
Archaeopress, 2007).
48
Meens, Het tripartite boeteboek, p. 499, no. 88.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 119

church.49 The church father Origen is the famous example, reputedly castrating
himself in answer to Christ’s words that ‘there are eunuchs who have made
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 19:12, Douay-
Rheims).50 From the early fourth century onwards, however, successive councils
condemned this voluntary, drastic practice as counter to God’s purpose for the
body and successfully eradicated it.51 Forcing the perpetrator of the unnatural
sex act to perform the equally unnatural act of castration upon himself brings
out the disgust which the Frisian ecclesiastical authorities must have felt. What
is left for the man afterwards, if he chooses this option (Figure 5.1), is to do
penance for the terrible sin that he will be vividly reminded of every time he
urinates, and in all likelihood more often than that.
Having discussed castration as a punitive measure, attention will now be
directed to cases of genital mutilation in the Frisian registers of compensation,
beginning with the man. It is fair to assume that the male members of society
would have more often been involved in and exposed to violent encounters
than the females, so it comes as no surprise that the registers indeed pay
attention to injuries inflicted upon the genitals as early as the Lex Frisionum.
‘Si veretrum quis alium absciderit, weregildum suum componat’ [If anyone
should have cut off somebody else’s penis, he must compensate with the man’s
wergild.] The implication of this rule is that the full wergild had to be paid,
because the man could no longer be considered a man. Cutting off one testicle
was rated at half a wergild, for two testicles the full wergild had to be paid.
However, if a testicle was hanging out of the scrotum and could be successfully
restored to its original position, the compensation amounted to that of a
particular wound, in addition to 6 solidi (= 72 pennies) to be paid (presumably)
to the doctor.52 These provisions are as far as the Lex Frisionum goes concerning
male genital injuries.
The later, vernacular Frisian laws, especially the registers of compensations,
are richer and more detailed on this matter. For these tariff lists, a distinction
should be made between the supra-regional General Register of Compensations,

49
Atargatis: Jan N. Bremmer, Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible and the Ancient Near
East (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 288–9. Early Christianity: Robert Muth,
‘Kastration’, in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum. Sachwörterbuch zur Auseinander-
setzung des Christentums mit der antiken Welt, ed. Georg Schöllgen et al., vol. 20
(Stuttgart: Anton Hierschemann, 2004), cols. 285–342.
50
For a critical analysis of Origen’s case, see Christoph Markschies, Origenes und sein Erbe:
Gesammelte Studien (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2007), ch. 2 ‘Kastration und
Magenprobleme? Eine neue Blicke auf das asketischen Leben des Origenes’.
51
Tuchel, Kastration im Mittelalter, ch. IV: ‘Kastration in Kirchenrecht und Kirchen-
geschichte’. In this volume, Jack Collins compares early Christian condemnations of auto-
castration with prohibitions of Jewish law in his article ‘Appropriation and Development
of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity’, pp. 73–86.
52
Eckhardt and Eckhardt, Lex Frisionum, Tit. XXII.57–9 (‘De dolg’); cf. Niederhellmann,
Arzt und Heilkunde, p. 148.
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120 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

FIGURE 5.1 Pieter Breugel the Elder (c.1520/25–9 September 1569), published by
Hieronymus Cock (c. 1510–3 October 1570). Copper engraving by Pieter van der
Heyden (c.1530–after March 1572): ‘The Seven Deadly Sins: Luxuria [Lust]’ (1558,
detail): monstrous man cutting off his own penis. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen,
Rotterdam. Photo provided by Studio Buitenhof, The Hague.

redactions of which are found in all the major Frisian legal miscellanies from
east of the river Lauwers, and the regional registers, which are usually
considered to be somewhat later than the General Register, partly because they
borrow from it.53 Remarkably, no attention is paid to male genital injuries in
the General Register, but this absence of attention is amply compensated for by
the concern that appears in regional lists, especially in those that circulated
west of the Lauwers. Trouble may start when a man is grabbed by his genitals
and is treated ‘dishonorably’ (quadelicke). In this case, he must be compensated
for this misdeed with 20 pennies, whereas when the same is done ‘in anger’ (bi
ira mode) the payment is 28 pennies; it is even worse if he is dealt a blow on
his testicles (scalsleeck), for then the bill is 4 shillings (= 48 pennies). The
summit seems to be when a man raises a complaint of having been grabbed by
his genitals so violently that he pisses blood afterwards; in such a case the
compensation rockets to 26 shillings (= 312 pennies) or, alternatively, the

53
Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht, pp. 85–8, 94–5.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 121

defendant is allowed to swear six oaths of innocence.54 All of these injuries

seem to have been inflicted by bare hands. But what if knives are pulled?
If someone’s testicles are cut off, the law says that the loss is to be compen-
sated with 6 pounds for the right one and 5½ for the left.55 Elsewhere, removing
somebody’s testicles completely – technically, in such a way that they have
become gersfallich ‘having fallen on the grass’ – is rated at 11 pounds. However,
if it appears afterwards that the disabled man has begotten children nonetheless,
he must return the money and do penance for the oath that he wrongfully swore
when he claimed to have lost his fertility.56 A penis cut off, quite understandably,
requires a higher recompense than does each of the testicles: 8 pounds.57 In the
latter case, there is a similar restriction concerning the payment of the money
as for the testicles. If a man has been compensated for the loss of his penis, but
is afterwards caught eth wiuem ‘with a woman’,58 in the act presumably, ‘so ne
ach hi nene bote vmbe thet [vn]manslike, vmbe thene pinth offesneyn’ [he has
no right to the compensation for the inhuman deed, (viz.) for the penis (that is)
cut off].59 Fraud in these serious matters does not pay.
Occasionally, the registers expand on an injury and provide further infor-
mation on why a simple compensation might not be the last step in the process
of reconciliation. This is the case, for example, when an arrow has wrought
havoc in a man’s crotch:60
Hweer so en man wr sine machte scetten werth, truch sine machte, truch
thet fel, thio bote is ij ensa, hit en sie thet hi ferra spreka vvolla; so mei hi
habbe thre sinekerff. Thio aersta hath thio stiapsine. Thio ander hath thio
wieldsine. Thio thredda thio fruchtsine. Ther moth hi fan bitigia thria
vnnameda morth, tha ach ma allerlick to betane also dyore soe en
manslachta iefta xij-sum to onswerne.

Whenever a man is shot on his genitals, [or] through his genitals, through
the skin, the compensation is two ounces, unless he wants to pursue a
further complaint; then he can claim [compensation for] three ‘sinew cuts’.

54
Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht, respectively, XXI.92–93 (‘Die Busstaxen von
Wymbritseradeel’) and XXVIII.243–44 (‘Busstaxen von Wonseradeel und die Fünf Diele’).
55
E.g., Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht, XXIII.118 (‘Busstaxen von Ferweradeel and
Dongeradeel’). On the distinction between left and right, see below.
56
Ibid. XXI.88 (‘Busstaxen von Wymbritseradeel’).
57
Ibid. XXIII.119.
58
Actually, eth wiuem is plural, ‘with women’, suggesting that the formerly injured man
was involved in a sex act with more than one woman. More likely, though, we are dealing
here with a type of the ‘generalizing’ or ‘generic’ plural, cf. Bruce Mitchell, Old English
Syntax, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), I.§75.
59
Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht, XXIX.123 (‘Busstaxen von Leeuwarderadeel’); MS
manslicke; offesneyth; cf. the redaction of this regulation in XXIII.119 (‘Busstaxen von
Ferweradeel und Dongeradeel’).
60
Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht, XXVIII. 239 (‘Interregionale Busstaxen’).
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122 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

The first is called the ‘steep sinew’, the second is called the ‘wield sinew’,
the third the ‘fruit sinew’. On account of this [i.e. these three injuries], he
is allowed to claim three unborn children; these must each be compensated
as high as [in the case of] manslaughter, or [the defendant] must swear to
innocence with eleven oath helpers.

The – imagined – situation is as follows: a man is shot through his genitals, but
no circumstances are given to explain how, when, or where this occurred.
Apparently, such information is irrelevant; what matters is the compensation
for the injury, which is set at one pound. However, if the victim suspects that
the injury has impaired the proper workings of his genitals, he has the right to
appeal and demand a more specified retribution, because the finer fabrics of his
reproductive organs have been damaged, notably three ‘sinews’. The interpre-
tation of the stiapsine, the wieldsine, and the fruchtsine has proven difficult. The
first elements of these three compounds, it is true, are quite lucid: stiap is cognate
with English ‘steep’, wield (also found as wald) is related to English ‘to wield’
(‘control’) and frucht (from Latin fructus) means ‘fruit’. The second element, sine
is cognate with English ‘sinew’, but covers a wider range of meanings than just
that; it also includes ‘nerve, tendon, muscle’, that is any cordlike body part that
is not a vein, artery, or gut. So much for the linguistic side of these words.
A greater interpretative difficulty lies in the anatomical parts to which the
‘sinews’ refer. Willem van Helten, a giant in Old Frisian lexicology, confessed
more than a century ago: ‘Was mit diesen drei sehnen gemeint ist, habe ich bis
jetzt nicht ermitteln können’ [I have until now been unable to find out what is
meant with these three sinews].61 Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhem Ebel in their
dual-language edition translated these three terms into German as Hochsehne
‘high sinew’, Rückennerv ‘dorsal nerve’, and Zeugungsnerv ‘generative nerve’,
respectively, translations that do not really bring us much further.62 Elsewhere,
Buma glossed the same words with Schwellkörper ‘corpus cavernosum’,
Rückennerv ‘dorsal nerve’,63 and Fortpflanzungssehne, Samenleiter ‘generative
sinew, vas deferens’, thus forcing modern anatomical concepts onto the
medieval Frisian text.64 Hofmann and Popkema, in their recent dictionary of

61
Willem L. van Helten, ‘Zur Lexicologie und Grammatik des Altwestfriesischen’, Beiträge
zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 19 (1894): 345–440 at p. 365, n. 1.
62
Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht, XXVIII.239 (‘Interregionale Busstaxen’). The
translation ‘Zeugungsnerv’ was coined by Karl von Richthofen, Altfriesisches Wörterbuch
(Berlin: Dieter’sche Buchhandlung, 1840), s.v. fruchtsine; it is a nonce-word not included
in any of the major German dictionaries that I consulted.
63
Buma arrives at the translation of ‘dorsal nerve’, in all likelihood by equating it with Old
Frisian wald(e)waxe and waldandsine ‘spinal nerve, spina dorsi’.
64
Wybren Jan Buma, Vollständiges Wörterbuch zum westerlauwerschen Jus Municipale
Frisonum (Leeuwarden: Fryske Akademy, 1996), s.vv.; cf. Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht,
p. 276, who follows, and expands on, Buma.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 123

Old Frisian, have steered away from precision and give eine Sehne am Penis ‘a
sinew on the penis’ and Sehne am Zeugungsglied ‘sinew on the generative
member’ for stiapsine and fruchtsine, respectively, while, like Buma, they take
wieldsine to be a variant of waldandsine ‘Rückennerv, Rückenmuskulatur’
[dorsal nerve, dorsal musculature].65 However, it takes quite some imagination
to envisage an arrow or some other missile that comes down from above cut
not only through specific parts of the penis but also through the dorsal nerve.
Therefore it is preferable to interpret wieldsine as a part of the penis and not of
the spine. Clearly, scholars of Old Frisian have struggled with the interpretation
of these three ‘sinews’, most probably because they did not realize that medieval
ideas of the anatomy of the male genitals differ considerably from modern ones,
based as the latter are on experimental dissection. For a proper understanding,
therefore, the opinions of contemporary authorities on the anatomy of the penis
are important to consider.
On the whole, the penis was afforded little attention in the classical
anatomical treatises, nor was it, for that matter, discussed in any great detail in
the Arab-influenced works that were produced in the medical school of Salerno.
According to Constantinus the African (1017–87), author of the Pantegni – the
first comprehensive medieval anatomical treatise that brought fame to the
Salernitan school – the penis is a cauda nervorum (tail of nerves), which is
‘concave so that with the arrival of appetite it is filled with air and becomes erect.
Lateral muscles on both sides prevent it from bending, so that the sperm is ejac-
ulated directly into the vulva.’66 According to this description, the penis is hollow
and consists of a duct through which the sperm flows and two muscles, one on
either side of the penis. The Anatomia vivorum (Anatomy of the Living), written
in Paris in the first half of the thirteenth century,67 expands on Constantinus’
description and explains that the penis ‘has two ducts, one for the sperm from
the testicles and the other for the urine from the bladder which join at the neck
of the penis. It also has two pairs of muscles [lacerti], one which governs the
length and extension of the erection and the other which keeps it straight.’68 The
Frisian classification of the three ‘sinews’ must have been inspired by knowledge
derived from such medical treatises, the stiapsine referring to the muscle that

65
Dietrich Hofmann and Anne T. Popkema, Altfriesisches Handwörterbuch (Heidelberg:
Universitätsverlag Winter, 2008), s.vv.
66
Constantinus, De genecia (On genecology), p. 323. For the Latin text, see Monica H.
Green, ‘The De genecia Attributed to Constantinus the African’, Speculum 62 (1987):
299–323 at p. 323 ‘De uirga’ (On the penis).
67
George W. Corner, Anatomical Texts of the Earlier Middle Ages. A Study in the Transmission
of Culture, with a Revised Latin Text of Anatomia Cophonis and Translations of Four Texts
(Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1927), p. 36; cf. Plinio Prioreschi, A History of
Medicine, vol. 5: Medieval Medicine (Omaha, NE: Horatius Press, 2003), p. 343.
68
Corner, Anatomical Texts, p. 24. Cf. John W. Baldwin, The Language of Sex: Five Voices
from Northern France around 1200 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 91.
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124 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

takes care of the erection, while the wieldsine reflects the one that keeps the
penis straight. The fruchtsine, then, must be identified with the duct that guides
the sperm from the testicles to the neck of the penis. If this interpretation is
right, the absence of the urine duct from the Frisian regulation needs to be
accounted for. There are two possible explanations for this. First of all, a tripartite
division tallies with the three children the injured man will never have; secondly,
the inability to create offspring is a much more serious handicap than having
difficulty discharging urine and therefore the focus of this particular regulation
is directed here on a man’s fertility.69
Finally, the injured man can claim a compensation for each of the three
children that he has not been able to generate. The regulation refers to the
children as ‘unnamed murders’, a term that is occasionally used in Frisian laws
to refer to children who die an unnatural death (usually through abortion)
before they have even been given a name and, with it, an identity.70 The
amount of the compensation required in this law text for each of the three
children that were never born equals that to be paid for manslaughter – a full
wergild. Wergild has to be paid, because the victim’s masculine capacity to
generate life has been lost.
As mentioned above, cutting off the right testicle was more expensive in
terms of compensation than doing the same to the left one. In general, such a
valuation concurs with places in the tariff lists where other symmetrical body
parts are involved, such as eyes and hands.71 Because the majority of mankind
is right-handed, the use of the right hand and the right eye was more important
than that of their left counterparts. Where no such functional difference seems
relevant, for example, with respect to a woman’s breasts, no difference is made
in the amount to be compensated for their violent loss.72 Nevertheless, there
may be an additional reason for this difference in valuation: the opinion
expressed both in classical and contemporary medical treatises was that the
right testicle, sometimes in combination with the right side of the uterus, was
responsible for the birth of a boy, while girls were associated with the left.73 In

69
Elsewhere, injury leading to a man’s incontinence is set at a compensation of a third
wergild, see Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, A VI.2 (‘Allgemeine Busstaxen’). The
stipulation is the second entry in the Emsigo redaction of the General Register of
Compensations, which would seem to contradict my remark on p. 120 that this register
does not pay attention to injuries in the male genitals. However, the stipulation was
inserted (by scribal error?) from the Emsigo regional register, see Nijdam, Lichaam, eer
en recht, p. 420.
70
Cf. Marianne Elsakkers, ‘Her anda neylar: An Intriguing Criterion for Abortion in Old
Frisian Law’, Scientiarum Historia 30 (2004): 107–54 at pp. 113–14.
71
As pointed out by Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht, pp. 276–77.
72
See p. 128 below.
73
See, e.g., Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science,
and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 35, 62–3, 93.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 125

the archaic, male-oriented society of medieval Frisia, sons would generally have
been preferred over daughters. It is the more remarkable, in the light not only
of the prevailing importance of right as opposed to left in the valuation of body
parts, but also of medical knowledge as it was current then, to read the
following passage from the Emsigo tariffs:74
Huersa hir en mon thruch sine mechte vndad werth, thet hi nauuet tia ni
mughe: nioghen merck to bote fora tha nioghen bern ther hi tia machte.
Het hi ac bern etein, sa nime ma hit ofta berena and retze hit tha vneberena.
Het hi thene winstera prelleng bihalden and thene farra urleren, thach mey
hi bern tia. Neth hi thene winstera nauuet, thach hi thene ferra hebbe, sa
is hi thes thochtalas.

Whenever a man is wounded here [in Emsigo] through his genitals, so that
he can no longer create offspring: nine marks as a compensation for the
nine children that he might have begotten. However, if he has [already]
begotten children, then it [i.e. part of the compensation] must be taken
from the born [children] and be given to the unborn [children]. If he has
retained the left testicle and lost the right one, yet he can beget children.
Does he not have the left one [any longer], though he [still] has the right
one, then he is unable to beget because of that.

Again, paramount in a man’s life is his offspring who are to continue his
bloodline and eventually to inherit and defend the ancestral manor. In this
specific case, a man is imagined to bring forth a maximum number of nine
children and this number determines the compensation for the wound that
has disabled his generative faculties: 9 marks for the man who has not yet
become a father.75 On the other hand, the compensation is to be decreased by
1 mark for each child born to him before he became sexually impaired.
Presumably, up to here the regulation deals with the loss of the penis. But what
if the penis is still there and he has lost one of his testicles? The text continues
to communicate emphatically, first by phrasing this positively and then nega-
tively, how a man’s fertility is lodged in his left testicle and not in his right one.
Such a claim is not in line with what we have seen earlier, namely that the right
testicle was valued more highly than the left one, even though the difference
was relatively small (6 pounds against 5½). Apparently, both testicles were
commonly assumed to play an active part in the procreative process. Nijdam
has observed in connection with this passage that the authors of the registers

74
Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, A VII.91–94 (‘Emsiger Busstaxen’).
75
One mark is equal to 12 shillings, so 9 marks is 5 pounds and 8 shillings. The Hunsigo
Register of Compensations likewise stipulates 9 wergilds for a man who has become
infertile as a result of genital mutilation. See Wybren Jan Buma and Wilhelm Ebel, Das
Hunsigoer Recht (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1967), VII.29 (‘Hunsigoer
Busstaxen I’).
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126 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

were rather ignorant of the more detailed aspects of the male reproductive
organs,76 and from a modern point of view this is true, of course. Rather than
judging from modern superior medical knowledge, however, there is contem-
porary evidence to show that the author of the Emsigo Register was not alone
in his opinion.
In medieval Ireland, too, a curious preference is attested for the left testicle
over the right one, according to the tract Bretha Éitgid (Judgements of
Inadvertance). In this legal text, violent removal of the penis must be compen-
sated not only with a full body-price (the counterpart of the Frisian wergild),
but also a full honor-price and restitution. The height of the compensation is
indicative of the importance of the loss of the male member. Following upon
the penis, the text deals with the testicles – na hairne toile (glands of desire), as
they are quite charmingly called – and declares that loss of the left testicle
requires a full injury payment, is uaithi ata in geinemain ‘because the progeny
is from it’. As in the Frisian text, the reason for the full amount being due is
emphatically explained. Compensation for loss of the right testicle, on the other
hand, was set at the value of the injury and did not require a full body-price.77
So how must we explain this Hiberno-Frisian parallel of attributing the power
of generation to the left testicle rather than to the right one, a notion that runs
counter to all the major medical treatises from antiquity to the close of the
Middle Ages? After all, it was established medical knowledge that the right
testicle produces boys and the left one girls. Familiarity in Frisia with vernacular
Irish texts need not be assumed, nor is it likely that Irish legal experts consulted
Frisian registers of compensation. In both countries, knowledge of the main-
stream medical literature is apparent,78 but evidently, when it comes to the
testicles, preference is sometimes given to other, perhaps older, traditions. In
view of the prevailing positive connotations with right (dexter) and negative
associations with left (sinister), autogenesis of the notion of the superiority of
the left testicle seems unlikely. Until new evidence turns up that points in
another direction, it seems, therefore, that the notion of the exclusive procreative
function for the left testicle only stems from a tradition that is very ancient and
not yet influenced by Mediterranean medical knowledge.
Men were more likely to contract injuries than women, if only because
feuding expeditions were staged by men. This generalization does not imply

76
Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht, p. 276.
77
See Brónagh Ní Chonaill, ‘Impotence, Disclosure and Outcome: Some Medieval Irish
Legal Comment’, 17–18, online at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/scottishstudies/earticles/
LegalConcern.pdf (accessed September 2011). Eska also discusses this passage in her
article in this volume, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”‘, pp. 167–8.
78
For Frisia, Galen and Hippocrates are referred to several times in the thirteenth-century
chronicle of Bloemhof Abbey, while Vindicianus’s treatise on gynecology, or a derivative
thereof, must also have been around; see Nijdam, Lichaam, eer en recht, p. 216, n. 164,
and Elsakkers, ‘Her anda neylar’, p. 124, respectively.
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 127

that women never resorted to violence, only that they were not expected to do
so and if they did, the stakes were high: ‘Hversar en wiff annen mon onfiucht
anda hine sla blaw iefta blodich, and hi hine bewerth and hir deth dath ieftha
dolg, sa heth hiu hire froulika bota wrlern anda is thiu bota lic aien like dethem’
[If a woman attacks a man and beats him black or bloody, and he defends
himself and kills her or inflicts her a wound, then she has lost her woman’s
compensation and the compensation [for both] is equally high for equal
injuries].79 In other words, women who started a fight ran the risk of losing the
additional half of a compensation that was assigned to women compared to
the compensation for a similar wound inflicted on a man.80 On the whole,
women led a far less public life than men and their daily activities were basically
confined to the manor, and are therefore far less frequently represented in the
compensation tariffs. Rather than the consequence of fighting, female genital
injuries and mutilations appear to be the result mainly of sexual assaults that
may begin with inappropriate touching and end with outright rape.81 The early
medieval Lex Frisionum only provides for lasciviously touching either a free-
woman’s breasts or her genitals, the latter requiring a compensation that was
twice as high as fondling her bosom.82
As with punishments doled out to men, the later, vernacular laws likewise
show more variety than the Lex Frisionum in the judicial directions concerning
women. Infringing upon a woman’s physical integrity, and at the same time her
honor and that of the men with whom she was immediately associated, most
often started with indecent touching. For this misdeed the Frisians had coined
the term bas(e)feng, (evil-minded grabbing) (cf. German böse ‘malicious,
wicked’); it referred to acts against women only. Basefeng, according to the
Emsigo tariffs, was envisaged to begin by groping her outside her clothes
(compensation: 3 shillings) and next, by putting a hand inside (9 shillings).
The offense was taxed even higher (1 mark = 12 shillings) if the woman was
pregnant or having her monthly period (‘hire stilnesse’).83 Perhaps to facilitate
grabbing, a man might cut a woman’s clothes, so that her nakedness was
exposed: 21 pennies for cutting her upper dress, 4 pennies for her inner dress
and 7 pennies for her chemise.84 Denuding is never mentioned in the Frisian
legal sources as an offense against men, but for women the act was seen as

79
Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, C II.7 (‘Ergänzungen’). On the usage of alliterative
pairs (‘blaw ieftha blodich’, ‘dath ieftha doch’), so typical for Frisian legal discourse, see
most recently Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘Dealing Dooms: Alliteration in the Old Frisian Laws’,
in Alliteration in Culture, ed. Jonathan Roper (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011),
pp. 74–92.
80
See, e.g., Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, C I.189 (‘Emsiger Busstaxen’).
81
Rape itself will not be discussed here, as it falls outside the scope of this contribution.
82
Eckhardt and Eckhardt, Lex Frisionum, Tit. XXII.89–90 (‘De dolg’).
83
Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, A VII.99–100 (‘Emsiger Busstaxen’).
84
Ibid. A VII.103.
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128 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

inflicting shame. According to the Hunsigo tariffs, the least form of denudation
was when ‘hire clathar uperauad send and hire skeme blicht’ [when her clothes
have been pulled up and her shame becomes visible].85 It should be noted that
such terms as skeme and skonde, ‘shame’, to denote the genitals, like basefeng,
are used in the laws only with reference to women. Denuding and grabbing
may be shameful for the woman who has to undergo these expressions of
lasciviousness, at the same time these deeds affect her father or husband under
whose tutelage she was customarily placed. Physical harm followed denudation
when a nipple was cut off (11 shillings = 132 pennies) or worse still, one of her
breasts (a third of her wergild, regardless of whether it was the left or the right
breast; two-thirds of her wergild for both breasts off). These compensations
had to make up not only for her bodily disfigurement but also for losing the
life-sustaining function of nursing a child.86 The registers do not leave it at that,
for they also provide for sexual mutilation: rending a woman’s genitals (‘Enre
frowa hire macht torent’), required 15 shillings (= 180 pennies) for recompense,
which is nothing compared to a third wergild, the compensation paid to a
woman who, as a result of this mutilation, was unable to keep in her urine any
longer (‘hire mese nawit behalda ne muge’).87 This amount implies that genital
mutilation leading to a woman’s incontinence was rated just as highly as
violently depriving her of a breast. Maltreating her genitals in such a way that
they are bleeding made the perpetrator liable to pay a compensation of 3
pounds and 3 shillings.88
A stock ingredient of the registers in use west of the Lauwers is the
following:89
Fan der cuntta bote: thria ensa and vj pund, thet is sex sneza grata and fyf
grate. Jef hio also dulghet werth, thet hio tha herum nath tho tancke thyania
ne mey, thet wite hio selua mith here selua onbringhe.

About the compensation for [mutilation of] the cunt: three ounces and six
pounds, that is six score stoters and five stoters. If she gets so wounded that
she cannot serve the lords [i.e. her husband] satisfactorily, she may herself
swear to this.

At first sight, this regulation would seem to suggest that establishing the right
amount of money for an injured vulva is more important than the injury itself
or indeed the victimized woman, for an older currency is recalculated, because

85
Buma and Ebel, Das Hunsigoer Recht, VII.88 (‘Hunsigoer Busstaxen I).
86
Buma and Ebel, Das Emsiger Recht, A VII.106 (‘Emsiger Busstaxen’).
87
Ibid. VII.96–7.
88
Buma and Ebel, Das Hunsigoer Recht, VII.30 (‘Hunsigoer Busstaxen I’).
89
Buma et al., Westerlauwerssches Recht, XXIV.64 (‘Busstaxen des südwestfriesischen
Küstengebietes’).
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Castration in Medieval Frisian Law 129

of continuous inflation in the later Middle Ages, into a more modern one:
3 ounces (= 60 pennies) plus 6 pounds (= 1,440 pennies) is said to be (more
or less) equal to 125 stoters (= 1,500 pennies). The size of the amount of
compensation and the care with which it is calculated, however, demonstrate
the seriousness of the deed. Once the pecuniary arithmetic has been settled,
the focus is directed to the woman who (not entirely surprisingly) fears that
because of the gravity of her injury she will from now on be unfit for sexual
intercourse – almost as if she had been castrated – and hence runs the danger
of being excluded from a normal future as wife. The social perspective is
completely male-oriented, for the sexual act is seen as one in which a woman
performs a service for tha heran, literally ‘the lords’. The plural is idiomatic
here,90 but the use of the word ‘lord’ is not otherwise found in the context of
compensation tariffs and underscores a woman’s inferior position with respect
to her future husband.
Ultimately, then, castration in the medieval Frisian laws is a punitive
measure that was rarely exercised. The cases in which emasculation was stip-
ulated apparently called for drastic action: Robbing of a pagan sanctuary in the
Carolingian Lex Frisionum (c. 800) and committing an act of bestiality in the
thirteenth-century vernacular Sendriocht. Both stipulations are carefully
couched in narrative scripts that outline the ritual procedures accompanying
the execution. Furthermore, the extensive corpus of compensation tariffs allows
us to catch glimpses of how Frisian law imagined all kinds of injuries that could
be inflicted to the genitals, ranging from those that would heal in time to
serious ones that led to permanent incapacity or infertility. Noteworthy are the
differences in the way mutilations are positioned for men and women. For men,
injuries are envisaged that on the whole result from fighting, whether with bare
hands or armed. Judging by the height of the compensations, a man’s greatest
concern appears to lie in the loss of penis and/or testicles.91 For women, genital
mutilation is rarely conceived of as the result of fighting, and if this is the case,
the woman is to blame and loses her right to an increased compensation.
Overall, her genital injuries are envisaged to originate in situations where
she is the object of male sexual harassment, expressed by the specialized term
basefeng ‘evil-minded grabbing a woman’. Attempts at denudation are
mentioned only with respect to women and, significantly, only the female

90
See note 58, above.
91
Perhaps, this concern explains the greater variety of Old Frisian words for the male
genitals in comparison to those for the female ones. The generic term for the genitals of
both males and females is macht/mecht, also plural machte/mechte (cognate with MoE
‘might’). The penis is called either pint (cf. MoE pintle) or tilinge (derived from tilia ‘to
obtain, cultivate’, cf. MoE to till), while a testicle is designated by pralling/prelling (obscure
etymology, confined to Frisian), hotha (cf. MoG Hoden), or skal (cf. MoE shell). The vulva
is called cunta (cf. MoE cunt); no further details of the female genitals are mentioned by
name.
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130 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

sexual organs are euphemistically, albeit with a value-loaded twist, referred to

as ‘shame’ (skeme, skonde). Moreover, whereas the law enumerates the children
a genitally mutilated man might have fathered, no such concern is expressed
with respect to women who had befallen the same fate. Finally, the possibility
that genitally mutilated women might not be able to ‘serve the lords satisfac-
torily’ finds no counterpart in mutilated men being worried about their
inability to have sex to the gratification of their wives. Clearly, the anonymous
laws, rooted in a centuries-long tradition, were composed by males (first orally
and later in writing), applied by males, and, on the whole, addressed to males.
Whatever genital wounds were inflicted on women were rephrased in terms
and conditions that were basically subservient to the most important male
interests in medieval Frisia: offspring and honor.
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CHAPTER 6

The Fulmannod Society:

Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject
Jay Paul Gates

A volume of essays taking up the theme of castration invites an exploration

of the relationship between the biological and the social, the private and
the public. Indeed, the ‘private parts’, those which are kept hidden, are by their
very nature not private but social: they can only perform their biological, gener-
ative function with another person. A focus not just on the body, but on the
male generative organ, raises a number of questions about the human, sexed
body and the interpretation of the social role of the biological body: what is its
value, how should it be used, who may act on it, what does its presence or
absence signify, and what does it indicate about an individual’s social function?
Taking the male member by itself provides an opportunity for a pars pro toto
response to a long-standing conundrum in social theory: ‘Is the person merely
a collection of roles or is the person the organizing principle which integrates
and orchestrates given social roles?’1 Evidence from the Anglo-Saxon period
indicates that the body was valued for the functions it could perform. The indi-
vidual gave a means for recognizing a collection of functions; but the evidence
depicts the individual primarily in terms of how a larger social matrix incor-
porated, and therefore valued, him rather than the individual holding inherent
value. However, there is no single social matrix for the Anglo-Saxon period,
but a changing vision of social order, how the individual fit into it, and the part
the individual played in maintaining it.
Miri Rubin has suggested that an approach emphasizing synecdoche focuses
on ‘the body as it was lived and experienced, in parts, rather than as whole’.2

1
Bryan S. Turner, The Body and Society: Explorations in Social Theory, 2nd edn (London:
Sage, 1996), p. 29. Cf. Roy Porter, ‘History of the Body Reconsidered’, in New Perspectives
on Historical Writing, ed. Peter Burke, 2nd edn (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2001), pp. 233–60.
2
Miri Rubin, ‘The Person in the Form: Medieval Challenges to Bodily Order’, in Framing
Medieval Bodies, ed. Sarah Kay and Miri Rubin (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1994), pp. 100–22 at p. 101.
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132 JAY PAUL GATES

That is, considering just one part of the body and how it was conceived of and
experienced can give perspective on how a whole person lived and was
perceived. The Anglo-Saxon understanding of the body and its social roles,
particularly their understanding of the body legal, suggests that the individual
body was under constant inspection and interpretation3 (at least as much as
the modern body), but at no point did they lose sight of the social functions
the body performed. Rather, the individual held a social role and the individual
body was valued according to its social functions. Texts treating violent action
on the male genitals indicate what was valued – not simply bodily integrity,
but integrity of function, integrity of the value attributed to the body – and
who benefited from that integrity.
In short, there is no evidence that castration was a particular concern for
the Anglo-Saxons nor that they experienced any particular castration anxieties,
as was the case in subsequent eras.4 The only mention of castration as punish-

3
A number of important studies concerning the body and inspection have been written.
Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe has examined corporal punishment and ordeal in Anglo-
Saxon England and argues for the importance of the legibility of the body. ‘Body and
Law in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-Saxon England 27 (1998): 209–32. Responding
to O’Brien O’Keeffe’s article, Mary P. Richards examines the early laws’ injury tariffs and
argues that the wounded body conveyed both the evidence of a crime and a means to a
restitution, connecting individual and community stability. ‘The Body as Text in Early
Anglo-Saxon Law’, in Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England,
ed. Benjamin C. Withers and Jonathan Wilcox (Morgantown: West Virginia University
Press, 2003), pp. 97–115 at pp. 105–6. Andrew Rabin develops these ideas and argues for
the focus of Wulfstan’s laws on the knowable self. In particular, he argues that it provides
a means of ordering social relations as well as a model for structuring the legal subject –
as law organizes society in response to external pressures, the individual must internalize
the legal text so that the ordered psychology of the legal subject parallels the ordered
community of which he is a part. ‘The Wolf ’s Testimony to the English: Law and the
Witness in the Sermo Lupi ad Anglos’, JEGP 105 (2006): 388–414. Most recently, Lisi
Oliver has addressed the body in barbarian law and provides the process and procedure
of law as well as an analysis of how the marked body is interpreted by the law. The Body
Legal in Barbarian Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011); especially relevant
to this discussion are chs 2 and 3.
4
Castration was imposed as a symbolic punishment for treason in England as early as the
post-Conquest period. Klaus van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding
as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England’, in Violence,
Vulnerability, and Embodiment: Gender and History, ed. Shani D’Cruze and Anupama
Rao (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 94–108. For an alternate reading of Anglo-Saxon
castration anxiety as part of a larger set of anxieties about bodily destruction, see John
M. Hill, ‘The Sacrificial Synecdoche of Hands, Heads, and Arms in Anglo-Saxon Heroic
Story’, in Naked Before God: Uncovering the Body in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Benjamin
C. Withers and Jonathan Wilcox (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003),
pp. 116–37. Hill, drawing on Melanie Klein’s Freudian reading of anxiety about body
destruction, applies it to the ‘fiercely righteous body, that of the super-ego hero’, which
defies such anxieties in heroic action and ‘has a sense of momentary omnipotence to it
– the feeling that not only can one not be castrated (beheaded, cut asunder, killed) but
in fact one is invulnerable during the particular action in question’ (p. 121).
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The Fulmannod Society 133

ment in the laws is for a slave who rapes another slave and is only able to make
compensation through his castration – the lex talionis still applies to a slave
because he lacks property with which to pay compensation. However, exam-
ining the texts that address violent action on the male genitals does offer
insight into the ever-elusive Anglo-Saxon view of sex as well as their under-
standing of manhood. Note, ‘manhood’ rather than ‘masculinity’, because the
evidence suggests that a man was defined more in relation to his contribution
to the society as a whole than in his gendered performance.5 The physical body
was a collection of tools useful in the performance of what a person
contributed. Thus arms and legs were as useful to a thegn in fighting as to a
churl in digging, and genitals were for procreation. If, as Paul Hyams has
suggested, the fundamental goal of assigning monetary values to bodies – in
the form of wergild or injury tariffs – was to maintain a secure and stable
society,6 tracing secular references to the genitals, especially violent action on
the penis and testicles,7 shows a shifting valuation of the male in Anglo-Saxon
society according to developing ideas about the vita activa, which in Anglo-
Saxon England is a life concerned with sustaining and protecting bodies,
including the spiritual body of the Church, and of how to achieve security and
stability. In particular, there is a shift from the emphasis on kinship ties and
the value of a man’s status (rank – e.g. thegn or churl – honor, physical
integrity, and ability to reproduce that status) within the family to an emphasis

5
Although the focus of this chapter is necessarily on males, the Old English mann indi-
cated, according to Bosworth and Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ‘a human being of
either sex’. Certainly a woman (wifmann) performed particular social roles that were
valued and that defined her personhood as much as a man’s. However, as has been noted,
women were often perceived as existing on the fringe of free status. Ruth Mazo Karras,
‘Desire, Descendants, and Dominance: Slavery, the Exchange of Women, and Masculine
Power’, in The Work of Work: Servitude, Slavery, and Labor in Medieval England, ed.
Allen J. Frantzen and Douglas Moffat (Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1994), p. 17; Elizabeth
Stevens Girsch, ‘Metaphorical Usage, Sexual Exploitation, and Divergence in the Old
English Terminology for Male and Female Slaves’, in The Work of Work, ed. Frantzen
and Moffat, pp. 30–54 at pp. 44–5. Yet the importance of masculinity to the Anglo-
Saxons should not be ignored. Discussions concerning masculinity in the early medieval
north such as Preben Meulengracht Sørensen’s The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual
Defamation in Early Northern Society (Odense: Odense University Press, 1983) suggest
that there was concern with the performance and maintenance of masculinity. However,
the discussion here suggests that in Anglo-Saxon England such masculinity was simply
not reliant on the penis.
6
Paul R. Hyams, Rancor and Reconciliation in Medieval England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2003), pp. 3–4.
7
The vocabulary in the texts discussed here is not entirely clear about what it is referring
to. For instance, the term lendenbræde is used to refer to male genitals in Alfred’s laws.
This may very well refer to the testicles, as Lisi Oliver takes it to mean (my thanks to Dr.
Oliver for allowing me to see an unpublished draft of an article on genital wounds in
Æthelberht’s laws). However, it is not clear to me that the texts here distinguish the parts
of the genitals – penis, scrotum, testicles.
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134 JAY PAUL GATES

on all men of all free ranks as equally necessary and valuable to the society.8
Peace and social order in relation to the vita activa were presented as bound
up with manhood throughout the Anglo-Saxon period and, finally, were only
achievable by what King Alfred, in the translation of Boethius’s Consolation
of Philosophy, refers to as a fulmannod (fully manned) society.9 Yet to get to
the fulmannod society of Alfred’s vision required a significant shift of
perspective on social order, the social relationships of individuals, and the
obligations of a man.
Nearly two decades ago, Caroline Walker Bynum noted that too great an
emphasis in studies on the body had been placed on sexuality and gender at
the expense of consideration of topics like work and death.10 In the intervening
years, scholars have attempted to redress this, but have not adequately brought
the sexed male body together with its social value. There have been worth-
while considerations of sexuality and gender, but these have generally focused
on women, not men, and on religious texts and contexts which dramatize ‘a
struggle for power between a threatening world, which is destructive and
sexual, and an embracing spirituality, which is asexual’.11 There have been
considerations of labor, death, disability, and materiality, but not of their
relation to sex.12 Matters of genealogy and succession have been treated, but
largely with focuses on heroic literature, politics, and propaganda, and rarely
with a consideration of children or sex, even though it is only in recent history

8
On the social status of slaves and the work they performed, see Girsch, ‘Metaphorical
Usage, Sexual Exploitation’, pp. 30–54.
9
Malcolm Godden and Susan Irvine, eds. The Old English Boethius: An Edition of the Old
English Versions of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), vol. 2, B 17, p. 26.
10
Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Why All the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist’s Perspective’,
Critical Inquiry 22 (1995): 1–33 at p. 33.
11
Hugh Magennis, ‘No Sex Please, We’re Anglo-Saxons: Attitudes to Sexuality in Old
English Prose and Poetry’, Leeds Studies in English 26 (1995): 1–27 at p. 3; Clare A. Lees,
‘Engendering Religious Desire: Sex, Knowledge, and Christian Identity in Anglo-Saxon
England’, Journal of Mediaeval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 17–45; Jocelyn
Wogan-Browne, ‘Chaste Bodies: Frames and Experiences’, in Framing Medieval Bodies,
ed. Kay and Rubin, pp. 24–42; Karen Biddick, ‘Genders, Bodies, Borders: Technologies
of the Visible’, Speculum 68 (1993): 389–418.
12
Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval
Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011); Christina Lee, ‘Body Talks: Disease and Disability
in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Anglo-Saxon Traces, ed. Jane Roberts and Leslie Webster
(Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011), pp. 145–64;
Withers and Wilcox, ed., Naked Before God; Kay and Rubin, ed., Framing Medieval Bodies;
Frantzen and Moffat, ed., The Work of Work. Exceptions to this are two essays in The
Work of Work: Karras, ‘Desire, Descendants, and Dominance’, pp. 16–29, and Girsch,
‘Metaphorical Usage, Sexual Exploitation’, pp. 30–54. However, both of these essays are
concerned with the sexual exploitation of unfree people, especially women, and,
therefore, offer only a very limited understanding of the larger perception of the sexed
male body in the vita activa of Anglo-Saxon England.
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that children have been perceived as valuable in their own right or as distinct
from the sex act.13 This essay attempts to fill this gap by drawing the lay, male,
sexed body and work in Anglo-Saxon England into dialogue in order to
consider how the Anglo-Saxons understood the function and value of the
sexed male body, and the development of their understanding, because no
person exists outside a matrix of social contexts.
There is, as has been widely noted, very little reference to sex or the sexed
body in the vernacular Old English corpus and what exists falls roughly into
three categories: religious, practical, and secular.14 The religious texts are not
particularly reliable evidence for how the Anglo-Saxons thought about sex
and the body. Those religious texts that do address sex (especially the male
genitals) show an anxiety about it and a desire to control it.15 Hagiographical
texts show saintly figures binding up their loins16 and homiletic and pastoral
texts are interested in the regulation of sexual interactions, especially on
Church holidays.17 Perhaps most famous among these appears in Archbishop
Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, in which he condemns the practice of men
who ‘sceotað togædere and ane cwenan gemænum ceape bicgað gemæne, and
wið þa ane fylþe adreogað, an æfter anum, and ælc æfter oðrum, hundum
geliccast, þe for fylþe ne scrifað’ [group together and buy one woman in
common, and with her practice filth, one after another, and each after the
other, most like dogs who do not care about filth].18 However, none of the reli-
gious texts offers useful evidence about the lay understanding of sex or the
body, not even Wulfstan’s graphic example which, given the goals of the genre,

13
Michael D. C. Drout, ‘Blood and Deeds: The Inheritance Systems in Beowulf’, Studies in
Philology 104 (2007): 199–226; Frederick M. Biggs, ‘The Politics of Succession in Beowulf
and Anglo-Saxon England’, Speculum 80 (2005): 709–41; Pauline Stafford, ‘Succession
and Inheritance: A Gendered Perspective on Alfred’s Family History’, in Alfred the Great:
Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences, ed. Timothy Reuter (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2003), pp. 251–64; Richard J. Schrader, ‘Succession and Glory in Beowulf’, JEGP 90 (1991):
491–504; Sally Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud: Sutton, 1999);
Mathew S. Kuefler, ‘“A Wryed Existence”: Attitudes toward Children in Anglo-Saxon
England’, Journal of Social History 24 (1991): 823–34.
14
This essay will only address the written. On visual depictions of sex and sexed bodies,
see Catherine E. Karkov, ‘Exiles from the Kingdom: The Naked and the Damned in
Anglo-Saxon Art’, in Naked Before God, ed. Withers and Wilcox, pp. 181–220.
15
Magennis, ‘No Sex Please, We’re Anglo-Saxons’, p. 7.
16
A search of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus online for lenden, the most basic of term
for loins, produces twenty results relating to the religious category, most of which refer
to binding up one’s loins. Larissa Tracy discusses the relative absence of castration among
the litany of tortures doled out to martyrs in English hagiography, ‘“Al defouleden is holie
bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South
English Legendary’, in this volume, pp. 87–107.
17
Magennis, ‘No Sex Please, We’re Anglo-Saxons’, p. 15.
18
Dorothy Whitelock, ed., Sermo Lupi ad Anglos (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1977),
lines 88–91.
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136 JAY PAUL GATES

cannot be comfortably accepted as representative or even commonplace.19

Practical medical texts make the greatest number of references to the genitals
in terms of healing sore or wounded genitals, but with little suggestion of how
injuries were received and with little to guide interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon
understanding of the sexed body.20 Rather, the most evidence for violent action
on the genitals appears in a seemingly ill-fitting pair of secular vernacular
genres – riddles and laws. However, when read against one another, they
provide the best evidence of the Anglo-Saxons’ broad concerns with the sexed
body and offer a common method for considering the developing under-
standing of the role of the male member, and thus of a man, in the vita activa.21
The riddles and the laws both direct their audiences’ attention beyond the
matter at hand and encourage them to reflect on the familiar social world. A
handful of suggestive riddles are contained in the tenth-century Exeter Book,
possibly the earliest extant collection of vernacular poetry from Anglo-Saxon
England.22 These appear to refer to the penis, but redirect the right-thinking
respondent to familiar, non-bodily, objects such as an onion, a key, and bread
dough,23 all of which receive rough treatment at the hands of another. In the

19
Perhaps an intermediary genre dealing with sex could be penitential literature. Although
fundamentally religious and Latinate, the ostensible intent of penitentials was to guide
confessors. However, as John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer note, much of what
appears in the Anglo-Saxon penitential texts is drawn from early Christian models and
is, therefore, not reliable as evidence for Anglo-Saxon practice. Medieval Handbooks of
Penance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), p. 180. However, see Pierre J.
Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550–1150 (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1984).
20
The Dictionary of Old English Corpus online lists thirty-nine references to lenden in
medical texts, but it is difficult to generalize about these because lenden is also used to
refer to the kidneys.
21
This essay will not treat sexuality and the unfree because slaves were not able to act within
the vita activa. However, it is worth briefly noting that the laws do concern themselves
with the consequences of sex with slaves and the status of the offspring of such
encounters. Karras, ‘Desire, Descendants, and Dominance’, pp. 16–29.
22
The most recent editor has dated it c. 965–75. The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poetry,
ed. Bernard J. Muir, 2nd edn, 2 vols (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), p. I:1.
Although the extant riddles post-date the laws, the way they work in their treatment of
the body offers insight into the laws’ approach to it.
23
Respectively, riddles 25, 44, and 45 in The Exeter Anthology, ed. Muir, pp. I:303 and 319.
Many commentators and editors have noted several double-entendre riddles besides these.
Reinhard Gleissner discusses as employing some degree of double entendre the following
riddles: 11 (cup or beaker of wine), 12 (ox, leather), 20 (sword), 30a (tree or wood in
various forms), 37 (bellows), 44 (key), 45 (bread dough), 54 (churn), 61 (helmet), 62
(poker, boring tool), 63 (beaker), 75 (piss), 76 (oyster, horn), and 91 (beech tree and
book, battering ram). Die ‘zweideutigen’ altenglischen Rätsel des Exeter Book in ihrem zeit-
genössischen Kontext (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1984) (proposed responses are taken from The
Exeter Anthology, ed. Muir, II:655–63 and 735–39). Others have been added to this list
by various scholars. For example: Mercedes Salvador, ‘The Key to the Body: Unlocking
Riddles 42–46’, in Naked Before God, ed. Withers and Wilcox, pp. 60–96; Sarah L. Higley,
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laws of King Æthelberht of Kent (r. c. 587x590–616x618)24 and of King Alfred

of Wessex (r. 871–99)25 the lists of injury tariffs lay out the prices for kinds and
degrees of wounds, including wounds to the genitals. It is striking that the
language and imagery of the riddles are violent – grabbing, grasping, striking,
piercing – and overlap with the laws’ concerns with bodily harm:
on þæt banlease bryd grapode,
hygewlonc hondum.
the proud woman grasped that boneless thing in her hand. (Riddle 45)26

Gif feaxfang geweorð, L sceatta to bote.

For seizing by the hair, 50 sceattas as compensation. (Æthelberht 33)27

heo on mec gripeð,

ræseð mec on reodne, reafað min heafod,
fegeð mec on fæsten.
she grips me, violently reddens me, deprives me of my head, binds me in
fastness. (Riddle 25)28

‘The Wanton Hand: Reading and Reaching into Grammars and Bodies in Old English
Riddle 12’, in Naked Before God, ed. Withers and Wilcox, pp. 29–59. Patrick J. Murphy,
Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011)
provides a particularly compelling analysis of the sex riddles.
24
In this dating format, ‘x’ indicates ‘between possible dates’. Æthelberht’s exact dates are
difficult to ascertain. Those supplied here are from Lisi Oliver, The Beginnings of English
Law (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), pp. 1–14. The traditional dating is
560x590–616: Michael Lapidge et al., eds., The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon
England (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999). However, skeptical of some of the evidence, especially
the possible fifty-six-year reign, Oliver has challenged this and provided a more reasonable
chronology. Æthelberht’s laws are extant only in the twelfth-century Textus Roffensis.
25
Alfred issued his Domboc, with the laws of Ine (r. 688–726) appended to it, in the late
880s or early 890s. The earliest extant copy is in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
(CCCC) MS 173. Liebermann dates this to c. 925. For a full discussion of the manuscript
context and history, see Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the
Twelfth Century. Vol. I: Legislation and Its Limits (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 264–85.
All references to Alfred’s laws cite CCCC 173.
26
On female violence see Carole Hough, ‘Two Kentish Laws Concerning Women: A New
Reading of Æthelberht 73 and 74’, Anglia 119 (2001): 554–78. Unless otherwise noted,
all translations are my own.
27
The law numbers are editorial. Citations to Æthelberht’s laws are taken from Oliver,
Beginnings of English Law. Alfred’s laws are taken from Felix Liebermann, Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen: Text und Übersetzung, vol. 1 (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903). On hair-pulling,
see Oliver, The Body Legal, pp. 108–9. In particular, she notes that laws against hair-pulling,
which we perhaps associate more with women who appear on Jerry Springer, are bound
up with the barbarian custom of men wearing long hair and probably have two main inten-
tions: ‘they regulate against a deliberate affront in which the hair is jeeringly (and probably
publicly) pulled, and they also fine the person who makes the first physical attack in a fight.’
28
On the insult of binding, see Oliver, The Body Legal, p. 170. While reodne simply indicates
the color red, Bosworth and Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary defines reodan ‘to redden,
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138 JAY PAUL GATES

Wrætlice hongað bi weres þeo,

frean under sceate. Foran is þyrel.
A wondrous thing hangs by a man’s thigh, under its lord’s cloak. It is pierced
through in front. (Riddle 44)

Gif man gekyndelice lim awyrdeþ, þrym leudgeldum hine man forgelde.
Gif he þurhstinð, VI scill gebete.
Gif man inbestinð, VI scill gebete.
If a person29 destroys the generative member, he must pay three times the
wergild.
If he pierces it through, compensate with 6 shillings.
If he partially pierces it, compensate with 6 shillings. (Æthelberht 64–64.2)

Gif sio lendenbræde bið forslegen, þær sceal LX scill. to bote.

Gif hio bið onbestungen, geselle XV scill. to bote.
Gif hio bið ðurhðyrel, ðonne sceal ðær XXX scill. to bote.
If the loins are violently struck,30 pay 60 shillings as compensation; if they
are pierced, give 15 shillings as compensation; if they are pierced through,
then pay 30 shillings as compensation. (Alfred 67–67.2)

Through the language of violently abused genitals, the riddles and the laws
alike evoke questions about the purpose and value of the organ.31 Most impor-
tantly, both riddles and laws assume a social interaction with the penis.
Someone (female) acts on it in riddles 25 and 45; in riddle 44 a man lifts his
cloak with the intention of using the object publicly;32 and the laws inherently
address an injury inflicted by another. Thus the ‘private part’ is only ever

stain with blood’ (I) and ‘to redden a person by causing blood to flow from a wound, to
wound, kill’ (II). Such an understanding is certainly promoted by the surrounding verbs
ræsan, meaning ‘to move against violently, attack’ (II), and the verb reafian.
29
The repetition of man (person) in the law is suggestive of anyone, male or female, injuring
a man’s genitals.
30
The Dictionary of Old English notes that forslean can carry the meanings ‘to strike, smite,
beat’ (1), ‘to injure (someone/something) by striking’ (1.a), ‘to break, wound (a part of
the body) with a blow; to cut through (the neck) with a stroke’ (1.a.i). F. L. Attenborough
translates it as ‘maimed’, but this seems too strong given the following degrees of wound:
The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922;
rpt Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2006).
31
In riddles 25 and 45, it is precisely the figure of the female agent and the contradiction
of the imagery of violence in the feminine, domestic, space that must be resolved and
that suggests the object as a penis. Similarly, the language of anxiety over injury pervades
the law, and is most clearly expressed in the injury tariffs.
32
‘þonne se esne his agen hrægl / ofer cneo hefeð, wile þæt cuþe hol / mid his hangellan
heafde gretan / þæt he efenlang ær oft gefylde’ [when the man lifts his cloak above the
knee, he intends to greet with the head of that hanging thing that well-known hole of
matching length which he has often filled before].
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presented in relation to others, and in this, the audiences of both riddles and
laws are invited to examine it.33
However, riddles perform the ‘double task of revealing and concealing’,34
and the ‘correct’ answers to the riddles redirect an audience’s attention and
thought process away from the male sex organs. Nonetheless, as has been
widely recognized, ‘it is in part through posing and solving riddles that people
test the conceptual boundaries of their world, rendering abstract relations
concrete and endowing common things with sentience’.35 Patrick Murphy has
suggested that riddles are not even so much about reaching a correct solution,
but about understanding an underlying metaphor.36 In particular, in those he
groups simply as the ‘sex riddles’ he sees a concern with the body in service.37
Although the penis disappears from view with the presentation of the desired
response, the penis as a social object has been established and it has been asso-
ciated with common and useful objects. Although the language of the riddles
is violent, Magennis suggests that sexuality is presented in the riddles as
quotidian and non-threatening.38
Double-entendre riddles teasingly introduce the indecorous into a decorous
literary form, in such a way as to implicate the audience in the indelicacy:
the riddler can always claim that the correct answer to the riddle is an
innocent one, despite the unseemly conclusion to which the audience is
inclined to leap. Such riddles accept the principle that sex is not a proper
subject for them to deal with – otherwise there would be no need for double
entendre – but they deal with it anyway. Their attitude is one of good-
humoured impudence rather than of hostility to sexuality; and they also
proceed on the assumption that the audience accepts that sex is an inter-
esting subject.39

Similarly, the laws dealing with injury tariffs redirect from simple compen-
sation for an injury to other, supra-bodily, concerns. As Suzanne Lewis notes,
‘we never encounter the body unmediated by the meanings that cultures,
including our own as well as medieval, give to it’;40 and focusing this point,
Stefan Jurasinski suggests that ‘Anglo-Saxon injury tariffs offer scholarship

33
On examination of the body, Richards, ‘The Body as Text in Early Anglo-Saxon Law.’
34
Marie Nelson, ‘The Rhetoric of the Exeter Book Riddles’, Speculum 49 (1974): 421–40 at
p. 424.
35
John D. Niles, Old English Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts (Turnhout: Brepols,
2006), p. 54.
36
Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles, p. 23.
37
Ibid., p. 182.
38
Magennis, ‘No Sex Please, We’re Anglo-Saxons’, p. 18.
39
Ibid., pp. 16–17.
40
Suzanne Lewis, ‘Medieval Bodies Then and Now: Negotiating Problems of Ambivalence
and Paradox’, in Naked Before God, ed. Withers and Wilcox, pp. 15–28 at p. 15.
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140 JAY PAUL GATES

striking indices of how meaning and value were accorded to bodies’.41 In

addition to composition – the putting back together of the broken or injured
body through compensation – the law codes of Æthelberht and Alfred, each
in its own fashion, direct the audience to consider the function of the body in
the larger, integrated social web, not simply as it is valued by the injured man.
In this, the laws present a body social and indicate what is valued about any
given (male) body and by whom.42
The laws of the Kentish Æthelberht contain schedules of injury tariffs
addressing a range of wounds and degrees of severity, running in a roughly
head-to-toe order. As mentioned above, composition laws are fundamentally
about the maintenance of peace in the society and so analysis of them provides
a sense of their underlying assumptions about social order and the role of the
individual in the vita activa. As William Miller points out, ‘the English word
peace, coming via Latin pax from pacare, derives from the idea of paying’.43
Thus composition is not only about making whole the individual through
compensation, but about making whole the society in order to maintain peace.
However, standing out from all of the values attributed to injuries in the laws
of Æthelberht is the compensation to be paid for injury to the genitals, which
hints that the social order was conceived according to family groups. Rather
than a simple bot (compensatory fine), as in the other injury tariffs, Æthelberht
64 requires the payment of three-fold wergild for the destruction of the gener-
ative member:
Gif man gekyndelice lim awyrdeþ,44 þrym leudgeldum hine man forgelde.
Gif he þurhstinð, VI scill gebete.
Gif man inbestinð, VI scill gebete.
If a person destroys the generative member, he must pay three times the
wergild.
If he pierces it through, compensate with 6 shillings.
If he partially pierces it, compensate with 6 shillings.

Æthelberht 64 suggests that a man receives compensation not just for the injury,
as is clearly the case in all the other injury tariffs, but for the loss of his ability

41
Stefan Jurasinski, ‘Germanism, Slapping and the Cultural Contexts of Æthelberht’s Code:
A Reconsideration of Chapters 56–58’, Haskins Society Journal 18 (2006): 51–71 at p. 52.
42
For similar arguments regarding injury tariffs and laws in Frisia and in Ireland and Wales
see in this volume Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband She
Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’, pp. 108–30
and Charlene M. Eska, ‘“Imbruded in their owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh and
Irish Sources’, pp. 149–73.
43
William Ian Miller, Eye for an Eye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 15.
44
Although awyrdan can mean both ‘injure’ and ‘destroy’, it seems unlikely in this case that
any wound is intended, but rather that impairment of function is.
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to procreate.45 Defining the member (lim) that is injured as gekyndelice implies

that what is valued so highly is its function, not the wound per se.46 This is
further suggested by the subsequent bot fines of a mere 6 shillings, which do
compensate the wound.47 Moreover, Æthelberht’s laws distinguish elsewhere
between damage and function, as in the case of injury to an ear, which is valued
differently depending on whether or not the hearing is impaired.48 Yet none of
those laws establishing compensation for function comes anywhere near the
three-fold wergild owed for destruction of the generative member. However,
this should not be interpreted as some kind of castration anxiety or compen-
sation for lost masculine identity. Rather, it is indicative of a compensation for
a man’s ability to reproduce his social function (a thegn producing future
thegns, a churl future churls) and thus contribute to the security of the larger
society. However, payment valued according to wergild rather than bot indicates
the imagined social structure. Bot was paid to the victim; wergild was paid to
the family. In this, the social structure is represented as one of families and the
social value of the individual is couched within his value to the family;
manhood is tied to the security of the family and its continuation.
Others have posited that Æthelberht 64 applies such a high price for a
wound to the penis because of the shame it would incur. Acknowledging the
proposal that it might compensate the harm to function, Mary Richards states,
‘we should not overlook, however, the factors of shame and embarrassment
such a wound might involve and the possibility, therefore, of compensatory
damages beyond those for other catastrophic injuries’.49 Miller goes further,
claiming that the penis here takes on symbolic value and that ‘fetishization is
clearly needed to explain the hyperevaluation of one part as three times greater
than the whole’.50 Certainly Miller raises the issue of reproductive ability,
pointing to a law in the Frankish Lex Salica that requires three-fold wergild for
killing a fertile woman, but only a single wergild for one beyond her fertile
years,51 but he emphasizes the symbolic quality. Although possible, such spec-
ulations do not seem to be supported by any hard evidence. There is no
primary-source evidence in the Anglo-Saxon laws to indicate that there was a

45
Oliver, Beginnings of English Law, p. 99.
46
Interestingly, this could theoretically refer to an injury to a man or a woman. Bosworth
and Toller’s Anglo-Saxon Dictionary identifies gecyndlim as ‘a birth-limb, womb; vulva’.
However, the context of the injury tariffs suggests that the interest is injury to the male
member.
47
Oliver suggests that these are referring to wounds to the scrotum rather than the penis
itself: Beginnings of English Law, p. 99.
48
Æthelberht 39–42. Oliver, Beginnings of English Law, p. 100.
49
Richards, ‘The Body as Text in Early Anglo-Saxon Law’, p. 105.
50
Miller, Eye for an Eye, pp. 125–8.
51
Cf. Marianne Elsakkers, ‘Inflicting Serious Bodily Harm: The Visigothic Antiquae on
Violence and Abortion’, Legal History Review 71 (2003): 55–63 at p. 62.
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142 JAY PAUL GATES

particular shame to being unable to procreate.52 Without question, the laws

compensate shame in that they value visible wounds more highly than those
covered by clothing or hair.53 However, a wound to the genitals, an area usually
kept covered, would presumably be no more shameful than any other wound.54
Rather, it is the value of future lives that is being compensated in the three-fold
wergild. Rolf Bremmer finds similar compensations for genital wounding in the
Lex Frisionum and the later, vernacular Frisian laws.55 There is literary evidence
from Beowulf that matters of succession and inheritance were important, at least
for the nobility,56 and the very constructedness of West-Saxon genealogical
material in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and Asser’s Vita Ælfredi reinforces such
a conclusion in practice. More broadly, children in Anglo-Saxon society must
have been an important resource, valued for their labor as well as for the care
they would likely provide aged parents.57 Consequently, although shame and
embarrassment for a genital wound or for the subsequent inability to procreate
may have been factors, there seems to be a more practical logic involved in the
extraordinary compensation paid for the destruction of the generative member.
There is one final piece of evidence that procreative function is being
compensated in Æthelberht 64. Despite rank-based wergild, compensation for
injuries did not change according to rank,58 except, Stanley Rubin notes, in the
case of Æthelberht 64.59 He then offers a reasonable speculation about the
reason for this exception:
It seems probable that this variable compensation could well stem from the
Anglo-Saxons’ strict view of their personal status reasserting itself even
within an ‘egalitarian’ tariff of payments. It would have been uppermost in
their minds that the loss of virility and fertility would always constitute a
far more serious genealogical handicap for a member of the noble class
whose chances of parenthood might consequently be put in grave jeopardy.
The resulting absence of descendants and risk of severing family lineage
could be sufficient for royal agreement to be given for this rare variant in
compensation law.60

52
In personal correspondence, Dr. Lisi Oliver has indicated that she also knows of no such
evidence for particular shame attaching to infertility.
53
On compensation for shame, see Oliver, The Body Legal, ch. 6.
54
This would change during the Anglo-Norman period when castration and blinding were
explicitly established as symbolic punishments for treason in place of execution: van
Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, pp. 94–108.
55
Bremmer, ‘The Children He Never Had’, pp. 109–10.
56
See infra. n. 12.
57
Oliver, The Body Legal, p. 135.
58
Stanley Rubin, ‘The Bot, or Composition in Anglo-Saxon Law: A Reassessment’, Legal
History 17 (1996): 144–54 at p. 146; Richards, ‘The Body as Text in Early Anglo-Saxon
Law’, p. 101.
59
Rubin, ‘The Bot, or Composition in Anglo-Saxon Law’, pp. 150–1.
60
Ibid., p. 151.
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Moreover, since wergild is rank-based, the compensation paid is dependent on

the rank of the injured man. In this, the law recognizes rank in the case of injury
only in terms of the man’s social function, that is, his ability to reproduce within
the family. While the injury tariffs generally indicate how to make whole the
individual, however he came by his injury, the exceptional Æthelberht 64 redi-
rects the understanding of all the tariffs. They are not concerned simply with
a wounded body, but with a body that does work in the society and is therefore
valued according to that work. Thus while a thegn’s ability to fight and a churl’s
to farm might be equally valued in the composition laws, the thegn’s function
(evident in the distinction of wergild) and his ability to reproduce that function
for the society were deemed far more valuable than the churl’s. It is the family
unit that must be made whole in order to maintain peace and social order.
The imagined social order shifts from family as the defining social unit in
Æthelberht’s laws to the individual in relation to the king in Alfred’s. This must
be an active revision of his model since Alfred says in the prologue to his laws
that he drew on Æthelberht’s in compiling the Domboc (Alfred Prologue 49.9),
likely as a rhetorical consolidation of royal power.61 Alfred’s laws, like those of
Æthelberht, redirect the attention of the audience from the simple compen-
sation for an injury to the social function of the individual, but Alfred’s laws
accomplish this through an intriguing structural shift. Unlike Æthelberht,
Alfred does not compensate so highly for the lost future generation, but his
injury tariffs do value all (male) members of the society equally, indicating a
significant development in the overall logic of the laws, which becomes evident
when read through the larger intellectual projects of his reign, particularly the
translations of Gregory’s Pastoral Care and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy.
Taking up the kingship as he did in the midst of massive Viking incursions
at the end of the ninth century, Alfred’s conception of the vita activa is funda-
mentally about supporting the security of the society. He was focused on re-
establishing order and to this end he addressed himself to educational and legal
reform. The two great products of Alfred’s reign are the translations of Latin
material62 and his law code. Although the translations and the law are usually
discussed separately,63 it is far from clear that Alfred perceived them as having
unrelated functions. He referred to the translated texts as ‘suma bec, ða þe

61
On assertion of royal ideology through law, see Andrew Rabin, ‘Old English Forespeca
and the Role of the Advocate in Anglo-Saxon Law’, Mediaeval Studies 69 (2007): 232–54
at pp. 232–3.
62
The question of what Alfred actually produced has long been debated. The simplest
suggestion concerning authorship of the works produced during his reign is that Alfred
took part as a member of a team, and probably not the most learned member. Allen
Frantzen, ‘The Form and Function of the Preface in the Poetry and Prose of Alfred’s
Reign’, in Alfred the Great, ed. Reuter, pp. 121–36 at p. 128; idem, King Alfred (Boston:
Twayne, 1986), p. 1.
63
An important exception to this is Frantzen, King Alfred.
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144 JAY PAUL GATES

nidbeðyrfesta sien eallum monnum to witanne’ [some books which are most
needful for all men to know],64 and Allen Frantzen stresses that ‘Alfred trans-
lated and encouraged translating not only because he hoped to create an
educated clergy and nobility for the good of his nation, but also because he
loved learning and literature’.65 Moreover, Patrick Wormald has discussed the
literary quality of Alfred’s Domboc and several later Anglo-Saxon law codes
that drew on it and he concludes that the laws had a more ideological, less util-
itarian purpose.66 Both the translations and the law seem to work, if not
together, at least in the same vein, to reconceive what made the society secure.
The logic of the shift from Æthelberht’s model of three-fold wergild compen-
sation to a flat tariff for injury to a man’s ability to procreate is indicative of
this, pointing to the social matrix no longer being individual to family, but indi-
vidual to king, with a realignment of individual obligation.
In his texts, Alfred grapples with both social and individual order and how
one is supported by means of the other. At the level of the society, Alfred’s trans-
lation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy provides the first extant use of
the idea of the ‘three orders’ of society:67
Tola ic wilnolde þeah and andweorces to þam weorce þe me beboden was
to wyrcanne; þæt was þæt ic unfracodlice and gerisenlice mihte steoran
and reccan þone anweald þe me befæst wæs. Hwæt þu wast þæt nan mon
ne mæg nænne cræft cyþan ne nænne anweald reccan ne stioran butan
tolum and andweorce. Þæt bið ælces cræftes andweorc þæt mon þone cræft
buton wyrcan ne mæg. Þæt bið þonne cyninges andweorc and his tol mid
to ricsianne þæt he hæbbe his land fulmannod. He sceal habban gebedmen
and fyrdmen and weorcmen. Hwæt þu wast þætte butan þisum tolum nan
cyning his cræft ne mæg cyðan. Þæt is eac his andweorc þæt he habban
sceal to þam tolum þam þrim geferscipum biwiste.68

64
King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care, ed. Henry Sweet, 2 vols
(London: Oxford University Press, 1871–72; rpt 1958), p. 6.
65
Frantzen, King Alfred, p. 6.
66
Wormald, The Making of English Law, p. 264; Patrick Wormald, ‘Lex Scripta and Verbum
Regis: Legislation and Germanic Kingship, from Euric to Cnut’, in Early Medieval
Kingship, ed. P. H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1977), pp. 105–38.
67
Timothy E. Powell, ‘The “Three Orders” of Society in Anglo-Saxon England’, Anglo-
Saxon England 23 (1994): 103–32 at p. 103. It has been suggested that, although the
author of the preface to the Old English Consolation claims Alfred as its translator, the
text may have been produced after Alfred’s death. The earliest extant manuscript is dated
c. 950, and Godden and Irvine suggest a composition date between 890 and 930: Godden
and Irvine, Old English Boethius I, pp. 140–6; Malcolm Godden, ‘Did King Alfred Write
Anything?’ Medium Aevum 76 (2007): 1–23 at pp. 15–17. However, the text may be
understood as a product of Alfred’s translation program, whether or not it was produced
after his death. I would like to thank Dr Nicole Marafioti for bringing this point to my
attention.
68
The Old English Boethius, ed. Godden and Irvine, vol. 1, B 17, p. 277.
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I sought tools and material for the work that I was commanded to carry
out; that was so that I could safely and fittingly steer and direct the power
that was entrusted to me. Truly you know that no-one can show any skill,
or exercise or control any power, without tools and material. The material
of any skill is that without which one cannot exercise that skill. Then the
material for a king and his tools for ruling with are that he has his land fully
manned. He must have prayer-men and army-men and work-men. You
know that without these tools no king can show his skill. His material is
also that he must have for these tools sustenance for the three
communities.69

As Timothy Powell interprets this, the kingdom is supported by a (male) popu-

lation comprised of three interdependent, non-hierarchical groups. He stresses,
‘the basis of the model is differentiation rather than stratification’.70 The
gebedmen fulfill the role of the vita contemplativa; the latter two participate in
the vita activa. The non-hierarchical division of labor is interesting in itself
because this was a hierarchical society, but it becomes fully meaningful as a
change in practical social value when read in conjunction with Alfred’s revision
of Æthelberht’s model. As Alfred’s Consolation of Philosophy highlights social
order and the necessities of royal government, his laws insist on the individual
man’s role in maintaining social order. The foundation of Alfred’s law is the
social individual: ‘Æt ærestan we lærað, þæt mæst ðearf is, þæt æghwelc mon
his að and his wed wærlice healdan’ [First we instruct what is of greatest
necessity, that each man carefully hold his oath and his pledge] (Alfred 1). The
individual is thus defined under the law in relation to the society, not to the
family. And although he is an individual, he only has meaning in relation to
the social whole. Consequently, this appears to be a part of an effort to consol-
idate royal power through individual obligation.
Like Æthelberht’s laws, a man’s value (his wergild) is set according to the
status he holds.71 However, Alfred’s laws are far more literarily elaborated than
Æthelberht’s,72 and their structure indicates a shift in the legal conception of
the value of the individual body. Alfred 44–77 are the schedules of injury tariffs.

69
The translation is Godden and Irvine’s. The Old English Boethius, ed. Godden and Irvine,
vol. 2, B 17, p. 26.
70
Powell, ‘The “Three Orders”’, p. 104.
71
In seventh-century Kent, a nobleman (eorl) carried a wergild of 300 Kentish shillings, a
churl 100. In Alfred’s time a nobleman carried a wergild of 1,200 shillings, a churl of 200.
There was, at one point, a class of gesithas who carried a wergild of 600 shillings, but this
may have disappeared by Alfred’s day: Dorothy Whitelock, The Beginnings of English
Society (London: Penguin, 1954), pp. 83–4.
72
On the careful rhetorical shaping of Alfred’s laws, especially the prologue, there are two
excellent studies: Frantzen, ‘The Form and Function of the Preface in the Poetry and
Prose of Alfred’s Reign’ and Michael Treschow, ‘The Prologue to Alfred’s Law Code:
Instruction in the Spirit of Mercy’, Florilegium 13 (1994): 79–110.
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146 JAY PAUL GATES

Like Æthelberht’s, the schedules of injury tariffs do not vary the cost for a
wound according to rank, but Alfred’s laws do not make an exception
concerning compensation for loss of procreative function either. As with
Æthelberht’s laws, these run roughly head to toe until, at Alfred 65, the
structure of the laws suddenly shifts to finish with a seemingly spasmodic series
of injuries to genitals, arm, shoulder, hand, rib, eye, shoulder, shin, sinews, and
tendons. Stranger than the sudden structural disruption is that several of the
final twelve laws are redundant, having been covered in some way in the
previous injury tariffs. Indeed, there are two laws treating wounds to the
genitals in this list and they are themselves divided by a tariff for injury to the
arm. What these laws do, however, is drive the understanding of the value of
the body social. As Wormald comments in relation to the structure of Alfred’s
laws, they develop according to logical connections; ‘continuity was preserved,
even if the overall result was that the code went round in circles’.73 In fact, the
two laws regarding genital wounds and the law on the arm provide a kind of
logic through which to understand the injury tariffs as a whole and the struc-
turally fragmented list in particular. The apparent structural disruption invites
interpretation as the riddles do in revealing and concealing and suggest a
common logic is applied to all of the injuries in this list.74
The break in the head-to-toe order disrupts the otherwise clear logical
progression of the Domboc and invites interpretation:
[65] Gif mon sie on þa herðan to ðam swiðe wund, þæt he ne mæge bearn
gestrienan, gebete him ðæt mid LXXX scill.
If a man is so badly wounded in the testicles that he cannot beget children,
compensate him for that with 80 shillings.

[66] Gif men sie se earm mid honda mid ealle ofacorfen beforan elmbogan,
gebete ðæt mid LXXX scill.
[66.1] Æghwelcere wunde beforan feaxe and beforan sliefan and beneoðan
cneowe sio bot bið twysceatte mare.
If the arm of a man be cut off at the elbow, complete with the hand,
compensate it with 80 shillings.
Each wound before the hair and before the sleeve and beneath the knee
should be compensated with two sceattas more.

[67] Gif sio lendenbræde bið forslegen, þær sceal LX scill. to bote.
[67.1] Gif hio bið onbestungen, geselle XV scill. to bote.
[67.2] Gif hio bið ðurhðyrel, ðonne sceal ðær XXX scill. to bote

73
Wormald, The Making of English Law, p. 270.
74
Nelson, ‘The Rhetoric of the Exeter Book Riddles’, p. 424.
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If the loins are violently struck, pay 60 shillings as compensation; if they

are pierced, give 15 shillings as compensation; if they are pierced through,
then pay 30 shillings as compensation.

Alfred 65 clearly addresses the loss of function. There is a further implication

of loss of function with the odd qualifier in Alfred 66 that the compensation is
for an arm cut off at the elbow complete with the hand. Presumably, if the hand
had already been lost, the loss of the forearm alone would be worth far less. Of
particular note is that the bot for these injuries is equal. The only other injuries
worth as much are a shin struck off at the knee, 80 shillings (Alfred 72), and
the damage of tendons in the neck, so that the victim loses control of his head,
100 shillings (Alfred 77). The logic connecting these laws suggests that the
concern is for the work that the individual is able to contribute to the society.
However, Alfred 65 significantly lowers the compensation to be paid for a
wound that deprives a man of his ability to procreate from the three-fold
wergild in Æthelberht 64. In fact, it is hardly more expensive than a straight-
forward wound to the genitals in Alfred 67, expensive though that is. In this
shift from Æthelberht 64, Alfred’s injury tariffs seem to agree with the social
framework laid out in his Consolation of Philosophy. Each of the three categories
of men is necessary to the society and the work each does is equally necessary.
Injuries that deprive a man of the bodily tools that allow him to contribute are
thus compensated equally. Moreover, it is not difficult to see that the penis, the
hand, and the foot would be of equal value to a thegn or a churl. What then
stands out in the logic of Alfred’s injury tariffs, highlighted by the logic that
binds the final set, is the revaluation of the individual body that understands
all men as equally important in their contributions to the Anglo-Saxon society.
Manhood, in both the body legal and the oath-bound man, is elaborated in
relationship to the labor he provides to the king, no longer simply to the family.
Analyzing the laws through the riddles offers a new way of conceiving of
the laws. If the riddles are intended to drive thought processes and the devel-
opment of logical connections, and if Wormald’s claim that the laws are
primarily ideological documents is accurate, then it is reasonable to think of
the riddles and the laws working in similar ways. Thus it is important to focus
on the exception of Æthelberht 64 and the logic that appears to drive the struc-
tural shift in Alfred’s list of injury tariffs. The texts discussed here (riddles and
laws alike) all present the male procreative organ as an object that is funda-
mentally social in its purpose. However, the value attributed to the injured
genitals indicates how the society values the body social. In the change from
Æthelberht’s to Alfred’s laws there is significant development: the status of a
person was differentiated from the contribution the individual made to the
society. This is a reflection on the social value of the individual and how the
laws attempt to deal not with the (male) individual himself – which is
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148 JAY PAUL GATES

adequately addressed by the earlier composition laws – but with the work he
can do within the society, how he is productive. Manhood, then, under the law,
is not about which tool a man uses – penis, sword, or shovel – but what he can
contribute to the maintenance of the society, workforce, and work. The body
is a collection of tools, but a whole man makes use of them to maintain the
wholeness of society.
Reading through references to violence against the genitals in the Exeter
Book riddles and the laws of Æthelberht and Alfred provides evidence for how
the Anglo-Saxons viewed the embodied and sexed individual, which provides
an answer to the social theory question that started this: ‘Is the person merely
a collection of roles or is the person the organizing principle which integrates
and orchestrates given social roles?’75 Like the penis to the body, the individual
only held a value for what he contributed in social relations. For the riddles,
there are both practical (procreative) and pleasurable relationships between
man and woman, object and individual; for Æthelberht, the individual
contributes to the larger society through his role within his family; for Alfred,
the man is of value in his relationship as an individual capable of contributing
to what the king requires.
The secular Old English texts which address violent action on the male
genitals, considering the understanding of the male member, point to the
shifting relationship of the individual to society in Anglo-Saxon England.
Reading the laws through the model of the riddles’ redirecting an audience’s
focus by revealing and concealing points up the laws’ own way of suggesting
an imagined social structure, how an individual fits into it, and how manhood
is defined in relation to it. There is a shift from a fragmented, family-, and feud-
oriented imagined social structure to one based on the relationship of indi-
vidual to king. And in this, the society can only be successful if fulmannod,76
with all its members valued equally.

75
Turner, Body and Society, p. 29.
76
Godden and Irvine, ed., The Old English Boethius, vol. 2, B 17, p. 26.
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CHAPTER 7

‘Imbrued in their owne bloud’:

Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources
Charlene M. Eska

I n his 1587 Chronicles, Raphael Holinshed describes the following events

surrounding the aftermath of the Battle of Bryn Glas in June of 1402:
[Y]et neither the crueltie of Tomyris nor yet of Fuluia is comparable to
this of the Welshwomen; which is worthie to be recorded to the shame of
a sex pretending to the title of weake vessels, and yet raging with such
force of fiercenesse and barbarisme. For the dead bodies of the
Englishmen, being aboue a thousand lieng vpun the ground imbrued in
their owne bloud, was a sight [a man would thinke] greeuous to looke
vpon, and so farre from exciting and stirring vp affections of crueltie; that
it should rather haue mooued the beholders to commiseration and mercie:
yet did the women of Wales cut off their priuities, and put one part thereof
into the mouthes of euerie dead man, in such sort that the cullions hoong
downe to their chins; and not so contented, they did cut off their noses
and thrust them into their tailes as they laie on the ground mangled and
defaced.1

The author assures his readers that these deeds were done in open sight and
recorded in history, thus justifying his need to relate the events in his mother
tongue so that all his countrymen will know (Holinshed 2:528). Holinshed
continues what is in all actuality nothing but anti-Welsh propaganda, despite
it being recorded in contemporary sources such as the Annales Ricardi Secundi
et Henrici Quarti:

1
Raphael Holinshed, The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Ireland (London: John
Harison, George Bishop, Rafe Newberie, Henrie Denham, and Thomas Woodcocke,
1587), 2:528. Translations are my own unless otherwise noted. I should like to thank
Katharine Olson for valuable discussion on medieval Welsh historical sources. I should
also like to thank Robin Chapman Stacey for reading a draft of this paper and making
many valuable suggestions for improvements. Any oversights are, of course, my own.
Hereafter, references are given in parenthesis.
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150 CHARLENE M. ESKA

Ibique perpetratum est facinus, a sæculis inauditum: nam foeminæ

Wallencium, post conflictum, accesserant ad corpora peremptorum, et,
abscindentes membra genitalia, in ore cujuslibet posuerunt membrum
pudendum, inter dentes testiculis dependentibus, supra mentum; et nasos
abscissos presserunt in culis eorundem.2

In that place was performed a deed unheard of by people: namely the Welsh
women, after the fight, approached the dead bodies, and, having cut off the
genitals, they placed the shameful member in the mouth of each [dead
man], between the teeth with the testicles hanging down above the chin;
and the torn off noses they pressed into their anuses.

Holinshed’s gruesome description of the mutilation of the bodies of the dead

Englishmen was, furthermore, the source of Westmorland’s speech to King
Henry in Shakespeare’s I Henry IV:
My liege, this haste was hot in question,
And many limits of the charge set down
But yesternight, when all athwart there came
A post from Wales, loaden with heavy news,
Whose worst was that the noble Mortimer,
Leading the men of Herefordshire to fight
Against the irregular and wild Glyndŵr,
Was by the rude hands of that Welshman taken,
A thousand of his people butchered,
Upon whose dead corpse’ there was such misuse,
Such beastly shameless transformation,
By those Welshwomen done as may not be
Without much shame retold or spoken of.3

Shakespeare’s play thus immortalizes a lie, but raises the question: to what
extent was castration a form of punishment during the Middle Ages in the
British Isles? The evidence from medieval Wales answers this question to some
extent and suggests that the Welsh (and probably the Irish) borrow from the
Normans a means of dealing with political enemies. Significantly, what seems
not to have been borrowed was the cultural stigma attached to castration; for

2
‘Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Quarti’, in Johannis de Trokelowe et Anon Chronica
et Annales, ed. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer,
1866), p. 341; and R. R. Davies, The Revolt of Owain Glyn Dŵr (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), p. 157.
3
William Shakespeare, I Henry IV, in The Norton Shakespeare, gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt
(New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997) p. 1158, 1.1.35–46 and n. 5. I should like
to thank Ernest W. Sullivan II for pointing me towards this reference. See also Richard
Hosley, ed. Shakespeare’s Holinshed (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), pp. 98–108.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 151

the Irish and the Welsh, castration was an effective means of eliminating future
rivals and avoiding the taint of being a kin-slayer.4
The medieval Welsh laws, like those of the Anglo-Saxons and Irish, are
based on a system of compensation. They are, however, later in date than the
earliest Anglo-Saxon and Irish codes, only being attested from the thirteenth
century. That being said, early and late features of the codes can be detected.
There are different versions of the Welsh laws; the main ones are Llyfr Cyfnerth,
Llyfr Iorwerth, the Latin redactions (A, B, C, D, and E), and Llyfr Blegywryd,
which is largely a Welsh translation of Latin D. Other redactions, i.e., Llyfr
Colan (which is a reworking of Llyfr Iorwerth), Latin C, and Llyfr Cynog, do
not survive in any manuscript in a complete copy. Llyfr Cyfnerth, Llyfr Iorwerth,
and Llyfr Blegywryd survive in multiple manuscripts, and, especially with Llyfr
Cyfnerth and Llyfr Iorwerth, there can be a great deal of variation in the texts
from one manuscript to another.5
The ‘laws of women’ are of particular significance because there are clear
indications of English influence in the laws regarding rape, including castration
as punishment in certain circumstances.6 According to the Llyfr Iorweth version
of the law (§50), if a man rapes a woman, he pays a fine to the king and her
lord. If she was a virgin, she is paid a series of very expensive fines, and if she
was married, her husband’s insult-price is augmented by half and paid to him.7
The Llyfr Cyfnerth version is different in that manuscripts U,8 W,9 and X10 all
contain additional material not found in V,11 Mk,12 and Z,13 specifically, the
material that corresponds to U §73/19–21.14 Llyfr Cyfnerth Mk §73/14–15a lists

4
Lizabeth Johnson, ‘Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism: The Transmission,
Practice, and Meaning of Castration and Blinding in Medieval Wales’, Istoria 1
(2008):1–23 at pp. 14, 17.
5
T. M. Charles-Edwards, The Welsh Laws (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1989),
pp. 20–1.
6
For a discussion of some of the outside influences on Welsh law, see Morfydd E. Owen,
‘The Excerpta de Libris Romanorum et Francorum and Cyfraith Hywel’, in Tair Colofn
Cyfraith, The Three Columns of Law in Medieval Wales: Homicide, Theft and Fire, ed. T.
M. Charles-Edwards and Paul Russell (Bangor: Welsh Legal History Society, 2005),
pp. 171–95. I should like to thank Robin Chapman Stacey for valuable assistance on this
topic.
7
‘The “Iorwerth” Text’, ed. and trans. T. M. Charles-Edwards in The Welsh Law of Women,
ed. Dafydd Jenkins and Morfydd E. Owen (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1980),
pp. 161–79.
8
National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 37.
9
British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra A.XIV.
10
British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra B. V.
11
British Library, MS Harleian 4353.
12
Bodorgan MS, the property of Sir George Meyrick.
13
National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 259.
14
Dafydd Jenkins, ‘The “Cyfnerth” Text’, in The Welsh Law of Women, pp. 132–45 at p. 134.
Transcriptions of Welsh often use ‘6’ for ‘w’ which reflects the form of the letter found in
the manuscripts. I have followed the editorial convention of my primary sources.
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152 CHARLENE M. ESKA

a series of fines paid to the woman and her lord for her rape, which is similar
in structure and content to that found in Llyfr Iorwerth:
14 Y neb a dycco treis ar wreic, talet y hamobyr y’r argl6yd a’e dir6y, a’e
dilysta6t a’e heg6edi a’e sarhaet a tal idi hitheu. 15 Or g6atta g6r treissa6
g6reic, ac os kadarnha y wreic yn y herbyn, kymeret hi y gala y g6r yn y lla6
asseu, a’r creir yn y lla6 deheu, a thyget ry d6yn treis ohona6 ef erni hi a’r gala
honno, ac uelly ny chyll hi dim o’e ia6n. 15a Y neb a wato tries, rodet l6 deg
wyr a deu vgeint heb gaeth a heb alltut.

14 He who rapes a woman, let him pay her amobr to the lord and her
dirwy; and her dilystod and agweddi and sarhead he pays to her. 15 If a
man denies raping a woman and the woman confirms it against him, let
her take the man’s penis in her left hand the relic in her right hand, and let
her swear that she was raped by him with that penis, and so she will lose
none of her right. 15a He who denies rape, let him give the oath of fifty
men without a slave and without an alien.15

Llyfr Cyfnerth U §73/19–21 states that if a man does not deny the charge of
rape, he must pay the woman a series of fines and he must pay the king a silver
rod.16 If he cannot pay these fines, his testicles are to be removed. If he raped
two women, each woman receives one of the testicles:
19 Od ymda gwreic e hunan, a dyuot g6r idi a’e threissa6, os diwat a wna yr
g6r roddet l6 deng wyr a deugeint, a thri ohonunt yn diofreda6c, o
uarchogaeth a lliein, a gwreic. 20 Ony myn diwat, talet y’r wreic y gwada6l,
a’e dilysta6t, a dir6y a gwialen aryant y’r brenhin yn y wed y dylyo. 21 Ony
eill y g6r y thalu dyker y d6y geill.

19 If a woman travels alone, and a man comes to her and rapes her, if the
man denies let him give the oath of fifty men, three of them being under
vows against horsemanship and linen and women. 20 If he does not wish
to deny, let him pay the woman her gwaddol and her dilystod, and a dirwy
and a silver rod to the king in the manner which is right. 21 If the man
cannot pay let his two testicles be taken.17

In the Latin versions of the Welsh laws, there is a similar situation. Latin C

15
Jenkins, ‘The “Cyfnerth” Text’, pp. 138–9. Amobr, dilystod, agweddi, sarhead, dirvvy, and
gwaddol refer to specific kinds of payment depending on the victim’s sexual status.
16
The length of the rod is given in other texts as being as tall as the king’s head while he is
sitting. See Paul Russell, Welsh Law in Medieval Anglesey: British Library Harleian MS
1796 (Latin C) (Cambridge: Seminar Cyfraith Hywel, 2011), pp. xxxix–xli.
17
Jenkins, ‘The “Cyfnerth” Text’, pp. 142–3. Although castration is not found in the main text
of manuscript Z, it is found in the ‘tail’. As with the other references to castration, it appears
as the final clause of the section; Llawysgrif Pomffred: An Edition and Study of Peniarth MS
259B, ed. and trans. Sara Elin Roberts (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 23–6, and #1331.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 153

does not contain laws dealing with rape,18 but the other Latin texts do.
Latin B19 and Latin E20 both have a final clause added onto the end of the
section that the other texts do not, listing castration as the punishment for rape
if the offender cannot pay the appropriate fines. Latin A21 and Latin D22 make
no mention of castration. Llyfr Blegywryd likewise does not include castration
as a punishment;23 the text specifically states that castration is not the
punishment for rape in the law of Hywel Dda, implying that this practice has
been borrowed: ‘Nyt oes yg kyfreith Hywel Da yspadu gwr yr treissaw gwraic’
[In the law of Hywel Dda, there is no castrating of a man for the rape of a
woman] (63.31–2). The very fact that the redactor of the tract felt the need to
state this fact is revealing in and of itself. It demonstrates a knowledge of the
legal practices of other cultures and implies that in some areas of Wales
castration had been making inroads as a valid legal punishment for rape.
In her edition and translation of Cyfnerth manuscript Z, Sara Elin Roberts
discusses English influences found in the ‘tail’ of the manuscript. Her wording,
however, is ambiguous as to whether she believes that these influences are pre-
or post-1282:
Much of the other material in the tail of Z also appears to be post-1282,
and there are elements which point to influence from England: the
possible reference to dueling, the references to losing a limb as a
punishment for theft, and castrating a man for rape are not found in Welsh
law. This suggests greater English influence in Wales after the conquest of
1282, or perhaps a Marcher origin for some of the texts in Z if not for the
manuscript itself.24

As demonstrated by the material from Latin B (which exists in a mid-thirteenth-

18
Latin C is the earliest of the Latin texts, dating to between 1226 and c. 1240. See Russell,
Welsh Law in Medieval Anglesey, p. xliii.
19
Hywel D. Emanuel, ed., The Latin Texts of the Welsh Laws (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 1967), p. 224.17–26 (hereafter LTWL). The manuscript dates to the middle of the
thirteenth century. See Charles-Edwards, The Welsh Laws, p. 102; and Daniel Huws,
Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Aberystwyth: University of Wales Press and The National
Library of Wales, 2000), pp. 58–9.
20
LTWL, p. 473.8–15. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 454, which contains the law
code, dates to the first half of the fifteenth century. See Charles-Edwards, The Welsh Laws,
p. 102.
21
LTWL, p. 144.29–37; and Ian F. Fletcher, trans., Latin A Redaction of the Law of Hywel
(Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, University of Wales, 1986).
The manuscript dates to the mid-thirteenth century. See Charles-Edwards, The Welsh
Laws, pp. 34–6, and 102, and references therein.
22
LTWL, 338.10–14. The manuscript dates to c. 1300. See Huws, Medieval Welsh
Manuscripts, p. 58.
23
Llyfr Blegywryd, ed. Stephen J. Williams and J. Enoch Powell, 2nd edn (Cardiff: University
of Wales Press, 1961), 43.31–41.1; and The Laws of Hywel Dda (The Book of Blegywryd),
trans. Melville Richards (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1954).
24
Roberts, Llawysgrif Pomffred, pp. 21–2.
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154 CHARLENE M. ESKA

century manuscript), i.e., that castration was a punishment for rape, there was
definite influence from English law before 1282. Thus, the later English
influence Roberts sees in Z need not necessarily be post-1282; for example, the
Welsh word edling (heir-apparent) was borrowed from Anglo-Saxon ætheling.25
The influence did not only go in one direction. Robin Chapman Stacey has
pointed out that §33 of the laws of Alfred contains an example of the ‘God-sure-
tyship’ (godborges) found in Welsh law (briduw) and suggests that there is a
strong possibility that this concept was borrowed from Welsh law.26
The earliest Anglo-Saxon law code, the laws of Æthelberht, makes no
mention of castration as a punishment.27 Like the early Welsh law codes, the
usual punishment for rape in the Anglo-Saxon laws was to pay compensation
to the victim’s kin, e.g., Æthelberht §10.28
10. Gif a man wið cyninges mægdenam geligeþ, L scillenga gebete.
11. Gif hio grindende þeowa sio, XXV scillenga gebete.
10. If a man lies with the king’s maiden, let him pay 50 shillings.
11. If she should be a ‘grinding’ slave, let him pay 25 shillings.29

Julie Coleman has noticed the difference in the fine structure between the law
as stated in Æthelberht §10 and that as stated in Alfred §11; in Æthelberht,
fines are paid to a woman’s legal guardian, while in Alfred they are paid to the
woman herself according to her social and moral standing.30 The law is rather
different, though, if the situation involves the rape of a slave:

25
The Law of Hywel Dda: Law Texts from Medieval Wales, ed. and trans. Dafydd Jenkins
(Llandysul: Gomer Press, 1986), pp. 222–3.
26
Robin Chapman Stacey, The Road to Judgment: From Custom to Court in Medieval Ireland
and Wales (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 208–9.
27
Jay Paul Gates gives a detailed analysis of castration and genital injuries (and their relative
absence) in Anglo-Saxon injury tariffs in his article in this volume, ‘The Fulmannod
Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’, pp. 131–48.
28
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. and trans. F. Liebermann (Halle: M. Niemeyer,
1898–1912), 1:3; and Lisi Oliver, The Beginnings of English Law (Toronto: University of
Toronto Press, 2002), p. 64; §10 in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen corresponds to Oliver’s §16.
29
Text and translation from Oliver, The Beginning of English Law, pp. 64 and 65. I have
retained the section numbering found in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen.
30
Julie Coleman, ‘Rape in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Violence and Society in the Early
Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1998), pp. 193–204 at p. 198.
Carole Hough, ‘Alfred’s Domboc and the Language of Rape: A Reconsideration of Alfred
ch.11’, Medium Ævum 66 (1997): 1–27. Hough notes that this ‘constitutes the earliest
explicit reference in the extant Anglo-Saxon laws to a woman’s right to receive compen-
sation for offenses against herself ’ (p. 5). See also Shari Horner, ‘The Language of Rape
in Old English Literature and Law: Views from the Anglo-Saxon(ist)s’, in Sex and
Sexuality in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Carol Braun Pasternack and Lisa M. C. Weston
(Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004), pp. 149–81; and
Sir Frederick Pollock and Frederic William Maitland, The History of English Law before
the Time of Edward I, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1898: Liberty
Fund repr. 2009), pp. 513–15.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 155

25. Gif mon ceorles mennen to nedhæmde geðreatað mid V scill. gebete
þam ceorle, LX scill. to wito.
1. Gif ðeowmon þeowne to nedhæmde genede, bete mid his eowende.31
25. If anyone rapes a ceorl’s slave-woman, he is to pay 5 shillings compen-
sation to the ceorl, and 60 shillings’ fine.
1. If a slave rapes a slave-woman, he is to pay by suffering castration.32

The penalties change and become much more severe in the eleventh- or
twelfth-century Leis Willelme,33 but Carole Hough has noted the direct parallel
between this section of the law code and the passage in Alfred §11:34
18. Cil ki purgist femme a force, forfeit ad les menbres.
1. Ki abat femme a terre pur fere lui force, la munte al seinur X solo.
2. S’il la purgist, forfeit est de membres.35
18. If anyone assaults a woman he shall suffer castration as a penalty.
1. If anyone throws a woman to the ground in order to offer violence
to her, the compensation to her lord for breach of his mund shall be 10
shillings.
2. If he assaults her, he shall suffer castration.36

The mid-thirteenth-century legal writer Henry de Bracton notes that in

former times the punishment for rape was loss of life,37 but that, in his own
time, the punishment for the rape of a virgin was blinding and castration.38
However, in Ruth Kittel’s examination of thirteenth-century rape cases, she
found that not only was the guilty party usually only charged a relatively small
fine, but also that (out of all those convicted), not a single one was castrated,

31
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 1:62 and 64.
32
Dorothy Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, eds, Councils and Synods with Other
Documents Relating to the English Church, vol. 1: AD 871–1204, part 1, 871–1066 (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 31. See also David A. E. Pelteret, Slavery in Early Medieval
England: From the Reign of Alfred until the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press,
1995), pp. 81–9.
33
Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 1:492 dates the text to between 1090 and
1135; see also Patrick Wormald, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth
Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 407–409.
34
Hough, ‘Alfred’s Domboc and the Language of Rape’, pp. 19–20.
35
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 1:504.
36
A. J. Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmond to Henry I (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1925), pp. 262–263. Castration is also mentioned as the
punishment for rape in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; see Dorothy Whitelock, trans. The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961), s.a. 1087.
37
Henry de Bracton, De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, ed. George E. Woodbine (New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1915–1942); Bracton, On the Laws and Customs of
England, trans. Samuel E. Thorne (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968),
fol. 148.
38
Bracton, On the Laws and Customs of England, fol. 147.
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156 CHARLENE M. ESKA

thus highlighting the difference between the laws as stated and the legal reality
of the time.39
Although compiled more than a generation after the Conquest, the so-called
Leis Willelme (Laws of William the Conqueror)40 state that the death penalty
in England is to be abolished and replaced with blinding and castration:
10. Interdico etiam, ne quis occidatur aut suspendatur pro aliqua cupla, sed
eruantur oculi et testiculi abscidantur; et hoc praeceptum non sit uiolatum
super forisfacturam meam plenam.41
10. I also forbid that anyone shall be slain or hanged for any fault, but let
his eyes be put out and let him be castrated. And this command shall not
be violated under pain of a fine in full to me.42

It is easy to dismiss this text for a variety of reasons, not least of which is, as
Klaus van Eickels has noted, that capital punishment was still being practiced
after 1066.43 Furthermore, physical mutilation was already in the pre-Conquest
legal system, as Jay Gates explains in his chapter in this volume.44 Thus, at the
time this text was written, capital punishment and mutilation were both facets
of the legal system. Article 10 is, however, culturally relevant. Van Eickels has
explored the history of blinding and castration as a means of eliminating
political enemies in Anglo-Norman England. He traces this punishment back
to medieval Scandinavia, where (as in Ireland) there were cultural taboos
surrounding the killing of members of one’s kin-group, bearing in mind that
most of the free families were related to each other. Van Eickels further argues
that this practice of castrating and blinding enemies rather than killing them

39
Ruth Kittel, ‘Rape in Thirteenth-Century England: A Study of the Common-Law Courts’,
in Women and the Law, ed. D. Kelly Weisberg, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman
Publishing Co., 1982), pp. 101–15 at pp. 108–10.
40
This text is fraught with difficulties surrounding its correct title, manuscript tradition,
and origins. For an overview, see Wormald, The Making of English Law, pp. 402–4. Not
only does this text share the same manuscript tradition as Instituta Cnuti, but the Instituta
Cnuti clearly influenced the text. Without doubt the Instituti Cnuti are based on I and II
Cnut; see Wormald, The Making of English Law, p. 404; and Lieberman, Die Gesetze der
Angelsachsen, 3:277–9. In this volume, see Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”:
Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English
Legendary’, pp. 87–107.
41
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 1:488.
42
David C. Douglas and George W. Greenway, eds., English Historical Documents
1042–1189, 2nd edn (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1968), p. 400.
43
Klaus van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for
Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England’, Gender and History 16 (2004):
588–602 at p. 589; see also John Earle, ed., Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1865), p. 253, s.a. 1124; trans. in Whitelock, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
p. 191.
44
Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society’.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 157

was brought from Scandinavia to Normandy with the early settlers in the tenth
century.45 The practice continued as part of Norman culture and was brought
to England with the Conquest.46 The Anglo-Saxon codes already had elements
of this practice in place, thus making the addition of judicial blinding and
castration to the legal system seem more of a point on a continuum rather than
a wholesale new practice.47 For example, the pre-Conquest law code Cnut II
§30.4–5 lists several forms of mutilation, including scalping, blinding, removal
of the ears, nose, hands, upper lip, and feet, as the punishment for various
crimes, so the later addition of another form of mutilation, i.e. castration, would
not be entirely new to the legal system.48 Just as changes in the Anglo-Saxon
legal system can be seen as the result of contact and conquest, the same can be
said of the Welsh laws.
In many ways, the Welsh annals present a similar picture to that found in
the Irish annals49 in that there are references therein to politically motivated
blindings and castrations. For example, in the year 1130,50 Meredudd ap
Bleddyn had Llywelyn ab Owain castrated and blinded. In that same year,
Madog ap Llywarch was slain by Meurig, his first cousin. The following year,

45
In this volume, Anthony Adams discusses the application of castration as a punishment
in Norse sources in his article ‘“He took a stone away”: Castration and Cruelty in the Old
Norse Sturlunga saga’, pp. 188–209. Although van Eickels’s argument is persuasive and
no doubt correct, there is some concern regarding whether the practice was truly as
common as he would lead us to believe.
46
van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence’, pp. 593–4. See also John Gillingham, ‘Killing and
Mutilating Political Enemies in the British Isles from the Late Twelfth to the Early
Fourteenth Century: A Comparative Study’, in Britain and Ireland 900–1300, ed. Brendan
Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 114–34.
47
This practice would continue for many years. Cf. the account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
s.a. 1125 of Henry ordering all the moneyers in England not only to be castrated, but also
to lose their right hands: Whitelock, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, p. 191.
48
Cf. also the account of Gowine ‘mutilating’ the companions of Alfred: Whitlock, The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1036.
49
For discussions of the Welsh annals and their relationship to each other and the Irish
annals, see John Edward Lloyd, ‘The Welsh Chronicles’, Proceedings of the British Academy
14 (1928): 369–91; Thomas Jones, ‘Historical Writing in Medieval Welsh’, Scottish Studies
12 (1968): 15–27; Kathleen Hughes, ‘The Welsh Latin Chronicles: Annales Cambriae and
Related Texts’, Proceedings of the British Academy 59 (1973): 233–58; Brynley Roberts,
‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and Welsh Historical Tradition’, Nottingham Medieval Studies
20 (1976): 29–40; Kathleen Hughes, Celtic Britain in the Early Middle Ages, ed. David
Dumville (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1980); Caroline Brett, ‘The Prefaces of Two Late
Thirteenth-Century Welsh Latin Chronicles’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 35
(1988): 63–73; J. Beverley Smith, The Sense of History in Medieval Wales (Aberystwyth:
University College of Wales, 1991); Julian Harrison, ‘A Note on Gerald of Wales and
Annales Cambriae’, Welsh History Review 17 (1994): 252–255; David N. Dumville, Annales
Cambriae, AD 682–954: Texts A–C in Parallel (Cambridge: Department of Anglo-Saxon,
Norse and Celtic, 2002), pp. v–xv; and Erik Grigg, ‘“Mole Rain” and Other Natural
Phenomena in the Welsh Annals: Can Mirabilia Unravel the Textual History of the
Annales Cambriae?’, Welsh History Review 24.4 (2009): 1–40.
50
This is the earliest year in which there is record of castration in the Welsh sources.
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158 CHARLENE M. ESKA

Meurig was blinded and castrated in revenge for Madog’s death.51 The Welsh
annals do record incidents of politically motivated blindings, e.g., in the Red
Book of Hergest version of the Brut for the year 1113. Lizabeth Johnson notes
that all the incidents of castration post-date the Norman Conquest, which
strongly suggests that the practice was borrowed from the Normans. She uses
the work of van Eickels as her starting point and expands the area of inquiry
to medieval Wales, pointing out the cultural differences between Welsh and
Norman attitudes towards castration. For the Welsh, a castrated man could not
reproduce and as such could not produce a political rival. For the Normans,
castration carried the stigma of effeminacy. This stigma and the gendered
language surrounding castration are lacking in the Welsh sources.52 The intro-
duction of castration as a punishment into the Welsh law codes most likely also
post-dates the Norman Conquest. There are far fewer references to mutilation
in general in the Welsh sources than the Irish sources (discussed below), but
there is still the possibility (as with the Irish sources) that not all incidents of
castration were recorded as such. Taking into account the situation in Wales,
it may not be a coincidence that all of the recorded accounts of castration in
the Irish annals also post-date the 1169 Norman invasion of Ireland.
Understandably, the Welsh annals are concerned not only with events in
Wales, but also with those involving their English neighbors. For example, both
the Peniarth 20 and Red Book of Hergest versions of the Brut record for the
year 1004 the politically motivated blinding of the Anglo-Saxons Wulfheah
and Ufegeat.53 The annals also mention the blinding and possible castration of
Henry II’s Welsh hostages in 1165. When the Welsh broke the peace they had
sworn to Henry II, he launched a campaign against them. After being defeated
by bad weather in the Berwyn Mountains, Henry decided to return to England.
Furious at the loss of his own men, resources, and time, he took his anger out
on his Welsh hostages: he had the men blinded and possibly castrated, and he
had the ears and noses of the female hostages cut off.54

51
Brut y Tywysogyon: Peniarth MS. 20, ed. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press,
1941); Brut y Tywysogyon: Peniarth MS. 20, trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of
Wales Press, 1952); Brut y Tywysogyon: Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. and trans. Thomas
Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955); Brenhinedd y Saesson, ed. and trans.
Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1971); and Annales Cambriae, ed. John
Williams ab Ithel (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860). The Peniarth
20 and Red Book of Hergest versions of the Brut contain incidents of castration for the
years 1130, 1131, and 1175. The Annales Cambriae has accounts of castration for the years
1130, 1131, and 1166, and the Brenhinedd y Saesson for the years 1130 and 1131.
52
Johnson, ‘Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism’, pp. 15–20. See also Frederick
Suppe, ‘The Cultural Significance of Decapitation in High Medieval Wales and the
Marches’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies 36 (1989): 146–60.
53
Elizabeth Boyle, ‘A Welsh Record of an Anglo-Saxon Political Mutilation’, Anglo-Saxon
England 35 (2006): 245–9.
54
Both versions of the Brut provide an account of Henry’s campaign. The blinding of his
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 159

Although castration might not figure in the reality presented by the law
codes, it is a political reality in the Irish annals.55 The probable driving force
behind so many of the mutilations recorded in the annals is the widespread
early belief that a ruler had to be without physical blemish.56 Part and parcel
with this belief is the fact that rulers were expected to be effective military
leaders. Thus, if a potential ruler blinds his brother, his brother is no longer
eligible for kingship, and a rival is thus eliminated. Furthermore, by mutilating
a kinsman, the mutilator is not guilty of the crime of fingal ‘kin-slaying’.57
Kin-slaying not only violates the kin-based structure of early Irish society, but
it poses legal problems in terms of compensation. The victim’s family would
normally be paid compensation for their loss, but with kin-slaying, the same
group that would receive payment is also the group that would be responsible
for contributing to the payment. Thus, it is not possible for kin-slaying to be
compensated, nor could the killing be avenged without the avengers them-
selves being guilty of fingal.
There are exceptions to these general statements. Katharine Simms has
remarked that there are a number of chiefs in the later years of the annals
described with epithets such as An Cammhuinéalach ‘the wry-necked’ Ó
Baoighill58 and Conn Bacach ‘the lame’ Ó Néill.59 When Brian Bóroimhe’s son,
Donnchadh, lost his right hand in an attack in 1019, he continued to rule for
at least another forty years.60 Although Irish legal Heptad 13 lists fingal as one

male hostages is mentioned, but not castration. The Annales Cambriae s.a. 1166 mentions
both the blinding and castration. Chronica de Mailros refers to the mutilation of the
female hostages: Chronica de Mailros, ed. Joseph Stevenson (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club,
1835), p. 79. See also Paul Latimer, ‘Henry II’s Campaign against the Welsh in 1165’, Welsh
Historical Review 14.4 (1989): 523–52; and Johnson, ‘Mutilation as Cultural Commerce
and Criticism’, pp. 9–10. Van Eickels argues that cutting off the nose of the women was
a form of symbolic castration.
55
For an overview of the Irish annals and how they relate to each other, see Katharine
Simms, Medieval Gaelic Sources (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 19–38.
56
D. A. Binchy, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon Kingship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970),
p. 10; Katharine Simms, From Kings to Warlords (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1987), p. 50.
57
Fergus Kelly, A Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1988), pp. 127–128 (hereafter GEIL). See also Thomas Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and
Welsh Kinship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 119–21.
58
Annals of the Four Masters, ed. and trans. John O’Donovan (Dublin: Hodges, Smith, and
Co., 1854), s.a. 1247 (hereafter AFM).
59
Ibid., s.a. 1559.
60
Simms, From Kings to Warlords, p. 50. The event is recorded in a number of the annals:
The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. Whitley Stokes (Felinfach: Llanerch Publishers,
1993), s.a. 1018/1019 (hereafter AT); The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. Seán Mac
Airt (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1988), s.a. 1019 (hereafter AI); The
Annals of Loch Cé, ed. and trans. William M. Hennessy (London: Longman and Co.,
1871), s.a. 1019 (hereafter ALC); The Annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), ed. and trans. Seán
Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1983), s.a. 1019 (hereafter AU2); and AFM, s.a. 1018.
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160 CHARLENE M. ESKA

of the actions that would cause a king to lose his honor-price,61 the annals
record accounts of kings who gained their thrones by slaying their own
kinsmen. For example, the Annals of Ulster s.a. 864 (= 865) record the death of
Tadc son of Diarmait, king of the Uí Cheinnselaig, by his own kinsmen. For
the year 875 (= 876), the same annal records the death of Tadc’s killer, his
brother Cairpre, who reigned as king of the Uí Cheinnselaig until he himself
became the victim of fingal.62
Despite the unambiguous references to blinding and castration of various
personages, Simms has noted with regard to castration that ‘there is reason to
suppose that this operation is often concealed beneath the annalists’
euphemisms of dalladh “blinding” and scathadh “lopping off ”‘.63 As potential
candidates for such concealment, she lists the Annals of Connacht s.a. 1224.3
(where blinding is given as the punishment for raping a woman), 1244.2 (where
Tadc, son of Aed Mac Cathail Chrobdeirg, was do dalladh ‘blinded’ and do
spochad ‘castrated’; in this case the text is explicit), and 1272.4 (which lists the
death of the same Tadc from 1244.2; this entry mentions the fact that he was
blinded, but says nothing of his castration).64 Simms includes the Annals of
Ulster s.a. 1490 (which records the scathadh of Tadhg, son of Toirdelbach, son
of Philip Mag Uidhir, at the hands of his own kinsmen; ‘maimed’ is the trans-
lation given in the text), 1496 (the same fate befell Eogan at the hands of his

61
Corpus Iuris Hibernici, ed. D. A. Binchy (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1979), 14.34 and 15.1–4, at 15.4 (hereafter CIH). The text from CIH reads: ‘[A]tait.UII.
rig LĀ na dligh dire na logh enech: rig istoing cach recht cina daim techtai, ar ni eitech
do neoch ma daim techtai cia isto; ri ithis gait 7 brait; ri feallas for einech; ri foluing air
no aire; ri feartar cath; ri gaibis cu oc imthecht aenar can a mancaine techta; ri dogne
fingal.’ [There are seven kings according to Irish law who are not entitled to compensation
or honor-price: a king who refuses each lawful person apart from his proper retinue, for
it is not refusal [of hospitality] by someone if [he refuses] a proper retinue, though he
refuses; a king who eats [food acquired by] theft and robbery; a king who betrays [those
under his] protection; a king who tolerates satire or satirizing; a king who is defeated in
battle; a king who takes a dog [and] sets off alone without his proper attendants; a king
who commits kin-slaying.] There is also a translation of this Heptad in Ancient Laws of
Ireland, ed. and trans. W. N. Hancock et al. (Dublin: A Thom, 1865–1901), 5:172 (hereafter
AL). The editorial method and translations found in AL are widely known to be prob-
lematic. In early Irish law, refusing a guest hospitality was considered a crime, although
there were limits on a host’s obligations. According to this Heptad, a king is obliged to
provide hospitality to every lawful person, but not the person’s retinue. Although being
defeated in battle is considered grounds for a king to lose his honor-price (and thus his
kingship), there are no records in the annals of this taking place. See GEIL, p. 19. Not only
was it considered dishonorable for a king to be without his attendants (except during times
of heavy agricultural labor), but it also meant that any woman with an illegitimate child
could claim it was the king’s. On satire and kingship, see Roisin McLaughlin, Early Irish
Satire (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2008), pp. 3–4.
62
AU2 s.a. 864 and 875; this example of fingal is discussed in GEIL, p. 128, n. 20.
63
Simms, From Kings to Warlords, p. 50, n. 71.
64
Annála Connacht. The Annals of Connacht (AD 1224–1544), ed. and trans. A. Martin
Freeman (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1996) (hereafter AC).
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 161

two brothers, Conn the Red and Feidhlimidh), 1503 (records the same injury
being done to Donchadh by Domnall, son of O’Domnaill, such that Donchadh
died of his injury), and 1504 (when Tadhg Ua hOgain was hanged along with
his two sons and an unnamed third man was mutilated).65 John O’Donovan
discusses further evidence of editorial censorship (for lack of a better word)
regarding an entry in The Annals of the Four Masters s.a. 1244. This entry refers
to the same Tadc mentioned in the Annals of Connacht s.a. 1244 above, except
the text in The Annals of the Four Masters has ‘Tadhg mac Aodha mic Cathail
Croibhdheirg do dhalladh 𐐲 do chrochadh,’ which the editor translates as ‘Teige,
the son of Hugh, son of Cathal Crovderg, was blinded and hanged.’ O’Donovan
notes that ‘Charles O’Conor writes inter lineas “do spochadh, potius; vide infra”‘.
He also notes that the Dublin copy of the Annals of Ulster has do dalladh 𐐲 do
sbochadh, which the old translator of the annals had rendered ‘Teige O’Conner
blinded and maimed by Coconaght O’Rely’ (AFM 3:309). Even more recent
editors are guilty of leaving out material of this nature. Simms notes that the
editor of the Annals of Clonmacnoise, Denis Murphy,
arbitrarily omits parts of the text that were available in the manuscript the
editor used, because he considered them unedifying for the general public,
for example a passage in which the Vikings are said to have practiced the
custom of ius primae noctis, by which the lord claims the right to sleep
with every bride on her wedding night, or an implausible tale involving the
post-mortem castration of the high-king Niall Glúndub.66

At times, editorial ‘prudishness’ (to quote Whitley Stokes) can be particularly

misleading. For example, he notes that Mac Carthy, the translator of the third
volume of the Annals of Ulster s.a. 1498, rendered ‘Ocus tri hordlaighe do
bhuain do bhod Emain Moirtla, idon, athair Tomais Mortla, d’orcar do gunna
andsa cumusg cetna sin 𐐲 tuilledh ar fichid do chlainn do breith dho ‘n-a
dhiaigh sin’ as ‘And Edmond Mortel namely, father of Thomas Mortel, was
partially mutilated by shot of gun in that same encounter and more than a score
of children were born to him after that’ when the first clause should read ‘three
inches were struck off E. M.’s penis’.67
Despite these euphemistically worded accounts, there are some entries in
the annals that leave no doubt that castration is what is meant. Not all of the

65
Annala Uladh. The Annals of Ulster, otherwise Annala Senait, Annals of Senait; A
Chronicle of Irish Affairs from AD 431 to AD 1540, ed. and trans. W. M. Hennessy and B.
Mac Carthy (Dublin: A. Thom, 1887–1901) (hereafter AU).
66
Simms, Medieval Gaelic Sources, p. 27; The Annals of Clonmacnoise, being Annals of
Ireland from the earliest period to AD 1408 translated into English AD 1627 by Conell
Mageoghagan, ed. Denis Murphy (Dublin: Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896,
repr. Felinfach, 1993) (hereafter ACl); and Sarah Sanderlin, ‘The Manuscripts of the
Annals of Clonmacnoise’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 82C (1982): 111–23.
67
Whitley Stokes, ‘The Annals of Ulster’, Revue celtique 18 (1897): 74–8 at p. 85.
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162 CHARLENE M. ESKA

Irish annals contain accounts of castration; for example, the Annals of Tigernach
does not, although it does contain accounts of other politically motivated muti-
lations such as blinding.68 (See Table 7.1 for castrations by annal and year.) In
comparison to the number of blindings recorded in the annals, the difference
in terms of sheer numbers is striking. (See Table 7.2 for the number of blindings
by annal and year.) There is a shift from mutilating to killing starting in the
fifteenth century and continuing through the early seventeenth.69 The number
of blindings decreases dramatically, replaced with accounts of beheading,
burning, and hanging instead, perhaps indicating a shift away from more ‘tradi-
tional’ methods of eliminating political enemies and the adoption of practices
more in line with those of the post-Conquest rulers.70 Considering Simms’s
observations and the examples discussed above, the high incidence of recorded
blindings most likely masks a number of castrations as well, thus the annals
most likely underreport the number of politically motivated castrations, and
perhaps incidents of castration in retaliation for rape, making it very difficult
to determine how widespread castration was in reality.
It is significant that all of the unambiguous accounts of castration take place
after the Norman invasion. Like the Welsh, the Irish seem to have borrowed
the practice, but not the Norman social stigma associated with it. An account
given for the year 1250 demonstrates this view:
The cause of the coming of the Burkes to take possession of lands in Tir
Amhalgaidh. At one time when the Barretts had supremacy over Tir
Amhalgaidh [as we have said], they sent their steward, who was called
Sgornach bhuidh bhearrtha, to exact rents from the Lynotts. The Lynotts
killed this steward, and cast his body into a well called Tobar na Sgornaighe,
near Garranard, to the west of the castle of Carns in Tir Amhalgaidh. When
the Barretts had received intelligence of this, they assembled their armed
forces and attacked the Lynotts, and subdued them. And the Barretts gave
the Lynotts their choice of two modes of punishment, namely, to have their
men either blinded or emasculated; and the Lynotts, by advice of some of
the elders among them, took the choice of being blinded, because blind
men could propagate their species, whereas emasculated men could not.
The Barretts then thrust needles into the eyes of the Lynotts, and accord-
ingly as each man of them was blinded, they compelled him to cross over

68
Blindings occur for the following years: 999, 1020, 1036, 1037, 1039, 1041, 1069, 1098,
1114, 1136, 1138, 1153, 1156, 1158, 1166, 1168, 1175, and 1177; see Table 7.2. It should
be noted that it is not uncommon for an annal to list the death of a person as a result of
their injuries. For example, s.a. 1036, Donnchad Mac Dunlaing was blinded and died as
a result.
69
This is not to imply that there are no accounts of murders by various means before the
fifteenth century; there are a number of such accounts.
70
E.g., AFM s.a. 1452, 1474, 1478, 1496, 1504, 1505, 1552, 1557, 1582, 1583, 1584, 1586,
1589, 1590, 1591, 1595, 1599, 1600, 1601, 1602, 1611, and 1615.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 163

the stepping-stones of Clochan na n-dall, near Carns, to see if more or less

of sight remained with them, and if any of them crossed the Clochan
without stumbling he was taken back and re-blinded!71

By way of contrast with medieval Wales and Anglo-Saxon England, the

canonical texts of the early Irish law codes (as opposed to the annals) were
compiled within a fairly narrow period of time, c. AD 650–800, based on
linguistic evidence. Most of the surviving law codes (in varying states of
completeness) are found in manuscripts that date to the fourteenth through
sixteenth centuries.72 Many of the texts were glossed and commented upon
by generations of Irish legal scholars, and, as a result of such activity, the
volume of material surrounding any given text can be quite substantial.
Members of the hereditary Irish legal families produced many of the surviving
manuscripts, often in collaboration with each other.73 Despite the continuous
copying and recopying of the texts and accompanying glosses and
commentary, the scribes and glossators on the whole tended not to make
substantive changes to the texts themselves, thus preserving linguistically (and
sometimes legally) stratified texts covering a range of close to a thousand
years.74 Like their Anglo-Saxon counterparts examined by Gates in this
volume, the secular Irish law
tracts are written in the
vernacular; most of the early
TABLE 7.1. Castrations by annal and year1 Germanic law codes on the
continent, discussed by Rolf
AC AU ALC AFM
Bremmer, are written in
1194 1194
Latin, so this seems to be a
1244 1243 1244 1244
purely Insular phenomenon,
1321 1321
at least in the early Middle
14962
Ages. Although the Icelandic
Notes laws codified in Grágás
1 It should be noted that the dating systems between
the annals do not always accord with each other. are in the vernacular, they
2 The text has scathad (maiming). were committed to writing

71
John O’Donovan, ed. and trans., The Genealogies, Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach:
Commonly Called O’Dowda’s Country (Dublin: The Irish Archaeological Society, 1844),
pp. 335 and 337 (for the translation).
72
GEIL, p. 1; Rudolf Thurneysen, ‘Die Bürgschaft im irischen Recht’, Forschungen und
Fortschritte 4. 18 (1928): 183.
73
GEIL, pp. 250–63.
74
One does, however, tend to find a mix of orthographic practices from various periods of
the language; see Fergus Kelly, ‘Texts and Transmissions: The Law-Texts’, in Ireland and
Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Texts and Transmission / Irland und Europa im früheren
Mittelalter: Texte und Überlieferung, ed. Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter
(Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2002), pp. 230–42 at p. 231.
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164 CHARLENE M. ESKA

TABLE 7.2. Blindings by annal and year1

AU2 AU AC AI ALC AFM ACl AB2 AT Misc. Ir.3

863
918
925
956
977
993
996
999 999
1009
1010
1017
1018 1018
1019
1020 1020
1023
1027 1027
1029
1031
1032
1036 1036 1036
1037 1037 1037 1037
1039
1041 1041
1044 1044
1051 1051
1067
1069 1069
1072
1092
1093 1093
1094
1098
1103
1113
1114
1136 1136
1138
1139
1141
1150
1153 1153 11534
1154
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 165

TABLE 7.2. Blindings by annal and year1 continued

AU2 AU AC AI ALC AFM ACl AB2 AT Misc. Ir.3

1156 1156
1158 1158 1158
1166 1166 1166
1167
1168 1168 1168 11685
1169 11696
1175
1177 1177
1181
1185
1187
1193
1194
1207
1208
1211 12117
1224
1233 1233
1234
1236 1236
12438
1246
1250 1250 12509
1251 1251 1251
1254 1254 1254
1257 1257 1257 1257 1257
1259 1259
1265 1265 1265
1266 1266
1272 1272
1296 1296 1296
1310

1321 1321 1321

1399
1411 1411
1444
1473
1496

See following page for notes to TABLE 7.2.

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166 CHARLENE M. ESKA

Notes to TABLE 7.2.

1 No attempt has been made to correlate events, only years. The annals list many other ways with
which political threats were dealt, including drowning (AT s.a. 738), hanging (AC s.a. 1228),
beheading (AU2 s.a. 890), starving (AI s.a. 824), suffocating (ALC s.a. 1059), poisoning (ACl s.a. 781),
and strangling (AT s.a. 741). The table is meant to be representative rather than strictly exhaustive.
Some years contain accounts of more than one person being blinded, e.g., AT s.a. 1177 lists that
Cuilén Húa Cuileoin was blinded by the son of Mac Carthaigh in revenge for the killing of his son,
Cormac, and Murchad, son of Ruadri, was blinded for his misdeeds.
2 Annála as Breifne, ed. Éamonn De hÓir, Breifne 4.13 (1970): 59–86.
3 Miscellaneous Irish Annals (AD 1114–1437), ed. and trans. Séamus Ó hInnse (Dublin: Dublin
Institute for Advanced Studies, 1947). Hereafter Misc. Ir.
4 From Mac Carthaigh’s Book in Misc. Ir.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 From Rawlinson B.488 in Misc. Ir. This entry refers to the same Tadc discussed above, except his
castration is not mentioned.
9 O’Donovan (3:340, n. h) notes that this event is recorded in greater detail in The Genealogies,
Tribes, and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach: Commonly Called O’Dowda’s Country, pp. 335 and 337 (for the
translation).

AD 1117–18,75 which is much later than the earliest Anglo-Saxon and Irish
codes. The earliest Anglo-Saxon code, that of Æthelberht, dates to c. AD 602–3.76
In recent years, there has been a great deal of debate amongst scholars regarding
the amount of Christian influence found in the early Irish secular codes. Part
of this debate deals with the issue of who wrote Irish law for whom. Although
there was definitely a certain amount of cooperation between lay and ecclesi-
astical scholars, it is difficult to say with any confidence at this time whether
the laws were originally committed to writing in a purely ‘secular’ or purely
‘ecclesiastical’ environment.77
Early Irish society was largely agricultural and status based. Every freeman
born into a community possessed a lóg n-enech (honor-price), which was based
on his status within the community, similar to the Germanic wergild. A
woman’s honor-price was calculated at half of whichever man was legally
responsible for her, usually her father before she married and her husband
afterwards; the unfree did not have an honor-price except in certain circum-
stances.78 The honor-price was the amount paid to a person or his/her kin for

75
Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, eds. and trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard
Perkins (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press), pp. 4–5.
76
Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, 3:2–3.
77
An even-handed summary of this debate can be found in Robin Chapman Stacey, Dark
Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia
Press, 2007), pp. 57–9.
78
Such a circumstance would be when a crime was committed against the wife of a slave. If
a bondman has a free wife, he is entitled to compensation for any type of crime committed
against her. If his wife is also a slave, he is only entitled to compensation for sexual crimes
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 167

various crimes committed against him/her. The amounts given in the law tract
Críth Gablach (Branched Purchase [?]) lists the value of a female calf as the
honor-price of the low-status freeman and the value of seven female slaves as
the honor-price of a king.79 In early Irish society, it was also possible to lose
one’s honor-price. For example, Heptad 15 lists the seven categories of women
who lose their honor-price as follows: a woman who steals; a woman who sati-
rizes others; a traitor; a woman who gives false testimony; a woman of loose
morals; a woman who inflicts wounds; and a woman who refuses hospitality
to guests.80 Each person was also assigned an éraic (body-fine), which was a
fixed penalty in cases of homicide; the amount was fixed at seven cumals81 for
each person, regardless of status.82
In a section of the law tract Bretha Éitgid (Judgments of Inadvertence), there
is a system of fines which details the injury done to various parts of the body
and the fines associated with each.83 This catalog of fines includes injury to the
male member and testicles:
Masi a uidim robeneth asin duine, lancoirpdire 𐐲 laneneclann 𐐲 aithgin
comlan do intibh. Na hairne toile 𐐲 in toilfheith, cidbe dib bentar as [ar]84
tús, is ann ata in coirpdire comlan, 𐐲 coirpdire fo truma na cneide isinni
bentar de fo dheoigh. Masí a uirghi cle robenadh as ar tus, is lancoirpdire
uair is uaithi ata in geinemain. Ma uirghi dhes, is coirpdire fo truma na
cneide. Daine dia fhoghnat sin 𐐲 dogni clannugud doibh. Ma daine dona
foghnat 𐐲 na denat clannugud doib, amail ata senior diblidhe nó fer graidh,
ni fuil doib intibh acht coirpdire fo truma na cneide.85

committed against her; her owner receives compensation for other crimes. In early Irish
society, a crime committed against a woman was considered also to be a crime committed
against her male guardian. These provisions are laid out in a law code on the fuidir ‘semi-
freeman’. The passage in question can be found in CIH, 1:248.22–5. See also Fuidir-tract,
ed. and trans. Rudolf Thurneysen, ‘Irische Recht’. II. Zu den unteren Ständen in Irland.:
Abhandlungen der preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische,
Jahrgang 1931, nr. 2. (Berlin: Verlag der Akademie der Wissenschaften), pp. 60–87 at pp.
60–83. For an English translation, see AL, 5:515. See also Liam Breatnach, A Companion
to the Corpus Iuris Hibernici (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 2005), p.
294; GEIL, p. 11; Charles-Edwards, Early Irish and Welsh Kinship, pp. 307–36. For slavery
in the early Irish laws, see GEIL, pp. 95–8; and Charlene M. Eska, ‘Women and Slavery in
the Early Irish Laws’, Studia Celtica Fennica 8 (2011): 29–39.
79
Críth Gablach, ed. D. A. Binchy (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1941), lines 24 and 450.
80
CIH 15.10–24; GEIL, p. 349; and AL, 5:177.
81
The word cumal means ‘female slave’, but it is commonly used in the law codes as a unit
of value.
82
For an overview of the currency systems used in the law codes, see Fergus Kelly, Early
Irish Farming (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1998), pp. 587–99.
83
See Breatnach, Companion, pp. 176–82. No complete copy of the text survives, but sizable
fragments are found scattered across several manuscripts. The edition in AL 3:82–547
and appendix at 3:550–61 is under the erroneous title Lebor Aicle ‘Book of Acaill’.
84
Emendation suggested by Binchy, CIH, 1623, n.f.
85
The text is taken from CIH, 1623.22–9.
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168 CHARLENE M. ESKA

If it is his penis that was cut off, [he will receive] full body-fine and full
honor-price and complete compensation for it. The glands of desire86 and
the penis, whichever of them is cut off first, there is complete body-fine [as
compensation for it], and body-fine according to the severity of the wound
of the one which is struck from him last. If his left testicle was cut off first,
it is full body-fine because the generative power is from it. If the right
testicle, it is body-fine according to the severity of the wound. [This is the
case for] a person to whom they are a use and who begets children by them.
If [it is the case that it regards] a person to whom they are not a use and
who does not beget children by them, as is [the case with] an elderly
decrepit man or cleric, they do not receive anything for them [i.e., the
wounded members], but body-fine according to the severity of the
wound.87

The Irish of the text is unambiguous, referring explicitly to complete loss of

the penis and/or testicles. The legal commentators draw a distinction regarding
the amount of compensation owed to different sorts of people. The virile man
capable of siring children is owed his full body-fine, honor-price, and complete
compensation for the loss of his member. If he loses both his penis and his
testicles, he is entitled to complete body-fine for whichever is lost first, and
compensation according to the degree of severity of the wound for whichever
was lost second. There is some question as to why the left testicle is assigned a
greater amount of compensation than the right. The editors of the Dictionary
of the Irish Language list semen virile as one of the meanings of genemain,88 thus
suggesting that the higher compensation is based on where it was believed that
potent semen originated. As Bremmer explains, in Frisia and elsewhere on the
continent the right testicle was considered more valuable than the left, noting,
however, that there is one exception to the general rule for which he uses the
Irish source as comparative material.89 Bronagh Ní Chonaill points out that the
assigned values are counter to the medical belief in the Middle Ages that the
left testicle produced female children and the right one produced males.90
Those for whom the loss of their genitalia would perhaps be considered a lesser

86
The ‘glands of desire’ refer to the testicles. Rolf H. Bremmer Jr cites the Irish text as well,
in ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital
Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’, in this volume, 108–30 at p. 126.
87
There is also a translation in AL, 3:355. For a discussion of impotence in early Irish law,
see Brónagh Ní Chonaill, ‘Impotence, Disclosure and Outcome: Some Medieval Irish Legal
Comment’, online at http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/scottishstudies/earticles/LegalConcern.pdf,
accessed October 18, 2011. See also Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe
(New York and London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 70–5.
88
Dictionary of the Irish Language, gen.ed. E. G. Quin, compact edition (Dublin: Royal
Irish Academy, 1990), s.v. genemain.
89
Bremmer ‘The Children He Never Had’, pp. 124–5. Bremmer compares the references
to castration and genital wounding in Bretha Éitgid to Frisian law texts (p. 126).
90
Ní Chonaill, ‘Impotence, Disclosure and Outcome’, p. 17.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 169

hardship are those either too old for procreation or those who have vowed not
to beget children (i.e., those in holy orders), are assigned a comparatively
smaller amount of compensation based solely on the severity of the wound.91
The commentary presents a system of compensation based on practicality. For
those to whom the loss of their member and testicles would diminish their
procreative capabilities (and thus their potential desirability as a marriage
partner), higher compensation was owed.
Prior to the twelfth century, a prominent feature of all the European law
codes was ‘the institution of fixed monetary sanctions payable by the kin of the
wrongdoer to the kin of the victim’.92 Starting in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries as a result of the renewed study of Roman law on the continent, these
early legal systems shift to more punitive than compensatory systems, i.e.,
instead of the threat of pecuniary damages, one had to contend with the threat
of capital punishment or bodily mutilation.93 Medieval Ireland was no

91
A very disturbing account of self-mutilation is associated with St Mo Ling († 697),
founder of the monastery of St Mullins. The account is preserved only in the mid-twelfth-
century Book of Leinster and can be summarized as follows: St Mo Ling had an evil
neighbor named Grác, whose wife was named Crón. Grác sent his wife to Mo Ling to
seduce him, but when she uncovered her private parts, Mo Ling (to resist temptation)
took the awl he had in his hand and pierced it through his member with such force that
the awl penetrated the vessel in which he sat. He thereupon cursed Crón, saying that she
would be gang raped until her own member was distorted. On her way home, she was
set upon by a group of twelve robbers and became pregnant as a result. She later bore a
son, and Grác (ever the bad neighbor) suggested she name Mo Ling as the father.
However, the scheme did not go as planned and Grác was killed by Mo Ling’s kinsmen;
Crón was left with her son.
Aside from the tale’s ferocity and overall misogyny, the eye-for-an-eye type of biblical
justice is rendered in specifically gendered terms. Just as Mo Ling has to endure physical
mutilation of his male member to avoid sexual temptation, so must Crón endure the
violation of her person and the resulting disfigurement of her own genitalia as punishment
for tempting the holy man. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, s.v. Mo Ling,
online at http://www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/view/article/7007?docPos=1,
accessed October 18, 2011.
The editor, Vernam Hull, suggests that the vessel might be a bathtub: ‘Two Anecdotes
Concerning St Moling’, Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 18 (1930): 90–9 at p. 93, n. 3.
The text reads ‘Maith, a banscel’, or se-seom, ‘ro·riastrat droch-dóine do gabol combat
saíthech ídt’ [‘Very well, O woman’, he said, ‘wicked men shall distort your member until
they have had enough of you’]: ibid., pp. 92–4, p. 93 for translation. Self-mutilation to
avoid sexual temptation, in this case, probably owes much to the story of Origen. The
account of Origen castrating himself is given in Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, trans.
J. E. L. Oulton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), 2:29. See also Karras,
Sexuality in Medieval Europe, 30–7, and in this volume, Jack Collins, ‘Appropriation and
Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity’, pp. 73–86, and
Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi’”.
92
Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), p. 55. It should be noted that although
numerous societies have this feature in common, the details of each legal system differ.
93
Ibid.
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170 CHARLENE M. ESKA

exception, and the law codes and legal commentary frequently provide
systematic and very detailed descriptions of the fines payable for a variety of
offenses. In fact, the secular codes assign a fine for every crime; nowhere do
they assign any form of corporal punishment. If a person has committed a
crime and neither he nor his family can pay the amount owed to the victim or
his kin, the wrongdoer can become the property of the victim or his kin. Once
the wrongdoer is the victim’s property, he is free to do whatever he likes with
him, including killing, mutilating, or selling into slavery; there is a legal prin-
ciple quoted in several law texts which states ‘do not kill a condemned person
until he is yours’.94 It is also possible for the wrongdoer (the legal term for the
person in this position is cimbid [captive]) to be saved from whatever fate the
victim has in store for him. This is possible when someone else pays the victim
the money owed.95 The law tract Críth Gablach recommends that every king
have amongst his bodyguard a person he has saved from captivity.96
This is not to say that corporal punishment does not find its way into the
early Irish legal corpus; it does, but not in the secular law codes. Adomnán of
Iona’s 697 promulgated law code Cáin Adomnáin (also known by its Latin title
Lex Innocentium) states that the punishment for killing a woman is twofold:
first the murderer has his right hand and left foot cut off, then he is killed, and
on top of that, his kin pays seven cumals and the price of seven years’ penance.97
If the murderer is well enough off, he has the option of paying for fourteen
years of penance and fourteen cumals instead of being mutilated and killed.98
Considering that everyone’s éraic is set at seven cumals, this is double the fine
payable under secular law. Another ecclesiastical text which adopts a more
punitive scheme of punishments is Irish Canon IV (Canones Hibernensis). In
§1, hanging or paying a fine worth the value of seven female slaves is the

94
Translation in GEIL, p. 216; see further pp. 13, 97–8, and 215–16. The legal principle
reads: ní gonae cimbid manip lat; e.g., CIH 328.7 (Bretha Éitgid ‘Judgments of
Inadvertence’).
95
In Adomnán’s Vita Sancti Columbae is the story of Librán. Librán had killed a man and
been taken as a captive by the victim’s kin. The text states that he was ‘held in chains, as
one condemned’ until a wealthy relative paid the amount due, thus rescuing him from
his captivity; Adomnán, Vita Sancti Columbae, in Adomnán’s Life of Columba, ed. and
trans. Alan Orr Anderson and Marjorie Ogilvie Anderson, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1991), 87a–92b; GEIL, pp. 97 and 215. The text dates to the late seventh
century.
96
GEIL, p. 97; CIH, 570.14; and Críth Gablach, l. 579.
97
‘Penance’ here refers to the fine payable to the church for which the original penance
has been commuted; see also Bretha Crólige, ed. D. A. Binchy, Ériu 12 (1934–38),
pp. 1–77, at §4 and note on p. 57.
98
The purpose of Adomnán’s law was to protect women, children, and clerics from acts of
warfare and general violence. It should be noted that the Columban federation of monas-
teries received payment from the wrongdoer too. A translation of the text can be found
in Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha, ‘The Law of Adomnán: A Translation’, in Adomnán at Birr,
AD 697, ed. Thomas O’Loughlin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 53–68, §33.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 171

punishment for shedding the blood of a bishop, monastic superior, or scribe,

provided that a drop of the blood falls to the ground. If, however, a drop of
blood does not fall to the ground and the victim does not require a dressing,
the assailant’s hand should be cut off, or he should pay a fine that is worth half
the value of seven female slaves (§4). If the blood of a presbyter is shed so that
it falls on the ground and a dressing is required, the assailant’s hand is cut off,
or he pays a fine worth half the value of seven female slaves (§7).99 The Irish
laws dealing with rape share similarities with those of Wales and Anglo-Saxon
England, but have some marked differences as well. Irish law recognized two
forms of rape, that done by physical violence (forcor) and that done by stealth
(sleth), such as sleeping with a woman who has passed out from intoxication.
In both situations, the penalty due was a portion of the éraic. If the victim was
a primary wife, girl of marriageable age, or virgin nun who did not renounce
her veil, the full éraic was paid. Secondary wives were only entitled to half the
éraic. In addition, the rapist had to pay the honor-price of the victim’s legal
guardian.100 Monetary compensation for rape was still the norm during the
period following the Norman invasion of 1169. For example, in Gillian Kenny’s
discussion of violence against women, she recounts the 1310 case in Dublin of
the abduction and rape of eleven-year-old Eva, the daughter of William de
Londoun. The rapist, Richard Tyrel of Castleknock, did not deny the charges
against him and was imprisoned at the request of Richard de Burgh, earl of
Ulster, and his son, John. A settlement was reached whereby Tyrel agreed to
pay Eva 100 marks as compensation. He further arranged for her to be married
to Thomas Skybas, and he made an additional financial settlement on Eva.
According to the source, Eva was satisfied with these arrangements, and Tyrel
was then pardoned.101
In 1307, there is a record of an incident involving a husband castrating his
wife’s lover.102 According to the records, the parties involved were John Don, a
wine merchant from Youghal, his wife Basilia, and her lover Stephen O’Regan.
Shortly after John and Basilia married, he went abroad on a business trip.

99
‘Canones Hibernensis IV’, in The Irish Penitentials, ed. and trans. Ludwig Bieler (Dublin:
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1975), pp. 170–1. See also GEIL, pp. 217 and 221.
100
GEIL, pp. 134–5; Cáin Lánamna, ed. and trans. Charlene M. Eska, in Cáin Lánamna: An
Old Irish Tract on Marriage and Divorce Law (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 282–5, §37; Lisi
Oliver, ‘Forced and Unforced Rape in Early Irish Law’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic
Colloquium 13 (1993): 93–105; Lisa M. Bitel, Land of Women: Tales of Sex and Gender
from Early Ireland (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 72–3, 223–7; and
Christina Harrington, Women in a Celtic Church: Ireland 450–1150 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2002), pp. 144, 146 and 153. For an overview of the different types of
marriages recognized under Irish law, see Eska, Cáin Lánamna, pp. 13–18.
101
Gillian Kenny, Anglo-Irish and Gaelic Women in Ireland c. 1170–1540 (Dublin: Four
Courts Press, 2007), pp. 42–3 and references therein.
102
The case was heard in Cork in May of that year.
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172 CHARLENE M. ESKA

During his absence, Stephen began an affair with Basilia. Upon John’s return,
the neighbors informed him of the affair, and John warned Stephen to stay
away from his house. When John left on another business trip, Stephen came
to the house and slept with Basilia again. John was informed of the events
which took place in his absence and came up with a ruse whereby he could
catch Stephen in the act. The ruse involved an elaborate plan with the keeper
of the tavern attached to his house. John told his wife he would be away for
another trip, but in reality the tavern-keeper was to spy on Stephen and Basilia.
When Basilia went to her bedroom, Stephen and the tavern-keeper followed
her. Stephen and Basilia tried to buy the tavern-keeper’s secrecy, but the tavern-
keeper double-crossed them and informed John and the armed men waiting
with him where he could find Basilia and Stephen.103 In the end, Stephen was
caught by John’s armed men trying to escape; they promptly bound him and
castrated him. Stephen won a case of assault against John and his associates
(he was awarded £20); John avoided prison by a payment of 5 marks, and later
won a counterclaim against Stephen for compensation for damage done to
goods in his house and was awarded £2.104 Despite having evidence of his wife’s
adultery, the courts clearly frowned on John and his associates taking the law
into their own hands. The records have nothing to say about what Basilia
thought of all this.
Despite the difficulties of determining how closely theory follows practice
in regard to medieval law codes, or any legal system for that matter, changes in
the written legal and annalistic sources can be tracked. The earliest layer of
the Welsh law codes was similar to the Irish and early Anglo-Saxon codes in
that there is no mention of castration. The Anglo-Saxon codes (as they
progress through time) list increasingly harsh physical punishments for some
types of crime, including castration as punishment for a slave raping another
slave. After the Norman Conquest, there is an increase found in annalistic
sources of accounts of physical mutilation as a means of dealing with enemies;
there is the strong possibility that the increase in this practice was due to

103
The Old French fabliaux include similar quasi-farcical episodes, at least three of which
end in castration or mock castration. In this volume, Mary E. Leech examines castration
as a comic motif: ‘The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and
Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee’, pp. 210–28.
104
The case of John Don and Basilia is summarized and discussed in Art Cosgrove,
‘Marriage in Medieval Ireland’, in Marriage in Ireland, ed. Art Cosgrove (Dublin: College
Press, Ltd., 1985)pp. 25–50 at pp. 36–7. In the early Irish law codes, adultery was
considered grounds for divorce, and there were financial penalties levied against the
adulterous party, but castration was not a legal option. Unlike canon law, the Irish law
codes recognized a variety of valid reasons for divorce, including adultery, spreading
false rumors about one’s spouse, sorcery, impotence, homosexuality, sterility, and
inducing an abortion. The law also had the equivalent of the no-fault divorce. See GEIL,
pp. 73–5; and Eska, Cáin Lánamna, pp. 14–16.
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Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources 173

cultural practices that came with the Normans, but mutilation was already
part of the law codes (e.g., Cnut II) before the Normans invaded.105 Some later
Welsh codes, even pre-1282, do add castration as a punishment for rape. The
Welsh annals contain few accounts of castration, but they are all post-1066.
With all of the annalistic sources, there is the strong possibility that many
instances of political and judicial castration were either not recorded due to
the sensitive nature of the subject matter or were euphemistically expressed
by referring to ‘blinding’ or ‘mutilating’. It may just be a fact of more accurate
and/or contemporary record-keeping, but it is striking that most of the
political mutilations cluster in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, providing
further evidence that the practice was introduced by the Normans. Castration
is not found within the corpus of secular Irish legal texts, but it is found in
the annals starting in the late twelfth century as a means of eliminating
political enemies without acquiring the stigma of being a murderer, strongly
suggesting Norman influence. Despite the differences in all three legal
systems, Welsh, Anglo-Saxon, and Irish society all adopted judicial and/or
political practices associated with the Normans, attesting to just how profound
legal and cultural changes can be in situations where multiple cultures coexist
as a result of contact and conquest.

105
Cf. also the account of Gowine ‘mutilating’ the companions of Alfred: Whitlock, The
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, s.a. 1036.
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CHAPTER 8

Castrating Monks:
Vikings, Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs
Mary A. Valante

‘I asked a group of them about the process of castration, and I learned that
the Romaeans castrate their youngsters intended for dedication to the
church … When the Muslims raid, they attack the churches and take the
youngsters away from them’, says the tenth-century geographer, al-Muqaddasi.
He describes Arab raids that deliberately targeted Greek churches and monas-
teries during his own time, a time when the Greeks castrated some young boys
to keep them as singers in the Church, and a time when the Arab world wanted
eunuchs.1 The demand for slaves, including talented and literate non-Muslim
eunuchs, was enormous across the Islamic world at the time of the early
Abbasid caliphate (mid-eighth to the late tenth century). Judging by the actions
described in al-Muqaddasi’s geography, the captives did not even need to be
literate in Arabic in order to be useful. This demand generated a ripple effect
that spread throughout Abbasid territories, throughout the Mediterranean
basin and also into eastern and western Europe. Scholars are just starting to
acknowledge the large-scale influence of this long-distance slave trade on the
start of the Viking Age in northwestern Europe, the same eighth through
eleventh centuries. Indeed, some still deny the importance of the economics
of the slave trade when it comes to Viking raiding activities.2 But women were
often targeted during Viking raids, as potential mothers and wives in Iceland
and Scandinavia, or as high-value trade objects to be exchanged as far away as
Byzantium and the Abbasid Empire.3 Men, too, were kidnapped by Viking
raiders active in both western and eastern Europe and sold as slaves. As with

1
al-Muqaddasi, The Best Divisions for Knowledge of the Regions: A Translation of Ahsan
Al-Taqasim Fi Ma’Rifat Al-Aqalim, trans. Basil Anthony Collins (Ithaca, NY: Center for
Muslim Contribution to Civilization, 1995), p. 216.
2
See David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200 (Leiden:
Brill, 2009), pp. 3–5.
3
Mary A. Valante, The Vikings in Ireland (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), pp. 88–90.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 175

female captives, some of course were sold to Scandinavia and Iceland where
they worked fields, tended animals, and otherwise helped with farmwork.
Others were traded further afield. But most men did not carry the added value
that young, ‘exotic’ European women did in the slave trade. Most men were
valued for their strong backs, which meant that transporting them over very
long distances when local men were available was not usually economically
feasible. However, boys and young teens could be very valuable as slaves in the
Greek and Arab worlds, especially if they were young enough to castrate, even
more so if they were educated and literate. In other words, the Arab worlds
required exactly the sort of young men who lived in medieval monasteries.
Scandinavian raiders traded some of their captives along routes that ended in
Venice, the major hub for buying young males from all over and then selling
them on as eunuchs to Jewish, Byzantine, and Islamic traders.4 So while north-
western Europe was certainly not the source for anywhere near the majority of
the slaves flowing into the Islamic world, it was the source for some.
Monasteries were targets of Viking attacks for more than their undefended
moveable wealth and potential general-use slave population; the Vikings also
targeted them to capture literate young males who could be turned into
eunuchs and sold off to the east.
Ruth Mazo Karras’s work, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia, is the
most important work analyzing the uses and origins of slaves in Scandinavian
lands during the Viking Age. Most significantly, she argues that there was (at
best) a modest economic profit at the time in actually owning slaves; instead,
she demonstrates that the primary benefit was enhanced social status.5 As she
points out, in the ninth and tenth centuries, Viking-Age slaves could work in
a household caring for animals, in the fields, performing any combination of
tasks; very rarely, women might be concubines, though it was less wasteful to
simply use any slave sexually rather than to keep one purely for sexual
exploitation.6 Karras does not address the sudden beginning of the Viking raids
at the close of the eighth century, nor the fate of the many people from north-
western Europe captured by Vikings raiders, because neither of these issues are
the focus of her research. More recently Michael McCormick has helped answer
those questions by showing that two major changes regarding the slave trade
took place in western Europe just at the start of the ninth century.7 He argues
that slavery became an ‘export business’ from western Europe for the first time,
and that Slavic lands became the main source for exporting slaves to Byzantium

4
Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce
AD 300–900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 764.
5
Ruth Mazo Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1998).
6
Ibid., pp. 73–94.
7
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 738–40.
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176 MARY A. VALANTE

and the Abbasid caliphate, though lands farther west (from Ireland to Anglo-
Saxon England to Frankia) were also sources of slaves for the new interna-
tional markets.8 In contrast, David Wyatt (in Slaves and Warriors in Medieval
Britain and Ireland) is highly critical of scholarship connecting the Viking
raids on the British Isles with the economic importance of the long-distance
slave trade.9 Instead, Wyatt argues that early medieval European slavery was
a social institution only. But when Wyatt criticizes Dáibhí Ó Cróinín and
others for making a distinction between the economics of slave-owning and
the vitality of the slave trade during the early Viking Age,10 he gets it wrong.11
Owning slaves in northwestern Europe during the Viking Age was very much
a social institution, where the benefit to the owner had more to do with
enhanced social status than with economic gain. The slave trade, though, was
an economic institution.
Throughout northwestern Europe, primary sources show that the social
benefits of slave-ownership (as well as some lesser economic ones) were much
the same in societies throughout the region. Slave-owning was ubiquitous,
despite Anglo-Saxon Bishop Wulfstan’s early and eloquent opposition to
Christians selling fellow Christians abroad. But even Wulfstan, with his famous
sympathy for the plight of slaves, saw nothing inherently immoral about the
practice.12 The institution of slavery thrived, even in Wulfstan’s England.
According to the Domesday Book from eleventh-century England, slave-owning
was omnipresent, even though many small landowners only had one or two
slaves. As just one example, the small village of Tollington, held by one Ranulf
from King William, included two smallholders, one cottager, and one slave.13
Slaves came from a variety of sources; there were varying degrees of
enslavement and slavery was not always permanent. There was a slave class, and
children of slaves were generally born slaves.14 People could find themselves
enslaved due to dire economic circumstances.15 Slaves could be freed, though
they were never equal with freeborn citizens; however, the children of freedmen
were born entirely free. Later medieval Icelandic law even makes the distinction
between children born to a woman freed while pregnant and the same woman’s
children conceived and born after she was freed – the former had a lower status

8
Ibid., pp. 738–54 and 611.
9
Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors.
10
Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland: 400–1200 (New York: Longman, 1995), p. 258.
11
Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, pp. 3–5.
12
David Pelteret, Slavery in Early Medieval England: From the Reign of Alfred until the
Twelfth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1995), pp. 90–2.
13
Domesday Book: A Complete Translation (DB), ed. Ann Williams and G. H. Martin
(London: Penguin, 2002). DB 11, fol. 130b.
14
Fergus Kelly, Guide to Early Irish Law (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies,
1988), pp. 112–13.
15
Ibid., p. 95.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 177

than their siblings.16 Warfare was a constant source of new slaves. The Irish
Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaib describes an occasions when Irish warriors stole girls,
women, and young men from the Viking town of Limerick: ‘Tuccait aningena
mini maccactda etrochta echramla, a hócmna blathi brecsrola, ocus a maccaimi
mer morglana’ [They carried away their soft, youthful, bright, matchless girls;
their blooming silk-clad young women; and their active, large, and well-formed
boys].17 Thus across northwestern Europe in the early Middle Ages, slaves were
taken, born, and freed for a variety of reasons and in a variety of circumstances.
The work slaves did was much the same across northern Europe as well.
According to the Cogadh, after king Brian Boru defeated and sacked Viking
Dublin: ‘ocus ni moba ni re mna ní dornd im meli bron, no funi bargini, no
nigi a hétaig, acht gall no gaillrech danenam’ [nor did a woman deign to put
her hands to the grinding of a quern, or to knead a cake, or to wash her clothes,
but had a foreign man or foreign woman to work for them] (116–17). Fergus
Kelly, in Early Irish Farming, describes slaves herding animals, cutting firewood,
milking, and churning and (as in the Cogadh) kneading bread and grinding
grain with a quern.18 In general, slaves in northwestern Europe helped out with
basic farm and housework.
In Scandinavian lands, the homelands of the Vikings as well as regions they
settled, a very similar picture emerges. There was a class of people born slaves.19
Slaves could also be captured in raids and in warfare.20 When Iceland was first
settled men greatly outnumbered women, so females brought in as slaves and
children born to them might well find themselves freed.21 But that practice did
not last, and within a century or so, anyone born a slave in Iceland was likely
to stay a slave. In addition to enhancing an owner’s social status, owning slaves
within Viking territories did provide some minor economic benefits. Women’s
workloads around the house and men’s around the farm were lightened by the
work of the slaves, just as in Ireland, as described in the Cogadh.22 The labor of
slaves and servants left the high-status women free to actually manage the
household and men free to oversee their lands. For some free women, slave
labor gave them enough time to do finer versions of the same work the slaves

16
Kristen Hastrup, Culture and History in Medieval Iceland: An Anthropological Analysis
of Structure and Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 114–15.
17
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaib, ed. and trans. James H. Todd, Rolls Series 48 (London: Her
Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1867), pp. 78–81. Hereafter page numbers are given in paren-
theses in the text.
18
Kelly, Early Irish Farming, pp. 438–9.
19
Rígsþula, trans. R. I. Page in Chronicles of the Vikings, Records, Memorials and Myths
(London: British Museum Press), pp. 150–1.
20
Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991), pp. 87–8.
21
Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998),
pp. 86–7.
22
Karras, Slavery and Society, pp. 69–70.
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178 MARY A. VALANTE

were doing. Thus women organized the meals, kept track of stores, and oversaw
the preparations for feasts.23 The slaves and servants in the meanwhile did the
actual cleaning, cooking, and serving for the evening. In western Europe,
however, castration was not part of slavery.
In Byzantium and in the caliphate, eunuchs were a specialized commodity.
But while castration did exist in western Europe, it was mostly unrelated to
slavery and had nothing to do with creating a slave class of eunuchs. Curiously,
castration in western Europe almost inevitably went hand and hand with
blinding, as several articles in this volume attest.24 In many cases, castration of
free men was meant to push someone forcibly out of a potential line of
succession, as in the case of the descendants of Gruffudd ap Cynan. His two
sons went to war, and in 1130, Maredudd castrated and blinded his nephew in
order to bolster his own claims to succession.25 Castrating and blinding an
enemy was more rarely used to punish rebellion;26 blinding was clearly
punishment but using castration to ensure someone could not father future
claims to a title or position was equally important in a world where feuds could
last over generations. In Scotland, for example, a bishop called Wimund laid
claim to his ancestral lands as a secular rule and rebelled against the Scottish
king David I. His blinding and castration by the king ensured that he was not
only punished, but that he would father no heirs who might rebel using the
same claims.27 According to Klaus van Eickels, under Norman monarchs, the
dual penalty of castration and blinding increased as a punishment against
traitors.28 However, there is some debate over the frequency with which some
of these punishments were actually inflicted.29

23
Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, pp. 126–30.
24
See, in this volume: Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband
She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’,
pp. 108–30; Charlene M. Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh
and Irish Sources’, pp. 149–73 and Jay Paul Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing
of the (Male) Legal Subject’, pp. 131–48.
25
Brut y Tywysogyon: Peniarth MS. 20, ed. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 1941); Brut y Tywysogyon: Peniarth MS. 20, trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff:
University of Wales Press, 1952); Brut y Tywysogyon: Red Book of Hergest Version, ed.
and trans. Thomas Jones (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955); see as well Eska,
‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”, in this volume, pp. 158–9 for a more detailed treatment
of this incident and others like it.
26
See Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture,
and Anxieties of Identity the South English Legendary’, in this volume, pp. 87–107.
27
William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs: Book I, trans. P. G. Walsh and M. J.
Kennedy (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988), pp. 106–7.
28
Klaus van Eickels, ‘Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for
Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England’, Gender and History 16.3 (November
2004): 599–602.
29
Emily Zack Tabuteau, ‘Punishments in Eleventh-Century Normandy’, in Conflict in
Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture, ed. Warren C. Brown and
Piotr Górecki (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 131–49.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 179

Regardless of its role in punishing traitors or criminals, castration in western

Europe had nothing to do with slavery and certainly not with the creation of
eunuch slaves. In a rare example of circumstances under which a slave might
be castrated, the Anglo-Saxon laws of Alfred the Great provide that a male slave
who raped a female one should be castrated.30 But the act of castration here
was purely punitive. It should also be noted that, as with those cases involving
succession, there was clearly an attempt on the part of male slave-holders to
control the procreation of slaves via castration; since female slaves were always
available sexually to their owners, and at times their owner’s friends, in most
cases, only upper-status men should be able to impregnate slave women.31 Thus
there was no specific demand for eunuch slaves in western Europe. In the east,
however, there was a booming market for eunuch slaves, and the Viking raiders
who helped supply this human commodity often sent their captives to sites
where they could be castrated in preparation for sale.
In general, long-distance trade in the pre-modern world consisted of either
bulk necessities or luxury goods. In this case, slaves (a high-value luxury good)
were traded long-distance across the great Northern Arc of the Viking Age, which
stretched from northern Europe through Scandinavia and south through what
is Russia, from which goods could easily move on to Venice, Byzantium, and the
Abbasid caliphate.32 For the Vikings, and thus for captives from northwestern
Europe, the northern trade routes were most important. Scandinavian trade
centers stretched eastwards from Hedeby in Denmark and Birka in Sweden to
Staraya Ladoga in northern Russia before the end of the eighth century. This
traffic continued into the ninth century as Scandinavians founded more trade
centers at Kaupang in southwestern Norway and Novgorod, farther south than
Staraya Ladoga, and Kiev, farther south still and closer to Byzantium. Dublin and
other northwestern European Viking settlements were established as gateways
through which captives were traded northwards.33 The Laxdeala Saga provides
a well-known example that encapsulates this trade, in which a Rus merchant,
‘Gilli inn gerzki’, attends a fair in the Brenn Isles in Sweden selling female slaves
from northwestern Europe, along with his other wares: ‘Þá lypti Gilli tjaldinu, ok
sá Hskuldr, at tólf konur sátu fyrir innan tjaldit’ [Gilli lifted it up [a curtain], and
Hoskuld could now see there were twelve women sitting behind it].34

30
Oliver J. Thatcher, trans., The Library of Original Sources, vol. 4: The Early Medieval World
(Milwaukee: University Research Extension Co., 1901), pp. 211–39 at p. 219. See also
Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society’, p. 133.
31
Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors, p. 10.
32
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 562–4.
33
Valante, The Vikings in Ireland, p. 59.
34
Einar ól Sveonsson (ed), Laxdæla Saga: Halldórs Þættir Snorrasonor Stúfs Þáttr Íslenzk
Fornrit 5 (Reykjavik: Hid Islenzka Fornritafelag, 1934), pp. 22–4 at p. 23. See also Magnus
Magnusson and Hermann Pálsson (trans.), Laxdæla Saga (New York: Penguin, 1995),
pp. 63–5 at p. 64.
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180 MARY A. VALANTE

Certain types of slaves, including educated males young enough to be

castrated, were worth far more when traded along these routes than when
brought home to Scandinavian farms. Viking raiders provided this valuable
commodity in part through their attacks on monasteries, feeding the growing
desire (rather than need) for educated and castrated slaves. The castration
houses in Venice were the main source for eunuchs for the caliphate, though
Verdun and the Andalusian region of Spain may also have produced large
numbers of eunuchs.35 The majority of boys and young men who were castrated
in Venice were clearly Slavs36 – Paul the Deacon in the eighth century describes
‘innumerable troops of captives’, from Germanic and Slavic lands being sold
southwards.37 A treaty between Venice and Charlemagne’s grandson, Lothar,
stated that Venice would not sell Lothar’s people (the Franks) to Muslims,
which meant that Slavs would have to do. According to the ninth-century
Arabic Book of Routes and Kingdoms, Jewish merchants transported eunuchs
from western Europe to Constantinople and various sites in the Islamic world.38
But there is still a question whether any monks were actually castrated and
sold to the caliphate. A tenth-century biography of St Naum describes a group
of some 200 churchmen, captured by Vikings from Slavic territories, being sold
to the slave markets at Venice.39 McCormick cites a number of examples of
Byzantine and Slavic youths, captured from monasteries and later sold as eunuchs
to the Arab world. According to the Vita Rimberti, one nun was rescued from
being sold as a slave into the Arab world when she was overheard singing
psalms.40 Methodius, the ninth-century apostle to the Slavs, describes churchmen
captured by raiders and sold to Venice.41 So, religious were being captured and
were being sold through centers where castration was being practiced regularly,
and records exist of large numbers of young men being sold specifically as
eunuchs, suggesting that some slaves may have been taken for precisely that
purpose – feeding the eastern market for young, educated castrates.
In northwestern Europe, monasteries were the most frequent targets of
Viking raids, where people as well as valuables were stolen. For example,
‘Orggain Lughmaidh di Loch Echdach o genntibh qui episcopos & praespiteros

35
Olivia Remie Constable, Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial
Realignment of the Iberian Penninsula, 900–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1996), pp. 96–7.
36
McCormick, Origins of the Europen Economy, p. 761.
37
Paul the Deacon, History of the Lombards, trans William Dudley Foulke (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1974), p. 2; Historia Langobardorum, ed. Ludwig
Bethmann and Georg Waitz (Hanover: Hahnian, 1878), I.1.
38
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 688–93, 764.
39
Ibid., p. 766, see as well p. 249 for a list of people, some from western Europe, known by
name who were sold into slavery in the Islamic world in the eighth and ninth centuries.
40
Vita Rimberti, ed. Georg Waitz (Hanover: Hahnian, 1884), pp. 95–6.
41
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 766.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 181

& sapientes captiuos duxerunt & alios mortificauerunt’ [Louth was plundered
by the heathens from Loch Neagh and they led away captive bishops and priests
and scholars, and put others to death] (AU 840.1).42 In AD 842 alone, six Irish
monasteries were plundered for captives. In AD 869, ‘Orccain Airdd Macha o
Amhlaim coro loscadh cona derthaigibh; .x.c. etir brith & mharbad & slat mor
chena’ [Armagh was plundered by Olaf and burned with its oratories. Ten
hundred were carried off or killed, and great rapine also committed] (AU
869.6).43 Bishops and abbots and other men of name and rank could always
hope to be ransomed, but for the majority of captives, such hopes must have
been nearly non-existent. Anyone young enough to be castrated (and already
literate and educated) might have found his way to the castration houses in
Venice. That young boys lived at monasteries and were taught to read and write
is clear. The tenth-century Rule from the Céli Dé reform movement in Ireland
states that ‘It is the duty of every one in Orders with whom these boys study to
correct and chastise them and to press them to take ecclesiastical Orders
forthwith, because they are being bred up for the Church and for God with a
view to receiving Orders’.44 One monk from Byzantine territories in Italy was
sent by his bishop to North Africa to redeem other monks caught in raids.45
The traffic in monastic slaves is well documented, especially as demand
increased outside of Europe.
Some of those captured during Viking raids remained in northwestern
Europe and became slaves in the old-fashioned sense, fulfilling the social need
to own slaves and yet not serving a particularly significant economic function.
Other captives, though, faced a far different fate and entered the long-distance
slave trade. Goods including silver from Baghdad and silk from Byzantium
traveled to Europe, while western and eastern Europe exported slaves in
exchange for these luxury goods.46 Captives from northwestern Europe traveled
primarily across the great Northern Arc, north along the Irish Sea into
Scandinavia; some then continued southwards via Rus territory, processed at
the trade centers of Novgorod and Kiev.

42
The Annals of Ulster (to AD 1131), ed. and trans. Seán Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill
(Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1983). Hereafter, references to this text,
by year, are given in parentheses in the text.
43
The same entry can be found in the Chronicum Scottorum, s.a. 869 (CS869.2) and the
Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, s.a. 869 (FA869.374). See Chronicum Scottorum: A
Chronicle of Irish Affairs From the Earliest Times to AD 1135, with a Supplement Containing
the Events From 1141–1150, ed. and trans. William M. Hennessy, Rolls Series 46 (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1866); Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. Joan
Newlon Radner (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1978).
44
‘Rule of the Céli Dé’, ed. and trans. Edward Gwynn, in The Rule of Tallaght, Hermathena
44, second supplemental volume (Dublin: Hodges, Figgis, 1927), pp. 64–89 at pp. 84–5.
45
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 515.
46
Valante, The Vikings in Ireland, pp. 58–9, 86–90, 128–31.
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182 MARY A. VALANTE

Other western Europeans were carried into Muslim lands via a southern
route. As McCormick demonstrates, trade from Frankia to Muslim lands was
very important from the Carolingian period onwards, and Jewish merchants
were especially important in facilitating this trade. A Jewish slave merchant
(Abraham from Saragossa) was granted legal protections by Louis the Pious
(AD 813–40), as long as he did not sell enslaved Christians to non-Christians.
Louis the Pious similarly protected other Jewish slave merchants, in particular
those operating out of Lyons. The ninth-century Arabic writer, Ibn
Khurradadhbih, produced a Book of Routes and Kingdoms, describing trade
routes taken by Jewish merchants who traded slaves from western Europe
(especially Spain, Frankia, and Italy) to eastern Mediterranean sites like
Constantinople, Egypt, and Antioch and on to Baghdad.47 One ninth-century
pilgrim named Bernard stated that in a single day he watched two ships laden
with human cargo leaving Taranto in southern Italy for Egypt.48 This southern
route, dominated by Jewish merchants, was a major pathway by which captive
western Europeans were transported to Muslim lands.
At first glance, slave-ownership among the Christian Byzantine Greeks
looked much the same as in early medieval northwestern Europe, which might
make a demand for slaves from Europe seem unnecessary. Traditionally, most
slaves worked on farms, as demonstrated in the Farmer’s Law (a collection of
Byzantine legislation concerning agriculture passed and compiled in the
seventh and eighth centuries): ‘If a man’s slave often steals beasts at night, or
often drives away flocks, his master shall make good what is lost on the ground
that he knew his slave’s guilt, but let the slave himself be hanged.’49 Slaves could
be born into slavery or captured, but also slaves could be freed. Greeks were
sometimes captured in raids and sold as slaves. However, the Byzantine Greeks
were in the process of moving away from having slaves perform most heavy
farm labor during the Viking Age, but it took time.50 In the ninth century,
Constantine the Philosopher (better known as Cyril) and Methodius were early
missionaries into Slavic territories in an effort to convert the Turkic Khazar
Khan on the Volga. They failed to convince him to convert to Orthodox
Christianity and instead the Khan converted to Judaism. But Cyril and
Methodius did return home to Constantinople with 200 Greeks whom they
had freed from slavery during their mission. In a future mission they traveled
to Moravia to establish a bishopric, and then they moved on to Rome via

47
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 675–6, 688–93.
48
Bernard, Itinerarium, ed. Titus Tobler and August Molinier, Itinera hierosolymitana et
descriptiones terrae sanctae bellis sacris anteriora 1.2 (Geneva: Fick, 1880), p. 311.
49
Walter Ashburner, ‘The Farmer’s Law (Continued)’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 32 (1912):
68–95 at p. 91.
50
Robert Sabatino Lopez, ‘The Dollar of the Middle Ages’, Journal of Economic History 11.3
(1951): 209–34 at pp. 223–4.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 183

Pannonia and Venice, freeing Christian slaves wherever they traveled, thus
providing the best witnesses to the fates of captured and enslaved Greeks of
the period.51 But, as in northwestern Europe, castration was simply not a part
of slavery in rural areas.
Within the Byzantine Empire, however, among the many categories of
slaves, eunuchs represented a unique subset – largely in urban areas.52 Only
young males could be castrated somewhat safely, and given the roles they
played, education was highly desirable as well. As Shaun Tougher points out,
from the reign of Diocletian (AD 284–305) onwards, eunuchs were increasingly
important in the courts of Eastern Roman emperors. By the ninth century
many important functions at the imperial court were filled only by eunuchs,
including personal guards, wardrobers, and the head of security. Eunuchs could
hold other offices in the palace as well, in fact only three court offices were
reserved for non-eunuchs, while at least ten were reserved for eunuchs alone.53
Eunuchs were popular slaves among the urban elite of Byzantium, far
beyond the imperial palace.54 They could act as guards for children and women,
or as message-carriers for women since they had more freedom to travel than
the women who owned them. Within the palace, they were guards, oversaw
the rest of the servants, managed the emperor’s schedule, and were trained as
professionals, including as barbers and doctors. Their tasks ranged from
singing to overseeing ceremonies; they were the staff most loyal to the emperor
and each member of the royal family.55 Some were military commanders.56
Within the Eastern Church, eunuchs were singers, monks, priests, and even
patriarchs, though these eunuchs could not have been slaves.57 And the more
well-placed eunuchs had more eunuchs on staff. Not all eunuchs were
successful, however, and those who never became part of wealthy households
could still be found around the city as entertainers and even prostitutes in lower
neighborhoods.58
The Byzantine Empire had both a demand for and a supply of eunuchs, fed
partly by trade with northern Europeans, including Vikings. Until and

51
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, pp. 188–90.
52
Of course, Western Christianity (unlike Eastern Orthodox Byzantium) prohibited
castration, despite the ascetic allure. See Jack Collins, ‘Appropriation and Development
of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity’, in this volume, pp. 73–86.
53
Shaun F. Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs: An Overview, with Special Reference to their
Creation and Origin’, in Men, Women and Eunuchs: Gender in Byzantium ed. Liz James
(New York and London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 168–84 at pp. 168, 171–2.
54
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 533.
55
Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Construction of Gender in
Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 1–2.
56
Ibid., pp. 130–1.
57
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 533.
58
Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, pp. 1–2.
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184 MARY A. VALANTE

including the fifth century, no citizen eunuchs could be sold – but some were.59
In the sixth century, Procopius stated that most eunuchs serving the emperor
were not Romans.60 Some eunuchs were Roman-born, though their status as
free or slave remains unclear.61 By the time of the Viking Age, some Persian,
Arab, and Armenian eunuchs from Byzantium were known by name, and these
non-Byzantine eunuchs were all sold and bought as slaves.62 By the tenth
century, even very wealthy and ambitious families might have one of their own
sons castrated at a young age, a practice so well-known that Guibert of Nogent
wrote about and condemned it.63 And by the eleventh century, most Byzantine
eunuchs came from free families within Byzantium.64 The most famous
example of this is the eleventh-century Basil Lekapenos, the illegitimate son of
the emperor Romanos I. Castrating him had the dual effect of removing him
completely from the line of succession while allowing him to remain at the
palace in increasingly important roles. In fact, he survived at the palace even
after his father was deposed. He became a general, and by the time he died he
had even acted as regent for an underage ruler.65
So while eunuchs were imported, particularly from farther east (Persia), or
received by emperors as gifts, evidence from Byzantium suggests that physicians
performed the operation on an ad hoc basis, and that not all survived. Most
eunuchs were castrated as children, some (more rarely) in puberty.66 The
Byzantine Empire even exported eunuchs to the caliphate: ‘From the Byzantine’s
country [we import]: gold- and silverware, dinars of pure gold, medicinal plants,
gold-woven textiles, abrūn [?], silk brocade, spirited horses, female slaves, rare
copperware, unpickable locks, lyres, hydraulic engineers, agrarian experts,
marble workers and eunuchs.’67 Byzantine eunuchs were also sometimes the
deliberate target of Arab raiders. Even so, only the Christian West was very much
in the business of creating eunuchs on a large scale for export.
By way of contrast, the institution of slavery in the Muslim world was
dramatically different than in northwestern Europe or the rural areas of

59
Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs’, p. 177.
60
Procopius, History of the Wars, vol. 5: Books 7.36–8: Gothic War, trans. H.B. Dewing
(London: Hutchinson, 1928), viii.3.17.
61
Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs’, p. 178.
62
Ibid.
63
Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God through the Franks, trans. Robert Levine (Woodbridge:
Boydell Press, 1997), p. 38. See Larissa Tracy, ‘Introduction’, in this volume, p. 12.
64
Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs’, p. 90.
65
Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, pp. 130–1; Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs’, p. 178.
66
Tougher, ‘Byzantine Eunuchs’, pp. 175–7; Paul of Aegina, Surgery, ch. 46, in Paulus
Aegineta, ed. J. L. Heiberg, 2 vols. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1921–24). Cf. Shaun Tougher, ‘The
Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, in this volume, pp. 48–9.
67
al Djahiz, A Clear Look, trans in McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 591;
David Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in Power Relationships (Jerusalem:
The Magnes Press, 1999), pp. 106–7.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 185

Byzantium. From the eighth century onwards, great changes were afoot in the
east. The Abbasid dynasty rose to seize control of the Islamic Empire in AD 750,
remaining on the throne until 1258, though their direct power began to wane
after the mid-tenth century. Remnants of the previous ruling dynasty (the
Umayyad) fled westwards and seized control of Muslim Spain and parts of
North Africa. While not all regions of the Islamic world were under Abbasid
control, socially and culturally the area remained connected. Among the many
social changes that took place under the early Abbasid was a massive shift in
the ways that slaves were utilized, and the resulting continuing demand for
huge numbers of slaves, many of whom were castrated. Slavery under the
Abbasid was certainly a social construct, but slaves played many more roles
than in western or eastern Europe. Slaves were builders, especially of the great
city of Bagdhad. Slaves were agricultural workers; in Iraq the Zanj slaves
worked on large-scale plantations. Slaves were soldiers, an institution that even-
tually led to the Mamluks of Egypt. Slaves were concubines in the harems of
the wealthy and those with more modest wealth seeking to increase their social
status.68 Exotic women were very popular as slave-concubines.69 The harems
of the wealthy across the Islamic world were filled with people. Concubines
themselves were bought, and yet more enslaved women served them.70 Caliphs
freed and married slave women who had no family ties that could interfere in
their court. Abu Ja`far’s mother was a Greek slave, as was Caliph Mu’tadid’s
mother. Abu Abd Allah’s was Byzantine (i.e. also Greek), and the mother of
Abbu al-Abbas was a Slav.71 In addition to the demand for women, the insti-
tution of the harem also created a massive need for trustworthy guards, a need
that was filled by eunuchs.72 Because they could come and go in the harem,
eunuchs were also the teachers of women and children, girls as well as boys,
and even military instructors. They often cared for the children as well as
instructed them.73 Eunuchs under the Abbasids were the chief bureaucrats of
the caliphate. Some guarded major holy sites, and later (in Cairo) freed eunuchs
were tomb guardians for the wealthy.74 Many worked for private individuals,

68
Murray Gordon, Slavery in the Arab World (New York: New Amsterdam Books, 1989),
p. 56.
69
Ibn But. lān, ‘On Buying Slaves’, in Islam: From the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of
Consantinople, vol. 2: Religion and Society, ed. and trans. Bernard Lewis (New York:
Walker and Company, 1974), pp. 243–51.
70
Nadia Maria El-Cheikh, ‘Servants at the Gate: Eunuchs at the Court of Al-Muqtadir’,
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 48.2 (2005): 234–52 at p. 236.
71
Mas’udi, Meadows of Gold: The Abbasids, trans. Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone (London:
Kegan Paul International, 1989), pp. 267, 329, 299, 281, 317–18, 277.
72
El-Cheikh, ‘Servants at the Gate’, p. 236.
73
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans, pp. 39–41.
74
Shaun Marmon, Eunuchs and Sacred Boundaries in Islamic Society (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995), pp. 21–6.
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186 MARY A. VALANTE

striving to earn a place in their local palace.75 In the end, the expanding uses
for slaves during the time of the early Abbasids, including the need for large
numbers of enslaved eunuchs, drove much of the slave trade around the
Mediterranean basin. The Viking raids, which began barely a generation after
the Abbasid dynasty seized the caliphate, met part of that need.
Thus it was within the Muslim world, and especially within the caliphate,
that eunuchs were the most prevalent and valued and in the most demand. All
slaves sold for less in Europe than Byzantium, and in both Christian domains
they were less valuable than in the Muslim world. Once castrated, European
males carried a greatly added value within the caliphate.76 According to the
‘Tale of the First Eunuch and the Second’ from 1001 Nights, one eunuch
describes in detail how he was made a ‘clean eunuch, with nothing left’, when
he was nine or ten years old. His value increased immediately and he was sold;
eventually he earned a place in the palace.77 So the potential for profit in selling
eunuchs was greatest by far in the caliphate. The number of women alone who
lived within the caliph’s harem was staggering: the caliph’s mother (if she was
alive), his wives and concubines, all of their children and any other female rela-
tives who were dependent on him. There were more women to serve the caliph’s
female relations, including female slaves owned by individual women who lived
in the harem. By the middle of the ninth century, some sources claim there
were as many as 12,000 women in the caliph’s harem. Management of an estab-
lishment of this size required nothing less than an ‘army of slaves and
eunuchs’.78 As Nadia Maria El-Cheikh so elegantly puts it, ‘It was the Muslim
women’s unique seclusion which made the employment of eunuchs inevitable’.79
Eunuchs administered the entire system. Eunuchs guarded the women.80
Eunuchs educated the children. Owned by some of the women personally,
eunuchs served them, ran errands for them, and even spied for them.
The large number of eunuchs at the court of one Caliph, al-Muqtadir (AD
908–32), is recorded in a number of sources. The tenth/eleventh-century writer
Hilal al-Sabi’ states that ‘It is generally believed that in the days of al-Muqtadir
bi-allah […] the residence contained 11,000 eunuchs: 7,000 blacks and 4,000
white Slavs; 4,000 free and slave girls and thousands of chamber servants’.81 Ibn
‘Abd al-Zāhir, a late thirteenth-century writer, claims that when Saladin
conquered the Fatamids he found 12,000 people living there, but the only non-

75
Malcom C. Lyons, The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights, vol. 1 (New York: Penguin,
2010), pp. 279–84.
76
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, p. 754; see table 25.1 on pp. 756–7.
77
Lyons, The Arabian Nights, pp. 279–84.
78
Piotr O. Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001),
p. 203.
79
El-Cheikh, ‘Servants at the Gate’, p. 236.
80
Ibid., pp. 234–52.
81
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans, p. 21.
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Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs 187

eunuchs were the Fatimid caliph himself and his immediate relatives. Even
without taking these numbers literally, clearly at the caliph’s court alone there
were thousands of eunuchs. Considering the need for more eunuchs to guard
and serve in every harem in the Muslim world the enormous demand for
eunuchs – a demand that Viking raiders attempted to supply – crystallizes.82 It
is unfortunate that the primary sources are not clearer about the origins of
these men, but the roles they played gives some idea at least of the importance
of training and education. As El-Cheikh points out, ‘the eunuchs regulated
court ceremonial and controlled a complex structure of spatial sanctity that by
the fourth/tenth century had come to surround the Abbasid caliph’.83 That
eunuchs also educated the elite youth as well as the slave army strongly suggests
that those with the prime posts were highly educated, and that for any eunuch,
an education would have increased their value.
But the caliphate had a huge problem filling its need for massive numbers
of eunuchs; it had by far the greatest demand, but unlike Byzantium, no local
supply.84 Up to and under the Umayyad rulers (until AD 750), castrating any
man was punished by law. The Abbasids (from AD 750 onwards) modified the
law so that only non-Muslims could be castrated, though castrated eunuchs
could convert and were encouraged to do so. Even so, the numbers of eunuchs
who came from within the borders of the caliphate were apparently quite small,
so the vast majority were boys and young men who had been castrated before
ever entering the caliphate.85 A tenth-century source describing Cordoba (the
capital of Muslim Spain) states that eunuchs in Cordoba were Slavs, as well as
Galicians, Franks, Lombards, and many others.86
Given the increasing demand for eunuchs, especially literate and educated
eunuchs, in the Byzantine and especially Arab world from the ninth century
onwards, Viking raids on western monasteries must be seen in a new light.
Monasteries were indeed repositories of great treasure, and men and women
could and were captured and sold to Iceland and Scandinavia. But the only way
to explain the massive drive for captives is to understand the economics of the
long-distance slave trade of the Viking Age. The added value of young, literate
boys and teens and the fact that Venice castration houses needed a near endless
supply of exactly such captives fill in another piece of the puzzle of the
economics of the Northern Arc of the slave trade. As long as there was a
demand for castrated young boys and teens, whether from Slavic or western
European lands, whether pagan or Christian, there would be a supply.

82
Ibid.
83
El-Cheikh, ‘Servants at the Gate’, pp. 234–52 at p. 240.
84
Ayalon, Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans, p. 75.
85
Ibid., p. 31.
86
Reinhart Dozy, Spanish Islam: A History of the Muslims in Spain, trans. Francis Griffin
Stokes (London: Chatto & Windus, 1913), p. 430.
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CHAPTER 9

‘He took a stone away’: Castration and Cruelty

in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga
Anthony Adams

We are not so wretched as we are vile.

Michel de Montaigne, ‘Démocritus et Héraclitus’

maður er manns gaman (‘man is the joy of man’)

Hávamal 47

T oward the end of Íslendinga saga, the long and bloody narrative that
comprises the largest portion of the Old Norse compilation of texts known
as Sturlunga saga, Gizurr Þorvaldsson, a man who has been deeply implicated
in the ongoing violence, arranges a meeting with Hrafn Oddsson for the
purpose of mutilating him. Gizurr (like most of the men and women in the
saga) has suffered great personal loss, living on after his wife Gróa is burned
alive in their home along with their three sons. The poem he composes after
their murder ends with the grim vow that ‘brjótr lifir sjá við sútir / sverðs,
nema hefndir verði’ [the sword-breaker will live with grief until vengeance
has occurred] (1:496).1 Ostensibly to arrange a truce, Gizurr goes to meet his
enemy with forty of his companions, not the agreed-upon eleven: in other
words, a raiding party rather than a band of peaceful apostles. His purpose
becomes clear to all present, and Gizurr’s voice and visage become angrier the
longer they speak; yet somehow, the apparently inevitable conflict is unex-
pectedly averted:
[…] ok var Gizurr þess at harðari í talinu, er þeir höfðu lengr talat. Þá gékk
at Hrafni Teitr Álason ok mælti við hann eintal, bað hann öllu því játa, er
Gizurr beiddi hann, – kvað honum eigi annat duga mundu, þar sem þá var
komit. Ok svá gerði Hrafn. Sór Hrafn þá Gizuri eiða, at hann skyldi aldri

1
Sturlunga saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson, Magnús Finnbogason, and Kristján Eldjárn, 2 vols.
(Reykjavík: Sturlunguútgáfan, 1946). Translation mine. Volume and page numbers are
given in parentheses in the text.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 189

honum í móti vera ok aldri veita brennu-mönnum í mót honum. Skilðu

þeir við þat. … Gizurr sagði svá sjálfr síðan, at hann kvaðst eigi vita, hvat
Hrafni hafði hlíft á þeim fundi, því at hann kvaðst einráðit hafa áðr fyrir
sér at meiða hann at nökkuru, blinda eða gelda. (1:502)

[…] and the longer they talked the more severe Gizurr became. Then Teit
Álason went to Hrafn and spoke with him privately; he asked him to agree
to everything Gizurr demanded of him; he said nothing else would help
him, considering the way things had gone so far. Hrafn agrees to this; he
swore oaths to Gizurr that he would never attack him or even help the
burners against him. With that they parted. […] Gizurr himself said later
that he did not know what had protected Hrafn at that meeting, for he had
earlier been determined to injure him in some way, either to blind him or
to castrate him.2

Hrafn avoids losing either his eyes or his genitals through a series of submissive
and supplicant verbal gestures. Instead of negotiating as if he and Gizurr were
equals (men both capable of and prone to violence), Hrafn voluntarily
surrenders his right then and in the future to partake in any violence against
Gizurr, nor will he assist any who might attempt to do him harm.3 He does not
argue; he does not fight. In the larger sense, Hrafn surrenders his power of
volition, his ability to do his will and impose it upon Gizurr. In a culture such
as the medieval north, where masculinity was in large part defined by the
power and potential of volition, Hrafn surrenders his manhood, offering up a
symbolic castration and a virtual blinding for the real ones intended by Gizurr.
Overt commentary on Hrafn’s words and actions would be contrary to the
laconic style typical of saga narratives, but Gizurr’s reaction to them makes
clear that they are unusual, and even baffling: he implies that there was some
unseen force protecting Hrafn from him. Hrafn’s own passivity, his voluntary
forswearing of violence and the masculine code that such violence represents,
offer a glimpse of the masculine aggression that enables a terrible economy of
cruelty; a masculinity marked by a code of self-identification that is impulsive,
sexually polarizing, and relentless.

2
Sturlunga Saga, trans. Julia H. McGrew, 2 vols. (New York: Twayne, 1970), 1:412. I have
adapted McGrew’s translation slightly from the original here and elsewhere in this
chapter, unless otherwise indicated.
3
This is not the only occasion on which Hrafn Oddsson avoids conflict through politics
or rhetoric. When a slightly younger man, Hrafn talks his way out of accompanying Þórðr
kakali Sighvatsson on a raiding expedition, insincerely claiming that he is too young and
‘eigi vita, hvárt hann myndi harðnaðr vera nökkut, þar er hann var lítt kominn af barns-
aldri’ [‘I don’t know that I’d be strong enough, since I’ve only just stopped being a child’].
Hrafn later becomes the most powerful Icelander following Gizurr’s death in 1268. See
Nic Percivall, ‘Teenage Angst: The Structures and Boundaries of Adolescence in Twelfth-
and Thirteenth-Century Iceland’, in Youth and Age in the Medieval North, ed. Shannon
Lewis-Simpson (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 127–49.
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190 ANTHONY ADAMS

Men such as Hrafn are rare in the twelfth/thirteenth-century Sturlunga saga;

violent confrontations such as the one Gizurr first envisages are far more
common. Violence is a form of communication between men, just as surely as
Hrafn’s persuading words are. Unlike speech acts, however, acts of violence aim
at disrupting connections between man and man, man and land, or man and
wife, and they are presented suddenly and with shocking bluntness. Lois Bragg
observes that in this text ‘we confront disfigurement, disability, and dis-
integrity of body and soul run wild’.4 The genital mutilation and blinding (by
his own cousin) of Órækja Snorrason, the illegitimate son of one of the most
powerful Icelanders of his era, is indeed one of the most memorable sequences
in Sturlunga saga, but it is not unrepresentative. Perhaps it appears to be only
one particularly graphic scene of butchery in a saga filled with them, suggesting
that there is little to be gained by prolonged analysis of the scene. The muti-
lation has received frequent glancing treatment, but has not yet been the subject
of detailed study.5 The injuries inflicted upon Órækja fall into a different
category than those suffered in the course of feud or combat. Mutilations such
as castration and blinding were a particularly vile and cruel form of injury, a
species of lingering death and continual torment enacted upon the bodies not
of fellow men and warriors, but of deviants. Through their survival and their
scars, those wounded in war might construct an intellectual prosthesis of pride
from the ruins of their body, one that might yet betoken masculinity. The muti-
lations suffered by Órækja are intended rather to mark him as one removed
from the realm of masculine action, one declared unfit for rugged male society
who instead properly belongs to a very different sphere that includes the
sexually deviant, the bestialists, the homosexuals, the priests, the sickly, the
beggarly, the unfit, and the old – all types characterized as unmanly and effem-
inate, and thus as ‘non-men’. The intention to castrate is nothing less than an

4
Lois Bragg, ‘Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration in Sturlunga saga’, álvissmal
4 (1995 [for 1994]): 15–32 at p. 19. See also Robert J. Glendinning, ‘Saints, Sinners, and
the Age of the Sturlungs: Two Dreams from Íslendinga saga’, Scandinavian Studies 38.2
(May 1966): 83–97.
5
In addition to Bragg, ‘Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration’, see Marlene
Ciklamini, ‘Biographical Reflections in Islendinga saga’, Scandinavian Studies 55.3
(summer 1983): 205–21; David Clark, ‘Manslaughter and Misogyny: Women and
Revenge in Sturlunga saga’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society 33 (2009): 25–43; Einar Ól.
Sveinsson, The Age of the Sturlungs: Icelandic Civilization in the Thirteenth Century, trans.
Jóhann S. Hannesson (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1953); John McKinnell,
‘Motivation in Lokasenna’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society 22 (1986–89): 234–62; Guðrún
Nordal, Ethics and Action in Thirteenth-Century Iceland (Odense: Odense University
Press, 1998), pp. 24, 101, and 180–1; Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, The Unmanly Man:
Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society, trans. Joan Turville-Petre
(Odense: Odense University Press, 1983), pp. 83–4; and Úlfar Bragason, ‘The Art of
Dying: Three Death Scenes in Íslendinga saga’, Scandinavian Studies 63.4 (autumn 1991):
453–63.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 191

ultimate attempt to effeminize an enemy, and this scene comes close to the
heart of a discourse of masculine desire and cruelty that runs through much
of Sturlunga saga.
The scene with Órækja Snorrason provides insight into an aggressive and
violent code of masculinity at its most wantonly cruel. In this world the cruel
becomes commonplace and the ‘currency’ of masculinity becomes debased.
Cruelty does not equate to violence in a simple fashion, for certain acts of
violence were considered an acceptable and even necessary or desirable
response to certain situations. Njáls saga presents a stark contrast between
manly and unmanly violence in the sequence of events that lead to the deaths
of Gunnar and Njál respectively: whereas Gunnarr is slain by men in face-to-
face combat, Njál and his family are burned in their home, an act that brings
much criticism upon the burners. Such examples of unmanly violence (such
as burning, mutilation, and castration) offer a particularly revealing if graphic
‘x-ray’ of medieval Scandinavian masculinity, exposing a perhaps surprising
discomfort at this exhibition of violence, one traumatizing and horrifying in a
different way than other scenes of the saga. The subsequent course of the
narrative in the aftermath of the mutilation arguably shows the author and the
saga’s actors attempting in various ways to undo the trauma of the mutual
experience of cruelty and its witnessing, suggesting that the experience marks
a limit event, a point beyond which it is not possible to make sense of the
world.6 The concept of ‘limit event’ is central to trauma studies, and indicates
an ‘extreme or excessive event or experience that transgresses normative limits
or suspends constraints and boundaries’.7 While the term was originally used
in reference to significant and large-scale ‘historical’ events (such as genocide),
it can also describe an event that takes an individual to his or her limit point
beyond which is oblivion. In Sturlunga saga, while mutilation and violence are
not themselves frequently moments for such horror, the scene with Órækja
does, arguably, present such a scenario to the eyewitnesses. Although the saga
authors present the texts as history, the narratives must also be read with an
eye on the value and function of their fictionality. Sturlunga saga, long mined
for historical facts about the period it describes, has been recently read more
closely by literary scholars who approach the text with an understanding that
the narrative has been shaped by literary tropes as well. A careful, albeit narrow,
examination of its grimmest scene provides additional insight about the
narrative techniques of medieval Icelandic authors, as well as presenting further
evidence of the fascination with, and abhorrence of, the most fundamental
unmanning of man – castration.

6
On the concept of ‘limit event’ and limits in connection with traumatization, see generally
the work of Dominick LaCapra, most recently History and Its Limits: Human, Animal,
Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009).
7
Ibid., p. 7.
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192 ANTHONY ADAMS

Sturlunga saga is the name that has been given to a collection of miscella-
neous prose narratives written by various authors and compiled around the
year 1300. The title is not actually found in either manuscript source, and
dates only from the seventeenth century; neverthless, it remains a fairly
accurate description of the subject matter of the compilation’s individual texts.8
As a whole, the texts offer an invaluable overview of the political and social
events in Iceland between the years 1117 and 1264, whose later decades are
named the Sturlung Age, a troubled era named after the most powerful family
of its time, and characterized by increasing violence and rampant feuds which
continued up until the eventual breakdown of the Icelandic Free State.9
Norway brought Iceland under its dominion in 1262, and rule transferred to
Denmark in 1380 when the male line of Norway’s royal family faltered. The
early stages of the Icelandic settlement break with political tradition, but early
sagas such as Egils saga also demonstrate that the social structures of
friendship, honor, poetry, and gift-exchange remained much a part of
Icelandic culture. That a ‘rupture’ and a ‘new beginning’ occurred when the
original Norwegian immigrants settled Iceland after refusing to submit to the
king is significant, and the stage is set for the eventual society based around
law and feuds like that in Sturlunga saga. According to Preben Meulengracht
Sørensen,
The history of the Icelanders during their first four hundred years passed
through changes which, in the retrospective literary gaze of the succeeding
period, were understood as rupture, loss, and new beginning. The first
rupture was the departure. The voyage out and the land-taking were the
first generations’ most significant experiences. The life they knew up to
that point was cut off and a new existence had to be built up, not only in a
material sense, but in a cultural and religious sense. The land-taking laid
the foundation for the Icelanders as a nation and already in the
construction and organization of the new society that had developed a
consciousness of themselves as a distinct people.10

Sturlunga saga is considered one of the most valuable of the so-called

samtiðarsögur, the ‘same-time’ or ‘contemporary’ sagas of medieval Scandinavia,

8
Sturlunga saga, 2:xiii–xvi. Two manuscript copies of Sturlunga saga have survived:
Króksfjarðarbók, AM 122a fol (written c. 1360–70); and Reykjarfjarðarbók, AM 122b fol
(of uncertain date, but thought to have been written somewhat later than
Króksfjarðarbók).
9
Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000), pp. 83–6.
10
Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, ‘Social Institutions and Belief Systems of Medieval
Iceland (c. 870–1400) and the Relations to Literary Production’, in Old Icelandic Literature
and Society, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000),
pp. 8–29 at p. 27.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 193

because of the detailed account it offers of the political intrigues and violent
family struggles of the Sturlung Age often related by some of the very men
involved, and it remains the most significant biographical work of the era.11
The saga is filled with relentlessly graphic accounts of the feuds and assaults
that took place at that time. There is scarcely a page that does not contain
some brief tale of armed conflict, grievous wounding, mutilation, and death.
In contrast to the Íslendinga sögur (‘Sagas of the Icelanders’, a specific genre
of saga-literature that should not be confused with the single text Íslendinga
saga), the general impression in many samtiðarsögur is that of a country
riddled with familial feuds and acts of vengeance, a landscape whose only
lasting law is that of the knife, axe, or spear, and one in which even the few
peaceable folk are often goaded into acts of murder and maiming by their
countrymen, wives, families, or even priests. The violence done to individuals
offers a mirror image of the chaos emblematic of the Icelandic community.
‘Whereas in Egils saga,’ according to Bragg,
readers are filled with awe at the uncanny darkness of this famous skáld,
we are simply repulsed by the gratuitous grossness and incommensurate
violence of some of his twelfth- and thirteenth-century descendants.
Whereas the Íslendinga sögur provide a varied array of memorable
moments – moments like Gunnarr’s fall from his horse as he is leaving his
homestead or his first meeting with Hallgerðr at the Alfling, as well as those
like Hallgerðr’s refusal to give him a strand of her hair – we remember
nothing of Sturlunga saga so clearly as the blinding and castration of
Órækja Snorrason, or the plea of Kristrún, the beggarwoman, during the
attack on Sauðafell that she be allowed to keep the salve because “hon sagði
… konu þá, er brjóstin bæði váru af höggvin, yfrit þungt at tekna” [she said
… that woman, both of whose breasts had been cut off, had borne a very
great deal].12

Bragg alludes to a key difference between the older and the newer sagas:
despite the seeming ubiquity in Norse literature of warfare, marauding,
dueling, and even home-burnings (see Njáls saga, for examples of all these),
there is the sense that much of this takes place (in the admittedly artificial
world of the Íslendinga sögur) within an environment involving heroic action,
and a warrior’s code. While the death and bloodshed is sometimes heart-
breaking, sometimes terrible and senseless, in many of these sagas those guilty
of misdeeds are eventually punished to some degree, or they are lionized for
other reasons. Legal proceedings and a sense of justice pervades the earlier
sagas. Not so with Sturlunga saga, in which the ‘struggle for power is the

11
Ciklamini, ‘Biographical Reflections in Islendinga saga’, p. 205. See also Stephen Tranter,
Sturlunga saga: The Rôle of the Creative Compiler (Berne: Peter Lang, 2005).
12
Bragg, ‘Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration’, p. 19.
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194 ANTHONY ADAMS

dominant mode of life’.13 This difference has caused more than one critic to
blanch, including Icelandic historians who have felt the need to comment
(apologetically, perhaps) on the age in which men ‘were more grim, treach-
erous, deceitful, savage, and revengeful. Fair play was not known and men
became half-trolls.’14
Íslendinga saga, which amounts to approximately 40 percent of the
Sturlunga saga, is one text in Sturlunga saga whose authorship can be assigned
to a known personage – Sturla Þórðarson (1214–84), nephew of the famous
Icelandic historian and lawman Snorri Sturluson, one of the most powerful
men of his time. Sturla painstakingly describes the feuds between Snorri’s own
family (including his son Órækja) and Snorri’s brothers and their sons
(including Snorri’s other nephew, Sighvatr Sturlasson). Sighvatr Sturlasson
carries out the attack upon Snorri’s farm in Reykjaholt and is primarily respon-
sible for castrating Órækja. Sturla Þórðarson felt (like Órækja) the social
disadvantage of illegitimacy; and he remains somewhat outside the events of
the story, gaining confidences of various factions during the long years of feud,
and apparently escaping vengeance himself. It is believed that Sturla wrote
Íslendinga saga within the last years of his life, prior to the capitulation to
Norway in 1262, so by the time he commits the narrative to manuscript, he has
had considerable time to reflect upon the events described, many of which he
saw first-hand.15
In many ways the saga centers around questions of legitimacy. Órækja
Snorrason is the illegitimate son of Snorri Sturluson. Snorri’s wife is Herdís,
but as the saga says, Snorri was ‘fjöllyndr, ok átti börn við fleirum konum en
Herdísi’ [loose, and had children with women other than Herdís] (1:212).
Snorri is known to modern audiences primarily as a man of letters, outlining
much of what we know (or think we know) of pre-Christian Scandinavian
mythology in the prose Edda, and sketching the raw, early connections
between the old homeland of Norway and the nascent state of Iceland in his
Heimskringla, one of the most important accounts of the Scandinavian kings.16
He might also have been responsible for one of the most electrifying Icelandic
sagas, Egils saga, whose main character, the Viking, poet, farmer, and trouble-

13
Ciklamini, ‘Biographical Reflections in Islendinga saga’, p. 215. Both genders could have
the right to representation in a ‘Sturlung’ theater of cruelty. Indeed, the above scene might
well have been seen to function as the female ‘equivalent’ of male castration.
14
Boga Th. Melsteð, ‘Útanstefnur og erindreka útlendra þjóðhöfðingja á Sturlungaöldinni’,
Tímarit [21] (1900): 57–131 at 126–7; cited in Sturlunga Saga, trans. McGrew, 1:24
15
Sturlunga saga, 2:xxxiv.
16
See Diana Whaley, Heimskringla: An Introduction (London: Viking Society for Northern
Research, 1991); Jónas Kristjánsson, ‘Var Snorri Sturluson upphafsmaður íslendin-
gasagna?’ Andvari 115 (1990): 85–105; and Vésteinn Ólason, ‘Er Snorri höfundur Egils
sögu?’ Skírnir 142 (1968): 48–67.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 195

maker Egill Skalla-Grímsson, makes a ghostly cameo in Sturlunga saga

(1:241–2). Snorri’s role in Sturlunga saga is considerable, for his family (the
Mýramenn), lie at the center of so many of the conflicts and bloodshed in the
saga. Sturlunga saga reveals a perhaps-unknown side of the antiquarian and
historian: an irascible and scheming man of action, who maintains a central
position in the violence of the age while also retaining a reflective and
respectful persona.17
Órækja fully arrives in the saga in chapter 86, after he has built a residence
for himself in Deildar-tungu with his kinsman Philipp. His father negotiates
an agreement at the Icelandic assembly that summer with another leading
Icelander, Kolbeinn ungi, one of the Skagfirðings. The agreement includes the
marriage of Kolbeinn’s sister Arnbjörg to Órækja, along with a good deal of
land and a goðorð – chieftancy – at Hafliði (Sturlunga saga, 1:359). This
arrangement displeases other men close to Snorri, who fear that he will now
prove to be unreasonable and overbearing. But it is his son who turns out to
be a troublemaker instead. Órækja begins a campaign of plundering in
Breiðafjörð, making numerous enemies in the process, an outcome that seems
to occur to Órækja rather late. He begins to fear for his life after receiving a
letter (ostensibly from Odd and Þórdís), detailing a plot against his life. This
in turn leads to a pre-emptive attack upon Odd and his men, ending in the
rather shameful slaying of Odd while he is already dying (1:367). Meanwhile,
Sturla Sighvatsson is in Norway, performing public penance for himself and
his father for their part in the cruel treatment of bishop Guðmundr (1:318).18
For his part Órækja and his men continue to behave cruelly, as they ‘fóru
óspaklega um sveitir; tóku hesta ok mat þar er þeir þóttusk þurfa’ [rambled
unpeaceably through the countryside, taking horses and food as they thought
necessary]; they ‘bjuggu þar óspaklega heyjum ok öðru’ [lived there unpea-
ceably on hay and other stores]; and they ‘hjöggu þar oxa níu vetra gamlan er
Þórði átti’ [slaughtered a nine-year-old ox that Þórði had] (1:373). They ransack
large swaths of land in Höfði, and in Bjarnahöfn they capture all the men they
can find, slaughtering the lambs for food (1:380–1). Matters worsen before
attempts at reconciliation are finally made. Órækja, Sturla Sighvatsson and their
men meet at Dýrafjörð, agreeing (in principle) that a temporary peace should
be held until Sturla’s father Sighvat can come to a decision about compensation
that midsummer, but this peace does not last. The two men (with their
retainers), and Sturla Þórðarsson, meet at Reykjaholt.

17
One example would appear to be Snorri’s reluctance at one point to acquiesce to an attack
during the Christmas season, a decision that seems to have led instead to a defeat for his
son Órækja, and the composition of a shameful verse (Sturlunga saga, 1:390).
18
For a synopsis of the story of Guðmundr, see Sturlunga saga, 2:cxxii–cxxv and see
also Bragg’s reading of his (accidental) maiming, ‘Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-
integration’, pp. 23–5.
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196 ANTHONY ADAMS

Þeir Órækja mötuðust í litlustofu um kveldit. En um morgininn, er þeir

gengu frá messu, fóru þeir í stofu. Þá var Órækja kallaðr í litlustofu ok
Sturla Þórðarson. Litlu síðar kom Sturla Sighvatsson í stofudyrr, þær er eru
frá litluhúsum, ok kallaði Sturlu Þórðarson til sín, ok gengu þeir í loft þat,
er þar var. Tók þá Sturla Sighvatsson til orða: ‘Þér var kunnigt, nafni, um
sætt vára í Dýrafirði. En nú kom faðir minn ekki til. En svá var mælt, at
Órækja skyldi hafa Stafaholt ok búa þar, en ek hér. Ok þykkir þat eigi
heilligt, at hann siti svá nær við lítit efni, en ek svima í fé Snorra. Er þar nú
knefat um annat ráð, at ek ætla, at hann skuli fara norðr til Skagafjörð ok
þar útan, ok mun nú skilja yðvart föruneyti.’ Tók hann þá til sverðsins
Kettlings, er lá hjá þeim, er Sturla Þórðarson hafði í hendi haft. Gengu þeir
þá til stofu, ok í durum kómu í móti þeim menn Órækju ok váru þá allir
flettir vápnum ok klæðum. Var þeim þá fylgt í loftit ok þar settir menn til
gæzlu. (1:395)

Órækja and his men ate in the little room in the evening, but in the
morning, when they came from Mass, they went into the sitting-room.
Órækja was then summoned into the little room, as was Sturla Þórðarson.
A little later Sturla Sighvatsson appeared at the entrance to the sitting-room
from the Little House, and called Sturla Þórðarson out to him. They went
into a loft there and Sturla Sighvatsson began to speak: ‘The agreement
made at Dýrafirði was well-known to you, my namesake. But now my
father has not come. It was agreed that Órækja was to have Stafaholt and
live there, and I here. But it doesn’t seem advisable for him to live so near
with such slight means while I swim in Snorri’s wealth. I have settled on
another idea therefore: I think he should go north to Skagafjörð, and from
there to Norway, and that your association should now come to an end.’
He then reached for the sword Kettlingr which lay near him, and which
Sturla Þórðarson had had in his hand. They went to the sittingroom, but
Órækja’s men came to meet them in the doorway. They were all stripped
of their weapons and clothes and led to the loft where man were placed to
guard them. (1:298–9)

Sturla’s words are filled with irony and nuance; he underscores his continued
feelings of ill-will (having been slighted in the past by Snorri) as well as his
resentment over Órækja’s ongoing harrassment and theft. He reminds Sturla
of the name-bond they share with the expression nafni, a term used sparingly
in the saga indicating an intimate friendship (vinátta). Órækja is physically
isolated by his cousins, left alone in the living room while they gather to speak
privately in the loft of the Little House, away from the main building. The
handling of the sword called Kettlingr (kitten) carries with it a gesture of
authority, and the sword itself proves later to be a desirable weapon.19
Órækja’s men are symbolically castrated through the stripping off of clothes

19
In ch. 144, Órækja asks for Kettlingr as compensation (Sturlunga saga, 1:445).
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 197

and weapons, and the narrative continues with Órækja’s forced isolation from
the others and from fellowship.
Sturla reið nú á brott með Órækju upp til jökla ok Svertingr með hónum
einn hans manna. Þeir riðu upp á Arnarvatnsheiði, þar til er þeir koma á
Hellisfitjar. Þá fara þeir í hellinn Surt ok upp á vígit. Lögðu þeir þá hendr
á Órækju, ok kvaddi Sturla til Þorstein langabein at meiða hann. Þeir
skoruðu af spjót-skafti ok gerðu af hæl. Bað Sturla hann þar með ljósta út
augun. En Þorsteinn lézk eigi við þat kunna. Var þá tekinn knífr, ok vafiðr,
ok ætlat af meir en þverfingr. Órækja kallaði á Þorlák biskup sér til hjálpar.
Hann söng ok í meiðslunum bænina Sancta Maria, mater Domini nostri,
Jesu Christi. Þorsteinn stakk í augun knífinum upp at vafinu. En er því var
lokit, bað Sturla hann minnast Arnbjargar ok gelda hann. Tók hann þá brott
annat eistat. Eftir þat skipaði Sturla menn til at geyma hans. En Svertingr
var þar hjá Órækju.
En þeir Sturla ríða þá í brott ok ofan í Reykjaholt. Lét Sturla þá fara á
brott menn Órækju, ok heldu þeir flestum föngum sínum. En hestar
Órækju ok vápn váru tekin. (1:395)

Sturla rode off with Órækja up toward the glacier; alone of his men
Svertingr went with him. They rode up along Arnarvatnsheið until they
reached Hellisfitjar, where they went into Surt’s cave and up to the
stronghold. There they seized Órækja, and Sturla ordered Þorstein
longbone to maim him. They cut off a piece of a spearshaft and shaped it
into a peg, and Sturla bade them strike out his eyes with this. But Þorstein
said that he could not make out how to use the instrument. Then they took
a knife and wrapped it about as thick as a finger’s breadth. Órækja called
on bishop Þorlákr to help him; during the maimings20 he also chanted the
prayer Sancta Maria mater Domini nostri Jesu Christi. Þorstein stabbed the
point of the knife, as far as the wrappings into his eyes. When this was done
Sturla bade him think of Arnbjörg, and castrated him. He took then a stone
away. After that Sturla arranged for men to guard him. Sverting was still
there near Órækja.
Sturla and his companions then rode away, down to Reykjaholt, where
Sturla had Órækja’s men sent away; most of them kept their belongings,
but Órækja’s horse and weapons were seized. (1:299)

The initial attempt at the maiming is handed to Þorstein langabein (longbone),

who is asked to use a makeshift weapon, a broken spearshaft which has pres-

20
McGrew here translates meiðslunum as ‘tortures’, but lexical evidence indicates that the
meaning of at meiða is to ‘injure in a lasting way’, to ‘maim’ (or ‘ruin’, if land or other
property is the object). See Johan Fritzner s.v. (‘beskadige, mishandle noget’) and the
examples he gives from the law codes and the Biskupa sögur, many of which are contem-
poraneous with Sturlunga saga: Ordbog over det gamle Norske Sprog (Oslo: Oslo University
Press, 1973). In a volume involving so much careful discussion of torture and its legal
interpretation, it is probably best to offer a more restrictive translation here.
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198 ANTHONY ADAMS

umably been shaven into a peg or a spike (ON hæll can mean both ‘peg’ and
‘pin’, and refers to the part of a scythe handle that protrudes from the shaft as
a grip or handle). Þorstein refuses to use this crude device, claiming he does
not know how to wield it. He settles on a more traditional and perhaps more
manly weapon – a knife – but this too is adapted for the unfamiliar procedure
to come. Its handle is wrapped in what is probably cloth, a striking inversion
of a traditional motif: Weapon handles in Norse sagas are sometimes described
as vafiðr (wrapped) in metal, such as iron or gold, a gilding treatment that
rendered them more precious.21 The presence of Bishop Þorlákr is notable in
this context because this bishop, for whom Þorláks saga was written, was
considered a saint by the Icelanders and was known for his efforts to strengthen
matrimony in Iceland and eliminate adultery.22 The prayer to the Virgin Órækja
desperately utters is an intercessory prayer, a humble request for protection for
the body and spirit, for health and for peace. Once the men have blinded
Órækja, they set about castrating him. Sturla mocks Órækja during the process,
asking him to think about his wife Arnbjörg while his manhood is carved away,
this time (it appears) choosing to do the job himself: ‘Tók hann þá brott annat
eistat’ [He took away [tók … brott] one stone of the two [annat eistat]]. Sturla
Þórðarsson takes some pains to clarify that the castration is not complete, that
the incident might still leave Órækja some potency – a point that Sturla
Þórðarsson returns to shortly. With the worst now accomplished, Órækja is left
in the cave while his assailants ride away.
The decision to castrate Órækja rather than kill him suggests that this parti-
cular kind of mutilation takes part of its power from the fact that the victim
must live in that condition. Meulengracht Sørensen has argued that the rationale
behind humiliations was to rob enemies of their ability to fight and also to father
children who might act as avengers.23 Castration, he says, is the most serious of
these mutilations, the ultimate form of emasculation: yet ‘saga writers represent
neither this particular injury nor the other disfigurements reserved for captives.
Even though they are interested in bodily injuries, they do not explore mutil-
ations that seem to serve no other purpose than to symbolize a man’s power-
lessness.’24 It is a punishment that weakens a man physically and socially. This

21
See the description of Bolli Þorkelsson in Haralds saga Sigurðarsonar, in Heimskringla,
ed. Bjarni Aðalbjarnarson, 3 vols (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1941–51), 3:225.
22
See Kirsten Wolf, ‘Pride and Politics in Iceland: Þorlákr Þórhallsson’, in Sanctity in the
North: Saints, Lives, and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Thomas A. Dubois (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2008), pp. 241–70 at pp. 244–5.
23
Meulengracht Sørensen, The Unmanly Man, p. 81.
24
For an interesting discussion of castration motifs in the Old Icelandic Tristram ok Ísodd,
see Karen Anouschka Lurkhur, ‘Redefining Gender through the Arena of the Male Body:
The Reception of Thomas’s Tristan in the Old French Le Chevalier de la Charette and the
Old Icelandic Saga af Tristram ok Ísodd’ (PhD dissertation, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, 2008).
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 199

castration (or partial castration) is a type of mutilation with clearly sexual

undertones, combining elements of corporal mutilation and a humiliating
sexual assault that could even be read as a type of rape.
Law codes such as the Icelandic Grágás offer a legal framework for consi-
dering the categorization of blinding and castration to other types of injury.
The written evidence in the Scandinavian law codes regarding corporal punis-
hment is somewhat sparse, but this method of criminal punishment appears
consistently as one intended for slaves and other unfree members of the
society’s lowest classes; each incident of punishment delivered lasting markers
of humiliation and abjection along with prolonged physical suffering. These
restrictions on corporal punishment were eventually loosened and expanded,
applying to commoners guilty of petty theft as well. Grágás contains a
commentary on eleventh-century regulations intended to govern the activities
of clerics and laypeople regarding Christian observances; these include
‘procedural rules for mounting lawsuits and bringing them before assembly
courts, the execution of outlawry penalties, relations between chieftains and
followers, and other constitutional matters […] and with man-slaying and many
categories of personal injury’.25 Grágás considers castration a ‘major wound’
along with ‘cutting out a man’s tongue, poking out a man’s eyes, knocking out a
man’s teeth, cutting off a man’s nose or ears, [… and] striking a shame-stroke
across someone’s buttocks’, the last of which was considered a sort of metap-
horical castration, but all of which warranted retribution and payment.26
Scandinavian law codes did legislate the gelding of men under certain circum-
stances, such as for men accused of bestiality. Additionally beggars were also
considered úmennzka (unmanly) and could legally be castrated; Grágás clearly
stipulates that there would not be a penalty attached to anyone castrating
beggars.27 Grágás also mentions that slaves could be mutilated (specifically by
the severing of hands and feet) for the murder of their owners or their owners’
kin. An apparently singular example of this exists in Draumr Þorsteins Síðu-
Hallssonar in which Þorsteinn castrates Gilli, an Irish slave.28 Gilli obtains his

25
Laws of Early Iceland: Grágás, ed. and trans. Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard
Perkins, 2 vols. (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1980), 1:vii.
26
Ibid., 1:141.
27
Ibid., 2:219: ‘rétt er at gelda göngumenn’.
28
Draumr Þorsteins Síðu-Hallssonar, in Austfirðinga saga, ed. Jón Jóhannesson (Reykjavík:
Hið íslenzka fornrítafélag, 1950), pp. 321–6. According to John Lindow, this is the only
example of a castrated slave found in medieval Icelandic sources: ‘Meeting the Other:
The Cases of Draumr Þorsteins Síðu-Hallssonar and Kumlbúa þáttr’, in Myths, Legends
and Heroes: Essays on Old Norse and Old English Literature, ed. Daniel Anlezark (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2011), pp. 77–90 at p. 78. However, in this volume, Mary A.
Valante explores the Viking practice of castrating slaves who were sold specifically to the
Byzantine Empire. See ‘Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of
Eunuchs’, pp. 174–86.
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200 ANTHONY ADAMS

revenge at Þorsteinn’s home at Svínafell by cutting his throat while he sleeps.29

After hiding for a while on the property, Gilli is eventually captured and cruelly
punished by Þorsteinn’s wife, Yngvildr, who sets a metal washbasin of burning
coals upon his bare stomach – a method of torture most famous for being used
by Óláfr Tryggvason in an attempt to convert the recalcitrant pagan Eyvindr.
In Denmark, provincial laws allowed petty theft to be punished with flogging
or mutilation, a category that could include the loss of hands, ears, or nose.30
The earliest Norwegian laws expand the code to include bestiality as an
offense punishable specifically by castration,31 not unlike the Old Frisian laws
examined by Rolf Bremmer in this volume.32 Later law codes introduce addi-
tional gradations of punishment for petty theft, debt, and sex crimes – branding
and mutilation are prescribed for repeat offenders. Swedish provincial laws
warrant corporal punishment for a wide range of offenses, and such punis-
hment could include the loss of hands, ears, and nose, blinding, or cutting out
the tongue.33 Anne Irene Riisøy notes that efforts to refine the laws were aimed
at the odadafolc, the transgressors or ‘outrageous people’ who have defied
convention. In one case, she points out that a fourteenth-century decree (of
King Hákon Magnusson) stipulates that such odadafolc who attempt to return
to their communities following banning should be marked by the loss of an
ear, and that ‘tha skulle the miste ørit oc drage sten aff by’ [they should be made
to drag stones through the town].34 All such punishment occurs within a system
of shame in which external signs mark out the transgressor from society.
Such pronouncements in the law codes indicate that certain prescribed
mutilations were aimed at the least powerful members of society, or at trans-
muting a more powerful member into an outcast. Physical deformities by them-
selves did not render someone an outcast. Bragg argues that physical
disfigurements, whether purposefully inflicted by another in retaliation for a
wrong, incurred by accident in combat or in daily activity, or congenital, were
not necessarily considered revolting. Physical disfigurement (such as a harelip),

29
See discussion of these scenes in William Sayers, ‘Clontarf, and the Irish Destinies of
Sigurðr digri, Earl of Orkney, and Þorsteinn Síðu-Hallsson’, Scandinavian Studies 63.2
(spring, 1991): 164–86 at pp. 178–9.
30
Kari Ellen Gade, ‘Crime and Punishment’, in Medieval Scandinavia, ed. Phillip Pulsiano
and Kirsten Wolf (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1993), pp. 115–17 at p. 116.
31
Norges Gamle Love indtil 1387, ed. Jakob Rudolph Keyser and Peter Andreas Munch
(Ghent: Gröndahl and Son, 1849), 1:18 and 2:496.
32
Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served:
Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’, in this volume, pp. 108–30.
33
Gade, ‘Crime and Punishment’, p. 116; and Lizzie Carlsson, ‘De medeltida skamstraffen:
Ett stycke svensk kulturhistoria’, Rig: Tidskrift utgiven af Föreningen för svensk kulturhis-
toria 17.3 (1934): 121–50.
34
Norges Gamle Love, 3:210. See also Riisøy, Sexuality, Law, and Legal Practice and the
Reformation in Norway (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 99–100; and Carlsson, ‘De medeltida
skamstraffen’, p. 130.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 201

deformities, or handicaps (such as a stammer) were not by themselves cause

for rejection; she asserts that a character like Þorgils skarði Böðvarsson in
Þorgils saga skarða would not have automatically been considered ugly because
of his harelip.35 He could still be described, without irony, as vænn (handsome)
by the saga-author, despite the skarð, or cleft, in his lip.36 On the contrary, he
manages to overcome this through a bold, even intractable, manner and
through aggression, which King Hákon interprets as manliness; Þorgils is
praised, rewarded, and eventually operated upon. The deformity is rendered
impotent and finally invisible by virtue of his deeds. Bragg argues, however,
that Norse culture did attempt to read physical deformities as what she calls
‘metonymy as incarnation’, a figure of narrative ‘in which the ethical dimension
is embodied in the physical’; in other words, they were frequently ‘read’ by
observers as symbolizing a flaw not primarily of the body, but rather of the
spirit or character.37 Thus, certain forced mutilations, such as blinding, would
suggest a significant failing or failure of the individual, and these could then
cause a loss of prestige, and even concomitant depression. On the one hand,
physical wounds, while often debilitating and sometimes fatal, were not in
themselves unmanly; to bear great pain and suffering with wit and stoic
acceptance was culturally admirable and bestowed masculine virtue. On the
other hand, many wounds described in Norse sagas were disabling physically
and socially, even if they were not mortal. Losses of legs, hands, feet, eyes, noses,
and ears were survivable injuries that do often suggest a concurrent loss of
manliness in reponse.38 The opening chapters of Grettis saga describe how a
brave warrior by the name of Önundr lost his leg below his knee in battle, and
was thereafter called Önundr tréfótr ‘treefoot’. He later attributes his loss of luck
to the loss of his leg, and is mocked for it by other men:
Tröll hafi tréföt allan,
tröllin steypi þeim öllum!

Let the trolls take you, Treefoot

Let the trolls take them all!

35
Bragg, ‘Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration’, pp. 15–18
36
Ian McDougall, however, reads the remark as ironic; see his ‘The Third Instrument of
Medicine: Some Accounts of Surgery in Medieval Iceland’, in Health, Disease, and
Healing in Medieval Culture, ed. Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall, and David Klausner
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 57–76. Cited in Bragg, ‘Disfigurement, Disability,
and Dis-integration’, p. 16, n. 4.
37
Bragg, ‘Disfigurement, Disability, and Dis-integration’, p. 18
38
According to William Ian Miller, the family sagas show only about three instances of torture,
but other forms of violence occur much more frequently such as ‘handhewing, and
leghewing, and occasional geldings’: Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society
in Saga Iceland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), p. 196; see also Theodore M.
Andersson and William Ian Miller, Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland: Ljósvetninga
saga and Valla-Ljóts saga (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 44–5.
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202 ANTHONY ADAMS

They add that it is a sight seldom seen ‘at þeir menn fari til orrustu, er ekki
mega sér’ [that men go to battle who cannot take care of themselves].39
Castration plays a particularly important role in this discourse. Real or
imagined, whether a visible mutilation made upon another man’s body or a
tangible threat, or as an insult of the highest order, castration was the ultimate
wound because of its power to effeminize. It was the final, irretrievable means
of sending a man from the realm of hvatr (keen, hard, manly) to blauðr (soft,
tender, feminine), rendering the once magi (potent) now permanently úmagi
(impotent), and removing him as a threat from the political and sexual world
of real men. It is this effeminization that Sturla Sighvatsson attempts by mutil-
ating Órækja Snorrason in Surtshellir, which Sturla Þórðarson is forced to watch.
Castration is mentioned three times in Sturlunga saga – the punishment of
Órækja Snorrason and that avoided by Hrafn Oddsson. The third reference to
castration is brief, but it demonstrates succinctly the distinction that castration
symbolized, the difference between the man of action and a man of passivity:
Eptir þat hljóp Sturla upp, ok var þá sótt at Ároni, ok stóðu spjót svá þykkt
at hónum, at henn fekk trautt fallit, ok varð víða sárr ok þó miðr en þeir
ætluðu.
Runnu þá biskupsömenn upp ór fjörunni, en þeir Sturla eftir þeim. En
Áron lá þar eftir.
Fóru þeir Sturla þá heim til kirkjugarðs. Váru þar teknir prestar tveir
ok geldir, Snorri ok Knútr.
Áron lá í brúkinu, þar til er Eyjólfr Kársson kom til hans ok mælti:
‘Hvárt lifir þú, mágr?’
Hann lézk lifa ok leika eigi. (1:291–2)

After that Sturla leapt up, and an assault was then made on Áron in which
so many spears struck at him that he scarcely could fall; he was wounded
in many places, yet less than they thought he was.
The bishop’s men then ran up from the beach, Sturla and his men after
them. But Áron lay behind.
Sturla and his men went on to the churchyard then, and there seized
two priests and gelded them; they were Snorri and Knútr.
Áron lay on a pile of seaweed until Eyjólfr Kársson came up to him and
said ‘Are you alive, kinsman?’
Áron said he was alive, and not playing. (1:187)

The warrior Áron is throughly pierced, yet his status as a man remains unques-
tioned. His bearing contrasts sharply with that of the two priests who are caught
and summarily castrated with none of the lengthy description (and not a drop

39
Grettis saga Ásmundarsonar, ed. Guðni Jonsson (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag,
1936), p. 6.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 203

of the horror) evident in Órækja’s mutilation. That they are mentioned by

name only underscores their reality, as well as their real impotence and
insignificance in a world of real men. The castration of priests (who are
celibate and thus sexually inactive and unthreatening) does not rate an expl-
anation; they might as well have been castrated already. That they cannot, or
do not, fight back distinguishes them even more from the figure of Áron, who
is penetrated but nevertheless remains a ‘kinsman’, retaining his voice and
perhaps a form of authority. His wounding is severe, yet he manages to outwit
his assailants: ‘ok varð víða sárr ok þó miðr en þeir ætluðu’ [he was wounded
in many places, yet less than they thought he was]. He is even allowed the
characteristically Norse flourish of a verbal quip before death, the ironic
gesture of someone unfazed by their own mortality who refuses to acknow-
ledge vulnerability even for a moment.40
In this scene, as in others, penetration is a metaphor for power; the essential
divide constituted by Norse masculinity does not come down to one of sex or
gender, but to the power symbolized in the act of thrusting or pounding, and
the loss of power symbolized by taking a passive sexual role.41 The importance
of this in Norse society is clarified by legal provisions against sodomy which
indiscriminately link homosexuality and bestiality and suggest that the passive
participant in sodomy is considered less human.42 Kari Ellen Gade suggests
that in some cases, the allusion could be made to taking an active role in pene-
tration without concomitant loss of manliness.43 What is at stake is obviously
not ‘homosexuality’ per se but effeminacy, specifically ‘unmanning’, or impo-
tence.44 The true concern for manliness in Norse society was volition – the
ability to take free, untrammelled action without impediment. Manly men were
one small segment of society that were thus empowered; the sick, the old, the
young, the disabled, and most women were not. In the analysis of medieval
Scandinavian masculinity offered by Carol Clover, the modern social binary
of male and female, masculine and feminine, does not apply to the cultural

40
See Joseph Harris, ‘Beowulf’s Last Words’, Speculum 67.1 (Jan. 1992): 1–32, for a full
overview of this phenomenon.
41
Paraphrasing Carol J. Clover, ‘Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early
Northern Europe’, Speculum 68 (1993): 363–87 at p. 380.
42
In the thirteenth-century Frostaþingslög, bestiality was explicitly mentioned and
forbidden, with castration prescribed for the man; the animal is to be killed. See Kari
Ellen Gade, ‘Homosexuality and Rape of Males in Old Norse Law and Literature’,
Scandinavian Studies 58.2 (1986): 124–41; and Jens Rydström, Sinners and Citizens:
Bestiality and Homosexuality in Sweden, 1880–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2003). Cf. Bremmer, ‘The Children He Never Had’, pp. 114–5.
43
Gade, ‘Homosexuality and Rape’, p. 132, n. 34.
44
Gade makes this point very clearly in her first footnote: the ‘term “homosexuality” in
the present discussion refers to sexual acts between two males and is not to be interpreted
in light of the institutionalized concept “homosexuality” of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries’ (‘Homosexuality and Rape’, p. 136, n. 1).
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204 ANTHONY ADAMS

community of the sagas.45 Clover draws upon the arguments made by Thomas
Laqueur, concerning the existence of two-sex and one-sex cultures.46 Modern
society, Laqueur explains, from at least the late eighteenth century onward, has
seen the world through a lens of two sexes (male and female) and imagined a
fairly well-defined (and impermeable) barrier between them. In a two-sex
society, the differences between the sexes are well established by virtue of birth
itself. These sexes have determined roles, physical and intellectual character-
istics, temperaments, environments of influence, and so on. In such a society,
it is much more difficult for one sex to become like the other. Just as it would
be difficult for a woman to become male, so too would a man be somewhat
protected from becoming female. In contrast, in a one-sex society such divi-
sions are confused because all people are simply more or less of one sex – in
Old Norse society specifically, more or less male. Masculinity is the single lens
through which people are judged, and all people have either more of it or less
of it. A girl child might be born with less of the power associated with maleness
than her brother, but nevertheless she would be able to ‘acquire’ it through her
life and reputation. Clover cites cases where the saga-author’s comments on
such ‘strong women’ describe them in tones neither laudatory nor condem-
natory, but neutral. If being female was actually a fairly amorphous and
malleable state, then it would not be surprising that ‘maleness’ is similarly
malleable, or even more so. Masculinity is a category or descriptor that indeed
seems to be ever at risk; despite the virtue of having been born a man, Norse
men were in constant danger of losing their masculinity. A man could also (far
more easily) ‘lose’ his maleness and his attributes of masculinity through his
actions or by virtue of his acquired reputation. A lasting image from Clover’s

45
Clover, ‘Regardless of Sex’. Despite the age of this study, it remains among the most striking
and theoretically sophisticated presentations of Norse masculinity; much excellent work
has been done in recent decades on women in Old Norse society, but studies of masculinity
have been either infrequent, or oblique. See Clark, ‘Manslaughter and Misogyny’, and also
David Ashurst, ‘The Transformation of Homosexual Liebestod in Sagas Translated from
Latin’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society 26 (2002): 67–96. See also Carol J. Clover, ‘Maiden
Warriors and Other Sons’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 85.1 (Jan. 1986): 35–49.
On the subject of women, the resources are far more diverse, from Rolf Heller, Die liter-
arische Darstellung der Frau in den Isländersagas (Halle/Saak: M. Niemeyer, 1958), to Jenny
Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995) and
Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1991), both of whom
offer some correctives to Clover’s assertions about women in the sagas. The collection of
essays edited by Sarah M. Anderson and Karen Swenson, Cold Counsel: Women in Old
Norse Literature and Mythology (New York and London: Routledge: 2002) offers a very
useful combination of historical and literary approaches. More recently, see Giselle Gos,
‘Women as a Source of heilræði, “sound counsel”: Social Mediation and Community
Integration in Fóstbrœðra saga’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 108.3 (July 2009):
281–300; and Lurkhur, ‘Redefining Gender through the Arena of the Male Body’.
46
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1992).
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 205

analysis is the distinction between the Icelandic terms hvatr (keen, sharp) and
blauðr (soft), used not uncommonly in discussions of men and women, and
fairly obvious metaphors for male and female genitalia. The terms appear in
numerous, non-sexual contexts as well, connected with weakness, age, senility,
poverty, and loss.
The slippery field of Norse masculinity featured an ongoing war amongst
men for supremacy and survival, and attempts to ‘unman’ one’s enemies
through innuendo, slander, and insult are numerous in the sagas and in Eddic
poetry. Traditions of men insulting one another include the reciprocal exchange
known as the flyting (and other examples such as senna, mannjafnaðr, and níð).
In addition to insulting claims about cowardice, patriliny, and debauchery,
there is a dizzying array of words and phrases for characterizing men as passive
rather than active sexual partners (the most offensive are: ragr, stroðinn,
sorðinn, all of which can be translated as ‘well-fucked’). This last category of
insults was so inflammatory that, according to the legal codes, they presented
the slandered with an occasion for justifiable homicide. When in Njál’s saga,
Skarpheðinn accuses Flosi of being the recipient of the Svínafell troll’s amorous
advances, ‘ef þú ert brúðr Svínfellsáss, sem sagt er, hverja ina níunda nótt ok
geri hann þik at konu’ [‘If you are the bride of the Svínafell troll, as people say,
every ninth night and he uses you as a woman’], or when, in Gisli’s saga, talk is
made of setting up wooden male figures in the act of intercourse with each
other, the slanderous allusions can only be resolved through bloodshed.47 The
shame in being accused of playing the role of passive sexual partner was closely
connected with castration. The accusation makes its appearance from time to
time in poetry, such as in a single strophe from a longer set of vituperative
verses spoken by the skaldic poet Örvar-oddr:
‘Sigurðr, vart eigi,
er á Sælundi felldak
bræðr böðharða,
Brand ok Agnar,
Ásmund, Ingjald,
Álfr var inn fimmti;
en þú heima látt
í höll konungs,
skrökmálasamr,
skauð hernumin.’

‘Sigurðr, you weren’t on Zealand when I felled the battle-hard

brothers Brandr and Agnarr, Ásmundr and Ingjaldr, and Álfr was the

47
Brennu-Njáls saga, ed. Einar Ól. Sveinsson (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka fornritafélag, 1954),
p. 314; Gísla saga Súrssonar, ed. Björn K. Þórólfsson in Vestfirðinga sögur (Reykjavík: Hið
íslenzka fornritafélag, 1943), p. 10.
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206 ANTHONY ADAMS

fifth—while you were lying at home in the king’s hall, full of tall stories,
a captive gelding.’48

The Old Norse translated as ‘captive gelding’ here is skauð hernumin, more lite-
rally a ‘war-snatched sheath’ – the final thrust in an insulting verse implicating
the accused in cowardice, castration, impotence, and passivity. In the late Eddic
poem Þrymskviða, the loss of the hammer Mjöllnir represents a symbolic
castration of Þórr; losing his hammer while asleep, in a passive state, is the
equivalent of homosexual rape, and by being sorðinn in this manner, Þórr has
brought shame upon himself and the other gods. Margaret Clunies Ross argues,
Þrymskviða […] shows how the gods’ honour and status depended on
Þórr’s hammer, the symbol of his virility and the instrument with which
he protected them and their women from marauding males and thereby
ensured the retention of their domininant social status. The poem post-
ulates what might happen if Þórr lost his hammer and then goes on to
represent a successful counter-strategem for its recovery, which involves
the god playing out his feminisation by transgressing (very reluctantly)
normal gender roles. […] In Þrymskviða the price of humiliation is success
and the recovery of honour. By contrast, in Icelandic saga literature and
probably in thirteenth-century society, the price of humiliation is usually
dishonour.49

This poem (while primarily comic) emphasizes the particularly rich field of
sexual transgression that links passive homosexuality, bestiality, castration, and
violence at the level of symbolic myth. The character of Loki, whose sexually
ambiguous presence highlights the comic and transgressive nature of the scenes
in Þrymskviða, remains particularly polysemic in this regard. Loki represents a
type of imprecise, androgynous (or even hermaphroditic), yet still potent
sexuality that is entirely at odds with the simpler, overt masculinity of the sagas.50
The sense of shame attached to castration and the sort of cultural capital
that castration (actual and metaphorical) had in Scandinavian society does not
appear to have been radically different than in other medieval societies, as the
other essays in this collection attest. What is missing in its treatment in

48
Text edited by Margaret Clunies Ross; trans. Carol Clover, in ‘Hárbarðsljóð as Generic
Farce’, Scandinavian Studies 51.2 (spring 1979): 124–45 at p. 128.
49
Margaret Clunies Ross, ‘Reading Þrymskviða’, in The Poetic Edda: Essays on Old Norse
Mythology, ed. Paul Acker and Carolyne Larrington (New York and London: Routledge,
2002), pp. 177–94 atp. 189.
50
One central scene for any discussion of Loki, sexuality, and castration must be the
description in Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál of how Loki got the giantess Skadi to laugh by
tying one end of a rope to his testicles, and the other end to the beard of a she-goat – an
animal associated with effeminacy (as in the proverbial expression ‘ragr as a goat’). In
Gylfaginning we learn that Loki once gave birth, while in the form of a mare, to Sleipnir,
Óðinn’s eight-legged horse.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 207

Sturlunga saga, however, is the sense of exquisitely cruel pleasure taken by

observers of its effects upon the castrated. While the ‘caponization’ of a man
like Abelard draws a parallel between real emasculation and dehumanization51
(as is implied in the scene between Hrafn and Gizurr), missing in Sturlunga
saga is any raucous laughter, whether that of Þrymskviða or of the Old French
tale De Connebert, when the blacksmith husband gleefully mocks the freshly
castrated priest: ‘Vos ne batroiz jamais crepon / Ainz manroiz vie de chapon!’
[‘You will never again pound the flesh, / but you will henceforth lead the life
[or, bear the cock] of a capon!’] (De Connebert, vv. 284–5).52 Given the emphasis
by medieval writers upon the ‘psychological’ effect of cruelty, it would seem
possible for a writer to focus on the internal turmoil caused by partaking in an
act that is emasculating and dehumanizing for many involved.53
Sturla Þórðarson attempts authorial amends almost immediately. In the
aftermath of the mutilation, they send for Órækja’s wife Arnbjörg. Þórð refuses
Sturla Þórðarson absolution for his part in the mutilation, suggesting he will
need to seek the higher authority of the bishop in Skálaholt. When Arnbjörg
arrives, Sturla tells her (somewhat surprisingly) that her husband still has his
sight and is heill (healthy or healed). She rides to the cave and finds him already
recovered enough to have ridden south. By the time the entire group meets in
Skálaholt, he is described as hressasti (restored), and Bishop Magnús proceeds
to leysti þá misskunnsamliga [absolve them mercifully] (1:396). At the bishop’s
suggestion, Órækja and others travel abroad with Magnús and Bishop Kygri-
Björn, while his wife travels north with her brother Kolbeinn ungi.54 Órækja
meets King Valdimar the Old in Denmark, and makes a verse in his honor
(1:396–7). There are several elements of this little narrative that remain unclear,
but what is most evident is that Sturla stresses that the damage to Órækja is
minimal (despite certain evidence to the contrary), including the reactions of

51
For more on the castration of Abelard and his construction of it as martyrdom, see
Larissa Tracy’s article in this volume, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the
Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary,
pp. 87–107.
52
Translated (and emended) by Laura Kendrick, in Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control
in the Canterbury Tales (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), p. 66. See also
Mary E. Leech, ‘The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and
Masculine Order in La dame escolliee’ in this volume, pp. 210–28, and Larissa Tracy, ‘The
Uses of Torture and Violence in the Fabliaux: When Comedy Crosses the Line’,
Florilegium 23.2 (2006): 143–68, and Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature:
Negotiations of National Identity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012).
53
Daniel Baraz has outlined the major writers in the medieval discourse on cruelty as
Seneca, Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Thomas Aquinas, in ‘Seneca, Ethics, and
the Body: The Treatment of Cruelty in Medieval Thought’, Journal of the History of Ideas
59.2 (April 1998): 195–215.
54
This was distinguished company; Kygri-Björn was an accomplished and learned bishop,
and traditionally is considered the author of the thirteenth-century Maríu saga.
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208 ANTHONY ADAMS

other Icelanders when the mutilation is known, not to mention the description
of the acts themselves. It is also suggested (although not certain) that after this
incident, Órækja and Arnbjörg no longer live together as husband and wife,
suggesting some permanent damage had been done to Órækja despite Sturla’s
initial protests to the contrary. Any reading that takes the author’s claim of
Órækja’s health at face value must willfully disregard the evidence suggesting
that the scene as described offered primal and traumatic cruelty to the eyewit-
nesses. Jenny Jochens argues that Sturla’s original reference to Órækja being
‘hale’ could imply mere optimism, although in her note to this passage she also
voices doubt that the recovery was as complete as Sturla suggests.55 Gade posits
that this event is fictitious, and this is a reading that is closer to the truth –
Sturla has been shaken by the event, and has attempted to make amends (or to
atone) through imagining at least temporarily a ‘happy ending’.56 But the
healing (if it has occurred) does not lead to an immediate resolution for the
husband and wife. Instead Órækja’s companions in the weeks following the
assault are bishops, and through their presence and his own reported prayers
and religious sentiments expressed under the most intense duress and terror,
Sturla grants his agonies a religious significance. His tribulations might seem
analogous to those of Guðmundr, the bishop of Hólar, who suffers a crippling
injury to his right foot during a shipwreck, bears the burden humbly, and is
miraculously cured.57 But Órækja’s life does not follow the peaceful course of
the bishop’s; he returns to the saga in chapter 143 to initiate a sequence of
revenge (which ends poorly for him), and by chapter 157 he is exiled to
Norway and is out of the saga. During these activities, the mutilation is
referred to on a few occasions, but there is no suggestion that Órækja
Snorrason is changed irrevocably by that visit to Surtshellir. Perhaps that is
because Sturla exaggerated the mutilation, or perhaps he obscured its painful
after-effects; more important to him, it would seem, were its effects upon the
eyewitnesses, including himself as author.
The sadistic attempt to effeminize another man rates among the lasting
images of Sturlunga saga. Despite the presence of castration as a punishment
in the law codes, and in spite of its popularity as a motif when males insult
one another, actual castration was rare in Icelandic literature. Contemporary
sagas such as Sturlunga saga are an exception to the rule, and the mutilation
of Órækja thus offers a unique opportunity to see how actors within the saga
react to extreme cases of real violation. Even for Icelanders accustomed to
violence and brutality, the scene in Surtshellir would seem to have gone
beyond acceptable standards of aggression and punishment, and seems to have

55
Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society, p. 66.
56
In ‘1236: Órækja meiddr ok heill gerr’, Griplá 9 (1995): 115–32.
57
See Prestssaga Guðmundar góða, in Sturlunga saga, 1:128–35.
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Castration and Cruelty in the Sturlunga saga 209

had a traumatizing effect upon the viewers as well as the victim. This sadistic
turn is also meaningful and beneficial because it prefigures, in its lingering
mélange of cruelty and cold comfort, some element of the modern fascination
with horror that is to come. To cite a well-worn quotation from film theorist
Kaja Silverman:
I will hazard the generalization that it is always the victim – the figure who
occupies the passive position – who is really the focus of attention, and
whose subjugation the subject [whether male or female] experiences as a
pleasurable repetition from his/her own history. Indeed, I would go so far
as to say that the fascination of the sadistic point of view is merely that it
provides the best vantage point from which to watch the masochistic story
unfold.58

Against this critical background, the violation of Órækja Snorrason suggests

itself as an early, perhaps pioneering, moment in scrutinized sadism and horror.
The wrapped knife, the gouged eyes, the lost ‘stone’ – all exist as elements of a
‘limit event’ in a sadistic ritual that reveals a small rotten core within the code
of Icelandic masculinity. The disfigurement and disability wrought in
Surtshellir are evocative of the worst extremes of the model of sexuality taken
for granted in medieval Scandinavia, one that, at its extreme, still held the
capacity to shock by making overt the essential link between violence, cruelty,
and manhood. The nebulous and fragile quality of Norse masculinity, one ever
at risk of penetration, mutilation, and abjection, was perhaps in this way an
early species of contemporary sexuality, which understands that the experience
of pleasure, like cruelty, depends a great deal upon one’s capacity for pain.

58
Kaja Silverman, ‘Masochism and Subjectivity’, Framework 12 (1980): 2–9 at p. 5. See also
the seminal article by Carol Clover, ‘Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film’,
Representations 20 (autumn, 1987): 187–228.
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CHAPTER 10

The Castrating of the Shrew:

The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine
Identity in La dame escolliee1
Mary E. Leech

S eemingly rooted in the shrew-taming tradition, the Old French fabliau La

dame escolliee (The Gelded Lady) defies the rules of any genre in which it is
placed. As a fabliau, the setting, characters and the disturbingly graphic violence
diverge from the usually light-hearted comedy typical of the fabliaux. As a
shrew-taming tale, the story breaks several of the genre’s conventions, which
generally work to confirm the accepted social order of male dominance and
female submission in a marital relationship. In its graphic depiction of a fake
castration performed on a woman, La dame escolliee does not restore masculine
order and dominance, but transforms a female body into a male one through a
violent performance, challenging the very concept of what masculinity is. The
husband of the castrated woman is not the one who punishes her. His passivity
makes him more feminine than masculine in many ways. The man who
performs the false castration (the woman’s son-in-law) presents a harsh and
exaggerated form of masculinity that insists on a narrow construct of maleness
that destabilizes the very structures it seemingly tries to preserve. By under-
mining his father-in-law and transforming his mother-in-law, the supposed
shrew-tamer reveals inherent problems with such a limited view of masculinity.
The use of a false castration on a woman changes the purpose of the
performance and moves the dynamic of the tale from a tale about the proper
role of women to a cautionary tale for men and masculine identity.
Castration in medieval literature across cultures works figuratively to verify
or enforce a specific concept of masculinity through actions perpetrated on a
male body. From perhaps the best-known medieval castration, that of Abelard,

1
Parts of this essay were originally published as ‘That’s Not Funny: Comic Forms, Didactic
Purpose, and Physical Injury in Medieval Comic Tales’, LATCH: A Journal for the Study
of the Literary Artifact in Theory, Culture or History, 1 (2008): 105–27. The thesis and
focus of this essay have been substantially revised for inclusion in this volume.
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The Castration of the Shrew 211

to comical presentations, such as the fabliau Le prestre crucefie (The Crucified

Priest), castration is enacted on the male body by those attempting to control
that body and assert their dominant masculinity.2 Such masculinities in liter-
ature are performative in that they demonstrate accepted male behavior, the
consequences of challenging that behavior, and the boundaries of masculine
action. Female castration in medieval tales is virtually non-existent.3 The impo-
sition on sexuality and feminine pleasure, which is the purpose of modern
female castration (or genital mutilation),4 was unknown in medieval Europe.
Control over female sexuality, and more importantly female social roles, was
usually played out through tales of marriage and marriage dynamics, such as
the traditional shrew-taming tale. Castration is a punishment reserved for men
– specifically men who have committed sexual transgressions, as several articles
in this collection point out.5 It was not a common, or even accepted, punish-
ment for women or for adultery.6

2
Foucault’s discussion on how such punishments are used as a means to control a body
is often cited as a theoretical hallmark for this concept. Foucault states: ‘Discipline
increases the forces on the body (in economic terms of utility) and diminishes these same
forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dissociates power from the body; on
the one hand, it turns it into an “aptitude”, a “capacity”, which it seeks to increase; on the
other hand, it reverses the course of energy, the power that might result from it, and turns
it into a relation of strict subjugation.’ Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth
of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 138.
3
Only La dame escolliee. There is an instance of female genital mutilation (but not
castration) in Trubert, which is arguably a fabliau. In this tale, Trubert kills a woman and
mutilates her, presenting her genitalia to his victim, the duke, as ‘proof ’ of his victory over
the duke’s enemy. Norris Lacy gives the best and fullest account of this 3,000-line tale in
‘Trickery, Trubertage, and the Limits of Laughter’, in The Old French Fabliaux: Essays on
Comedy and Context, ed. Kristin L. Burr and Norris J. Lacy (Jefferson, NC: McFarland &
Co., 2007), pp. 82–92. The text of Trubert appears in Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux,
ed. Willem Noomen and Nico van den Boogaard (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1983–98), Vol. 10
pp. 143–262. See also Larissa Tracy, Torture and Brutality in Medieval Literature:
Negotiations of National Identity (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), p. 216, n. 94.
4
Female castration and circumcision are often referred to as ‘female genital mutilation’, and
have been a central topic for modern human rights. Many pieces have been published on
this topic, some medical, and others editorial. See Linda Burstyn, ‘Female Circumcision
Comes to America’, Atlantic Monthly, 276.4 (October 1995): 28; J. M. Abu Daia, ‘Female
Circumcision’, Saudi Medical Journal, 21.10 (October 2000): 921; P. Brisson, H. Patel, and
N. Feins, ‘Female Circumcision’, Journal of Pediatric Surgery, 36.7 (July 2001): 1068–9.
5
Castration was a possible punishment for treason and for rape, according to Norman
law, which adopted several of its punishments from Scandinavian tradition. Occasionally
it was the prescribed punishment for sodomy. For an analysis of castration in law texts,
either as punishment or in reference to compensation for genital wounds, see, in this
volume, Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never
Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’, pp. 108–30; Jay Paul
Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’, pp. 131–48;
Charlene M. Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish
Sources’, pp. 149–73.
6
In her article ‘The Uses of Torture and Violence in the Fabliaux: When Comedy Crosses
the Line’, Florilegium 23.2 (2006): 143–68, Larissa Tracy cites the following example from
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212 MARY E. LEECH

In literature, metaphoric castrations are also signs of sexual impropriety.

The female transgressors are often mistreated and physically punished for their
part in the sexual act, but they are not mutilated like the men.7 Concepts of the
role of the female body in a patriarchal society contribute to the lack of female
mutilation; literary presentations of punishments for women do not normally
penetrate the woman’s body because penetration carried sexual overtones of
illicit intercourse.8 The dangers of open female bodies are imagined in tales of
the loathly lady, in which the bodies of these women are open in their misshapen

the Spanish Libro de los fueros de Castiella, which is not a law but a judicial decision called
a fazana, which established a legal precedent. As Tracy writes, ‘While there seem to be no
references to castration in French customary law, according to a collection of judicial
precedents from thirteenth-century Spain, punishing the offending wife was acceptable,
but the lover was protected by the law’ (p. 153, n. 31): ‘A knight of Ciudad Rodrigo castrated
another knight whom he caught sleeping with his wife. The relatives of the other man
complained to the king. […] The decision of the court was that the husband ought to hang,
because […] if the husband wanted to kill anyone, he could kill his wife with no penalties;
[…] but since [he] had not killed his wife, he had taken the law into his own hands [and]
had also dishonored his victim’, Libro de los fueros de Castiella, ed. Sanchez, pp. 58–9, titulo
116. See Theresa Vann, ‘Private Murders and Public Retribution’, in Proceedings of the
Tenth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Kenneth Pennington, et al.
Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Vol. 11 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2001),
p. 812. In French customary law, ‘The Costuma d’Agen lists public humiliation for both
the wife and her lover as the appropriate punishment. According to this thirteenth-century
statute, the two offenders, having been caught and witnessed in the sexual act by a judge
appointed after the initial accusation and two council members, would be bound together
naked and led through the town preceded by trumpeters. The audience of assembled
villagers could then gawk and even beat the two with clubs’: Tracy, ‘The Uses of Torture’,
p. 153. A fourteenth-century customal of Toulouse in MS Paris, BN, lat. 9187, includes an
illustration of castration. See Daron Lee Burrows, The Stereotype of the Priest in the Old
French Fabliaux: Anticlerical Satire and Lay Identity (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 178–9.
See also Agen, France, Archives départementales de Lot-et-Garonne, MS 42, fol. 42v.,
trans. in F. R. P. Akehurst, ‘Good Name, Reputation, and Notoriety in French Customary
Law’, in Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. Thelma Fenster
and Daniel Lord Smail (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 75–94, p. 89.
7
The wife in Bisclavret has her nose torn off by her wronged wolf/husband, and her descen-
dants are said to have the same deformity. Though she is unfaithful once she learns her
husband is a werewolf, her punishment is not so much for sexual transgressions as for
betraying her husband’s trust. When she confesses, her crimes are the betrayal of her
husband and her work to keep him in wolf form, not her remarriage. Her punishment is
related to her vanity, as her face is mutilated. Also, she is not portrayed as shrewish.
Though she takes advantage of another man’s love for her, she is not punished to change
her behavior, but to get at the truth. At the end of the tale, she leaves with the second
husband and has children with him. She does not return to her original husband, nor
does he seek to have her submit to his authority.
8
Marina Warner comments on the sexualized nature of torture performed on female
saints: ‘In Christian hagiography, the sadomasochistic content of the paeans to male and
female martyrs is startling. […] But the particular focus on women’s torn and broken
flesh reveals the psychological obsession of the religion with sexual sin, and the tortures
that pile up one upon the other with pornographic repetitiousness underline the identi-
fication of the female with the perils of sexual contact’: Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth
and the Cult of the Virgin Mary (New York: Vintage, 1976), p. 71.
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The Castration of the Shrew 213

forms. Hags such as Dame Ragnell or the malformed women of Kempy Kay and
The Tale of Florent appear in the woods, outside of society. It is their ability to
enter the culture that is threatening, and it is only in their transformation to the
conventions of femininity that the threat is presumably erased.9 The openness
of the female body must be closed before comfort is restored. In other romances,
when there is even a thought of illicit sexuality by women, their bodies are often
locked away.10 Penetrating the female body exposes unregulated female power
and the threat that power represents to a patriarchal culture.
Castration then, is an issue of the masculine body and trangressive
masculine behavior, in both the reason for the castration, as well as the
castration itself. Though literary castrations may be largely symbolic, as in
Guigemar’s wound to the thigh in Marie de France’s lai, the implications are
the same. Sexual transgression by males results in the loss (either literally or
figuratively) of male sexuality. However, by punishing a transgression with
another transgression, castration confuses masculine roles and behavior more
than it reaffirms any sense of authority.11 In this volume, Jed Chandler explains
that castrations, both literal and figurative, are inscriptions of masculine
virginity in the Grail cycles – that loss prevents sexual spoiling and allows the
final achievement of the Grail.12 By performing castration on a female body,
the sense of masculine authority is further confused, as the female body must
first be transformed into a male body. She must be empowered as a man before
she can be controlled through castration. The faux castration performed in La

9
There are several very good essays on this topic in the volume The English Loathly Lady
Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs, ed. S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter
(Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008). In particular, Susan Carter’s
essay, ‘A Hymenation of Hags’, pp. 83–99, addresses the issue of gender power politics in
The Wife of Bath’s Tale. Often, the misshapen and leaking body of the loathly lady is asso-
ciated with uncontrolled sexuality, which is put back in its proper place with the marriage
and transformation of the loathly lady into a beautiful woman. Carter addresses this issue
and the issue of sovereignty, normally the central point of power in these tales. Carter
argues that ‘allegorizing ideas about masculine power through the vehicle of female flesh
places sovereignty in the realm of gender power politics. Virginity or its absence ought
to be crucial in an allegory that involves an active female sexuality, but curiously it matters
less than it might […]. The Loathly Lady motif consistently makes chastity less of an
issue than female control’: ‘A Hymenation of Hags’, p. 83.
10
There are many examples of this motif. Often, the woman is young and the husband is
older, so it is the threat of infidelity rather than the actual infidelity that motivates the
husband to lock away his young wife. The young wife in Marie de France’s Yonec and
May in The Merchant’s Tale are perhaps two of the best-known examples.
11
The fact that those who mutilated Abelard are also mutilated and blinded shows that the
very attempt to control Abelard’s body and masculine role actually results in the loss of
masculinity rather than the role of dominance that was sought in the act of castration.
See Larissa Tracy ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodie”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture,
and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary’, in this volume, pp. 87–107, and
Introduction.
12
Jed Chandler, ‘Eunuchs of the Grail’, in this volume, pp. 229–54.
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214 MARY E. LEECH

dame escolliee is an anomaly: the transgression is not sexual, the punisher is

not correcting a wrong done to him, and most importantly, the performance
is not enacted on a male body.
La dame escolliee begins with a count who goes out hunting near the home
of a nobleman, intent on seeking the nobleman’s daughter whose beauty is
renowned. The count asks the nobleman for hospitality, but the nobleman hesi-
tates for fear of his wife’s response. To get around his wife, the nobleman orders
exactly the opposite of what he (the nobleman) really wants, and thus the count
gets to stay, have a sumptuous meal, and marry the nobleman’s daughter. Before
the girl leaves with her new husband, her mother advises her not to be mild, but
instead to take control over her new husband. The count suspects that his wife
may prove troublesome, so he makes an example of two greyhounds given as a
wedding gift from the nobleman. When the hounds do not catch a rabbit fast
enough for him, the count cuts off their heads in front of his wife. He also
beheads a palfrey (another wedding gift from the nobleman) that stumbles after
he commands it not to trip. Once installed in her new home, the new wife delib-
erately orders the cook to over-season the count’s food with garlic, against his
express wishes. When he finds out, the count first mutilates the cook and then
beats his wife with a thorn branch so badly that it takes her three months to
recover: ‘Iluec jut ele bien .iii. mois / qu’ele ne pot seoir as dois’ [There she lay
well three months that she could not sit at table] (363–4).13 The emphasis is not
just on the length of time, but also on how long she is unable to fulfill her social
duties as wife.
When the nobleman and his wife come to visit, the count sends the
nobleman out hunting, and while he is gone the count tells his servants to
castrate a bull and bring him the balls. He then tells the mother that her pride
is in her testicles, which he will now remove: ‘“Vos avez coilles comme nos, /
s’en est vostre cuers orgueillous / Ge vos i vueil faire taster; s’il i sont, ses ferai
oster”‘ [‘You have testicles like us. It is the means of your proud heart. I will
feel for them there; if they are there, I will remove them’] (461–4). Holding the
mother down, a servant slices a six-inch gash in one buttock, shoves in one of
the bull testicles with his fist, and pulls the fist back out. He does the same for
the other side, while the mother screams: ‘cele se pasme qui fu mue’ [she faints
letting out a wail] (488). When she recovers, the count says that if she does not
do as she is told, he will burn out the roots of her testicles with a hot iron
coulter. She then swears that she will obey her husband:

13
All quotes from La Dame escolliee are from Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux, ed.
Noomen and van den Boogaard, 8:1–125. Line numbers are given in parentheses in the
text. All translations in the footnotes are mine. I chose to have literal translations that
are less elegant rather than more polished ones, in order to get across, as much as possible,
the exact structure and meaning of the language. I am deeply indebted to Dr Ellen
Friedrich for her invaluable help with the translations.
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The Castration of the Shrew 215

‘certes lealment vos affi

& sor sanz le vos jurerai
que mon seignor ne desdirai;
servirai le si com ge doi.’
(498–501)
‘I surely give loyalty to you and by the saints I will swear to you that I will
not disobey my lord; I will serve him as I should.’

The count shows his wife what he has done to her mother, and says he will do
the same to her if she is disobedient. The wife swears she is more like her father
than her mother:
‘Ge ne sui pas de la nature
ma mere, qui est fiere & dure;
ge retrai plus, sire, a mon pere
que ge ne faz voir a ma mere.’
(517–20)
‘I am not of the nature of my mother, who is fierce and proud; I take after
more, sir, of my father than I resemble my mother.’

She promises to obey him from now on. When the nobleman returns, he is told
the same story, and shown the pail with the bloody balls in it. He acts convinced:
Cil quide que trestot voir soit
por les coillons que iluec voit;
por la dame qu’il voit navree,
cuide qu’ele soit amendee.
(551–4).
This he believes that he has heard because of the testicles he sees; because
the lady that he sees wounded, he believes that she will make amends.

After the mother swears to obey her husband, her wounds are treated and she
recovers. The tale ends with a moral praising the count’s actions and calling
for shame on men who are ruled by their wives and on women who would
dominate their husbands: ‘Honi soient, & il si ierent, / cil qui lour fames trop
dangierent!’ (May they be shamed they go thus, they whom their wives
dominate!) (567–8).
From the start, Le dame escolliee departs from the shrew-taming conven-
tions.14 The basics of the shrew-taming story include a shrewish older sister

14
The origins of shrew-taming as a comedic form cannot truly be traced. Part of a long
oral tradition, the shrew-taming structure is outlined in number 901 of Francis James
Childs’s The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (New York, Dover Publications, 1965).
The folktales listed here are referenced in Child’s volume by motif number, rather than
page numbers.
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216 MARY E. LEECH

who must marry before her mild younger sister, a suitor who marries the
shrew and then vows to tame her, the killing of animals as an example to the
new wife, punishment through deprivation, and a wager to prove the wife’s
submissiveness.15 The emphasis is not on the suffering of the wife (which is
underplayed), but rather the comedy of her change in attitude – her humili-
ation – as a result of the punishment inflicted on her.16 The overall threat of
female dominance is played out in the comedy of the violence against the
woman and the eventual triumph of the man. Shrew-taming tales were meant
to reinforce the proper role of women. These tales are not about sexual trans-
gression, but rather social transgression. In La dame escolliee, the punishment
is not one of masculine control over a female body, but masculine control over
a male body. The female body is transformed into a male body through the
enactment of the false castration. The conflict in this tale changes from one
of a man asserting control over a woman to a man asserting control over
another man.
First of all, the central female character is the mother-in-law, not the wife
of the count. Next, the count’s wife is not really the problem in the tale, nor
does she need to be married off to secure a match for a younger and more
compliant sibling. Though she is foolish for following her mother’s advice, the
impetus for her actions is not her own shrewishness, but rather her mother’s.
The false castration is particularly gruesome, both in concept and in
description in the tale. The presentation of the wife’s mutilated mother is really
unnecessary in terms of convincing the wife to obey her husband because she
has already been beaten into submission. Also, the father-in-law is an unusual

15
If these tropes sound like the plot of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, it may be
due to the influence of oral folklore on Shakespeare. Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand
explores these possible influences in his article ‘The Folktale Origin of The Taming of the
Shrew’, in The Taming of the Shrew: An Authoritative Text, Sources and Contexts, Criticism,
Rewritings and Appropriations, ed. Dymphna Callaghan (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
2009), pp. 266–279.
16
Variations on the story, such as the sixteenth-century ballad A Merry Jeste of a Shrewd
and Curst Wife, include more extreme physical punishments. In this ballad, the wife is
beaten and wrapped in a salted horsehide until she swears to behave. While she is
wrapped in the skin, the emphasis is on her thoughts of how she has wronged her
husband, not her physical pain. The ballad reads: ‘Within a while, she did reuiue, /
Through the grose salte that did her smarte / She though she should neuer haue gone on
lieu, / Out of Morels skin so sore is her harte.’ When she berates her husband for his
cruelty, he says that he will keep her there to ‘wayle and weepe’, The song then says: ‘With
that her moode began to sinke, / And sayd deare husband for grace I call: / For I shall
neuer sleepe nor winke, / Till I get your loue whatso befall’. The implication here is that
the physical pain does not change her ways as much as the idea that she is not loved by
her husband. Any mention of pain is minimal, and she seems to be no worse for wear
once she is taken out of the salted hide. Other stories, listed by both Child and the Aarne-
Thompson-Uther type 900, include: ‘Pride Punished’ (Italy), ‘The Crumb in the Beard’
(Italy), ‘Greyfoot’ (Denmark). From Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
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The Castration of the Shrew 217

male character in the tale. Rather than controlling his domineering wife, he
has found a way to manipulate her into giving him what he wants. He has
control over his house to a degree, but only in execution, not in appearance.
The count’s actions demand that the appearance of masculine control and
feminine obedience be upheld. It is not enough that the nobleman is able to
circumvent his wife’s will; his wife must accept her subservient place and show
public obedience to her husband.
Shrew-taming tales normally place blame on the woman and her desire to
dominate. The husband’s failing may be implied, but this fault is corrected by
his taming of his wife. La dame escolliee puts the blame squarely on the husband
who allows her to rule him: ‘Mais tant avoit amé s’osser / Que desor lui l’avoit
levee / & segnorie abandonee’ [Because he loved his wife so much he let her be
raised up and abandoned his authority] (28–30). In the typical shrew-taming
tale, the husband is desperate to find some way of controlling his wife. This is
not the case with the nobleman in La dame escolliee. He seems perfectly happy
with his solution. The count is the one who is upset by the wife’s behavior and
the nobleman’s lack of direct authority over her. The husband’s response to his
wife’s castration is passive as well. In fact, given the violence performed on his
wife, the husband’s reaction is rather mild. He takes the count at his word, and
accepts that his wife’s behavior will change. He demands no proof of her
obedience, nor is any obedience demonstrated, as is typical in other shrew-
taming tales. Throughout the entire tale, the nobleman never aggressively seeks
control over his wife. In contrast to the exaggerated masculinity of the count,
the nobleman’s passivity is more feminine than masculine.
From the contemporary moral standpoint, the nobleman’s solution would
be troubling. Men were supposed to be the moral center for women, and
husbands were morally responsible for their wives. Admonitions about a
husband’s responsibility for his wife’s spiritual well-being as well as his domi-
nance over her can be found in the epistles of Paul: ‘Wives, submit yourselves
to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of
the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their
husbands in everything’ (Ephesians 5:22–4). Other theological figures of the
early Christian world, particularly Augustine, expressed similar sentiments,
arguing that the man gave a child its soul, while the woman gave the child its
imperfect flesh, which followed the philosophy of the ancient Greeks.17 Since
the nobleman only rules his wife through subversion, he does not appear to

17
Aristotle states: ‘the male and female principles may be put down first and foremost as
the origins of generation, the former as containing the efficient cause of generation, the
latter the material of it’: ‘On the Generation of Animals’ 2.716a 5–7, trans. Arthur Platt,
in Great Books of the Western World, vol. 8: Aristotle II, ed. Mortimer J. Adler, 2nd edn
(Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1990).
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218 MARY E. LEECH

fulfill his moral duty as a husband. The tale even states that the authority is
hers, not his, when the nobleman says to the count, ‘si l’a apris, / sel vorra main-
tenir toz dis’ [So she has taken [authority/control] and will want to continue
it] (105–6). The threat to masculinity is in the behavior of the man, not the
woman – another man corrects the problem, but has no right to do so.
The passive actions of the nobleman in the tale, then, are a greater threat to
the construct of male authority in the tale than his wife and daughter ever are.
Jo Ann McNamara asks ‘If a person does not act like a man, is he a man? And
what does it mean to “act like a man” except to dominate women?’18 His
passivity is traditionally feminine,19 and he does not uphold the moral or social
standards that are expected of him. He is ruled by his emotions, especially
love.20 The wife has control over running the estate, and contradicts him to
show her disdain for him. Rather than confronting his wife or asserting his
authority as a man, the nobleman develops an underhanded method for
tricking his wife into doing what he wants. Trickery and deception, along with
passivity, were associated primarily with women.21 Starting with Eve, women
were viewed as weak-willed creatures who were easily deceived.22 When the
nobleman explains the situation to the count, the count laughs and tells him,

18
Jo Ann McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage: The Restructuring of the Gender System,
1050–1150’, in Medieval Masculinities: Regarding Men in the Middle Ages, ed. Clare A.
Lees, Thelma Fenster, and Jo Ann McNamara (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1994), pp. 3–29 at p. 5. McNamara’s point is primarily about celibacy, but the issue
of defining manhood according to dominant relationships with women is applicable here.
19
This belief was widespread throughout the ancient and medieval eras. The following
statement by Aristotle, on the male and female roles in generation, is typical of the belief:
‘But the female, as female, is passive, and male, as male, is active’: ‘On the Generation of
Animals’, p. 269. For a detailed look at the construct of gender perceptions, particularly
the association of masculinity with activity and femininity with passivity, see Joyce E.
Salisbury, ‘Gendered Sexuality’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough
and James A. Brundage (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 83–6.
20
Excess of emotion, particularly love, was seen as a weakness in men. For a more detailed
discussion on the concept of lovesickness and its associated effects on masculinity, see
Vern L. Bullough, ‘On Being Male in the Middle Ages’, in Handbook of Medieval Sexuality,
ed. Bullough and Brundage, pp. 38–40.
21
In the courtly love tradition, the wives often use tricks to keep their husbands from
finding out about their lovers. When a disguised Tristan carries Isolde across a creek on
his back, she is able to swear to King Mark that she has had no man between her legs
other than the king and the beggar who carried her across the creek. In The Merchant’s
Tale, May convinces January not to trust his newly regained eyesight when he sees her
with Damian.
22
In The City of God, Augustine argues that the serpent ‘first tried his deceit upon the
woman, making his assault upon the weaker part of that human alliance, that he might
gradually gain the whole, and not supposing that the man would readily give ear to him,
or be deceived, but that he might yield to the error of the woman. […] we cannot believe
that Adam was deceived, and supposed the devil’s word to be truth, and therefore trans-
gressed God’s law, but that he by the drawings of kindred yielded to the woman’: (book
XIV ch. 11).
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The Castration of the Shrew 219

‘“Se fussiez preuz, pas nel feïst”‘ [‘If you were strong, she would not do this’]
(104). Despite this chiding, the nobleman responds that nothing will change,
‘“Se Dieux de moi n’en merci”‘ [‘unless God gives to me mercy’] (107). Though
the nobleman may have control behind the scenes, his actions do not conform
to the ruthless domination performed by the count, nor do the nobleman’s
actions demonstrate a socially recognized form of masculinity. The nobleman’s
remedy is not an active solution, or one that asserts authority over his wife.
Rather, the nobleman has usurped authority, in the figure of his wife, much as
Eve did when she tempted Adam. Since the nobleman is unwilling to take direct
action, the count steps in and takes action for him.
But the count’s actions are also extreme. In choosing a mock castration, the
count violates a host of other social and genre taboos, besides disciplining
another man’s wife and effectively emasculating him in the process. Castration
in the fabliaux is uncommon. It only appears in two other tales, and in each
case the punishment is enacted on men – adulterous priests at that. In these
stories, castration is a method of exerting masculine authority over a trans-
gressive masculine body. In Le prestre crucifie (The Crucified Priest) a priest
engages in an affair with a crucifix sculptor’s wife. When the sculptor arrives
home early, the priest, who had merely been dining with the wife, hides in the
workshop among the life-sized half-finished crucifixes. The priest strips and
climbs up on a cross, but the sculptor is not fooled. Seeing the priest, the
sculptor feigns horror at having carved genitals on the figure of Christ and cuts
them off. The priest escapes after being castrated, but is caught by two other
men, beaten and forced to pay a high ransom. In Le prestre ki perdi les colles
(The Priest Who Lost His Balls), also known as De Connebert, a smith takes
revenge on a priest having an affair with his wife by nailing the priest’s scrotum
to the workbench, giving him a razor, and setting the workshop on fire. The
priest must slice off his testicles to escape, which he does. After a long conva-
lescence, the priest seeks retribution in the courts, but the court rules against
him. The final image of the fabliau is of two dogs fighting over the roasted
testicles in the ruins of the blacksmith’s shop.
Both of these tales have an underlying theme of justified revenge, with the
wronged husbands exacting a punishment that appears to fit the crime. Though
the punishments are extreme, and castration as an actual practice was not widely
condoned, the audience can take a certain amount of satisfaction in the idea of
the priests being humiliated for their transgressions. The transgressive
masculinity of the priest is removed by the proper masculine authority and
accepted masculine identity. The social reinforcement of the punishment allows
a sense of justice to triumph in the tales that may not happen in reality.23

23
William Ian Miller, ‘In Defense of Revenge’, in Medieval Crime and Social Control:
Medieval Cultures, vol. 16, ed. Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minneapolis:
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220 MARY E. LEECH

In this way, the masculine performance of the married man is reaffirmed by

the control he takes over the masculinity of the priests who have usurped the
married man’s role in his household. The extreme aspect of the punishment
is downplayed by social acceptance. The public knowledge of the castration
causes no outrage, and the priests’ humiliations are continued publicly
through the beating of one priest and the failed lawsuit of the other. In terms
of masculinity, the priests in these tales violate the philosophy behind clerical
celibacy,24 and usurp the masculine control of feminine sexuality that marriage
is supposed to bring to women.25 Clerical celibacy was not merely an exercise
in sexual control. Church fathers, particularly Augustine, believed that sex
was a distraction to the true connection between a man and a woman.26
Abelard attempted to restructure his masculine identity after his castration as
intellectual, and not physical or sexual.27 Chastity (or lack of sexual activity)
was meant to elevate the cleric beyond mere physical desire and move him
towards a more intellectual and spiritual life. Through their sexual misconduct,
the fabliaux priests have undermined a higher concept of masculinity, and
threatened the masculine control of sexuality that marriage was supposed
to provide.
Male power in these fabliaux is directly connected to control over male
genital performance. Masculinity, male identity, and the male body cannot be
neatly separated in the medieval world view in which the male body was both
metaphorically and philosophically the focus. Women’s roles and women’s

University of Minnesota Press, 1999), pp. 70–89, contrasts revenge motifs in Icelandic
sagas to the modern appeal of revenge. Miller writes that despite ‘the antihonor discourse
and pretense that revenge is inimical to a just legal order, we still feel at some visceral
level that the world of honor and revenge is nobler than ours, and it still remains for us
grand and frightfully alluring’ (p. 72). Later in the essay, Miller discusses the reality of
revenge in Norse culture with the sagas (pp. 77–8). His point as it relates here is that the
avenger in fiction can act without shame or repercussions in a way that does not and
cannot happen in reality. I would argue that this concept of revenge applies to the
castration fabliaux discussed here.
24
McNamara discusses the social implications of priestly celibacy and the fears it brought
to concepts of masculinity: ‘If men who repudiated connection with women not only
remained men, but even claimed to be superior to other men, what did this mean to the
self-image of men in the secular world?’ ‘The Herrenfrage’ (p. 5). The fear of rampant
female sexuality because of clerical celibacy is ridiculed in tales about priests who have
affairs with or seduce women, which is part of what these particular priest castration tales
may be addressing. See McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, pp. 6–12.
25
Georges Duby discusses how marriage in medieval society was a method of controlling
female behavior, both sexually and socially: Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages, trans.
Jane Dunnett (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 4–5 and 11.
26
Augustine, De bono coniugali. Quoted in Bonnie Wheeler, ‘Origenary Fantasies: Abelard’s
Castration and Confession’, in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 107–28 at p. 108.
27
For further discussion on Abelard’s castration and its function in shaping medieval
discourse of holiness and sanctity, see Tracy “Introduction”, pp. 15–18 in this volume.
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The Castration of the Shrew 221

bodies were part of the male-centric view of the world. In Making Sex: The
Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud, Thomas Laqueur explains: ‘Instead
of being divided by their reproductive anatomies, the sexes are linked by a
common one. Women, in other words, are inverted, and hence, less perfect
men. They have exactly the same organs, but in exactly the wrong places.’28
Just as physical differences distinguish men and women, their social roles are
necessarily an extension of that natural and cosmological difference. As
Laqueur contends, ‘both the division of labor and the specific assignment of
roles are natural [based on the physical differences of the sexes]’.29 Therefore,
it was through understanding the body (the male body in particular) that the
world and the cosmos could be understood. According to William D. Sharpe,
Isidore of Seville
held the traditional philosophical notion that each individual human
being is a microcosm within himself, paralleling the universe, the
macrocosm, on a miniature scale. […] Man forms the central link in the
great chain of being: this anthropocentricity does not infer that the
universe exists for the sake of man but that man in the key to the whole
cosmic riddle, and that insight into human nature will provide insight into
that of the universe.30

Isidore, like most other learned men, believed that only by understanding the
universe and having some knowledge of it could man be included in it.31 In
other words, the male body becomes the model for the largest concepts (such
as the universe), and more common ones (like the social structure of a culture).
In an article on the importance of the male body to the medieval world view,
D. Vance Smith explains that ‘[t]he bodies of man and of the world do not just
happen to be similar: man, in fact, produces the body of the world. […] The
natural world in which the male body must labor, in other words, cannot be
represented without the intervention of the male body.’32
Because the male body was so important to conceptions of the world at
large, that body and its behavior had to be specifically defined by a culture in
order to preserve the culture’s identity. As Michael Uebel asserts, ‘[m]edieval
men, despite the repeated assertion of their superiority and transcendence in
learned texts […] nevertheless were, like women, subject to categorical assump-

28
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 26.
29
Ibid., p. 29.
30
Isidore of Seville, ‘On Medicine’, in Isidore of Seville: The Medical Writings, trans. William
D. Sharpe (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1964), p. 25.
31
Ibid., p. 26
32
D. Vance Smith, ‘Body Doubles: Producing the Masculine Corpus’, in Becoming Male in
the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler, pp. 3–19 at p. 15.
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222 MARY E. LEECH

tions constraining the range of their corporeal activities’.33 Though in a comic

sense the castration of sexual transgressors may fit in with a perverse sense of
comic justice, the reality of castration was inherently threatening to masculine
identity because male identity was directly connected to the masculine
performance of power. In tales that relate to concepts of masculine power, the
shape of masculine identity is presented along with the confirmation of a patri-
archal world view.34 Such tales normally work to reinforce these notions, which
are culturally produced so that the culture can maintain stability.35 Comic liter-
ature often presents images of underlying fear in order to make the fear
ridiculous or absurd.36 La dame escolliee does not appear to do any of these
things. Like many fabliaux, it challenges the social structure, but the oddities
of this tale do more to contest the existing masculine structure rather than rein-
force the cultural norms. The creation of a non-gendered body, one that is
overtly female but transformed into male, produces a figure that is neither truly
male nor truly female, undermining the very fabric of gender construction.
McNamara conceives of the problem in connection with male celibacy and the
creation of the ungendered male body: ‘the whole male effort would collapse
if women also became ungendered’.37
From the beginning of La dame escolliee, the count exerts his view of
masculinity, starting with the hunt,38 both for prey and for a wife. The count
does all he can to undermine the noblewoman’s power. Upon entering the
nobleman’s home, the count addresses the husband first in his greeting. The
proposal of marriage is first addressed to the nobleman, not the wife. When

33
Michael Uebel, ‘On Becoming Male’, in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen
and Wheeler, pp. 367–84 at p. 371. See also Kathleen Biddick, ‘Genders, Bodies, Borders:
Technologies of the Visible’, Speculum 68.2 (1995): 389–418.
34
There are more examples of such tales than can be listed. Chivalric tales that set standards
of masculine behavior for knights are seen in the tales of Crétién de Troyes. The
masculine courtly lovers in the lais of Marie de France are perhaps some of the best-
known examples. Epics such as Le chanson de Roland also establish the ideals of
masculine power and masculine behavior.
35
James Clifford challenges how one can understand gender historically. He writes that the
conception of culture is ‘a coherent body that lives and dies. Culture is enduring, tradi-
tional, structural (rather than contingent, syncretic, historical). Culture is a process of
ordering, not of disruption’: The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,
Literature and Art. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 235.
36
The standard for this argument is generally considered to be Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais
and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1984).
37
McNamara, ‘The Herrenfrage’, p. 5.
38
There are numerous examples of hunting as reflective of honorable masculine behavior.
The best-known is the hunting game in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which the
honor of Gawain is juxtaposed with the spoils of the Green Knight’s hunt. John Cummins
compares the sport of hunting to preparation for war as well as a reclamation of lost
aspects of manhood: ‘Introduction’, in The Art of Medieval Hunting: The Hound and the
Hawk (London: Phoenix Press, 1988), pp. 3–4.
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The Castration of the Shrew 223

the nobleman’s wife offers the count a generous dowry, he refuses, saying, ‘“Molt
a qui bone feme prant; / qui male prant, ne prant nïent”‘ [‘More he has whose
wife is good. Who has a bad wife, he has nothing’] (215–16). He does, however,
accept the hounds and palfrey as gifts from the nobleman, rectifying what he
perceives as proper gender roles through his own masculine behavior. The
count thus attempts to restore the nobleman to the same position of authority
the count enjoys.
Once away from the nobleman’s home, the count’s actions become exces-
sively aggressive. With thoughts of his mother-in-law in mind, he kills the
hounds and palfrey when they disobey his orders. When the new wife
comments on the insult to her and her father, the count replies, ‘“Por seul itant
/ que trespasserent mon commant”‘ [‘The only reason was that they trespassed
my command’] (267–8). Though the main purpose here is to warn the young
bride not to imitate her mother, the mention of the father implies a masculine
confrontation, challenging the behavior of the nobleman as well as setting up
the proper behavior for a wife. The implied confrontation comes up again when
the young wife disobeys her husband. He asks her who encouraged her disobe-
dience. While she first takes the blame herself, the count insists she is not acting
on her own, and eventually gets her to admit she is following the advice her
mother gave her before she left home:
‘Pranes essample a vostre mere,
qui toz jors desdit vostre pere:
ainz ne dist riens ne desdeïst
ne commenda c’on feïst.’
(227–30)

‘Take the example of your mother, who always disobeyed your father.
Before he said anything, I did not obey, I did not follow his commands.’

While the punishment of the wife shows a rejection of misplaced pride in a

woman, the role of the mother has been set in part by her husband. The
punishment of the countess foreshadows the confrontation between the count
and the noblewoman; however, because the noblewoman’s behavior is a result
of an ineffective masculine performance by her husband, the count’s actions
are a direct challenge to the masculinity of the nobleman and the nobleman’s
authority within his own marriage.
Because it was the husband’s role to keep the wife virtuous (not just sexually,
but morally and socially as well), the nobleman has failed in his role as a
husband. Since his daughter takes her mother’s advice over her father’s, the
nobleman has failed in his duty as a father as well by continuing the pattern of
improper feminine behavior. The daughter does not understand that her mother
is being manipulated, and so her intentions to dominate her husband are a direct
challenge to masculine authority. In terms of masculine performance, the
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224 MARY E. LEECH

nobleman has not performed acceptably, and his failure to perform properly
threatens the social construction of patriarchal dominance. The count
(observing the failures of the nobleman) takes it upon himself to restore the
proper masculine roles, even if that restoration is outside the scope of his own
authority. Through this attempt to restore masculine control, the count under-
mines the role of the nobleman as a husband, again threatening the very
masculine performance he is attempting to reinstate.
Once the count’s wife is subdued, his duty is done. It is clear that the young
wife has learned her lesson. When her parents visit, she does everything her
husband tells her to, even if it is against her inclinations. When the nobleman
and his wife arrive, the tale describes the daughter’s reaction:
La contesse issi de la chanbre,
qui vers sa mere ot le cuer tendre
& nequedent le conte crient
por le baston dont li sovient.
Primes, son pere salua.
(393–7)
The Countess comes out of the bedroom. She who towards her mother has
a tender heart, but gesturing the count cries out for the cane which she
recalls [she remembers the beating]. First she greets her father.

The focus of the tale shifts away from the countess to the interaction between
the count and his in-laws. Throughout the visit, the count enforces the proper
feminine roles upon the mother-in-law, and in turn, on the nobleman. The
count forces his wife to sit, as the lady of the house, next to her father and not
her mother. The count serves the nobleman the best food and wine, while the
mother-in-law, seated away from the main table, has less sumptuous food.
There can be no question that this performance is for the nobleman and the
nobleman’s wife. The count’s wife is obviously subdued, as she ignores her own
inclinations out of fear of her husband’s reprisal, and acts in accordance to his
expectations.
Before the count chastises the mother-in-law, he sends the nobleman out
hunting. Once the nobleman is gone, the count executes his plan to tame his
mother-in-law. Not only does the count usurp the nobleman’s role of
husbandly authority, he makes sure that the nobleman is gone when he
punishes the wife. Unlike his other attempts at masculinizing the nobleman,
the count does not perform for the nobleman directly. The masculine
confrontation has been redirected to one between the count and the
nobleman’s wife. Even before the false castration, the count has already begun
moving the placement of the struggle for masculine identity from the
nobleman to the nobleman’s wife.
When the nobleman returns, ‘assez a prise venoison’ [he took a lot of game]
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The Castration of the Shrew 225

(536). The nobleman, by hunting successfully, has demonstrated a degree of

masculine performance that he has not shown before. However, the
nobleman’s generally passive nature has not really changed. Upon hearing the
count’s explanation of why he castrated the nobleman’s wife, the nobleman
accepts at face value the purpose of the castration as well as his wife’s change
of heart. The outer appearance of masculine dominance has seemingly been
demonstrated and accepted, and so the tale ends with the typical praising of
the shrew-tamer’s actions and a reassertion of the place of women. This ending
also includes a justification for the count’s extreme actions: ‘il otroit mal &
contraire / a ramposneuse de put aire’ [He should act bad and contrary to the
insulting woman of nasty nature] (571–2). While this ending is typical of a
shrew-taming tale, the count’s actions have not truly been directed at a
woman. He has challenged the authority of the nobleman, and created a
performance that identifies the nobleman’s wife as a castrated male.
The domestic performance of masculine dominance and feminine
submission has had no impact on the nobleman’s wife. The mother-in-law is
still described as fiere (haughty). The count’s mind is not on her behavior,
though; it is on the plight of the nobleman. The tale notes that: ‘La nuit
se’n va, li jors apert, / li quens lieve, qui dolenz ert / se son seignor, qui feme
a male’ [the night goes away, the day opened. The count rises he who is
pained about his lord who has a bad wife] (419–21). The countess’s behavior
and the focus of the count’s thoughts on the nobleman both point to the
necessity (in the count’s mind) of showing the nobleman more forcefully how
to control a wife. The pointed examples of the count’s own behavior do not
seem to have any effect on the nobleman. In the count’s mind, the nobleman’s
masculine performance needs more direct interference, which is what the
count does.
Questions remain about the veracity of these changes. While the nobleman
seemingly accepts his wife’s change of heart, he does so with his usual passivity.
He does not question her conversion, nor does he question the rather brutal
method by which this conversion was achieved. In this sense, the nobleman
has not been reinstated into a masculine role, but rather feminized again
through the dominant actions of the count. More troubling in terms of
masculine performance here are the actions of the count. Besides overstepping
the authority of his father-in-law, he gives his mother-in-law a masculine
identity in his attempt to tame her. Through the faux castration, the mother-
in-law’s body is transformed into that of a man. The absence of the nobleman
further marginalizes him as a masculine power, and so the fight for masculine
dominance takes place between the count and the mother-in-law. Every
dynamic of the false castration is one of male/male, not male/female.
Through his assumption of the nobleman’s role, the count further destroys
his father-in-law’s masculinity rather than reinscribing it. By first killing the
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226 MARY E. LEECH

nobleman’s wedding gifts, the count symbolically emasculates him.39 The

count’s treatment of the mother-in-law when the nobleman visits is meant as
an example of how a wife should be treated, just as the young wife’s fear of her
husband’s retaliation is meant to show that willfulness can be controlled. As
with his own wife, the count moves to more violent and excessive actions
against his mother-in-law when the subtler hints at proper behavior are
ignored. While the count is concerned about the nobleman’s situation, the
ultimate confrontation is with the mother-in-law.40 The count takes direct
action to modify her behavior, not her husband’s. Her unfeminine behavior,
which she tries to pass along to her daughter, is compared to that of a man,
particularly when the count gives his reasons for the false castration – her
manly pride comes from her testicles. More significantly, the count attempts
to control her as a man, not a woman.
Nothing about the count’s punishment of his mother-in-law presents her
in a feminine role. Her body, now made masculine, is not the body of a woman
but rather the body of an emasculated man – a eunuch. Nancy F. Partner, in
her article ‘No Sex, No Gender’, makes the point that the social role of the
eunuch ‘could establish a gender identity strong enough to persist through
disabling alteration of the genitals’.41 She goes on to discuss the relationship of
such gender identity to women, saying ‘[o]nly the most temperate of feminist
criticism was necessary to recognize that biological femaleness did not auto-
matically or “naturally” entail femininity when “Feminine” turned out to be
every society’s catchall for transparent male fears’.42 If the female represents
masculine fear, then the castration of the nobleman’s wife becomes a
performance of the male working to subdue what is frightening in the male, a
loss of masculine identity and power, not a fear of female dominance. Rather
than controlling the woman’s body and behavior, the false castration performed
on the female body redirects that body into a male sphere. The mother-in-law’s
body is made male by the count, but her castration cannot return the body to
that of a female. In performing a castration on his mother-in-law, the count

39
Most hunting manuals, according to Cummins, list the greyhound as a particularly
prized animal in hunting, mainly for its speed, obedience, and ability in catching a variety
of quarry (The Art of Medieval Hunting, pp. 12–15). The beheading of the nobleman’s
gifts by the count can be interpreted as a type of castration, which further feminizes the
nobleman. Though the destruction of dogs and horses are a part of the shrew-taming
tradition, the performance here is directly linked to the nobleman rather than as just an
example for the new wife.
40
The phrase feme a male is used throughout this tale. Though the phrase is an indictment
of the mother-in-law’s character, the phrase is also used to mark the identity of the
nobleman (son seignor, qui feme a male) as a victim. The focus becomes a man who is
identified through his wife, not a man who should control her behavior.
41
Nancy F. Partner, ‘No Sex, No Gender’, Speculum 68.2 (1993): 419–43 at pp. 422–3.
42
Ibid., p. 423.
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The Castration of the Shrew 227

emasculates another male; he is not taming or subduing a female. His actions

have undermined the very concepts of masculine order and identity he has
been trying to reinstate.
The castrated body of Abelard again offers an insight into the performance
and perception of masculinity in this fabliau. Martin Irvine discusses implica-
tions raised by Fulk (the prior of Deuil), in a letter where he hints that Abelard’s
only sexual identity is possibly homosexual in nature. Irvine concludes that for
Fulk, ‘it is not simply the fact of castration that unmans Abelard: the lack of
genitals is a sign of a deeper lack, a deficiency or erasure of virtus, which alone
allows the true performance of masculinity. And it was this that Abelard sought
to perform through his books […] a re-identification with symbolic power.’43
Fulk implies that without genitals, Abelard must function as a woman, not a
man; that somehow he has lost his essential masculinity. Abelard challenges
this assumption, and changes the nature of the discussion from the physical to
the philosophical.
Abelard’s castration does not destroy his masculine performance, but rather
changes the focus of it. The loss of his genitals does not change his sexuality or
his role as a man. Bonnie Wheeler argues that in ‘resistance to and independent
of his castration, Abelard asserts a fixed masculinity that inspires unending
feminine desire and the relentless envy of other men’.44 The male body is fixed;
the male body is not dependent on genitalia, but rather on how the body is
perceived by others. Wheeler goes on to say that Abelard challenges the
conception of his own masculinity, and through his conflict with authorities,
establishes a public construction of masculine identity for himself that becomes
the ‘marks of a masculine reputation founded on mastery, creation, and
unbreakable endurance’.45 In Abelard’s case, then, castration is not the end of
masculine power, but the reforging of it. His castration makes him more
masculine, not less. Castration, therefore, is a male-to-male performance which
empowers the victim rather than the castrator.
In the same way, the stage of the mother-in-law’s body becomes a stage for
masculine competition and masculine identity. Since the nobleman has not
controlled his wife through an accepted performance, the count forces the issue
in the fake castration. This performance takes place without the nobleman’s
presence or consent. Afterwards the nobleman appears to go along with the
new performance, but this is also similar to his behavior at the start of the tale.
In accepting the count’s new structure for his marriage, the nobleman can be

43
Martin Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)Writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity, and
Remasculination’, in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Cohen and Wheeler,
pp. 87–106 at p. 94.
44
Wheeler, ‘Origenary Fantasies’, p. 108. McNamara discusses similar concepts of
masculinity and its association with sexuality in ‘The Herrenfrage’.
45
Wheeler, ‘Origenary Fantasies’, p. 107.
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228 MARY E. LEECH

seen as agreeing with the count much in the same way as he appeared to
acquiesce to his wife when he tricked her to get his way. At the end of the tale,
the surface has changed, but the underlying implications of masculine identity
have not. By creating a masculine body from a feminine one, the count has also
created a competition not between himself and his father-in-law, but between
himself and his mother-in-law. This competition is not one of a man exerting
proper authority over a woman, as she is not his wife, but rather the dominance
of one man over another. Rather than taming the wife and reestablishing the
desired masculine role in the nobleman, the count creates an alternate
masculinity to compete with the weaker masculinity of the nobleman and the
overly aggressive masculinity in himself. The mother-in-law’s submission does
not change her new masculine role; she is now in a position to attain a higher
level of masculinity (as Abelard does) than the nobleman, who has not shown
any ability to perform as a proper man. Likewise, the dominating performance
of the count has not removed the threat to masculine authority, but created a
new threat.
The imagery of the female castration suggests fundamental challenges to
the perceived masculine world order. The castration, set up as a corrective for
improper female behavior, actually works to create a new masculine identity
through the newly masculinized body of the mother-in-law. The nobleman’s
performance, which from the start is more feminine than masculine, does not
really change. In many ways, the count reinforces the feminine role of the
nobleman under the pretense of moving him into a more masculine
performance. Though the mother-in-law’s performance at home may change,
the nobleman has not changed, implying that there will be no masculine role
performed in that household. Rather than preserving a masculine dominance,
the count has created a masculine vacuum. His use of an unacceptable and
extreme punishment points to an excess in his masculine performance that
undermines the very concepts he is so desperate to uphold.
La dame escolliee challenges its audience to reconceive the accepted
philosophy of masculine roles and gender identity that it superficially appears
to support. The female body here is a stage, but not one that asserts masculine
dominance or feminine subordination. Rather, this stage enacts a male/male
performance that transforms gender and blurs the lines of gender dynamics.
Masculine roles and masculine identity, even the male body, are not stable
entities. This fluctuation of masculinity and gender roles creates more fears
than it relieves, which offers a unique challenge to the concepts of medieval
masculine authority and social identity.
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CHAPTER 11

Eunuchs of the Grail

Jed Chandler

T he medieval quest for the Holy Grail could only be achieved by a very
special man. He should be a virgin, utterly pure, and, according to certain
of the early versions of the Grail legend, have a rather unusual gender profile:
he may (in short) be castrated. The contextual correspondence between the
representations of Perceval’s ‘virgin gender’ in the early Grail cycles and the
‘spiritual eunuchs’ of the early Christian ascetic movement coalesce in sexual
wounds. In both of these social contexts, perfect purity is valorized as a trans-
formative grace which renders humans angelic; in both contexts the cultivation
of purity represents direct action by the individual to mitigate the effects of the
fall and loss of Eden which precipitated humanity into sexual desire.1 The
literary milieu in which the Grail cycles took shape was infused with the ideal-
ization of virginity which characterized early Christian society, and immersed
in hagiographic narratives which extolled the virtues of virgins. But one partic-
ularly pertinent dynamic linked the two environments: both dissect
masculinity, teasing out a type of manhood in which sexual purity could be
expressed. In medieval Europe, the eleventh-century Gregorian reforms
required celibacy of the priesthood, and saw the development of the concept
of virginity as a philosophical ideal as well as a religious principle.2 Both of
these factors prompted a renewed interest in conceptualizing a ‘non-sexual’
man. In both cases, (late ancient and high medieval) focus falls sharply on the
uncoupling of humans from their sexual desires and organs by asceticism and
by actual or symbolic castration. The organs under scrutiny here are those of
Perceval, in Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval le Conte du Graal and the Manessier

1
According to Augustine, sexual desire was the direct results of the fall, ‘an evil added acci-
dentally from the ancient sin’. Against Julian, trans. Matthew A. Schumacher (Washington,
DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1957), 13:40, p. 345.
2
I. P. Bejczy discusses the evolution of virginity from religious to social and philosophical
ideal in Virtue Ethics in the Middle Ages: Commentaries on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics,
1200–1500 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), pp. 249–73.
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230 JED CHANDLER

continuation of Chrétien’s work the Perlesvaus, and Galahad, in the Queste del
Saint Graal with reference to a parallel text in the Vulgate Lancelot.
Writing between 1170 and 1181, Chrétien de Troyes effectively established
the genre of the Arthurian romance with the publication of his first four works,
Erec and Enide, Cligès, Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, and Lancelot, the Knight of
the Cart. His works represent a radical departure from earlier French chansons
de geste with their focus on narrative action; Chrétien’s romances flow around
the nuances of his characters’ interiority, charting their development as they
reflect and react to events. Particularly, Chrétien focuses on their development
as lovers, since utter commitment to an absolute desire (at once erotic and tran-
scendent) is ennobling. The beloved is the object of the chivalric quest and its
justification.
Chrétien introduces castration into Cligès as a disqualification from the
business of romance. In this text he particularly scrutinizes the meaning of
marital fidelity and chastity from a technical perspective: his protagonists stay
within the letter of the law, yet their love licenses a degree of moral shiftiness.
Cligès, the son of Alexander of Constantinople and Soredamors (Gawain’s
sister), fulfils his father’s wishes for him to be knighted at the court of King
Arthur. He falls passionately in love with Fenice, the wife of Alis, his uncle and
the regent of Constantinople. She refuses to be unfaithful to her husband, but is
open to equivocation. She serves Alis a potion which causes him to confuse
dreams with memories so that he takes his dreams of passionate nights with her
as actual memories, allowing her to retain her virginity. Subsequently she takes
a potion prepared by her old nurse Thessala (a sorcerer) to simulate death, and
once pronounced legally dead is free to marry Cligès. The romance concludes
with the wry comment that because Cligès trusts Fenice he never places her
under surveillance, but subsequent Byzantine rulers keep their wives closely
confined in their quarters, visible to no other men except eunuchs castrated at
birth. The coda adds a retrospective commentary on Alis’s performance:
sexually active only in his dreams, he is in effect another eunuch in the bedroom.
However, Chrétien’s final, unfinished work effectively subverts this
paradigm of erotic and platonic desire and its resolution by demonizing desire
and valorizing purity. For in Perceval, le Conte du Graal he introduces into the
literary corpus an enigmatic tale which inspired numerous successive elabo-
rations and exigeses. In Perceval, the quest for realization through heterosexual
erotic and platonic love is replaced by a quest for virginal purity and spiritual
perfection, and throughout the copious Grail narratives that followed Chrétien’s
work, the sexual realm remains anathema to the Grail questors. They undertake
a battle waged against the exigencies of the body; their quest is for union with
God rather than a union with the lady. The conventions of romance tales where
the man proves his masculinity through battle, through protecting vulnerable
women, and through heterosexual sexual union are forced out of shape. The
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Eunuchs of the Grail 231

Grail knight remains embattled, but he is concerned above all with self-defence
against threats to his own vulnerable chastity. Chrétien returns to the figure of
the eunuch: rather than surrender to lust, and with it to the loss of his sexual
purity, the Grail knight undertakes metaphorical or literal castration. Where
castration disqualifies a man from winning the lady, it can qualify him for
winning the Grail.
Although this conversion in his heroes’ orientation from adventures directed
towards fulfilment of sexual desire to a quest for its negation represents a radical
change of direction in Chrétien’s work, it has analogues in earlier Christian
cultural and literary texts. The resonances become more distinct as the Grail
legend is ‘Christianized’. The quest for utter purity assumes even greater signif-
icance in the versions of the Grail legend which follow Robert de Boron’s
redaction (c. 1191–1202), which frames the narrative in Christian theology by
establishing a provenance for the Grail as the chalice of the Last Supper and the
vessel in which Christ’s blood was caught when his side was pierced during his
crucifixion. There is an intercontextual relationship between such a third ‘virgin
gender’ in the Grail cycles, the congregation of groin wounds and queered
gender in the families closely associated with the Grail, and the tertium genus
of literal and metaphorical eunuchs in early Eastern Christianity.3 The quest for
apatheia, a permanent stilling of sexual desire, is in both contexts linked to male
attainment of the cross-gendered virtue of absolute, intact chastity and to tran-
scendence of the male body. The stilled male body is not fully, and not exactly,
a male body but not a fully feminine one either.
Neither vulnerability to genital wounds nor celibacy were themselves
necessarily regarded as feminizing in medieval literary texts. Indeed, male
chastity was (on occasion) associated with military prowess in historical
combat. In the thirteenth-century Song of Lewes, the success of Simon de
Montfort’s troops at the Battle of Lewes in 1264 is attributed in part to their
clean living, contrasted with the degeneracy of King Henry III’s troops who
‘[e]sse ne victoria digni debuerunt, Qui carnis luxuria foeda sorduerunt’
[defiled by foul carnal debauchery ought not be worthy of victory].4
Descriptions of battle and individual combat are integral to chivalric narra-
tives, and injuries inevitably happen in battle. Kenneth Hodges, anxious to

3
In this volume, Shaun Tougher analyzes the classical attitudes towards eunuchs and their
reception in the Roman Empire, as well as the indeterminate ‘third gender’. See ‘The
Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, pp. 48–72.
4
Thomas Wright, Political Songs of England: From the Reign of John to that of Edward II
(London: Printed for the Camden Society by J. B. Nichols and Son, 1839), cited text from
The Battle of Lewes, lines 164–5, p. 80. When de Montfort was defeated and killed at the
Battle of Evesham in 1265, his body was mutilated and castrated. Cf. Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al
defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of
Identity the South English Legendary’, in this volume, pp. 87–107.
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232 JED CHANDLER

counter the overinterpretation of male vulnerability and male weakness which

he characterizes as a vogue in gender studies, has written a timely article
rearticulating precisely those positive aspects of heroic wounding explicit in
medieval accounts.5 Willingness to suffer wounding in battle demonstrates a
knight’s commitment and his courage, and one’s fighting technique is honed
by the painful results of errors. These honourable wounds (particularly those
to the groin) are translated into the means of spiritual progress in the Grail
cycles, where a wound may function as punishment for sin, prompting repen-
tance and transformation or spiritual insight. In both temporal and spiritual
chivalry, wounds can prove and validate the man.
But not all wounds are manly. Peggy McCracken discerns a distinct
contrast in the connotations of male blood and female blood.6 Women’s blood
is their own business, connected intimately to the body, and its shedding is
generally a closeted, private event; men’s blood is more often shed publicly
and instrumentally to prove or implement or win something – often, in the
romances, to win a woman. Moreover, menstrual blood and the blood of
parturition were regarded as polluting (the legacy of Eve’s primal sin and God’s
consequent curse), and both stem from woman’s perceived imperfection.
Castration is, by its nature, unmanning: the body which results is qualitatively
different. It is an act of transition, of a radical alteration of status, of genre – a
man becomes a eunuch.
This transformation of man is enacted in the early Grail cycles, and partic-
ularly in the Vulgate Cycle, as a battle against sexuality itself, against male
embodiment and its concomitant desires. The Grail which the questors seek
may therefore be handled safely by the female, virginal Grail maidens or by
anomalous men. The fisher king, custodian of the Grail, is the castrated and
powerless son of a maimed father; the knight who will achieve the quest is
foretold and heralded as a creature of compound species and genders with
intersexed anatomy. The Grail quest is both a profoundly holy and a prodi-
giously queer undertaking; it is a quest to become perfectly, asexually pure.
The Grail knight faces temptation everywhere, and sin lies within his body, in
its sexual responses which assert his earthiness and undermine his purity. The
adventures of Perceval, in particular, probe and deconstruct the qualia and the
qualities of masculinity revealing a compromised, salvaged male embodiment
– the Grail virgin who is essentially different from the natural man.
The male groin is a particularly vulnerable area in the Grail cycles. It is
vulnerable to wounds in battle, to sexual temptation and assault, and (amongst
the chaste questors) to a literary or (almost) literal ablation as the hero under-

5
Kenneth Hodges, ‘Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le
Morte Darthur’, Studies in Philology 106.1 (2009): 14–31.
6
Peggy McCracken, The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval
Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
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Eunuchs of the Grail 233

takes a process of ascesis intended to produce the total sexual apatheia which
alone will permit him to win the Grail. There is a lack of ease with the male
body in its entirety reflected in the fragmented, itemized descriptions of Perceval
and later Galahad, and their representation as unhuman beings or beasts. Both
knights achieve the Grail quest primarily through their virginity, and they are
creatures of incongruous parts – Perceval and Galahad are prophetically
accorded male and female viscera.7 While the Grail maiden can hold and
minister from the Grail without any injury or danger to herself, men must be
wounded and shaped in the female-gendered discipline of virginity – in effect,
castrated, because the Grail will damage whole men. King Mordrain, who
rescues Joseph of Arimathea from imprisonment, is struck down because he
tries to gaze upon the Grail (now identified as the cup in which Christ’s blood
was caught at his crucifixion) without being worthy.8 Blinded, sustained indef-
initely in pain, he can die only in the arms of a true and sinless knight – Galahad.
The emasculation of the Grail virgins sets them outside the frame of nature,
creating an abstract ideal of purity unattainable in the flesh. In the Old French
Perlesvaus, written between 1198 and 1240, Perceval forces his way into the
‘turning castle’, a structure Vergil constructed at a time when philosophers were
seeking an earthy paradise and which was inhabited by people who followed
the ‘old law’. This castle is destined to spin unceasingly until the arrival of a
knight ‘qui averiot le chief d’ore et regart de lion et cuer d’acier et nonbril de
virge pucele et teches sanz vilenie et valeur d’ome et de foi et creance de Dieu’
[who would have a head of gold, the gaze of a lion, a heart of steel, the navel of
a virgin girl free from all villainy, the valour of a man, and faith and belief in
God] (250).9 The advent of the ‘good knight’ will save their souls and win them

7
Kathleen Coyne Kelly discusses Galahad’s femininity in Malory’s Morte Darthur, finding
that in this later redaction of the Grail legend he remains outside the homosocial society
of Arthur’s knights and represents the ‘threatening feminine’ which the knights sought to
disown in themselves. He was inviolate, ‘unscathed by sword or temptation’ and ‘more
feminine than the feminine itself in his invoilateness’: ‘Menaced Masculinity and Imperiled
Virginity in Malory’s Morte Darthur’, in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie (Newark:
University of Delaware Press, 1999), pp. 97–114 at p. 113. Unlike Perceval, Galahad is
never naked, and unlike Perceval he never bleeds; he is sanitized, purified femininity.
8
The story of King Mordrain, previously known as King Evalach of the Saracens before
his conversion to Christianity, is recounted in Gerbert de Montreuil’s Continuation of
Chrétien’s Perceval, and in the Vulgate Estoire del Saint Graal, which contains the account
of his healing and death in the arms of Sir Galahad. Gerbert de Montreuil. La Continuation
de Perceval, vol. 2, ed. Mary Williams (Paris: Champion, 1925), lines 10450–556,
pp. 109–13; The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, vol. 6: Les aventures ou la
queste del Saint Graal. La mort le Roi Artus, ed. H. Oskar Sommer (Washington, DC:
Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1913), pp. 62, 184–5.
9
William A. Nitze and T. Atkin Jenkinson, eds., Le haut livre du Graal, Perlesvaus: Text,
Variants, and Glossary, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932). Page numbers
are given in parentheses in the text.
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234 JED CHANDLER

respite from death because they can receive baptism and embrace Christianity
immediately upon his arrival. Earlier in the text, Perceval’s sister describes him
in almost identical terms while searching for him: ‘Il a le chief d’or e regart de
lion e no[m]blil de virge pucele e cuer de valeur e teches sanz vilenie’ [He has
the head of gold, the gaze of a lion and the navel of a virgin girl. And a valorous
heart free from all villainy] (61). Neither of those she approaches (Sir Gawain
and a hermit who serves the fisher king) need any further identifying
description, they recognize him from this amorphous blend of emblems;
Perceval is the unhuman virgin knight.10
In the Vulgate Lancelot, Merlin prophesies that a beast ‘de diuerse manière
sor toutes autres bestes’ [distinct from all other types of beast] (27),11 with trans-
genic and cross-gendered parts, will fulfil the quest for the Grail. The foreor-
dained Grail beast is (in this case) Galahad, and Master Elias reveals the
prophecy to Galehaut, close friend and companion of Lancelot. This beast is
fleshed out with the ‘head and face of a lion and the body and legs of an
elephant […] the kidneys and navel of an untouched maiden, and a heart of
hard, dense steel that will be proof against swaying or softening, and it will have
the speech of a serious woman and the will to make right judgements’.12 This
hybrid beast is charged with symbolism. Both the lion and the elephant were
familiar allegorical images, described and depicted in Latin bestiaries, a genre
which flourished in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in northern Europe
and which combined the functions of natural description with supernatural
interpretation and didactic moral allegory.13 The lion (then as now) was titled
‘king of the beasts’ and symbolized human power and authority, with specific
reference to Christ as the Lion of Judah. According to the bestiary preserved
in Harley MS 3244, the elephant (an image of might) could not bear evil and

10
A very similar formula for Perceval also appears in the Livre d’Artus continuation of the
Vulgate Cycle, As noted by J. Douglas Bruce, ‘Pelles, Pellinor, and Pellean in the Old
French Arthurian Romances: I’, Modern Philology 16.3 (1918): 113–28 at p. 118 n.1. Bruce
traces the genealogy of this description of the hybrid Grail hero from its first appearance
in the Perlesvaus.
11
The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, Vol. 2: Le livre de Lancelot del Lac, ed.
Heinrich Oskar Sommer (Washington, DC: The Carnegie Institution, 1911). Page
numbers are given in parentheses in the text.
12
There is some variation in the precise anatomical graftings comprising the beast in the
various manuscripts of the Lancelot, but all agree that it will have the kidneys and navel
of an untouched virgin maiden: ‘si aura rains & nombril de pucele denterine uirginite’
and the discourse of a serious woman. The translation here is that in Lacy’s edition of
the post-Vulgate Lancelot: Norris J. Lacy, gen. ed., Lancelot-Grail: Part 3, Lancelot Parts
I and II, new edn (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010). Textual references are taken from
Sommers’s edition of the British Museum manuscripts.
13
Ellen Lorraine Friedrich examines medieval bestiaries and their portrayal of beavers as
mammals who castrate themselves in her essay in this volume, ‘Insinuating
Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose’,
pp. 255–79.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 235

so crushed it under its feet.14 As well as signifying size and strength, the
elephant was also associated with purity; they were believed to be naturally
chaste animals having, ‘no desire for sexual intercourse’,15 living as platonic
partners for life and mating only once whereupon the female conceived a single
calf.16 A further allegorical interpretation of a characteristic ascribed to
elephants is particularly relevant to the Grail knight in his salvific role. Once
fallen, the elephant was believed to be too heavy to get to its feet again, and
could be saved only by a smaller elephant which would help it to rise. The fallen
elephant represented the Jewish nation and the smaller elephant anagogically
represented Christ, who brought salvation to the fallen and the new covenant
to the Jewish people.17 Perceval exists outside the frame of the mundane
because he is known through prophecy and recognized through allegory. His
liberation of the imprisoned followers of the old law establishes him as a Christ-
like figure, the Messiah of Old Testament prophecies who (through the
harrowing of Hell) liberated the prophets and pious Jews.18 He is inscribed into
a genealogy of gender variance and metaphorical castration which has
shadowed representations of Christian purity since the Pauline epistles.
The description of the compound beast that will achieve the Grail appears
again in a somewhat expanded form in the Tristan en prose (c.1230–42), the
latter part of which incorporates much material from the Vulgate Cycle Queste
del Saint Graal. The account of the Grail beast ‘de toutes bestes la plus diverse’
[the most diverse of all beasts] (§85. 4)19 provides a particularly succinct expla-

14
George C. Druce supplies the translation of the relevant part of this manuscript together
with other manuscript sources of elephant lore contained in medieval bestiaries, natural
scientific and heraldic texts: ‘The Elephant in Medieval Legend and Art’, Journal of the
Royal Archaeological Institute 76 (1919): 1–70 at pp. 5–7.
15
This reputation for chastity was elaborated on in devotional literature where elephants
were depicted iconographically in pairs and deployed to represent Adam and Eve in the
Garden of Eden. In a recapitulation of the biblical narrative of the fall, the female elephant
bore the responsibility for their loss of paradise. Like Eve she ate and plied the male with
food – in this case the mandrake – which weakened their resistance to carnal desire. The
pair retired to an earthly paradise in the east after their mating. Ibid. p. 6. Translation
from British Library MS. Harley 3244.
16
D. F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 2: A Century of Wonder. Book 1: The Visual
Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 129 and refs.
17
Willene B. Clark, ed., A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary.
Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006) p. 128; Christa
Grössinge, ‘The Unicorn on English Misericords’, in Medieval Art: Recent Perspectives: A
Memorial Tribute to C. R. Dodwell, ed. Gale R. Owen-Crocker and Timothy Graham
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 142–58 at p. 155.
18
A very similar description of Perceval appears in the Livre d’Artus continuation of the
Vulgate Cycle, as noted by Bruce, ‘Pelles, Pellinor, and Pellean’, p. 118, n.1. Bruce traces
the genealogy of this description of the hybrid Grail hero from its first appearance in the
Perlesvaus.
19
Emmanuelle Baumgartner, ed., Le Roman de Tristan en prose, vol. 6: Du séjour des amants
à la Joyeuse Garde jusquaux premières aventures de la ‘queste du Graal’ (Geneva: Librarie
Droz, 1993), p. 224. Text and line numbers will be given in parentheses.
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236 JED CHANDLER

nation of the exact effect of the female kidneys and navel: ‘par ce qu’il avra rains
et nombril de pucele virge et enterine, dont sera il virges et castes’ [since it will
have the kidneys and navel of an intact virgin maiden, then it will be a chaste
and celibate] (§85. 26–8). To the medieval mind, the kidneys were dangerous
to the preservation of chastity (particularly male chastity) since they were instru-
mental in channelling the precursors of semen to the testicles and in triggering
its ejaculation. The kidneys are, according to Nemesius of Emesa:
purgers of the blood and exciters of sexual desire. For the veins which
empty into the testicles […] pass directly through the kidneys, deriving
thence a certain pungency provocative of lust, after the same manner that
some pungent juice under the skin causes an itch. And inasmuch as the
flesh of the testicles is more delicate than skin, they are the more stung by
this pungency and cause an unreasoning desire to emit semen.20

In this outline of renal function, Nemesius follows the physiological conjectures

of Hippocrates and Galen, whose texts on human anatomy and physiology,
together with the selected texts translated from the Arabic medical corpora,
effectively constituted the Western medieval medical curricula. Received
medical consensus held that healthy kidney function was essential for phallic
erection and the emission of semen.21
The kidneys were believed also to have a role in determining moral
behaviour and in cognition, a belief derived from references to them in the Old
Testament where the kidneys represent a person’s innermost essence, the touch-
stone of integrity: ‘I will bless the Lord, who hath given me understanding:
moreover my reins [i.e. kidneys] also have corrected me even till night’ (Psalm
16:7), and the essential nature that God will judge: ‘I am the Lord who search
the heart and prove the reins: who give to every one according to his way, and
according to the fruit of his devices’ (Jeremiah. 17:10). According to Isidore of
Seville, the navel is the source of female sexuality and sensuality. After a brief
and delicately worded resumé of the role of the kidneys in the production of
semen, with the loins (lumbus) as the locus of ‘the cause of bodily pleasure in
males’, he adds ‘just as in women it is the navel’ (umbilicus).22 He appends a
gloss of biblical exigesis to the theory by referring to Job 38:3: ‘Gird up your
loins like a man’. This is a reminder, he claims, of vigilance against lust. In
Pseudo-Athanasius’ On Virginity, a late ancient treatise falsely accredited to

20
William Telfer, ed., Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emesa (Westminster: John Knox
Press, 2006), p. 38.
21
Eustace Dockray Philips outlines early Greek medical thinking about the function of the
kidney as regulator of semen in Aspects of Greek Medicine (Philadelphia: Charles Press,
1987), pp. 25, 46.
22
S. A. Barney, ed., The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), XI.i.89, p. 237.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 237

Saint Athanasius of Alexandria and preserved in two Syriac manuscripts dated

between the fifth and ninth centuries, the author provides biblical grounds for
distinguishing between the male and female loci of sexuality citing Job 40: 16:
His strength is in his loins and at the navel. And surely it was in the beauty
of chastity that Job spoke, saying ‘loins’ to mean the man and ‘navel’ the
beautiful form of the woman. Thus, let the man’s loins be girded, and let
the company of women put on precious chastity.23

The Grail beast’s virginity, then, has a specifically female type of purity, with
female physiology of sexual regulation. It is a compound of virtuous parts, its
sexuality indeterminate. The sexual ambiguity of the Grail beast at once rein-
forces and destabilizes the medieval traditional gender binary. That it should
have ‘the valour of a man’ is a conventional descriptor in perfect accordance
with the attributes traditionally accorded to the male. That it should have the
navel of a woman, and ‘the speech of a serious woman’ – the gender associated
with garrulousness and levity – goes entirely against the ingrained bias of
medieval gender stereotypes. Woman’s speech (it was believed) was dangerous
talk, loose and licentious, and her place in medieval society was often defined
by curtailment and containment. Women had little voice in matters of religion,
where Paul’s authority was definitive: ‘Let women keep silence in the churches:
for it is not permitted them to speak but to be subject, as also the law saith. But
if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is a
shame for a woman to speak in the church’ (1 Corinthians, 14.34). The
injunction was taken up and elaborated enthusiastically by the Church fathers.
According to Tertullian, woman was ‘the devil’s gateway’ since her speech
‘unsealed’ the tree of knowledge by persuading Adam to eat its fruit.24 In the
Ancrene Wisse, Eve’s loquacity teaches the serpent exactly how to get her to eat
from the tree of knowledge: ‘Eve heold i parais long tale with the neddre, talde
him al the lesceun thet Godd hefde i-red hire ant Adam of the eappel, ant swa
the feond thurh hire word understod anan-riht hire wacnesse ant i-fond wei
toward hire of hire forlorenesse’ [Eve had a long talk with the snake in
paradise, and told him all the lesson God had taught her and Adam about the
apple, and thus the devil understood at once her weakness from her words,
and found out the way to destroy her] (216–18).25 Moreover, unguarded
speech is dangerous to a woman’s chastity. Writing to an anchoress, the

23
David Brakke, ed., Pseudo-Athanasius on Virginity, vol. 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 2002),
p. 12 §33.
24
Tertullion, ‘On the Apparel of Women’, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers IV, ed. Alexander
Roberts and James Donaldson, trans. S. Thelwall (New York: Christian Literature
Publishing, 1885), p. 14.
25
Ancrene Wisse, part 2, ed. R. Hasenfratz (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University
Medieval Institute, 2000), p. 111.
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238 JED CHANDLER

twelfth-century Cistercian abbot, Ælred of Rievaulx, cautions that she must

be utterly preoccupied with chastity:
[i]n food and drink, in sleep, in speech let her always be on her guard
against a threat to her chastity, lest by allowing the flesh more than its due
she may increase the enemy’s strength and nourish the hidden foe. […] Let
her always be afraid of hearing something which might cast even the least
cloud over the clear skies of her chastity; let not doubt that she will be aban-
doned by grace if she utters a single word against purity.26

A serious woman is a quiet woman, a woman who is constantly vigilant against

the temptations of lust and the serpent: and it is precisely in those respects that
Perceval (the Grail beast) falls down and is – almost – abandoned by grace
because his desire invokes the devil. In a trope familiar to a medieval audience
from its frequent occurrence in the vitae of holy ascetics, Perceval is assayed
and almost lost to the quest by a demon in the form of a woman.
It is precisely in this context of sexual desire that the groins of the Grail
virgins are at risk from physical wounds as well as from literary attenuation. A
cluster of literal wounds afflict the immediate family of the fisher king, custodian
of the Grail. A fisher king is central to the Grail cycles from his first appearance
between 1181 and 1190 in Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval. He starts his literary
career as something of an enigma: there are two kings of the Grail Castle which
Perceval visits, a father (the Grail king) and a son (known as the roi pêcheur, the
fisher king) whose attributes merge. Neither functions as a king; both are
maimed, both passive and circumscribed. The fisher king is introduced into the
narrative as a fisherman who offers Perceval lodging. He is revealed as the king
of a wasted land, himself disabled (mehaigné [maimed]), through a wound
sustained in battle. He is pierced with a spear through the thighs ‘par mi les
hanches amedos’ [between or through both hips] (A text, v. 3499); ‘Parmi les
cuisses ambesdeus’ [between or through both thighs] (T text, v. 3513).27 The
suggestion here, that the wound may be interpreted as castration, was not lost
on early redactors of the Grail cycle. As noted by Anne Wilson, Wolfram von
Eschenbach certainly interpreted it that way: his fisher king in the Parzival is
‘durch die heidruose sîn’ [pierced through the testicles] (479.12).28 The fisher

26
Ælred of Rievaulx, A Rule of Life for a Recluse, trans., Mary Paul Macpherson OCSO, in
The Works of Aelred of Rievaulx, vol. 1: Treatises (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian
Publications c/o Liturgical Press, 1971), pp. 41–102 at p. 64,
27
I am indebted to Anne Wilson for both of the Perceval citations here – the A text, edited
by Lecoy, and the T text, edited by William Roach. A. Wilson, The Magical Quest: The Use
of Magic in Arthurian Romance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), p. 118.
28
Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, ed. and trans. Peter Knecht as Parzival: Studienausgabe.
Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der sechsten Ausgabe von Karl Lachmann. Mit Einführung
zum Text eer Lachmannschen Ausgabe und in Probleme der Parzival-Interpretation: 2
Auflage. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), p. 483. The phrase ‘par mi les hanches amedos’ was a
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Eunuchs of the Grail 239

king presides over a sumptuous feast during which a procession passes through
the hall. At its head a youth carries a bleeding lance, at its centre a girl carries a
‘grail’ – a shallow serving dish – accompanied by radiant lights. After it has been
carried in procession through the hall, the Grail is taken into a further chamber
and Perceval, restrained and passive, watches in silence. As Helen Adolf remarks,
‘a bleeding lance, which is carried around, reminds those who are present of the
bleeding warrior’,29 and although Perceval is unaware of the aetiology of the
fisher king’s wound at this point, the association between weapon and wound
relates to his disabled father as well as to the fisher king.30 The bleeding spear is
identified in the First Continuation of the Conte del Graal as the spear of
Longinus, the soldier named in the Gospel of Nicodemus as the man who
pierced the heart of the crucified Christ, but in Chrétien’s work it remains an
enigma. The last that is heard of the fisher king or Grail king in the Perceval is
that they disappear (with the castle and all its inhabitants) the morning after
Perceval fails to ask any pertinent questions about the bleeding lance or whom
the Grail might serve. Later it is revealed that the Grail king has lived entirely
within his chamber for twelve years, sustained only by the Host which is brought
in the Grail. Since he is so spiritual, he needs nothing else. The author does not
reveal whether he is immobilized in the chamber through injury or through
choice, nor is it clear whether the fisher king is also fed from the Grail. Other
questions relating to Perceval’s presence at the Grail castle also remain
temporarily unresolved. Why is Perceval invited to the castle? And does the
fisher king recognize this strange, mute, awkward youth at his table? For
(unknown to the reader at this stage in the story, and unknown to himself)
Perceval is cousin to the fisher king and nephew to the Grail king. He learns
this from another relative, a hermit whom he visits and who also turns out to
be his uncle – the brother of the Grail king and Perceval’s mother. Perceval’s
silence is the speech of a serious woman – a silent witness to a mystery; like a
woman silent in a church service he has, as yet, no identity.
Perceval has had to piece himself together from the start. At the beginning
of the story, he knows nothing about himself, he even lacks a name. Perceval is
set apart from his society, raised in ignorance of his culture and his family and
away from other human contact. He is secluded from the world (particularly
from male company), confined with his mother in a woodland castle – a

common enough euphemism for the genitals: See Clovis Brunel, ‘Les hanches du roi
pécheur (Chrétien De Troyes, “Percevalz” 3513)’, Romania 81 (1960): 37–43.
29
Helen Adolf, ‘Studies in Chrétien’s Conte del Graal’, Modern Language Quarterly 8.1
(March 1947): 3–19.
30
David C. Fowler suggests that ‘[t]he lance is to be identified with the hero’s father, or the
fisher king, and the Grail, containing the sacramental wafer (oiste), with his mother,
whose influence has helped determine the form of the entire apparition which we are
examining’. Prowess and Charity in the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 1959), p. 32.
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240 JED CHANDLER

controlled environment more fitting for a medieval girl than a boy, a cloistered,
interior, feminized space. The forest in which the castle is set has returned to
nature: it is known as the Gaste Forêt or Waste Forest, desolate territory laid
waste by warfare, raped and abandoned by all but the defenceless. But one day
Perceval wanders beyond this space and sees men for the first time – armed
men, a company of knights riding through the forest. He focuses his gaze on
their magnificent armour. He tries to understand them in his mother’s Catholic
paradigm, rapidly dismissing the possibility they may be demons; these beings
are, he marvels, ‘[p]lus bel … que Dex ne que si enge tuit’ [more beautiful than
God or all his angels] (417–18).31 He throws himself on the ground before them
to worship them, as his mother had told him to worship God. When one of the
knights approaches him, thinking he is cowering in fear, Perceval asks him if he
is God, and when they tell him they are knights and explain the function of the
lance, shield, and armour, he aspires to become one of these prodigies himself.
His mother tries to discourage him by revealing why they live hidden from the
world. Her husband met with disaster in battle where he was disabled and lost
his lands and riches: ‘[Il]fu parmi les janbes navrez si que il mahaigna del cors’
[He was wounded between the legs, so that he was maimed] (A: 434–5). Their
two elder sons were later killed in battle and Perceval’s father died of grief. The
knights seemed to Perceval to be angels, and he is entranced by the gloss and
glamour of their armour, but he is deluded. Battle, seen from the perspective of
the Gaste Forêt, destroys men rather than ennobling them. Perceval is unmoved
by her words and impervious to her fear for him. He leaves his mother who
faints on the threshold of the house. His first autonomous undertaking is to
sever himself from maternal control, follow in his father’s footsteps and seek his
place among knights at the court of King Arthur. However, since his sole model
for social interaction is his mother, Perceval lacks any insight into the andro-
centric culture of chivalry. He is a blank slate, a man without a name, without a
male role model, and without any understanding of the world beyond his forest
enclosure. He awaits gender confirmation.
The groin wound which Perceval’s father sustains receives further attention
in the third continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval, by an author who identifies
himself as Manessier, It was written between 1210 and 1230, considerably later
than the other continuations and the composition of the Vulgate Grail cycle
which follows Robert de Boron’s Christianized Grail redaction, from which
Manessier borrowed extensively. The work conveys its message through violence
rather than finesse: the fisher king mutilates himself in a paroxysm of grief and
his healing is effected through revenge. Where Chrétien simply explains the
fisher king’s mutilation as a battle wound, Manessier provides a more detailed
aetiology. The fisher king and his brother, Goon Desert (an invention of

31
Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal (Perceval), ed. F. Lecoy (Paris: Champion, 1975).
Line numbers are given in parentheses in the text.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 241

Manessier’s), engage in a battle against two giants, Espinogre and Partinal. Goon
Desert kills Espinogre, and is killed by Partinal in revenge; Partinal’s sword
breaks with the stroke. Goon Desert’s body and the broken sword are brought
back to the Grail king, who injures himself on the shards. His wound cannot be
healed until Goon Desert is avenged. There is a critical debate whether this
wound is self-inflicted deliberately or the result of clumsiness, but the king’s
insistence on taking the broken blade, on acting in haste, on the precise line of
incision confirm his objective – the fisher king castrates himself:32
Et je …
Pris les pieces que me randi
Ne onques plus n’iatendi,
Parmi les cuises an travers
M’anferi, siquetoz les ners
An tranchai.
(32910–14)33

I took the pieces [of the blade] which had been returned to me and without
any delay I cut along between my thighs so that all the nerves were severed.

32
Writing in 1888, Alfred Nutt settled on the accidental hypothesis, pronouncing that ‘taking
up the fragments incautiously [the fisher king] was pierced through the thigh’: Studies on
the Legend of the Holy Grail (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2003), p. 20. In a similar
vein, Jean-Claude Lozac’hmeur insists that ‘chez Manessier, le Roi-Pêcheur déclare qu’il
s’est blessé en maniant maladroitement les fragments de l’épée’ (according to Manessier, the
fisher king declares that he injured himself while handling the fragments of the sword care-
lessly). ‘De la tête de Bran à l’hostie du Graal’, in Arthurian Tapestry. Essays in Memory of
Lewis Thorpe, ed. Kenneth Varty (Glasgow: British Branch of the International Arthurian
Society at the French Department of the University of Glasgow, 1981), 275–86 at p. 285.
The fisher king injured himself deliberately, grief-stricken at the death of his brother and
notes a correspondence with Perceval’s self-harm later in the text (p. 587). Marie-Colombe
LeBlanc refers to ‘ l’automutilation du Roi Pêcheur: fou de chagrin, le Roi Pêcheur, recevant
les pièces de l’épée, se blessa entre les cuisses: il se trancha les nerfs, ce qui le rendit impotent’
[the self-mutilation of the fisher king: maddened by grief, the fisher king, on receiving the
pieces of the sword, injured himself between the thighs: he severed the nerves, which
rendered him impotent] (vv. 32910–15), observing that ‘[l]a répétition des pronoms de la
première personne insiste sur la proper responsabilité du roi dans cet acte’ [the repetition
of first person pronouns stresses the king’s personal responsibility for this action]: ‘Perceval
quêteur du Graal chez les continuateurs’ (PhD dissertation, Université Jean Moulin Lyon
3, 2008), p. 231. Hélène Bouget raises his mutilation as a question, an enigma: ‘Pourquoi le
Roi Pêcheur porte-t-il atteinte à son intégrité physique, en se heurtant les cuisses du tronçon
de l’épée qui s’est brisée contre son frère? Le chagrin n’ explique pas tout, et encore moins
le lien specialist en magique entre la soudure, la vengeance et la guérison’ [Why does the
fisher king compromise his physical integrity, striking the fragment of the blade which
broke which was broken against his brother into his thighs? Grief does not explain it, still
less the particular magical relationship between re-forging [the broken sword], vengeance
and healing]. ‘Enquerre et deviner: poétique de l’énigme dans les romans arthuriens français
(fin du XIIe–premier tiers du XIIIe siècle)’, (PhD dissertation, Université de Rennes II–
Haute Bretagne, 2007), p. 223.
33
Manessier, The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien De Troyes: The Third
Continuation, ed. W. Roach and R. H. Ivy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1949), pp. 11–12.
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242 JED CHANDLER

One day (it is foretold), a knight will repair the sword and avenge Goon Desert.
This focus upon revenge effectively transfers Perceval’s sphere of action to a
temporal arena in keeping with the overarching revenge structure of this
continuation, and the fisher king is restored to health and vigour when Perceval
brings the head of Partinal to his castle. Perceval (the nephew of both the fisher
king and of Goon Desert) eventually succeeds the fisher king as Grail king.
The fisher king’s self-mutilation in Manessier’s continuation seems completely
irrational. Autocastration is, at least, a highly eccentric expression of grief.
Manessier’s rationale for the wound, set as it is in a revenge narrative, seems
primarily to demonstrate strong feeling compellingly and serve as a convenient
(if implausible) plot device to further the action.
In both the Grail cycles and in early Eastern religious texts, whether the
metaphorical ‘spiritual castration’ of the late ancient ascetic or a wound to the
groin of the romance questor, castration generally follows lust. For the ascetics
it is a blessing, a divine grace, for those who overindulge in sex it is a
punishment; and for Perceval it is penance. But in all these cases it is the conse-
quence of sexual desire. There is an unambiguous instance of punitive castration
in Wolfram’s Parzival, where the evil magician (Clinschor) is unambiguously
unmanned for committing adultery with Iblis, the wife of King Ibert of Sicily:
Clinschor slief an ir arme,
lager dä iht warme,
daz muoser sus verpfenden:
er war mit küneges henden
zwischenn beinn gemachet sieht.
(657, 217–21)

Clinschor slept in her arms; if he had slept warm there he had to pay a penalty
for it: he was rendered smooth between his legs by the king’s own hand.

In the fifteenth-century Morte Darthur, Thomas Malory has the sexually prolific
Sir Gareth inflicted with a wound readily interpreted as symbolic castration. He
is in bed with Lyonesse and the pair are interrupted by an armed knight who
stabs Sir Gareth ‘thorow the thycke of the thygh’ before being himself killed.34
In the Queste del Saint Graal spiritual chivalry is valorized and virginity is
privileged above other virtues as an expression of holiness.35 According to

34
Sir Thomas Malory, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 3rd edn,
revised. P. J. C. Field (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 333. On the interpretation of
this wound, see Karen Cherewatuk, Marriage, Adultery and Inheritance in Malory’s Morte
Darthur (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 14–17. Roger Dalrymple notes the
suggestion of homoeroticism between the two knights in this scene: Middle English
Literature: A Guide to Criticism (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), p. 197.
35
Albert Pauphilet, ed., La queste del Saint Graal: Roman du 13e siècle (Paris: Champion,
1923).
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Eunuchs of the Grail 243

Albert Pauphilet, ‘[l]a pensée dominante de la Queste, qui a dicté le plan

d’ensemble, inspiré maint épisode et qui est attestée par quelques phrases caté-
goriques, c’est que la vie morale est tout entière résumée par l’antithèse de la
luxure et de la virginité’ [The dominant concept of the Queste, which has
dictated the overall plan, inspired each episode and which is borne out by
particular key phrases, is that a moral life is totally defined as the antithesis to
lust and by virginity.]36 The perfect knight in this fully Christianized redaction
of the Grail narrative is Galahad, who replaces Perceval as the Grail beast and
as paragon, and in whose company Perceval attains the Grail as a privileged
witness. Galahad’s purity is absolute and is undertaken for the purest of reasons
– unreserved love for and commitment to God without any personal desires
or interests: ‘La figure qui domine tout le tableau de la vie chrétienne, en qui
s’incarne la perfection, Galaad, a pour première qualité d’être vierge’ [The
image which dominates the entire representation of Christian life, in whom its
perfection is embodied, Galahad, has as his foremost quality virginity.]37 In the
Queste, Perceval is tested against this ideal of holiness rather than in the
temporal revenge framework of Manessier’s continuation and he is found
wanting. He is earthly, male, and hormonal. In both the Queste and the
Manessier continuation, a demon assays Perceval’s chastity in the form of a
woman. In the Queste the test and penance are gritty, graphic, and corporal;
assaulted by the devil in female form, Perceval takes direct action against his
groin, the source of his imperfection.38
Perceval is marooned on an island, and as he scans the horizon he sees a
ship with black sails approaching. On board is a woman of extraordinary
beauty, who deceitfully plies him with food and wine until he is (for the first
and only time in his life) so overcome by sexual desire that he reneges on his
commitment to chastity and pleads for her love. She agrees, asking only that
he pledge himself to her. In his haste Perceval neglects his duty of prayer as
well, until he notices the cross engraved on the handle of his sword and crosses
himself. At this the devil reverts to its natural form and (palled in smoke and
stinking) it flees from the island into the sea, which roils in flames. As a result
of this metamorphosis, Perceval savagely pierces his thigh with his blade, and
the blood spurts out to cover him. ‘Lors trest s’espee dou fuerre et s’en fiert si
durement qu’il l’embat en sa senestre cuisse, et li sans en saut de toutes parz. Et
quant il voit ce, si dist: “Biax sire Diex, ce est en amende de ce que je me sui
meffet vers vos’” [Then he unsheathes his sword from its scabbard and strikes
himself so hard that he embeds it in his left thigh and the blood spurts out

36
Albert Pauphilet, Études sur La queste del Saint Graal attribuée à Gautier Map (Paris:
Champion, 1921), p. 38.
37
Ibid..
38
This is similar to hagiographic accounts of penitential autocastration in The South English
Legendary. See Tracy, ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’, pp. 98–9 in this volume.
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244 JED CHANDLER

everywhere. And when he sees this, he says ‘Lord God, this is my reparation
for my misdeed against you’] (110.23). Perceval takes stock of himself. He is
confronted by an image of unstable gender identity. His clothes lie scattered
off to one side, his armor lies discarded on the other; he is naked, pierced, and
bleeding, reminiscent of female defloration and of castration. Moreover, the
creature he took for a woman was a demon, gendered male.39 In Manessier’s
version of this attempted seduction narrative the demon takes the form of
Perceval’s beloved, Blanchefleur. It is a particularly perverse temptation. Who
exactly (or indeed what exactly) he desires is equivocal, since on seeing his
sword: ‘Se seigna, et par ce deçut / Le deable a qui son delit / Volloit faire dedanz
le lit’ [He crossed himself, and so deceived the devil with which he had wanted
to enjoy himself in bed] (38146–8). Perceval sees his sword and is reminded to
cross himself only as he joins the Blanchefleur double in bed, at which sign she
changes form beneath him and flees: ‘Li diables qui soz lui jut / Saut sus, que
plus n’i aresta; / Paveillon et lit am porta’ [The devil which was lying beneath
him immediately jumped up without any delay] (38156–8). The scene in
Manessier’s continuation turns upon Perceval’s vulnerability to the seduction
of sin and his escape from metaphorically and literally coupling with the devil.
In the Queste, where the highest virtue is virginity, it revolves around his
vulnerability to, and renunciation of, lust – it is all about his groin.
Perceval has all the signs of strength, all the accoutrements of chivalry. As a
knight, Perceval receives his own armor and the entitlement to wear it as an
outward expression of a code of masculinity which rigidly prescribes the
conduct and attitudes of a social elite. Armor was an intact, impenetrable sealed
shell, encasing the male body. Perceval embodies the kind of rigid control of
which the armor is emblematic; he is always contained and controlled, first by
his mother in the forest castle and later by the patriarchal code of chivalry.
Casting aside his performance of chivalric masculinity, Perceval has indeed let
his guard down. He jettisons his armor and dispenses with his spiritual disci-
pline by omitting to pray. He has, instead of protecting women, rendered himself
passive and vulnerable before a seeming woman (who is in fact gendered male),
and who has (almost) mastered him. He is utterly undone, unmanned through
castration or effeminizing penetration; both responses enact Perceval’s psychic
emasculation. Kathleen Coyne Kelly, in her consideration of this act of self-
harm as it is recounted by Malory, notes that the thigh is a ‘common enough
euphemism for the genitals’ to read this as castration.40 Perceval may alterna-

39
Anna Roberts discusses castration as a ‘thematic site’ where it is linked to non-hetero-
normative sexuality, particularly male homoeroticism. Anna Roberts, ‘Queer Fisher King:
Castration as a Site of Queer Representation (Perceval, Stabat Mater, the City of God)’,
Arthuriana 11.3 (2001): 49–88.
40
Kelly, ‘Menaced Masculinity’, p. 111.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 245

tively, she suggests, be both perpetrator and victim of an emblematic rape.

Perceval enacts on his own body what an Other (a demon lover) would have
done. As both penetrator and penetrated, Perceval is at once a compound of
sexes and a negation of both. McCracken sees in the tryst between Perceval
and the demon a juxtaposition of ‘the chaste body and the body whose gender
is indeterminate’.41 It is also a juxtaposition of two compound, transitional
bodies which do not conform to either male or female binaries. Both gender-
shifting demon and Grail beast are outside the frame of nature; both manifest
and conform to the qualities of both sexes and neither sex.
Raised in isolation in the Gaste Forêt, Perceval lacks any male exemplars.
As a consequence, he learns manhood through his mother’s cautionary tales
of death and of wounds. He reads the knights in the forest as demons first, then
as God or as angels, and it is to this status that he aspires. He becomes the Grail
beast – a perfected, spiritualized man who is able to attain to the Grail with
impunity. Significantly, it is in Manessier’s continuation that Perceval most fully
achieves the Grail quest, becoming the Grail king and on his death bearing the
Grail to heaven with him. In this version of the story he enacts the most
profound ablation of his sexuality. Through self-wounding he achieves what
the Grail maiden is able to perform naturally – intact, unspotted virginity. In
the Perlevaus, he attains the Grail as the transgendered Grail beast, becoming
the ‘virgin gender’, a man ‘without villainy’ and with the nombril de pucele –
the sexual restraint of an intact virgin girl. He transcends gender, becoming
something other than a man.42
The subversion and transcendence of gender (and its association with
virtue), exemplified in the Grail cycles in the motif of the hybrid beast and the
autocastration associated with the Grail virgins, finds its counterpart in late
ancient Christian conceptualizations of purity. A concept of gender as a tran-
sient, malleable human characteristic and a desire for the status of spiritual
eunuch – the ‘virgin gender’ – is a trope running through early Christian liter-

41
Peggy McCracken, ‘Chaste Subjects: Gender, Heroism, and Desire in the Grail Quest’,
in Queering the Middle Ages, ed. Glenn Burger and Steven F. Kruger (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2001), pp. 123–42 at p. 132.
42
In a tantalising verbal parallel, and as another expression of the subversion and tran-
scendence of gender, the Vulgate Merlin relates the story of Grisandole, a female-bodied
knight who passes muster as the best knight at the court of King Arthur. Nothing differ-
entiates Grisandole from a male-bodied man, save that he lacks one masculine quality,
villainy: ‘Si se demena en toutes les maneres k’escuier se demaine, sans vilonie. N’ainc ne
fu ravisee por femme.’ From Ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France 24394 fol. 214r,
which constitutes the base text of Merlin: Roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha.
(Geneva: Droz, 1979). Text cited by Laura Jane Campbell, ‘Translation and Réécriture in
the Middle Ages: Rewriting Merlin in the French and Italian Vernacular Traditions’ (PhD
dissertation, Durham University, 2011), p. 229. I follow the practice of the author of the
Roman de Merlin in using the male personal pronoun for Grisandole while he presents
socially as a man.
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246 JED CHANDLER

ature, particularly the literature of Eastern Christianity. The case for an Eastern
Christian origin for, or Eastern influence upon, the Grail narratives has been
posited and revived periodically over the past 150 years of scholarship, and
attention has been drawn to the role of Byzantium in the cross-fertilization of
literary strands which passed through its cosmopolitan cultural centres. An
early hypothesis held that the Grail romances derive from Eastern Christian
Mass rituals in which a knife was used to cut the bread or to pierce the Host,
and where the juxtaposition of knife (masculine) and chalice (feminine)
suggested the central motifs of lance and grail in the Grail narratives.43 William
A. Nitze links the Grail procession which Perceval witnessed to the ‘great entry’
in the Byzantine Mass of St John Chrysostom, noting moreover that the
purported lance of Longinus (found in Antioch in 1098) was incorporated into
this order of the Mass and was used to pierce the Host.44 Pierre Gallais argues
that Robert de Boron’s Estoire dou Graal was actually written in Cyprus, and
that Robert ‘certainly lived in a milieu wide open to Byzantine and Syriac influ-
ences’ and several scholars have noted the imprint of Eastern intertextuality in
the Estoire.45 Robert de Boron was well placed to come into contact with

43
Wolfgang Golther, Parzival und der Gral, in Deutscher Sage des Mittelalters und der
Neuzeit (Munich: G. D. W. Callwey, 1908); Rose J. Peebles, The Legend of Longinus
(Baltimore: J.H. Furst, 1911), pp. 195–221. See also E. Anitchkof, ‘Le Saint Graal et les
rites eucharistiques’, Romania 55 (1929): 174–94. This is also found in the symbiotic rela-
tionship of the masculine and feminine divine in Kabbalah (c. 1200) in the Zohar,
embodied in the Serfiriot Tree.
44
William A Nitze, Perceval and the Holy Grail: An Essay on the Romance of Chrétien De
Troyes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), pp. 307–9.
45
Pierre Gallais, ‘Robert de Boron en Orient’, in Mélanges de langue et de littérature du
Moyen Age et de la Renaissance offerts à Jean Frappier, ed. Jean Charles Payen and Claude
Régnier (Geneva: Droz, 1970). Krijna Ciggaar has, in collaboration with Byzantinists
and other orientalist scholars, sought to corroborate his hypothesis, finding that ‘[t]he
Grail literature and iconography are impregnated with Eastern elements of which the
legend of Joseph of Arimathea is just one’: K. N. Ciggaar, ‘Joseph of Arimathea in the
Service of Pilate’, Romanische Philologie 3 (1995): 417–21 at p. 421. See also K. N. Ciggaar,
‘Robert de Boron en Outremer? Le culte de Joseph d’Arimathie dans le monde byzantin
et en Outremer’, in Polyphonia Byzantina: Studies in Honour of Willem J. Aerts, ed. H.
Hokwerda, E. R. Smits, and M. M. Woesthuis (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1993),
pp. 145–59. Ciggaar’s studies of various episodes in the works of Chrétien de Troyes detail
his incorporation of Byzantine current affairs into his narratives. K. N. Ciggaar, ‘Chrétien
de Troyes et la “matière byzantine”: Les demoiselles du Château de Pesme Aventure’,
Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 32 (1989): 325–31; K. N. Ciggaar, ‘Encore une fois
Chrétien de Troyes et la “matière byzantine”: La révolution des femmes au palais de
Constantinople’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 38 (1995): 267–74; for the historical
background of cultural and literary exchanges between north and west Europe and
Byzanium, see K. N. Ciggaar, ‘Visitors from North-Western Europe to Byzantium:
Vernacular Sources: Problems and Perspectives’, Proceedings of the British Academy 132
(2007): 123–55; K. N. Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople: The West and
Byzantium, 962–1204: Cultural and Political Relations (Leiden: Brill, 1996), pp. 186–7; K.
N. Ciggaar, A. Davids, and H. G. B. Teule, ‘Manuscripts as Intermediaries: The Crusader
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Eunuchs of the Grail 247

Eastern Christianity since he was in the employ of Gautier de Montbeliard,

who embarked on the Fourth Crusade in 1202, married Burgundia (daughter
of King Amalric of Cyprus and Jerusalem), and after the death of his father-
in-law, acted as regent on behalf of his brother-in-law, Hugh of Lasignan.
The argument that the crusades and the influx of holy relics to the west
exerted a formative influence on the Christianized Grail legend is compelling.
In this context, Helen Nicholson considers the representations of the military
orders in romance and epic, investigating the appearance of the Knights
Templars in Wolfram’s Parzival, the connections between the Grail and the
Holy Land and the emerging concept of the ideal knight.46 Krijna Nelly
Ciggaar’s observation that Byzantine literature and ritual became known to the
educated West through the presence of Greek monks in western European reli-
gious houses in an environment of peaceful co-operation also suggests a route
for the transmission of particularly religious motifs included in the Grail
cycles.47 In one example, John Cassian travelled to Palestine and then to Egypt
to live and study the monastic life around the turn of the fourth century, later
setting up an Egyptian-style double monastery in Gaul which became the
model for later monastic communities in the West. His works were recom-
mended reading in Benedictine monasteries.48 Some aspects of the earliest
Eastern traditions of Christianity were undoubtedly transmitted to the West.
The profound anxiety about sexuality and the privileging of virginity had their
origins in the early waves of asceticism and the earliest developments of monas-
ticism in Eastern Christianity. The Pauline epistle to the Galatians includes a
text which effectively undermines the structure of society, heralding an end to
hierarchies: ‘For you are all the children of God, by faith in Christ Jesus. For as
many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ. There is
neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor
female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Galatians 3:26–8). Every baptized
Christian should put off the social prescriptions of gender and ‘put on Christ’.
But rather than moderating entrenched status differences between women
and men, the Church fathers interpreted this as a loophole for women to tran-

States and Literary Cross-Fertilization’, in East and West in the Crusader States: Context,
Contacts, Confrontations: Acta of the Congress Held at Hernen Castle in May 1993, ed.
Krijna Nelly Ciggaar and Herman G. B. Teule, vol. 1 (Leuven: Peeters, 1996), pp. 133–5.
46
Helen Nicholson, Love, War, and the Grail (Leiden: Brill, 2001), pp. 102–86.
47
Ciggaar, Western Travellers to Constantinople, pp. 336–48.
48
See E. C. Butler, Benedictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life and Rule (London:
Longmans, Green, 1919), ‘Cassian we know was St Benedict’s spiritual book of
predilection. In two places in the Rule he tells his monks to read Cassian, and […] the
references to Cassian are more numerous, and also more considerable, than to any other
author; and if the references be examined, it will appear that St Benedict was familiar
with Cassian’s writings, and was saturated with their thought and language, in a greater
measure than with any other, save only the Holy Scriptures’ (p. 25).
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248 JED CHANDLER

scend their limitations in a culture which regarded the female as anchored in

the flesh and the male as allied with the spiritual.49 They argued that women
started with a decided disadvantage since their flesh and their given role in life
were particularly unhallowed; the male was crafted in imago dei, the female
was either a defective copy of the man, or the image of God insofar as she
shared anatomy or characteristics with the male.50 To become at least spiritually
male, a woman had to demonstrate the intellectual and spiritual discernment
to accept Christianity.51 Ambrose implies that faith alone induces a modifi-
cation of gender, writing that ‘[s]he who does not believe is a woman and
should be designated by the name of her sex, whereas she who believes
progresses to perfect manhood, to the measure of the adulthood of Christ. She
then dispenses with the name of her sex, the seductiveness of youth, the garru-
lousness of old age.’52 But faith needed cast-iron reinforcement; she had to
renounce her sexuality and her sanctioned social role as wife and mother, as St
Jerome teaches: ‘[a]s long as woman serves for birth and children, she is
different from man, as body is from soul. But if she wishes to serve Christ more
than the world, then she will cease to be woman and will be called man.’53
Clement of Alexandria expounded a similar doctrine in the second century in
his discussion of celibate ‘spiritual’ marriage: ‘For souls, themselves by them-
selves, are equal. Souls are neither male nor female, when they no longer marry
nor are given in marriage. And is not woman translated into man, when she

49
Augustinian patristic theology infused Christian doctrine on gender with Platonic dualism,
and Augustine justified female subordination to male through associating man with spirit
and woman with body: woman’s deference to the male is, then, a matter of natural law.
Through her association with the body, woman was allied with the flesh, the material world,
the sexual, and the transitory, and so with death. Cf. Kari Elisabeth Borresen, Subordination
and Equivalence: The Nature and Role of Woman in Augustine and Thomas Aquinas
(Kampen: Kok Pharos, 1995), pp. 26–9; Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and
‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), pp. 27–37.
50
Augustine of Hippo writes that ‘[t]he woman together with the man is the image of God,
so that the whole substance is one image. But when she is assigned as a helpmate, which
pertains to her alone, she is not the image of God: however, in what pertains to man
alone, is the image of God just as fully and completely as he is joined with the woman
into one’ (De Trinitate, 12.7.10). On the interpretation of this, see Mathew S. Kuefler, The
Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), pp. 234–5.
51
Some holy women effected this transformation through cross-dressing and living as men
in male monastic communities. See Larissa Tracy, Women of the Gilte Legende: A Selection
of Middle English Saints’ Lives (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003) and Valerie Hotchkiss,
Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe (New York: Garland,
1996).
52
Ambrose, Expositio Evangelii Secundum Lucam Libri X, 161 (1539), Patrologia Latina,
ed. J.P. Migne (Paris: Garnier, 1844–55), cited by Vern L. Bullough, Sexual Variance in
Society and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 365.
53
Jerome, Commentarli in Epistolam ad Ephesios, Libri III, Patrologia Latina 26, ed. J.P.
Migne (Paris: Garnier, 1844–55), col. 533.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 249

has become equally unfeminine, and manly, and perfect?’54 The sexes will be
merged, but the female will be subsumed into the male, a reflection of the
stance adopted by Valentinian Gnosticism which sought the reintegration of
the male and female elements of a primordial unity through sublimation of the
female and its eventual dissolution. But this vocation to transcend the flesh –
and particularly the reproductive flesh – was not the sole preserve of female-
bodied people. The male flesh carried its own corruption and its singular
miasma: original sin was transmitted through the male line by sexual inter-
course and every individual is fatally flawed from conception. Augustine of
Hippo locates the source of this contagion in Adam’s fallen testicles; all men
sinned with Adam, as ‘all men are understood to have sinned in that first “man”
because all men were with him when he sinned’.55 Elsewhere Augustine clarifies
his exact meaning: ‘by the hidden corruption of his own carnal lust all those
coming from his stock rotted in him’.56 The male body, polluted and polluting,
stands between man and God, anathematized.
A man immersed in this anathematized contamination of the flesh cannot
access the Grail, and Perceval must be something more than and something
distinct from a man to pursue his quest. Perceval must become the Grail beast,
an unhuman and unsexed emblem of human virtue incorporating the virtues
traditionally associated with masculine and feminine, and before he can tran-
scend human failings he needs to be aware of them. He has to acknowledge
and be vigilant against both female and male components of human inade-
quacy. As the Grail beast, he has the stereotypically masculine ‘heart of hard,
dense steel that will be proof against swaying or softening’,57 and he has unmit-
igated, remorseless steeliness of purpose in his initial pursuit of chivalry. His
first autonomous action as a male is to leave his mother unconscious on the
doorstep when he leaves home to become a knight. Later he learns from his
hermit uncle that she dies of sorrow at his departure and for the first time feels
guilt, aware of his hard-hearted callousness. His attention is drawn to the
‘feminine’ quality of garrulousness (to which Ambrose refers) in a formative

54
Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, in Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A.
Cleveland Coxe, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Fathers of the Second Century – Hermas,
Tatian, Theophilus, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, vol. 2: The Writings of the Fathers
down to AD 325 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), pp. 299–367, 6.12.503.
55
Augustine’s version of the mechanics of sin propagation derives from Romans 5:12:
‘Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and
in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.’ The sexual reference Augustine
introduces represents his inference drawn from the use of the verb intrare in the trans-
lation he used. See Martha Ellen Stortz, ‘“Where or When Was Your Servant Innocent?”
Augustine on Childhood’, in The Child in Christian Thought, ed. Marcia Bunge (Grand
Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001), pp. 78–102 at pp. 92–4.
56
Augustine, De peccatorum meritis et remissione, Patrologia Latina, ed. J.P.Migne (Paris:
Garnier, 1844–55), 1.9.10.
57
Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, p. 26.
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250 JED CHANDLER

event in his chivalric career when Gornemant de Goort instructs him in chivalry
and knights him. He admonishes Perceval to be sparing of speech and never to
repeat his mother’s advice to anyone again or admit that she taught him anything
(1675–84). Loquacity (his mother’s legacy) must be put aside; silence is the
discourse of a serious woman which characterizes the Grail beast who incor-
porates and renounces the feminine. And yet this silence, in mute obedience to
the rules of men, stops Perceval from asking the questions which would have
healed the fisher king and his land. He is only aware of this failure when the
hermit tells him of it. Perceval lacks interiority, depending on other people to
supply his human feelings and directing his resolve – spiritual advisors for his
moral development, knights for his career development. The spiritual path priv-
ileged by the early Church required a further annulment of embodiment. The
goal was transcendence of the sexual passions, the attainment of spiritual
virginity. There grew up a perception of virgins as a genus apart, based on the
text in Matthew 23:30: ‘For in the resurrection they shall neither marry nor be
married; but shall be as the angels of God in heaven’, and celibacy on earth was
seen to permit people some share in the purity of heaven. This virginal gender
characterized ancient and Eastern Christian traditions and destabilized the cate-
gories of male and female. Behaviour and commitment could determine gender.
Then (as now) it was a performative iteration. The virgin gender in the Grail
cycles is the sex which can handle the Grail unscathed.
However, male virginity, insofar as such a concept could be conceived (let
alone validated), was a nebulous construct. The penis was a constant reminder
of the conflict between ascetic aspiration and anatomy. Its apparent autonomy,
together with the evidence of nocturnal emissions, compromised male purity.58
The only measure of male purity was the degree to which a man could suppress
his sexual thoughts and reflexes. As Maud Burnett McInerney observes, ‘if non-
ejaculation is the criterion, male virgins must have been as rare as hen’s teeth’.59
But where male virginity was a nebulous and experiential quality, female
virginity was a well-elaborated theological and social construct, as Larissa Tracy
explains in terms of hagiography.60 The female virgin body, believed to be

58
Cf. Basil of Caesarea’s acknowledgement of his blemished purity: ‘I do not know woman,
but I am not a virgin.’ John Cassian, The Institutes 19, trans. Boniface Ramsay (New York:
Newman, 2000), p. 161, cited by David Brakke, ‘The Lady Appears: Materializations of
“Woman” in Early Monastic Literature’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies,
33.3 (2003): 387–402 at p. 388. Cf. also Brakke’s article discussing Cassian’s equation of
the absence of nocturnal emissions with intact physical virginity in the female. ‘The
Problematization of Nocturnal Emissions in Early Christian Syria, Egypt and Gaul’,
Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 419–60.
59
Maud Burnett McInerney, ‘Rhetoric, Power, and Integrity in the Passion of the Virgin
Martyr’, in Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,
ed. Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marina Leslie (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999)
50–70 at p. 58.
60
Tracy, ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’, pp. 99, 101.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 251

hermetically sealed by the intact hymen, was a fit and quantifiable exemplar
of sexual purity. A woman could more easily transcend her body than a man
could transcend the effect of her body on him, let alone transcend his own
body. McInerney writes that in ‘the face of such uncertainty about the possi-
bility of maintaining virginity, or of even approximating it, in a male body, the
body of the female virgin was an object of admiration to male ascetics and,
inevitably, of envy’.61 Yet measures could be taken in the quest to attain to male
virginity. Men committed themselves to celibacy and fierce ascetic practice to
flense away the desires of the flesh, and particularly the phallic flesh. They
sought spiritual castration, to become eunuchs of the spirit, retreating from the
established faith to form radical Christian communities. The earliest of these
ascetic communities crystallized in the deserts of Egypt in the third and fourth
centuries BC. But still nervousness and vigilance peppered their lives: ‘Do not
sleep in a place where there is a woman’, cautions the desert father Abba
Theodore of Pherme, while Abba Daniel advises ‘never put your hand in the
dish with a woman, and never eat with her; thus you will escape a little from
the demon of fornication’.62 For in her supposed absence, woman was every-
where haunting the male ascetic.63 Devils in the form of women assaulted men
in dreams and in diabolical visions, just as they do in the Grail narratives. The
male body (it seems) manifests the apparitions of women, as indeed does
Percival’s, drawing the demon to him when he is shipwrecked. The male body
– the genitals – becomes the devil’s gateway. Without extraordinary grace, man
cannot escape from the exigence of the body, yet amongst the most pious and
rigorously ascetic in the desert, these graces are bestowed.
John Cassian describes such an instance of supernatural aid in stilling
desire. Describing six progressive stages of purity to the monks of his Egyptian-
style monastic foundation, the Abbey of St Victor of Marseilles (founded c. AD
415), he illustrates the final stage of complete nocturnal continence with an
account from his days in Egypt. Abba Serenus who ‘pleaded night and day for
internal chastity of the heart and soul’ underwent a spiritual surgical procedure
which had the effect of permanently eliminating lust. He saw a vision of an
angel one night, who removed his viscera, excised a ‘fiery tumour’ from his
abdomen, replaced his intestines, and explained he had removed his fleshly
desires to endow him with the permanent purity he had sought.64 The location

61
Maud Burnett McInerney, Eloquent Virgins from Thecla to Joan of Arc (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), p. 63.
62
Cited by Susanna Elm, ‘Virgins of God’: The Making of Asceticism in Late Antiquity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 257.
63
David Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early
Christianity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
64
Cassian, The Conferences, trans. Boniface Ramsey (New York: Paulist Press, 1997),
pp. 267–8.
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252 JED CHANDLER

of the tumour is unknown, but describing the six stages of purity Cassian
recommends covering the kidneys with lead plates placed over the abdomen
like armor as this will suppress the formation of ‘obscene humours’.65 This
practice of stilling the kidney function with iron (instead of lead) was
described by Pliny and Galen and employed as late as the sixteenth century
to prevent nocturnal emissions.66 Another desert father gifted with spiritual
emasculation was Abba Elias. Out of charity he gathered some 300 wandering
ascetic virgins into a monastery, and to still the infighting which broke out
among them he lived alongside them as a pastoral adviser. But he was over-
whelmed by desire and in his anguish he left the monastery. He dreamed that
three angels offered him the opportunity to be free from desire if he would
return. He consented willingly, and the angels used a razor to perform a spir-
itual castration in his dream. He too was released from sexual desire for the
remainder of his life.67
It was in Byzantium, which Chrétien associated with eunuchs in the coda
to Cligès, that eunuchs occupied responsible positions in secular and religious
hierarchies, and where the eunuch became (in hagiographic contexts) a double
for an angel – an image of purity.68 Byzantine artists from the fourth century
began to draw upon representations of the court eunuchs in their depictions
of angels.69 The archangel Michael, for example, appeared as his hierarchical
equivalent in the imperial court, ‘dressed in the robe of a praepositus’
appearing as ‘a fearful man as out of the heaven, with a rush descending on
horseback on a white and terrible steed’ to one Marcianus, a chandler.70
Indeed, confusion between angels and eunuchs and cases of mistaken identity
are remarkably common in Byzantine hagiographic sources.71 There are other

65
Cited by Dyan Elliott, Fallen Bodies: Pollution, Sexuality, and Demonology in the Middle
Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), p. 16.
66
Concetta Pennuto, ed., Girolamo Mercuriale: De arte gymnastica (Florence: L. S. Olschki,
2008), p. 194. Pennuto suggests that St Paul had this practice in mind when he wrote
‘Runners in a race abstain from all these things to obtain a mortal crown, but we do so
in order to receive an immortal one’ (p. 195).
67
Palladius, The Lausiac History, 29A, trans. Robert Meyer (Westminster: The Newman
Press, 1965), pp. 89–90.
68
See Shaun Tougher’s essay in this volume, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration’, pp. 48–72.
69
Kathryn A. Ringrose makes her case for this assimilation compellingly in ‘Transcending
the Material World: Eunuchs and Angels’, in The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the
Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003),
pp. 142–62. See also Amelia R. Brown, ‘Painting the Bodiless: Angels and Eunuchs in
Byzantine Art and Culture’, Sexualities: Bodies, Desires, Practices, paper presented at
Salzburg, Austria, 2007. <http://inter-disciplinary.net/ci/transformations/sexualities/
s4/brown%20paper.pdf.
70
This account appears in a vita of Saint Michael by the late ninth- to early tenth-century
Pantaleon. Cf. G. Peers, ‘Apprehending the Archangel Michael: Hagiographic Method’,
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 20 (1996): 100–21 at p. 115.
71
Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, p. 153.
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Eunuchs of the Grail 253

obvious points of similarity between the two besides the visual iconography:
both serve as intermediaries (eunuchs between women and men, angels
between humans and God); both are messengers; eunuchs castrated before
puberty remain morphologically distinct from the sexually mature, and angels
are commonly depicted as prepubescent;72 while the eunuch is without any
role in a family as an adult, angels neither marry nor engage in sexual activity.
Both represent a different type of embodiment outside the gendered binary, a
being designated other, a tertium genus.73 And in their Otherness and their
equivocality, they recall the knights Perceval saw in the forest, shining, on
‘terrible steeds’, whom he mistakes for angels, who inspire his quest and
engender the pure Grail beast.
The collocation of eunuchs and angels represents an intriguing intercon-
textual commonality between two settings: one, late ancient eastern Christian
communities, and the other, high medieval Europe. The angel, the Grail beast,
and the Grail virgin belong to a genus beyond binary classifications, occupying
a literary locus similar to sexual Otherness, similar to that occupied by eunuchs
in late ancient society, and to the sexually neutered virgins of Christ or spiri-
tually virilized women. For these, as for the Grail beast, sex and gender traits
could be ephemeral, could be modified, and could be annulled. As the eunuchs
of Byzantium stood in for angels iconographically and were believed to have
particular access to the supernatural, so the Grail beast and the Grail virgins
have unique access to the Holy Grail. For it is in this common ground of gender
variance and attenuated gender that the Grail custodians are forged, one
remove from humanity. Virgin knights encased in armor, the eunuch appearing
before the chandler, and the ‘angels’ whom Perceval meets in the Gaste Forêt,
are the avatars of a purity inconceivable in the flesh. Compounds of male and
female perfection, the Grail beasts (hybrids ‘without villainy’) define themselves
through their experiences and articulate their identities through their actions.
Perceval’s story is the fullest account in the Grail cycles of this process. The
stories of the fisher king, the Grail king, and Perceval’s father all represent trun-
cated versions of gender metamorphosis and renunciation. While Galahad
lacks the initial flaws to relinquish, Perceval is constantly in flux, undertaking
parallel quests for the Grail, for his mother, and for his identity. He assumes
provisional identities as he encounters events and characters. Under the
tutelage of Goremant he replaces his mother’s teachings with the codes of

72
Ibid.
73
Terry Wilfong, describing this grouping, discerns a distinct ‘third sex’ for which there
was ‘a fairly clear and standard category in the discourse of late antiquity: the idea of a
separate gender consisting of eunuchs and others who do not exhibit primary or
secondary sexual characteristics of men or women but give off mixed signals or none at
all’: Women of Jeme: Lives in a Coptic Town in Late Antique Egypt (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 35–6.
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254 JED CHANDLER

chivalry, the voice of the (lost) father, and under the tutelage of his uncle (the
hermit) he understands piety and penitence. In Chrétien’s Perceval, however,
his development is truncated through this lack of a stable identity. At the Grail
castle, in servile silence and obedience to Goremant’s parole of the father, he
fails to ask the questions which would heal the king and the land. He lacks the
quality accorded him in prophecy – the ‘discourse of a serious woman’ – and
the female-gendered qualities of curiosity and empathy for the king. Along the
path to spiritual perfection, in the defence of his contested virginity, in his
negation of desire, in his flight from the feminine which costs his mother’s life,
Perceval fails to learn humanity.
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CHAPTER 12

Insinuating Indeterminate Gender:

A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris’s
Romans de la rose
Ellen Lorraine Friedrich

‘C astration is a motif running through the Rose’ asserts Sylvia Huot in The
Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers.1 The thirteenth-century
Old French Romans de la rose that Huot examines, one of the most popular
works of the European Middle Ages, occurs in two parts. The original text, an
approximately 4,000-line first-person verse allegory composed by Guillaume
de Lorris around 1230, recounts the dream vision quest of the young narrator
for the rose he seeks. The continuation, written a generation later by Jean de
Meun (c. 1270), amounts to an encyclopedic 17,000-line, often satiric gloss on
Guillaume’s Rose that retells, amplifies, and at times diverges from the young
lover’s story.2 The four primary examples that Huot presents of the mutilation
motif in the Rose all appear in Jean’s poem. David F. Hult, in ‘Language and
Dismemberment: Abelard, Origen, and the Romance of the Rose’, arrives at a
rather extreme assessment of Jean’s work, finding that the author exhibits an
‘unrelenting fascination with castration’.3 Jean presents the four castration

1
Sylvia Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers: Interpretation, Reception,
Manuscript Transmission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 277.
2
I use the Old French nominative form of roman – romans – as a reminder that the work
is the product of a language other than modern French, as well as of another time, the
thirteenth century. I cite the edition by Daniel Poirion: Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de
Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1974), and provide the verse
numbers from this edition. All translations are my own, unless otherwise indicated. I
use the date 1230 for Guillaume’s Rose, from Daniel Poirion, ed., Précis de littérature fran-
çaise du Moyen Âge (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983), p. 390. See also
Poirion, ed. Roman, ‘Chronologie’ (pp. 5–6) for the suggested dates 1230–45. Heather
M. Arden, The Romance of the Rose: An Annotated Bibliography (New York and London:
Garland, 1993) estimates the composition of Guillaume’s part as between 1225 and 1230,
and Jean’s part from 1270 to 1276 or earlier (p. xvi).
3
David F. Hult, ‘Language and Dismemberment: Abelard, Origen, and the Romance of
the Rose’, in Rethinking the Romance of the Rose: Text, Image, Reception, ed. Kevin
Brownlee and Sylvia Huot (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992) 101–30
at p. 115.
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256 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

FIGURE 12.1 Opening page of the Romans de la Rose, British Library, MS Stowe
947 (f.1) depicting (on the left) the dreamer in bed surrounded by roses, and (on the
right), Oiseuse, encircled by rosebushes and holding a mirror and a comb. © The
British Library Board, MS Stowe 947.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 257

FIGURE 12.2 Detail of self-castrating beaver in the lower right-hand marginalia of

the opening page of British Library, MS Stowe 947 (fl.1). © The British Library
Board, MS Stowe 947.

commentaries – on Saturn’s dismemberment by his son Jupiter, on Abelard’s

by the henchmen of his wife’s uncle, on Genius’s exhortation against it, and on
Origen’s self castration – as generally negative, even if Jean, as author, identifies
some positive results from such violent actions.
Hult limits his study of linguistic and literal dismemberment to Jean’s Rose,
and thus does not consider the issue of castration in Guillaume’s original
narrative. Huot, however, notices unusual marginalia at the bottom of the
opening page of the copy of Guillaume’s composition in British Library MS
Stowe 947 that ‘surely’ (she maintains) intended to comment on castration
thematics in the poem,4 noting that ‘marginal images often did provide a visual
gloss on the text’.5 At the top of the first page of the Rose manuscript, a two-
part, double-framed miniature portrays (on the left) the dreamer in bed
surrounded by roses, and (on the right), encircled by rosebushes and holding
a mirror and a comb, Oiseuse – the character who eventually admits the
dreaming youth to the vergiers (orchard) to which he seeks entrance (Figure
12.1).6 Rose bibliographer Heather Arden remarks that the female gatekeeper
figure Oiseuse ‘may be a key to understanding Guillaume’s conception of love’.7
Directly under the depiction of Oiseuse, in the lower margin, the viewer can
discern a beaver castrating itself (Figure 12.2).8 While Huot understands the

4
Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers, pp. 275, 277.
5
Ibid., p. 275, n. 4.
6
Some of the discussion on Oiseuse and other pertinent subjects in the Romans de la rose
may be found in Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, ‘Oiseuse: An Introduction to a Homoerotic
Reading of Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose’ (PhD dissertation, University of
North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1999).
7
Arden, The Romance of the Rose, p. xxi.
8
The opening page, fol. 1r of British Library MS Stowe 947, is reproduced in Huot, The
Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers, p. 276.
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258 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

self-injuring beaver as participating in the castration thematics by suggesting

that the lover practice continence, or resist temptation,9 the drawing, by high-
lighting the animal’s eunuch-like body under the image of Oiseuse, also implies
a castration motif in Guillaume’s Rose that involves Oiseuse, intimating that
the emasculated beaver somehow relates to her. Michael Camille, writing on
thirteenth-century marginalia in Images on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval
Art, affirms that things ‘drawn in the margins add an extra dimension, a
supplement, that is able to gloss … the text’s authority’.10 Therefore, the image
of a beaver biting off its own testicles invites inquiry both into what
commentary the castrating animal offers on the character of Oiseuse, and into
how the mutilation motif functions in Guillaume’s Rose. Arden’s assertion
regarding Oiseuse as a key to understanding Guillaume’s idea of love suggests
that love (or erotic desire) may include castrates, and, as a consequence,
represent a more comprehensive conception of love than previously thought.
Moreover, the presence of a castration motif in the original Rose confirms that
castration is not simply an obsession of Jean’s, but a thread that weaves itself
throughout both works.
Images on the first page of a Romans de la rose manuscript normally consist
of a singular illustration of the dreamer in bed,11 or of the dreaming lover along
with a representation of another episode from the narrative, usually the
dreamer beholding the images on the exterior of the wall that encloses the
vergiers/orchard.12 The relatively uncommon placement of a miniature of
Oiseuse (as well as the beaver below her) on the initial page of a Rose manu-
script13 calls attention to her importance in the work, and closely associates her
with both the lover and his quest. Huot recognizes the intimacy of the rela-
tionships among the dreaming lover, the rose, and Oiseuse: ‘The conflation of
the rose, object of desire, with the sensuality and self-absorption of Oiseuse –

9
Ibid., pp. 275, 277.
10
Michael Camille, Images on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1992) p. 10.
11
Alfred Kuhn, in ‘Die Illustration der Handschriften des Rosenromans’, Jahrbuch der
Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des allerhöchsten Kaiserhauses 31.1 (1912): 1–66, notes that
the earliest images, i.e. those from the earliest manuscripts, represent the dreamer in bed.
Kuhn maintains that those miniatures recreate the Nativity scene, a notion to which Huot,
The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers, 275, n. 6, does not seem to subscribe,
and one I too reject. Charles Dahlberg, in ‘Love and the Roman de la Rose’, Speculum 44
(1969): 568–84 at pp. 578–81, develops the argument regarding the Nativity scene.
12
Alcuin Blamires and Gail C. Holian, The Romance of the Rose Illuminated: Manuscripts
of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies, 2002), survey the iconographical studies of the romance in ch. 1 (see
especially p. 1 for mention of Kuhn’s analysis of incipit miniatures in ‘Die Illustration’),
and discuss manuscript illuminations in ch. 2 (see especially p. 41 for comments on the
opening scenes). Huot, as well as Blamires and Holian, makes use of the study of opening
page illuminations by Alfred Kuhn, ‘Die Illustration’.
13
Blamires and Holian, The Romance of the Rose Illuminated, pp. 1–2.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 259

a feminine figuration of Narcissus, in whose mirror the rose is first glimpsed

– tells us that the dream is inspired by and focused upon erotic love.’14
Significantly, Huot’s identification of Oiseuse with Narcissus, who (as
Guillaume recounts) fell in love with a beautiful young man like himself,15 links
Oiseuse – and perhaps the animal associated with her – with a hint of homo-
eroticism in the Rose narrative and implies that the type of love story portrayed
in the text may not be straightforward, or indeed ‘straight’.
Although the allegory is traditionally seen as the youth’s quest for a lady
‘rose’,16 scholars in the late twentieth century began to question the nature of the
erotic love portrayed in the romance – at times specifically in Guillaume’s poem
– focusing on the autoerotic and masturbatory,17 narcissistic, homosocial, and
homoerotic tensions in the Rose. Marta Powell Harley decides that through the
use of classical myths like those of Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Attis,
Guillaume is ‘conscientiously flirting with sexual ambiguity and homosexu-
ality’.18 Unlike Jean, who, in the Rose continuation, uses the mythical castration
of Saturn to establish the birth of heterosexual desire embodied by Venus,
Guillaume chooses other myths for his own purposes, apparently homoerotic
ones. Harley’s argument, employing both the story of Hermaphroditus who lost
his full masculinity, thereby becoming half a man (semivir)19 – and thus symbol-
ically or actually castrated – and the account of Attis who castrated himself,
becoming ‘nec femina nec vir’ [neither woman nor man] according to Ovid,20
supports her reading of gender and erotic anomaly in Guillaume’s romance.
Therefore, Guillaume’s use of the Hermaphroditus and Attis myths sustains the

14
Huot, The Romance of the Rose and Its Medieval Readers, p. 275. However, I note that it
is the rosebud (not the rose) that is glimpsed. The young lover looks into the spring of
Narcissus – referred to in the Rose text as a mirror – where he sees two crystals that reflect
the rose garden and its bushes; from one of those bushes he selects a rosebud. See Poirion,
ed., Le Roman, vv. 1536–8, 1549ff, 1560–1, 1615–16; 1655–6.
15
Poirion, ed., Le Roman, vv. 1487 ff.
16
Poirion, for example, in his ‘Préface’ to Le Roman, refers to the object of the young lover’s
quest as ‘une jeune fille pudique’ (a modest young girl) (p. 12). For a more general
assessment, see also Dahlberg’s ‘Love and the Roman de la Rose’: ‘Whether or not the
rose represents a specific young lady, it certainly represents the object of a desire that
controls the Lover’s actions throughout the poem’ (p. 569).
17
Dolores Warwick Frese, An Ars Legendi for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: Re-constructive
Reading (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991). See especially chs 1 and 2 for
Frese’s analysis of the opening scenes in Guillaume’s romance as autoerotic and mastur-
batory.
18
Marta Powell Harley, ‘Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Attis: Ovidian Lovers at the
Fontaine d’Amors in Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la rose’, PMLA 101 (1986): 324–37
at p. 333.
19
Ovid, Metamorphoses books I–VIII, trans. Franck Justus Miller, rev. G. P. Gould
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977; rpt. 1984, 1994), p. 204.
20
Ovid, Ibis, in The Art of Love and Other Poems, vol. 2, trans. J. H. Mozley, 2nd edn rev.
G. P. Gould (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979; rpt 1985), p. 455.
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260 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

notion that the emasculation motif, albeit differently conceptualized, runs as

strongly through his original text as through Jean’s.21
Gender ambiguity also exists in the character of Bel Acuel,22 as Simon Gaunt
has remarked.23 The handsome youth offers his service to the lover narrator,
and welcomes the latter to the orchard and through the hedges into the rose
garden, where the lover eventually chooses a rosebud as the object of his desire.
Even if Bel Acuel has a grammatically masculine name, manuscript illuminators
at times portray him as feminine, evidently aware of his – or her – role as the
amenable aspect of the beloved (purportedly feminine) rose that the lover seeks.
In his study on the Rose, Douglas Kelly, although primarily commenting on
Jean’s continuation, similarly identifies Bel Acuel as the ‘receptive agent in the
rose complex’, and links the lover to sodomites, to castrates, and to effeminates.24
Gaunt and Kelly’s recognition of Bel Acuel as sexually ambiguous and Kelly’s
similar association of the lover with non-normative erotic activities that imply
non-normative gender, recall the categories of sexual indeterminacy that
medieval scholars have identified as confused and conflated with homosexuality.
In a like manner, Robert L.A. Clark, in this volume, analyzes the troubled
category of eunuchs as not-exactly-male in two works, the thirteenth-century
Latin De Vetula and its fourteenth-century French translation, Jean Le Fèvre’s
La Vieille.25 Monica E. McAlpine writes on another ambiguously gendered
medieval character, Chaucer’s Pardoner from The Canterbury Tales, and finds
that allusions to the three ‘sexual phenomena with which homosexuality was
often confused – effeminacy, hermaphroditism, and eunuchry’ equal references
to homosexuality itself.26 Her statement brings to mind Guillaume’s flirtation
(in his Rose) with sexual ambiguity and homosexuality. Since the last type
(eunuchry) of the three phenomena confused with homosexuality represents a
castrated state, all the categories could describe the Rose author’s use of both the
Hermaphroditus and the Attis myth.

21
Hermaphroditus’ and Attis’ resultant castrated states also recall Jean’s textual use of the
calamitous castration of Abelard, and the self-mutilation carried out by Origen, discussed
below in this essay.
22
I use the old French spelling ‘Bel Acuel’ throughout, though many scholars use ‘Bel Acueil’.
23
Simon Gaunt, ‘Bel Acueil and the Improper Allegory of the Romance of the Rose’, in New
Medieval Literatures, II, ed. and intro., Rita Copeland, David Lawton, and Wendy Scase
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 65–93. Although Gaunt, like many scholars, focuses
on Jean’s Rose, he does not neglect Guillaume’s composition. Nevertheless, Gaunt – as
many, if not most, critics – generally treats the two texts as if they comprised one whole
work, whereas Harley and a few others (as do I) concentrate on the original poem by
Guillaume.
24
Douglas Kelly, Internal Difference and Meanings in the Roman de la Rose (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), especially pp. 114–16 at p. 115.
25
Robert L. A. Clark, ‘Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre’s La
Vieille’, in this volume, pp. 280–94.
26
Monica E. McAlpine, ‘The Pardoner’s Homosexuality and How It Matters’, PMLA 95
(1980): 8–22 at p. 13.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 261

In Chaucer’s work, McAlpine points out the narrator’s comment in the

General Prologue comparing the Pardoner to two animals, or rather two forms
of the same animal: that he is a ‘geldyng or a mare’.27 A gelding, of course, refers
to any castrated male animal, usually a horse, and archaically to a eunuch.28
The narrator effectively calls the Pardoner castrated.29 Already in the fourth
century BC, Aristotle had summed up the standard view of a castrate or eunuch
when he remarked that a ‘castrated male … assumed pretty well the form of a
female’.30 The twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw similar characterizations of
castrates. In the first quarter of the twelfth century, letters attacking the
castrated cleric Abelard characterize him as a feminized eunuch with a dual-
sexed identity,31 and in Jean’s late thirteenth-century Rose, Genius criticizes
castrated men as having meurs feminins (feminine ways) and as resembling
women.32 Both characterizations recall McAlpine’s first category of indirect
allusions to homosexuality: effeminacy. So calling the Pardoner a gelding (a
castrated male horse) or a mare (a female horse) not surprisingly references
the male character’s effeminate characteristics, his possible lack of male genitals,
and his resulting feminized form deficient in male hormones. The use of such
animal analogies for the Pardoner’s apparently castrated male (gelding)/female
(mare) body blurs the gender line into androgyny or hermaphroditism,33 and
brings to mind the castrating beaver in the Rose manuscript as well as
Guillaume’s use of the self-castrated ‘neither woman nor man’ Attis and ‘half
man’ Hermaphroditus myths in the Rose. Harley locates the use of the two
myths in the episode at the fontaine d’amors, the fountain of Narcissus. In the

27
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1987) p, 34, v. 691. The note to line 691 glosses the expression as ‘a
eunuch or a homosexual’.
28
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1990):
509. Moreover, the noun ‘gelding’ and the verb ‘to geld’ are related to the Greek term
gallos which refers to a eunuch priest of Cybele.
29
As Lee Patterson points out, this may simply be a form of insult and may not be meant
literally. Several scholars, including McAlpine, have translated ‘mare’ as ‘homosexual’,
but Patterson maintains that there is no textual evidence for this use of ‘mare’. See
‘Chaucer’s Pardoner on the Couch: Psyche and Clio in Medieval Literary Studies,’
Speculum 76.3 (July 2001): 638–80.
30
Cited in Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 31, from Aristotle’s Generation of
Animals 1.2.716b5–12.
31
Martin Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity, and
Remasculinization’, in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and
Bonnie Wheeler (New York and London: Garland, 2000), pp. 87–106, pp. 91–4. See also
Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and
Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary’, in this volume, pp. 87–107.
32
Poirion, ed., Le Roman, vv. 20058–60; 20065–7.
33
Jed Chandler discusses the same kind of gender ambiguity in the Grail narratives with
their ‘self-wounded’ virginal Grail knights in ‘Eunuchs of the Grail’, in this volume,
pp. 229–54.
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262 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

waters of the fountain, whose self-absorbed owner Huot connects to Oiseuse,

the lover sees reflected rosebushes. Drawn to the bushes with the straight-
stemmed, plump, ready-to-burst rosebuds upon them, the lover essentially falls
in love with one of the bigger vermilion buds, finding it so beautiful that none
of the others attracts him at all.34 Surprisingly, the lover has not fallen for a
seemingly feminine object of desire (a rose) as suggested by the title of the
work, but rather for the stiff-stemmed, bulbous rosebud that Harley and others
identify as phallic.35
The ambiguously gendered Bel Acuel controls access to the roses, and thus
also to the masculine bud ‘li boutons’ (v. 1666) chosen by the lover. The male–
male, or indefinitely gendered desire, begins of course as a longing for the rose.
However, even the rose has been interpreted as a masculine object of desire, the
entry to which lies with, or through, Bel Acuel. Philological analyses suggest
that the rose represents the anus, the lover’s first object of desire, found in his
beloved Bel Acuel who is eventually imprisoned for their transgressive rela-
tionship.36 Jean’s obsession in his later Rose with condemning corrupt love,
promoting procreation (through Genius), and cautioning about the catastrophe
caused by castration, confirms the gravity of ignoring nature and practicing
‘unnatural love’.37 Guillaume, too, demonstrates his awareness of ‘amors contre
nature’ when he has the God of Love caution against it in his speech to the young
lover.38 Generally speaking, medieval audiences39 understood unnatural love –
or love ‘contre nature’ – as sexual practices that did not produce progeny. Since
castration results in sterility, a castrated state therefore permits non-procreative
sex acts on the part of the resulting eunuch, typified by the self-mutilating
beaver, which, as Huot points out, participates in the castration thematics found
in the Rose. Consequently, the animal suggests that the character Oiseuse repre-

34
Poirion, ed., Le Roman, ‘un si tres bel … nus des autres riens ne prisé’ [one (masculine
‘li boutons’) so very beautiful … none of the others did I prize at all] (vv. 1656–7).
35
Harley seems to have been the first – in ‘Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Attis’ – to
describe the bud as a ‘phallic image’ (p. 334). Karl D. Uitti, in ‘“Cele [qui] doit estre Rose
clamee” (Rose, vv. 40–44): Guillaume’s Intentionality’, in Rethinking the Romance of the
Rose, ed. Brownlee and Huot, pp. 39–64, refers to the closed flower as the ‘phallic rose’
(p. 40). For a philological analysis, see also Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, ‘When a Rose Is not
a Rose: Homoerotic Emblems in the Roman de la Rose’, in Gender Transgressions: Crossing
the Normative Barrier in Old French Literature, ed. Karen J. Taylor (New York and
London: Garland, 1998), pp. 22–43.
36
Friedrich, ‘When a Rose’.
37
Genius’s warning occurs in Poirion, ed. Le roman, vv. 19505 ff. Summary comments on
the anal symbolism of the rose, and Jean’s obsession with condemning certain types of
love and castration come from Ellen Friedrich, ‘Romance of the Rose’, in Encyclopedia of
Sex and Gender, ed. Fedwa Malti-Douglas, 4 vols (Detroit: Thomas Gale, 2007) 4:1269–71
at p. 1271.
38
Poirion, ed. Le roman, vv. 2169–74.
39
I understand ‘audience’ as any person receiving a text, whether by personal reading,
hearing the text read, or seeing it performed.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 263

sents some sort of eunuch-like being, and that Guillaume begins his allusions
to missing members through her and, indirectly, through the beaver.
The missing masculine organs in Guillaume’s Rose are not immediately
apparent. Toward the end of Guillaume’s Rose, the character Reason counsels
the young lover about the extreme danger in consorting with Oiseuse who
carries the key (‘porte / la clef ’; vv. 3003–4) to the vergiers: ‘S’acointance est trop
perilleuse’ [Her acquaintance (acquaintance with her) is too perilous] (v. 3006).
Oiseuse’s key, never visibly used in the tale, but said to have opened the door
to the orchard, is reminiscent of another key that plays a considerable role in
the Rose. Harley understands as clearly phallic the clef – key – that the Diex
d’Amors (God of Love) possesses and uses to penetrate the Lover (vv. 2008–10),
an action to which the Lover willingly submits in a homoerotically charged
scene.40 Imagine the sexual implication in the positioning of the relatively long
and hard ‘key’ that Amors says he holds over his ‘jewels’:41 ‘Sous ceste clef sont
mi joiau’ [under this key are my jewels] (v. 2004). In fact, in order to penetrate
the Lover, the God of Love takes his clef out of his aumouniere ‘purse / sack’:
‘Lors a de s’aumoniere traite / Une petite clef bien faite’ [Then from his purse
he drew out / A little key well-made] (vv. 1999–2000). In Jean’s Rose, Genius
uses the word aumoniere twice (vv. 19667; 19670) to refer to the testicular sac
(scrotum) in the character’s diatribe against homosexuals. Genius rails against
those who will not use their testicles and penises for the right purpose of
procreation, and he wishes their testicles torn out and their penises taken away
(vv. 19671–3).42 In this way, in his Rose, Jean (through his character Genius)
calls for castration as punishment.
In Guillaume’s Rose it seems that the Diex d’Amors has used his ‘key’
(whether fully attached to his body or not) for a non-normative sex act with the
lover. Amors thus participates in an activity that merits castration (if he is not
already in that state). In a parallel way, Oiseuse carries a key that suggests a sepa-
ration of the phallic-like object from her body, bringing into question the type
of body she exhibits. Likewise, the beaver pictured under the character’s repre-
sentation in the Stowe manuscript is separating its genitals from its body. The

40
Harley, ‘Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Attis’, p. 333. See also Ellen Lorraine Friedrich,
‘The Mentorship of the Lover by the Diex d’Amors in Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de
la rose’, Medieval Perspectives 26 (2011 [2012]): 89–103.
41
OF Joiau, ‘joiel, joel’ (jewel, plaything) derives from Latin jocalem ‘pleasant’ or ‘plaything’.
It may also refer to ‘Le sexe de la femme’ (see Algirdas Julien Greimas, Dictionnaire de
l’ancien français [Paris: Larousse, 1980], p. 347), and, by extension and linguistic evidence
in modern French, English, and other languages’ slang, to a man’s (family) ‘jewels’, ‘balls’,
or ‘testicles’. Medieval Latin jocale is attested by 1204, as ‘jewel, precious object’, and OF
joel, joal (1175) is regularly derivable from jocale. http://sci.tech-archive.net/Archive/
sci.lang/2008-05/msg01781.html. (accessed Dec. 30, 2012).
42
Historical records and literary references do not always distinguish between the removal
of the penis (a penectomy) and castration, normally the removal of the testicles.
Castration can also refer to the removal of the genitalia in general.
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264 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

animal has a long philological, folkloric, cultural, literary, and even medicinal
and economic history that contributes to how medieval readers and listeners
understood its presence in a manuscript, and therefore its comment on the char-
acter to which it refers, and on the work itself.43 Similarly, classical and medieval
accounts of the beaver influence the interpretation of the castrated animal in
the Rose manuscript, the understanding of its relationship to Oiseuse, and finally
the perception of how Oiseuse also exists in a castrated state.
The sixth-century BC series of animal tales commonly known as Aesop’s
Fables, although based at least partially on earlier Egyptian material,44 may offer
the earliest observations in the Western world on beavers: they live in pools,
and they know hunters pursue them for their genital organs that can cure
ailments. When chased, beavers will run, and seeing they cannot escape, chew
off their own testicles, and throw them to their pursuers, hence enabling their
getaway.45 In his fifth-century BC History, Herodotus mentions that the beaver
is hunted for its testicles which are useful for preparing cures.46 In the fourth
century BC, Hippocrates often included castoreum, the aromatic substance
made from the beaver’s testicles and the secretions thereof, in remedies.47 In a
2002 Smithsonian Zoogoer article, Amy Himes summarizes the importance of
the beaver in ancient and medieval societies: Although its fur ‘could cost up to
five times more than the fur of other animals […] many people hunted beavers
for another reason, one originally considered far more valuable than fur’.48 Both
Europeans and others used the castoreum for a variety of aches and pains,
suggesting that earlier cultures were quite familiar with the animal.49
Other facets of the animal’s lore may hold even more appeal for ancient and
medieval peoples, as Himes explains:

43
The Romans de la rose has traditionally been assumed to be a ‘book’ that was read. Recently
Evelyn Birge Vitz has considered its performability: ‘Le Roman de la Rose, Performed’,
abstract for paper, Fordham University conference, ‘Think Romance!’ March 31–April 1,
2012. Online at http://www.fordham.edu/mvst/conference12/Romance/Vitz.pdf, accessed
March 5, 2012.
44
Ebenezer Cobham Brewer, ‘Aesop’, in Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, ed. Ivor H.
Evans, 14th edn (London: Cassell, 1991), p. 14.
45
Aesop, The Complete Fables, trans. Olivia and Robert Temple; intro. Robert Temple
(London: Penguin, 1998); # 153, ‘The Beaver’, pp. 113–14 at p. 113.
46
Herodotus, The Histories of Herodotus, trans. Henry Cary (New York: D. Appleton, 1904),
book IV 109.2.
47
Hippocrates, Coan Prenotions: Anatomical and Minor Clinical Writings, trans. Paul Potter
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), e.g. p. 345.
48
Amy Himes, ‘At the Zoo: Busy Beavers’, Smithsonian Zoogoer 31.2 (2002); online at
http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Publications/ZooGoer/2002/2/busybeavers.cfm, accessed March
5, 2012.
49
The castoreum undoubtedly had some actual medicinal powers since researchers have
found that it contains, as Himes points out, ‘small amounts of salicylic acid … found in
the bark of one of the beaver’s favorite trees, the willow. Salicylic acid is the active ingre-
dient in aspirin’ (Himes, ‘At the Zoo’).
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 265

Castoreum was once thought to enhance sexual energies – an erroneous

connection between the oil and beavers’ sexual activity. Indeed, beaver
sexual function fascinated early cultures because, unlike most mammals,
beavers have no external difference in sexual organs that may distinguish
one sex from the other. In many males, the external sexual organs look
almost exactly like the female’s. The penis and testicles are hidden inside
the urogenital passage that opens into the cloaca. Some males even have a
non-functioning uterus. Because of the absence of external sex organs,
ancient Egyptians as well as European writers until the 1600s believed
beavers would castrate themselves if threatened with capture.50

Even Himes’s explanation, taking into account earlier Egyptian and European
understandings of the animal’s biology, seems contradictory regarding the
appearance of gender markers on or in the beaver’s body.
A study of the animal’s history in Persian- and Arabic-speaking lands eluci-
dates:
castoreum is a musk-like strong-smelling resinous matter secreted by a pair
of bulky glandular pouches united by a common excretory duct and located
side by side under the abdominal skin in the urogenital region of both male
and female beavers. […] The fact that she-beavers also possess these musk
glands (though less developed than in males) must have passed unnoticed
by classical authors […] hence the confusion of these pouches with he-
beavers’ testicles.51

Thus, ancient and medieval peoples undoubtedly found beavers’ genitalia, or

the apparent – or actual – lack of them, as well as the substance supposedly
derived from it, a source of speculation and fascination.52
Given the popularity of beaver fur, and the importance of castoreum to cure
various ailments, along with the belief that the substance can increase erotic
vigor, societies remained well acquainted with the animal and its economic,
medicinal, and folkloric values. In addition, viewing or hearing of the beaver’s
apparently non-gendered body contributed to the fact that earlier cultures
believed beavers chose castration over capture, suggesting at the same time that
ancient and medieval peoples maintained an interest in emasculated bodies.

50
Himes, ‘At the Zoo’.
51
‘Beaver’, Encyclopaedia Iranica; online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/beaver-
castor-fiber-l, accessed March 5, 2012.
52
To clarify from a modern biological perspective, according to a standard volume on
animals, zoologists must either dissect dead beavers or have experience palpating live
ones to be able to determine their sex: Theodore Bookhout, ed., Research and
Management Techniques for Wildlife and Habitats (Bethesda, MD: Wildlife Society, 1980).
See pp. 204–5 for palpation instructions and illustrations of the male and female beavers’
vestibular cavity. I thank my colleague, J. Mitchell Lockhart, Department of Biology,
Valdosta State University, for sharing the text with me.
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266 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

For example, in the Byzantine Empire, eunuchs held a special place, and they
were valued for their service and for their voices throughout Europe.53 As
Shaun Tougher argues in this volume, Roman eunuchs were objects of beauty
and were often sexually desirable.54 As a result, the medieval audience likely
recognized the ramifications of marginal drawings of the castrating (or
castrated) and valuable animal and could apply that knowledge to the inter-
pretation of the character Oiseuse, well known for her beauty (vv. 525 ff; 1251).
In fact, people had long conceived of animals in human terms. Aristotle,
writing around 350 BC, explains:
In the great majority of animals there are traces of psychical qualities or
attitudes, which qualities are more markedly differentiated in the case of
human beings. […] Some of these qualities in man […] differ only quan-
titatively: that is to say, a man has more or less of this quality, and an animal
has more or less of some other.55

Clearly, the beaver’s supposed cognizance of the hunter’s objective and the
animal’s apparent decision to castrate itself depend on the conception of beasts
as having at least ‘proto-human’ qualities, an idea not only common in the
ancient and medieval worlds, but one that continued up until the eighteenth
century.56 A related quality of the beaver, that of making choices to sacrifice
part of its body for the greater good of saving its life, appears in texts at the
turn of the first millennium in Ovid,57 and in the first century AD in Pliny the
Elder’s Natural History.58
Examining the tradition of the beaver as a sexually symbolic animal in the
Middle Ages, Michael J. Curley notes that around the turn of the second century
AD, Juvenal (in Satire 12.34) uses the example of the beaver ‘qui se / Eunuchum

53
See Mary A. Valante, ‘Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of
Eunuchs’, pp. 174–86 and Kathryn Reusch, ‘Raised Voices: The Archaeology of
Castration’, pp. 29–47, in this volume.
54
Shaun Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, in this
volume, pp. 48–72.
55
Aristotle, The History of Animals, book 8, part 1, trans. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson,
online at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/history_anim.8.viii.html, accessed November
15, 2011.
56
Willene B. Clark and Meradith T. McMunn, ‘Introduction’, in Beasts and Birds of the
Middle Ages: The Bestiary and Its Legacy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1989), p. 1.
57
Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems, trans. J. H. Mozley, 2nd edn rev. G. P. Gould
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979; rpt. 1985); Nux, line 304. In his poem
Nux (The Walnut Tree), Ovid refers to the parts imperiling the beaver that, once removed,
leave the animal everything else, implying the possibility of a choice eventually under-
stood morally as a sacrifice for a greater good.
58
Pliny the Elder, The Natural History of Pliny, trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley (London:
George Bell & Sons, 1890), 8.47.109. Pliny, a source for many later writers, explains that
beavers around the Black Sea know hunters seek them for the oil (castoreum) produced
by an organ that they self-amputate when chased.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 267

ipse facit’ [who / makes itself a eunuch] by cutting off its own testicles.59 By using
the term eunuchum, Juvenal may have made the first formal connection of the
castrated beaver to eunuchs, although Aristotle had earlier described both the
assimilation of animals to human (see passage quoted above) and the intersex
state of castrated animals in general:
In the case of all these animals their nature appears in some kind of a way
to have got warped, just as some male animals get to resemble the female,
and some female animals the male. The fact is that animals, if they be
subjected to a modification in minute organs, are liable to immense modi-
fications in their general configuration. This phenomenon may be observed
in the case of gelded animals: only a minute organ of the animal is muti-
lated, and the creature passes from the male to the female form. We may
infer, then, that if in the primary conformation of the embryo an infinites-
imally minute but absolutely essential organ sustain a change of magnitude
one way or the other, the animal will in one case turn to male and in the
other to female; and also that, if the said organ be obliterated altogether,
the animal will be of neither one sex nor the other.60

Aristotle’s placing of gelded animals – castrated males – into the category of

female or of neither sex recalls not only the sort-of-man Hermaphroditus and
nec femina nec vir Attis, but the ‘geldyng or a mare’ Pardoner as well (and any
other character in between genders), whether human or animal, since the qual-
ities of both were attributed to each other. Curley also remarks that Apuleius’
second-century AD The Golden Ass identifies a special punishment enacted for
unfaithful lovers that transforms them into self-castrating beavers.61 Thus, both
Juvenal’s association of the castrated animal with human eunuchs and Apuleius’
linking of faithless lovers with emasculated beavers confirm (not surprisingly)
that society, as Aristotle pointed out, conceived of castrated creatures in human
terms and vice versa. Therefore, placing a drawing of a self-mutilating beaver
below the depiction of the character Oiseuse in a Rose manuscript illustration
reinforces the idea that the viewer should understand the key-carrying gate-
keeper as some sort of castrate/eunuch.
By the beginning of the third century AD, in the De natura animalium (On
the Nature of Animals) 6.34, Claudius Aelianus (Aelian) specifies that the beaver
understands why hunters come after it, so it puts its head down, chews off its
own testicles, and throws the organs down in front of the men in pursuit. Aelian
adds the new information that if the animal has already saved its life by self-
castration, and hunters still chase it, that it stands up and shows the pursuers

59
Michael J. Curley, ‘A Note on Bertilak’s Beard’, Modern Philology: A Journal Devoted to
Research in Medieval and Modern Literature 73.1 (1975): 69–73 at p. 70.
60
Aristotle, History of Animals, book 7, part 2, trans. Thompson.
61
Curley, ‘A Note on Bertilak’s Beard’, p. 69.
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268 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

that its testicles are no longer there so the men will abandon their chase.62 More
importantly perhaps, Aelian writes that beavers escaping with their testicles
intact draw them into their bodies,63 demonstrating yet another understanding
both of the apparently deliberate actions of the animals, and of the seemingly
indeterminately gendered bodies of beavers. As a result, hunters may believe
that the animals do not have what they in fact capably conceal. Consequently,
whether by castration or concealment, beavers demonstrate a eunuch-like,
ambiguously gendered body, either lacking testicles or seeming to lack them.
Their intersex bodies suggest provocative possibilities for interpreting the
animal’s significance for a text such as the Rose, prompting the reader of the
work to focus not only on the castrating action of the beaver, but also on its
eunuchoid body. That Aelian often took the behavior of animals as a model of
human conduct64 again intriguingly implies that the beaver’s body may mirror
Oiseuse’s or vice versa, i.e. that the Rose character possesses the ‘keyless’
castrated body of a eunuch.
Another influential work, the anonymous Greek Physiologus, a relatively
compact compendium of animal, non-animate, and plant allegories that
subsumed and built upon the earlier traditions of Pliny, Aelian, and others,
may have appeared as early as the first part of the second century65 or as late as
the fourth.66 Translations of the allegories in the Physiologus begin to appear
almost immediately in Latin and then in European vernacular languages, and
the work became one of the most widely read texts during the Middle Ages.
Directly, and through its derivations, the Physiologus turned into a source for
medieval iconography, poetry, preaching manuals, and religious textbooks.67
The Latin versions generally repeat the information found in Pliny, and most
of that in Aelian. The different versions of the Physiologus include the
description of each animal, often followed by a moral and a meaning. In the
case of the beaver, the description generally notes that the beaver’s genitals
serve as medicine, and that its behavior includes the first two of the self-saving
actions. First, the animal bites off its genitals and throws them towards the
hunter, and then, if another man pursues it later, it lies down on its back (or
stands up, or lifts its leg) to show its lack of genitals.
The next step in the evolution of the beaver lore occurs when the Iberian

62
Michael J. Curley, trans. Physiologus (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979; 2009),
p. xxiii.
63
William Barker, Mark Feltham, and Jean Guthrie, ‘Commentary on Emblem 153’ of
Alciato’s Book of Emblems (1531), Department of English, Memorial University of
Newfoundland, online at http://www.mun.ca/alciato/c153.html, accessed September 15,
2011.
64
Ibid.
65
Curley, trans. Physiologus, pp. xvii–xviii.
66
Ibid., p. xviii.
67
Ibid., pp. ix–x.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 269

scholar Isidore of Seville, in his seventh-century Etymologies (book 12, 2:21),

establishes the popular etymology of the beaver’s name – Castor fiber –
explaining that the castor was so named from its castrando ‘castrating’ action.68
Isidore does not fully explain his etymologies; instead, he makes references
(writing in Latin) that his learned audience would understand. Old French
castor/castre ‘beaver’ comes from Latin castor, which in turn derives from Greek
Kastōr, the name of Castor, one of the Gemini twins, the Dioscuri (from Dios,
genitive of Zeus + kouroi, plural of kouros, boy),69 sons of Zeus. Significantly,
Zeus castrated his own father, Kronus, who, in turn, had earlier castrated his
father, Uranus. Zeus was therefore both the son and grandson (and Castor the
grandson and great-grandson) of castrated gods, as well as the father of a
number of ‘sexually impaired’ children, one an androgyne changed into a
woman, another two castrated, and still another produced from cast-off
genitals.70 Naming Zeus’ son Castor, in addition to referencing the youth’s
castrated family, may well evoke the latter’s absent double, his brother Pollux
so loved by Hermes,71 the Greek god whose name became part of the nomen-
clature of his emasculated, yet hermaphroditic offspring. The bi-formed boy,
Hermaphroditus, re/created both as male (like his father Hermes), and as
female (like his mother Aphrodite), serves as an example of Guillaume’s allu-
sions to homosexuality and sexual ambiguity in the Rose, and fits the second
of McAlpine’s phenomena with which homosexuality was confused – that of
hermaphroditism. A medieval audience would understand a reference to a
castrated castor as a direct reference to Castor (he of the castrates), and as a
veiled reference to Castor’s twin Pollux, beloved of Hermes who also loved
other males (and rarely females),72 and who produced a eunuch-like son,
Hermaphroditus. The latter’s name – as well as that of the castor/Castor –
precedes Isidore’s interest in etymologies, yet highlights the importance of
understanding the significance of names (including that of the Rose gatekeeper
Oiseuse) from antiquity through medieval times, and up until the modern
period. Camille explains: ‘In the medieval love of etymological thinking, words
really were things, and if two words sounded alike it meant that what they
designated must also be similar.’73 Thus a philological examination of Oiseuse’s
name can substantiate an indeterminate gender identity for her just as the

68
Isidore of Seville, Etymologies, 12.2:21; Robert Bartlett explains that Isidore had himself
derived the etymology from the fourth-century grammarian Servius. See Robert Bartlett,
Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 144.
69
Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 357.
70
Piotr O. Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati: A Cultural History, trans. John A. Broadwin and
Shelley L. Frisch (Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2001), pp. 48–50.
71
Encyclopedia of Queer Myth, Symbol and Spirit, ed. Randy P. Luncunas Conner, David
Hatfield Sparks, and Mariya Sparks (London and New York: Cassell, 1997), p. 269.
72
Ibid., p. 176.
73
Camille, Image on the Edge, p. 40.
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270 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

extraordinary significance of the names of both the castor and the hermaph-
roditic youth indicate their ambiguous genders.
Isidore’s assertion that beavers have a name related to the fact that they often
castrate themselves necessarily refers to the Latin infinitive castrare (to castrate)
which eventually provided Old French castrer/chastrer. Audiences would asso-
ciate these words phonologically, from folklore and from ancient and medieval
sources with the castor/beaver. Authors and translators in the Physiologus
tradition knew and incorporated Isidore’s etymology into their texts. At this
point, with the addition of interpolated material from Isidore and other
sources, the Physiologus texts begin to transform into bestiaries. One form of
the work, the Theobaldus-Physiologus derived from the Dicta Chrysostomi,74
arises in the eleventh century.75 Commonly used as a schoolbook, it moves the
animal lore into the education and the common consciousness of the learned
classes. The considerable Physiologus tradition thus contributed to the twelfth-
century phenomenon of bestiaries that absorbed the animal legends along with
their accompanying lessons.76 The promulgation of such information in the
bestiaries, along with the iconography, poetry, preaching manuals, and religious
textbook traditions of animal lore, all provided society with a general awareness
of the beaver, of the potential danger to its testicles, and of its resultant (whether
in fact, or simulated by the beaver concealing its genitals) castrated ambigu-
ously gendered body.
In particular, the period from 1125 through 1225 – the latter the approx-
imate date of the composition of Guillaume’s Rose – saw at least four French
bestiaries appear. Any or all of them could have further contributed to the
medieval marginalia artist’s perception of the beaver and the decision to
position the drawing under the miniature of Oiseuse as a commentary on her
body and her being. The margins provide a comfortable space for the inde-
terminately gendered body of the beaver, as anthropologist Arnold Van
Gennep suggests when he notes that ‘the attributes of liminality are necessarily
ambiguous’.77 A comment by Camille on human gender also relates to the
character of Oiseuse reflected in the intersex body of the beaver when he
asserts ‘The margins […] represent things excluded from official discourse’78

74
Frances McCulloch, in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1962), studies the Physiologus and its derivatives. See ch. 2, and
especially p. 55.
75
Curley, trans. Physiologus, pp. xviii; xxxiv n. 3.
76
Ibid., p. xxx. In general, the bestiary tradition elaborated the moral lesson about the
beaver’s sacrificing its possessions to a hunter into a warning for man to cast aside vices
and throw them to the devil. The increase in references to man casting off vices as the
beaver does its testicles suggests an association of the parts of generation with evil, an
intriguing area for investigation, but one beyond the purview of the present essay.
77
Quoted by Camille in Image on the Edge, p. 9.
78
Ibid., p. 126.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 271

since depictions of androgynous or genderless characters in medieval romance

rarely, if ever, occur.
Frances McCulloch points out that the beaver, ‘in both its text and illustra-
tions is one of the most unvarying of all those [animals] in the Physiologus’.79
Her summary recognizes the beaver as ‘a very gentle animal’80 whose testicles
contain a valuable medicine for maladies, and her synopsis repeats the series
of behaviors previously noted. McCulloch observes that the identical infor-
mation appears ‘in all French bestiaries’.81 Nevertheless, one may observe some
slight differences in the four authors writing close to the time Guillaume de
Lorris wrote his Rose (c. 1230). For example, the earliest, that of the Anglo-
Norman poet Philippe de Thaon (or Thaün), probably written between 1121
and 1135,82 gives the two alternate names, castor and bievre, and notes that the
animal is named for its castrated state: ‘chastre sei de sun gré, / pur ço est si
numé’ [castrated itself by its will, / for that is it so named], and that it signifies
the man who abandons luxure,83 a sin that may suggest sodomy.84 A beaver
signifying a sinning man in the Rose margin offers an intriguing link to non-
normative erotic activities if the reader connects the animal to the nearby
Oiseuse who has already been linked to hermaphrodites who are in turn linked
to same-sex activity that would likely include sodomy. In the beginning of the
thirteenth century, the second French bestiary author, Gervaise, writing in his
rhymed Bestiaire about the castor/beivre startlingly states: ‘Une beste est d’autre
nature’ [One beast is of another nature].85 That nature, of course, consists of
neither masculine nor feminine, but something in between, a gender that
presents itself as indeterminate. The author explains that ‘L’on fait des coillons
medicine / meudre que de nule racine’ [One makes from the [animal’s] testicles
a medicine / better than any root].86 Gervaise describes typical beaver behavior
concluding with how the beaver auce la cuisse (raises its leg)87 to show the hunter
its castrated state. The longest rhymed French bestiary, the very popular Bestiaire
divin composed around 1210 or 1211 by the third author, Guillaume le Clerc

79
McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, p. 95.
80
Ibid.; See also the castor described as ‘mansuetus’ (gentle) in the Latin ‘Fisiologo, version
Bis’ in Luigina Morini, Bestiari Medievali (Turin: Giulio Einardi Editore, 1996), p. 42;
and, as Curley points out, ‘the animal’s mildness (innocentissimum valde et quietum)’,
Physiologus, p. xxiii.
81
McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, p. 95.
82
McCulloch provides the likely date as c. 1121 (ibid., p. 48). Emmanuel Walberg, in Le
bestiare de Philippe de Thaün (Lund: H. J. Müller), offers the span from 1121 to 1135 as
possible dates of composition in his introduction, p. xviii.
83
Walberg, Le bestiare, pp. 42–3; vv. 1137–8, 1155.
84
Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1997); see especially chs 4–7.
85
Morini, Bestiari, p. 326, v. 685.
86
Ibid., p. 326, vv. 689–90.
87
Ibid., p. 326, v. 704.
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272 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

(also called Guillaume le Normand), calls the castor quite intelligent and of great
wisdom, and recounts the typical steps the animal takes to avoid capture,
including how it lies down with its feet in the air to show its castrated body.88
The fourth author, Pierre de Beauvais, writing his bestiaries – a short version
and a long one – before 1217 or 1218,89 describes the castor as a very peaceful
beast.90 McCulloch’s summary comment about the beaver’s gentleness and
Pierre’s assessment of it as peaceful suggest qualities that belie the desperate
action it finds itself forced to take. The last three writers – Gervaise, Guillaume
le Clerc, and Pierre – attribute cognitive behavior typical of humans to the
beaver, and facilitate the animal’s association with Oiseuse. The last two authors,
Guillaume le Clerc and Pierre (in particular), add moral lessons for man to
please God and to cast aside evils, or throw their sins to the devil, further linking
transgressive behavior to the beaver and to humankind, and through both, indi-
cating that Oiseuse somehow transgresses normative barriers.
Finally, a different sort of bestiary, no longer fully in the tradition of the
Physiologus, the popular prose Bestiaire d’Amours written by Richard de
Fournival, appeared sometime before the author’s death in 1260.91 The artist
drawing the beaver under Oiseuse in British Library MS Stowe 947 may have
known the work.92 The Bestiaire d’Amours recounts the same story of the
animal’s escapades as the other sources, but, in the context of attempting to
convince the author’s beloved to give up her heart as easily as the beaver does
its testicles, the text also reminds the reader of the willingness of the animal to
disfigure itself.
Interest in the beaver’s disfigurement may have reflected medieval muti-
lation concerns.93 Jacqueline Murray maintains that men experienced a real
fear of castration and that it ‘occupied a central place in theological, legal, and
popular discourses’.94 Outlining a sort of history of the issue in the Christian
West, Murray names the same main moral examples (in their respective
historical contexts) of castration provided by Huot and Hult in their discussion
of the Rose. Murray begins with the well-known quote from Matthew 19:12
regarding eunuchs thus born, those made by men, and those who make them-

88
Gabriel Bianciotto, trans. Bestiaires du Moyen Âge (Paris: Stock, 1980; 1992), pp. 92–3.
89
Morini, Bestiari, xviii; McCulloch, Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries, p. 68.
90
Bianciotto, trans., Bestiaires, p. 37.
91
Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: Le Moyen Âge, revised edn (Paris: Fayard, 1992),
p. 1266. The Latin poem De Vetula is attributed to Richard de Fournival and is discussed
by Clark, ‘Culture Loves a Void’, in this volume.
92
Although Guillaume de Lorris wrote his section of the Rose around 1230, and Jean de Meun
wrote the continuation around 1270, the Stowe manuscript dates to the fourteenth century.
93
Jacqueline Murray, ‘Sexual Mutilation and Castration Anxiety: A Medieval Perspective’,
in Mathew S. Kuefler, ed., The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance,
and Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006) 254–72.
94
Ibid., p. 255.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 273

selves so for the kingdom of heaven. While many, including Church fathers
Augustine and Jerome, understood the third category metaphorically to mean
choosing the way of the spiritual eunuch (i.e. chastity), at least a few, such as
Origen in the third century, took it literally.95 Jean’s Rose sets out how Origen
cut off his own testicles so he could serve religious women without the
suspicion that he might lie with them.96 While Guillaume does not mention
the example of Origen, the author likely knew of the story, and the beaver
sketch that appears in the margin of the text of Guillaume’s poem sets up the
motif of purposeful self-emasculation in the original Rose.
Spiritual or mystical castration occurring in the dreams of holy men even-
tually found itself included in the lives of historical figures, thus keeping
castration in the consciousness of medieval culture.97 Secular law codes, like
those examined by Rolf Bremmer, Charlene Eska, and Jay Gates in this
volume,98 also set out castration penalties for sins against nature and for some
heterosexual crimes. Formal courts, and, on occasion, informal justice, as in
the c. 1117–18 case99 of Abelard, carried out punishments. Abelard, as Jean
relates in his Rose, had his testicles taken from him at night while he was lying
in bed.100 As Abelard himself communicates in his Ad amicum suum consola-
toria (Consolation to his friend), also known as the Historia calamitatum, two
of the men who had attacked him were soon caught and in turn emasculated.101
Similar to Murray’s study of cases of medieval castration, Martin Irvine iden-
tifies mutilation narratives in accounts of revenge, war, and the crusades, as
well as in a number of the French fabliaux that treat male genital removal.
Irvine asserts that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries comprise ‘an era of
heightened anxiety about the body and its sexuality’.102 R. Howard Bloch details

95
Ibid.. See also Scholz, Eunuchs and Castrati, especially the chapter entitled ‘“Chastity of
the Angels?” Sexuality in Early Christianity.’
96
Poirion, ed. Le Roman, vv. 17052–8 at vv. 17,052–3: ‘Origenés, qui ses coillons / Se copa’
[Origen, who his testicles / Cut off]. For more about Origen’s autocastrataion, see Jack
Collins, ‘Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early
Christianity’, in this volume, pp. 73–86.
97
Murray, ‘Sexual Mutilation and Castration Anxiety’, pp. 255–6.
98
Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, ‘The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served:
Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’, pp. 108–30; Charlene M.
Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources’, pp.
149–73; Jay Paul Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal
Subject’, pp. 131–48, in this volume.
99
Dates come from ‘Repères chronologiques’ and Jean-Yves Tilliette, ‘Introduction’, in Éric
Hicks and Thérèse Moreau, ed. and trans., Lettres d’Abélard et Héloïse (Paris: Librairie
Générale Française, 2007), pp. 36–7 at p. 36.
100
Poirion, ed., Le Roman, vv. 8759 ff. Jean de Meun was especially familiar with the story
as he translated the letters of Abelard and Heloise. See Betty Radice, ‘Introduction’ to
The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 1974), p. 47.
101
Lettres d’Abélard et Héloïse, ed. Hicks and Moreau; Latin p. 74; French, p. 75.
102
Irvine, ‘Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body’, p. 87.
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274 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

the subject of detached sexual organs in the fabliaux in The Scandal of the
Fabliaux.103 In the chapter entitled ‘The Body and its Parts’, Bloch discusses a
series of the comedic and satirical narratives that concern castrated organs,
including ones that a person can purchase at market, even if only in one’s
dreams.104 To medieval audiences, to Harley, and to others, the possibility of
choosing phalluses may recall the phallic rosebuds in the bushes reflected in
the fountain of Narcissus in Guillaume’s Rose.105 From among these disem-
bodied phallic buds, the young dreaming lover chooses one.
Genitals presented as separated from their corresponding bodies thus
continued to appear in medieval society in a number of different contexts, both
literary and historical.106 Many of the well-documented cases of castration, as
well as literary descriptions of castrated bodies and unattached or detachable
genitals, are contemporary with the two parts of the Rose. Therefore, the last
two categories of eunuchs from Matthew 19:12 – those made so by other men,
as happened to Abelard (and numerous others), and those who make them-
selves so for the kingdom of heaven, like Origen (and some others) – formed
part of the theological, legal, and popular discourses of the Middle Ages.
Intriguingly, the beaver’s body actually comprises the three categories of
eunuchs listed in Matthew 19:12: those naturally born so,107 those castrated by

103
R. Howard Bloch, The Scandal of the Fabliaux (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
104
Ibid., pp. 59–100; see especially pp. 61–5. See also Larissa Tracy, ‘The Uses of Torture
and Violence in the Fabliaux: When Comedy Crosses the Line’, Florilegium 23.2 (2006):
143–68; and the related essay by Mary E. Leech on the fabliau La dame escolliee in this
volume, ‘The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine
Identity in La dame escolliee’, pp. 210–28.
105
See footnote 35.
106
Murray, ‘Sexual Mutilation and Castration Anxiety’, see especially pp. 256–9.
107
Commenting on the first category of Matthew, regarding eunuchs thus born, remains a
bit beyond the scope of the present essay, but contemporaneous reports of such would
only serve to keep the subject of undifferentiated bodies in front of medieval audiences.
Valeria Finucci, in The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the
Italian Renaissance (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), and Thomas Laqueur,
in Making Sex document cases of girls or young men ‘born without any visible signs of
those parts which are taken out in castration’ (Finucci, p. 242), who, around the age of
puberty sprout penises (Finucci, p. 243; and Laqueur, pp. 7, 128–9; both relate the case of
Marie [later called Germain] and others.). Such incidences probably represent, as Finucci
points out, cases of an endocrine disorder recognized even in antiquity, perhaps
Reifenstein’s syndrome that causes undescended testicles (Finucci, p. 243, and n. 51), or,
as Laqueur explains, androgen-dihydrostestoserone deficiency, a genetic disorder known
as ‘penis at twelve’ condition, an inherited type of male pseudo-hermaphroditism
(Laqueur, pp. 7, 247, n. 22). In fact, in a modern estimation, the occurrence in the United
States of undescended testicles in boy babies is one in three hundred (Finucci, p. 243, n.
51). Vern L. Bulloch discusses ‘intersex’ children and transgendered individuals in
‘Eunuchs in History and Society’, in Eunuchs in Antiquity and Beyond, ed. Shaun Tougher
(London: Classical Press of Wales and Duckworth, 2002), pp. 1–17. So, while no repre-
sentations of the third category of eunuchs may seem to appear in either Guillaume’s or
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 275

others, and the self-emasculated. As an animal with no externally visible geni-

talia, the beaver resembles eunuchs thus born; when castrated by hunters, those
made eunuchs by men; and when the beavers purportedly bite off their own
testicles, they make themselves eunuch-like. Therefore, the drawing of the
beaver placed below the illustration of Oiseuse, serves as a three-fold example
par excellence of a eunuch or castrate, one whose very name castor suggests
both its chastré nature and the genitally challenged and homoerotically inclined
family of Castor (the Gemini twin of Pollux).
Numerous cases of wordplay involving castration and the terms for testicles
exist in Jean’s Rose. The puns cross linguistic boundaries between Latin and
French, usually dismembering and re-membering the terms in question.108 As
a result, concomitant with awareness of the significance of the beaver’s name
and its seemingly de- or un-gendered state, medieval people, looking above the
beaver to the miniature of Oiseuse, would seek to appreciate the ramifications
of her name and personage. Guillaume, according to E. K. Rand, ‘knew his Ovid’
intimately.109 Guillaume de Lorris, well versed in Latin and in its literary tradition,
chose a curious name with significant etymology in Latin and in French for his
character Oiseuse, whose name has a variety of meanings, although translators
often render it as ‘Idleness’ in English. Hult, calling attention to the form of the
word, notices that ‘the character is called “Oiseuse” and not “Oisiveté” as might
be expected’.110 Jean Batany comments the odd origin of the character’s name:
‘L’adjectif oiseus est normalement péjoratif, et il en va de même pour ce nom
abstrait [oiseuse] bizarrement tiré de son féminin par ‘dérivation impropre’ (par
ellipse de vie-, chose-, parole-?), a moins qu’il ne vienne du neutre pluriel latin
otiosa’ [The adjective oiseus is normally pejorative, and the same goes for the
abstract noun [oiseuse] bizarrely taken from its [i.e. the masculine adjective’s]
feminine [form] by ‘improper derivation’ [through ellipsis from -life, -thing, -
speech] unless it comes from the Latin neuter plural otiosa].111
The strange name of Oiseuse is an abstract feminine noun, derived
improperly from an originally masculine adjective in Old French, which is in
turn derived from the Latin masculine adjective otiosus, or perhaps from the

Jean’s Rose, antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern society all recognize the existence of
such ‘natural eunuchs’. (The term ‘natural eunuchs’ occurs in Finucci, The Manly
Masquerade, p. 249.)
108
Hult, ‘Language and Dismemberment’, especially 110 ff. See footnote 3 above, and its
corresponding text.
109
E. K. Rand, ‘The Metamorphosis of Ovid in Le roman de la rose’, in Studies in the History
of Culture, ed. Percy W. Long (Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries, 1969), pp. 103–21 at
p. 116.
110
David F. Hult, ‘The Allegorical Fountain: Narcissus in the Roman de la rose’, Romanic
Review 72 (1981): 125–48 at p. 127, n. 8.
111
Jean Batany, ‘Miniature, allégorie, idéologie: “Oiseuse” et la mystique monacale récupérée
par la “classe de loisir”‘, in Études sur le Roman de la rose de Guillaume de Lorris, ed. Jean
Dufournet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1984), pp. 7–36 at p. 19.
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276 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

Latin neuter plural form, otiosa. In the first case, a masculine form turns into a
feminine word, recalling the feminizing effects of castration, and in the second
case, a feminine word comes from a neuter form, bringing to mind the effem-
inate appearance of a neutered being. Oiseuse may also have originated from
the adverb otiose, a grammatical form with (of course) no gender at all. All the
original Latin or Old French masculine, neuter, or genderless forms would have
had to undergo a feminizing transformation, (essentially a linguistic castration),
a possibility suggested by Hult’s study on language and dismemberment,
followed by a change in gender markers to provide the eventual Old French
feminine noun. A feminine form resulting from a masculine or neuter one
presents a pregnant possibility for understanding Oiseuse as a character who
has a name with an ambiguous gender history, much as the beaver’s name
purportedly conveys its castration and resultant eunuch-like state. Oiseuse’s
name thus suggests that she has undergone a change in gender, or apparent
gender: that she was once masculine, had something removed, and now appears
feminine.
The meanings of the Latin and French forms of Oiseuse’s name provide addi-
tional support for a reading linking the castrated beaver to the indeterminately
gendered origin of oiseuse, and thus to the character’s body, as well as to the
mutilation motif in Guillaume’s Rose. The Old French noun oiseuse (or oisose)
has two main meanings as given in most dictionaries. Both definitions refer to
a lack of activity, the first also to types of speech and to other acts. For example,
in the standard Tobler and Lommatzsch Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, the first
meaning, ‘idleness, futility, pointlessness, otioseness/otiosity; invalidity,
void(ness), trifle, trivia/triviality, vanity, emptiness’, corresponds to one inter-
pretation of the character’s significance; the second, ‘idleness [idling]; idleness,
passivity, dormancy,’ reflects the common translation of Oiseuse’s name,
‘Idleness’.112 In Latin, as in Old French, the adjective otiosus, -a, -um (Old French
oiseuse) means ‘at leisure, without occupation […] esp. free from public duties
or occupied in literary work only […] [by transference: of persons] calm, quiet
[…] in a struggle, indifferent, neutral’.113 The concept of ‘neutral’ also approaches
the notion of ‘neuter’. The term otiosus has broad meanings and uses, but basi-
cally, the Latin word conveys senses of being inactive or of lacking productive
activity, and it therefore sometimes describes states of leisurely activity, including
love acts; of uselessness or superfluousness; of being peaceable, undisturbed,

112
Adolf Tobler and Erhardt Lommatzsch, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch (Berlin: Wiedmann;
Wiesbaden: Steinen, 1925–) VI Pt. 2:1055–7. Müßiges, Nichtiges, and Müßiggang,
Untätigkeit are the German definitions given. Translators and scholars often refer to the
character as ‘Idleness’. See Charles Dahlberg, trans., The Romance of the Rose (Hanover,
NH: University Press of New England, 1971, 1983); and Frances Horgan, trans., The
Romance of the Rose (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).
113
For Latin definitions, see Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (New York: Macmillan, 1959, 1962,
1964, 1966, 1968), p. 418.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 277

unoccupied, vacant, idle, or sterile.114 The word may describe persons, parts of
the body, mental states, and things. It may even refer to an idle penis.115 The
sense of sterility, apart from its status as a legitimate meaning, is contained or
suggested in other definitions of oiseuse such as ‘lacking productive activity’ or
‘uselessness’. ‘Sterile’ passed into Old and Modern French as a sense of the word
oiseuse,116 yet Rose scholars seem to have ignored this particular definition that
can convey something very important about the figure seen as ambiguous,
usually either as a positive aspect of courtly love or as a negative aspect of
cupidinous love. Critics instead concentrate on her name and figure as refer-
encing the history of literary leisure, the goddess Venus or the useless idleness
of Oiseuse, and only rarely on the form of her name or on the alternate meanings
of it.117 The connotation of sterility – or that of neutrality – in Oiseuse’s name
recalls Chaucer’s Pardoner (called a gelding), understood as neutered or
castrated, as eunuch, as infertile as the castrating beaver placed below the illus-
tration of Oiseuse in the manuscript marginalia. The indeterminately gendered
animal with a name that points to its dismembered state indicates that Oiseuse
could be understood as equally ambiguously gendered through her name, a
moniker improperly formed by linguistic dismemberment. While audiences
know that a castrated beaver will be sterile, in case there remain any doubt about
Oiseuse, Guillaume chooses a name for her that signifies the resultant sterile
state of her transformed body. The gatekeeper embodies castration.
Therefore, in Guillaume’s original Rose, a castrated state amounts to an indi-
cator of indeterminate gender. And if Oiseuse and the Diex d’Amors with their
‘Keys’, and the disembodied stiff rosebud the lover desires (as well as the latter’s
relationship with Bel Acuel) serve as examples, being differently gendered also
offers the possibility of non-normative sexual activity.118 Above the beaver’s

114
Ibid. Emphasis mine.
115
Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. 1277; Thesaurus Linguae
Latinae 10 vols. + (Leipzig: Teubner, 1980), pp. 1165–74.
116
Le (Nouveau) Petit Robert (Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1993, 1996), p. 1527; implied
in Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes
du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols (Paris: Vieweg, Bouillon, 1881–1902), 5.588–9.
117
See Carlos Alvar, ‘Oiseuse, Vénus, Luxure: trois dames et un miroir’, Romania 106 (1985):
108–17; Batany, ‘Miniature, allégorie, idéologie’; John Fleming, ‘Further Reflections on
Oiseuse’s Mirror’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 100 (1984): 26–40; Herbert Kolb,
‘Oiseuse, die Dame mit dem Spiegel’, Germanisch-Romanische Monatschrift n.s. 15 [46]
(1965): 139–49; Earl Jeffrey Richards, ‘Reflections on Oiseuse’s Mirror: Iconographic
Tradition, Luxuria and the Roman de la rose’, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 98
(1982): 296–311; and ‘The Tradition of “otium litteratum” and Oiseuse in Le roman de
la rose’, Studi francesi 32 (1988): 271–3.
118
In addition to Harley, ‘Narcissus, Hermaphroditus, and Attis’, and Jordan, The Invention
of Sodomy, John Boswell also discusses categories of sexual phenomena conflated and
confused with homosexuality. For example, Boswell states outright: ‘Hermaphroditus
often signified “homosexual” in the Middle Ages’: Christianity, Social Tolerance, and
Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 185, n. 58.
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278 ELLEN LORRAINE FRIEDRICH

depiction, Oiseuse, the first character whom the young lover meets, takes her
place. Harley makes a cogent argument for Oiseuse, not just as a feminine
figuration of Narcissus as Huot maintains,119 but also as a reflection of the
Hermaphroditus story, thereby equating her with the youth who was
unmanned by the waters of the pool. Oiseuse’s improperly formed and gram-
matically ambiguous name signifies sterility, a corollary to the castre castré. The
suggestion that Oiseuse carries a phallic clef, like the one the beaver cuts off or
keeps hidden, and the ‘key’ the Diex d’Amors uses in the homoerotic
submission ceremony with the young lover, evoke the eunuch Pardoner who
carries his relikes (relics)120 around in a pouch as Amors does his jewels. The
next gender-ambivalent character the lover encounters after Oiseuse is Bel
Acuel (Kelly’s ‘receptive agent’ in the rose complex), and the lover’s male object
of desire. At the fountain of Narcissus – the young man who fell in love with a
masculine image like himself and who is linked to both Hermaphroditus and
Oiseuse – the plump rosebuds on the rosebushes’ stiff stalks reflected therein
stand as disembodied phallic symbols. As symbols of masculine same-sex
desire, the buds offer the lover a choice. Once the youth chooses a manly bud,
he submits himself to the God of Love in a ceremony portrayed as nothing
short of sodomitic.121 Eventually the young lover obtains a ‘kiss’ from Bel
Acuel,122 after which the latter finds himself in prison, punished for the
improper relation, blamed at least partially on Oiseuse who initially admitted
the lover to the vergiers.
In the circular story of castration and non-normative gender states alluding
to same-sex desire recounted in Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose,
Oiseuse plays a crucial part, especially at the beginning of the tale. Both her
name (with its gender ambiguity and irregular form) and her personage
(perhaps with an unattached phallus) participate in a medieval topos of gram-
matical abnormality as a comment on irregular sexuality.123 In the next essay
in this volume, Robert L. A. Clark considers the cultural categories of the sterile
eunuch, a demi homme ‘half-man’ or semi-viros ‘sort-of-man’, evocative of
Ovid’s Hermaphroditus as semivir, and thus of Oiseuse as semi-something, but
as fully part of, indeed the entrée to, the society in the Rose. The sterile eunuch
is reminiscent of Oiseuse through the derivation and meaning of her name.
Clark’s difficult-to-categorize character offers a parallel to the ambiguity
scholars find in Oiseuse’s persona in Guillaume’s original Rose.

119
See footnote 14 and the corresponding quote.
120
Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Benson, p. 34, v. 701. Jean uses the same term,
‘reliques’ as a slang term for testicles (vv. 7111–12).
121
Friedrich, ‘The Mentorship’. See footnote 40 and its accompanying text.
122
Friedrich, ‘When a Rose’, pp. 32–3. Through philological analyses, I demonstrate that
the ‘baisier’ scene (e.g. vv. 3769 ff.) recounts an act of sodomy.
123
For the topos of grammatical irregularity, see Boswell, Christianity, pp. 258–9; and Clark,
‘Culture Loves a Void’, in this volume.
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Insinuating Indeterminate Gender 279

The castration motif in the first Rose, couched in words and images like
Oiseuse and the beaver, is not always easy for the modern reader to interpret.
However, unlike the generally negative and violent cases of castration – Saturn,
Abelard, and Origen – in Jean’s Rose, Guillaume’s differently gendered beings
participate in a broader culture, one permitting and describing desire among
those who fit the categories identified by Harley and others as alluding to
homosexuality. Castration therefore serves as a metaphor for Oiseuse (or vice
versa) and for the differences in and varieties of bodies and desires in the
vergiers portrayed in Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose.
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CHAPTER 13

Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in

De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre’s La Vieille
Robert L. A. Clark

I n James Brundage’s compendious Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval

Europe, there are only two references to eunuchs, although there are consid-
erably more references to the primary way that one becomes a eunuch, that is,
castration.1 In AD 558 Justinian prohibited ‘castration and the making of
eunuchs, an oriental practice that had begun to fall into disfavor in the Empire’.2
At the opposite end of Christendom and of the medieval period, Brundage
reports that on March 9, 1350, an Augsburg judge ruled against nullification
of a marriage because the husband, a eunuch (the word used in the text is
spado), had been able to consummate the marriage.3 Perhaps it is not surprising
that in western Christendom, the focus of Brundage’s study, the texts should
say so little about the condition of being a eunuch, for eunuchs, almost by defi-
nition, occupy an ambiguous position with regard to ‘law, sex, and society’, the
three terms of Brundage’s title. In so far as the law itself was concerned, this
ambiguity is clear considering that, despite Justinian’s prohibition, castration
was at various times and places the punishment for males who had sex with
males; for males who had sex with non-Christian women (the woman’s offense
was to have her nose cut off); or for rape.4 Regarding sex, the eunuch’s ambi-
guity might seem a given. Yet it was precisely due to this ambiguity that decre-

1
James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 122, 512.
2
Ibid., p. 122.
3
Ibid., p. 512.
4
In Visigothic Spain, as punishment for men found guilty of having sex with other men
(ibid., p. 149); in the Levant, for men having sex with non-Christian women (ibid., p. 207);
for cases of rape, see citations in ibid., p. 471, n. 278. Legal penalties for castration and
other genital injuries are discussed in detail by Rolf H. Bremmer Jr, Jay Paul Gates, and
Charlene M. Eska in this volume. See Bremmer, ‘The Children He Never Had; The
Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law’,
108–30; Gates, ‘The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject’,
pp. 131–48 and Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh and
Irish Sources’, pp. 149–73.
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Culture Loves a Void 281

talists, theologians, and jurists struggled with eunuchry for centuries, especially
where marriage was concerned. Could a eunuch contract a legitimate marriage,
as was the question in the Augsburg case cited by Brundage? Could a legitimate
marriage be nullified if the husband became a eunuch? Finally, regarding
society, perhaps one can best evoke the endlessly fascinating case of Peter
Abelard, whose first reaction to his castration was a shamed retreat from society
– and from his marriage – into the monastery.5
But what of culture? Here there can be no doubt that in the cultural imag-
inary of western Europe, the sterile eunuch, because of his ambiguity, was a
paradoxically pregnant figure for thinking about culture. As a provocative ‘third
term’, the eunuch (as Marjorie Garber has argued for the cross-dresser) troubles
both cultural binaries and unity. Is the castrated male still a male? Is he to be
assimilated to the category of ‘not male’ or ‘other than male’? Can he be thought
of as an ‘unmanly male’, to use a term that borrows from the registers of
biological sex and gender construction? Or is he more properly a liminal figure,
caught somewhere in between male and maleness’s various others? Regarding
the ‘third term’, Garber writes: ‘The “third” is a mode of articulation, a way of
describing a space of possibility. Three puts in question the idea of one: of
identity, self-sufficiency, self-knowledge.’6 For Garber, the cross-dresser
provokes a ‘category crisis’ resulting in what she terms the ‘transvestite effect’.7
She writes, ‘the transvestite makes culture possible […] there can be no culture
without the transvestite because the transvestite marks the entrance into the
Symbolic.’8 The cultural work accomplished by the figure of the transvestite is
not limited to but belongs above all to the realm of representation, as evidenced
by the myriad phenomena of cross-dressing as performance in the theater and
beyond. The eunuch is, if anything, even more profoundly disturbing to the
cultural categories evoked by Garber. For the eunuch belongs not only to the
realm of the symbolic but also to that of physical reality, although ultimately it
is through representation and especially through discourse that the eunuch
serves to trouble those categories.
For the medieval period, the thousand-year history of Byzantium has
provided an especially rich vein for thinking about the place of eunuchs in the
social construction of gender. Citing Garber’s notion of ‘category crisis’ at the
beginning of his study, The Manly Eunuch, Mathew S. Kuefler writes: ‘This is
precisely the role that I argue was played by the eunuch in the later Roman

5
For a fuller discussion of Abelard’s castration, and his response to that punishment in
hagiographical terms, see Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the
Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary’, in this
volume, pp. 87–107.
6
Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York and
London: Routledge, 1992), p. 11.
7
Ibid., p. 17.
8
Ibid., p. 34.
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282 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

culture, revealing the anxieties around sexual differentiation and at the same
time questioning its foundation, and bringing to the surface all of the uncer-
tainties of masculine identity in public and private life, and in particular, the
tension between manliness and unmanliness.’9 In her work on eunuchs in
Byzantium, Kathryn Ringrose has (like Garber) advanced the notion of a third
gender and even a third sex, stating that the ‘“thirdness” of the eunuch is an
important part of his gender construct’.10 Ringrose notes that ‘after Late
Antiquity there is little indication that eunuchs were believed to constitute a
“third sex”‘.11 In her book and in a shorter article, however, she develops the idea
that in Byzantine society eunuchs did constitute a distinct third gender, a socially
recognized (and recognizable) category that possessed a high degree of limi-
nality. Ironically, eunuchs were a critical element of Byzantine culture precisely
because their liminality allowed them to serve as intermediaries between social
groups that were rigidly separated: the court and the world outside, men and
women, even, in their role as care-givers, between the living and the dead.12
Things were altogether different in the Christian West, which did not have
a centuries-old presence of eunuchs in so many walks of life with the attendant
social and cultural schemes of categorization. A particularly rich source for
understanding what, after Garber, can be termed the ‘eunuch effect’ (the
profound unsettling of categories) is provided by a pair of two relatively little
studied texts, the thirteenth-century De Vetula and its fourteenth-century
French translation, Jean Le Fèvre’s La Vieille. The Pseudo-Ovidian Latin poem
De Vetula is commonly (if problematically) attributed to Richard de Fournival,
the author of the Bestiaire d’Amours.13 The Latin poem is extant in some thirty-
nine manuscripts, and excerpts and fragments of it survive in many others. De

9
Mathew S. Kuefler, The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian
Ideology in Late Antiquity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 14.
Shaun Tougher, however, argues that eunuchs were not always figures of anxiety in
Roman society, that there is evidence that some were loved and admired – and specifically
made eunuchs to preserve their beauty. See ‘The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of
Roman Eunuchs’, in this volume, p. 48–72.
10
Kathryn M. Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender
in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 7. In this volume, Jed
Chandler explores the virgin ‘third gender’ of Grail eunuchs. See ‘Eunuchs of the Grail’,
pp. 229–54.
11
Ringrose, Perfect Servant, p. 4.
12
Ibid., pp. 5–6; Kathryn M. Ringrose, ‘Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in
Byzantium’, in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and
History, ed. Gilbert Herdt (New York: Zone, 1996), pp. 85–109 at pp. 94–8. Mary A.
Valante discusses the importance of Byzantine eunuchs and how the need for them was
fed by the Viking slave trade. ‘Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value
of Eunuchs’, pp. 174–86.
13
On the issue of the poem’s attribution to Richard, see Pseudo-Ovidius De Vetula:
Untersuchungen und Text, ed. Paul Klopsch (Leiden: Brill, 1967), pp. 78–99; and The
Pseudo-Ovidian Vetula, ed. Dorothy M. Robathan (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1968),
pp. 6–10.
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Culture Loves a Void 283

Vetula’s popularity continued into the age of the printing press: There are two
incunabula (c. 1475 and 1479), as well as one fifteenth- and two sixteenth-
century printings. The text’s popularity is also attested to by the fourteenth-
century translation by Jean Le Fèvre (c. 1320–after 1380), sometimes referred
to as Jean Le Fèvre de Ressons to distinguish him from another author with
the same name. Jean Le Fèvre is best known as the author of the Respit de la
mort and the Livre de leesce. In addition to these two original texts, he also
made several translations, the most famous of which is the Lamentations de
Matheolus. His translation of De Vetula appears to have remained as obscure
in his own day as it is now. La Vieille, ou les dernières amours d’Ovide is extant
in only two manuscripts, fr. 881 and fr. 2327 of the Bibliothèque nationale de
France.14 There is only one modern edition that dates from a century and a half
ago.15 The editor, Hippolyte Cocheris, who holds Jean’s text in low regard,
remarks that La Vieille is as much an ‘imitation’ as it is a translation of his
source due to Jean’s propensity to amplify certain passages.16 He does allow,
however, that Jean’s recourse to amplificatio, a hallmark of the medieval trans-
lator’s art, bears results that are not devoid of interest. He also condemns the
salaciousness of both source and translation, although Jean’s poetic verve is
often most evident in such passages.17
De Vetula’s success may be likened to that of the Romans de la Rose,
discussed by Ellen Friedrich in this volume, a text that it resembles on more
than one count.18 Like the Rose (especially Jean de Meun’s continuation of
Guillaume de Lorris’s poem), De Vetula incorporates into a loose narrative
structure a wide range of material, including Ovidian motifs, tips about

14
For a succinct philological presentation of the La Vieille and its source, see G. H.
[Geneviève Hasenohr], ‘Jean Le Fèvre’, in Dictionnaire des lettres françaises: Le Moyen
Âge (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 802–4.
15
Jean Lefevre [sic], La Vieille, ou les dernières amours d’Ovide, ed. Hippolyte Cocheris (Paris:
Aubry, 1861). Cocheris bases his edition on BnF, fr. 881 (formerly ms 7235), a fine copy
on vellum dating from the fifteenth century. On the title page of La Vieille a miniature
represents the author standing before a male figure, perhaps a cleric, who, seated on a
high-backed chair, leafs through the pages of the book. La Vieille (fols 1–48v) is followed
by a glossed translation of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria (fols 49r–96v), followed in turn by a
selection of poetry by Guillaume de Machaut, incomplete at the end (fols 97r–112v). A
digitized copy of fr. 881 is available at http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449041w. Fr.
2327 is a paper manuscript of the fifteenth century.
16
La Vieille, ed. Cocheris, pp. xxxviii–xxxix.
17
Ibid., pp. xiii, xlix.
18
Karen Pratt shows that Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Roman de la Rose is the main
intertext in Jean Le Fèvre’s translation of the Lamentationes Matheoluli in which Jean de
Meun is invoked or quoted either to supplement or to replace the auctores in the source
text, making the French text more misogynistic in the process. See ‘Translating
Misogamy: The Authority of the Intertext in the Lamentationes Matheoluli and Its Middle
French Translation by Jean LeFèvre’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 35.4 (1999):
421–35. Also see Ellen Lorraine Friedrich, ‘Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A
Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris’s Romans de la rose’, in this volume, pp. 255–79.
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284 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

grooming, and theological and scientific matter. And, like the Rose, it is a
literary text with encyclopedic pretensions. It is the latter element, especially
its third book, an astrological treatise with philosophical and theological preoc-
cupations, which doubtless assured its success with generations of readers that
included such luminaries as Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon.19 Finally, as
in the Rose, the narrative itself occupies only a small part of De Vetula. The
poem’s first book, with its long digressions about gaming, hunting, and fishing,
deals with the pastimes of Ovida, a typical noble youth of the thirteenth
century. Only the second book is devoted in the main to recounting Ovida’s
final loves, the ‘dernières amours’ of Jean Le Fèvre’s title. As with the Rose, the
fierce misogyny of De Vetula must also have played a role in its success, and
in both De Vetula and La Vieille the Eunuchenparodie20 is a key feature of a
masculinist discourse on gender in which misogyny serves as a springboard
for a highly elaborate attack on eunuchs. The passage’s rigorous scholastic
organization does more than provide a coherent structure for the satirical
diatribe. Emanating from a position of clerical privilege, the authors position
themselves against the threats posed by enemies from without and within,
Others perceived as threatening the primacy and plenitude of the clerical class.
Women were by definition excluded from the ranks of the clergy, but in the
two poems eunuchs are the enemy within, or at least represented as such. The
texts anxiously seek to exclude them even as they fill the void embodied by the
eunuch’s lack, the monstrous breach in nature that he is held to represent. What
fills that void is the power wielded by the clerical pen.
In De Vetula and La Vieille the passage on eunuchry at the beginning of
book 2 introduces the Ovidian narrative proper. The title character is the
guardian of the poet’s love object, who promises to introduce him into the bed
of his amie. Instead, she takes her mistress’s place for a night of blissful love-
making before the full horror of the poet’s situation is revealed to him at dawn.
In both La Vieille and its source, the section on eunuchs represents less than 8
percent of the text, about 180 out of nearly 2,400 lines in De Vetula (2.21–201)
and some 470 lines out of almost 6,000 lines in La Vieille (2087–2556).21 The
transitions leading into the passage and, at its conclusion, back into the
narrative offer only the thinnest of arguments for its inclusion. In the opening
of book 2, ‘Ovid’ says that the games described in the first book did not
succeed in freeing him from the cares of love: ‘solum felicem super omnes esse
putebam / Qui, quotiens vellet, cognoscere posset amicam’ [I considered to
be happy only he who could ‘know’ his lady friend whenever he wanted]

19
Hasenohr, ‘Jean Le Fèvre’, p. 803.
20
De Vetula, ed. Klopsch, p. 93.
21
In the discussion below, I treat the two texts together, noting certain elements in Jean’s
poem that represent departures from or additions to his source.
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Culture Loves a Void 285

(Vet. 2.4–5).22 Now that he knows better (or so he says), he is forced to sing the
praises of those who can do without women, the semiviros, demi homes, ‘half
men’ (LV 2087). He will return to this idea at the conclusion of the long
digression lambasting eunuchs, saying that he must ‘praise’ them, even though
it may not be proper to do so, because they are able to live a life free from
women: ‘Talia monstra modo laudo, quia vivere possunt / Feminosque carere,
quamvisque solerem / Felices solos coitu reputare potentes, / Felices solos
reputo cessare coactos’ [Such monsters must I now praise because they can live
without women; although I was accustomed to consider only those capable of
intercourse to be happy, I now consider to be happy those who have been
compelled to cease] (Vet. 2.196–9). Jean renders this passage faithfully but then
goes on to embellish it with more colorful language, a trait that is typical of his
rendering into French: ‘Ne puent habiter ne joindre, / Ne de l’instrument
charnel poindre’ [They cannot copulate nor unite with a woman, nor prick with
a member of their flesh] (LV 2541–2).23 The narrator’s irony here is, of course,
patent and disingenuous, but the author of La Vetula and his translator both
gloss over what was in fact one of the vexed points in the discourse of the
Church regarding eunuchry – that is, whether there was any merit to a eunuch’s
chastity since it was achieved through no effort of his own but through the
mechanics of castration. Though the reader is doubtless not taken in by the
ironic narrator and his supposed ‘envy’ of eunuchs, it is easy to miss the fact
that his smirk and wink refer to the thornier issue of ‘true chastity’ as it was
constructed by male clerics: either the complete life-long abstention from
sexual relations or the renouncement thereof by men and women who were
capable of engaging in them.24
The Vetula poet is clearly well acquainted with a broad range of discourses
about eunuchs, including biblical and theological, medical and the literary

22
Citations from De Vetula are from Robathan’s edition. All translations from De Vetula
and La Vieille are my own, abbreviated as Vet. and LV, respectively.
23
In her article on Jean’s translation of the Lamentationes Matheoluli, Pratt characterizes
him as a careful translator who ‘is able to preserve and elaborate on many of Matthew’s
stylistic flourishes, including enumeration and punning’ (‘Translating Misogamy’, p. 427).
24
While virginity was most highly valued, one could be chaste without being a virgin, as
in the case of chaste or spiritual marriage. See Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual
Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
Women’s place in society was most often determined by the sole criterion of chastity
according to the archaic and static triadic model of Christian society as consisting of
virgins, the chaste, and married people. Women were accordingly classified as either
virgins, widows (and other chaste women), or wives, and their relative spiritual merit
determined as one-hundred-fold for virgins, sixty for widows, and thirty for married
women. See Geneviève Hasenohr, ‘La vie quotidienne de la femme vue par l’Eglise:
L’enseignement des “journées chrétiennes” de la fin du Moyen-Age’, Frau und spätmitte-
lalterlicher Alltag (Internationaler Kongress, Krems an der Donau, 2. bis 5. Oktober 1984)
(Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1986), pp. 19–101
at pp. 21–3.
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286 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

heritage of Latin antiquity. For example, he opens his digression on eunuchs

by citing the different ways of becoming a eunuch: one can be, through an act
of nature, born a eunuch; suffer a violent castration at the hands of a jealous
husband (perhaps an evocation of Abelard’s unhappy plight); or undergo a
medical castration where there is the danger of peritonitis due to a hernia (Vet.
2.10–20). The ur-text behind this discourse in the western Christian tradition
is the passage in Matthew 19:12 in which Christ says to the disciples: ‘sunt enim
eunuchi qui de matris utero sic nati sunt, et sunt eunuchi qui facti sunt ab
hominibus et sunt eunuchi qui se ipsos castraverunt proptor regnum caelorum’
[There are eunuchs born that way from their mother’s womb, there are eunuchs
made so by men and there are eunuchs who have made themselves that way
for the sake of the kingdom of heaven].25 The Vetula poet excises Jesus’ cryptic
reference to ‘eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven’, perhaps because
he did not consider it appropriate subject matter for his post-Ovidian poem.
But he also may have wished to sidestep the millennial debate over Jesus’ words,
which were taken literally by some exegetes as recommending self-castration.
Brundage states that in the very early Christian era, the Stoic Sextus saw in
castration a cure for lust, and St Justin Martyr praised a young man who
requested it.26 As noted earlier in this volume, Origen of Alexandria was the
most famous self-castrator, although his act was represented as misguided by
Eusebius and other commentators (including Abelard). The matter was serious
enough to be prohibited by the Council of Nicaea in 325, and the allegorical
reading of Jesus’ pronouncement became the standard interpretation.27
It is especially interesting that in the Vetula poet’s formulation, spiritual
eunuchry (i.e., self-castration) has been replaced by scientific discourse on the
surgical treatment of hernias. Scientific knowledge is certainly deployed here
to lend authority to the text but, through the replacement of the positive, spir-
itual valence of eunuchry, the poet deftly shifts the focus to the supposedly
neutral ground of science. And while the attribution of De Vetula to Richard
de Fournival is questionable, he had in fact been granted a papal dispensation
to practice surgery and was thus particularly well placed to possess this kind
of knowledge.28 There is little reason to believe, however, that the Vetula poet
actually practiced surgery as his knowledge could well have come from surgical
manuals. The marshaling of science in the text serves rather to justify his highly

25
Biblia sacra vulgata, 3rd rev. edn (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1983); trans.
Jerusalem Bible: Reader’s Edition (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968). Jack Collins
discusses the original Greek text in the context of rabbinic views on castration. See
‘Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early
Christianity’, in this volume, pp. 73–86.
26
Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 65.
27
Ibid., p. 87.
28
F. F. H. [Françoise Féry-Hue], ‘Richard de Fournival’, in Dictionnaire des lettres françaises:
Le Moyen Âge (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 1266.
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Culture Loves a Void 287

critical attitude toward castration, which he qualifies as a cruel and reprobabilis

usus ‘reprehensible practice’ (Vet. 2:20). Perhaps the poet knew that the survival
rate for certain types of castration was very low and that certain law codes
called for death by castration. He may well have been aware that the practice
was condemned by Roman law. But Jean Le Fèvre also seems to possess at least
a layman’s knowledge of what castration involves, for he adds details to his
translation that are not in his source, as if to reinforce its authority. After the
testicles are ablated, he says, one must sew up the wound, apply a bandage, and
then apply a poultice made from eggs and estoupes (stuffing) (LV 2123–4).29
As is typical of Jean’s more truculent style, and perhaps needing a rhyme for
estoupes, he finishes off his translation of this passage with a breezy: ‘Jamais ne
batera les croupes’ [Never will he pound rumps] (LV 2125). The surgical
process for making a eunuch is not, however, what really interests either poet.
It is the resulting ‘monster’ (called spado or eunuchus in the Latin poem, spadon
or eunuche in Jean) that will exercise their considerable poetic and rhetorical
powers in the remainder of the eunuch satire. The rational explanation of how
eunuchs are made through the surgeons’ handiwork seems little more than a
pretext that calls forth the poets’ condemnation of the formers’ manipulation
of nature, which (they have noted) does not need men’s help to create eunuchs.
Surgery is positioned here as a lower, mechanical practice, as opposed to the
higher realms of knowledge from which, through the apparatus of scholas-
ticism, the poets will derive the remainder of their discussion of eunuchry.
What, the Vetula poet continues, are these half men, these semiviros? He
states that he does not know whether he should designate them as illos (the
masculine accusative pronoun for the third-person plural), whether the eunuch
is an iste or an ista (respectively, the masculine and feminine nominative
demonstrative pronouns for the third-person singular) (Vet. 2.21–2). It is not
an ista, he reasons, because it does not have a vulva, a remark that Jean does
not translate. He concludes that it must then be neuter. But, he continues, one
has never seen an animal that did not have a sex, so it must not be an animal.
But if it’s not an animal, he pursues, and yet is alive, it must be a plant. But even
plants have seed and fruit and, furthermore, never lack a root. But since the
eunuch lacks seed, fruit, and testes, which correspond in this analogy to the
root in plants, the plant will never flower. His bare face signifies the inability
to engender, either due to excessive cold (frigidus) or a lack of semen-producing
testes.30 So, if it is not a man, nor a woman, nor an animal, nor a plant: ‘quid est?
/ Non est sine vita. / Ergo quid esse potest? Nichil esse potest nisi monstrum’

29
Paul of Aegina’s seventh-century Epitome of Medicine, describes two methods of
castration, one by compression and the other by excision that are fairly similar to this.
See Shaun Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration’, p. 48. It is possible that Jean Le Fèvre
had access to a copy of this text, or one very much like it.
30
Here, one sees the Galenic theory of the humors at work.
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288 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

[what is it? It is not lifeless, therefore what can it be? It can be nothing but a
monster] (Vet. 2.43–4). Having reached this conclusion through a series of
syllogisms, the poet will proceed to support it by bringing to bear the full force
of his scholastic training in the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric) and the
quadrivium, (‘matheses’, an amalgam of the mathematical and scientific arts).
Remaining in the grammatical register, the poet turns, naturally enough,
from gender to declension in order to demonstrate that the eunuch is a monster
of grammar. ‘Nullus sibi congruit articulorum’ [No article can be joined to it]
(Vet. 2.46). In Jean’s formulation, the eunuch is a cas non declinable, a ‘case with
no declension’ (LV 2183) to which no article can be joined ‘soit devant ou
derriere’ [neither before or behind] (LV 2185). This is Jean’s somewhat clumsy
effort to gloss over the fact that Old French, with its rudimentary case system,
did not use endings as the primary markers of grammatical inflection for nouns
and pronouns, although it does allow him to make a pun rich in sexual
innuendo. Since the eunuch has no genitive, the Vetula poet continues, he
cannot join his possessions to him. On the other hand, he does have a marked
preference for the ablative, a pun on the etymological meaning of aufero, to
carry away or remove. Since one can only take away from the eunuch and not
add to him, the other cases are inoperative; and since all grammatical construc-
tions are closed to him (there is not even a ‘relative’ that can comfort him), he
is denied recourse to speech: ‘non est oratio que sit / Huic cum parti totum,
sed pars est est sine toto’ [there is no speech that can be his as part of a whole,
for he is a part without wholeness] (Vet. 2.33–4). In an interesting twist on the
stereotype of the eunuch as possessing a high, shrill voice, the Vetula poet
denies him the very possibility of constituting himself through speech, cut off
as he is from the copulative functions of grammar. His inability to perform
sexually as a male is in a sense replicated by the loss of his tongue, the member
that through speech would allow him to join in social intercourse. The poets
are particularly anxious to exclude eunuchs from the clerical class to which
they belong. By identifying the male member so closely with the phallic pen,
eunuchs are (by definition) denied access to the higher functions of the word.
The poets’ punning evocation of grammatical monstrosity bears a striking
similarity to the De planctu naturae (Plaint of Nature) by his twelfth-century
predecessor, Alan of Lille, where unnatural grammatical couplings are used to
evoke the ‘sin against nature’. But the Vetula poet’s discourse is, in fact, almost
the negative image of Alan’s in that the former denies the possibility of any kind
of coupling, even monstrous or unnatural. Surprisingly, there does not seem
to be any evocation of sodomy in either De Vetula or La Vieille, and Alan’s poem
is, conversely, all but silent on the question of eunuchs. In one passage, Alan
does make a parenthetical remark to the effect that ‘quidam homines depau-
perati signaculo, juxta meam opinionem, possent neutri generis designatione
censeri’ [some men, deprived of a sign of sex, could, in my opinion, be classified
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Culture Loves a Void 289

as of neuter gender].31 This reflection of Alan’s, which he himself does not

pursue, raises an interesting question. Since Latin possesses a neuter gender in
which neuter nouns function quite happily, why could this not be the gram-
matical paradigm applied to eunuchs? Neither the Vetula poet nor his translator
raises this point, perhaps because the overarching discourse of the diatribe
against eunuchs is that of natural philosophy and not the more specific
discursive parameters of the different liberal arts, in this instance, grammar. It
is more likely, however, that they simply did not want to open the door to any
positive or neutral valences of eunuchry, as with the exclusion of any mention
of spiritual eunuchry.
Having shown that the eunuch is monster of grammar, the Vetula poet
moves on to dialectic (i.e., logic) and then to rhetoric. Eunuchs are a hopeless
case for the dialectician because they do not fall into one species or genus. One
does not know how to divide their flesh, presumably because it has already been
divided. Punning on the terms of dialectic, the poet states that they are neither
a species speciosa, a ‘beautiful species’, nor a genus generosum, a ‘generous genus’
(espece specieuse and genre genereus in the French); rather, as a class they
constitute a monstrum individuum, an ‘indivisible monster’ (monstre indi-
visable) that defies logic (Vet. 2.62–6; LV 2207–15). With rhetorical art, there
is appropriately a shift in rhetorical strategy. Here, the Vetula poet imagines
the eunuch as judge, the better to judge and condemn him in turn. With
another cutting pun, rendered by Le Fèvre as ‘le theume tranché lui puet nuire’
[cutting to the heart of the matter can hurt him], the poet argues that the
eunuch will be unable to hear a case fairly and will thus be a cruel and uncom-
prehending judge. Whatever facundia, or eloquence, he might bring will remain
sterile in its effects; his science will issue in infecondité, or sterility (Vet. 2.67–73;
LV 2221–30).
Having dispatched the trivium, the Vetula poet turns to the quadrivium, to
which he devotes a single passage, one of the most difficult in the poem. He
uses the argument that in every demonstratio or scientific proof there must
properly be four components: number, measure, movement, and sound.
Regarding number, ‘deficiente sibi numero pare’ [he is lacking an even number]
(Vet. 2:83), that is, he quite literally does not have a ‘pair’, and thus measurement
is impossible and movement abhorrent, although why this should be is not
made clear. As for sound, the poet concludes with the remark: ‘quem si temp-
tarit, tandem lira murmurat ani,’ which Jean renders as ‘s’il y tempte par
adventure / La harpe du cul lui murmure’ [if he should try it [i.e., movement],
his ass’s harp murmurs] (Vet. 2.85; LV 2258–9). Although it is far from clear

31
Alanus de Insulis, Liber de planctu naturae, ed. J.P. Migne, Patrologia latina (Paris:
Garnier, 1844–55) 210: col. 457; Alan of Lille, Plaint of Nature, trans. James J. Sheridan
(Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1970), p. 157.
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290 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

what the eunuch’s murmuring ass is supposed to denote, this colorful image
undercuts the argument being made – there is movement and sound. As for
the ‘music’ emanating from his lower body, in the logic of the text, it can be
only yet another sign of his imperfection. The passage in De Vetula includes
the adverb tandem, ‘in the end’, which is not rendered in Jean’s translation. It
suggests a loss of control over the body, in keeping with the eunuch’s loss of
manliness, his hopeless incapacity and ineptitude. His efforts at movement can
issue only in foul winds.
After establishing the eunuch’s monstrosity according to the liberal arts, the
Vetula poet turns to another scheme to prove that the eunuch is, by turns, a
monster of nature, a moral monster, a metaphysical monster, and, finally, a
monstrum fastorum, in Jean’s rendering, a monstre de destinées, or ‘monster of
destinies’. In the first of these four sections, where the poet returns to the
discourse of natural philosophy, he remarks that, paradoxically, nature can find
either a vacuum, a ‘void’, or an infinitum, an ‘infinity’ in the eunuch, depending
on the form of his neutering (Vet. 2.90–1). If his folles (fueilles in Jean, i.e.,
‘bags’) have been ablated, she will find them empty, bourses vuides, as Jean puts
it (LV 2275). If, on the other hand, his testicles were crushed, she will find an
abnormal enlargement due to the mutilation. Here, Jean introduces into his
translation a distinction that is not in his source: if the couillons, or ‘balls’, have
been removed, the term eunuche should be used; in the other case, the term
spadon is more appropriate (LV 2271–80). Jean himself is not consistent in his
use of these terms, nor is the Latin poet. But this confusion over terms and
definitions is in fact emblematic of the medieval discourse on eunuchry, which
embraced a variety of conditions. Castration could be achieved, as Kuefler
observes in his overview of eunuchry in the Medieval Handbook of Sexuality,
by removing or crushing the testicles, or by the much rarer and more dangerous
practice of removing the penis.32 In other cases, the terms ‘eunuch’ or ‘spadon’
might designate men born with genital abnormalities, men who became
impotent because of disease or injury, or castrated men. In some cases there
might be overlap between or among these categories.33 The Vetula poet side-
steps these difficulties – after all, what can be unnatural about a congenital
condition? – which is consistent with his practice of avoiding anything that
might naturalize or spiritualize eunuchry. Yet despite the impression of plen-
itude and completeness that both poets seek to convey, the gaps and omissions
in their texts belie their agenda of defining a certain idea of clerical privilege,
one where eunuchs are marked as outsiders.
Sticking to a more specifically scientific and medical discourse, the Vetula

32
Mathew S. Kuefler, ‘Castration and Eunuchism in the Middle Ages’, in Handbook of
Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough and James A. Brundage (New York and London:
Garland, 1996), pp. 279–306 at pp. 285–6.
33
Ibid.
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Culture Loves a Void 291

poet says that eunuchs are either healthy or diseased, but he insists that in any
case medicine offers no cure or remedy for his condition. Indeed, since the
eunuch offers no recognizable complexio ‘constitution or temperament’, other
than lacking one, he remains a conundrum to which the discourses of natural
philosophy and medicine cannot be applied (Vet. 2.93–9). Just as the two texts
had sought to deny to the eunuch any possibility of self-representation through
speech, they now seek to push him even further from the realm of signification.
He can be neither the subject nor the object of discourse.
The poet now moves onto the eunuch as monstre moral. This section is little
more than a list of all the traits that are ‘naturally’ those of a eunuch. Since
eunuchs are physically sterile, it inevitably follows that they are morally so as
well: envious, lazy, fearful, thieving, and wretched. Their supposed physio-
logical coldness, a condition that they share with women, makes them naturally
covetous. Their wrinkled faces – Jean says, ‘Com vieille qui mangue frommaige’
[like that of an old woman eating cheese] (LV 2332)34 – are the mark of their
moral shame. Finally, the text returns to the vexed issue of chastity, rejecting
out of hand the notion that eunuchs are truly chaste. Eunuchs who have to
struggle to be chaste are vainglorious; those who do not have to struggle are
simply insensitive to carnal desire. The issue of chastity with regard to eunuchs
was indeed a constant in medieval discourse. It is, for example, at the heart of
a twelfth-century Greek text that it is doubtful that the Vetula poet knew, the
Defense of Eunuchs by Theophylaktos, a text analyzed by Kathryn Ringrose.35
The text takes the form of a debate between a testiculated man and a eunuch
in which the latter marshals a number of arguments to support his contention
that eunuchs can indeed achieve chastity. Why, he asks, should voluntary celi-
bates be less evil than eunuchs, who were given no choice in the matter? Why
should ascetics who destroy their bodies through their extreme practices be
considered more holy than eunuchs? Why should the loss of testes be
considered an evil when their presence can impede one’s progress toward spir-
itual good? And, most interestingly, why should eunuchs be considered
unnatural when it is impossible to say what is ‘natural’? The Defense of Eunuchs
shows that the Vetula poet’s text is but one voice in a medieval dialogue in
which both sides could argue the same points using the same terms.
Furthermore, the learned arsenal and scholastic trappings deployed by the
Vetula poet in his eunuch satire are, in fact, doubly satirical: the passage is as
much a parody of the scholastic method as it is a satire against eunuchs. Despite
its many self-authorizing gestures, it does not (and doubtless was not intended
to) bear the weight of the ecclesiastical, legal, or indeed scientific discourse

34
A variant in BNF, fr 2327, has ‘Comme vieille qui vent frommage’ (Like an old woman
who sells cheese).
35
Ringrose, Perfect Servant, pp. 194–202; Ringrose, Living in the Shadows, pp. 103–7.
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292 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

from which it borrows. It is a second-hand discourse got up in scholastic ‘drag’.

In this, it is not unlike Jean de Meun’s Romans de la Rose, another bricolage, or
patchwork, to which medieval readers, especially male clerics, readily granted
the status of authority.
The Vetula poet opens his attack against eunuchs by echoing Jesus’ words.
In the last sections of the anti-eunuch satire, the Old Testament is pressed into
service. The language echoes Jewish condemnation of eunuchs to support the
poet’s portrait of the eunuch as metaphysical monster.36 In a development not
present in his source, Jean returns to the issue of gender in language. If an
escouillé – literally, a man whose testes have been removed – becomes a priest,
is he a prestre or a prestresse (LV 2388–9)?37 Without offering an answer, the
poet wonders how God can allow this hideous, filthy, deformed creature into
his temple, where he affemine, ‘feminizes’, the Lord’s altars (LV 2397). The final
section on the eunuch as monstrum fastorum, a monstre de destinées (monster
of destinies) is a retelling of the Jacob and Esau story (Vet. 2.170–85; LV
2467–98). Although Jacob was not a eunuch (the poet assures us), he had the
eunuch’s high voice and hairless body. Through his machinations, he tricks
Isaac in order to gain his father’s benediction and Esau’s rightful heritage,
perverting the destinies that were to be theirs. So will the eunuch, the poet
argues, go to any lengths to become a prelate, to achieve domination, to sit in
high estate, and to seize the possessions he covets. In these sections of the
eunuch diatribe that follow the deployment of the liberal arts scheme, the
context is quite clearly and specifically clerical. Indeed, the rubric of the final
section on eunuchs in La Vieille is ‘Comment Ovide dit qui feist sa volounté
jamais home spadon ou escouillé ne fust en prelature’ [How Ovid says that, if
one were to do his will, a man with crushed or ablated testicles will never enter
the priesthood] (LV, after 2526). Here, the example of Moses is cited, who fortu-
nately did not allow Aaron to wear priestly vestments with his vultuque Maria
(visaige de Marie in Jean) ‘Mary’s face’ (Vet. 2.191–5, LV 2931–6).
Although Klopsch grants that one cannot attribute De Vetula to Richard de
Fournival with any degree of certainly, he speculates that, were Richard the
author, through the eunuch satire he might have been attacking his nemesis in
the cathedral chapter at Amiens, Gérard de Conchy. The latter had sought to
deprive Richard of his chancellorship on the grounds that he practiced surgery
as a deacon and subdeacon.38 Klopsch admits that this is pure speculation, and
indeed, one would have to assume that Gérard was an effeminate, eunuch-like

36
Cf. Collins, ‘Appropriation and Development’, pp. 73–86.
37
Mary E. Leech explores the manning and unmanning of men and women in the Old
French fabliaux in her analysis of La dame escolliee in this volume. See ‘The Castrating
of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame
escolliee’, pp. 210–28.
38
De Vetula,, ed. Klopsch, pp. 87–8.
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Culture Loves a Void 293

cleric. Klopsch’s speculation does, however, have the merit of raising the
question of just who these eunuchs were that the Vetula poet claims were
scheming to attain high positions in the Church. As noted above, there is not
a single reference to sodomy in De Vetula and La Vieille – especially surprising
since charges of passive sodomy were often directed at eunuchs – but the
nascent medieval discourse on sodomy offers striking parallels with the
rhetorical strategies and ambiguities of these two poems.
The Vetula poet’s attack on eunuchs shares many features with condem-
nation of sodomy in Alan of Lille’s De planctu naturae and Peter Damian’s Liber
Gomorrhianus.39 In his study of De planctu naturae, William Burgwinkle
proposes five possible readings, allowing that there may be some degree of truth
in all of them. Two are especially relevant to the discussion here: Alan’s text may
be read primarily as an attack on sodomy, or it may be ‘a true Menippean satire
which emphasizes form over philosophy, humor over moralism’.40 The same
formulation, with ‘eunuch’ in the place of ‘sodomy’, can apply equally well to De
Vetula and La Vieille, of which form and humor are major constituents. Cary
Howie notes that Peter Damian’s text, in which the author rails against the
legions of clerics who supposedly were practicing the sin against nature, is
permeated with anxiety over the Church’s integrity, the supposed breach opened
up by the presence of sodomites within its clerical ranks: ‘What is fascinating
about this contention is not only its staging of anxieties not that different from
those of contemporary culture’s heteronormative custody of the so-called back
door, but the fact that Damian must insist upon the sodomites’ inability to
achieve their aim.’41 And, as Mark Jordan observes: ‘The Sodomite is unfit for
full membership in the Church, especially in its ministerial orders, and yet Peter
fears that Sodomites have taken over the Church, constituting a shadow hier-
archy with its own means of recognition and recruitment.’42 Like Peter Damian,
the poets of De Vetula and La Vieille loudly and anxiously proclaim the impos-
sibility of eunuchs carrying out clerical functions even as their texts implicitly
allow that their vilified objects are doing precisely that.
Medieval anti-Semitic and misogynist discourses of the Other also offer
useful parallels for the understanding of De Vetula and La Vieille. Sylvia
Tomasch has advanced the term ‘virtual Jew’ in the context of anti-Jewish

39
Alanus de Insulis, Liber de planctu naturae; Peter Damian, Liber Gomorrhianus. There is
an abundant literature that queers these two authors and their preoccupation with
sodomy. Among the most important titles: Mark D. Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy in
Christian Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); William Burgwinkle,
Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Literature: France and England, 1050–1230
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Cary Howie, Claustrophilia: The Erotics
of Enclosure in Medieval Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
40
Burgwinkle, Sodomy, p. 192.
41
Howie, Claustrophilia, p. 75.
42
Jordan, Invention of Sodomy, pp. 161–2.
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294 ROBERT L. A. CLARK

discourse in post-expulsion England. That is, the anti-Semitic fury of texts like
the Croxton Play of the Sacrament is no less real for its lack of a real Jewish
presence, let alone a Jewish ‘threat’.43 Such texts are clearly not mere rhetorical
exercises but rather are doing cultural work in the service of forming a
community of orthodox believers. Similarly, Étienne de Fougères’ estates poem,
the Livres des manières, includes women as one of Christian society’s six estates,
all the better to tax them for their role in the social ills he sees as threatening
social stability and the primacy of the Church: the rise of the merchant class
and the ideology of fin’amors. But he cannot resist exercising his satirical verve
in a violent diatribe against women who have sex with other women.44 It would
be a mistake to view the eunuch satire in De Vetula and La Vieille, in many
regards a variant on misogynist discourse in texts such as Etienne’s, as simply
an extended rhetorical exercise, a tour de force demonstration of how to do
something new with the scholastic method, although its tongue-in-cheek style
might lead to that conclusion. By attacking virtual eunuchs, De Vetula is also
doing cultural work, most obviously in the area of gender regulation in the
Church and the society at large. ‘Quid est?’ the poet asks with regard to his
hapless eunuch, usually in order to say what it is not, or, more interestingly, to
say at times both what it is and is not. But the more pertinent question is not
‘What is it?’ but ‘What does it do?’ The answer is clearly: a great deal indeed.
The sterile eunuch is, if not father or mother or lover, the midwife of culture.

43
Sylvia Tomasch, ‘Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew’, in The Postcolonial Middle
Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: St Martin’s Press, 2000), pp. 243–60. For an
argument similar to Tomasch’s, see Robert L.A. Clark and Claire Sponsler, ‘Othered
Bodies: Racial Crossdressing in the Mistere de la Sainte Hostie and the Croxton Play of
the Sacrament’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29.1 (1999): 61–87.
44
See Robert L.A. Clark, ‘Jousting without a Lance: The Condemnation of Female
Homoeroticism in the Livre des manières’, in Same Sex Love and Desire among Women
in the Middle Ages, ed. Francesca Canadé Sautman and Pamela Sheingorn (New York: St
Martin’s Press, 2001) 143–77.
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CHAPTER 14

The Dismemberment of Will:

Early Modern Fear of Castration
Karin Sellberg and Lena Wånggren

The soldier’s pole is fall’n: young boys and girls

Are equal bow with men: the odds are gone,
And there is nothing left remarkable
Beneath the visiting moon.
Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, 4.15.67–701

T he works of William Shakespeare often look back from the early modern
period upon the sensibilities of the medieval world, illuminating similar
anxieties about culture, identity, ethnicity, and gender. In his plays, taboo
subjects of medieval literature and history are given centre stage, acted out for
an early modern audience coming to grips with its own fraught place in history.
Shakespeare’s dramas (Antony and Cleopatra perhaps more explicitly and
completely than any other) feature numerous instances of emasculation, yet
these are seldom considered in corporeal terms. Recent scholarship on early
modern castration shares a number of curious features: the majority of the
discussion takes place in relation to a very select number of Shakespearean
sources, and the references are invariably contextualized through psycho-
analytic theories of phallic lack. Through the new historicist and cultural
materialist turn of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century academia,
Shakespeare has become recognized as the spokesperson for Western sensibility
in general, not just a historical time and place in particular – and the deep-
seated fear of effeminization or castration that is extracted from his work does
indeed often appear more modern than early modern. The anachronistic
moves that have been made in these studies can be conceptualized through
three specific types of ‘cuts’: a temporal cut that removes Shakespeare’s plays

1
William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, ed. John Wilders (London: Routledge,
1995), 4.15.65–9. Act, scene and line numbers are given in parentheses throughout, after
the initial reference.
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296 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

from their contemporary contexts; a textual cut that removes drama from its
social functions; and finally an often horrifying and graphically illustrated
corporeal cut found in early modern medical compendia.
From within these dismemberments of contemporary Shakespearean crit-
icism emerges an early modern fear of castration which is both a historical relic
and a modern projection. The cultural and social constructions surrounding
castration take form both within and without the framework of the anachro-
nistic scholarship that surrounds them, both embracing and challenging the
historical differentiation between past and present castration. There was an
undisputed unease about the idea of castration in the early modern period that
in many ways is reminiscent of contemporary popular fears. To some extent
this unease must be conceptualized in reference to contemporary discourses
of emasculation and gender differentiation, but it also has its source in a more
visceral concern about the relationship of body and soul and the decline of the
spirit in any act of bodily fragmentation, harking back to medieval spirituality
and humorous science. The early modern fear of castration is thus a fear of
incompleteness and imbalance as much as a loss of manly embodiment.
Thomas Laqueur argues, in Making Sex, that the early modern idea of
embodiment, gender, and sexuality is so different from any modern under-
standing of these concepts, that it is practically impossible for a modern reader
to comprehend it. According to Laqueur, this was a time before sexual
difference, since ‘no image, verbal or visual, of “the facts of sexual difference”
exists independently of prior claims about the meanings of such’2 and the
common beliefs employed in order to define what makes a man, or something
masculine, ‘are so farfetched to the modern scientific imagination that it takes
a strenuous effort to understand how reasonable people could ever have held
them’.3 According to the first volume of Michel Foucault’s The History of
Sexuality, the seventeenth century was the scene for the first of two crucial
‘ruptures’ in the social imaginary surrounding sexual practice and embod-
iment that enabled the development of what is nowadays considered in terms
of sexuality and sexual difference.4 The sexual and gendered past of Western
culture has thus been drastically dislocated from its present form. There is a
temporal rift established between early modern and contemporary discourses
of sexuality that is even more pronounced in modern discussions of the
medieval body explored throughout this volume. There is a tendency to
approach medieval and early modern narratives of castration through a theo-
retical lens, applying psychoanalytic, Freudian or Foucauldian paradigms to

2
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 66.
3
Ibid., p. 70.
4
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1: The Will to Knowledge, trans. Robert
Hurley (London: Penguin Books, 1998), p. 115.
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The Dismemberment of Will 297

texts and laws, rather than examining the literal acts of castration within their
social and temporal context.
This anachronistic ‘cut’ is continually reiterated in late twentieth- and early
twenty-first-century studies of Shakepearean gender and sexuality (which
themselves, of course, are anachronistic terms). The body of sexual thought
has, itself, been brutally castrated and any study into the history of gendered
embodiment is an attempt to recover an earlier sense of completeness. Laqueur
argues that Sigmund Freud and psychoanalytic theories of gender and sexuality
provide the most definitive division (or ‘cut’), between early modern and
modern sexual thought.5 Despite his active participation in this divide, Freud is
prevalent in a great deal of critical writing on early modern sexuality, which is
practically invariably read through a psychoanalytic lens. The Freudian concept
of castration especially is so imbued in the modern sense of the term (and the
modern conception of sexuality in general) that it seems almost impossible for
modern interpreters of medieval or early modern sexuality to leave it behind,
although the modern Freudian framework attributes meanings to medieval
and early modern conceptions of castration that in many cases do not make
much sense. Contemporary readings of medieval and early modern castration
(including Laqueur’s, which claims to be aware of its anachronistic position)
invariably tend to express a sense of confusion or ‘lack’ of understanding, which
says more about the theorists’ symbolic fear of some type of temporal castration
than their subjects’ actual experience of the practice.
As Gary Taylor acknowledges in Castration: An Abbreviated History of
Western Manhood, the fact that Freud is reiterated in historical as well as
contemporary studies of sexuality is because he has not merely become
castration’s ‘most famous modern theorist’,6 but one of its few modern inter-
preters. Freud formulates the castration complex (Kastrationskomplex) in his
1908 paper ‘On the Sexual Theories of Children’, which became the basis for a
psychoanalytic concept about the origins of sexual difference to which many
literary critics and scholars of the history of sexuality subscribe. Freud claims
that the first sexual inclination in children consists in ‘attributing to everyone,
including females, the possession of a penis’,7 leading to the formulation of the
castration complex.8 According to this complex, men will suffer from an eternal
threat of castration, and female genitalia are regarded as ‘a mutilated organ’.9

5
Laqueur, Making Sex, p. 20.
6
Gary Taylor, Castration: An Abbreviated History of Western Manhood (New York and
London: Routledge, 2002), p. 15.
7
Sigmund Freud, ‘On the Sexual Theories of Children’, in The Standard Edition of the
Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 7, ed. James Strachey (London:
Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, 1953), pp. 207–26 at p. 215. Italics
in original.
8
Ibid., p. 217.
9
Ibid.
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298 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

Women – feeling themselves unfairly treated – suffer from penis envy.10 For
Freud, castration is a genital loss that all women believe that they have suffered
and that all men fear to suffer. According to this illogical logic, a woman is a
mutilated man, and castration (for Freud castration always signifies penile
castration) must for the man involve effeminization.
Freud in this way treats castration (Kastration) as a synonym for unmanning
(Entmannung), as feminizing, and psychoanalytical literary critics have followed
this reading. A number of prolific late twentieth-century works on early modern
drama, including Stephen Orgel’s Impersonations, Laura Levine’s Men in Women’s
Clothing and Dympna Callaghan’s Shakespeare without Women, argue that the
all-male early modern stage was generated in a culture imbued with ‘fear of
effeminisation’.11 For these scholars, Shakespeare’s works are full of metaphorical
castrations signifying effeminization. Janet Adelman, in Suffocating Mothers
(and elsewhere), associates ‘wounds with castration and hence effeminisation
[…] displayed wounds and mouths both seem to me to function as the sign of
the female’.12 Coppélia Kahn, in Man’s Estate, also equates castration with ‘losing
masculine identity’.13 As Anthony Adams, Mary Leech, and Larissa Tracy point
out in this volume, the question of ‘unmanning’ and the loss of masculine identity
was a prevalent, and literal, concern for medieval audiences as well.14 For many
Shakespeare scholars, Shakespeare’s plays contain the imagery that Freud’s subse-
quent theories of sexual development formulate as castration anxiety. Lee
Edelman unquestioningly accepts Freud’s assertion that a child sees the mother
as a castrated man in his readings of Shakespeare, while Orgel and Levine read
early modern femininity in general in terms of phallic lack, and Callaghan
considers early modern effeminization to be a form of castration.15 Shakespeare’s
dramas have thus been used as examples (or before-the-fact templates) for

10
Ibid., p. 218. See also Freud’s ‘Three Essays on Sexuality’ (1905), in The Standard Edition,
vol. 7, ed. Strachey, pp. 135–243 at p. 195.
11
Stephen Orgel, Impersonations: The Performance of Gender in Shakespeare’s England
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Laura Levine, Men in Women’s Clothing:
Anti-Theatricality and Effeminization 1579–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), quote at p. 134; Dympna Callaghan, Shakespeare without Women: Representing
Gender and Race on the Renaissance Stage (New York and London: Routledge, 2000).
12
Janet Adelman, Suffocating Mothers: Fantasies of Maternal Origin in Shakespeare’s Plays,
Hamlet to The Tempest (New York and London: Routledge, 1992), p. 327, n. 61.
13
Coppélia Kahn, Man’s Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1981), p. 43; cf. p. 132 and passim on ‘psychosocial castration’.
14
See in this volume Anthony Adams, ‘“He took a stone away”: Castration and Cruelty in
the Old Norse Sturlunga saga’, pp. 188–209; Mary E. Leech, ‘The Castrating of the Shrew:
The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee’, pp. 210–28;
and Larissa Tracy, ‘“Al defouleden is holie bodi”: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture,
and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary’, pp. 87–107.
15
See Lee Edelman, Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory (New York and London:
Routledge, 1994), pp. 2–10; Orgel, Impersonations, pp. 103–5; Levine, Men in Women’s
Clothing, pp. 134–5; Callaghan, Shakespeare without Women, pp. 36–8.
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The Dismemberment of Will 299

contemporary psychoanalytic conceptions of self,16 a fact that entirely obscures

more historically sensitive pre-Freudian readings of Shakespearean castration.
Readings of Shakespeare’s King Lear (1608) are a case in point for this kind
of criticism. Several critics have read the blinding of Gloucester in this play as
a figurative castration.17 Gloucester’s simultaneous loss of sight and socio-
political influence signifies a symbolic loss of psychosexual phallic power.
However, there are less anachronistic connections between castration and
blinding. The medieval punishment for rape required the rapist to lose his eyes
as well as his testicles because the eye was held responsible for inspiring uncon-
trolled sexual desire.18 Charlene Eska explains that William the Conqueror
supplemented the death penalty in England as punishment for treason with
castration and blinding. She writes that ‘The Anglo-Saxon codes already had
elements of this practice in place, thus making the addition of judicial blinding
and castration to the legal system seem more of a point on a continuum rather
than a wholesale new practice’.19 So there is a pervasive link between castration
and blinding that dates back to the law texts of the early Middle Ages. At the
end of the play, Lear himself is also, in a sense, ‘blinded’ (castrated) by his loss.20
This ahistorical reading of castration is problematic. Freud (and many of his
followers) ignores historical context, but instead assumes that the meaning of
castration is always the same; for psychoanalysis, the castration complex shapes
the psychological character of every individual throughout history. As Taylor
states: ‘If Freud is right, there is no real reason to read a text about castration
from 1624, because any text about castration, or any other aspect of human
sexuality, should be telling the same story.’21 But the historical context needs to
be considered, rather than trying to fit texts into an essentialist and ahistorical
system. Castration existed both before and after psychoanalysis, but Freud

16
Even Freud himself uses Shakespeare as an example of his theories; see for example his
famous use of Hamlet in his explanation of the Oedipus complex in The Interpretation of
Dreams, trans. James Strachey, ed. Angela Richards (London: Penguin, 1991) e.g. pp. 164,
247–9, 418.
17
Adelman, Suffocating Mothers, p. 107; Hillary M. Nunn, Staging Anatomies: Dissection
and Spectacle in Early Stuart Tragedy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), p. 173.
18
Nunn, Staging Anatomies, p. 172.
19
Charlene M. Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud”: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish
Sources’, in this volume, p. 157.
20
Callaghan points to the phallic imagery in Lear’s lamentation over his dead daughters,
using words such as ‘stones’, ‘eyes’, and ‘tongues’ (Shakespeare without Women, pp. 91–2).
Another play that has come to feature heavily in studies of figurative castration is Twelfth
Night. Scholars like Callaghan and Orgel repeatedly discuss the unfortunate character
Malvolio’s spelling out of the letters C, U, and T (which Callaghan takes the liberty to
read in a Freudian light: interchangeably as CUT and CUNT) and consider this in terms
of the subsequent social castration that the character experiences as a punishment for
coveting and making advances towards a woman above his social status (Callaghan,
Shakespeare without Women, pp. 36–47; Orgel, Impersonations, pp. 53–4).
21
Taylor, Castration, p. 31.
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300 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

ignored what castration had meant for millennia and ‘substituted a radical new
meaning of his own’.22 Taylor writes: ‘In twentieth-century psychoanalysis,
castration means loss, unequivocal loss, the epitome of loss. In the world before
Freud, castration could produce a powerful voice, a powerful general, a powerful
intimate of women and emperors, and powerful spirituality.’23 Eunuchs
throughout history have often occupied important positions in society. Kathryn
Reusch provides burial evidence of modern castrati graves, arguing that their
physical state affected their social acceptance, even in death.24 As Shaun Tougher
explains, ‘eunuchs remained a desirable commodity into the later Roman Empire,
when they became an institutional feature of the imperial court, serving primarily
in the capacity of chamberlains (cubicularii)’.25 But, as Robert Clark argues, ‘there
can be no doubt that in the cultural imaginary of western Europe, the sterile
eunuch, because of his ambiguity, was a paradoxically pregnant figure for
thinking about culture’.26 The laws examined by Rolf Bremmer, Jay Gates, and
Charlene Eska reveal cultural concerns about the loss of potency, the inability to
procreate, inherent in castration or genital wounding. Mary Valante explains the
financial value placed on castrated clerics sold into slavery in Byzantium.27 But
there were other cultural considerations at play, especially in the discourse of
virginity and bodily purity.28 Castration did not mean one thing in the Middle
Ages, nor did the cultural implications diminish in the early modern period.
Taylor argues that there are two entire cultural traditions at war in this argumen-
tation: early modern drama and Freud’s psychoanalysis ‘represent two rival
systems of theories, experiences, and memories about what castration means’.29
Importantly, Freud equates castration with penile loss, since for him this
‘essential constituent’ is the basis of the whole human sexual imaginary.30 But
castration does not necessarily revolve around the penis; it usually signifies the
removal of the testicles. The first extant medical description of castration, by
the seventh-century Byzantine physician Paul of Aegina, makes clear that the
operation concerns the testicles only,31 and early modern physicians often care-

22
Ibid., p. 43.
23
Ibid.
24
Kathryn Reusch, ‘Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration’, in this volume,
pp. 29–47.
25
Shaun Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs’, in this
volume, pp. 48–9.
26
Robert L. A. Clark, ‘Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Fèvre’s La
Vieille’, in this volume, p. 281.
27
Mary A. Valante, ‘Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs’,
in this volume, pp. 174–86.
28
See Jack Collins, ‘Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice
in Early Christianity’, in this volume, pp. 73–86.
29
Taylor, Castration, p. 46.
30
Freud, ‘On the Sexual Theories of Children’, p. 216.
31
Taylor, Castration, p. 53; and Tougher, ‘The Aesthetics of Castration’, p. 48.
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The Dismemberment of Will 301

fully elaborate this point. Poets, playwrights, and philosophers in the early
modern period, Taylor argues, knew this as well as physicians.32 Not until the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did surgical operations on diseased or
injured penises become more common (because of the recent syphilis
epidemic), as a last resort to save the patient from death.33 So by the seventeenth
century, Europeans knew of medical castration, genital war wounds as well as
disciplinary dismemberment of all the genitalia (to humiliate a criminal) – but
they had known for millennia about castration of the scrotum, and the differ-
ences between these operations.34 Freud completely disregards this difference:
anachronistically, he ‘reduced castration to a single meaning and reduced sexu-
ality to a single organ’, thus ‘erect[ing] a penis-shaped model of the mind’.35
Despite the absence of a Freudian castration complex, there is still evidence
of a certain amount of early modern anxiety regarding the emasculating effects
of castration, as Callaghan explains in Shakespeare without Women. In his
Anthropometamorphosis: Man Transform’d (1653), the early modern English
physician John Bulwer states that it is ‘manifestly against the Law of Nature to
tamper with the witness of mans virility’, which makes men ‘not current for
men’.36 He makes it clear that there is a distinct difference between penile and
testicular castration, however:
Two waies there are of this unnatural dilapidation of the body, one is
performed by contusion, the other by excision, the last being more
approved of; for they who have suffered the contusion of the Testicles, may
now and then affect to play the man.37

Bulwer implies that castrated men exist in a differently gendered space, but
that some who have only suffered ‘contusion’ (that is the bruising or rupture
of the testicles) can still behave as men. Freudian conceptions of castration
disregard this difference and contemporary Shakespearean critics thus often
express confusion and disbelief when confronted with references to castrated
men. Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night simultaneously refers to figurative castration
in comical and berating terms, and embraces a character who takes on the
appearance of a eunuch. Considering the difference between penile and
testicular castration at the time, and the social positions that followed these
proceedings, this is not surprising. When Twelfth Night’s heroine Viola

32
Taylor, Castration, pp. 52–3.
33
Ibid., p. 57.
34
Ibid., pp. 57–8.
35
Ibid., pp. 60–1.
36
John Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis: Man transform’d; or, The artificiall changling histor-
ically presented, in the mad and cruell gallantry, foolish bravery, ridiculous beauty, filthy
finenesse, and loathsome loveliness of most nations, fashioning and altering their bodies
from the mould intended by natvre … (London: 1653), p. 362.
37
Ibid., p. 359.
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302 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

announces to the captain that ‘thou shalt present me as an eunuch’ (1.2.55),38

this does not invoke any type of negative reaction, because eunuchs are not
considered in a negative light. Viola’s eunuch alter-ego Cesario takes up a
socially recognized position, which makes her/him the possessor of such a
degree of masculinity that she/he is considered fit to stir the emotions of the
play’s most eligible woman, Lady Olivia. Castrated men had an important role
to play in early modern English as well as European society – especially one
that was associated with the stage. As Marjorie Garber acknowledges in Vested
Interests, castrati were common on the stages of Italy and France and they were
occasionally seen in the courts of Elizabethan and Jacobean England.39
Although they may not have been a frequent sight on the London streets, their
presence was thus an acceptable, and to some extent expected, part of early
modern upper-class entertainment and drama, lending them a hint of the
exotic and spectacular, but in the case of the ordinary man, often unattainable.
The figure of the eunuch, if considered in relation to this connotation,
becomes an embodiment of spectacle itself. Callaghan thus interprets the
eunuch as a person who, despite his genital incompleteness, becomes
respectable because of the completion granted him through his art. She
compares a set of penile prostheses invented in 1634 by French surgeon
Ambroise Paré in order to overcome the physical obstacles arising in
connection to urination by patients who had to undergo penile castration due
to syphilis,40 and the voices (‘pipes’) and musical instruments used by castrati
performers. According to Callaghan, the music or art of the eunuch becomes
his phallus, and as such makes him something close enough to a man to be
accepted in early modern society.41 Although the idea that a specific social role
gives early modern eunuchs a place in society is credible, the interpretation of
music or expression as a replacement phallus is of course once more entirely
reliant on a Freudian, figurative, and distinctly penile idea of castration. Where
Callaghan attempts to recover the masculinity of her subjects through an
anachronistic and anatomically incorrect phallic replacement, what the
eunuchs truly gained was a specific space, where they could develop a
reasonably respectable role despite their exclusion from the ordinary gender

38
William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, ed. J.M. Lothian and T.W. Craik (London: Routledge,
1988), 1.2.55.
39
Marjorie Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing and Cultural Anxiety (New York and
London: Routledge, 1992), p. 130.
40
Ambroise Paré, The Workes of that famous chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of
Latine and compared with the French. by Th: Johnson (London: Th. Cotes & R. Young,
1634), p. 583. Paré explains that ‘Those that have their yards cut off close to their bellies,
are greatly troubled in making of urine, so that they are constrained to sit down like
women, for their eas. I have devised this pipe or conduit, having an hole through it as
big as one finger, which may be made of wood, or rather of latin’ (p. 583).
41
Callaghan, Shakespeare without Women, pp. 62–9.
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The Dismemberment of Will 303

dynamic. As the description of Viola/Cesario in Twelfth Night attests, eunuchs

resided both inside and outside the gender binary:
they shall yet belie thy happy years,
That say thou art a man: Diana’s lip
Is not more smooth and rubious; thy small pipe
Is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound –
And all is semblative of a woman’s part.
(1.4.25–9)

Although eunuchs undeniably were men, they were thus often considered more
feminine than masculine. As Kathryn Ringrose recognises in The Perfect
Servant, eunuchs were not thought to have the humorous balance that a man
was meant to display. Balance was a pivotal element in early modern medicine.
Since Hippocrates, European medical writing stressed the importance of
harmony and control and both the rivalling camps of Aristotelian and Galenic
followers among the medical and scientific profession believed that this was
maintained through the moderation of animating spirit and heat. A body that
was moderately and harmoniously heated was a healthy body, and nothing
should be allowed to disturb ‘the perfect balance that became the hallmark of
the ideal masculine body’.42 Such balance was considered exclusively masculine;
however, ‘the sense of control, balance, and harmony was generally contrasted
with women’s lack of control – the assumption that women became upset and
cried easily, proving that they were emotionally unstable’.43 Quoting Aristotle,
Bulwer states that the reason for this effect is that ‘the Heart is stretched by the
Testicles, and therefore relaxed when they are cut away’.44 Despite their
masculine position in general, eunuchs were thus also thought to harbour
distinctly ‘unmanly’ traits: ‘Like women, they were assumed to be unable to
maintain the focus of either the mind or the body. They lacked balance and
harmony in body, mind, and behaviour. As a result eunuchs, like women, were
believed to be unable to control their desires for food, drink, and physical
pleasure.’45 To have the testicles removed meant relinquishing manly self-control.
The eunuch is thus a man that has something ‘lack[ing] of a man’ (Twelfth
Night, 3.4.308), but this ‘thing’ cannot simply be translated into a figurative
phallus like Callaghan, Orgel, and Levine would have it. Twelfth Night’s eunuch,
Cesario, has the appearance and social manners of a man, but he lacks a man’s
strength and humorous balance. This is why he is particularly useless with a
sword. Viola/Cesario’s lack of manliness is only openly ridiculed at one point

42
Kathryn Ringrose, The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender
in Byzantium (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 52.
43
Ibid., p. 52.
44
Bulwer, Anthropometamorphosis, p. 356.
45
Ringrose, The Perfect Servant, p. 52.
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304 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

in the play, and that is in her/his fight with another unbalanced character, Sir
Andrew Aguecheek.46 As the early modern Jesuit and scholar Thomas Wright
states in The Passions of the Mind in General, manly composure is of the utmost
importance on the battlefield, where humorous balance, precision, and level-
headedness are crucial, which is why only mature and fully developed men
should be deployed in war.47 Viola/Cesario and Sir Andrew are not fully
masculine, and they are thus not warriors. They have to be urged by the other
characters to fight and their duel ends up a veritable debacle, because neither
is balanced or focused enough to bring it to a conclusion.
The loss of this perfect warrior masculine balance is arguably also what
brings Mark Antony to his tragic end in Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.
Although he is the most powerful warrior in the Roman Empire at the start of
the play, ‘the greatest soldier of the world’ (1.3.37), he loses all his public thrust
when he falls in love with Egypt’s forceful queen Cleopatra, whose demands
and desires eventually ‘rob [him] of [his] sword’ (4.14.24), as well as his
masculine power. With sooted eyes, dressed like the actor of a continuous court
drama (and surrounded primarily by women and eunuchs), Antony himself
becomes a form of eunuch, powerless even to end his own life with his sword
like a soldier. He is ridiculed throughout the world outside of Egyptian court
spectacle, for although eunuchs were accepted on stage and in court perform-
ances, they were also restricted from many important social, political, and reli-
gious gatherings in early modern English society. King James’s Bible of 1611
states that ‘He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off,
shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD’ (Deuteronomy 23:1). The
social exclusion that followed as a result of castration was possibly one of the
reasons why the character of the castrated man fascinated early modern
theatre-goers: the noun eunuch(s) appears at least 240 times in at least seventy-
eight different English plays written between 1580 and the closing of the
theatres in 1642; early modern synonyms for the verb castrate appear more
than 150 times in the plays of those decades.48 There are actual eunuchs as
speaking characters in twenty-five dramatic texts written between 1600 and
1640.49 Eunuchs abound on the stage, because like so many of the great
Renaissance tragedies and tragi-comedies, they come to communicate a loss
of self and social position.
The consequences of castration are thus conceptualized primarily in social

46
See Gail Kern Paster’s discussion of Sir Andrew Aguecheek as a man who suffers from a
character-defining deficiency of blood and spirit in ‘Nervous Tension’, in The Body in
Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Hillman and Carla
Mazzio (New York and London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 107–25.
47
Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Mind in General, 2nd edn (London: Valentine
Simmes, 1604), F6.
48
Taylor, Castration, p. 30.
49
Ibid.
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The Dismemberment of Will 305

psycho-chemical terms. The actual surgical ‘cut’ is neither commonly described

in medical texts nor directly portrayed on the early modern stage. Shakespeare
never uses the words ‘castrate’, ‘castration’, ‘emasculation’, or ‘evirate’ in his texts,
although ‘geld’ and its derivatives appear thirteen times.50 The only known early
modern play that sports an explicit ‘castration plot’ is John Middleton’s A Game
at Chess (1624). Nevertheless, the threat of dismemberment and bodily muti-
lation with more or less direct references to castration is not uncommon in
Shakespearean drama. There is a reference to literal castration in Westmorland’s
speech to King Henry in Shakespeare’s I Henry IV, in which he relates the
barbarous actions of the Welsh women who do unspeakable things to the
corpses of dead Englishmen. As Eska notes, Shakespeare immortalizes the lie
found in his source, Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles (since there is no historical
evidence for this),51 but it reveals a profound concern with castration and emas-
culation within early modern society, one that was equally prevalent in
medieval society before it. The most famous Shakespearean castration episode
is possibly Shylock the Jew’s demand of ‘a pound of flesh’ off Antonio’s body in
retribution for Antonio’s failure to comply with the terms of their ‘bond’ in The
Merchant of Venice. As Suzanna Penuel argues in ‘Castrating the Creditor in
The Merchant of Venice’ this could possibly echo medieval disciplinary
castration in response to adultery, punning on the multiple meanings of the
word ‘bond’,52 but the episode can also be seen as a form of mercenary–marital
fulfilment. No scenes in the play are portrayed in as meaningful, yet gruesomely
precise, terms as when Shylock prepares to consummate his and Antonio’s legal
agreement in front of the duke and all the ‘Magnificoes’ of Venice.
Although Shylock’s demand for flesh is portrayed in grisly terms, it is strik-
ingly similar to the other mercenary marriage transactions in the play. Indeed,
Antonio originally agrees to Shylock’s bond so that his beloved Bassanio may
have the funds to procure himself a rich heiress. Shylock becomes the character
who makes these hidden concerns of the play visible. He verbalizes the juxta-
position of the mercenary and the marital: when his daughter elopes his pain
is expressed through interchangeable exclamations of ‘My daughter! O my
ducats! O my daughter! Fled with a Christian! O my Christian ducats! Justice!
the law! my ducats, and my daughter!’ (2.3.15–17). The threat of Shylock’s cut
in the climactic court scene becomes the final testimony of the inhumanity of

50
Ibid., p. 12.
51
Eska, ‘“Imbrued in their owne bloud’”, p. 150.
52
Suzanna Penuel, ‘Castrating the Creditor in The Merchant of Venice’, in Studies in English
Literature, 1500–1900 44. 2 (2004): 255–75. As Larissa Tracy points out in Torture and
Brutality in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2012), ch. 5, castration was
rarely, if ever actually, a punishment for adultery, however. There are only a couple refer-
ences to it, and those may be anecdotal rather than historical. See also Leech, ‘The
Castrating of the Shrew’ in this volume, pp. 210–28.
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306 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

arranged marriage. The fear and horror that the possibility of castration
produces is so powerful that it comes to function as a useful metaphor for other
social injustices.
The carnality of the simultaneously public and personal proceedings in the
court scene of The Merchant of Venice is reminiscent of the official marriage act,
as well as the following consummation. It also evokes emerging medical
discourses and the public operating theatres in early modern London.
Castration, like many early modern surgical procedures, was a bloody affair.
Surgery itself was a relatively new specialization which was only properly recon-
ceived as a profession through the merger of the Surgeons’ Guild and the
Barbers’ Company under the leadership of the English physician Thomas Vicary
in 1540. This official act ensured that only barber surgeons were allowed to
perform surgical procedures and that they were educated sufficiently in the art.53
It also gave rise to the first sets of official praxes in relation to medical incision.
The translation of Paré’s Workes recommends that the patient be bound and that:
it is fit to have four strong men at hand; that is, two to hold his arms, and
other two who may so firmly and straightly hold the knee with one hand,
and the foot with the other, that hee may neither move his lims, nor stir his
buttocks, but bee forced to keep in the same posture with his whole bodie.54

Medical castrations were performed with the help of tools as varied as a hot
gridiron, bone and steel scalpels55 or a pair of scissors. If a mere removal of the
patient’s testicles was required, the procedure was relatively simple and had
been perfected through centuries of farmyard geldings throughout Europe. If,
on the other hand, a full penis had to be removed, the procedure was both
complicated and dangerous. The English physician Richard Wiseman describes
a number of more and less successful ventures in his Eight Chirurgical Treatises
(1696) all of which present equally gruesome scenarios:
A young fellow came to me with the Prepuce inflamed, and a mortification
on the upper part of it, which had spread the compass of a broad Shilling
on that part of the Glans. In scarifying the Eschar I found it had penetrated
through: upon which consideration I made the separation of the Prepuce
with a pair of Scissors cutting it off round.56

53
Jonathan Sawday, The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance
Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), p. 22.
54
Paré, The Workes, p. 427.
55
Ambroise Paré includes pictures of his various invented surgical instruments in the section
on the ‘Treatment of Wounds’ in his Workes, including elaborate bone and steel scalpels.
56
Richard Wiseman, Eight Chirurgical Treatises on these following heads, viz. I. Of tumours.
II. Of ulcers. III. Of diseases of the anus. IV. Of the kings-evil. V. Of wounds. VI. Of gun-shot
wounds. VII. Of fractures and luxations. VIII. Of the lues venerea (London: Benj. Took and
Luke Meredith, 1696), p. 506. http://eebo.chadwyck.com.ezproxy.webfeat.lib.ed.ac.uk/
search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgimages.cfg?ACTION=By10§ID=V137217.
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The Dismemberment of Will 307

Wiseman adds that ‘In making the extirpation of the Prepuce I had permitted
him to bleed freely’,57 drawing attention to the common connection made
between venery, venereal disease, and blood at the time. As Robert Burton
states, excessive venery and appetites were thought to be connected to overly
heated and ‘corrupted’ blood,58 and venereal disease becomes an embodied
manifestation of this.
An important, although often ignored, detail about the means by which the
legal conflict in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is resolved, is that Portia
releases Antonio from his bond to the bloodthirsty Shylock by pointing out
the difference between a demand for flesh and a spilling of blood:
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’:
Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
Unto the state of Venice.
(4.1.297–303)

A pound of flesh is a lifeless substance – an object that can be requested in

exchange for a sum of money, whereas blood is something more transient and
simultaneously more fundamental to the subject. The loss of flesh results in
the loss of a part of Antonio, but the spilling of the blood that runs through
this flesh means that a substantial part of Antonio’s character and being (and
in this instance most probably his life, considering that Shylock wants to claim
the flesh closest to Antonio’s heart) is forfeit. Even Shylock himself acknowl-
edges that Antonio is generally considered ‘a good man’ (1.3.12), and thus such
a thing must not be allowed to happen. The piece of flesh that is removed from
Wiseman’s patient, on the other hand, is an emblem of his unrestrained lifestyle,
and in order to cure such a condition it is appropriate that some of the blood
of the character was discharged with the excised penis.
Early modern anatomists (who based many of their assumptions on
medieval medical treatises) were not entirely agreed on the precise connection
between blood, life, and sex, but most of them subscribed to the idea that there
was a definite connection. An overactive sex drive and hotheadedness were
commonly explained through excess of blood and heat flowing through the
body. The racing pulse that is often associated with physical attraction and the

57
Ibid.
58
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy: What it is, vvith all the kindes, cavses, symp-
tomes, prognosticks, and seuerall cvres of it: in three maine partitions, with their seuerall
sections, members, and subsections: philosophically, medicinally, historically opened and
cut up (Oxford: J. Lichfield & J. Short, 1624), p. 248.
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308 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

simultaneous flow of seminal fluids and blood to the penis during coitus
suggest that the two are not unrelated. The English physician Helkiah Crooke
goes as far as to suggest that blood turns into semen if the conditions are right
and sufficient amount of heat is produced.59 This theory should be contextu-
alized by Crooke’s specific conception of the flows of energy or ‘spirits’ in the
body: ‘Vnder the name of vessels we vnderstand three kinds, Veines, Arteries
and Sinewes, because out of these as out of riuers, doe flow into all the parts of
the body Blood, Heate, Spirits, Life, Motion and Sense.’60 Blood, like semen,
not merely enables life – blood is a stream of sensuality, spirituality, and life.
As Gail Kern Paster argues in her essay ‘Nervous Tension’, blood thus becomes
one of the means through which early modern conceptions of the body and
the soul are united: ‘“Blood” becomes related integrally to “sense”, and blood
vessels become, in effect, sites of production and dissemination for the lower
reaches of somatic consciousness.’61 Blood is thus not merely integral to life:
blood is life, energy, or life spirit. Whereas the body in general is a material
vessel, detachable from the more eternal soul, blood for Crooke becomes
almost indistinguishable from and incorporates this soul.
According to Crooke, who wrote his influential Microkosmographia in 1615,
more than ten years before William Harvey lay the foundation for a modern
conception of the circulation of the blood in 1628, the primary function of
blood is to transport energy or spirit to the otherwise dull and lifeless flesh:
‘Hauing wrought our way through the darke and shady groue of the Muscels
[…] the vessels like so many brookes do water and refresh this pleasant Paradise
or model of heauen and earth; I mean the body of man.’62 Spirits, on the other
hand, ‘are the Instruments of the Soul’63 in its tripartite incarnations; ‘Naturall,
Vitall and Animall’,64 and as such their properties completely condition the
character of both body and mind. A pound of Antonio’s flesh in The Merchant
of Venice is of no particular consequence without its concomitant blood. It is
what makes flesh alive, and the removal of blood results in the loss of a section
of the soul. Similarly, castration is primarily horrific because of the concurrent
letting of genital blood and its hotter and more spirited form – the sperm.65
This carries the part of the soul in which masculine heat is generated and, as

59
Helkiah Crooke, Mikrokosmographia: A description of the body of man; together with the
controversies and figures thereto belonging, 2nd edn (London: Th. Cotes & R. Young,
1631). Crooke also argues that breast milk is a particularly hot and ‘spirited’ incarnation
of blood. Paré reversely argues that menstrual blood is a ‘corruption of the seede’ (The
Workes, p. 939).
60
Crooke, Mikrokosmographia, p. 825.
61
Paster, ‘Nervous Tension’, p. 113.
62
Crooke, Mikrokosmographia, p. 825.
63
Ibid., p. 58.
64
Ibid., p. 824.
65
Ibid., p. 58.
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The Dismemberment of Will 309

Bulwer establishes, the loss of such spirits results in the ultimate loss of
masculinity. A castrated man, whether he has undergone penile or testicular
castration, can thus never truly be a man because the seat of masculinity, his
manly soul, is mutilated with the removal of the male genitalia.
Crooke’s theories rely on what to some extent can be considered a fully
embodied circulation of soul and spirits. Such a corporeal philosophy should
inspire a medical methodology the very opposite of what emerged in early
modern Europe. As David Hillman and Carla Mazzio acknowledge in their
introduction to The Body in Parts, not merely was early modern dissection an
act of cutting, but the anatomy compendia that were produced in response to
this practice are complicated exercises of division.66 As Thomas Vicary puts it,
anatomy is an art ‘touching a part of every member particularly’67 and as Burton
acknowledges in The Anatomy of Melancholy, anatomy is a space where concepts
are divided into ‘Sections, Members, and Subsections – Philosophically,
Medicinally, Historically opened and cut up’.68 In Staging Anatomies Hillary
Nunn argues that there are significant connections between the emerging
public interest in medical dissection and the increase of threatened or actual
dismemberment portrayed on the Jacobean playhouse stage.69 Shakespeare’s
Titus Andronicus is possibly one of the best examples of this. It builds a full
catalogue of dismembered body parts and corporeal cuts.
Titus Andronicus is without doubt Shakespeare’s most graphically violent
play, featuring on-stage rape and repeated bodily mutilation. As such, it
embodies the early modern fear of corporeal division; that bodily mutilation
which would, by removing any part of the body, disarrange the entire
humorous balance. There are two key scenes in particular that demonstrate
this embodied mutiny: the aftermath of Lavinia’s mutilation and rape (act 2,
scene 3), and the cutting off of Titus’s hand (act 3, scene 1). While the first act
of cutting (that of Lavinia’s mutilation and rape) is not depicted on stage, its
results are given in the stage directions: ‘Enter the empress’ sons, with LAVINIA,
her hands cut off, and her tongue cut out, and ravish’d’ (2.4).70 Chiron and
Demetrius, the empress’s sons who have just mutilated Lavinia, exit the stage

66
David Hillman and Carla Mazzio, eds., ‘Introduction’ in The Body in Parts: Fantasies of
Corporeality in Early Modern Europe (New York and London: Routledge, 1997),
pp. xi–xxix at pp. xiv–xv.
67
Thomas Vicary, The English-man’s Treasvre. With the true anatomie of mans body:
compiled by Mr. Thomas Vicary (London: 1633), p. 1.
68
Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, p. 1.
69
This was by no means the first time an interest in dissection arose in Europe since ancient
times. As Carolyn Walker Bynum shows in her book Fragmentation and Redemption:
Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Mediaeval Religion (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1991) there was an increased interest in dissection in the thirteenth century, which
made church officials highly uncomfortable.
70
William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, ed. J.C. Maxwell (London: Methuen, 1985), 2.4.
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310 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

after taunting their victim. Marcus enters, noticing his niece’s state, and in a
forty-seven-line monologue laments Lavinia’s bleeding wounds and lost beauty:
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirr’d with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
…
Ah, now thou turns’t away thy face for shame,
And, notwithstanding all this loss of blood,
As from conduit with three issuing spouts,
Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan’s face
Blushing to be encount’red with a cloud.
(2.4.22–32)

For Pascale Aebischer, Marcus’s imagery of ‘bubbling’ blood and ‘conduit’

images, are ‘attempts to render her wounds “speakable” through metaphoric
distancing’.71 But as Mariangela Tempera points out, Marcus’s monologue
carries Galenic allusions. Shakespeare in this soliloquy pays homage to early
modern beliefs about the ‘one-directional flow of blood through veins and
arteries by referring to the “river” and the “conduit” of Lavinia’s blood’.72 The
colourful descriptions of Lavina’s mutilation are indeed more reminiscent of a
fountain of life than a fountain of death. The warmth of the ‘bubbling’ and
‘stirr’d’ blood that ‘rise[s] and fall[s]’ expressly speaks of Lavinia’s vitality; what
Crooke would term her heat and spirit.
Indeed, there are recurring references throughout the play to Galenic notions
of heat and humours; depicting heat/cold, and blood – and the mutinous role
that chopping and cutting, dividing bodies, has in these unsettlements.
Demetrius shows a dangerous imbalance in heat and humours, needing to ‘find
the stream / To cool this heat, a charm to calm these fits’ (2.1.133–4). Together
with his brother, Demetrius rapes Lavinia in order to ‘cool’ his ‘heat’. When
Lavinia has been mutilated, Titus wants to ‘chop off my hands too / … Now all
the service I require of them / Is that the one will help to cut the other’ (3.1.72–9).
He goes on later, lamenting and not knowing what to do: ‘Or shall we cut away
our hands like thine? / Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows / Pass
the remainder of our hateful days?’ (3.1.130–2). There is even more hand-
chopping when Titus, Lucius, and Marcus debate who will have the honour of
offering their cut hand in exchange for Titus’s two captured sons (3.1.160–87).

71
Pascale Aebischer, Shakespeare’s Violated Bodies: Stage and Screen Performance
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 28.
72
Mariangela Tempera, ‘Titus Andronicus: Staging the Mutilated Body’, in Questioning
Bodies in Shakespeare’s Rome, ed. Maria del Sapio Garbero, Nancy Isenberg, and
Maddalena Pennacchia (Goettingen: V&R Unipress, 2010), 109–19 at p. 111.
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The Dismemberment of Will 311

The sight of the sons’ chopped heads, Titus’s cut-off hand (returned with
the heads), and the mangled Lavinia, strikes Lucius ‘pale and bloodless’ and
Marcus himself ‘Even like a stony image, cold and numb’ (3.1.257–8). The
purely corporeal cutting and unbalancing of characters leave Lucius and
Marcus unbalanced too – bloodless, without heat. Titus has now seemingly
gone mad with sorrow, for which his friends are asked to ‘attend him carefully,
/ And feed his humour kindly as we may, / Till time beget some careful remedy’
(4.3.28–30). The use of ‘humour’ here carries a double significance: imbalanced
temper and imbalanced bodily humours. Tamora, mother of the two rapists,
says to herself: ‘But, Titus, I have touch’d thee to the quick; / Thy life-blood [is]
out’ (4.4.36–7). She tells her sons, regarding Titus’s supposed madness, to
uphold and maintain in their speeches whatever she forges ‘to feed his brain-
sick humours’ (5.2.70–2).
Throughout Titus Andronicus, the rivers of blood flow freely and almost
uncontrollably. The play portrays a leaky or haemophiliac body politic, the
stability and continence of which can only be restored through a final act of
bloodletting. With the help of Lavinia, Titus bleeds Tamora’s sons to death,
before making pies of them: ‘Hark, wretches, how I mean to martyr you. / This
one hand yet is left to cut your throats, / Whiles that Lavinia ‘tween her stumps
doth hold / The basin that receives your guilty blood’ (5.2.180–3). Lavinia, in
a final act of revenge, with her stumped arms collects the blood, the loss of
which finally incapacitates the two rapist brothers. Once the over-heated lustful
and ‘guilty’ blood of the state has been discharged, and the ‘corrupted’
substances have been removed, Lucius enters as a physician of the state, ‘To
heal Rome’s harms, and wipe away her woe’ (5.3.148), offering a new beginning
and a virtuous future. This is the desired end of a successful surgical inter-
vention: purification through evacuation.
In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, corporeal cuts thus disable and destroy
the harmony of the state, finally escalating in a cathartic bleeding out of over-
active sexual spirits.73 In Antony and Cleopatra, a final balance of the state is
also restored through a slowly draining sword cut. Mark Antony comes to stand
for the image of the emasculated man not merely in Shakespearean drama, but
in Western cultural history in general. Cleopatra provides him excess of food,
drink, and sensual pleasures, ‘tie[ing] up the libertine in a field of feasts’ (2.1.23)
and ‘makes hungry where most she satisfies’ (2.2.242–3), and when he is power-
lessly inebriated she literally robs him of his masculine attire: ‘Ere the ninth
hour I drunk him to his bed; / Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst /
I bore his sword Philippan’ (2.5.21–3). The relationship is the onset of a thor-
oughly disabling love-sickness which exclusively ‘with a wound … must be
cured’ (4.14.79). Antony and Cleopatra’s ‘heated blood’ and ‘monstrous feasts’

73
See Tracy, Torture and Brutality, ch. 6.
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312 KARIN SELLBERG AND LENA WÅNGGREN

are an infection on the Roman state; ‘launch[ing] Diseases in our bodies’

(5.1.36–7) and although Antony’s loyal followers mourn the ‘gap in nature’
(2.2.223) that his death causes, for ‘never shall there be such a man’ (4.14.83),
he is a part the Roman public corpus that needs to be removed through a ‘vent
of blood’ (5.2.344).
Similarly, the surgical castrations that took place in early modern London
were considered necessary evils, the results of immoderate living and
humorous corruption, which the barber surgeon’s scalpel and the flow of blood
and heated spirits to an extent could cure. As Wiseman and Paré both point
out, castration is never a desirable solution to venereal disease, however. 74
Regardless of whether a man had to undergo a penile or a testicular castration,
neither his position in society nor his soul would remain the same. He would
lose his masculine forcefulness as well as his humorous balance. Castration
may thus alleviate an acutely serious condition (and calm the blood for the
moment), but it does not necessarily have an effect on the original cause of the
problem: the carnal lusts. If anything, the loss of masculine ability to control
the appetites would have made the situation worse. As the eunuch Mardian in
Antony and Cleopatra sorrowfully points out, his condition only disables him
from partaking in venery ‘in deed’: ‘for I can do nothing / But what is honest
to be done; / Yet have I fierce affections, and think / What Venus did with Mars’
(1.2.17–18). The art of cutting a virtuous balance is not something that can be
surgically introduced to a body. It has to be taught spiritually.
In the medieval and early modern imaginations castration is a prevalent
concern, especially in the construction of masculinity. The eunuchs of
antiquity, noted for their beauty and desirability, emerge as figures on the early
modern stage, giving voice to anxieties of maleness and femaleness that
evolved continuously over the course of more than one thousand years.
Shaped in some sense by Abelard’s rehearsal of his own calamitous wounding
in the Historia calamitatum, medieval ideas of castration carry over into the
early modern period and into modern discourse. From late antiquity, when
eunuchs could achieve great power and prominence, to the fraught rela-
tionship between male genitalia and Christian purity in early Church
discourse, to the legal proscriptions for and prohibitions against castration
and the literary constructions of masculine identity, Western society has
struggled to define itself in relation to the male body in all its permutations
and all its paradoxes. The history of castration and of how societies dealt with
its physical ramifications is a history of calamities that tells a story of loss, of
love, of law, of sacrifice, of punishment, of wounding, and of healing. This is
(perhaps) where the importance of early modern drama becomes most
expressly apparent. Although Mardian and the other twenty-four eunuchs

74
Wiseman, Eight Chirurgical Treatises, p. 505; Paré, The Workes, p. 421.
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The Dismemberment of Will 313

who express themselves on the early modern stage may never develop into
balanced and virtuous men themselves, their examples furnish the theatre-
going public with a means to do so. As Aristotle decrees in his Poetics, drama
– and tragedy in particular – has the ability to cathartically restore the mental
balance of its audience.75 Plays such as Titus Andronicus and Antony and
Cleopatra may not present very happy outcomes for their protagonists, but
they have the ability to cleanse the many perturbed spirits that suffer with
them. The literal flows of blood on stage result in a figurative release of spirits
among the audience. The various embodiments of fear and unease evoked by
references to castration and castrated men on the early modern stage may thus
be more than a mere precautionary example. They are a figurative cure.

75
Aristotle, Poetics, in Rhetorics and Poetics of Aristotle, ed. Friedrich Solmsen (New York:
Random House, 1954).
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British Library, MS Cotton Cleopatra A.XIV
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British Library, MS Harleian 4353
National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 37
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Abasgia 49 Annals of Loch Cé 159 n. 60

Abbasid 174, 176, 179, 185–6, 187 Annals of the Four Masters 159 n. 58,
Abelard, Peter 11, 12–19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 161, 162, 163–6
33, 73, 83, 87–9, 97, 98, 103 n. 89, Annals of Tigernach 159 n. 60, 162,
106–7, 207, 210, 213, 220, 227–8, 164–6
255, 257, 260 n. 21, 261, 273–4, Annals of Ulster 181, 159, 160, 161,
279, 281, 286, 312 163–6
Historia calamitatum 13, 14, 16, Antinous, lover of Hadrian 50
33 n. 21, 88, 273, 312 apatheia 231, 233
abortion 124, 172 n. 104 apocalyptic ideology 73, 74, 78, 79, 80
Ad amicum suum consolatoria See: Apollo, god 60
Abelard, Peter, Historia Arab world 26, 123, 174–5, 180, 182,
calamitatum 184, 187, 236, 265
Adomnán of Iona 170 Arcadius 49
adultery 15, 16, 22, 53, 117, 172, 198, archaeology 4, 29–47
242 Also see: castration, Aristotle 4, 217 n. 17, 218 n. 19, 261,
punishment for adultery 266, 267, 303, 313
Aelred of Rievaulx, saint 18, 237 Artemis of Ephesus, goddess 67
Æthelberht, king 137, 145, 148 ascesis 233
laws 133 n. 7, 137–8, 140–8, 154, 166 asceticism 45, 73–4, 85, 229, 247
Alan of Lille, De planctu naturae 288, Asclepius 56, 57–60
293 Atargatis, goddess 118–9
Alcuin, Life of St Willibrord 113 Athanasius of Alexandria, saint 17, 84,
Alexander of Hales 115, 116 237
Alexander the Great 68 Attis 5, 52–6, 58, 60, 62, 65, 102,
Alfred, king of Wessex 134, 137, 143, 259,260, 261, 267
144, 145 Augustine of Hippo, saint 12, 248 n. 49,
laws 133 n. 7, 137, 138, 140, 143, 249
145–8, 154, 155 ’aylonit 76
al-Muqaddasi 174
al-Muqtadir, caliph 186–7 Baghdad 181, 182
Ambrose, saint 12, 85, 248, 249 Bagoas, eunuch 67, 69
Anatomia vivorum 123 Basil Lekapenos, eunuch 184
androgynos 77 Basil of Ancyra 84
Anglo-Saxon England 22, 24, 25, 92, Bavli Shabbat 76
93, 95, 97, 131–48, 151, 154, 157, bestiality 23, 115–6, 117, 129, 190, 199,
158, 163, 171, 173, 176, 299 200, 203, 206 See sexual abuse
laws 25–6, 33 n. 21, 76 n. 10, 95–6, of animals
109, 131–48, 166, 172, 179, 299 beauty 10, 25, 33 n. 21, 48–72, 214, 237,
Annales Cambriae 157 n. 49, 158 n. 51, 243, 266, 282 n. 9, 310, 312
158–9 n. 54 beavers, self-castrating 264–72, 275
Annales Ricardi Secundi et Henrici Bernard of Clairvaux 107, 207 n. 53
Quarti 149 biological sex 6–9, 12, 77, 131, 226,
Annals of Clonmacnoise 161, 164–6 265 n. 52, 281
Annals of Connacht 160, 161, 164–6 blood 16 n. 77, 53, 55, 65, 102, 103,
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116 n. 38, 120, 127, 138 n. 28, 110, 111, 113, 117–8, 132, 150,
171, 188, 193, 195, 205, 215, 231, 153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 162, 172,
232, 233, 236, 243, 307–8, 310–3 178, 198, 199, 202, 208, 263, 273
blood feuds 26, 108, 126, 148, 178, 190, for adultery 16 n. 77, 20 n. 95,
192–4 172 n. 104, 211, 211–212 n. 6,
Bobbitt, Lorena 27 305 n. 52
Bodleian Library, MS Laud 108 93, for bestiality 111 See sexual
95 n. 40 abuse of animals
Boethius 134, 143, 144 for homosexuality 23, 116, 203,
Consolation of Philosophy 134, 143, 206, 280
144, 145, 147 for rape 1 n. 1, 8, 16 n. 77, 22, 23,
Book of Routes and Kingdoms 180, 182 95, 104, 110, 133, 151, 152–5,
Book of the City of Ladies 18 160, 162, 172, 173, 179, 199, 200,
Braveheart 28 211, 280, 299
Brenhinedd y Saesson 158 n. 51 for sacrilege 111
Bretha Éitgid 126, 167, 168 n. 89, 170 for theft 111
Brut y Tywysogyon 158 n. 51, for treason 8, 19, 20, 22, 94, 95,
178 n. 25 104, 132 n. 4, 142 n. 54, 178,
Bulwer, John 301, 303, 308 211 n. 5, 299
burial 24, 30, 32, 34, 35 n. 37, 38, Catullus, poet 53, 54, 56, 65
43 n. 81, 44, 45–6, 117, 300 Céli Dé 181
Bynum, Caroline Walker 19, 90, 99, celibacy 25, 78, 79, 80, 85, 218, 220,
106, 134, 309 222, 229, 231, 250, 251
Byzantium 5, 6, 30 n. 4, 33–4, 70, Charlemagne 108, 117, 180
174–87, 246, 252, 253, 281, 282, Christine de Pizan 18
300 circumcision 11–12, 79, 80, 111, 211
Claudian, poet 1, 49, 50, 71
Callaghan, Dympna 216, 298, 299, 301, Claudius Aelianus, (Aelian) 267, 268
302, 303 De natura animalium 267
Chaucer, Geoffrey 14 n. 74, 21 n. 99, Clement of Alexandria 80, 82, 248,
260, 261, 277, 278, 249
Canterbury Tales 91, 207, 260 Cnut II, king 157, 173
The Pardoner 14 n. 74, 21 n. 99, 260, Cogadh Gaedhil re Gallaib 177
261, 267, 277, 278 Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome 8, 9
capitularies 25 compensation (for injury; injury tariffs)
Cassius Dio, historian 56, 63, 64, 65 2, 26, 23, 76 n. 10, 95 n. 41, 109,
castor fiber (beaver) 269, 270, 271, 272 110, 116, 119–22, 124, 125–9,
castoreum 264, 265, 266 n. 58 132 n. 3, 133, 137–43, 145–7,
castrates, 9, 24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 32, 151, 154–5, 159, 160, 166–7 n. 78,
33–47, 180, 258, 260, 261, 269 168–9, 171, 172, 195, 196,
Also see: eunuchs 211 n. 5
castrati, (singers) 2, 3, 8, 29, 30, 302 composition (laws) 140, 143, 148
castration concubines 175, 185, 186
autocastration (self-castration) 9, Constantinople 49, 87, 180, 182, 230,
10, 11, 24, 56, 71, 82, 84–5, 87, 246 n. 44
88, 97, 98, 106, 118, 119, 242, Cordoba 187
245, 286 Council of Soissons (1121) 17
chemical 1 n. 1, 29 n. 2 Críth Gablach 167, 170
as a complex 297, 299, 301 Crooke, Helkiah 308, 309, 310
as punishment 1, 2, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, Microcosmographia 308
15, 16 n. 77, 17, 18, 19–27, 28, Cummean Penitential 115
29 n. 2, 33, 88–9, 90, 95–6, 104, Customs of Orléans 16 n. 77
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Cybele, goddess 5, 41, 46, 51, 53, 54, 62, military officials, eunuchs as 6, 49,
67, 74, 102, 261 n. 28 159, 183, 184, 185, 231, 300, 312
Cyril, (Constantine the Philosopher) 182 slaves, eunuchs as 48, 51, 63, 174–87
Eusebius of Caesarea 10, 82, 83, 84,
Dacian, emperor 100, 101 169 n. 91, 286
Dame Ragnell 213 Ecclesiastical History 10, 169 n. 91
Darius III, king 68 Eutropius, chamberlain 49, 50, 71
David I, king of Scotland 178 Evesham, battle of 20, 93, 231 n. 4
De Connebert 22, 207, 219 Exeter Book 136, 146, 148
De Vetula 27, 89, 260, 272 n. 91, 280–94
Despenser, Hugh 20, 21 n. 99 fabliaux 14, 22, 24, 26, 89, 172 n. 103,
Dicta Chrysostomi 270 210–28, 273, 274
Diet of Aachen 108 Farmer’s Law 182
Dio Chrysostom, Oration 66, 67 Fatimid 187
Diocletian, emperor 49, 183 femininity 8, 9, 24, 27, 213, 218 n. 19,
dismemberment 18, 19, 100, 101, 257, 226, 233 n. 7, 298
276, 301, 305, 309 fingal, (kin-slaying) 159, 160
divorce 74, 75, 77, 172 n. 104 Finucci, Valeria 3, 8, 274 n. 107, 275
Domesday Book 176 First Council of Nicaea 10, 12, 87, 106,
Dominic, saint 93 286
Domitian, emperor 48, 49, 50, 56, 57, fisher king 232, 234, 238–42, 250, 253
58–64, 66 Fleta 117
Dorus, eunuch 69, 70, 71 Foucault, Michel 21, 211 n. 2, 296
Drusus, the son of Tiberius 69 Fourth Lateran Council 12, 114
Du Prestre crucefié 22, 211 Frankia 176, 182
Freud, Sigmund 1, 4, 132 n. 4, 221,
Earinus 48, 50, 56, 57, 59–63, 65, 70, 296–302
72 Frisia 24, 33 n. 21, 76 n. 10, 108–30,
Edward I, king of England 21, 93, 95 140 n. 42, 142, 168, 200
Edward II, king of England 20, 21 n. 99, Froissart, Jean 21 n. 99
93 Fulco, prior of Deuil 17–8
effeminization, fear of 202, 295, 298 fulmannod 134, 144, 148
emasculation 1, 9–11, 13 n. 72, 15, 20,
25, 86, 92, 104, 107, 110, 129, Galahad, Sir 230, 233–4, 243, 253
198, 207, 233, 244, 252, 260, 273, Galen 126 n. 78, 236, 252, 287, 303, 310
295, 296, 305 Galenic humors 287, 310
Encartites, (religious sect) 81 Galli, the 46, 51–2, 54–6, 60, 61, 63, 67,
Endymion 58, 60 70, 71, 74, 80, 81
Etablissements de Saint Louis 16 n. 77, Ganymede 57, 60, 61, 62, 72
22 Garber, Marjorie 281, 282, 302
Eunuchenparodie 284 Gareth, Sir 242
eunuchs 2, 3, 4, 6–7, 9, 10, 11, 17, 24, General Register of Compensations 119,
25, 26, 27, 29 n. 3, 39, 41, 43, 44, 124 n. 69, 125 n. 75
46, 50–6, 60, 62, 66–72, 73–81, genitalia 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 99, 100, 101 n. 71,
83, 84, 86, 87, 106, 107, 119, 174, 106, 107, 150, 168, 169 n. 91,
175, 178, 180, 229, 230, 231, 251, 205, 211 n. 3, 227, 263 n. 42, 265,
253, 260, 267, 272, 274, 275, 280, 297, 301, 309, 312
281, 282, 284–94, 302, 303, 304, George, saint 98, 100, 101, 102, 105–7
312 Also see: castrates Gilte Legende 90 n. 11, 105
chamberlains, eunuchs as 30 n. 5, Gnosticism 80, 249
31, 42, 45, 49, 183–7, 252, 266, Godes ewa, (natural law) 114
300, 312 Grágás 163, 166, 199
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Grail Beast 234–5, 237, 238, 243, 245, Islam 32, 174–5, 180, 185
249, 250, 253 Íslendinga sögur 193
Gratian, Decretals 114
grave goods 34, 46 James, saint 97–8
Gray, Dorian 71 Jean de Meun 18, 26, 255, 272 n. 92,
Gruffudd ap Cynan 178 273, 283, 292
Guibert of Nogent 12, 97, 98, 184 Jean Le Fèvre, La Vieille, ou les dernières
Gesta Dei per Francos 12 amours d’Ovide 27, 89, 260,
Guigemar 213 280–94
Guillaume de Lorris 27, 255–79, 283 Jerome, saint 12, 50, 85, 106, 248, 273
Romans de la rose 18, 26, 255–79 Judaism 11, 24, 25, 73–80, 85, 86, 119
n. 51, 175, 180, 182, 235, 292,
Hadrian, emperor 50, 63, 68 293, 294
hagiography 15, 16, 24, 25, 87–107, Juno, goddess 57, 60 n. 46, 62
135 n. 16, 212 n. 8, 250 Jupiter, god 57, 60, 62, 72, 257
halisah 76 Justinian, Digest 6
harems 30 n. 5, 31, 185–7 Justinian I, emperor 49, 280
Heloise 12–8, 88, 103 n. 89, 273 n. 100 Juvenal, Satire 52, 266, 267
Henry de Bracton 155
Henry I, king of England 96 Karras, Ruth Mazo 7, 10, 11, 20, 107,
Henry II, king of England 95 n. 40, 133, 134, 136, 168, 169, 175, 177
157 n. 47, 158 Kempy Kay 213
Henry III, king of England 20, 93, 231 kidneys 136 n. 20, 234, 236, 252
Henry IV, king of England 150, 305 Kronus, god 269
heresy 23, 25, 92 Kuefler, Mathew S. 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11,
Hermaphroditus 259, 260, 261, 267, 26, 30, 32, 50, 74, 78, 80, 81, 85,
269, 277 n. 118, 278 102, 106, 135, 248, 272, 281, 282,
Herold, Joannes (scholar-printer) 109 290
hijiras 29, 34, 43, 44, 45
Hippocrates 126 n. 78, 229, 236, 264, La dame escolliee 26, 210–28,
303 274 n. 104, 292 n. 37, 298 n. 14
Holinshed, Raphael 149, 150, 305 labor 109, 133, 134, 142, 145, 147,
Holy Grail 26, 106, 213, 229–54 160 n. 61, 177, 182, 221
homosexuality 23, 103 n. 89, 116, 118, Langland, William, Piers Plowman 91
172 n. 104, 203, 206, 260, 261, Laqueur, Thomas 204, 221, 261, 274,
269, 277 n. 118, 279 296, 297
Hoskuld 179 Laurence, saint 98, 99, 100
hunting 92, 214, 222 n. 38, 224, 225, law 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 16 n. 77, 17, 18, 19,
226 n. 39, 284 20, 21, 22, 23, 25–7, 33, 58, 61,
Hylas 58, 60 75, 76, 77, 89–93, 95, 96, 104,
108–130, 131–48, 149–73, 176,
Ibn Khurradadhbih 182 179, 182, 187, 192, 193, 194, 197,
Iceland 23, 26, 163, 174–7, 188–209, 199, 200, 201, 208, 211 n. 5,
220 n. 23 212 n. 6, 230, 233, 235, 237, 248,
Ignatius of Constantinople 87 273, 280, 287, 297, 299, 300, 305,
imitatio Christi 99 307, 312
infanticide 18 n. 83 Legenda aurea 90, 101 n. 71, 105
injury tariffs See: compensation Leges barbarorum 108, 110, 115
Ireland 24, 33 n. 21, 76 n. 10, 96, 126, Leis Willelme 96, 155, 156
140 n. 42, 149–73, 176, 177, 181 Lex Frisionum 25, 108, 109, 110, 111,
Isidore of Seville 221, 236, 269 113, 119, 127, 129, 142
Etymologies 236, 269 Lex Julia 114
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Lex Ribuaria 110 miles Christi 107

Lex Salica 110, 111, 141 Mills, Robert 2, 90, 92, 93, 101
lex talionis, (Mosaic law) 111, 133 Mirror of Justices 95
Lex Visigothorum 111 Mishnah 11, 75, 76, 77
liminal 31, 270, 281, 282 Mo Ling, saint 169
Liudger, bishop 111 Mordrain, king 233
Llyfr Blegywryd 151, 153 Murray, Jacqueline 3, 7, 10, 15, 17, 87,
Llyfr Colan 151 98, 272
Llyfr Cyfnerth 151, 152, 153 mutilation 5, 9, 19 n. 89, 21, 22, 25, 36
Llyfr Cynog 151 n. 40, 93, 96, 98, 150, 156–9, 169,
Llyfr Iorwerth 151, 152 172, 173, 191, 193, 198, 199, 200,
Louis the Pious, king of the Franks 182 201, 202, 209, 240–2, 273, 309,
Lygdus, eunuch 69 310
genital 13, 14, 17, 20, 24, 87 n. 1, 88,
Magna Carta 104 n. 93 89, 90, 97 n. 57, 108–30, 190,
Magna Mater See: Cybele 203, 207, 208, 255, 258, 260, 276,
Mamluks of Egypt 185 290
Manessier, Perlesvaus 229–30, 240–5 genital, female 103, 128, 129, 211,
manhood 1, 8, 9, 25, 27, 50, 53, 55, 58, 212
60, 61, 67, 79, 102, 118, 133, 134,
141, 147, 148, 189, 198, 209, 218, Narcissus 58, 60–1, 259, 261, 274, 278
222, 229, 245, 248, 297 Naum, saint 180
Marcionites 80 Nero, emperor 48, 63, 64–6, 69
Margaret, saint 101, 103 Njáls saga 191, 193, 205
Marie de France 213, 222 Norman Conquest 22, 26, 90, 92, 94–6,
marriage 6, 12, 14, 15, 16, 31 n. 8, 34, 157–8, 162, 171–3
58, 64, 73–9, 81, 85, 86, 104, 109,
169, 171, 195, 211, 212, 213 n. 9, 1001 Nights 186
220, 222, 223, 227, 242, 248, 280, Oiseuse 256–9, 262, 263, 264, 266–72,
281, 285, 305–6 275–9
Martial, Epigrams 52, 53, 56, 61–3 Órækja Snorrason 190, 191, 193–8,
martyrdom 15, 16, 25, 88, 89, 99, 101, 202, 203, 207, 208, 209
102, 105, 106, 207 Origen 10, 11, 13 n. 72, 18, 24, 73, 82,
masculinity 2–4, 7, 8, 9, 15, 17, 20, 24, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 106, 119,
26–8, 63, 71, 88, 89, 102, 104–6, 169 n. 91, 255, 257, 273, 274,
133, 189, 190, 191, 203–7, 209, 279, 286
210–28, 229, 230, 232, 244, 259, original sin 249
302, 309, 312 osteology 45
mastectomy 89 n. 10, 103, 124, 128, Ovid 266, 275, 278, 283, 284, 292
193 Ars Amatoria 283 n. 15
masturbation 115, 116 Fasti 55, 56
material culture 30, 33, 44, 45, 295 Metamorphoses 5, 259
Matthew, Gospel of 9, 10 n. 45, 73–5,
77–9, 82, 85, 86, 87, 119, 250, Paezon, eunuch 69
272, 274, 286 Palladius of Galatia 84, 252 n. 65
(Matt. 19:12) 9, 73–5, 77–9, 82–3, Pandora 61
85, 87, 119, 272, 274, 286 Paré, Ambroise, Workes 302, 306, 308,
Megabyzus 67 312
Menander, Athenian playwright 69, Paul of Aegina 5 n. 14, 48, 184 n. 66,
72 n. 107 287 n. 29, 300
Methodius 180, 182 Epitome of Medicine 48, 287 n. 29
Middleton, Thomas 3, 305 Paul the Deacon 180
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penis 1, 4, 8, 9, 13, 27, 35, 36, 43, 44, 46, 172, 173, 179, 199, 200, 211, 280,
48 n. 3, 105, 119, 120, 121, 123, 299
124, 126, 133, 136, 138, 139, 141, Renault, Mary 68
147, 148, 152, 161, 168, 250, 263, Richard de Fournival 27, 272, 282, 286,
265, 274, 277, 290, 297, 298, 300, 292
301, 306, 307, 308 riddles 136–9, 146–8, 221
anatomy of 123–4 Rígsþula 177
Perceval 229–54 Ringrose, Kathryn 30, 32, 33, 34, 183,
Pergamum 51, 56, 59, 62 184, 252, 282, 291, 303
Physiologus 268, 270, 271, 272 Robert de Boron 231, 240, 246
Pliny the Elder, Natural History 67 n. 88, Robert of Gloucester, chronicler 93
69, 79 n. 16, 266 Roman funerary ritual 46
Plutarch 64 n. 72, 68, 69 n. 94 Romans de la rose See: Guillaume de
Poenitentiale Parisiense compositum Lorris
118 Rufinus, (Origenist) 106
Poppaea Sabina, wife of Nero 64, 66
prepubertal 25, 36 n. 42, 45 Salerno 123
Prick of Conscience 91 samtiðarsögur 192, 193
Procopius 49 Santiago de Compostela 98
The Secret History 42 saris 30 n. 5, 75, 76, 77
Wars 49, 184 Scandinavia 22, 26, 95, 96, 97, 116 n. 37,
procreation 76, 77, 78, 79, 85, 86, 116, 156, 157, 174, 175, 177, 179, 180,
133, 169, 179, 262, 263 181, 187, 188–209, 211 n. 5
Prudentius, poet 50, 102 Sejanus 69
psychoanalysis 19 n. 89, 299, 300 semivir 52, 259, 278, 285, 287
punishment 1, 2, 6, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, Sendriocht 113, 114, 116, 117, 129
16 n. 77, 17, 18, 19–27, 28, Sextus Aurelius Victor, The Caesars 65
29 n. 2, 33, 88–9, 90, 95–6, 104, sexual abuse, of animals 114, 115
110, 111, 113, 117–8, 132, 150, Shakespeare, William 27, 150, 295–313
153, 154, 156, 157, 158, 162, 172, Antony and Cleopatra 27, 295, 304,
178, 198, 199, 202, 208, 263, 273 311, 312
See also: castration as I Henry IV 150, 305
punishment King Lear 299
blinding 22, 23, 94, 95, 142 n. 54, The Merchant of Venice 305, 306,
155–60, 162, 164, 165, 173, 178, 307, 308
189, 190, 193, 199, 200, 201, Taming of the Shrew 216 n. 15
299 Titus Andronicus 27, 309, 310, 311,
burning 117, 118, 162, 191 313
evisceration 21 n. 99, 103 n. 82 Twelfth Night 299 n. 20, 301, 302, 303
execution 19, 20, 21, 96, 111, 112, silk 107, 177, 181, 184
116, 129, 142 n. 54, 199, 217 Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester
hanging 94, 162, 170 20, 93, 231
singers 3, 29 n. 3, 31, 42 n. 76, 46, 174,
Queste del Saint Graal 230, 233 n. 8, 183
235, 242 skeletons 25, 30, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41
Quintilian, Training in Oratory 66, 67 Skoptsy 34, 35, 39, 42, 45
Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of slaves 4, 24, 25, 26, 48, 49, 51, 58, 59,
Alexander 68 63, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 110,
111, 133, 136 n. 21, 152, 154,
Rabbinic tradition 10, 11, 73–86 155, 166 n. 78, 167, 170, 171,
rape 1 n. 1, 8, 16 n. 77, 22, 23, 95, 104, 172, 174–87, 199, 300
110, 133, 151, 152–5, 160, 162, social theory 131
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South English Legendary 25, 82, 87–107 Umayyad 185, 187

Sporus, eunuch 48, 63, 64, 65, 66, 69 ungendered 222
Statius, Silvae (The Hair of Flavius Uranus, god 5, 18, 269
Earinus) 56, 60–5
sterility 76, 172 n. 104, 262, 277, 278, Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings
289 and Sayings 54
Sturlunga saga 26, 188–209 van Eickels, Klaus 20, 22, 94, 95, 96,
Suetonius, biographer 49 n. 5, 63, 64, 132, 142, 156, 157, 158, 159, 178
69 Venice 175, 179, 180, 181, 183, 187,
Summa confessorum 115 305, 306, 307, 308
Venus, goddess 5, 53, 57, 60, 61, 62,
Tacitus 69 259, 277, 312
Tale of Florent 213 Vikings 161, 174–87
Talmud 11, 75, 76 n. 8, 77 virgins 84, 90, 103, 104, 106, 229–54,
Taylor, Gary 1, 2, 3, 6, 27, 28, 29, 79, 285 n. 24
297, 299, 300, 301, 304 virility, loss of 1, 2, 8, 12, 82, 142, 206,
Templar, Order of the Knights 107, 247 301
Terence, The Eunuch 51, 69, 70, 71 vita activa 133, 134, 136, 140, 143, 145
Tertullian 81, 85, 102, 237 Vita Rimberti 180
testicles 4, 5, 8, 9, 13 n. 72, 18, 20, 23, Vitellius, emperor 65
31 n. 7, 35, 36 n. 40, 48, 76, 93, von Eschenbach, Wolfram 238
94, 97 n. 57, 105, 110, 119, 120, Vulgate Cycle 232, 234, 235
121, 123–6, 129, 133, 146, 150,
152, 167, 168, 169, 206, 214, 215, Wales 24, 96, 149–73
219, 226, 236, 238, 249, 258, 263, wergild 119, 124, 125 n. 75, 126, 128,
264, 265, 267, 268, 270 n. 76, 133, 138, 140–5, 147, 166
271–5, 278 n. 120, 287, 290, 299, Wheeler, Bonnie 8, 9, 13, 15, 88, 220,
300, 301, 303, 306 227
Theophylaktos, Defense of Eunuchs 291 Wilde, Oscar 71
thigh wounds 26, 229–54 Willehad, bishop 111
third gender 54, 77, 106, 282 William I, king of England 92–3, 95,
Thomas Aquinas, saint 5, 116, 207 n. 53 96, 156, 176, 299
Summa theologica 116 William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani
Thomas of Chobham 115, 116 94
‘three orders’ of society 144 William Wallace 19, 21, 28
Þrymskviða 206, 207 Wimund, bishop 178
Tiberius, emperor 54, 69 Wiseman, Richard 306, 307, 312
Tigellinus, prefect 64 Wulfstan, bishop of York, Sermo lupi ad
Titus, emperor 63 Anglos 132 n. 3, 135
torture 2, 21, 23, 25, 27, 87–107, 116, Wulfstan, saint 92–5, 176
197 n. 20, 200, 201 n. 38, 212 n. 8
transvestites 65, 281 Zanj 185
Tristan en Prose 235 Zeus See : Jupiter
tumtum 77
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352 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

Castration and Culture txt hebrew_castration 06/02/2013 09:40 Page 353

Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity 353

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354 ROLF H. BREMMER JR

 CASTRATION
Castration and castrati have always been facets of western culture,
CASTRATION
from myth and legend to law and theology, from eunuchs guarding
harems to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century castrati singers.
Metaphoric castration pervades a number of medieval literary
CULTURE
genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux – exchanges of power IN THE MIDDLE AGES
predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified

CULTURE
by genitalia – but the plain, literal act of castration and its
implications are often overlooked.

This collection explores this often taboo subject and its

implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe,
seeking to demystify and demythologize castration. Its subjects
include archaeological studies of eunuchs; historical accounts of
castration in trials of combat; the mutilation of political rivals in

IN THE MIDDLE AGES

medieval Wales; Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary
examples of castration as punishment; castration as comedy in the
Old French fabliaux; the prohibition against genital mutilation in
hagiography; and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration
enacted on the Elizabethan stage. The introduction reflects on
these topics in the context of arguably the most well-known victim
of castration in the middle ages, Abelard.

Larissa Tracy is Associate Professor of Medieval Literature at

Longwood University.

Cover illustration: Illumination from the Romans de la rose of Origen castrating himself.
TRACY

© The British Library Board. All rights reserved. Egerton 881, f.132.
(ED)

an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd

EDITED BY LARISSA TRACY
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY14620-2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com