Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbrevations
- Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration
- 1 Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration
- 2 The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs
- 3 Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity
- 4 ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary
- 5 The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law
- 6 The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject
- 7 ‘Imbrued in their owne bloud’: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources
- 8 Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs
- 9 ‘He took a stone away’: Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga
- 10 The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee
- 11 Eunuchs of the Grail
- 12 Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris's Romans de la rose
- 13 Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Févre's La Vieille
- 14 The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration
- Select Bibliography
- Index
3 - Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbrevations
- Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration
- 1 Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration
- 2 The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs
- 3 Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity
- 4 ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary
- 5 The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law
- 6 The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject
- 7 ‘Imbrued in their owne bloud’: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources
- 8 Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs
- 9 ‘He took a stone away’: Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga
- 10 The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee
- 11 Eunuchs of the Grail
- 12 Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris's Romans de la rose
- 13 Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Févre's La Vieille
- 14 The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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 expectation, 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.
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- Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages , pp. 73 - 86Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013