The Manly Eunuch, pt. 2

[JesusA (imported)]

Chapter 8 (part 1)

"EUNUCHS FOR THE SAKE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN:" Castration and Christian Manliness

In part 1 of this book, I argued that the presence of eunuchs in the Western Roman Empire in late antiquity functioned as a powerful reminder of the many changes facing men of the Roman aristocracy, in both public and private life. But the eunuch also served as a potent symbol of the conversion of the empire to Christianity, and in this chapter I will discuss the importance of that symbol. Christian writers denounced the castration of men as typical of all that was immoral and effeminate in pagan culture. At the same time, the authority of Jesus' saying that Christians should "make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of Heaven" required a radical rehabilitation of the symbol of the eunuch. Latin writers condemned early Christian experiments with physical self-castration, because of its disturbing gender ambiguity, but encouraged a tamed notion of spiritual castration. By the end of the fourth century, Latin Christian writers even represented the new ideal of masculinity, the monk, as a type of manly eunuch. As a result, the eunuch served as a symbol not only of the dangers of traditional Roman masculinity but also of its Christian transformation.

THE CHRISTIAN RESPONSE TO PAGAN CASTRATION

Christian writers resolutely opposed the popular use of eunuchs in late antiquity. Jerome ridiculed the overly refined Christian women of his day who were carried in litters by eunuchs because the "could not bear the unevenness of the streets." One noblewoman even brought her eunuchs with her into St. Peter's Basilica, he noted with disgust. Christian writers also seem to have shared the same negative stereotypes about the characters of eunuchs that other Romans did. When a eunuch official of the emperor Valentinian II threatened the life of Ambrose during the famous dispute over the control of a basilica at Milan, Ambrose replied acerbly: "then I will suffer as bishops do, you will act as eunuchs do." If a Christian noblewoman rejected an association with eunuchs, the Church fathers counted it as a sign of her holiness. Jerome praised his dear friend Paula for rejecting her former habit of being carried on a litter by eunuchs and traveling instead astride a donkey, and mentioned it in letters to other female acquaintances, doubtless as an example to them. "Their separation from men was so complete," he wrote of Paula and her ascetic female associates, "that it separated them even from eunuchs, so as to give no occasion to evil tongues, who are accustomed to tearing down the saints in order to reassure the delinquent." Similarly, Jerome praised Christian virgins who refused to bathe with eunuchs. Behind these comments was the widespread fear that eunuchs were no guarantors of women's sexual purity. Accordingly, Jerome counseled a female correspondent to choose her eunuch servants on the basis of their good morals, not their good looks.

It was not the presence of eunuchs in family life or even in public office that most horrified Christian writers, however. Even more disturbing was their presence in Roman religions, as the eunuch priests of the Mother of the Gods (Mater Deum). The mythology of the worship of the Mother of the Gods is complicated, as complicated as most ancient myths, and several scholars have attempted to untangle the treads of the origins and regional variations of the cults associated with the Mother of the Gods. Suffice it here to say that at the heart of the religion was a goddess, usually known as Cybele from the Phrygian version of the cult, but in the syncretic environment of late antiquity also identified with Egyptian Isis, Syrian Astarte and Babylonian Ishtar, Carthaginian Tannit (also known in Roman times as Caelestis), and a host of Greek goddesses including Rhea, Demeter, Aphrodite, and Hera, and thus also with Roman Ceres, Venus, and Juno. The Mother of the Gods was believed to control both agricultural and human fertility; she was also responsible for the erotic passions that made human fertility possible, and her abundant fecundity had even aided in the multiplication of the gods (thus her title as "Mother of the Gods"). Also associated with the Mother of the Gods, at least by the classical era, was her male consort. Again, he was usually known as Attis from the Phrygian myth, but also identified in late antiquity as Egyptian Osiris, Syrian Tammuz and Babylonian Dumuzi, or Greek Adonis, and also as Greek Dionysus and Roman Bacchus. We should not think of all of their pairs of gods and goddesses as the same cult, to be sure, but Roman writers of late antiquity did tend to consider them as ethnic and local variations on a general mythological theme.

Variants of these cults existed in the western Mediterranean from earliest antiquity. Already in the sixth century B.C.E., Phoenician settlers at Carthage had imported elements of the cult of a great goddess from the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to North Africa, and when Romans settled in the region, they added Roman elements to it. The cult of the Great Mother (Magna Mater) was brought from Asia Minor to Rome in 204 B.C.E., although it does not seem to have thrived. But the cult seems to have grown in popularity especially in late antiquity. Worship of the Great Mother, by then more often referred to at the Mother of the Gods, was reintroduced in the second century C.E. and spread throughout the western provinces of the empire with Roman imperial patronage. The emperor Elagabalus was also said to have encouraged the cult in the third century, as did Julian in the fourth century. It only disappeared at the beginning of the fifth century C.E. with the general decline of public paganism.

The mythological motifs associated with the Mother of the Gods and her consort are equally complicated, but numerous ancient writers attest to an overall pattern. A fundamental component was the theme of castration. According to some versions of the myth, the consort eventually rejected the love of the Mother of the Gods and loved another, and in anger she castrated him (according to other versions, he castrated himself out of regret). It is usually said that he died of his wound, but because of her love for him she restored him to life, although he remained a eunuch. Again, complex layers of different, ancient legends were overlaid one upon the other. (According to the Egyptian myth, for example. Osiris was killed by an evil third party, Seth, who dismembered his body as well as castrated him and then hid the parts of his corpse; when Isis determined to restore him to life by reassembling his body parts, she was unable to locate his genitals.) The myth of the Mother of the Gods and her consort was reenacted each spring with rites of death and lamentation followed by rites of restoration to life and rejoicing. The timing of the rites also coincided with the springtime fertility of the Earth.

The mythological theme of castration was also used to explain the presence of eunuch priests who figured prominently in the ritual worship of this network of cults. During the annual spring rites, a few inspired acolytes (or perhaps only a few selected ones) castrated themselves in public, after which they became special priests of the goddess. These eunuch priests were called 'galli' in Latin, although no one seemed to know why. Some said that it was because of the presence of Celts, also called 'Galli' in Latin, in Asia Minor, where the Attis cult originated; others said it was after the river Gallos, also in Asia Minor; the name did allow for a pun with "roosters," also 'galli' in Latin, especially a comparison between the crowing of roosters and the high-pitched voices of eunuchs. The presence of eunuch priests was until recently often disregarded or at least under-emphasized by modern scholars of the cults, some of whom claimed that the practice had died out by the later empire - arguing, for the most part, that the Roman laws against castration were responsible for this decline. The self-castration of devotees of the Mother of the Gods might have been only a minority experience, but it continued to exist throughout the later history of her cult and demonstrates how Roman law could sometimes be ignored with impunity. It is true that the castration honored in the myth and reenacted by followers as spiritualized in meaning by some pagan intellectuals, among them the emperor Julian, who saw the myth of castration as a symbol of the need to cut oneself off from material and carnal realities in order to approach higher things. But the notion of spiritual self-castration could easily have coexisted with actual physical self-castration.

Various explanations have been given for the relationship of castration to the worship of the Mother of the Gods. The priests' self-castration was seen even in antiquity as a symbolic sacrifice of individual fertility in order to enhance the fertility of the community and even of the cosmos, and as a sacred reenactment of the spring harvest. The 'gallus'-to-be took a sickly or sharpened stone, perhaps an agricultural symbol, and in an ecstatic frenzy severed his genitals on the Day of Blood (Dies sanguinis, March 24). The agricultural connection perhaps also explains the felling of a pine tree that occurred during the annual rituals. Likewise, both ancient and modern scholars have seen the priests' self-castration as a pledge of their sexual purity. The priests' self-castration may also have been part of a renunciation of masculine identity, however, and associated with their personal dedication to a feminine deity. After their castration the new eunuchs adopted women's clothing, or at least clothing identified as women's, even if it had originated in ritual costume, including wearing a veil and jewelry and growing their hair long. According to one source, the newly self-made eunuch ran through the streets with his severed genitals in his hand, and threw them at a doorstep; the women of that household were obliged to give him some of their clothing, which he adopted as his own. We must allow for inaccurate descriptions as well as regional variation in the rituals of the religion, but this brief overview is necessary in order to understand the Christian reaction to the worship of the Mother of the Gods, since Christina writers tended to lump all of these rituals and cults together as one.

To begin, it must be said that Christian writers were obviously familiar with the details of the myth. They might have witnessed the public self-castration of the priests or public reenactments of the Attis legend in theatrical performances, sometimes including the actual castration of a prisoner sentenced to participate in the show (and an example of the reasons for their denunciations of the spectacles). "The Mother of the Gods loved a beautiful young man," Lactantius explained, "and having caught him with a mistress she turned him into a half-man [semivir] by cutting off his genitals [virilia]; and therefore his sacred rites are now celebrated by eunuch priests [galli sacerdotes]." A century earlier, Tertullian had asked: "Why is a male mutilated in honor of the Idaean goddess, unless it be that the youth who was too disdainful of her advances was castrated owing to her vexation at his daring to cross her love?" In the fifth century, Prudentius asked the same question: "Why does the Berecynthian priest mutilate and destroy his loins?" In these descriptions, the Christian writers gave no indication that these priests had ceased to castrate themselves.

Without exception, Christian writers used the castration ritual to confirm the depravity of pagan religion. Lactantius, who wrote at length against the sacrilege of paganism generally, described the public rituals in honor of the Mother of the Gods as "insanity" and made it clear that what revolted him was the violation of men's bodies through castration. "Men themselves make propitiation with their own sex organs," he suggested, and "with such mutilation they make themselves neither men nor women." Tertullian also mocked the gender ambiguity of the eunuch priests in his polemical writings against the pagans; they were "a third sex, and made up as it is of male and female in one." Augustine ridiculed the "amputation of virility" in the cult of the Mother of the Gods, in his attack on the pagan gods in 'The City of God,' in which "the sufferer was neither changed into a woman nor allowed to remain a man." The familiar rhetoric against the blurring of sexual boundaries was called into action to denounce the self-castration of the eunuch priests.

Perhaps the most interesting denunciation of self-castration by a Christian writer was that of Prudentius in his 'Liber peristephanon' on the Christian martyrs. Prudentius saw the castration of the eunuch priests as proof of the violence of paganism. He imagined a conversation between the soon-to-be martyr Romanus and the pagan emperor Galerius, and had Romanus ask: "Shall I go to Cybele's pine-grove? No, for there stands in my way the lad who emasculated himself because of her lust, and by a grievous wound cutting the parts of shame saved himself from the unchaste goddess' embrace, a eunuch for whom the Mother has to lament in many a rite." Hidden in this passage is an ambivalent praise of the action, since by castrating himself, Attis has preserved himself from the goddess' "unchaste embrace" (and we will see that Christian writers felt a certain ambivalence about castration). But Prudentius also had Romanus offer a lengthy critique of the castration ritual: