A History of Celibacy
Posted: Thu May 16, 2002 5:52 pm
A recent book which may be of some interest to readers of the Archive is "A History of Celibacy" by Elizabeth Abbott (Simon & Schuster 1999, with a paperback edition by Da Capo Press in 2001). Abbott is a journalist and writes very well, though she doesn't make very critical use of her sources. This despite a PhD in history. Only 20 pages (pp. 317 - 337) are devoted to castration and eunuchs, but the rest of her work is also fascinating in its approach to the history and practice of celibacy, both voluntary and coerced. Chapter 9 - Coerced Celibacy - is divided into a number of short segments that I have listed below. I have also posted in its entirety the opening segment on eunuchs so that readers can judge the writing style and content. I'm enough of a nitpicker to have added some of my own comments in square brackets!
Chapter 9 (pages 303 - 337) Coerced Celibacy
Sections include:
Involuntary Celibacy (general introduction to the chapter)
Doing Celibate Time (all male prisons)
Vestal Virgins of St. Petersburg (rules for Russian schoolteachers)
Celibacy in Mao's Cultural Revolution
Celibacy in a Crowded Marriage (a Palestinean case study of a divorce)
Celibate Victims of Skewed Gender Ratios
Chaste Hindu Widowhood
Suttee as the Ultimate Chastity Belt
Castrated Celibacy (reprinted below)
Eunuchs in Greek Mythology
Chinese Eunuchism as a Career Opportunity
Byzantine Eunuch Paradise
Black African Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire
The Hijiras of India
The Castrati of the Opera
Castration to Punish Offenders (including recent Thai cases)
CASTRATED CELIBACY
Celibacy necessitated by castration - the excision of the sexual parts - sends shudders through our modern sensibilities. Yet for more than four thousand years, millions of males have endured this mutilation. The Persians were perhaps its Þrst authors. As an eighteenth-century scholar noted, "The Latin word "spade," which comprehends several sorts of eunuchs, was taken from a village of Persia called Spada, where... the Þrst execution of this nature was made.... The Þrst eunuch mentioned in the holy scriptures was Patiphor... who bought Joseph from the Midianites... and it is observed... that Nebuchadnezzar caused all the Jews, and all other prisoners of war, to be gelt or cut." [It is far more likely that the Sumerians, or possibly even THEIR predecessors, invented the idea of human castration. See my earlier posts on this board. Nebuchadnezzar, and other Persian rulers, certainly had a very large number of young male prisoners of war castrated, but deÞnitely not ALL the Jews as Abbott alleges. The Persian practice of using them in governmental administration continued into the early 20th century. Again, see some of my earlier posts.]
Throughout the centuries, a large percentage of eunuchs have been youngsters from families whose poverty precipitated the decision to castrate the child. In these cases, parents expected to advance their son's career in areas closed to all but eunuchs: certain types of domestic service in aristocratic homes or royal courts, or as castrati opera singers. Other boys were neutered after their enslavement by enemies victorious in wars: Nebuchadnezzar's policy of castrating male prisoners of war "that he might have none to attend him in his private service but eunuchs" is a case in point. [The quote is actually about Cyrus and is taken from Xenophon's "Cyropaedia." It would have been true of all of the Persian monarchs, however.]
Sometimes older males voluntarily sought out the surgery, almost always as a means of earning a living as an entertainer or court functionary. Occasionally, men gelded themselves in full adulthood for religious reasons - the Church Father Origen; the obscure Valesii, a heretical Christian sect of the third century about whom little is known; and the nineteenth-century Russian Skopts are examples of these self-determined celibates. Much closer to home and closer in time is California's Heaven's Gate celibate computer cult, the members of which committed mass suicide in 1997 and whose leader, Marshall Applewhite, had turned to castration as a desperate measure to obliterate his uncertain sexuality. [The Valesii are an especially interesting group. They believed that, not only was castration essential to their own Christian salvation (like the Skoptzy), but that it was their Christian duty to forcibly castrate any male that they could. Even kidnapping children to save their souls through making them eunuchs.]
We shudder at castration for a host of reasons. It assaults the private core of human existence. It has almost always been a butchery, performed inexpertly by unqualiÞed quacks and costing the lives of a majority of its victims. [The high number of fatalities seems to be more legend than reality. BattleÞeld castration was certainly brutal and lead to many deaths, but the Chinese reported only about a 2% death rate for the radical operation. Remondino reported that less than 10% of the young Black boys castrated in Sudan died, despite the rather primitive conditions.] Its consequences are lifelong, visible, and far-reaching, affecting appearance, stance, and above all, psychological development and adjustment. We know now how important, perhaps crucial, the penis is to psychosexual development. [I think a number of readers of the Archive would quibble with this point.] Lessons harshly leaned from routine circumcisions gone wrong have taught us that sexuality is not an amorphous variable physicians can successfully alter simply by radical surgery. When we read about eunuchs, whether in medieval China or the Ottoman empire, or as victims of Nazi eugenics, our growing knowledge of the effects of castration colors our perceptions. [I would argue the opposite. We have little or no personal knowledge of eunuchs in modern society. We IMAGINE the consequences in the absence of real information.]
The issues surrounding castration are complex and as fascinating as they are disturbing. Eunuchs who have left written records reported that they reþected deeply and incessantly on their mutilation. Though a dearth of such documents prevents a thorough study of eunuchs' reaction, all anecdotal evidence suggests that most of them brooded bitterly about the physical effects of castration and about the contempt and ostracism that mainstream society directed at them, including the mightiest military commanders of the Byzantine empire.
However, eunuchs often simultaneously understood and valued another dimension of their condition, seeing it as a means - their only means - of gaining access to certain positions. They or their parents neutralized poverty by trading their sexuality for opportunity, often but not always realized. Afterward, eunuchs had lifetimes of confronting the other, less desirable consequences of the procedure. In particular, they had to deal with incessant humiliation and enforced celibacy, though much evidence exists that they experienced sexual longing their ravaged bodies could not satisfy. And these were the luckier men who could at least rationalize about their situation. Others, victims of brute force alone, had not even that consolation.
Chapter 9 (pages 303 - 337) Coerced Celibacy
Sections include:
Involuntary Celibacy (general introduction to the chapter)
Doing Celibate Time (all male prisons)
Vestal Virgins of St. Petersburg (rules for Russian schoolteachers)
Celibacy in Mao's Cultural Revolution
Celibacy in a Crowded Marriage (a Palestinean case study of a divorce)
Celibate Victims of Skewed Gender Ratios
Chaste Hindu Widowhood
Suttee as the Ultimate Chastity Belt
Castrated Celibacy (reprinted below)
Eunuchs in Greek Mythology
Chinese Eunuchism as a Career Opportunity
Byzantine Eunuch Paradise
Black African Eunuchs of the Ottoman Empire
The Hijiras of India
The Castrati of the Opera
Castration to Punish Offenders (including recent Thai cases)
CASTRATED CELIBACY
Celibacy necessitated by castration - the excision of the sexual parts - sends shudders through our modern sensibilities. Yet for more than four thousand years, millions of males have endured this mutilation. The Persians were perhaps its Þrst authors. As an eighteenth-century scholar noted, "The Latin word "spade," which comprehends several sorts of eunuchs, was taken from a village of Persia called Spada, where... the Þrst execution of this nature was made.... The Þrst eunuch mentioned in the holy scriptures was Patiphor... who bought Joseph from the Midianites... and it is observed... that Nebuchadnezzar caused all the Jews, and all other prisoners of war, to be gelt or cut." [It is far more likely that the Sumerians, or possibly even THEIR predecessors, invented the idea of human castration. See my earlier posts on this board. Nebuchadnezzar, and other Persian rulers, certainly had a very large number of young male prisoners of war castrated, but deÞnitely not ALL the Jews as Abbott alleges. The Persian practice of using them in governmental administration continued into the early 20th century. Again, see some of my earlier posts.]
Throughout the centuries, a large percentage of eunuchs have been youngsters from families whose poverty precipitated the decision to castrate the child. In these cases, parents expected to advance their son's career in areas closed to all but eunuchs: certain types of domestic service in aristocratic homes or royal courts, or as castrati opera singers. Other boys were neutered after their enslavement by enemies victorious in wars: Nebuchadnezzar's policy of castrating male prisoners of war "that he might have none to attend him in his private service but eunuchs" is a case in point. [The quote is actually about Cyrus and is taken from Xenophon's "Cyropaedia." It would have been true of all of the Persian monarchs, however.]
Sometimes older males voluntarily sought out the surgery, almost always as a means of earning a living as an entertainer or court functionary. Occasionally, men gelded themselves in full adulthood for religious reasons - the Church Father Origen; the obscure Valesii, a heretical Christian sect of the third century about whom little is known; and the nineteenth-century Russian Skopts are examples of these self-determined celibates. Much closer to home and closer in time is California's Heaven's Gate celibate computer cult, the members of which committed mass suicide in 1997 and whose leader, Marshall Applewhite, had turned to castration as a desperate measure to obliterate his uncertain sexuality. [The Valesii are an especially interesting group. They believed that, not only was castration essential to their own Christian salvation (like the Skoptzy), but that it was their Christian duty to forcibly castrate any male that they could. Even kidnapping children to save their souls through making them eunuchs.]
We shudder at castration for a host of reasons. It assaults the private core of human existence. It has almost always been a butchery, performed inexpertly by unqualiÞed quacks and costing the lives of a majority of its victims. [The high number of fatalities seems to be more legend than reality. BattleÞeld castration was certainly brutal and lead to many deaths, but the Chinese reported only about a 2% death rate for the radical operation. Remondino reported that less than 10% of the young Black boys castrated in Sudan died, despite the rather primitive conditions.] Its consequences are lifelong, visible, and far-reaching, affecting appearance, stance, and above all, psychological development and adjustment. We know now how important, perhaps crucial, the penis is to psychosexual development. [I think a number of readers of the Archive would quibble with this point.] Lessons harshly leaned from routine circumcisions gone wrong have taught us that sexuality is not an amorphous variable physicians can successfully alter simply by radical surgery. When we read about eunuchs, whether in medieval China or the Ottoman empire, or as victims of Nazi eugenics, our growing knowledge of the effects of castration colors our perceptions. [I would argue the opposite. We have little or no personal knowledge of eunuchs in modern society. We IMAGINE the consequences in the absence of real information.]
The issues surrounding castration are complex and as fascinating as they are disturbing. Eunuchs who have left written records reported that they reþected deeply and incessantly on their mutilation. Though a dearth of such documents prevents a thorough study of eunuchs' reaction, all anecdotal evidence suggests that most of them brooded bitterly about the physical effects of castration and about the contempt and ostracism that mainstream society directed at them, including the mightiest military commanders of the Byzantine empire.
However, eunuchs often simultaneously understood and valued another dimension of their condition, seeing it as a means - their only means - of gaining access to certain positions. They or their parents neutralized poverty by trading their sexuality for opportunity, often but not always realized. Afterward, eunuchs had lifetimes of confronting the other, less desirable consequences of the procedure. In particular, they had to deal with incessant humiliation and enforced celibacy, though much evidence exists that they experienced sexual longing their ravaged bodies could not satisfy. And these were the luckier men who could at least rationalize about their situation. Others, victims of brute force alone, had not even that consolation.