A while back I saw a story by Pueros, "The Young Patrician" https://eunuchworld.co/s4328 which was a fascinating alleged history of a VERY famous / well known Christian saint, alleging that he was actually a eunuch.... (I'm leaving the name out in order not to be a spoiler...)

It's a good yarn if you are into long, historically detailed stories, highly recommended....

When I tried doing searches, the name given in the story matched directly to the saint's entry in Wikipedia, and lots of other Catholic references... The Wikipedia article matched up reasonably well with the story except no mention of the Saint getting or the details of the things leading up to it...

However both mention a period where our hero was enslaved, and it certainly seems possible... The actions alleged in the historical article (which are mostly after the majority of the story and aren't in it) aren't inconsistent with him being a eunuch....

Does anyone know if there is any actual PROOF that the story is true? If there is, it would be an interesting factoid to mention to a lot of folks that have heritages relevant to this saint....

Jesus has mentioned this story in the 50 top stories thread I recently necro'd as an example of Pueros' tending to do historically accurate stories, and I'd love to know if there is evidence of just how accurate in this detail he may be....

WheelyCurious

I don't want to spoil it, but it seems your character is originally from Caledonia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caledonia

At least according to the Wikipedia article about him that I found, there is a lot of debate about the geography pretty much all the way through his early life... The place names change, and weren't all that clearly specified to begin with, however the story basics don't really change all that much whatever the geography actually was.

WheelyCurious

Pueros is a historian and most of his stories build from what we actually know about an event or person. For The Young Patrician, there is nothing in the story that I can find that is contradicted by what little we know about the actual person. Pueros' version "could" be accurate.... We'll probably never know.

JesusA (imported) wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2023 5:32 pm Pueros is a historian and most of his stories build from what we actually know about an event or person. For The Young Patrician, there is nothing in the story that I can find that is contradicted by what little we know about the actual person. Pueros' version "could" be accurate.... We'll probably never know.

Thanks Jesus, I had sort of reached that conclusion about the story overall when comparing it to the stuff I'd found.

Assuming the enslavement part was true (Per Wikipedia, some experts question it) the castration wouldn't be unreasonable given what we know of customs in that time period, but wouldn't have been certain either.

I just read the English translation of the document Pueros cited as the source in the story, and it doesn't seem to say anything either way. There doesn't seem to be any record of conduct that would make being a eunuch unlikely, but celibacy wouldn't either...

So basically I was asking if we had any hard evidence that he was but sounds from what you say that we don't...

WheelyCurious

Figured this thread and the story it references could use a bump in honor of the day....

I still think the possibility is an interesting one, even if there doesn't seem to be any way to be sure either way...

One of the minor somewhat political speculations I've had is to wonder what would happen if the possibility got introduced into the arguments being made by the various types that have been so into saying nasty things about us.... (I have no idea about how to do this, but....)

WheelyFixed