VBulletin, in its great cyber-wisdom, just sent me a notice that An Onymus had posted a message on a moderated board. It then, apparently, sent the message off into the aether before I could check it. Ive posted his message below and will be working on a response (which may take a while). Other comments are certainly appreciated.
----Jesus
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An Onymus has just posted in the Non-Fiction Articles forum of Eunuch Archive Message Boards under the title of The Perfect Servant.
Here is the message that has just been posted:
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A question, Jesus--Have you ever read anything authoritative, on the subject of how much of the role of eunuchs in Byzantium was simply a carryover from earlier Persian practices, and how much was originated by the Byzantines themselves? The Persians, of course, used eunuchs extensively in the imperial court and elsewhere in administrative positions, but I can't remember reading anything about the place of eunuchs in Persian religion, or in Persian society generally.
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The original Nonfiction Board post on which this is based is located at http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthr ... eadid=3886
RE: The Perfect Servant
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JesusA (imported)
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JesusA (imported)
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Re: RE: The Perfect Servant
Someday I may actually get around to writing MY book on the history of castration and eunuchs. Im gradually gathinging the information and taking notes, but the particular question asked by An Onymus is one of the current blanks in my research. I can give some information, but certainly not enough to properly answer the question.
As a result, Im going to give more information than is asked for as a background and then avoid most of the central part of the question. (Maybe Pueros, or some other expert on the time and place will add to this thread.)
First of all, humans are much better at borrowing and adapting than they are at original invention. As simple a procedure as it may seem in retrospect, human castration seems to have been independently invented very few times probably at least twice, but certainly no more than three times we know of in all of world history.
One of the inventions of human castration was in the Andean area of South America. There were, according to some reports, a few eunuchs attached to the Inca court at the time of the Spanish invasion. There is a slight chance that this use of eunuchs was really a borrowing from the Chinese, as a result of the around-the-world voyage of a Chinese fleet under the direction of the great eunuch navigator Cheng He. I have read Gavin Menzies book (1421: The Year China Discovered America. Transworld Publishers: 2002) on the subject, as well as a number of other sources, and I doubt that the voyage took place. If it did not, this is an independent invention of human castration, but one that had limited geographic and historic range before being exterminated by the Spanish.
The Chinese case for independent invention is problematic. Human castration was, from all we can tell, first practiced in China at a time of strong influence from cultures to the west, where eunuchs were common. Writing was invented later (and most of the documents burned during the Chin Dynasty), so it is impossible to tell if the castration of Chinese prisoners of war was a local invention or was done already knowing of the existence of eunuchs elsewhere. Scholars have come down on both sides of this question, though I lean toward the idea of independent invention, partly because the purpose of castration was so different from the west.
The ONLY unambiguous invention of human castration was in the ancient Fertile Crescent. (Not everything was originally invented in Sumeria, though it sometimes seems that way.) The pre-Sargonic archives of Ur III, Lagash appear to be the earliest records of the procedure. Ill save a detailed explanation for another time, but, basically, it appears that the young sons of un-married weaving women were castrated to work either as shepherds or as boat tenders. The analogy was with young male animals that were castrated when they were separated from their mothers to be trained as work animals. Gradually other uses for castrated humans were discovered and the practice expanded and spread. All human castration practiced in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia can be clearly traced back to the Sumerian invention.
If castration in China was derived from ideas imported from the west, AND if Gavin Menziess thesis about Cheng Hes voyage is correct, the Sumerian invention of human castration may have been the ONLY time in human history that the procedure was invented. Or, at least, the only invention of it of which we have any knowledge.
Both the single invention of human castration in our area of interest AND the rarity of truly original inventions are important for the question at hand. (Once an original invention is made, its modification and improvement seem to be easy and frequent in human history. It is only the original starting point that seems to be difficult.)
While the History of Civiliation classes that most Americans (and, I would guess, most Western Europeans) remember start with Sumeria, Egypt, Assyria, and the Persian Empire, the focus begins to move west with the rise of the Greek city-states. Once they get to Alexander the Great and the rise of Macedonia, their focus shifts entirely to the west with the rise of Rome. The focus remains on Rome and western Europe the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration. There is little attention paid to all the exciting things going on in the Middle East (or elsewhere, for that matter).
The powerful and important Parthian Empire usually shows up only in a brief mention as a serious rival to Roman power. The powerful and important Sassanians rarely rate even a footnote in highschool texts.
While eunuchs were certainly known in ancient Greece, they were apparently quite rare. They were a bit more common in Rome, but still rare until quite late in Roman history. They were far more commonly employed in the various states that existed to the east.
When Constantine founded Constantinople as the new Roman capitol in 330 C.E., it was to remove his seat from the strife-torn Italian Peninsula to the more stable and properous eastern part of the Roman Empire. The city was founded on the site of the former Greek colony of Byzanitium, hence the use of Byzantine Empire by western Europeans. The rulers and peoples of the empire, however, saw it as the continuation of the Roman Empire, especially after the fall of Rome to the barbarians. Eastern Roman Empire is probably a better name for the empire that maintained that it was in an unbroken continuum with Rome.
The empire centered on Constantinople, however, began to take on more and more cultural practices that were found in its neigbors to the east, or that were already common in its eastern regions, though rare in the west. The increased frequency of eunuchs seems to be one of these traits. The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium[/b] written sometime soon.]
The various states centered in the Near East had long made use of eunuchs in civil administration. The Roman Empire, as centered in Rome, had used very few. Their rapid increase in the administration of the Eastern Roman Empire seems to be under the influence of the successor states to the Persian Empire, though they had also been commonly used in areas that were now incorporated into the Eastern Roman Empire.
The use of eunuch priests in the faith centered on the Great Mother had entered Rome from the east (from an area then part of the Roman Empire) long before the shift of the capital to Constantinople. According to the research of Mathew Kuefler (The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity. University of Chicago Press: 2001), Christian theologians in the west reformulated Christian ideology to counter this important rival faith. They lessened the importance of celebacy and denigrated the role of castration and eunuchs in order to appeal to and recruit Roman men to the faith. While this was true in the west, in the east there seems to be greater continuity with eunuchs becoming increasingly important in the Christian church.
There certainly was some role of eunuchs in the religions of the ancient Near East, although my guess (without sufficient research) is that their increased role in Orthodox Christianity is based primarily on a continuity with the Great Mother and with the emphasis on chastity and celibacy that remained an important part of the eastern Christian faith, rather than being reformulated as it was in the west.
The seclusion of women that we, today, associate with Moslem culture, actually entered Islamic practice from their conquest of the Sassanian Empire in the seventh century C.E. The practice goes back much further in Middle Eastern history at least to the time of the Persian Empire. I have not done sufficient research to feel comfortable ascribing an origin, but the practice of seclusion of upper-class women certainly spread widely. It was certainly part of the Eastern Roman Empire, but I hesitate to call its origin Persian, rather than just being a part of the larger culture area. The excerpt (
Ringrose describes a world where the only proper intermediaries between the world of man and the world of God, between the world of men and the world of women consisted of only four types: holy men, angels, prepubescent boys, and eunuchs. The later three were closely intertwined, with eunuchs being an extension of prepubescence into adulthood and there being frequent confusion of identity between angels and eunuchs. The art of the period depicts angels and eunuchs as identical. There are many legends of eunuchs being mistaken for angels and vice-versa. By the ninth century C.E., many of the holy men were also eunuchs.
I know that this doesnt really answer all of the question, but it ought to point out the complexity involved. I do promise to work on some of the additional pieces and will report back along the way.
As a result, Im going to give more information than is asked for as a background and then avoid most of the central part of the question. (Maybe Pueros, or some other expert on the time and place will add to this thread.)
First of all, humans are much better at borrowing and adapting than they are at original invention. As simple a procedure as it may seem in retrospect, human castration seems to have been independently invented very few times probably at least twice, but certainly no more than three times we know of in all of world history.
One of the inventions of human castration was in the Andean area of South America. There were, according to some reports, a few eunuchs attached to the Inca court at the time of the Spanish invasion. There is a slight chance that this use of eunuchs was really a borrowing from the Chinese, as a result of the around-the-world voyage of a Chinese fleet under the direction of the great eunuch navigator Cheng He. I have read Gavin Menzies book (1421: The Year China Discovered America. Transworld Publishers: 2002) on the subject, as well as a number of other sources, and I doubt that the voyage took place. If it did not, this is an independent invention of human castration, but one that had limited geographic and historic range before being exterminated by the Spanish.
The Chinese case for independent invention is problematic. Human castration was, from all we can tell, first practiced in China at a time of strong influence from cultures to the west, where eunuchs were common. Writing was invented later (and most of the documents burned during the Chin Dynasty), so it is impossible to tell if the castration of Chinese prisoners of war was a local invention or was done already knowing of the existence of eunuchs elsewhere. Scholars have come down on both sides of this question, though I lean toward the idea of independent invention, partly because the purpose of castration was so different from the west.
The ONLY unambiguous invention of human castration was in the ancient Fertile Crescent. (Not everything was originally invented in Sumeria, though it sometimes seems that way.) The pre-Sargonic archives of Ur III, Lagash appear to be the earliest records of the procedure. Ill save a detailed explanation for another time, but, basically, it appears that the young sons of un-married weaving women were castrated to work either as shepherds or as boat tenders. The analogy was with young male animals that were castrated when they were separated from their mothers to be trained as work animals. Gradually other uses for castrated humans were discovered and the practice expanded and spread. All human castration practiced in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia can be clearly traced back to the Sumerian invention.
If castration in China was derived from ideas imported from the west, AND if Gavin Menziess thesis about Cheng Hes voyage is correct, the Sumerian invention of human castration may have been the ONLY time in human history that the procedure was invented. Or, at least, the only invention of it of which we have any knowledge.
Both the single invention of human castration in our area of interest AND the rarity of truly original inventions are important for the question at hand. (Once an original invention is made, its modification and improvement seem to be easy and frequent in human history. It is only the original starting point that seems to be difficult.)
While the History of Civiliation classes that most Americans (and, I would guess, most Western Europeans) remember start with Sumeria, Egypt, Assyria, and the Persian Empire, the focus begins to move west with the rise of the Greek city-states. Once they get to Alexander the Great and the rise of Macedonia, their focus shifts entirely to the west with the rise of Rome. The focus remains on Rome and western Europe the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration. There is little attention paid to all the exciting things going on in the Middle East (or elsewhere, for that matter).
The powerful and important Parthian Empire usually shows up only in a brief mention as a serious rival to Roman power. The powerful and important Sassanians rarely rate even a footnote in highschool texts.
While eunuchs were certainly known in ancient Greece, they were apparently quite rare. They were a bit more common in Rome, but still rare until quite late in Roman history. They were far more commonly employed in the various states that existed to the east.
When Constantine founded Constantinople as the new Roman capitol in 330 C.E., it was to remove his seat from the strife-torn Italian Peninsula to the more stable and properous eastern part of the Roman Empire. The city was founded on the site of the former Greek colony of Byzanitium, hence the use of Byzantine Empire by western Europeans. The rulers and peoples of the empire, however, saw it as the continuation of the Roman Empire, especially after the fall of Rome to the barbarians. Eastern Roman Empire is probably a better name for the empire that maintained that it was in an unbroken continuum with Rome.
The empire centered on Constantinople, however, began to take on more and more cultural practices that were found in its neigbors to the east, or that were already common in its eastern regions, though rare in the west. The increased frequency of eunuchs seems to be one of these traits. The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium[/b] written sometime soon.]
The various states centered in the Near East had long made use of eunuchs in civil administration. The Roman Empire, as centered in Rome, had used very few. Their rapid increase in the administration of the Eastern Roman Empire seems to be under the influence of the successor states to the Persian Empire, though they had also been commonly used in areas that were now incorporated into the Eastern Roman Empire.
The use of eunuch priests in the faith centered on the Great Mother had entered Rome from the east (from an area then part of the Roman Empire) long before the shift of the capital to Constantinople. According to the research of Mathew Kuefler (The Manly Eunuch: Masculinity, Gender Ambiguity, and Christian Ideology in Late Antiquity. University of Chicago Press: 2001), Christian theologians in the west reformulated Christian ideology to counter this important rival faith. They lessened the importance of celebacy and denigrated the role of castration and eunuchs in order to appeal to and recruit Roman men to the faith. While this was true in the west, in the east there seems to be greater continuity with eunuchs becoming increasingly important in the Christian church.
There certainly was some role of eunuchs in the religions of the ancient Near East, although my guess (without sufficient research) is that their increased role in Orthodox Christianity is based primarily on a continuity with the Great Mother and with the emphasis on chastity and celibacy that remained an important part of the eastern Christian faith, rather than being reformulated as it was in the west.
The seclusion of women that we, today, associate with Moslem culture, actually entered Islamic practice from their conquest of the Sassanian Empire in the seventh century C.E. The practice goes back much further in Middle Eastern history at least to the time of the Persian Empire. I have not done sufficient research to feel comfortable ascribing an origin, but the practice of seclusion of upper-class women certainly spread widely. It was certainly part of the Eastern Roman Empire, but I hesitate to call its origin Persian, rather than just being a part of the larger culture area. The excerpt (
) that I put on the Nonfiction Board from the first two pages of The Perfect Servant certainly speak to this upper-class custom.JesusA (imported) wrote: Sun Aug 24, 2003 12:52 pm http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthr ... eadid=3886
Ringrose describes a world where the only proper intermediaries between the world of man and the world of God, between the world of men and the world of women consisted of only four types: holy men, angels, prepubescent boys, and eunuchs. The later three were closely intertwined, with eunuchs being an extension of prepubescence into adulthood and there being frequent confusion of identity between angels and eunuchs. The art of the period depicts angels and eunuchs as identical. There are many legends of eunuchs being mistaken for angels and vice-versa. By the ninth century C.E., many of the holy men were also eunuchs.
I know that this doesnt really answer all of the question, but it ought to point out the complexity involved. I do promise to work on some of the additional pieces and will report back along the way.
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An Onymus (imported)
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Re: RE: The Perfect Servant
As usual, Jesus, I am impressed with your scholarship and writing ability, and you do provide a partial answer to the question. Given that the Byzantine Empire was largely Greek in language, culture, and intellectual heritage, I have always wondered why it showed so many characteristics similar to those of eastern empires. Perhaps the classical Greek commitment to ideals like democracy and intellectual freedom was not as fundamental as historians have thought, and they adopted eastern practices when it seemed expedient to do so--even though this compromised the qualities which made the Greeks unique.