‘castration level’.
India has an estimated million-plus eunuchs. Many have been castrated before puberty, but in many cases they are children born with ambiguous external sexual characteristics, or men whose testicles have not descended. For convenience, transsexuals and transvestites are also lumped together with them. They live partly from alms that they receive for dancing at parties. In 2006 the Indian authorities deliberately employed a group of eunuchs to sing outside the houses of tax-evaders, with the object of embarrassing the offenders so acutely with their singing that they would finally pay up. According to the Indian press the campaign was very successful in the city of Patna in the eastern state of Bihar, where singing eunuchs collected over 7,000 euros.
As long ago as 1887 the British Governor-General promulgated a law forbidding castration, but the eunuchs are still there, not only in India, but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Most probably they are of Muslim origin, as indicated, for example, by the fact that they bury rather than cremate their dead. Most eunuchs live communally as hijra (meaning ‘the third gender’), sharing their lot with transsexuals and 102
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transvestites. They play a part in certain rituals, or work as artists or healers, besides acting as singers or dancers at festivals marking births and marriages. The words of their songs are usually humorous and with a sexual tinge.
From time immemorial eunuchs have made a pilgrimage to the temple of Bechraji, about 100 km west of Ahmedabad, which houses the goddess Bahuchara-Mata. This goddess is associated with sexual abstinence and genital mutilation. According to legend a king once prayed to the goddess for a son. The son arrived, but when he became a man proved to be impotent. Bahuchara appeared to the man in a dream and asked him to serve her by cutting off his genitalia and donning women’s clothes. The man did as the goddess asked and since then hijras have been supposed to hear a call from the gods in their sleep to divest themselves of their external sex organs. Even today there are always eunuchs to be found at a certain spot in the back garden of the temple in Bechraji, but they are not allowed inside. It is still said that when a baby boy is born with underdeveloped genitals he is taken to the temple by his family. The eunuchs receive the child and perform a simple ritual operation, followed by six weeks’ seclusion, after which the child can become an apprentice hijra.
Ancient Rome
In Ancient Rome castration was a well-known phenomenon. At a later period, though the Church of Rome was not well disposed towards genitalia, a practice survived until 1913 of feeling between the legs of the candidate elected pope by the conclave of cardinals before he was allowed to mount the throne of St Peter – to make sure he was really a man. Any Catholic also knows that there is a hole in the seat of the Holy Chair. After all, in the past the cardinals had slipped up. In 855
they elected a certain Johanna, and that must not be allowed to happen a second time. Once one of the cardinals had confirmed the candidate’s masculinity de visu et tacto (by sight and touch) through the hole in the chair, he pronounced the customary words ‘Testiculos habet et bene pendentes’ (He has testicles and they hang well). The cardinals then sang: ‘Habet ova noster papa!’ (Our pope has balls). Like the pope, candidate monks were closely examined for any abnormalities in those bodily parts, which they would subsequently be forbidden to use . . .
The Ancient Romans distinguished four different types: the true castrati, where both testicles and the penis had been removed, the spadones, who had lost only their testicles, the thlibiae, whose testicles had been destroyed by crushing and the thlasiae in whom only the seminal cords had been severed. Eventually castration took place on 103
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such a large scale that the emperor felt compelled to ban it. It was not doctors, but barbers or bath house attendants who carried out the procedure, and they were paid by slave traders and brothel-keepers, who initially had a monopoly. After the ban certain priests (of Cybele) continued to mutilate themselves – and not only themselves, but also any unfortunate youths who fell into their hands. They were called galli, or capons, and were destined to work as prostitutes.
In the Byzantine Empire it was also known that castrated men were less competitive and aggressive than men with testicles, which is why they were appointed as civil servants. One could take them at their word and they did what they were instructed to do, they knew they place and did not constitute a threat to the emperor and his followers.
Daniel and Potiphar
In several places in the Bible there is mention, sometimes in veiled terms, sometimes explicit, of castration and eunuchs. The Talmud is much clearer, for example about Daniel and his friends. In the Christian tradition Daniel is one of the great four: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezechiel and Daniel. In the book of Daniel the story is told of how the king of Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar) conquers Jerusalem and deports the Jews.
In Babel Nebuchadnezzar orders his steward to select a number of strong young men for a three-year period of training as counsellors. In the Bible the head of the household is also called the head of the eunuchs, and in the Talmud it is stated that Daniel and his friends themselves became eunuchs. There is a great divergence of opinion among rabbis on the how and why. There is a story that Daniel and his friends were accused of immoral conduct before Nebuchadnezzar and, in order to defend themselves against this charge, they mutilated ‘certain parts of their bodies’ (meaning their sex organs) in order to prove that the accusations were groundless, so becoming eunuchs at their own instiga -
tion. Another commentator tells how Daniel mutilated himself in order not to have to marry a non-Jewish princess.
The most current view is that Daniel and his friends were castrated by the king’s servants, so that they were no longer a danger to the women of the court. In addition, they were extremely useful to the king.
Daniel was brilliant at explaining and interpreting dreams. No one could match him, and he was worth ten of any of the native diviners and exorcists.
By far the most famous eunuch in the Bible is Potiphar, who features in a classic story, with his wife. Joseph, the son of the patriarch Jacob and his wife Rachel, had been thrown into a well by his jealous brothers and subsequently sold to merchants. He was taken to Egypt, 104
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where he was resold to a courtier of the pharaoh called Potiphar.
Potiphar was head of the bodyguards of Pharaoh Apepi II – in those days a most responsible and prominent position. There was an important precondition for those who came so close to the pharaoh: they must be castrated . . . Potiphar probably lived in the city of On, north-east of present-day Cairo, at the beginning of the Nile delta. At that time it was the scientific and religious heart of Egypt. Because it was the centre of sun-worship, and the Greeks later called it Heliopolis, the city of the sun.
Genesis tells us that God was with Joseph, so that he prospered.
God’s blessing followed him to the house of the Egyptian and it was not long before Joseph had risen to become Potiphar’s closest assistant. He became overseer, administrator, butler and steward combined. Potiphar came to trust Joseph so implicitly that he put him in charge of all his possessions and henceforth concentrated solely on wining and dining.
One has to admit that Joseph had all the personal qualities imaginable. He was handsome and well built, intelligent and successful.
Apart from that, in Ancient Egypt Syrian slaves were considered the best and Joseph was of Syrian (Aramaic) origin on both his father’s and his mother’s side. Syrians were preferred because the Egyptian ruling class belonged to the Hyksos, people who originated from Syria. There was also something mysterious about Joseph, so it was no wonder that he was noticed, especially by his master’s wife: Joseph’s presence brought excitement into her sexually dull life and his charms gradually became irresistible. Her invitation (‘Come lie with me’), was therefore not long in coming. Joseph, however, refused: ‘Behold, my master wotteth not what is with me
in the house, and he hath committed all that he hath to my hand; there is none greater in this house than I; neither hath he kept back any thing from me but thee, because thou art his wife’ (Genesis 39). Potiphar’s wife was not impressed by this Salvation Army-style moral rectitude. Of course she persisted but her passion remained unrequited, since he was in the house day after day and continued to refuse.
One day she saw her chance: they were alone in the house. It was now or never. She went to him, clutched his robe and for the umpteenth time repeated her imperious question: ‘Come lie with me.’ Joseph tore him self free, leaving his garment in her hands. Her feelings turned to hate. She called her servants and said: ‘See, he hath brought in an Hebrew unto us to mock us; he came in unto me to lie with me, and I cried with a loud voice: and it came to pass, when he heard that I lifted up my voice and cried, that he left his garment with me, and fled, and got him out.’
In the Aramaic version the text has a more modern flavour: ‘She threw the white of an egg on the bed, called the domestic staff and said: 105
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“Look at the semen stains that man left – the Hebrew whom your master has brought into the house to mock at us.”’
When Potiphar heard the news he was furious, had Joseph arrested and thrown into the pharaoh’s jail on a charge of attempted rape, without even giving him a chance to defend himself.
Actually all the attention in this story is focused on Joseph, the ideal man, yet also a man not averse to power. ‘Potiphar’s wife illuminates both sides of Joseph’s personality’, was an interpretation I once heard a clergyman give. Her passion shows how attractive he was and his response to questions how he revered God, but still . . .
Potiphar’s wife seems to be a marginal figure, also shown by the fact that the Bible gives her no name. At the beginning of the story she is called ‘Potiphar’s wife’, but disappears anonymously. But however little attention she is given in the modern Bible story, she is given all the more in the Jewish tradition, and even has a name: Zuleika. Jewish accounts describe her inviting her girlfriends over and having Joseph serve them in order to show him off. Her friends were so bowled over by Joseph’s appearance that their knives slipped and they cut their fingers. When she pretended to be surprised, her friends replied: ‘How are we supposed to look at our hands when you show us such a divine looking man?’ The theme of the spoiled, bored woman who conceives a burning passion for a younger servant, tries to seduce him and when she fails, falsely accuses him of rape, is a perennial one.
What makes Potiphar’s wife so different from other ‘bad’ women in biblical stories? Tamar, it’s true, seduced her father-in-law, which is certainly not very edifying, but Potiphar’s wife had completely dif ferent motives. She was used to the luxury of the high life, but was at the same time neglected, since Potiphar paid no attention to her. What she was looking for was distraction, or rather, simple sexual satisfaction. What she was hoping for was a fling, a one-night stand, that was all. ‘And what was wrong with that?’ I can still hear that country clergyman saying.
In the fourth century, in the sect of the Obelites, some men had themselves castrated on the basis of a text from the Bible (Matthew 19:12). Oddly enough they did not disapprove of marriage itself, but of sexual intercourse. Two centuries previously in the Near East a Gnostic sect, the Adamites, had emerged, whose aim was to invoke heaven by the suppression of all sensual desires: in imitation of Adam they went around naked in their religious observances. These strange excrescences undoubtedly spring from early Christian thinking on mar-tyrdom and the accompanying physical abstinence, self-chastisement and privations as the only way to salvation. Castration was condemned as early as 323, at the Council of Nicaea, and the ordination of eunuchs 106
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was forbidden. In forbidding (self-)castration and excluding castrati from the priesthood Christianity became more Roman, since in the Eastern Church particularly castrated priests like Cybele and Attis were revered. Many castrated monks and bishops were active in the Byzantine Christian church. Until the late Middle Ages eunuchs were even appointed bishops in the Eastern Church, among them Theophylactus, an eleventh-century bishop of Bulgaria, whose seat was in Ochrida.
The French philosopher Pierre Abélard (1079–1142) believed that the mutilation of his own genitalia had been appointed by God and that castration would make him a better theologian.
The Skoptsy
Much later, in the eighteenth century, in the Russian Skoptsy sect, it became the custom after fathering two children to have not just the testicles but the greater part of the penis removed. First the testicles were destroyed (originally with red-hot iron bars, but later a knife was preferred). The second procedure comprised the removal of the penis.
After the first stage the result was referred to as ‘The Minor Seal’ and after the second as ‘The Great Seal’. Seal is a concept that features extensively in the impenetrable Book of Revelation. After castration there was an interval of several years before the penis was removed, which may be the reason why, according to the records, no serious complications occurred. The Skoptsy regarded the testicles as the keys to hell. Removal gave them the right to remount ‘the pale horse’, undoubtedly a reference to passages from Revelation, 6: And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see. And I looked and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given to them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
The penis too, then, was simply the key to hell. In her fascinating book on the sect ( Castration and the Heavenly Kingdom) Laura Engelstein shows that the hell was of course a metaphor for the vagina.
After cutting off the penis the person conducting the operation would say a prayer and cry out: ‘The Lord has truly risen!’ The castrato was now ready to mount the pale horse:
And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, 107
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‘The Minor Seal’
and ‘The Great
Seal’.
Come and see. And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer. [Revelations 6]
To make urinating possible after the operation, though, the follower concerned did temporarily require a tin or lead tube in his urethra.
Female members of the sect did not damage their ovaries, but did mutilate their labia, clitoris, breasts and nipples.
The sect originated from a group of flagellants, which included a certain Andrey Ivanov. He and his followers wanted to take a stand against the Klysty family, who had been accused of licentiousness, and founded the Skoptsy sect, after the Russian word skopets, eunuch. The sect rejects most of the dogmas of the Russian Orthodox Church, specifically redemption by Jesus Christ on the cross. The sect preached castration as salvation, basing themselves mainly on passages from Isaiah 56:
Neither let the eunuch say, Behold I am a dry tree. For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
These eunuchs could no longer have sons and daughters, but God promised them something better than the transience of descendants.
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The founder of the Skoptsy, Andrey Ivanov, met a less glorious fate.
He was arrested and deported to Siberia, and the leadership passed to Kondrati Selivanov, one of his first followers. Selivanov later preached in St Petersburg under the protection of Baroness von Krüdener, one of the Czar’s mistresses, who regarded the preacher as a saint.
The Sk
optsy denied themselves not only sexual pleasure, but also parties, gambling and alcohol. Meanwhile many bankers and money-lenders were converted, which might explain why many members of the sect became millionaires, using their wealth mainly to propagate their ideology. For me, the story of the Skoptsy echoes that of the Church of Scientology, with its celebrity converts such as Tom Cruise.
At its height the sect is thought to have had almost 150,000 members, but it was struck a severe blow in 1917 when the Bolsheviks passed anti religious legislation and there was widespread persecution. In 1929
a big anti-Skoptsy trial was held in Leningrad, and many sect members sought asylum in Romania, where there was still freedom of religion.
Two octaves higher
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries not only the directors of opera companies, but also the Catholic Church made grateful use of men castrated at a young age. In Italy at that time, if you had a reason -
able voice when you were ten and came from a poor family there was a good chance that you would be recruited, with the local priest acting as a go-between. That meant being crudely castrated before your voice broke: your testicles were plunged into boiling water, causing them to shrivel. The Adam’s apple did not develop, though the rest of the body did, and in this way the effect of the voice breaking was prevented once and for all. In addition, after puberty the castrato would have a small larynx over an ample ribcage; this could of course be filled with large amounts of air, which he could then force out through his relatively small glottal apertures. The men retained their high-pitched voices and could continue to sing soprano roles into adulthood.
Both the parents and the boy were tempted with the prospect of free training as an opera singer and the accompanying singing career.
But what is true now was just as true then: ‘for many be called, but few chosen’ (Matthew 20:16). An opera career or a permanent position as a singer in the Sistine Chapel was something only a few could aspire to. If someone failed to make the big time, a relatively meagre existence as a priest or something similar beckoned. What was the cost to the castrated boy? All his life he would have a tendency to obesity, his penis would remain small and no seminal glands would develop. He would not develop the normal male pattern of hair growth, but nor 109
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