Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbrevations
- Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration
- 1 Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration
- 2 The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs
- 3 Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity
- 4 ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary
- 5 The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law
- 6 The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject
- 7 ‘Imbrued in their owne bloud’: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources
- 8 Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs
- 9 ‘He took a stone away’: Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga
- 10 The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee
- 11 Eunuchs of the Grail
- 12 Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris's Romans de la rose
- 13 Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Févre's La Vieille
- 14 The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbrevations
- Introduction: A History of Calamities: The Culture of Castration
- 1 Raised Voices: The Archaeology of Castration
- 2 The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs
- 3 Appropriation and Development of Castration as Symbol and Practice in Early Christianity
- 4 ‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture, and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary
- 5 The Children He Never Had; The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian Law
- 6 The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject
- 7 ‘Imbrued in their owne bloud’: Castration in Early Welsh and Irish Sources
- 8 Castrating Monks: Vikings, the Slave Trade, and the Value of Eunuchs
- 9 ‘He took a stone away’: Castration and Cruelty in the Old Norse Sturlunga saga
- 10 The Castrating of the Shrew: The Performance of Masculinity and Masculine Identity in La dame escolliee
- 11 Eunuchs of the Grail
- 12 Insinuating Indeterminate Gender: A Castration Motif in Guillaume de Lorris's Romans de la rose
- 13 Culture Loves a Void: Eunuchry in De Vetula and Jean Le Févre's La Vieille
- 14 The Dismemberment of Will: Early Modern Fear of Castration
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Castration is a frequent feature of early Christian debates on the purity of the body, but it remained a difficult issue in the pursuit of sanctity, particularly in accounts of male saints and martyrs. As Jacqueline Murray writes, ‘the whole problem of the body was perceived to be located in the male genitals. Once they were removed, it was believed that the problem of lack of control of the flesh would simply disappear.’ As a result of such (well-intentioned) logic, self-castration was practiced among some early Christian theologians, most notably Origen (c. ad 185–254) and Ignatius of Constantinople (ad 799–877); however it was condemned by the First Council of Nicaea (ad 325) as an excessive misinterpretation of the biblical verse Matthew 19:12 which ends with the exhortation ‘there are eunuchs, who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, he that can take, let him take it’. Peter Abelard, in the twelfth-century account of his own castration (Historia calamitatum), lauds Origen as a model (albeit excessive) for sexual restraint but constructs his own forced, punitive mutilation as a form of martyrdom, a necessary trial to achieve spiritual purity. Martin Irvine suggests that Abelard ‘will be able to imitate the exemplary self-castrator, Origen, and other saints and martyrs who rejoiced to be without genitals’. However, there are relatively few instances of castration in hagiographical narratives; most occur as part of a miracle performed by the saint.
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- Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages , pp. 87 - 107Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013