Castration as Consequence: Mutilation and the LawĬhapter 5–– The Children He Never Had The Husband She Never Served: Castration and Genital Mutilation in Medieval Frisian LawĬhapter 6–– The Fulmannod Society: Social Valuing of the (Male) Legal Subject Jack Collins, George Washington UniversityĬhapter 4––‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary Rooting out sin: Purifying the Body and the SoulĬhapter 3––The Appropriation and Development of Castration Imagery in Early Christianity The volume includes my own article: “‘Al defouleden is holie bodi’: Castration, the Sexualization of Torture and Anxieties of Identity in the South English Legendary.”Ī History of Calamities: The Culture of CastrationĬhapter 1–– Raised Voices: The Archaeology of CastrationĬhapter 2 –– The Aesthetics of Castration: The Beauty of Roman Eunuchs The essays progress from the very concrete, tangible evidence of castration in archeological research, an untapped area of study, to the cultural position of eunuchs and the religious debates concerning physical and spiritual emasculation and self-mutilation, to the legal incidents of and prohibitions against castration, the more interpretative accounts of actual castration as a literary motif, and finally the persistence of medieval attitudes towards castration in early-modern plays juxtaposed against medical texts. The articles in this volume include archaeological studies of eunuchs, historical accounts of castration in trials of combat, the mutilation of political rivals in medieval Wales, Anglo-Saxon and Frisian legal and literary examples of castration as punishment, castration as comedy in the Old French fabliaux, the prohibition against genital mutilation in hagiography, and early-modern anxieties about punitive castration enacted on the Elizabethan stage. This collection explores this grave subject and its implications for cultural mores and custom in Western Europe and seeks to demystify and demythologize castration. It is within Abelard’s calamitous history that we ground our study on the culture of castration from late-antiquity through the sixteenth century.
The unlawful castration of Abelard, and his autobiographical account Historia Calamitatum, creates a framework for discussing the taboo of male, and occasionally female, genital mutilation-its reception, inception, legal boundaries, ancient origins and early modern legacies. 1101–1164) and Fulbert’s unsanctioned punishment of Abelard’s transgressions captivated audiences immediately after the events and throughout the Middle Ages.
Bound up in the intrigue of twelfth-century religious politics, the marriage of Abelard and Heloise (ca.
One of the most famous (or infamous) episodes of medieval judicial brutality and barbarism is the castration of Peter Abelard (1079–1142). Metaphoric castration pervades a number of medieval genres, particularly the Old French fabliaux - exchanges of power predicated upon the exchange or absence of sexual desire signified by genitalia - but the plain, literal act of castration and its implications are often overlooked. The sweet voices of castrati were praised by the patricians of Rome and audiences of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe while eunuchs guarded harems and served as advisors to emperors, empresses, and kings.
#MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS WITH PICTURES OF SELF CASTRATION FREE#
Castration is a subject of myth, legend, law, literature and theology - the famous early Christian theologian Origen is said to have castrated himself, while the god Kronos castrated his father Uranus to free the children of Gaia in Greek myth. From the roots of history, castration and castrati have been facets of western culture.
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