Many people would be surprised to discover that, even before the establishment of the slave trade in the 15th and 16th centuries, Christian states promoted slavery and castration as something extremely natural.

Neutering itself is not a biblical practice, as it’s officially condemned in the Mosaic Law (Deuteronomy 23: 1). However, if, on the one hand, castration was forbidden to Jews – and consequently to Christians – all the diverse pagan peoples throughout the Mediterranean saw the practice of making eunuchs a traditional and even legally recognized custom.

Despite the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire, the Church’s relations with Roman law and culture are better described as accommodation than exactly as a cultural revolution. Of course, the Christian state’s rise promoted civilian changes, such as the end of the mandatory nature of certain pagan cults and the practice of castrating slaves to sodomize them as passive homosexuals. But even Constantine, seen by Eastern churches as a true saint, did not promote the abolition of imperial worship (who worshiped Caesar as a god), slavery or castration.

Many readers would be shocked to discover that in the middle of the 9th century, Charlemagne’s Franks observed this whole triad of practices occurring in a general way throughout the Eastern Roman Empire. In fact, until the Eastern Empire found its very end by Turkish hands in 1453, all of these pagan traditions and customs were still in force. And although Islam is remembered by Westerners as a religion of slavery origin, many do not remember the fact that contemporary Christians viewed the practice with extreme naturalness: many of them even practiced it!

It was through the political machinations of Aetius, one of the countless eunuchs at Irene’s court, that Byzantines and the Franks did not unify the two arms of the Roman Empire [1]. Irene would still charge another eunuch, Staurakios, to blind and imprison her own son [2], guaranteeing her return to power and preventing the Church from becoming iconoclast again [3].

‘Byzantium also required eunuchs to serve in the imperial palace, where they were taken on a variety of important functions. Some military commanders were eunuchs, while in the Eastern Church eunuchs could rise to the position of patriarchs. […] However, not all eunuchs were successful. Those who never joined the wealthy houses could still be found on the outskirts of the cities, serving as entertainment and even prostitutes in lower neighborhoods. ‘ [4]

That Christian society, and especially the Church itself – Roman or Orthodox – has an embarrassing relationship with eunuchs is a clear fact. Even more considering that the Papacy made official use of eunuchs in Sistine corals until the beginning of the 20th century [5], a practice abandoned due to extensive public criticism at the time and the fact that castration for corals was banned in Italy since 1861.

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, had a solemn and inviolable ban on castration at its formation’s basis. It is recalled in the Islamic tradition that the Prophet Muhammad would have said about the castrators of slaves: “whoever castrates them, we will castrate him” (Sunan na-Nasai. Hadith 4736) [6].

Unlike the Christian Church, which allowed itself to be accommodated and even happily incorporated the pagan custom of castration for the most diverse and superfluous purposes, Islam remained stricter at its own prohibitions.

Not that this, of course, prevented Islamic societies from seeing eunuch servants at the highest esteem: they did not establish dynasties or practice nepotism, and were the most suitable guardians of harems. But as Sharia prohibited the castration process, punishing offenders under the Lex Talionis principle (the Muslim who castrates will be punished with castration), there were legal ways of acquiring them without breaking the Prophet’s law: commerce and razias. As the chronicler and eyewitness al-Muqaddasi, in the 10th century, describes:

‘When I asked a group of them about the castration process, I was informed that the Romans [Byzantines] castrate their young people with the intention of dedicating them to the Church […] When Muslims carry out robberies, they attack churches and take their youth’ [7]

As noted by Mary Valante in her book “Monks Castrators”:

‘Arab raids were deliberately targeting Greek churches and monasteries […] at a time when the Greeks castrated certain young boys to keep them as singers in the Church and at a time when the Arab World wanted eunuchs.’ [8]

In addition to the pillaging campaigns in churches, another opportunity to acquire eunuchs came from commerce with the Northmen.

Although Vikings did not make any use of eunuchs, there was a high demand for them in the Eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic World. This resulted in a curious slave trade chain that brought together pagans, Christians and Muslims, all gathered in the lucrative trade in emasculated men.

The importance of eunuchs in Nordic trade played an important role in establishing the Viking Era itself:

‘One of the main reasons behind the start of increased attacks against monasteries in Ireland and France was “to capture young, literate men who could be turned into eunuchs and sold in the East. “’[9]

If, on the one hand, Arabs were generally further removed from Western Europe and had a ban in place against castration, the Vikings corresponded to the Arabs’ main commercial deficiencies: location and moral clearance. As Valante notes: “Vikings filled a niche in demand with this ‘industry ’of targeting boys and young men in their assaults. They could be sent to Venice, where they would be castrated and sent to the East ’’ [10].

‘Historical records show examples of this slave trade taking over. A biographer from Saint Nian, in the 10th century, reports that 200 clerics were captured by the Vikings and taken to slave centers in Venice. Valente writes that “religious men were captured and sold through commercial centers, where castration was practiced regularly”. There are records of large numbers of young men being sold specifically as eunuchs, suggesting that some slaves were taken specifically for this purpose: to feed the eastern markets with castrated and educated young people. ‘ [10]

These are significant data: while more modern and polemicist niches of Christian and Roman Catholic apologetics insist on saying that Christianity had ‘ended the terrible institution of slavery’, we see the practice of slavery being done massively in Catholic centers, with Catholic slaves, being sold to Orthodox Christians and Muslims through the inhuman and biblically condemned practice of castration.

That the practice had the convenience of secular and religious authorities is evident from its very density: otherwise we would have to assume that two hundred enslaved and huddled clergymen on a single occasion went unnoticed by the authorities on the island of Venice.

The practice of castration was not limited to the Latin and Greek churches. At the same time that Rome was abandoning Castratos for public consternation that fueled European anticlericalism, Coptic Christians were active castrators. American scholars record the activity of Coptic priests emasculating slave boys in Egypt in 1898 [11], 1900 [12] and 1919 [13], as well as in even later decades.

The produced reports all echo in unison about the barbaric methods of Coptic ecclesiastical castration: the slaves, all from black countries like Nubia and Abyssinia, were about eight years old: young enough to have their voices unchanged by the hormonal transformations of puberty. The boys were stuck on boards, so as not to resist the surgery, which consisted of removing the penis and testicles with a sharp razor. The real problem, however, came from post-surgery’s infections. To prevent this, immediately after the cut, the priest-surgeon would insert a piece of bamboo into the urethra, thus allowing a channel of urine ejection. The new eunuch was then buried in a sand pit up to the height of his neck, being left under strong sunlight for two or three days until there was no more risk of infection [14].

Nevertheless, even with all these preparations, the survival rate of these children was only 10% [14]. However, the financial return generated by the capture and emasculation of sub-Saharan children was large enough to justify itself:

“Each eunuch castrated in a simple way costs around 200 dollars. The country’s largest eunuch factory, however, is found on Mount Ghebel-Eter, in Abou-Gerghè. Here, at a large Coptic monastery, where the unfortunate African children are gathered. […] Coptic monks operate in a lucrative business, supplying Constantinople, Arabia and Asia Minor with their highly sought after – and expensive – eunuchs. Two types come from here: those simply castrated and those with complete organ ablation; the second type [of eunuch] is sold at about 750 or 1,000 dollars a head. “[14]

We are talking about the 1919 dollar. Converting the maximum value of a eunuch to modern currency means talking about a little more than 15 thousand dollars (US $ 15.024.16), or about 83 thousand reais (October 2020 quotation), for each slave. According to our eyewitness, about 3,000 black eunuchs were “produced” annually by the priests, resulting in a gross annual income of more than 57 million dollars. (October 2020 quote)

All this was profited by a monastery that followed vows of poverty and that castrated not for any sort of dark delight got from effeminate voices in chorus, but for the simple profit!

Bibliography:

[1] GARLAND, Lynda. Irene (769–802), Byzantine Empresses: Women and Power in Byzantium, AD 527–1204. New York City: Routledge, 1999. p. 89.

[2] ibid. p. 85-87.

[3] HAWKES, D. Idols of the Marketplace: Idolatry and Commodity Fetishism in English Literature, 1580–1680. New York City: Palgrave, 2001. p. 62

[4] MEDIEVALIST.NET. Vikings raided monasteries to feed demand for eunuchs in the east, historian finds. Disponível em: < https://www.medievalists.net/2013/07/the-viking-slave-trade-and-eunuchs-in-the-east/ >. Acesso em 8 de outubro de 2020.

[5] BARBIER, P. C. The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon. Cap. 6: “The Castrati and the Church”. Londres: Souvenir Press, 1997. 

[6] BROWN, Jonathan A. C. Slavery and Islam. Simon and Schuster, 2002.

[7] VALANTE, Mary A. Castrating Monks: Vikings, slave trade, and the value of eunuchs. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013. 

[8] ibid. 

[9] MEDIEVALIST.NET. ibid.

[10] ibid.

[11] ANDREWS, Edmund. Oriental Eunuchs. Chicago: The American Journal of Medicine, vol. XXX, No. 4, 1898. Disponível em: < https://books.google.com.br/books?id=ilIKAQAAMAAJ&hl=pt-BR&source=gbs_navlinkss>. Acesso em 8 de outubro de 2020.

[12] REMONDINO, Peter C. History of Circumcision. Honolulu: The Minerva Group Inc, 2001. p. 99. Disponível em: <https://books.google.com/books?id=VS-2aLdskbAC&pg=PA99>. Acesso em 8 de outubro de 2020.