Why were (are) Eunuchs a "thing"?

[River_Hippie]

As for surviving surgical procedures in ancient times, look up trepanning. People got holes drilled through their skulls, exposing the brain, to release evil spirits or whatever. Many lived long enough for the holes to heal significantly.

[jasg]

@senoy

Not a farmer huh? Castration has been safely practiced on farm animals for thousands of years. The old days it was just a razor blade, a needle and some thread. You heat the blade and the needle and it’s a quick procedure. If you were more budget minded, a string tied around them will cut off the blood supply and they’ll just drop off. I would assume that humans wouldn’t be as keen on that method though.

You don’t even need a blade or string. As Mike Rowe once discovered, teeth are all you need…

[gkster]

@DavidwithanR

For one example of someone who supposedly DID do the deed himself for his own (religious) reasons, look up Origen. I think.

For a more recent example, and probably more fully documented than Origen, look up Boston Corbett, the soldier who shot and killed John Wilkes Booth:

“In 1858, Corbett was propositioned by two prostitutes while walking home from a church meeting. He was deeply disturbed by the encounter. Upon returning to his room at a boardinghouse, Corbett began reading chapters 18 and 19 in the Gospel of Matthew (“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee…and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”). In order to avoid sexual temptation and remain holy, he castrated himself with a pair of scissors.”

Boston Corbett

“One day while he was ministering in the summer of 1858, Corbett was ogled by a pair of prostitutes, and the lower half of his body responded invitingly. He went home, took a pair of scissors, snipped an incision under his scrotum, and removed his testicles, then headed out to a prayer meeting.
In the Bible, Matthew 19:12 quotes Christ as saying “there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.” Corbett made himself a eunuch and didn’t check himself into Massachusetts General Hospital until he’d finished his prayers, had a full dinner, and taken a light stroll through the city that evening.”

The Insane Story of the Guy Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln -...

[Hari_Seldon]

How do castrati compare with countertenors? Here is a sample from Daniel Taylor: Daniel Taylor(countertenor) - Petits Chanteurs du Mont-RoyalCanada)Ave Maria - YouTube. I have heard him live and on radio many times. His voice is not exactly the same a woman’s and certainly not like a typical man’s. I have heard him interviewed. He is regularly asked if was gay. “Ask my girl friend” is his stock answer. He explained that when his voice started to change, his voice teacher said that he would likely grow up to be a rather ordinary tenor and offered to train him to be a countertenor. Since he wanted a singing career, he agreed and this is the result.

[Leo_Bloom]

NB: I’ve reordered these cites from their original chronology to better address (and take issue with) the point in this case:

@Nava

There were three main types/reasons:

• having sopranos that were adult males. Why this was considered necessary, rather than the eventual solution of having female singers, is one of those things that make my head try to turn itself inside-out, I don’t think I’ll ever get it…

@Lucas_Jackson

Rereading the OP, it appears he thinks most eunuchs underwent the process voluntarily. That might explain the confusion.

Any castrato (the singer musician), at least in the West, never became “that way” unless voluntarily.

Thus the “why this was considered necessary, rather than … female singers…” is at first blush a weird use of “necessary,” as opposed to “socially acceptable” and more generally is a complex and well-addressed topic of musicologists.

Not sure if this is the OP to go there though. /not snark

[Leo_Bloom]

@DavidwithanR

For one example of someone who supposedly DID do the deed himself for his own (religious) reasons, look up Origen. I think…

As you suggest, one can look up Origen, and find that the matter is most likely a scurrilous allegation, which became valorized, interestingly enough, 800 years later in the biography of Abelard, who actually started out along that road while dealing with and spiritually remaking himself after he knocked up his girlfriend.

The source text for the valorization (and pertinent of course to this OP) is Matthew 19:12:
“For there are eunuchs, that were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are eunuchs, that were made eunuchs by men: and there are eunuchs, that made themselves eunuchs [castrated themselves] for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

[Leo_Bloom]

ETA: The bracketed material “[castrated themselves]” was inadvertently copied by me from some trying-to-be-helpful commentator, and is neither mine nor anyone’s definitive take on the words of what is arguably–and boy have people argued–a parable, just one of those not prefaced in Dicta Sancta as being one.

[DavidwithanR]

@md2000

I think it was Robert Heinlein in one of his books who related the anecdote that removal of the testicles after puberty did not stop performance, just reproduction. (And perhaps lessened desire). Not sure about pre-pubescent castrations; but you can be pretty sure that historically, a child who was castrated did not come up with the idea or the initiative himself.

I guess the question about the Ottomans would be at what age were most of their eunuchs “initiated”?

Plus, since the male organs are the end-all and be-all of male identity, I suspect there’s a certain domination/humiliation aspect to castrating your male enemies or inferiors, at least the ones who would not be too dangerous after being “processed”. After all, some cultures had a tradition of killing all the menfolk and enslaving the women when they conquered an opponent - castrating the lesser males would be a logical extension of that idea.

The bible, for example, has a prohibition against “incomplete” men entering the Temple, although it specifically mentions “those whose testicles have been crushed”? WTF.

I can think of a couple of possibilities:

• Before that was written, one man was in an unfortunate accident and told the rabbi. The rabbi thought about it for a while and said “I think you better not come in - we have these strict regulations that apply to sacrificial animals, why shouldn’t the same regulations apply to humans?”

• Before that was written, there was a fad in the Levant region for hot-fudge sundaes (why not?.. hot weather…), but they got the idea from some Greeks or Phoenicians or some other foreigners, and the translation of the recipe for the final add-on to the topping was badly mangled - and so were some of the customers.