Download PDF | Shaun Tougher - The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society-Routledge (2008).
258 Pages
THE EUNUCH IN BYZANTINE HISTORY AND SOCIETY
The existence of eunuchs was one of the defining features of the Byzantine Empire. Covering the whole span of the history of the empire, from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries av, Shaun Tougher presents a comprehensive survey of the history and roles of eunuchs, making use of extensive comparative material, such as from China, Persia and the Ottoman Empire, as well as about castrato singers of the eighteenth century of Enlightenment Europe, and self-castrating religious devotees such as the Galli of ancient Rome, early Christians, the Skoptsy of Russia and the Hijras of India.
The various roles played by eunuchs are examined. They are not just found as servile attendants; some were powerful political players — such as Chrysaphius who plotted to assassinate Attila the Hun — and others were prominent figures in Orthodoxy as bishops and monks. Furthermore, there is offered an analysis of how society thought about eunuchs, especially their gender identity - were they perceived as men, women, or a third sex?
The broad survey of the political and social position of eunuchs in the Byzantine Empire is placed in the context of the history of the eunuch in general. An appendix listing key eunuchs of the Byzantine Empire is included, and the text is fully illustrated. This book will be a major contribution to the study of the subject, of interest also to the non-specialist.
Shaun Tougher is Senior Lecturer in Ancient History in the Cardiff School of History and Archaeology at Cardiff University, and has also taught at Queen’s University Belfast and the University of St Andrews. He specializes in late Roman and Byzantine history. He is the author of The Reign of Leo VI (866-912) (1997) and Julian the Apostate (2007), and is the editor of Eunuchs in: Antiquity and Beyond (2002).
PREFACE
It is a great pleasure to acknowledge here the two major contributors to the completion of this project on Byzantine eunuchs. Without the granting of a Research Leave Award by the Arts and Humanities Research Council no doubt I would still be trying to snatch moments between the twin duties of administration and teaching (the latter rather more pleasurable) in an attempt to complete the book. I am eternally grateful to the AHRC for the opportunity to break the back of the work. My other main debt is to Richard Stoneman, who was immediately enthusiastic about the project. His support and belief were invaluable, and much appreciated.
Eunuchs have been a research interest of mine ever since studying for my PhD on the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (886-912), who had a marked interest in eunuchs himself. Over the course of my career in the Celtic world (Belfast, St Andrews and Cardiff) a great many people have assisted me in my enthusiasm, too many to acknowledge them all individually here. I would, however, like to take this opportunity to recognise some particular supporters. As ever, Shelley Hales, Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Janett Morgan and Nicholas Baker-Brian, have been on hand to assist, encourage and console. Margaret Mullett, Paul Magdalino and Ruth Macrides, established mentors, continued in this role.
Anton Powell provided much valued belief. Bente Bjornholt, Liz James, Katherine Lewis and Mary Harlow consistently proffered information and stimulation. Leslie Brubaker and Jane Potter furnished assistance with photographs. Pamela Armstrong and Dirk Krausmuller contributed vital last minute assistance. On a more personal note, William Kay has kept me going throughout the project, showed interest (even though it wasn’t about the eighteenth century), and attempted to help me with English. Finally, I would like to thank Rufus and Russell for adding immeasurably to the pleasure of life.
A note on transliteration
In general, I have attempted to use Latin forms for names and terms for the period of the later Roman/early Byzantine empire (fourth to sixth centuries aD), but Greek forms for the rest of the history of the empire. There are some exceptions with the spelling of names for the period from the seventh to the fifteenth centuries, as sometimes I find a Latinised form simply more comfortable (e.g. Heraclius, Leo, Nicholas, Isaac and Theophylact).
INTRODUCTION
The fascination of eunuchs
Eunuchs have been a source of fascination for centuries, if not millennia. One only has to consider the reaction in Britain to the discovery of the skeleton of a ‘eunuch’ on the site of late Roman Catterick in north Yorkshire to appreciate the effect that the idea of a castrated male can have on a modem audience. Ina brilliant piece of PR to launch the publication of their report in 2002 on the excavations at Catterick, which had been ongoing since 1958, archaeologists chose to highlight the discovery of the skeleton of a young man who had been buried at Bainesse near Catterick wearing several items of jewellery: a jet necklace and bracelets, and an expanding anklet. They suggested that this unusual instance could be explained by the fact that the man was a gallus, one of the cross-dressing selfcastrating devotees of the eastern mother goddess Cybele.' The British press, from The Daily Mail to The Guardian, had a field day. Television also got in on the act; an item on the supposed Yorkshire transvestite, and eunuchs in general, was featured on Channel 4’s Richard and Judy. \t is clear, then, that eunuchs capture the imagination.
The reaction to the Catterick ‘eunuch’ is indicative of a wider interest in the subject. Many artists, for instance, have been drawn to the figure of the eunuch. Several authors have chosen to make eunuchs the heroes of their novels. Probably the most widely known case is that of Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy, which narrates the life of the famous Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great from the point of view of his lover the eunuch Bagoas, the Persian boy of the title. Also worthy of note is Anne Rice’s Cry to Heaven, whose hero Tonio is one of the famous castrati singers of the eighteenth century.
Byzantine eunuchs have also been the subject of fiction. John the grand chamberlain of the emperor Justinian I (527-565) is a creation of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer; he features in a series of detective novels.‘ Christopher Harris’s Memoirs of a Byzantine Eunuch recounts the life of Zeno, who found himself embroiled in court politics in ninthcentury Constantinople.* Paul Adam wrote an historical novel about the Byzantine empress Eirene (797-802), but chose to title his book /réne ef les eunuques, an acknowledgement of the significant part that eunuchs played in her reign. Eunuchs, however, have had a much longer history in fiction beyond these examples from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
For instance Honoré de Balzac’s novella Sarrasine (1830) featured the castrato La Zambinella, while William Beckford’s Vathek (1787) included the character of Bababalouk, the chief eunuch of the eponymous caliph.’ Eunuchs have also appeared as characters in cinema and on the stage. Gérard Corbiau’s film Farinelli, Il Castrato was released in 1994, and documented the life and career of one the most famous and successful castrati singers of the eighteenth century. In Sridhar Rangayan’s The Pink Mirror (Gulabi Aaina) two of the main characters were Indian hijras, the infamous cross-dressing self-castrating men who usually live in distinct communities and are traditionally associated with the Hindu mother goddess Bahuchara Mata. The film, released in 2003, explored the issue of homosexuality, and was banned in India itself. The eunuch Bagoas, made famous by Mary Renault, also appears in Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004).
Castrati singers and hijras have been portrayed on the stage too. Castradiva, written by Mark Ryan, had its world premiere in 2000 at Theatr Mwidan, Cardigan, Wales, and focused on a fictional eighteenth-century castrato, Pedrolino il Magnifico. The Bollywood musical Bombay Dreams, which was produced by Andrew Lloyd Webber and opened in London in 2002, featured among its characters a hijra named Sweetie. As with literary fiction, there is a much longer history of the depiction of eunuchs on the stage. For instance, in the early seventeenth century, William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra includes the character of Mardian, one of Cleopatra’s trusted entourage,’ while William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1676) centres around the conceit of a man called Mr Horner pretending to be a eunuch in order to pursue his career of seduction, recalling the ancient Roman play The Eunuch by Terence.’
Another medium in which eunuchs have been depicted is the visual arts. Eunuchs are particularly prominent in orientalist paintings of eastern life, especially the institution of the harem, famous nineteenth-century examples being works by Ingres and Géréme.!!
All of these examples beg the question, what is it about eunuchs that accounts for the interest in them? The obvious answer is that eunuchs are inherently interesting given that they are physically altered humans. Most eunuchs would have resulted from the castration of prepubertal boys, though castration could also occur after puberty. Essentially, the condition of the eunuch is beyond the experience of most humans and is thus a matter of curiosity. There are, however, other factors which can contribute to the attraction they exert.
Eunuchs can be understood as a phenomenon of the past, which can only be recreated through imagination. Those who live in the West today often perceive eunuchs as an aspect of eastern culture, and thus beyond even any direct historical connection. Such attitudes should of course be qualified, since eunuchs are not just a feature of the ancient world, but have survived into the modern era, into the early twentieth century in the cases of the court eunuchs of the Ottoman and Chinese empires. Moreover, the castrati singers who attained the peak of their popularity in the eighteenth century did have careers in western Europe, and several lived in Britain. The British interest in the Catterick ‘eunuch’ was surely intensified by the fact that he brought a foreign subject closer to home.
Notably the Leader of The Guardian made much play on the idea of the eunuch being a Yorkshireman."? It should also be appreciated that eunuchs are not just confined even to the recent past: they still exist today. This fact may surprise some, and thus account for further interest in the topic. For instance, the Western media seems particularly preoccupied with, not to say anxious about, the existence of the hijras in India. Articles on this group are certainly a regular feature in the British press.'? In addition, the fact that contemporary Westerners still want to castrate themselves, for a variety of reasons, has prompted several documentaries in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. There is no doubt that shock and sensationalism can amplify the interest in eunuchs.
Associated with the issue of the physical condition of eunuchs is the question of gender identity, and this is vital in explaining their fascination. Are eunuchs male, female, or something else? More important than the answer to this puzzle is the fact that eunuchs can serve to destabilise notions of sex and gender. What do the terms male and female, and masculine and feminine, signify? Eunuchs point to a more complex reality beyond the simple straitjacket of these polarised models, as the modern appreciation of the category of Intersex illustrates. Eunuchs provide an alternative perspective to that of heterosexual orthodoxy.
Some find this challenging, if not downright alarming. It is notable that press articles on the hijras can adopt a mocking tone, and the Catterick ‘eunuch’ brought forth some camp humour from the papers.'* Conversely, however, individuals can make personal connections with the figure of the eunuch, and even derive comfort from it. In 2007 Richard Wassersug, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology who had to undergo chemical castration for the treatment of prostate cancer, wrote an article in The New York Times asserting that he was a eunuch and that the reality of historical eunuchs had provided positive role models for him.'5
Of course eunuchs can prove a concern simply on academic grounds. It is clear, for instance, that the interest in the ‘authentic’ performance of baroque music, which has occurred from the late twentieth century onwards, has led to an increasing curiosity about the castrati singers and the quality of their voice. The Handel House Museum in London staged an exhibition in 2006 on Handel and the castrati. Countertenors such as Michael Chance and Andreas Scholl now dominate the market in performing parts that had been created for castrati centuries earlier." In 2006 BBC4 broadcast a documentary entitled Castrato — In Search of a Lost Voice, which explored the possibility of recreating the castrato sound. Thus a range of factors may contribute to an interest in eunuchs, but the essential factor is curiosity about the curious.
Byzantine eunuchs
The group of eunuchs that this book is particularly concerned with are those of the Byzantine empire. This empire was the heir of Rome in the east, centred on the ancient Greek city of Byzantium, which had been refounded as Constantinople in 324 by the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine the Great (306-337). For many, the advent of Constantine and the foundation of Constantinople mark the beginning of the history of the Byzantine empire, which was to survive until the fall of the city to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.
One of the characteristic features of the Byzantine empire was the existence of eunuchs within it, particularly in the role of servants and officials of the imperial court. This aspect of Byzantine culture has long been recognised, witness for instance the Irish historian William Lecky’s jaundiced verdict of 1869 that ‘The history of the empire is a monotonous story of the intrigues of priests, eunuchs, and women, of poisonings, of conspiracies, of uniform ingratitude’.'!? The twentieth century finally witnessed an attempt to get beyond such negative stereotypical views of Byzantium, which had a prolonged history in the West. One of the great British godfathers of Byzantine Studies, Sir Steven Runciman (1903-2000), remarked in 1929 that the ‘significance [of eunuchs in Byzantium] has never . . . been properly realized’.'*
Only a few years before this, however, an interest in the institutional history of Byzantium had brought the spotlight to fall upon eunuchs. James Dunlap’s study of the office of the grand chamberlain, which was usually held by a eunuch, was published in 1924." Institutional history was also the focus of the work of Rodolphe Guilland, who from 1943 onwards published a series of articles about the offices and titles held by éunuchis at the Byzantine court.” In the 1960s attention remained fixed on court eunuchs in Keith Hopkins’ groundbreaking attempt to understand why it was that eunuchs became such a prominent feature of the imperial court from the fourth century onwards, though he took a sociological approach rather than just an institutional one.?' From the late twentieth century onwards it was the gender identity of Byzantine eunuchs which was foregrounded, as seen in a series of articles and finally a book (the first ever monograph on Byzantine eunuchs) by Kathryn Ringrose.” Clearly, this once again reflected the academic trends of the time, with the development of the field of gender studies.
The present book builds on the previous work concerning Byzantine eunuchs but has several distinctive features of its own. It covers the entire history of the Byzantine empire, from the fourth to the fifteenth century AD. This period was . covered only summarily by Guilland’s initial article surveying eunuchs throughout the span of Byzantium’s existence, while Ringrose’s monograph on Byzantine eunuchs restricted itself to the period from the seventh to the eleventh century.” Earlier studies have also tended to focus on singular aspects of the eunuchs of Byzantium, such as their roles at court or the question of their gender identity.
This book instead embraces a more general and diverse examination. It is concerned with the court role, which was after all the main reason for the consumption of eunuchs in the empire, but in addition it considers other roles, especially religious, though educational and musical roles are also touched upon. Further, it examines the social status of eunuchs, the social attitudes surrounding them, and the self-perception of Byzantine eunuchs. The book also emphasises the issue of transformations in the history of Byzantine eunuchs over time. It is well known to Byzantinists that the prominence and power of eunuchs declined in the late empire, roughly from the twelfth century onwards, but it is important to appreciate too that there were great changes in the nature of eunuchs in the empire between the early and middle periods (that is between the fourth to sixth century and the seventh to twelfth century), the pivotal point being the sixth and seventh centuries.
The issue of the ethnic origin of eunuchs is particularly significant here, and has been a concern of my work already, though Spyros Stavrakas had begun to point the way in 1978.** The book is especially interested in the reality of the eunuch: it is concerned with those who were castrated either voluntarily or involuntarily, and the lives-they led. It is not a history of castration, or an exploration of the idea of the eunuch, though these topics necessarily receive treatment as aspects of the study. The major distinctive feature of the book, however, is its interest in the history of eunuchs in general. This was not the case with Ringrose’s monograph, and it has been observed that her book was the poorer for this ‘contextual vacuum’.?5
It is certainly helpful to understand the history of eunuchs prior to Byzantium, especially of those ef the Mediterranean world. Byzantium was the heir both to preexisting traditions and pre-existing attitudes. More than this, however, knowledge of the history of eunuchs in other times and places, including beyond the temporal existence of Byzantium itself, facilitates the adoption of a comparative approach to the subject. The book argues that this is a legitimate methodology, and that it is helpful in illuminating the specific case of Byzantine eunuchs. Other historians have already deployed the technique in relation to eunuchs, to varying degrees.”
The comparative approach assists in the identification of common features of the history of eunuchs, such as the recurring roles they played, but also indicates the variations that exist at specific times and in specific cultures, Given that evidence for the history of eunuchs can be lacking, any approach which may cast some light on the subject is valuable. Finally, it is important to make clear that it is not the aim of this book to be the last word on Byzantine eunuchs. That would be an immense task. Rather, the objective is to provide a general context in which to understand the history of Byzantine eunuchs, and to delineate and explore some particular aspects of their existence across the span of the empire’s life.
To achieve the aims described above, the book has been organised in the following way. Chapter 1 provides a brief account of eunuchs in world history, from the earliest testimony up to the early twenty-first century. It details the roles that they played (or continue to play) and the cultures where they have been found (or continue to be found). The aim of this chapter is to introduce the reader to the expanse of eunuch history, to illustrate how prevalent the eunuch has been in human history, and to demonstrate that the subject is still of relevance. The chapter also serves to inform the comparisons that are developed in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 2 nuances the picture established in the first chapter, as it reviews the previous study of eunuchs, and establishes the methodological problems inherent in researching their history. In particular the problems of orientalism, terminology, and the lack of a eunuch voice are discussed. Castration, the sine gua non for eunuchs, is the subject of Chapter 3. This focuses on the reasons for castration, its varying degrees and procedures, as well as its physical and ideological consequences.
With Chapter 4 Byzantine eunuchs come to the fore of the book. The chapter traces the emergence of the court eunuch as a key characteristic of the later Roman and early Byzantine empires, and explores the theories propounded to explain this development. Although Hopkins attempted to provide a solution, the answer remains very much debated.”” The focus remains on court eunuchs in Chapter 5, but is concerned with those of the middle Byzantine empire, from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. It considers how the character of the later Roman and early Byzantine. court eunuchs altered in the early medieval period, such as their changing origins and the creation of specialised offices and titles for them.
Of particular importance in the analysis is a late ninth-century document called the Kletorologion, which was composéd at court by an official named Philotheos to detail the hierarchy of Byzantine officials and provide guidance on who should be invited to feasts and where they should sit.”7 A consequence of this text is that there exists a remarkable snapshot of the role and position of eunuchs within Byzantine society. In Chapter 6 the spotlight falls on religion, for eunuchs were not just court officials in the Byzantine empire, but could also have careers as clerics and monks.
This is illustrated by the chapter, but in addition it highlights the ambivalence Byzantine society felt about eunuchs in religious positions, for — they could be perceived as both pure and corrupt beings. This tension in social views of eunuchs is more fully explored in Chapter 7, which focuses on the images and identities of Byzantine eunuchs. The chapter includes discussion of the gender identity of éunuchs, which has been such a particular concern of the work of Ringrose, who has argued that in the middle Byzantine period eunuchs were constructed positively as a third gender.
A very interesting and unusual text has been central in Ringrose’s arguments: the so-called In Defence of Eunuchs, written in the twelfth century by the Byzantine bishop Theophylact of Ochrid to comfort his brother, who was a eunuch.” The chapter suggests, however, that conceptions of the gender identity of eunuchs in Byzantium remained much more fluid. It also explores the possibility of accessing what Byzantine eunuchs thought about themselves.
Chapter 8, the last chapter, returns the focus to court eunuchs, and investigates their apparent decline in prominence and power in the late empire. As with the rise of eunuchs, their fall remains subject to debate. A final conclusion reflects on the aims, nature and key concerns of the book, and considers the possibilities for further research. In addition to the main chapters, the book includes in an appendix a selective prosopography of late Roman and Byzantine eunuchs. It is clear that Ringrose herself had compiled details of about 200 Byzantine eunuchs, but this resource was not appended to her monograph.” It is hoped that such an appendix in this volume will go some way to filling this gap, as well as augmenting the overall aims of the study and facilitating future research on the eunuchs of the Byzantine empire.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق