Eunuchs, or how to get rid of them

Abstract

While his assimilation of repudiation to divorce aroused the displeasure of his disciples, Christ useda parable about the eunuchsto make himself understood, or rather obeyed (" comprenne qui pourra ") (Matthew, 1, 10-12). Those who are "  bornlike this from their mother's womb " pose the problem of understanding intersex in ancient societies, and those " who have been made like this by men " that of the punishment of castration. But there are also those who, since Origen, " have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven ". Is this the case of clerics who have renounced the flesh ? Symbolic castration is a " combat of chastity " (Michel Foucault), which brings into play the categories of masculinity and virility. Eunuchs are thus the bearers of a theological enigma and a political secret that Europeans prefer to dismiss, in the far-off notion of Oriental despotism : this is how we follow Orcan, the black eunuch, to that tragic place par excellence, Bajazet's seraglio.

Contents

• " Viens, suis-moi, la sultane en ce lieu se doit rendre   : the curtain rises on Bajazet (1672)
• The seraglio, site of Racine's tragedy, following Orcan, the black eunuch
• False start and misunderstanding of the disciples, " Comprenne qui pourra " (Matthew, 19, 10-12)
• Can you repudiate your wife ? Morale of the lineage and morality of priests (Georges Duby, Le Chevalier, la Femme et le Prêtre, Paris, 1981)
• Are the eunuchs mentioned by Jesus really eunuchs ?(Constantin Daniel, " Esséniens et eunuques ", Revue de Qumrân, 1968)
• " Les eunuques, nés ainsi au sein de leur mère " : thinking about intersex in the Middle Ages
• L'épreuve par la génétique, ou le chromosome  Xet la guerre (Ulla Moilanen, Neil-Johanna Kirkinen Saari et al., "  AWoman with a Sword? -Weapon Grave at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Finland ", European Journal of Archaeology, 2022)
• " Those who are men and women " : monstrosity, diversity, inequality (Men's Monsters. Un inventaire critique de l'humanité au ^XIIIe siècle, ed. Pierre-Olivier Ditmar and Maud Pérez-Simon, Paris, 2024)
• "  Do we really need a real sex ? " (Michel Foucault, preface to Herculine Barbin dite Alexina B, Paris, 1978)
• " There have been eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men " : begetting the gods, chastising men
• Castration and circumcision :Jewishnekeva and Christian misunderstandings
• Orchidectomy and emasculation in medieval medical practice (Laurence Moulinier, " La castration dans l'Occident médiéval ", in Autour de la castration : de l'adultère à la chirurgie régulatrice, Poitiers, 2009)
• Castration and private vengeance : Abélard and the thugs
• " You must be called, not Pierre, but Pierre the incomplete " (Roscelin of Compiègne) : castration and name change in human and non-human animals
• " And there are some who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven " : the youthful error of Origen, Father of the Church
• Infertility, impotence and debauchery : the impossible martyrdom of the libido
• " Nothing is better than to be one's own heir and wife " (" Life of Antonin Heliogabalus ", Augustan History)
• Origen's castration as a mark of the contradictions of the Christian economy of begetting
• From testiculum to testis : flesh becomes verb and chastity becomes fertile (Odon Valet, Le Honteux et le Sacré. Grammaire de l'érotisme divin, Paris, 1998)
• Le Christ autobasileia et la théologie du suicide (Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat, Le Suicide du Christ. Une théologie, Paris, 1998)
• Le " sexe de vent " du Christ mort (Jérôme Baschet and Jean-Claude Schmitt, " La "sexualité" du Christ ", Annales ESC, 1991)
• L'un et l'autre sexe de Jésus (Carolyn Bynum, Jesus as mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages, Berkeley, 1984)
• L'ostentatio genitalis : humanation et tentations du Christ (Léo Steinberg, La Sexualité du Christ dans l'art de la Renaissance et son refoulement moderne, Paris, 1987)
• What to do with sex  The " chastity battle " of husbands and priests
• "  Itis the involuntary form of a movement that makes sex the subject of an insurrection and the object of the gaze " (Michel Foucault, Les Aveux de la chair, Paris, 2018)
• Histories of consent (Manon Garcia, La Conversation des sexes. Philosophie du consentement, Paris, 2021)
• Body use and the Gregorian cut (Peter Brown, Le Renoncement à la chair. Virginity, celibacy and continence in early Christianity, Paris, 1995)
• Castration, infirmity and disability in the mirror of papal supplications (Ninon Dubourg, " Émasculations cléricales. Itinéraires particuliers pour aborder l'identité du clerc émasculé (^XIIe-XVe siècle) ", Encyclo. Revue de l'école doctorale Sciences des Sociétés ED 624, 2014)
• Lapsus carnis between political discourse and social practice (Julien Théry "  L'incontinence de la chair. Pastoral revolution and papal control of the clerical hierarchy in the Second Middle Ages (^12th-15th centuries) ", Cahiers d'histoire, 2020)
• Can the priest be a good family man ?(Michelle Armstrong-Partida, " Clerical concubinage, clerical families and priestly masculinity in ^14th-century Catalonia century ", Cahiers de Fanjeaux, 2019)
• A sacrificial male mastering the sex of power, the priest is the most virile of men (Robert N. Swanson, " Angel incarnate: clergy and masculinity from gregorian reform to reformation ", in Dawn Marie Hadley ed, Masculinity in medieval Europe, London, 1999)
• " Without the Abbé's knowledge, he must be wished " (Roland Barthes, "  Iconographiede l'abbé Pierre ", in Mythologies, Paris, 1957)
• Resacerdotalisation et surcharge viriliste dans l'Église contemporaine (Josselin Tricou, Des soutanes et des hommes : enquête sur la masculinité des prêtres catholiques, Paris, 2021)
• In the Middle Ages, the long robes of clerics and judges (Robert Jacob, La Grâce des juges. L'institution judiciaire et le sacré en Occident, Paris, 2014)
• Généalogie du monstre ou monstre généalogique (Vincent Azoulay, "  Xenophon, le roi et les eunuques ", Revue française d'histoire des idées politiques, 2000)
• In Byzantium, eunuchs in the palace, or the third sex (Georges Sidéris, " Une société de ville capitale : les eunuques dans la Constantinople byzantine (^IVe-XIIe siècle) ", in Les villes capitales au Moyen Âge. Actes du ^36e Congrès de la SHMESP, Paris, 2005
• Slavery, freedom and expertise : the "neutralized political   " (Paulin Ismard, La Démocratie contre les experts. Les esclaves publics et Grèce ancienne, Paris, 2015)
• The harem, " under the sign of a monarchical and virile absolute " (Jocelyne Dakhlia, Harems et Sultans. Genre et despotisme au Maroc et ailleurs, ^XIVe-XXe siècle, Toulouse, 2024)
• " The truth is that men remain " (Al-Mas'udi) : fantasies, false mysteries and social mobility
• Black eunuchs and white eunuchs after 1550
• Thetyrant's " savoir jouir " (Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail. La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l'Occident classique, Paris, 1979)
• Du despotisme politique au despotisme familial (Nadia Tazi, Le Genre intraitable. Politiques de la virilité dans le monde musulman, 2019)
• Orcan, Bajazet's black slave , and violence against women
• " A thousand years or a thousand places from us, what is not yet in any printed history " (Jean Racine, preface to Bajazet).