page_title: Castration
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Castration / History / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Кастрация в средневековье в качестве наказания
context_page_description: Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchidectomy, and chemical castration uses pharmaceutical drugs to deactivate the testes. Castration causes sterilization; it also greatly reduces the production of certain hormones, such as testosterone. Surgical castration in animals is often called neutering.
  The term castration is sometimes also used to refer to the removal of the ovaries in the female, otherwise known as an oophorectomy, or the removal of internal testes, otherwise known as gonadectomy.
  The equivalent of castration for female animals is spaying. Estrogen levels drop following oophorectomy, and long-term effects of the reduction of sex hormones are significant throughout the body. Castration of non-human animals is intended to favor a desired development of the animal or of its habits, as an anaphrodisiac or to prevent overpopulation. As above, see neutering for more information on castration of non-human animals.
  The term castration may also be sometimes used to refer to emasculation where both the testicles and the penis are removed together.
context_section_description: The trade and employment of eunuchs (castrated men) was known in classical and Roman antiquity, and continued into the Middle Ages. The phenomenon of castrated singers was abolished in Italy in 1878 by pope Leo XIII. In Al-Andalus in the 10th century, eunuch slaves were used as harem attendants. They were castrated by merchants in Verdun in France and Becâne (Pechina), Spain.
  Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire reports castration of defeated Byzantine Greeks at the hands of the Frankish marquis Theobald of Camerino and Spoleto in the course of 10th-century wars in Italy. Gibbon also alludes to a 12th-century incident set out in William Fitzstephen's Vita Sancti Thomae (Life of St. Thomas) in which Geoffrey of Anjou castrated the members of the cathedral chapter of Sens as a punishment for disobedience.
  In the medieval kingdom of Georgia, the pretender Demna was castrated by his uncle George III of Georgia to ensure the supremacy of George's branch of the family.
  Another victim of castration was the medieval French philosopher, scholar, teacher, and (later) monk Pierre Abélard. He was castrated by relatives of his lover, Héloïse.
  Bishop Wimund, a 12th-century English adventurer and invader of the Scottish coast, was castrated.
  In medieval England men found guilty of high treason were hanged, drawn and quartered, which often included emasculation or removal of the genitalia. Women were burned at the stake for the sake of public decency.
  In ancient Greek mythology, Cronus castrated his father, Uranus, after the latter imprisoned the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires.
  William Wallace, the Scottish resistance leader, was castrated as part of his execution, for resistance to English rule.
  Wim Deetman was criticized by the Dutch parliament for excluding evidence of castration in his report on sexual abuse by the Roman Catholic Church, where ten children were allegedly "punished" by castration in the 1950s for reporting sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests. However, the Deetman Commission had rejected it as the person who reported the incident admitted it was speculative. Voluntary castration for homosexuality was also state policy in Netherlands at that point, as well against Catholic canon law, and there has been no evidence suggesting the Church had a part in organizing the procedures.
  Chemical castration has been and is used as part of sentencing in criminal cases.
  In 1952, Alan Turing—the father of computer science and the inventor of the Turing machine—was criminally prosecuted for homosexual acts and chose chemical castration as an alternative to a period of imprisonment.
  In Spain, a law against castration was used to deny sex-reassignment surgery to transgender people until the Penal Code was reformed in 1983.
caption: The procedure of castration as punishment during the 16th century.
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