Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis (22 page)

Both the parents and the boy were tempted with the prospect of free training as an opera singer and the accompanying singing career.

But what is true now was just as true then: ‘for many be called, but few chosen’ (Matthew 20:16). An opera career or a permanent position as a singer in the Sistine Chapel was something only a few could aspire to. If someone failed to make the big time, a relatively meagre existence as a priest or something similar beckoned. What was the cost to the castrated boy? All his life he would have a tendency to obesity, his penis would remain small and no seminal glands would develop. He would not develop the normal male pattern of hair growth, but nor 109

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would he go bald. And however long he lay in the sun, he would never tan.

There are various explanations of exactly how and why castrati came into being. The most logical answer is that at that time women were forbidden to appear on stage, and female roles were taken by castrati. Another explanation is that the castrato embodies the trinity of male and female lust and childlike beauty. This view links to the Ancient Greek androgynous ideal: the uniting of the male and the female. The castrati were the pop stars of their age. If a castrato struck it rich, he could achieve an almost divine status. In Italy a successful castrato voice was called a
canaro elefante
, a canary’s voice in the body of an elephant.

The 1994 film
Farinelli
gives a romanticized picture of a famous castrato. The film’s subject is Carlo Broschi (1705–1782), stage name Farinelli, one of the most famous Italian castrati, who also played key-board instruments and occasionally composed and wrote lyrics. Broschi was castrated at about the age of seven. He was an exception to the rule that most castrati were of humble origin: his father was a nobleman and governor of Apulia. He was sent to a music school founded especially for castrati, where he developed his voice under the direction of Nicola Porpora. He became known in Southern Italy as
Il Ragazzo
(The Boy). In 1720 Farinelli sang in public for the first time, performing a piece by his mentor. Two years later he made his debut in Rome, where the audience was particularly enthusiastic about his ability to sustain notes of great purity. He toured all through Europe, and a Milanese critic wrote of him: ‘Farinelli had a piercing, full, rich, clear and well-modulated soprano voice, with a range from A below middle C to D three octaves above middle C. His intonation was pure, his breath-control exceptional and he had a very flexible throat, so that he could execute the longest intervals quickly and with the greatest of ease.’

In 1724 he visited London and appeared in
Artaserse
, a work for which his brother had written most of the music. The Prince of Wales and the whole court showered him with compliments and gifts. After three years in England, he left for Spain, stopping en route for a few months in France, where he sang for Louis xiv. His original intention was to spend only a few months in Spain, but it eventually became almost 25 years. The queen used Farinelli’s voice to cure her husband, Philip v, of his pathological melancholy. The singer became as powerful as any minister, but was wise enough to use that power very discreetly. For two decades Farinelli sang songs evening after evening for the depressed king. After the succession of Ferdinand v, Farinelli was appointed theatre director in Madrid and Aranjuez. In 1750 the 110

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Alessandro

Moreschi.

castrato was knighted, but when Charles iii ascended the throne Farinelli returned to Italy, where he spent the rest of his life.

The most sensational stories circulated about the sexual dissipation of castrati: they were sterile, but by no means always impotent. In addition they had a certain tenderness about them, an attractive combination for women in an age without contraceptives.

Sadly there is only one recording of a man castrated as a pre-adolescent: it dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, and the recording is probably not representative, since the singer, Alessandro Moreschi, was already advanced in years and was certainly not a top-flight singer.

Legal action against men without balls

The Church Father St Augustine (354–430) had already stated that in sexual relations there should always be the hope of fertilization. And in the past at least that was only possible with a stiff penis and normal testicles. ‘Go forth and multiply,’ as it says in Genesis. Well, impotent men were incapable of that and hence were violating the sacrament of marriage – it was as simple as that. From the thirteenth century onwards, following Augustine, ecclesiastical law considered it more or less a mortal sin if impotent and hence infertile men turned out to have entered into marriage. The same applied to eunuchs and herma -

phrodites and men with undescended testicles, who for that reason could be indicted by an ecclesiastical court.

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A public erection.

During the trial the defendants in any case had to prove that they possessed a normal sexual apparatus, and a jury composed of theologians, doctors and midwives had to assess it. From the trial proceedings it is clear that where necessary the jurors even spent the night at the defendant’s bedside in order to be able to judge any nocturnal erections occurring. The pompous rituals surrounding these trials indirectly confirmed the power of the Catholic Church. Originally there was a degree of discretion, but during the course of the sixteenth century the church authorities made the leap from mental to actual voyeurism. Not only was a demonstration of the erect member required, but its

‘elasticity and natural movement’ must be demonstrated. Sometimes the jury even demanded ‘a proof of ejaculation’. Naturally this was eventually no longer sufficient and the married couple had to make love in the presence of the jury, the so-called congress.

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The treatment of eunuchs and hermaphrodites also showed that for the church there was a taboo on pleasure. Though eunuchs could not ejaculate, some of them could manage a quite satisfactory erection, so that their wives were by no means always unsatisfied. But after 1587, irrespective of the wishes of the partners, these marriages had to be annulled by decree of Pope Sixtus v. This gruesome pope could not bear to think that these men should sleep in the same bed as their wives instead of living chastely together. He wrote about this in a letter to the papal nuncio in Spain, who was also bishop of Navarre. According to Sixtus, the eunuchs had consorted with women ‘with filthy lewd-ness’ and ‘impure enbraces’ and even presumed to have a right to marry. In the pope’s eyes the fact that the women knew of this ‘defect’

made the offence all the more grave. Sixtus was taking to its logical conclusion both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas’ view of procreation as the primal and true goal of marriage.

In Greek mythology Hermaphroditus was the son of the gods Hermes and Aphrodite. On one of his journeys the nymph Salmacis falls in love with him because of his great physical beauty. She tries to seduce him, but fails. When he goes for a swim in a cool lake, believing himself alone, Salmacis dives in after him, and embraces and kisses him. She prays to the gods that she may be united with him. Her prayer is answered, and they become one flesh.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries French society was caught up in a furious public debate on the differences between men and women. In his book
Damning the Innocent
the French historian Pierre Darmon states that there was a certain envy of the supposedly unbridled sex lives of deviants. From the sixteenth century onwards herma phrodites – who during the Middle Ages were sometimes burned alive and were regarded as children of Satan – received an apparently milder treatment. They were examined by doctors and midwives, who subsequently stated publicly which sex was applicable. In doubtful cases the person involved was allowed to choose for himself/herself, but then had to abide by that choice for the rest of his/her life. Leaving one’s sexual role open or occasionally switching identities, as the mood took one, as Marie/Marin le Marcis tried to do, was unforgiv-able fraud. This hermaphrodite chambermaid fell in love with a fellow maid, decided it was more useful to go through life as a man from then on and married her, with her full consent. To their astonishment the happy young pair were immediately detained, imprisoned and brought before the court. The experts unanimously accused them of fraud and, inevitably, sodomy and obscenity. ‘If one of the jury had not ventured to feel Marin’s private parts – and felt something masculine – the poor 113

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man would have been burnt alive and his wife flogged in the market place and afterwards banished.’ As it was things turned out differently: Marin was reprieved, but was condemned to live as a woman.

An angel with balls

In 1908 the avant-garde sculptor Jacob Epstein designed an angel for the tomb of Oscar Wilde in the cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris.

‘Homo sexuals, artists and writers are outcasts’ reads the verse inscription. Epstein’s angel was not placed on the grave without a fight. There was a great commotion among all involved about the dimensions of its testicles. They were unusually large, it was maintained in a meeting. However, that would not have been difficult, since according to the Judaeo-The grave of

Oscar Wilde.

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Christian norm, angels should not have any testicles at all, being sexless.

The sex of the angel was probably a homage to Oscar Wilde by Epstein.

Whatever the considerations of the moralizers of Père Lachaise may have been, a consensus soon emerged on what should be done with the angel: either castration or a chaste fig leaf. Pending a final decision it was hidden from view by a tarpaulin. Much later the angel, now once again on view naked and intact, became a place of pilgrimage for gays.

So many visitors gave the balls a quick stroke that they acquired a patina, their shiny surface standing out against the matt white sculpture. Until in 1963 things went wrong. Two British ladies, who had taken offence at the angel’s balls, hatched a plan. They paid the angel a second visit armed with hammer and chisel. Looking around furtively, they chipped the balls off. The action of the prim ladies had little to do with climbing up the hierarchy. A gardener found the angel’s testicles on the ground near the grave and took them to the superintendent, who found a use for them as paperweights.

Eunuchs in the twenty-first century

In the United States an estimated 40,000 men per year are chemically castrated as a treatment for metastasized prostate cancer. In many cases the growth of this type of cancer is dependent on testosterone, at least in the initial phase. In the Netherlands 7,000 new patients are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year. Until well into the 1980s the castration was performed surgically, which was certainly no joke for the patients involved. True, they were mostly older men, but even so

. . . Nowadays the procedure is carried out chemically, usually with prolonged-release depot injections in the abdominal wall. The injections consist of gonadorelins, or lh-rh analogues. lh-rh stands for luteinizing hormone-releasing hormone. These medicines act mainly on the brain (hypothalamus hypophysis). Examples include Suprefact 9.45 mg injection, Zoladex 10.8 mg injection, Lucrin 11.25 mg and Decapeptyl 3.75 mg.