You are right: and thus it is that he is not, and never was, Saint
Origen. Even the ancient Church was (a lot of the time) quite good
at moderation...
Anselm Cramer OSB
Ampleforth Abbey
>Eusebius tells the story that Origen castrated himself in a fit of
>youthful zeal to overcome lust. However, my understanding was that
>voluntary castration was forbidden by the church, and castrated men were
>restricted from clerical positions (as was a concern with Abelard).
>(Reasons? One should control lust through an act of the will, resisting
>temptation? Or notions of the "whole man"?).
> Perhaps we need to make a distinction between: 1) stories,
>particularly literary motifs, of castration as punishment ("poetic
>justice") 2) actual accounts of castration (eg Origen, Abelard, slaves,
>etc) and 3) legal precedents of castration as a possible punishment for
>sexual sins (I have my doubts, given the church's attitude, but I will
>defer to Brundage's excellent work on the legal side of things). I
>suspect that 1) and 3) have less to do with each other than 1) and 2).
>That is, I don't think stories reflect legal conditions, but may reflect
>particular incidents, such as Abelard's notorious case.
> By the way, did Heloise's uncle castrate Abelard BECAUSE of common
>stories of such justice (ie, such stories circulated in France, and he
>was influenced by them to think it was an appropriate action to take).
>Or, did Abelard's case spur the outpouring of stories. Or both. Somewhat
>of a chicken-egg question, but it might be interesting to check the
>dates on your popular stories.
>
>Karen Jolly
>--
>Dr. Karen Jolly
>Associate Professor, History
>University of Hawai`i at Manoa
>[log in to unmask]
>http://www2.hawaii.edu/~kjolly
>
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