Apart from Abelard, there was another case of castration recorded, of Mathias
Count of Nantes in 1103/4, apparently for adultery, according to a satirical
poem edited by Dronke in Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies (Glasglow
1976), reprinted in Dronke's Intellectuals and Poets, p 45 of the 1976 edition
(Ornavere due to quondam Gallia gemme... Invida sors summos privat genitalibus
ambi / Dispar causa pares vulnere fecit eos. / Consul adulterii damnatur
crimine iusto... This poem was later re-edited by Dronke and others in the
Archives d;histoire litteraire du moyen age 49 (1983). My sense is that
castration may not be a formal legal punishment, so much as a form of
deliberate ritual action making someone unclean, excluding them from the
community; I recall that it was still being done to slaves in the big markets
as at Verdun (?), but I don't know much of that or when the practice was
continued till.
Yours Constant Mews
Monash University, Australia
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