The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium William N. Bonds The Perfect Servant: Eunuchs and the Social Construction of Gender in Byzantium. By Katherine M. Ringrose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Pp. 312. $40.00 (cloth). For millennia eunuchs played prominent roles in important Eurasian empires, among them Achaemenid Persia, Ming China, Ottoman Turkey, and, the subject of Katherine M. Ringrose's recent and admirable book, medieval Byzantium. Why they did so is a question that has long eluded a satisfactory answer. While providing such an answer is not the ostensible goal of Ringrose's book, her thorough and subtle examination of Byzantine perceptions of eunuchs between the sixth and twelfth centuries C.E. sheds much light upon the question. For those interested in the topic, The Perfect Servant is now the book to consult. Following a lengthy introduction devoted to defining and contextualizing ideas about both gender and eunuchs in Byzantium—a complex and difficult matter—are the nine chapters that comprise the core of The Perfect Servant. These are grouped into two parts: "Gender as a Social Construct" and "Becoming Protagonists." The four chapters in part 1 discuss the language employed by Byzantines to represent eunuchs, the concepts of gender and of eunuchs that appeared in the available medical literature, the intellectual acculturation of eunuchs, and the ways that both the literature and the events of the past came to be interpreted in light of the undeniable presence of eunuchs in society. From her careful analysis of a wide range of texts, Ringrose concludes that by the period of her study the inhabitants of Byzantium had come to regard eunuchs as a distinct or third gender: their castration deprived [End Page 344] them of full masculine status without making them feminine. Freed from reproduction and family obligations, reared in a specialized environment, and with their distinctive physiology and appearance, eunuchs could become altruistic aids, counselors, and mediators for a wide range of employers. They could be "perfect servants" (5–7). "Eunuchs," she proposes, "represented a very special 'other.' They were 'unnatural' (in the sense that they were artificially, culturally created); they existed outside of what was perceived to be the natural order of the biological world. . . . Because of their special gender status, [they] were associated with preternatural realms. This made them fascinating, dangerous, and desirable in ways that are hard for the modern reader to grasp" (83). Three of the five chapters in part 2 consider the role as well as the perceptions of eunuchs in the institutional and spiritual life of the church (chapter 5), in civilian and military commands (chapter 6), and in the imperial palace (chapter 8). Although the church routinely condemned castration and had long questioned the spirituality of eunuchs, whose celibacy was not voluntary, by the tenth century eunuchs served as bishops and patriarchs, held important posts in monasteries, and were even portrayed as saints. Among the patriarchs who exerted considerable influence on the church and orthodoxy, notably in the conflict over icons, were the eunuchs Germanos (r. 715–30), Niketas (r. 766–80), and Ignatios (r. 843–48 and 867–78); among holy men were the eunuchs Saint Symeon the Sanctified (ca. 1080), who was instrumental in restoring the monastery of Xenophon on Mount Athos, and Saint Nikephoros Patrikios (d. 856), who helped heal men "tormented by sexual desires" (124). While the military services expected their commanders to be completely masculine, some eunuchs did move from staff to command positions and distinguished themselves as generals and admirals. In the late fourth century Eutropios led an army against the Huns, and in the sixth Narses, "a manikin who lived effeminately in the bedchamber" (Agathias 1.7), commanded the troops that surprised and defeated the Ostrogoths in Italy. In the ninth century the eunuch Theoktistos led a naval expedition against the Arabs in Crete. In the tenth the eunuch Theophanes commanded a fleet that burned Russian ships attempting to assault Constantinople, and Peter Phocas, who "overturned everyone's expectations" (Leo the Deacon, 106–7), thwarted a Russian land invasion by killing the enemy general in single combat. It was in the imperial palace that eunuchs played...