Eunuch - Non-castrated Eunuchs

Non-castrated Eunuchs

According to Byzantine historian Kathryn Ringrose, while the pagans of Classical Antiquity based their notions of gender in general and eunuchs in particular on physiology (the genitalia), the Byzantine Christians based them on behaviour and more specifically procreation. Hence, by Late Antiquity the term "eunuch" had come to be applied to not only castrated men, but also a wide range of men with comparable behavior, who had "chosen to withdraw from worldly activities and thus refused to procreate". The broad sense of the term "eunuch" is reflected in the compendium of Roman law created by Justinian I in the 6th century known as the Digest or Pandects. That text distinguishes between two types of eunuchs – spadones (a general term denoting "one who has no generative power, an impotent person, whether by nature or by castration", D 50.16.128) and castrati (castrated males, physically incapable of procreation). In this historical text, Spadones are eligible to marry women (D 23.3.39.1), institute posthumous heirs (D 28.2.6), and adopt children (Institutions of Justinian 1.11.9), unless they are castrati.

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