The question of Origen’s castration can be canvassed in accordance with a unique testimony provided by Origen himself in one of the last commentaries, namely, the commentary on Matthew. Let us then follow him in his self-criticism apropos of commenting on Matthew, 19:12. The scriptural pericope refers to three kinds of eunuchs: one, those who were born so from their mother’s womb, that is, congenitally; two, those castrated by other humans; three, those who castrated themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.
Origen explains that there are ‘certain ones’ (τινὲς μὲν γάρ) who understood the first two categories of eunuchs literally; consequently, they assumed that the Gospel means the third kind of eunuchs in a literal sense, too. Hence, ‘they took the bold step of submitting themselves to castration, since they thought that the third kind of castration should be interpreted analogously with the first two ones, that is, literally’. This they did ‘out of fear of God’, yet ‘unadvisedly’. As a result, they incurred ‘shame and reproach, not only by those who were outside the faith, but also by those who sympathise with common situations of life rather than with him who acted so being under the impression that he did so out of fear of God or of immeasurable love for chastity; therefore, he caused pain to himself ←365 | 366→and mutilation of his own body, and everything that one who entangles himself in such a kind of action suffers’.1
This is the point for some things to be said regarding the tragic harrowing experience of a man who argued staunchly for allegory and made much of the scriptural caveat ‘the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life’;2 a man whose recurrent expression ϰατὰ λέξιν (‘according to the literal sense’) was tantamount to caveat not to miss the secret treasures concealed behind the literal narrative.3
Regarding authors before him who had applied allegory, in addition to Philo,4 he probably had in mind the Stoics Cleanthes and Chrysippus,5 the philosopher and Homeric commentator Heraclitus (probably, first century AD),6 Longinus,7 his contemporary Cassius Longinus,8 and Plutarch.9 Of his Christian forebears, he would have had in mind Irenaeus, who entertained the idea that the Old Testament proclaimed Christ ‘in parables and allegories’,10 Hippolytus,11 Clement of Alexandria,12 even the apologist Tatian, who had disputed the right of Greeks to entertain allegory upon the tales of their gods.13←366 | 367→
As surprising as it might appear, on the one hand, Origen’s name is considered as almost synonymous with ‘allegorical interpretation’, while, on the other, he was accused of excessive literalism.14 Normally, his recurrent expressions are ϰατὰ τὴν λέξιν (or, ϰατὰ λέξιν ‘according to the literal sense’), or ϰατὰ τὴν ἱστορίαν (‘according to the literal narrative’), or ϰατὰ τὸ γράμμα (‘literally’), or πρόχειρος (or προχειροτέρα) ἐϰδοχὴ (‘the apparent literal sense’), or πρόχειρος λέξις (‘the superficial meaning’), or ψιλὴ ἱστορία (‘the prosaic surface’ of a narrative that conceals the mystery involved in a proposition), all of which introduced a caveat against arid literalism upon reading the Scripture.15 Besides, he took seriously biblical turns of phrase, such as Proverbs, 1:6, which assured that it is for ‘the wise to comprehend God’s dark word’ (σϰοτεινὸν λόγον)’, as well as ‘the riddles and sayings of the wise’,16 or Psalm 17:12 (‘He established darkness as His own hiding-place’),17 and certainly 1 Cor. 2:7 (‘we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the wisdom that has been hidden’).18
When Origen endorsed Ecclesiasticus, 16:21 (‘for their most part, His [sc. God’s] works are concealed’),19 he knew of course that the Greeks had averred that the empirical phenomena, which by general consensus constitute ‘reality’, are not reality itself. Instead, these are only mere manifestations of a deeper and more fundamental reality – on which never any general consensus has been achieved whatsoever. Thus, the biblical proposition ‘most of God’s works are concealed’, was one more instance that virtually was at one with the Greek wisdom, which ←367 | 368→had asserted that ‘phenomena are only the external manifestation of those [things] which are not manifest’ (ὄψις ἀδήλων τὰ ϕαινόμενα).20
However, he always saw ‘the letter’ as the terrain for the interpreter to strive for discovering the truth concealed therein: he did not at all discount literal reading of the text (ϰατὰ λέξιν); indeed it was the great store he set by ‘the letter’ that oftentimes stirred him to seek parallel or supplementary supportive points in scripture.
Eustathius of Antioch, no more than a 100 years after Origen’s death, at several points used the term τροπολογία (‘tropolgy’) in an otherwise caustic essay against him.21 In that text, virulent attacks against Origen abound, reproving him for excessive literalism because he had refrained from entertaining the allegorical method in order to accommodate the ‘witch of Endor’ episode, as in 1 Samuel 28 (1 Kings 28). As a matter of fact, at that point, Origen had remained faithful to the letter of scripture. However, the text of Eustathius is surprising not for the author’s theses, but for the obnoxious expressions against Origen personally. It seems that this odium flowed not so much from the latter’s particular exegesis, but from his theory of Father, Son and Holy Spirit being different and distinct hypostases. To such a Monarchian representative of the Asian tradition as Eustathius, this was too vexatious to swallow, although (owing to the political circumstances of the day) he was unable to voice his views because of the danger of being inculpated as a heretic.22
There are countless instances pointed out by Origen as inexorably compelling allegory. Let me cite just one of them. The text of Ezekiel 29:3, reads thus: Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of his streams, that says, ‘My Nile is my own; I made it for myself.’ The question that Origen posed was, ‘But when was it that a physical dragon was reported to have been seen in the actual river of Egypt?’ The logic of this is exactly the same as the exegesis of Homer’s poems by Porphyry, and then by Michael Psellus, who followed Porphyry in stride: the ‘cave of Nymphs’23 at Ithaca should be interpreted allegorically as indicating souls which descend to generation. Psellus wrote that this was an allegorical exegesis of Homer ‘according to the Greek beliefs’ (ϰατὰ τὰς ‘Eλληνιϰὰς δόξας). In fact, he copied from Porphyry without naming ←368 | 369→him, yet endorsing his explanation.24 What is remarkable about this comment is that Psellus conveniently employed the figure of body being ‘the garment of the soul’ expressed in biblical terms. The importance of Porphyry’s reference is that it is couched in the terms of Genesis, although he maintained a Platonic view, which was contrary to Origen’s one. In any case, this formula made an impact on Proclus.25
This is why Origen resolved that the text of Ezekiel calls for another exegesis: “But we should consider whether the river of Egypt, which could not even kill Moses when he was a little child, stands for the region of our enemy, the dragon.”26 To him, concerning particular points, false assumptions (ψευδοδοξιῶν) arise only because ‘Scripture has been interpreted literally, whereas its spiritual meaning is missed (ϰατὰ τὰ πνευματιϰὰ μὴ νενοημένη).’27 His general view was that the Jews did not believe in Jesus Christ exactly because they did not see the spiritual sense of the Scripture that is concealed behind the letter.28 Nevertheless, the literal narrative is not dismissed, since even ‘the narrative of historical events is highly beneficial’ (Kαὶ ἡ ϰατ’ αἴσϑησιν τῶν πραγμάτων ἱστορία μεγάλης ὠϕελείας πεπλήρωται).29
This concern for real facts stimulated him to visit places recorded here and there in the stories, following ‘the footprints of Jesus and of his disciples and of the prophets’ in order to investigate and confirm the ‘literal historical account’ ←369 | 370→(ἐπὶ ἱστορίαν).30 It was this concern for the ‘letter’ that impelled him to consult with different editions of particular scriptural texts,31 and with different versions of the Old Testament.32 Perhaps, it was this assiduity and adhesion to the historical reality of ‘things’ that instigated occasional onslaught on Origen for literalism.33
To Origen, allegory is called for, particularly whenever one comes across discrepancies and impossibilities of the text. However, never did he license discovery of a spiritual meaning at the expense of the real historicity of events – and certainly, he never disputed the historicity of the milestones of biblical narrative. Going out of Egypt, passing through the Red Sea, living in the desert, and finally reaching the Land of Promise, are themes treated as real historical events, which nonetheless are considered also as loaded with deeper spiritual significance. Accordingly, the allegories identifying ‘Egypt’ and ‘Pharaoh’ with evil domain, ‘desert’ with exigencies of life, the ‘Land of Promise’ with the eschatological expectation, and so on, are not simply theories in a Platonic vein, such as those of Philo’s. Instead, he makes both the narrative and its spiritual meaning a real part of everyone’s life. The struggle, progress, and setbacks, are conditions to be experienced by the faithful during their lifetime. Allegorical exegesis is a support for everyone, so that one does not lose courage, faith, and hope. These are patterns for Christian life to be experienced as real history, in real history, in any historical age.34 The ‘thousands of other facts’,35 which are asserted as undisputedly historical, are all the events of the Bible. What he normally disputed was precepts and laws taken to the letter by the Jews. This is the only sense in which ‘all of scripture has a spiritual meaning, but not all of it has a bodily [i.e. literal] meaning.’36
Origen devoted himself to the disclosure of the truth deposited in the Bible. This was not mere intellectual exercise: instead, it was for the sake of history ←370 | 371→unto salvation that he sought to find the ‘mind of Christ’.37 To this purpose, he buttressed up his exegetical conjectures by means of ample cross-reference to biblical testimony. He always remained faithful to the Bible. In order to sustain allegorical interpretation, he appealed not only to Paul’s statement in Gal. 4:24 (rebuking the Galatians for failing to perceive the mystical meaning behind the narration about Abraham and his sons),38 but also to other words of Paul, such as ‘we have this treasure in earthen vessels’,39 and his consideration of the Deuteronomic precept, ‘Thou shall not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn’, making this point: ‘Is it for the oxen that God cares or said He this entirely for our sake? Indeed it was written for out sake.’40 Following Paul’s allegorical leaning, the idea that Origen took for granted and entertained copiously was that the rock from which the Israelites drew their water in time of need was both a real event and a foreshadow of Christ.41
Origen elicited the meaning of history from facts, not just from a narrative. He did not divest History from its content, since such a History could be a body without life. Had truth not appeared by means of facts, the spiritual meaning could be compromised by evaporation into vapid mysticism. Had he deprecated the real historical occurrences of the Bible, his proclamation of a deeper spiritual import could lose all of its ground and real onset. Kings, battles, devastation, births, deaths, successions, and marriages – all of them bespeak higher truths concealed behind the letter.
All the narrative portions of scripture, which seem to deal with marriages or the begetting of children or battles of various kinds, … must surely be regarded as nothing other than the forms and figures of hidden and sacred things.42
On no account does grasping of this meaning presuppose abolition (far less, demolition) of historicity of real events.43 Allegory did not part ways with reality or with the need to elevate everyday praxis to a higher noble level. This is why he did not dismiss allegorical explanation also of Greek myths and poems (ϕιλοσόϕως ἀϰούειν ποιημάτων) and declared himself proud of having made ←371 | 372→their explanation part of his tutorship of his own students (τοῦτο ποιοῦντες οὐϰ αἰσχυνόμεϑα ὁμολογεῖν τὸ πραττόμενον), which ultimately aimed at showing that such poems and myths were only early vestiges of the perfect truth already taught by the prophets and then by Jesus.44
Against this intellectual attitude and practice, part of Origen’s modern predicament has been that his exegetical methodology fell prey to certain religious proclivities. For example, some scholars were allergic to Origen’s use of allegory, which they took as only dismissal of History.45 There are exceptions, of course: John David Dawson made a penetrative and equanimous analysis showing that Origen only respected the Jewish background of Christianity while pointing out its independence from that. Taking his cue from Philo, he argued that allegorical reading is not a detriment to the literal meaning of scriptural narrative, which Origen took seriously and investigated more than anyone else.46
Why was it that Origen committed such an act upon himself? He leaves no doubt that the reason was liberation from the fire of lustful desires and thoughts that distracted him from his self-imposed purpose. It turns out, nevertheless, that this prince of allegory ostensibly ‘misinterpreted’ the scriptural precept, but in reality he sought justification of his act in authors who spoke generally about castration as a means for liberation from besieging lust. In reality, only in the second place was he cued in from the pericope of Matthew, 19:18.
He refers to two authors ‘who lived before us’ (οἱ πρὸ ἡμῶν), who ‘by their books’ became the cause for ‘certain ones’ to take Matthew’s 19:12 ‘third castration’ literally.47
Whenever Origen used this expression about antecedent intellectuals (οἱ πρὸ ἡμῶν), he normally mentioned no names.48 An exception is his reference ←372 | 373→to Pantaenus49, as well as the present instance, in which he refers to those who provided ‘certain ones’ (τινάς, i.e. Origen himself) with the excuse to perpetrate self-castration, namely, Sextus and Philo.
1.Sextus (possibly, second – third century AD). He was the author of a book entitled Gnomes, a set of terse and pithy aphorisms, which point to a Christian writer. The book of Sextus was pretty popular among Christians and was translated in Latin by Rufinus, although the fire-breathing Jerome attacked Sextus, styling him a ‘Pythagorean’ and ‘idolater’. A careful reading of Origen extant works shows that he made recurrent use of that work. In the present instance, he quotes two propositions of Sextus: One, “Dispose of any member of your body that impels you not to exercise chastity. For it is better to live without that member in self-control than having that member and being ruined”.50
‘Further in the same work’, Origen goes on, ‘he induces towards the same act’ (i.e. committing self-castration) by saying this:
You can see people who have cut and cast away members of their body in order to maintain the rest of it sound. How better would this be if [one did so] for the sake of chastity?51
It should be observed that Origen quoted from Sextus also at other points of his work, although he did not always cite his source.52←373 | 374→
2.Philo. He was the second author who instigated Origen to commit self-castration. He praises Philo as an intellectual, many commentaries of whom interpreted successfully Moses’ Law and are highly esteemed by sagacious men (εὐδοϰιμῶν ϰαὶ παρὰ συνετοῖς ἀνδράσι). The particular work of Philo which he cites (On that the Worse likes to attack the Better, Περὶ τοῦ τὸ χεῖρον τῷ ϰρείττονι ϕιλεῖν ἐπιτίϑεσϑαι) contains this:
It is better to castrate oneself rather than deliriously desire delinquent sexual intercourse.53
Origen’s conclusion (but, sadly, after he had followed that advise) is that ‘one should not believe them, since they had not grasped the real meaning of the divine scriptures’ (’Aλλ’ οὐ πιστευτέον αὐτοῖς μὴ τὸ βούλημα τῶν ἱερῶν γραμμάτων περὶ τούτων ἐξειληϕόσιν).54
Subsequently, he goes ahead with gainsaying both Sextus and Philo on that score:
For if the fruits of the Spirit55 include temperance along with love and joy, and forbearance, and the rest, it is better to bear the fruit of temperance and to maintain the body that has been given by God masculine, rather than venture on anything other than this, which would be a breach of the saying, which beneficially teaches this: You shall not mar the look of your beard (οὐ ϕϑερεῖς τὴν ὄψιν τοῦ πώγωνός σου).56 … This is useful in order to dissuade those who are ardently prone [to committing self-castration] yet they are inchoate in faith. Concerning them, we should grant that they yearn for chastity, but not according to knowledge.57
Then, he sets forth a pericope from the Deuteronomy:
When men strive together with one another, a man with his brother, and the wife of one of them should advance to rescue her husband out of the hand of him that smites him, and she should stretch forth her hand, and take hold of his private parts, then you shall cut off her hand, your eye shall not spare her.58
The conclusion out of this is plain:
If a hand that lays hold of the testicles of a man is cut, how could the same not happen to one who engaged in a situation of the same kind, because of ignorance of the way that leads to chastity?59
This point is illuminating, since such an argumentation was anything but like Origen; rather, it was a sophism (but Origen detested casuistry and loathed the Sophists, anyway60) betokening how anxious he was to avert his readers from committing such an act. Actually, at no other point of Origen’s work have I seen such a feeble argumentation and reasoning so unlike Origen. For when he quoted Deuteronomy, 25:11–12, he was perfectly aware that Philo (while sticking to his penchant for allegory) had made a detailed analysis dismissing any literal understanding of that biblical stipulation,61 as indeed Origen himself did with the exegesis Matt. 10:34 (‘I did not come to bring about peace, but a knife’): he explained, ‘Although literally he spoke of knife, he meant not the nature of that thing itself, but human disposition (τὴν ἀνϑρωπίνην προαίρεσιν)’.62
Naturally then, he has made a symbolical distinction concerning the hand which has taken hold of testicles: he does not suggest that the body should be mutilated, so that it would be deprived of a most indispensable part of it; instead, he [said so] for the purpose of exscinding all of the godless thoughts, which take their cue from all those [genitals] that relate to generation. For ‘testicles’ (δίδυμοι, literally, ‘twin’ i.e. ‘duo’) are a symbol of seed-sowing and ←375 | 376→generation. For I will say this by following the laws of Nature: whereas any monad is a representation of the First Cause, a dyad is an image of the passive and divisible matter. Therefore, whosoever would honour and hallow any dyad by giving it precedence over a monad, he should know that he venerates matter rather than God.63
When Origen wrote the commentary on Matthew (which he did a long time after he had written the treatise against Celsus),64 he already had lived at least two decades at Tyre, after having decamped from a two-year sojourn at Caesarea of Palestine.65 His memories from his native city of Alexandria were too remote to recall, unless those were too striking ones to forget. By all accounts, therefore, it could have been extremely unlikely that Origen could have cast his mind back to a rather insignificant event recorded by Justin Martyr (c. 100–c. 165) in his First Apology to the Roman emperor (from 138 to 161), Antoninus: a certain Christian (τὶς τῶν ἡμετέρων) had handed over a booklet to Felix, the governor of Alexandria, asking for permission to allow a certain medical doctor to cut off that Christian’s testicles (τοὺς διδύμους αὐτοῦ ἀϕελεῖν), because the doctor said that he could not do that without the governor’s permission (a permission that Felix eventually did not grant). This should have happened more than 110 years before the time when Origen wrote his commentary.
Justin wrote this upon informing the emperor that Christians practiced continence; he adduced the case of ‘booklet’ written by that Christian as an extreme example of zealotry, not because Justin advocated self-mutilation, but only because that Christian wrote his booklet in order ‘to convince you [sc. the ruling Romans] that, among us, there is no such a rite as licentious sexual intercourse’ (ὑπὲρ τοῦ πεῖσαι ὑμᾶς ὅτι οὐϰ ἔστιν ἡμῖν μυστήριον ἡ ἀνέδην μίξις, βιβλίδιον ἀνέδωϰεν).66 This booklet written by an insignificant zealot was not meant for publication: it was handed to the governor, just as an effort to dispel the countless ←376 | 377→slanders against the Christians that circulated among pagans at those times. It seems to me too far-fetched to argue in order to defend what is untenable, namely, that Origen could have written (in manifest anxiety) this section in his commentary on Matthew only because he was apprehensive lest the Christians of Tyre could be swayed by a ‘booklet’ handed over to the governor of Alexandria more than a century ago.
Besides, I am not sure that Origen did ever care to read Justin’s work, anyway. Actually, he made little reference to Christian predecessors, and that was when he castigated Melito of Sardis, ‘who bequeathed treatises maintaining that God is corporeal’,67 or Tatian, who ‘most impiously’ interpreted the ‘Let there be’ (γεννηϑήτω) of Genesis as suggesting a petition of God to the Son rather than a command.68 Instead, he mentioned and cited ‘Clement of Rome’ a few times, whereas at the points where influences by Clement of Alexandria can be noticed, Clement’s name is not mentioned, although reportedly he had been Origen’s teacher.69
Why is that so? Because Origen wrote having determined that, by his time, there was no established systematised corpus of doctrine, and it was his vocation to carry out this task, so as both to instruct the flock and rebut various slanders by the heathen. This is why he felt it incumbent upon him to ‘expound a clear and unmistakeable rule of faith’ (regulam)70 and compose a single body (unum corpus) of doctrine71 (i.e. De Principiis itself). Nevertheless, in the same work, he had no problem with placidly declaring that ‘the Greeks are men of wisdom and of no negligible knowledgeability’ (Graecos et ipsos sapientes et non parvae eruditionis homines).72←377 | 378→
This section of the commentary on Matthew is in fact an agonising effort by Origen to avert anyone who might consider committing self-castration because of seeing this act as one of piousness. His reasoning is simply exposition of his own experience.
Therefore, anyone who plans to dare commit such an action should consider what he is going to suffer by those who upbraid him by adducing the saying, He that is fractured or mutilated in his private parts shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord,73 since he will be counted among those who have mutilated their own masculinity (συναριϑμούντων αὐτὸν τοῖς ἀποϰεϰομμένοις τὸν ἄνδρα).
And I have not at all spoken of what one is going to suffer once the semen that goes from one’s head down to his masculine parts is untimely obstructed, as medical doctors74 say. For as these [sperms] go down, they pass through some veins that run around the cheeks, wherefore the natural heat [of the blood] causes hair to grow in the part [of the face that is covered by] the beard.75 But ←378 | 379→those who believe that they should physically castrate themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heavens are deprived of this hair. Furthermore, what else would those people suffer other than headaches or vertigo, which sometimes affect the principal part of the soul [τὸ ἡγεμονιϰόν] and disconcert [those men’s] formation of mental images,76 since that material [of the semen] instigates weird images?77
It would take irredeemable nescience of Greek literature, as well as of Origen’s texts, in order to argue that what he describes here is anything other than his personal dire and sore experience, and his assessment of the physical, psychological, and ethical implications of self-castration.78 It is characteristic that the Latin translation eschewed all of this personal confession in the commentary of Matthew altogether. It is also characteristic that some modern scholars dispute one of his very few points on which he spoke of himself, namely, that Origen castrated himself (which was confirmed by Epiphanius, too).79 All possible and impossible alternatives have been urged – from Eusebius allegedly having mistaken castration for circumcision80 to Origen having never done anything of the sort.←379 | 380→
On this, it would be argued that, while the conjecture that Origen merely circumcised himself is unsupported by ancient evidence, it cannot be dismissed on the grounds that, in other texts, Origen deprecates the performance of this act by Christians; otherwise, the same reasoning would prove that he never castrated himself.
To this, my reply would go as follows. In Origen’s theological considerations, the analyses of either ‘circumcision’ or ‘castration’ have a sheerly different tenor. The former (περιτομή), being a Jewish sacramental ritual, plays a significant role in the New Testament, all the more so since Paul sought to demonstrate that ‘the letter’ of the Old Testament now should be understood in its ‘spiritual’ sense, at a time when the question that had been raised was whether Gentile converts needed to be circumcised. Naturally, Origen staunchly defended the ‘spiritual’ sense81 of circumcision (‘which began with Abraham’82), also because he sought to secure the typological character of the Jewish one,83 which he took pains to distinguish from the peoples who also practiced this, such as the ‘Egyptians, Colchians, who did so prior the Jews’, Ismaelite Arabs,84 and Samaritans.’85 Moreover, he appealed to Herodotus, who had reported that this was practiced by ‘the Indians, Egyptians, Arabs, and the Syrians of Palestine’.86
However, the difference of Origen’s style and mood in this section of the commentary should not elude us: whereas his disparagement of circumcision had an evidently ‘intellectual’ tenor, his argument seeking to avert from castration is demonstrably loaded with anxiety and apprehension to convince and dissuade – not to mention his references to the ‘physical’ consequences of such an act, which he describes in unusually minute details, as a sort of personal experience.←380 | 381→
Perhaps, one could like to thrash out an argument such as this: was it not Jesus who said the following words?
If your right eye entices you to temptation, pluck it out and throw it away from you. For it is profitable for you that one of your members should perish, than for your whole body to be cast into Gehenna.87
Could it not have sufficed for Origen to do what he did, so as to get rid of the temptations of the flesh? As a matter of fact, it was Origen himself who gave an anticipatory answer to this, arguing that those words, along with other ones, were demonstrably impossible to take literally:
And it is impossible to accept the precept from the Gospel about the ‘right eye that entices to temptation’. For granting the possibility of a person being ‘enticed to temptation’ through his sense of sight, how can the blame be put on the right eye only, given that there are two eyes that see? And what man, even supposing he accuses himself of ‘looking on a woman to lust after her’ and puts the blame on his right eye alone, would act rationally if he were to cast his eye away?88
Origen wrote this in a section designed to show what it means to abide by ‘the letter that kills’,89 and quoted also other passages from the Scripture, too. What is indeed stunning and illuminating is that Origen repeated the same argument (and quoted the same scriptural passages, of which he had claimed also in De Principiis, IV.3, that it is impossible to take it literally) in his commentary on Matthew,90 that is, several decades later. In this case, all of this served as a preamble introducing to his penitent self-criticism because he too took literally ‘the letter that kills’ and committed self-castration of which he speaks contritely forthwith.91
It should be noted that no ancient source did ever dispute that self-castration is what Origen committed: there was only variation, due to uncertainty as to whether that act was performed by means a certain drug or it was self-mutilation. ←381 | 382→However, when ancient authors mentioned this, they did not dispute with each other: they only expressed their uncertainty on how that act was carried out, not if this was carried out at all. In modern times, disagreement arose only because of the point at which Origen wrote (when he was an old man) about his own experience that took place when he was young, in a clearly conscience-stricken mood, almost reproaching himself for this ‘pious but unwise act’, and urging others not to do so. It was this old man’s urging that has been taken as banning castration, which though Origen had performed long ago, and now as a preacher dolefully (almost anxiously) sought to prevent others from imitating that ‘unwise’ act of his. In fact, he wrote of his self-mutilation in rueful honesty, suggesting that this tore him inside out and turned his penchant for allegory upside down. It was one of the rare cases that contrary attributes inhabiting the same person appear as a logical antithesis – and yet, to the person who experiences this, it is a state of the soul which is only too real all the same.
Upon recalling the dramatic exigencies of that awful event, it appears as though deep down he felt that Sextus and Philo with their propositions somehow had engineered his own indulging in self-castration. However, unlike Augustine, who spoke in dramatic personal tones about himself and his earlier lapses, it was a noble tradition of the Eastern fathers not to be prone to speaking personally: even whenever they felt they should make references of personal character, they frequently spoke in third person. Origen is one of the many examples of such a style practice.92 Actually, he did not need his Greek background in order to do so, since paradigms from the New Testament were in front of him: in John’s gospel, he read, ‘And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true’,93 and none of those who considered this pericope did ever doubt that John was speaking of himself. Likewise, Paul refrained from speaking in first person when he related the most profound of his experiences:
I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago (whether in the body, I don’t know, or whether out of the body, I don’t know; God knows), such an one caught up ←382 | 383→into the third heaven. I know such a man (whether in the body, or outside of the body, I don’t know; God knows), how he was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.94
Origen’s interaction with words is stupendous since he knew that words have a certain force – some of them have a particularly great force, which allows them to operate on their own account: it is as if he provided his personal inspiration following his experience of divine revelations granted upon him, and then the words themselves begin to have a will of their own, recognising and rendering specific instances of his experience. Accordingly, at points, it appears as though the words assert their own power, and Origen is just allowing them to do so. This is like the case of a film or stage director: overwhelmed as he is by the power of two great actors, he suspends himself from directing and yields to giving them the right-of-way and allows actors to unfold the power of their own talent. By the same token, once the words have their own power, the writer is no longer entirely in charge: he allows his instinct to let them move to a certain direction, while trusting that this is the direction he himself wished to go in the first place.
Origen’s numerous references to ‘mysterious’ truths, which nonetheless could be grasped (if not merely by means of cerebration alone), means that the instinct sometimes is better and truer and more trustworthy than any kind of intellectual calculation or design. He had the sense that he wrote as a member of the Church. He was an individual, but he wanted to be the voice of the Church, not an individual. This is like the Gregorian chant, where there is not the slightest spirit of egoism expressed as soloing: everyone is part of the group, and there is a total absence of ego.
Anyway, those who would like to believe that Origen cared to set about writing such a poignantly elaborate physiological and psychological depiction of what a demasculinised man would experience only in order to describe the feelings of others, not of himself, let them maintain their belief.
It is important to notice how he starts his phrase: “Before I come to the exegesis of this part of Matthew’s gospel (πρὶν δὲ ἔλϑω ἐπὶ τὴν διήγησιν τῶν ϰατὰ τὸν τόπον).” In other words, everything he has said up to this point is only an excursive personal confession aiming at dissuading aspirant zealots and forfend imitation of his act. He does not consider this personal confession as an essential part of his scriptural commentary.←383 | 384→
Origen refers to Marcion, ‘if indeed he did something similar to himself’, that is, if the report that he castrated himself only because he rejected any allegorical interpretations of scripture is true (εἴπερ τι ἀϰόλουϑον ἑαυτῷ ὁ Mαρϰίων πεποίηϰε ϕάσϰων μὴ δεῖν ἀλληγορεῖν τὴν γραϕήν).95 This is a unique testimony to Marcion having castrated himself because he took Matthew’s pericope about self imposed eunuchism literally, which Origen makes clear that he knew from hearsay. Although Tertullian made an ambiguous remark ridiculing Marcion for his ban on marriage and his admiration for physical eunuchs, he made no explicit statement that Marcion himself was a eunuch. He only asked this question:
Who indeed will be called continent, if that be taken away which gives him the opportunity of pursuing a life of continence? What room for temperance in appetite does famine give? What repudiation of ambitious projects does poverty afford? What bridling of lust does a eunuch merit?96
In other words, could anyone possibly be called abstinent once deprived of that which he is bid to abstain from? Following Origen’s testimony, it can now be confirmed that Tertullian’s question was in fact a rhetorical one: Marcion himself was a eunuch, who had committed self-castration.
In the first place, Marcion argued that (like all scripture) Matthew 19:12 should be taken literally, hence, he committed self-castration. Subsequently, however (obviously because he had the physical experience that Origen described), he saw the folly of his act, and urged that these words were not actually pronounced by Jesus. Therefore, he asserted that this part of the Gospel should be dismissed.Marcion’s point was that either one has to accept that these words were said by Jesus, which should result in committing self-castration, or one should believe that Jesus never said these words, which can only denigrate the divine teaching, given that allegory is banished.97
Does Origen’s reference imply that Marcion had castrated himself? To me, this all too evident, all the more so since Tertullian implied this, too. However, should any doubt about this remained, there is also another source that could be adduced, so anyone who doubts Marcions’ act should not have to rely only on Origen’s and Tertullian’s insinuations. For indeed there were people who ←384 | 385→were not prepared to allow for the memory of such acts to fade. One of them was Theophylact of Achris (c. 1055 – died after 1107; discussed in length below). Whereas he mentioned eunuchs that had been illustrious people and held high offices in the Church, it did not elude him that eunuchs were also infamous because of such men as Simon Magus, Marcion, and Manes.
And let us allow that, by that time, eunuchism was prohibited, since the circumstances called for the apostles to command that because of the cursed Simon, and for the later fathers also to do so because, during their times, the hangovers from Marcion and Manes still existed and cutting-up the testicles (ἡ τῶν διδύμων ἐξαίρεσις98) appeared to bolster their own doctrines, and perhaps the [doctrines] of more people, who made use of the teaching of those men, wherefore the wretched ones calumniated marriage, branding this evil and lying down the doctrine that this stemmed from the Evil one.99
An excellent rhetor as Theophylact was, he had set forth his forethought right from the start.
And if some of the laws and rules deter from cutting-up the testicles, you should ferret out the intent of the precepts, and consider the times when those laws were decreed, and, in general, take into account all of the circumstances, whereby one would remain faithful to the laws of rhetoric.100
I think, therefore, that those testimonies should leave no doubt that Marcion was remembered by posterity also as one who had castrated himself.
Following his introductory remarks, Origen comes to the point, which is simply an allegorical interpretation of all three kinds of castration described in Matthew’s pericope. First, there are those who by nature are not inclined to sexual activity. Secondly, those who refrain from ‘sexual activity’ (τῶν ἀϕροδισίων ἀποχήν), only because either they follow the philosophical teaching promulgated by certain Greek philosophical sects, or they act in accordance with specific ‘heresies’ (which is a reference to Marcion, this time an implicit one). The third kind (i.e. self-castration) bespeaks those who choose to mortify their own passions out of their own free will.←385 | 386→
In order to undergird his allegorical interpretation against ‘those who think that the words of that point should be taken literally’ (ϰαὶ οὐχ ὡς οἴονται οἱ σωματιϰῶς τὰ ϰατὰ τὸν τόπον ἐξειληϕότες), Origen appeals to certain scriptural instances, which show that, along with those who are ‘barren in respect of any good thing’ (ἄγονοι παντὸς ϰαλοῦ), there are also those who are ‘eunuchs in respect of doing any bad thing’ (ἄγονοι παντὸς ϰαϰοῦ).101 However, he goes on with an additional statement:
One should know that it is also possible to find many [scriptural] instances, by means of which one could support that the three castrations can be understood literally, which should conform with both what we have said previously and with those who taught this through their writings. But we have not wished to expound those theories, lest, in case we presented the relevant arguments and their respective resolutions, we would provide false alleged motive to those who do not understand the teaching about castration in the way Jesus wants this to be understood, and go ahead with taking this in an improper manner and interpret it in a physical sense.102
He adds that he does not wish to mention such views even if that were to be done ‘for the sake of [intellectual] exercise’ (μὴ γυμνασίας ἕνεϰεν).103
Once again, it is characteristic that the Latin translator opted for omitting this Greek portion: it was deemed more safe not to induce Latin readers into research about who were those Christian writers who, according to Origen, had advanced the thesis that the three castrations should be taken literally. Since Origen himself opted for not giving this information, the Latin translator thought it better to exclude this passage altogether, as if Origen never said anything about it. It is characteristic that, although setting forth alternative propositions tentatively just for the same of mental exercise (γυμνασία) was his favourite habit, at this point he explicitly declined to do so.
One more point is interesting in his exposition: the second category of those who are ‘eunuchs’, according to Origen, includes those who practiced sexual temperance following the teaching of Greek secular teaching, as already mentioned. His expression describing this temperance is τῶν ἀϕροδισίων ἀποχὴν (‘abstinence from sexual activity’).←386 | 387→
This is a remarkable expression, indeed a revealing one, since it is extremely rare and transpires in two characteristic instances.
One, in Galen,104 from whom Origen also took up the expression ἰατρῶν παῖδες, as discussed a moment ago. He speaks of a people who falsely believed that a certain Pythion (mentioned by Hippocrates)105 suffered from quivering because of sexual abstention, which however makes the stomach very strong.106 Galen argued that, although Pythion dwelled by the sanctuary of goddess Earth, there was no need for him to abstain from sexual activity, since he was neither a priest nor a ministering attendant; but even if he were anything of these, he did not have to abstain from sexual intercourse, as it happened with the priests of Artemis or those of Athena.107
It is highly likely that Origen received his phraseology from Galen. But ipso facto he shared the same language with Porphyry, since there are no further instances of this expression being used during the following five centuries at least, and it remained extremely scarce anyway. For indeed Porphyry put the matter in exactly the same context as Origen did: “The gods have enjoined abstention from food and sexual” intercourse, by ‘food’ meaning meat of animals offered as sacrifice.108
This is one more indication bespeaking the contact which Origen maintained with Porphyry throughout the latter’s life, even after Origen was converted to Christianity (Porphyry was converted to Christianity during a period of his lifetime, then he reverted to the Hellenic religion).109←387 | 388→
One point should not pass unnoticed: Origen makes a personal confession with respect not only to his castration, but also to his own understanding of Jesus as Logos of God during the earlier stages of his life:
But we, who, once understood Christ, the Logos of God, after the flesh, but now we know him no longer so,110 do not condone that those who (ostensibly for the sake of the kingdom of heavens) so construed the third [kind of] castration, did so advisedly. And we would not have spent so much time in order to refute those who would be prone to taking the third [kind of castration] literally, in the same sense as the previous two ones, had we not seen those who dared to do so, and had we not read [the books of those] who would stimulate a perfervid soul, which is faithful but not rational, towards committing such a bold act.111
One can see the words of Paul in 2 Cor. 5:16 being quoted. However, Paul wrote this having in mind the bare letter of the Old Testament, and he spoke as a Jew nourished in the texts that proclaimed Christ ‘in shadows and figures’.112 Unlike Paul, Origen uses the same words speaking of himself in the most personal terms: he does so not because he was (like Paul) a former faithful of Judaism, but because he was a pagan that had heard of the teacher of Galilee, while he was himself a renowned exponent of the Greek philosophy. That was the period of his life that he knew of Christ only ‘after the flesh’ and had no inkling of his divinity.
He says that he committed self-castration once he was converted to Christianity, and subsequently he incurred derision and censure by both his former fellow-pagans and his new brothers of the new religion. He also says that he did so because he followed propositions set forth by Sextus and Philo, although further he alludes to the writings of unspecified Christian authors who propounded literal understanding of Matthew’s 19:12 three ‘castrations’: following Origen’s own text, of these authors we can determine only Marcion.
However, there is no need to take his statements literally. He entered into the new faith while maintaining his pagan erudition. He committed self-castration at a time when he was inchoate in the faith and an enthusiast (ϑερμῶν). This, however, does not mean that he was young in age, which is why he says ‘young in terms of faith’ (πίστει νεωτέρων), not ‘young’ in terms of age. ←388 | 389→For all that, Eusebius adapted this to his own purposes, so as to make it fit with a predisposed hagiography.
At this time, while Origen was carrying on the work of catechetical instruction at Alexandria, he committed an act characteristic of an immature and youthful mind (ϕρενὸς μὲν ἀτελοῦς ϰαὶ νεανιϰῆς), yet one which also involved an outstanding token of both faith and temperance. He interpreted the words, There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven in too a literal and imprudent sense (ἁπλούστερον ϰαὶ νεανιϰώτερον ἐϰλαβών).113 His intention was both to fulfil the words of the Saviour and, although still youthful in age (διὰ τὸ νέον τὴν ἡλιϰίαν ὄντα), he discoursed on divine subjects with women, as well as with men, in order to avoid all suspicion of shameful slander in the minds of unbelievers. Thus, he hasted to carry out the Saviour’s words by action, having planned to escape the notice of most of his pupils.114
This is an exemplary token of how Eusebius composed his hagiography of Origen by taking Origen’s words and distorting them towards his own aims. For a careful reading of this text reveals that Eusebius had in mind no other source but Origen’s own words in the commentary on Matthew. Let us then see the corresponding texts.
Nowhere does Origen say that he committed self-castration while he was in Alexandria. He only says that he dared to perpetrate this ‘out of fear of God, yet unknowledgeably’ (ἀπὸ ϕόβου μὲν τοῦ πρὸς Θεόν, ἀνεπιστημόνως δέ).115 On the face of it, Eusebius uses Origen’s own words while paraphrasing them: that act was one by ‘an immature and youthful mind’ (ϕρενὸς μὲν ἀτελοῦς ϰαὶ νεανιϰῆς, then, διὰ τὸ νέον τὴν ἡλιϰίαν ὄντα). However, there is a substantial difference: Origen does not say that when he committed this act he was a young man, as Eusebius put it: he actually said that he was young concerning faith, that is, an inchoate zealous Christian, ‘an enthusiast concerning faith’ (ϑερμῶν μὲν τῇ δὲ πίστει νεωτέρων). This was an act ‘out of love for temperance, though not a knowledgeable one’ ←389 | 390→(ἔρωτα σωϕροσύνης ἔχουσιν, ἀλλ’ οὐ ϰατ’ ἐπίγνωσιν) and his soul was ‘faithful, yet not rational’ (ψυχὴν πιστὴν μὲν οὐ λογιϰὴν δέ). Eusebius saw this as ‘an outstanding token of temperance’ (σωϕροσύνης μέγιστον δεῖγμα). Furthermore, he was at pains to reassure that the act by Origen took place ‘during the old times, when he was still a child’ (τῆς πάλαι ἐν παιδὶ γεγονυίας αὐτῷ πράξεως).116
Therefore, reconstruction of reality is faced with a dual conundrum.
First, Eusebius (who always was alert to which way the wind blows) ostensibly copied from Origen’s own statement, yet he distorted this by means of half-truths, in order to make it fit his own aims.
Secondly, to a certain degree, Origen himself obscured his own pagan past: he wrote that he castrated himself following Matthew, 19:12, but at the same time he implied his being at the time ‘a novice in faith’ and gave a detailed exposition of the writers and their own words that induced him to doing so, namely, Sextus and Philo.
This is in fact only one aspect of Origen’s normal practice: upon joining Christianity, he brought with him all of his pagan erudition and essayed to see in what extent could that lore possibly incorporate truths he came upon in Christian and Jewish scriptures. He believed that Scripture contained some of his Greek ideas in a more profound and perfect form. As a pagan, he had written a treatise On Daemons, but as a Christian he based his notion of sundry rational beings arranged in different ranks of life on Paul speaking of ‘principalities, thrones, dominions’, etc. Again, he says that castration for the sake of chastity was an idea propagated by Sextus and Philo, yet this was also what he understood in Matthew 19:12.
Besides, being ‘young in faith’ does not have to suggest that, when he converted to Christianity, he was a young man.
This would be inferred by the following point: when he wrote the commentary on Matthew (that is, by the end of his life), and sought to dissuade others from perpetrating such an action, he argued for this by referring to the ‘censurers who could appeal’ to Deuteronomy, 23:2, (‘He that is fractured or mutilated in his private parts shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord’) in order to cut off a eunuch from the Church (συναριϑμούντων αὐτὸν τοῖς ἀποϰεϰομμένοις τὸν ἄνδρα).
However, much earlier, when he wrote his treatise On Prayer, he proudly professed that ‘the Church is different from the Synagogue, since the Church has neither spot nor wrinkle or any such thing,117 but she is holy and immaculate, ←390 | 391→in which neither one born of a harlot nor He that is fractured or mutilated in his private parts enters.118
It is seems therefore that, at the time when he wrote the On Prayer, he had not yet castrated himself, since it would have been unthinkable for him to make this quotation. However, when he wrote the present section of the commentary on Matthew, his dysphoria is all too evident, and now those who used the pericope of Deuteronomy, 23:2 in order to excommunicate a man who has been castrated, are not considered as the best of Christians. This alone could suffice to argue that the On Prayer is a very early work of his, not to mention how prone he was to discuss extensively the polysemous Greek notion of οὐσία apropos of the term ἐπιούσιος of the Dominical Prayer in that treatise, too.
Concerning the time when Origen converted to Christianity is a topic that I have promised to treat in a forthcoming biography of his. However, since I have written that Origen converted to Christianity when he was nearly fifty years of age, I should quote Patriarch Dositheus’ report –which is not the sole evidence to this argument of mine, anyway.
Origen, although advanced in age (ϰαίτοι παρῆλιξ ὤν), learned the Hebrew language, and took up the three translations by Akylas, Theodotion, and Symmachus, and discovered another one in Jericho within a large jar in the years of Antoninus, the son of Severus; also, he found another two translations, as Eusebius and Jerome wrote, and juxtaposed those six translations with the Hebrew text in order to acquire an accurate knowledge and grasp of the divine scripture.119
What did Dositheus mean by the word παρῆλιξ? Usage of this epithet by various authors makes this all too clear: it means someone who is older than middle-aged and moves towards old age.120 In relation to women, this was used of Sarrah or Elisabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, in order to indicate a woman who is advanced in age and sterile because menopause has come about.121←391 | 392→
Therefore, Dositheus reports that Origen began to learn Hebrew when he was pretty much advanced in age, and he did so in order to understand the Old Testament better by composing his Hexapla.
We do not need to follow in detail the story of how castration was understood and functioned in Antiquity, but a few things would be useful to recall.
By and large, self-castration was committed in pursuance of purification of the incorporeal soul,122 upon which Pythagoreans, Platonists, and Essenes relied for redemption. Both during his pagan and Christian period of life, Origen always thought of himself as being a special man, indeed a hierophant. This is particularly evident in his dialogue with Heraclides, where he expresses his ‘agony’ at whether he should divulge the most hallowed mysteries of Christianity, or not.123 He believed that the secret doctrines expressed in parables, which Jesus used to decipher to his disciples privately (ϰατ’ ἰδίαν),124 had been revealed to him to a considerable extent by divine grace. Had he been a Christian since childhood, he would probably have not committed this act of self-mutilation. There is a telling passage written during a later stage of his life, in which he refers to Christians ‘that are despised as uneducated and fools and lowly, because they have entrusted themselves to God and have embraced the teaching of Jesus’,125 who, nevertheless, ‘keep themselves far from sexual immorality and filthiness and just like perfect priests have forsaken every sort of sexual intercourse, while there are many of them who keep themselves clean not simply from every sexual intercourse.’126 What does this additional remark mean? Of course, it means men refraining not only from sexual intercourse, but also keep themselves pure from any sexual feeling. What else other than castration could this possibly mean? But there is no need to conjecture, since this passage speaks for itself and goes on thus:
There is an hierophant at some place of Athens, who, not trusting his ability to be master of his male desires and to overcome them by force of will, drugs his ←392 | 393→male parts with hemlock (ϰωνειασϑεὶς τὰ ἄρσενα μέρη), whereby he is thought to be pure for the ritual, which is customary among the Athenians. But among Christians it is possible to see men who do not need hemlock to worship God in purity; to them, not hemlock, but a word is sufficient to drive out all lust from their mind as they worship God with prayers.127
It should be recalled that Epiphanius attesting to Origen’s castration gave two alternative reports: according to ‘some people’, he cut-off his male instrument; according to ‘others’, he ‘devised a drug by means of which he shrivelled’ his genitals.128 As a matter of fact, Origen did not have to devise any drug of the kind (and, anyway, there was abundance of recipes to this, already provided by his favourite author, Galen): he had already been to Athens and he knew of the specific use of hemlock.129 He had in mind a ritual of the Eleusinian mysteries, and probably he imparted this knowledge to Hippolytus, who wrote, ‘the hierophant himself is not castrated like Attis by having his testicles cut-off, but is rendered a eunuch by means of hemlock, and is dissociated from all carnal generation’.130 Attis was a young shepherd from Phrygia that had castrated himself. He was a disciple of Cybele, the reputed mother of the gods, and her consort.131 Hence, ←393 | 394→Cybele’s most ecstatic followers were males, who ritually castrated themselves.132 It seems that, officially, castration was forbidden at Athens, which is possible to confirm from a reference in the Etymologicum Genuinum (ninth century), which was repeated in the Etymologicum Magnum (twelfth century):
Among the Athenians, none was to be deprived of any part of his body; instead, he should to be integral and uncastrated … in Athens, kings and priests were examined with regard to their being integral and whole.133
Quite the opposite was the case in Egypt134 – and this is the point to present a piece of evidence by Eustathius of Thessaloniki. The text is revealing because it contains valuable details concerning how castration was seen by different culture settings. The verb ἀπάρχομαι (which here becomes a word used for the pun of it) has a specific meaning, namely, primal offering, in the sense of beginning a ceremonial sacrifice, through which God would be propitiated.135 This was the case with ‘the king [Agamemnon], who, upon taking an oath, cut the firstling hairs from the boar’.136 Eustathius explains this, and adds that ‘the verb ἀπάρχομαι became a jest in relation to eunuchism in the case of certain Egyptian intellectual man’ (ἐϰ τοῦ ἀπάρχεσϑαι σϰῶμμά τι εὐνουχιϰὸν προὔϰυψε παρά τινι λογίῳ Aἰγυπτίῳ ἀνδρί). The words that follow in quotation reveal that he was referring to the comic poet Anaxandrides (fourth century BC), since this quotation is found in Athenaeus137 advising that this was written in the poem entitled Cities (Πόλεις).
←394 | 395→One should know that, use of the verb ἀπάρχομαι in relation to eunuchism turned out a jibe in the case of a certain Egyptian intellectual man (ἐϰ τοῦ ἀπάρχεσϑαι σϰῶμμά τι εὐνουχιϰὸν προὔϰυψε παρά τινι λογίῳ Aἰγυπτίῳ ἀνδρί),138 who said that, with reference to the Egyptian priests (who were eunuchs), someone139 lampooned them, saying that they set out to do their office by cutting off their own genitals. This is clear from [the latter’s words], ‘since priests in this place’ (τοὺς ἱερέας ἐνϑάδε μέν) (that is, Greek [priests]) are integral [= uncastrated, ὁλοϰλήρους]140 according to the law, ‘whereas in your place, they have to be castrated’ (παρ’ ὑμῖν δ’, ὡς ἔοιϰεν, ἀπηργμένους).141 From these words, it is possible to gather that, at that time, to Egyptians, eunuchism was commendable (ὡς ἐπαινετὸν Aἰγυπτίοις ἦν τότε ἡ τῶν ἱερέων εὐνουχία), since this was a prefacing sacrifice to their all too evil gods (διὰ τὸ ἀπαρχὴν ἐξ αὐτῶν δεδόσϑαι ϑεοῖς ἐϰείνοις τοῖς ϕαυλεπιϕαύλοις). However, during the present times, this conception of sacrifice has made eunuchs subject to excruciating gibe (ὁ δὲ νῦν χρόνος εἰς μέγα σϰῶμμα τὴν τοιαύτην ἔννοιαν τῆς ἀπαρχῆς περιτρέπει τοῖς εὐνούχοις). For the real God does not concede offer of such a sort of sacrifice to him (ὁ γὰρ ὄντως ϑεὸς ἀπαρχὰς οὐϰ οἶδε τοιαύτας προσίεσϑαι).142
There should be little doubt that, by means of this subtle and short obiter dictum, Eustathius speaks of Origen, and in fact he obliquely quotes his words by reporting the poem of Anaxandrides, and then his own thoughts on the change of cultural values over time concerning self-castration in Greece and in Egypt. Origen himself describing his own experience wrote of how he was taunted and reviled (ὀνειδισμῷ, τάχα δὲ ϰαὶ αἰσχύνῃ) by both those outside the faith and Christians alike.143
But there are additional points involved in this report by Eustathius. The man he wrote about this was ‘an Egyptian scholar’ (λογίῳ Aἰγυπτίῳ ἀνδρί). We should recall that this is how Origen was designated by the acerbic Epiphanius ←395 | 396→(Aἰγύπτιος τῷ γένει),144 by Theodoret (’Ώριγένης ὁ Aἰγύπτιος),145 and by a couple of other authors.146
Origen probably committed his castration at Athens,147 while he was there with his friend and companion Publius Herennius Dexippus (Herennius was the disciple of Ammonius Saccas mentioned by Porphyry),148 the Greek intellectual, historian, and statesman, who was a hereditary priest of the ancient Eleusinian family of the Kήρυϰες ([public] Messengers [of the gods]),149 he held the offices of ἱερεὺς παναγὴς (‘sacrosanct priest’) in Athens, and that of the relevant ritual of self-castration of the Eleusinian mysteries.
Origen knew as well that which also Porphyry knew, and then Eusebius reported to posterity: ‘in the Eleusinian mysteries, the hierophant was dressed so as to be the image of the Demiurge’,150 which emphasised the importance attached to the office and duties of the high priest. As a matter of fact, Athens played a role in Origen’s life: at the very point where Epiphanius styles him ‘an Egyptian by descent’, he notes that, according to his information, Origen ‘spent sometime studying at certain schools at Athens’ (τάχα δὲ ϰαὶ ἐν ’Aϑήναις ϕοιτήσας ἐν τοῖς παιδευτηρίοις χρόνῳ τινί).151
Presumably, Origen thought that now, as a Christian hierophant, he should follow the example of the Egyptian priests who castrated themselves; to put it in Eustathius of Thessaloniki’s (indeed Origen’s) words, ἀπαρχὴν δεδόσϑαι, that is, committing self-castration as a ‘primal offering’ to God upon initiation into the priestly office. In his mind, the notion of one being ‘a perfect priest’ always remained a cherished one, anyway.152←396 | 397→
Origen of course justified this by appealing to Matthew, 19:12, referring to ‘eunuchs’. Nevertheless, there were many pagan points that he was able to make by ostensibly appealing to Scripture alone. Eusebius mentions a sojourn of Origen in Athens, but he did so only to report that, while he was there, Origen finished his commentary on Ezekiel and started his commentary on the Song of Songs. As he did throughout this biography, Eusebius deliberately offered an obscure and ambiguous account of half-truths.153 Although castration was outlawed, there are references of priests in Athens that used to castrate themselves.154 However, Jerome reported that this was an established habit,155 indeed up until his own time, assuring that ‘the high-priests of Athens, to this day, emasculate themselves by drinking hemlock, and once they have been drawn in to the pontificate, cease to be men’.156 Nevertheless, he reported that ‘Origen castrated himself with a knife’ (‘ferro truncaret genitalia’).157
John Laurentius Lydus explained that those who circumcised themselves believed that they became like ‘Cronus, who is the topmost of all planets’ (ὑψηλότερος τῶν πλανήτων). The ‘Hebrew mystics believed’ that circumcision was ‘a symbol of purgation (ϰαϑαρμός) of the intellectual soul’ (νοερᾶς ψυχῆς), wherefore Lydus argued that this Hebrew custom ‘was not a Cronian rite’ (οὐ Kρονία τελετή). He added that, ‘according to Origen, those [= a tribe] of the Arabs who were called Scenitae [Σϰηνῖται = dwellers in tents] used to circumcise their children upon the age of 13, but this rite was instituted in order to honour Astarte, not Cronus.158 Astarte (’Aστάρτη) was a Hellenised name for goddess Istar, one of the main deities of the Semitic pantheon. In all of the Semitic regions, she was the Eastern (Phoenician, Assyrian, Philistine) version of the Great Mother of God, the goddess of fertility and procreation. Greeks identified Astarte with ←397 | 398→either Aphrodite or Demetra, the Egyptians with Isis, and Romans with Venus or Juno (the wife of Jupiter). The name Astarte or (the Hebrew) Astoreth appeared in the Old Testament,159 and the Hebrew prophets excoriated this as a symbol of idolatry.160
To determine the precise manner used by Origen for this self-infliction is not easy, but there would be some flavour of reality in Jerome’s account reporting mutilation instead of use of hemlock.
There are some reasons for plumping for this. For indeed, Origen’s text points to a different (and more awful) direction (namely, mutilation), which is couched in terms that suggest that he is speaking of himself. (1) Origen speaks as one who caused mutilation of his own body (σώματος ἀϰρωτηριασμόν). (2) His text includes too many expressions that allude to excruciating maiming and physical pains (πόνους ϰαὶ σώματος ἀϰρωτηριασμόν), even when he uses those terms metaphorically (‘mutilation of the passive part of the soul’).161 (3) Since Origen’s self castration became a renown piece of information, it comes as no surprise that mere reference to that became a lexicon-lemma, in order to betoken usage of the rare verb (actually, a later neologism) ἐξορχίζω, which though appears in no text known to us, and comes from a little-known source alone: “Origen castrated himself”.162 (4) He not only says that he knew from his readings (ἐντετεύχειμεν) of ‘those who bestirred’ towards castration those who were ‘fervent’ in faith (ϑερμοτέραν ϰινῆσαι ψυχήν) (forthwith explaining that he meant Sextus and Philo), but also adds that he himself ‘had seen those who perpetrated such a bold act’ (ϰαὶ ἑωράϰαμεν τοὺς τολμήσαντας).163 Even the example from Deuteronomium, 25:11-12, that he uses (‘the hand which seizes the testicles of a man is cut off’) involves mutilation.
Nevertheless, this point cannot be determined, all the more so there are other considerations that should be taken into account, which are discussed forthwith.←398 | 399→
Photius had his own information drawn from the book he reviewed, namely, the defense for Origen written by Pamphilus and Eusebius: during the time when Origen was simply an exegete of scriptures, his bishop Demetrius classified him among his dearest persons; but ‘shortly before Origen had set out to go to Athens (μέλλων ἀπαίρειν εἰς ’Aϑήνας), he was ordained presbyter at Jerusalem by Bishop Theotecnus of Caesarea, without his own bishop being asked to give permission’. Consequently, ‘all the fondness of Origen that Demetrius had was transformed to hatred, and praise turned to reproach (τρέπεται διὰ τοῦτο ∆ημητρίῳ εἰς μῖσος τὸ ϕίλτρον ϰαὶ οἱ ἔπαινοι πρὸς τοὺς ψόγους)’. This means that Origen went to Caesarea of Palestine, he was ordained presbyter, and then he travelled to Athens. As it happened, he was disposed to pick up whatever appeared correct and pious to him from heathen doctrines and practices.
I am convinced (but this is not the place to make the case) that Hippolytus was the man who converted Origen to Christianity, and it was also he who introduced him to Ambrose, the former Gnostic that sponsored lavishly Origen’s scholarly production. At this point, it is remarkable how Hippolytus implicitly defended Origen against those who accused him for his castration and disputed his position within the Church.
God rejects no one of His servants; He detests no one as being unworthy of His divine mysteries: He does not prefer a rich man to a poor one, nor does He set at naught a poor man on account of his poverty; nor does He reproach a barbarian as being unwise, nor does He excommunicate a eunuch as if he were not a human being (οὐδὲ εὐνοῦχον ὡς μὴ ἄνϑρωπον ἀϕορίζων).164
It is all but coincidence that Hippolytus cared to point out that Christians should not despise ‘a eunuch, as if he were not a human being’. This is not the point to demonstrate the numerous affinities between Origen and Hippolytus, and the arguments that undergird my opinion that the latter was (to some extent, at least) responsible for the former’s conversion to Christianity. But it is the point to remark that Origen’s and Hippolytus’ phraseology have similarities which can be explained: Origen described his ordeal that was enkindled by disdainful fellow-Christians by using the term ὀνειδισμὸς (‘being put to shame’);165 Hippolytus wrote that eunuchs should not be ‘cast out’, which could have gone as far as meaning ‘excommunicated’ (οὐδὲ εὐνοῦχον ὡς μὴ ἄνϑρωπον ἀϕορίζων), a term analogous ←399 | 400→to Origen writing of eunuchs being considered as ‘cut off from’ the Church (συναριϑμούντων αὐτὸν τοῖς ἀποϰεϰομμένοις τὸν ἄνδρα),166 which he rejected after that point by appealing to Isaiah.167 Do Hippolytus’ and Origen’s expressions have something in common? They certainly have: for it is Luke, 6:22, that imbues both of those, indeed in both letter and spirit:
Blessed are you when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you (ὅταν ἀϕορίσωσιν ὑμᾶς) from them and reproach you (ϰαὶ ὀνειδίσωσιν), and throw out (ϰαὶ ἐϰβάλωσιν) your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.
The question of eunuchs remained controversial within the Church circles and beyond. The alsmost unknown Discourse on Eunuchism by Theophylact, Archbishop of Achris, contains one of the finest pieces of Greek dialectics used by two disputing opponents: on the one hand, there was an ‘orthodox’ exponent, arguing that eunuchism is incompatible with membership in the Church, and certainly with ecclesiastical office. On the other, a clergyman, who was a eunuch, controverted this view and expounded his own arguments. The reasoning by both sides is admirable indeed, and Theophylact himself (who says that he simply recorded this debate) did no conceal his admiration for the dialectical ability of both interlocutors, which took place at Thessaloniki. In addition, there is historical information which does not seem to obtain in any other source. We learn, for example, that Justinian had decreed that eunuchs should be deprived of certain civil rights,168 for which the conversationalist who defended castration (but explicated that he did not recommend this) remarked sarcastically that this did not prevent Justinian himself from appointing Narses (the famous eunuch, who was promoted to military general), neither did he advise his wife Theodora not to promote so many eunuchs to higher offices – but this, the rhetor adds, was natural to happen, because Justinian ‘was to Theodora not a husband, but a slave’ (ἐπεὶ μηδὲ ἄνδρα τοῦτον εἶχε μᾶλλον ἡ βασιλὶς ἢ ἀνδράποδον). In reality, Justinian had decreed that eunuchs should be deprived of the right ‘to buy’ property.169 Rules ←400 | 401→concerning clergymen appeared not earlier than the fourth century, and reports attribute such decrees either to the council of Nicaea, or to the so-called Rules of the Apostles, written during the same period.170 Cyril of Alexandria severely condemned eunuchism,171 which was also the custom of an obscure Christian sect established by a certain Vales, who had made castration central to their practices.172
Moreover, the same rhetor names a considerable number of Christian martyrs and venerated saints who were eunuchs, to which he added several names of bishops of his times (the bishops ‘of Thessaloniki, of Pydna, of Petra, and of the Bulgarian Edessa’). He reports also a certain highly-regarded monk from Athens, named Symeon, who had established a community of eunuch-monks at Mount Athos (συνοιϰίαν εὐνούχων μοναστῶν),173 and adds several instances from both scriptures and Christian history showing that certain eunuchs had been held in high esteem.174 Moreover, up to the date of that discourse,175 several eunuchs had been ordained priests, archbishops, and patriarchs.176
My own impression is that, in fact, Origen did not feel that self-castration in itself was aberration, all the more so since he knew of scriptural instances referring ←401 | 402→to certain pious eunuchs having enjoyed a very honourable status. However, as a teacher, he felt he should dissuade his audience from committing such an act, not only because of its physiological consequences, but also because he himself suffered from his fellow-Christians, who ruthlessly utilised this fact against an acclaimed genius, who chose to live the last 28 years of his life as nearly an anchorite at Tyre,177 actually, as an outcast ostracised by the local clergy, a genius who was on the worst of terms with the local bishop (namely, Methodius of Tyre, formerly, of Olympus or of Patara), whom he felt all but like interfacing with.
This is why, and albeit this eremite had to bear what was unbearable, and suffer what was insufferable, did not mince his words: he repudiated vehemently the decay of that stern and hard-hearted community of prelates, and identified them with ‘the den of robbers’ who ‘sold the doves’ in the temple.178 To him, the clergymen of his solitary years at Tyre were purveyors of lies, indeed a repellent gang of well-heeled hucksters and egregious mongers of mundane positions, of power and wealth, who cared only about their Faustian bargain.179 Compared to those men of the cloth, the Pharisses of scripture were saints. But while undergoing this predicament, Origen all but sulked in hopeless silence.
In many so-called churches,180 especially those in large cities,181 once can see leaders of the people of God, who do not allow anyone to speak on equal terms (μηδεμίαν ἰσολογίαν), indeed [they do not allow this] even to the noblest of Jesus’ disciples (τοῖς ϰαλλίστοις τῶν ’Iησοῦ μαϑητῶν).182
However, the fact that Origen had taken the high road did not mean that he was unnerved, let alone out of steam: instead of feeling enfeebled, he did not shy away from locking horns with those dignitaries, who had turned their backs to both truth and virtue as squarely as they could, and he did not refrain from castigating the sordidness of the clerics of his day, especially the bishops.
←402 | 403→There are certain reprehensible archpriests, who do not honour the name of bishop because of their conduct of life, neither are they cloaked with knowledge and truth.183 Seeing the wonderful things of God,184 no less do these people despise the little ones185 and babies186 of the Church, although they praise God and his Christ.187 They feel tempestuous irritation at the progress [of the little ones] (ἀγαναϰτοῦσι ἐπὶ τῇ τούτων προϰοπῇ), and they [i.e. bishops] accuse before the face of Jesus of sinning those who have committed no sin (ὡς ἁμαρτανόντων τῶν μὴ ἁμαρτανόντων). And although he is in order in every respect, they ask him,188 as if he does not hear:189 Do you hear what these are saying? 190 We shall grasp this better once we realise in what way do the reprehensible archpriests censure those who are fervent in spirit,191 and are simple in their speech,192 and stand up to the unfaithful even with the result of being thrown into prison, and despise all kinds of danger, and entertain chastity and celibacy with utmost vigour. The reprehensible archpriests (οἱ ψεϰτοὶ ἀρχιερεῖς) reprimand them as being disorderly (ὡς ἀτάϰτοις),193 and accuse them in front of Jesus, alleging that they themselves act more justly than those simple and important and righteous children (τῶν οὕτως ἁπλῶν ϰαὶ σπουδαίων ϰαὶ χρηστῶν παιδίων). But Jesus, on the one hand, gives testimony about the children,194 while, on the other, he accuses the archpriests of ignorance,195 by saying this: Yes; Out of the mouth of babes and nursing babies you have perfected praise?196
Perhaps, statements of this kind (out of numerous ones, which I am going to consider in a future work) explain why was it that English and French translations have persistently and uncharacteristically have set Origen’s books 15–17 ←403 | 404→aside. Actually, for too long a time has Origen’s commentary on Matthew somehow remained a taboo to English and French translators.197
In the foregoing passage, Origen appears all but as feeling a ‘sinner’ because of having perpetrated self-castration. Actually, all of his pertinent references betray his conviction that, in contrast to the filthiness and mental darkness of the local bishop and his clergy, he regarded himself as one who was ahead of the times concerning knowledge of God, one who ‘did not sin’ in any way whatsoever, and ‘rigorously’ practiced chastity and took heed to observe strict observance of the religious duties.
Besides, the concluding part of the section from his commentary on Matthew is illuminating: whereas this begins with expression of regret for having eunuchised himself ‘unknowledgeably’ (ἀνεπιστημόνως),198 it concludes with his unvarying declaration that he was able to adduce scriptural support for the honourable status of eunuchs vis à vis God. Nevertheless, he stops short of this, only because he did not wish to induce others to imitating him. In other words, this part of his commentary was edifying, not doctrinal. Accordingly, he urges his readers to understand Matthew 19:12 ‘spiritually’, not physically. Nevertheless, already at the outset of his analysis, he noted that those who understood the first two castrations literally, and the third one allegorically, were ‘the majority’, yet there were also others, ‘who did not peruse the logical sequence of the words concerning three castrations’ (μὴ βασανίσαντες τρόπον ἀϰολουϑίας λόγων). Shortly after this, nevertheless, he adds that all three eunuchisations should be considered allegorically in the first place.←404 | 405→
It is all but surprise that, in the fine piece of dialectics that Theophylact of Achris recorded, the eunuch interlocutor adduces not only all of the scriptural instances that Origen presented and discussed in favour of eunuchs, but also additional ones, which Origen insinuated but refrained from discussing.
Origen was always as bold as to set forth and consider all possible exegeses of the scriptural points he came upon, even as a ‘mental exercise’ (γυμνασία). Athanasius admired him for this, and urged his own readers to judge Origen’s orthodoxy not from those points, but to do so based on his definitive doctrinal statements, one of which was his thesis that the Son is co-eternal with the Father.199 This kind of Origen’s ‘mental exercise’ (of which Athanasius caveated Origen’s readers) was not always doctrinal: it would be also ‘logical’, following an impeccably ‘Greek’ consideration of all possible implications (grammatical, lexical, even speculative or tentative) of a certain text,200 since Origen, who always had an eye for linguistic quality and a unique sense of the nuances of Greek, made the utmost of his ability.
And whether the five successions of workers contain a certain symbol of the sensible world, and of those who started from sense perception to perform their works, let anyone who is able to do so consider this carefully. And let him be [mentally] exercised, even if he is not willing to accept the things that follow these doctrines.201
One thing is for sure: against Athanasius who defended Origen’s engagement in tentative exegeses, the majority of subsequent theologians (excluding the Cappadocians and some others) either pretended that they did not notice the conjectural character of such statements or condemned them ungraciously. However, Origen himself was proud of his practice.
For those who are concerned with wisdom and reason and mental exercise concerning the things of God (τῆς περὶ τὰ ϑεῖα γυμνασίας) lit a lamp so as to become perfect, since there is no other way for them to attain perfection other than by ←405 | 406→exercising their divine and intellectual senses, which Paul made clear by saying, But solid food is for those who are full-grown, who by reason of entrenched habit have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.202 They are those to whom the wisdom, which is spoken to the perfect ones, can be spoken, of which he [sc. Paul] says, But we teach wisdom to those who are full-grown.203
One of the delicate points on which Origen did not wish to set forth his opinion with explicit confidence (although he wrote not without aplomb either) was the issue of castration. This he had already suggested in the same commentary, only shortly before his partially reticent consideration of his self-castration, when he wrote this:
Following a great deal of agony and inquiry, we believe that we shed light on certain points, either by grace of God or by the power of our own mind. However, we do not dare to commit them to writing, whereas we expound some of them for the sake of our own mental exercise and for those who will read them.204
Although his consideration of castration began with a personal expression of his ordeal aroused by his environment (especially, the Christian one), it is concluded with his confident declaration that there are many scriptural points accrediting his act, and yet he stops short of discussing them lest he should convince some of his audience.
The similarity of Theophylact’s text is stunning indeed: in the first place, the eunuch interlocutor set forth a host of scriptural instances sanctioning his being so; but upon concluding his speech in the public assembly, he declared that, although he was satisfied that he had acted piously and not contrary to scripture, nevertheless, he did not set forth his arguments as ones aiming to induce others to imitating him. As a matter of fact, it could have been impossible for Origen not to be aware of the Gnostic pupil of Valentinus, Julius Cassian, who had written a treatise entitled On Continence or On Eunuchism, in which he defended his own castration by appealing to, and quoting, Isaiah, who had written this:
←406 | 407→Let not the stranger who attaches himself to the Lord, say, Surely the Lord will separate me from his people: and let not the eunuch say, I am a dry tree. Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs, As many as shall keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things which I take pleasure in, and take hold of my covenant, I will give them in my house and within my walls an honourable place, better than sons and daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, and it shall not fail.205
Julius Cassian appealed also to an apocryphon, in which Jesus is represented as replying to Salome’s question, ‘when will death be destroyed?’,206 through a phrase taken by Julius as vindicating castration.207
Instances such as this demonstrate that, had Origen wished to advocate eunuchism by means of scriptural instances, he would have been all but short of agonistic prowess. However, here is how he concluded his analysis.
Anyone who would like to demonstrate by argument and agree with both what I said above and those who taught so by their writings208 could find no small number of plausible arguments buttressing [the thesis]209 that those three castrations are physical. However, we did not want to expound these [arguments], lest (by scrutinising the scriptural [proof texts] and expounding the interpretation of each one of them for the sake of mental exercise), we would occasion those who do not grasp the saying on eunuchism the way Jesus intends it, and understand [Jesus’ word] to receive it210 in a different manner, and understand this physically, since it is necessary for one who lives and walks in the Spirit211 also to be persuaded that these three castrations have been said in a spiritual sense.212
It seems, however, that this is one more point of Origen’s work that has been glaringly neglected. Perhaps, this is owing to the fact that the commentary on Matthew, especially Books 15–17, did not enjoy popularity among scholars and translators, actually it appears that everyone wished to dodge this part, as if this were too perilous to touch upon.213
In any event, deep down, Origen was rather proud of his castration: it was the ordeal he suffered by his social environment that depressed him, not any shortage of adducing scriptural approbation for his act. Even at this point of his commentary, although he endorses the idea of allegorical interpretation of eunuchism on edifying grounds, he did not disguise how he thought of himself: once it is realised that ‘there are eunuchs who are assigned with the task of building the fallen Jerusalem’, it will be also grasped why is it that there are saintly ‘eunuchs, who have been deemed worthy of becoming leaders of the reconstruction of God’s temple’.214
What Origen regretted most was not the physical ordeal caused by his castration, which he described in very vivid and indeed scientific terms.215 He was after all a devout student of Galen’s books, from whom he imbibed numerous philological terms and technical formulas.216 Rather, he regretted the way he was treated also by pagans, since it is all too evident that, by converting to Christianity, he got into hot water, hence his ordeal at Alexandria, where he was faced not only with the political and pagan religious authorities, but also with the wrath of his former admirers as a Greek philosopher of note. Nevertheless, above all, he sighed over the behaviour of Christians: he wrote about them heavy-heartedly, explaining what he suffered by such people, who were supposed to be ‘merciful to all human affairs’ but they were not not so to him, although he acted ‘out of fear of God and immeasurable desire for continence’. Quite evidently, he knew that, in his environment, benignant Christians were in short supply. The overall tenor of his text is plaintive, although it involves not actual self-reproach: rather, it is a ←408 | 409→melancholic amour-propre for reasons easy to guess: he felt that he had sacrificed himself both physically and socially, only because of the intransigent slur by the relentless and brassy gloating clergymen, who had decided that he was unworthy of being not only a presbyter but also a member of the Church.
Accordingly, to him, reference to Esdras was a favourite motif, since Esdras had a leading role in rebuilding the temple of God, and Origen thought of himself also as a rebuilder of the fallen Body / Temple of Logos. In this context, it is characteristic that he styles Nehemiah not only ‘cupbearer’ (οἰνοχόος) of the King, but also ‘eunuch’ – although, in the Septuagint, the biblical text has it only ‘cupbearer’.217
At the point of the commentary on Matthew where he speaks of his castration, Origen replaces οἰνοχόος (‘cupbearer’) with εὐνοῦχος (‘eunuch’) following the Hebrew text, only to conclude that ‘an eunuch becomes the leader of the rebuilding of God’s temple’.218 In his epistle to Julius Africanus, he uses both designations by combining the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts, once again emphasising the premiership of a eunuch in rebuilding219 the temple.220 The sentiment underlying such statements is all too plain, since it comes as exegesis to ‘the reason why an eunuch has been found worthy of becoming leader of rebuilding the temple of God’.221 This means that, at heart, only ostensibly was self-castration Origen’s real blight: his really unexpressed and hardly expressible emotionality stemmed from the way he had been treated by the ecclesiastical ←409 | 410→authorities, who did not appreciate his noble motives, let alone the quality of his conduct of life.
Aristotle saw the absence of beard as a token of sterile men who ‘are eunuchs’.222 He believed that semen was produced in the head, especially in the region around the eyes, which is a theory that Origen embraced and indeed described in detail, appealing to ‘the pupils of medical doctors’ (ἰατρῶν παῖδες): once semen is not ejaculated, this remains in the head, causing not only headaches, but also various hallucinations and torpor.223
The medical suggestion was that semen must be ejaculated, so that the body should be relieved from the unnecessary deposit.224 Moreover, Galen reported that ‘prudent men engaged in sexual intercourse’ not for the sake of pleasure, which they did not really feel thereupon, but in order to get rid of the excessive amount of semen. As an example, he reported the case of Diogenes the Cynic, ‘who was reputed as a most self-controlled and restrained man, and yet he practiced sexual activity (ἀϕροδισίοις ἐχρῆτο), only in order to get rid of the nuisance of the surplus of his semen’.225
Hippocrates reported that, among the Scythians, there are ‘eunuchs called impotent men’ (ἀνανδριεῖς), who behave as women and speak femininely (ϰαὶ γυναιϰεῖα ἐργάζονται ϰαὶ ὡς αἱ γυναῖϰες διαλέγονται ὁμοίως), yet ‘they are held in respect and made obeisance to’, because people are fearful lest this trait was granted them by God.226 Moreover, to Hippocrates, ‘once men were castrated during their childhood, they never attained puberty, nor did they grow beard’ (οὔτε ἡβῶσιν οὔτε γενειῶσιν); instead, they became soft-skinned throughout (λεῖοί τε γίνονται ὅλοι), because ‘once the semen does not flow through the vessels, it does not rarefy the epidermis throughout the skin.’ The reason why this happens is that ‘the vessels through which the semen passes did not receive what was their due’ (ἀπολέλαπται γὰρ ἡ ὁδὸς τῆς γονῆς).227←410 | 411→
In a dialogue entitled The eunuch, written by Lucian of Samosata, the social values concerning treatment of eunuchs is vivid indeed. This was about a trial in an ad hoc court of justice, in order for a decision to be made as to whether an eunuch named Vagoas could be appointed as chair of a philosophical school at Athens. The other part of the debate was Diocles, a man well trained in sophistic argument, who asked for Vagoas to be banned from appointment to the post. Lucian wrote that ‘neither of those men was superior to the other in terms of dialectical skill’,228 but what matters is that both of the debaters used the ancient locution: Vagoas’ unnamed defender spoke of ‘a eunuch, whose chins are soft-skinned and the voice feminine’.229 Diocles said, ‘that man [sc. Vagoas] had soft-skinned chins and his voice was feminine’; besides, ‘a eunuch is neither man nor woman, but a certain compound and a mixture and a monstrous being, alien to human nature’.230
Likewise, not long after Lucian, Philostratus spoke contemptuously of ‘eunuchs’, whose ‘chins are barren and stiff and stony’: for ‘those abject offenders are ashamed of this [manifest] contour rather than the other [sc. castration itself], only because they believe that the latter is concealed, whereas the former is visible on their face’.231
Despite this tradition, in ecclesiastical circles and authors of the Byzantine era, castrated men of the cloth were mentioned in an approbatory rather than disparaging mood. Actually, some later chroniclers spoke highly of Patriarchs of Constantinople that were eunuchs.
This invited a gainsaying reaction in the West, which is why Pope Leo IX (from 1049 to 1054), who sent three legates to Constantinople conveying the papal demand that eunuchs should not be ordained bishops.232 However, Dositheus II (Notaras), Patriarch of Jerusalem, argued that Patriarch Michael I Keroullarios of Constantinople (from 1043 to 1059) rejected this and anathematised Pope Leo on other grounds. Dositheus argued that ‘several saints became Patriarchs, such as Germanus [I of Constantinople, 715–730], Ignatius [of Constantinople, 847–858, and 867–877], and others’. Nicephorus I (Patriarch of Constantinople, 806–815), mentioned Nicetas, ‘formerly a presbyter of the church of the Saint ←411 | 412→Apostles and general supervisor of the monasteries’, who became Patriarch. So he did of ‘Ignatius I, the eunuch’.233 However, Dositheus endorsed ‘the 22th canon of the Apostles, according to which, anyone who has castrated himself willingly, should be banned from becoming a clergyman’, unless they were castrated by force.234 In this context, Dositheus mentioned the hackneyed example: ‘Origen was rightly reprehensible, because he committed an unlawful act’, but Dositheus rejected the circulating report that Methodius I of Constantinople had also castrated himself and yet became Patriarch.
However, obverting evaluation was always there: for example, Eustathius of Thessaloniki made a remark appealing to ‘the canons by the Apostles’, although in fact no such apostolic precept was there. In short, Eustathius recommended self-castration in exactly the same mood that Origen described, yet declared that this was a mistake to be avoided.
For we believe that, just as a straight rod used by carpenters cannot grind timbers or any sort of two different pieces of wood, unless one scrapes off its bumping surface, likewise, the divine precept given by the holy Apostles bids that we should cut off and painfully dislodge any part of our flesh, whenever this [act] is serviceable to rectification of the soul.235
There is no much to speculate about the reason why Origen committed self-castration as his quotations from both Philo and Sextus leave no doubt about this: it is better to castrate oneself rather than deliriously desire delinquent sexual intercourse. Since presumably he had been besieged by passions which are congenital with any man’s nature, but he himself considered them sordid, especially in view of the content of his moral teaching, he deemed that he could live a purer life by committing this act and free himself from pertinent desires.
One should wonder why was it that critical points of this piece of Origen’s work were not translated into Latin. For most of those points, of which it was deemed that better remain obscure, are telling. For example, the Vetus Interpretatio (known as Commentariorum in Matthaeum Series) has no translation of chapter 15.3, which has a painfully personal character, and speaks of those who bestirred him to mutilate himself (namely, Sextus and Philo) and assures that he ←412 | 413→had ‘seen people who committed such an act (meaning himself) and describes both the physical pain and social reproach that he had suffered because of this. His explanation of his motives to commit this act, and his subsequent suffering out of this, were not translated, whereas hardly was so his reference to his smug fellow-Christians, who were supposed to be merciful and compassionate with all human affairs, yet they were not so with one who (on account of what he thought to be fear of God and immeasurable desire for continence) caused upon himself physical pains and mutilation of his own body, and whatever else one who submitted himself to such a grave venture might experience.236 Likewise, Origen’s statement that he opted for explaining ‘the third castration in accordance with the two previous ones’ was ignored, and so was his subsequent remark that literal explanation of the third castration was ‘the letter which kills’. Furthermore, all of his detailed references to passages of Sextus and Philo and quotations from them, along with the sweating intensity of his delineation of physical symptoms he suffered out of self-castration, were not deemed worthy of being communicated to the Latin-speaking audience. The same happened with his final remarks suggesting that there are several scriptural references which ‘could justify literal exegesis of the three castrations’. And I should not consider other autobiographical remarks of his, such as depiction of the deplorable demeanour of clergymen at Tyre, whom he abominated, or the conflict with one’s pagan parents owing to one’s decision to convert to Christianity, or emphasis on Jesus’ command to sell all of one’s possessions and give them to the poor, or the conflict with those Christians by ancestry and birth, who felt superior over those (such as Origen) who converted to Christianity at an advanced age and were not born to a family observant of Christian heritage.
At several points of my books upon considering specific topics, I have remarked that the Commentary on Matthew along with Contra Celsum are the two most mature and latest works of Origen, which were written not in 244 (as currently believed), but after 265, since Origen did not die in 254/5 as many believe because of Eusebius’ feigned ‘biography’ of Origen, but much later. But which of the two works preceded the other? I have always believed that the Commentary on Matthew is much later than the Contra Celsum.237←413 | 414→
Origen’s 15th book of the commentary on Matthew contains some critical points of his thought. In the next chapter, I will present the text and translation of §§1–5 only (on Matt 19:12), discussing the three types of eunuchs. Concerning §§29–37 (on Matt 20:1–16, on the parable of the hired workers or ‘labourers’), I have already considered and discussed this in the full context of Origen’s thought.238 Moreover, his remarks on his philological parsing of various manuscripts and his own work in order to restore their consistency illuminating (including comments on his Herculean work of critical edition of the Hexapla or Octapla [§14]) are also some of those which Book 15 contains and have remained obscure. There are also other points of this commentary which deserve attention, such as his reference to apokatastasis, the theory of successive cosmic periods (§31), his references in §27, which could falsely be taken as insinuating pre-existence of souls, or those in §10, which in fact have nothing to do with any subordinationist notion of Logos.239 Perhaps, the only point of Eusebius’ report concerning this incident is his remark that Origen did this ‘having given heed to escaping the notice of most of his pupils (τοὺς πολλοὺς τῶν ἀμϕ’ αὐτὸν γνωρίμων διαλαϑεῖν ϕροντίσας), which, however, was not possible for him to achieve, although he wished to conceal this act (οὐϰ ἦν δὲ ἄρα δυνατὸν αὐτῷ ϰαίπερ βουλομένῳ τοσοῦτον ἔργον ἐπιϰρύψασϑαι).’240 But since a secret is no longer a secret when shared by more than two people, it could have been impossible for him to carry this to his grave. Thus, a troublesome new day dawned for him, the day that his secret could no longer be secret, the day when what he thought was right could go wrong. He lived with this for the rest of his life, which was a very long period indeed.241
Pending publication of Origen’s biography, I postpone discussion of other points in which he touches upon another problem with his Christian environment: those who were born and bred from Christian forebears (some of whom were clergymen) boasted against people such as Origen, who was a Greek philosopher converted to Christianity. No doubt, this also prompted his valiant criticism of the debased and avaricious clergy (especially bishops) during his living at Tyre for the last 28 years of his life, having been deprived of operating ←414 | 415→as a presbyter, and virtually being excommunicated. He had lived for two years at Caesarea, and despite the respect he enjoyed by a couple of high-rank prelates of the region, the reverberation of what appeared to be reprehensible behaviour at Alexandria,242 had preceded him; which is why, not long after his sojourn at the region, his acceptance by the locals began to circle the drain. Hence, during that gut-wrenching period, he lived in obscurity, indeed on the worst of terms with the resentful local bishop, whose person can be identified as ‘Methodius of Olympus, then of Tyre’ (according to Jerome, and then the Suda), but not in the present work. Ironically, it is this period which shows that his theological thought had reached maturity, and it would be all by hyperbole to say that, in substance, this was his heyday. On the face of it, his societal impact was marginal. However, no matter how his nerves were shot, his days were all but languid, and, as always, still waters run deep. For a great intellectual though Origen was, he did not always have a hot hand in the circumstances of his life. Nevertheless, seclusion did not mean escapism, even though, during that bleak stage, clerics were not his ‘brothers’ but disputants. The deadlock for Origen and his surroundings was there, not because they failed to understand one another, but because they understood each other too well – only they were as oil and water. Two different worlds were confronting each other, the gap between them was ineluctable, and since like attracts like, the clerical establishment treated him as an outcast with one accord.
However, it was this (physically and socially) sore experience that eventually set Origen free; which is why, in this later and advanced work, he spoke so explicitly of such dicey doctrines as his idea of universal restoration, or matters fraught with danger, such as the opprobrious conduct of clergymen. Somehow, by overcoming physical pain, he felt unchained while taking upon himself the Psalmist’ words, ‘I heard the reproach of many that dwelt round about’ repeated also by Jeremiah,243 on which his comment was, ‘the unimpeachable, the blessed Jeremiah was reproached by many; but the reproach by many was for him eulogy before God.’244 Besides, ←415 | 416→a student of Philo as well as an ardent admirer of the Anaxagorean Euripides as Origen was, he could feel himself in Hercules’ shoes, and say with him: