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

by Kathryn M. Ringrose

The Perfect Servant reevaluates the place of eunuchs in Byzantium. Kathryn Ringrose uses the modern concept of gender as a social construct to identify eunuchs as a distinct gender and to illustrate how gender was defined in the Byzantine world. At the same time she explores the changing role of the eunuch in Byzantium from 600 to 1100.

Accepted for generations as a legitimate and functional part of Byzantine civilization, eunuchs were prominent in both the imperial court and the church. They were distinctive in physical appearance, dress, and manner and were considered uniquely suited for important roles in Byzantine life. Transcending conventional notions of male and female, eunuchs lived outside of normal patterns of procreation and inheritance and were assigned a unique capacity for mediating across social and spiritual boundaries. This allowed them to perform tasks from which prominent men and women were constrained, making them, in essence, perfect servants.

Written with precision and meticulously researched, The Perfect Servant will immediately take its place as a major study on Byzantium and the history of gender.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Gender, Classical Studies, Academic

312 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Lois Bujold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting if academic social history, leading me to meditate that the surgical reconstruction of gender is no new thing in the world. Ringrose follows the development of the practices and practicalities as they change over the course of several centuries from late antiquity to the dawn of the high middle ages. She is meticulous about not exceeding her sources which -- since almost no writing by eunuchs about their own inner lives in this period survives, only writings about them from the outside -- leaves me still trying to imagine it for myself. It's like trying to learn about women using only sources written by men, or, worse, churchmen. Except at least some writing by women does survive.

...Or their outer lives on the day-to-day basis, a standard problem with history. I still need something like a quick guide to Byzantine court and governmental structure for dummies. "What were these people actually doing all day?" tends to be maddeningly glossed over by their contemporary historians, since that was stuff their audience was expected to know, and historians in the interim tended to only go for the wars, politics, and occasional lurid bits. Well, this is a start, anyway.

Interesting to compare and contrast this with writings about the Chinese imperial court, which also made heavy use of eunuch servants, officials, and even military officers. Both courts promulgated models of themselves as being mirrors of a court of heaven, presumably for similar propaganda purposes, leading, circularly, to heaven being imagined as like an imperial court. Making the Orthodox and the Confucian views of the afterlife oddly congruent.

Fine print, argh my eyes. People considering reading this might want to pop for the e-edition, with expandable fonts.

Ta, L.

[C. B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

After noticing something of a dearth of books that take on early transgender history, or rather history that could be read usefully in the light of modern transgender concepts, I decided to follow this path on my own; to find some topics that could be of interest. The first thing I thought of was the court eunuchs in Byzantium and China, which I'd noticed on the periphery of much of my reading.

Ringrose writes wonderfully. She uses the eunuch of Byzantium almost as a case-study of how genders are constructed in societies. From the Byzantium of Late Antiquity, where eunuchs were deeply suspect, to the Byzantium of the tenth-century, where eunuchs were a hugely integrated part of the court and the church. It's fascinating that a third/intermediate gender category was normal in a past society.

In a deeply gender segregated society like Byzantium(where even the food one ate was determined by gender), a new one was necessary to transgress the boundaries allowed amidst such division. A 'perfect servant' that could serve the court in areas perceived as masculine and feminine.

She also examines a few more themes, including the religious eunuchs and debates in Byzantium over the legitimacy of their chastity, eunuchism as a punishment, and contemporary accusations of sexual depravity in eunuchs.

Hugely recommended for anyone interested in the history of gender.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm very glad I finally managed to acquire a copy of this book—it's out of print and for quite a while I wasn't able to locate an affordable used copy—and it was certainly interesting to compare it to The Eunuch in Byzantine History and Society, which I read this summer. The two authors have very different views on the gendering of eunuchs in Byzantine society, which is perhaps unsurprising since Byzantine writers didn't really consider or conceive of gender as a distinct concept from sex or embodiment, and tended to conceive of traits that we would consider to be learned or inculcated as being results of physical differences in the body. However, Kathryn M. Ringrose does seem to make a good case that the Byzantine understanding of the nature of eunuchs was, on some level, a parallel "third thing" different from men and from women.

The extended discussion of parents' decision to castrate their sons to prepare them for careers in the Church was interesting in particular because of how it falls into a general pattern of seeing children as property and as entities to be shaped by their parents without consideration of concepts like consent. Also a bit stressful to think about, admittedly.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book is very interesting though because of its focus it is a narrow look at Byzantium - their view on eunuchs. Very interesting historical transition from the time of Constantine in which eunuchs were rejected by Roman culture, the church, the bible to the 11th Century in which eunuchs were accepted (though still with some ambivalence). By the 11th Century eunuchs were powerful in the government, held positions in the church, even as saints and monks. Earlier histories of the empire were rewritten to reflect the then current attitude toward eunuchs.

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite pieces of scholarly writing. A fascinating, well-researched, well-written introduction to the social roles eunuchs had in the Byzantine empire, as well as a thorough analysis of the early church's attitudes and approaches to them.

Chapter 7, which outlines her argument that eunuchs are the basis of Western angel imagery, is particularly interesting.