Title: 13 Reasons Cultures Throughout History Brutally Castrated People
Headings: 13 Reasons Cultures Throughout History Brutally Castrated People
Weird History
13 Reasons Cultures Throughout History Brutally Castrated People
During The Renaissance, Italians Castrated Young Boys To Turn Them Into Sexually Appealing Singers
Sex Offenders Are Still Surgically Or Chemically Castrated In Western Cultures
18th-Century Russian Christian Mystics Castrated Themselves
In The Byzantine Empire, Eunuchs Were Some Of The Best Military Generals
Rapists Were Castrated In Post-Revolutionary Virginia
The Normans Castrated Enemies To Assert Their Dominance
Early Christians Castrated Themselves To Prove Their Devotion
Castration Was A Long-Standing Punishment In China
Chinese Eunuchs Were Key Imperial Officials
The Ottoman Empire Used Eunuchs To Manage Harems
Ethiopians May Have Castrated Italian Soldiers In The Late 19th Century
Southeastern Tributary States Sent Eunuchs To China
Medieval Law Castrated Pederasts And Rapists

Content: mandalariangirl / flickr / CC-BY 2.0
Rapists Were Castrated In Post-Revolutionary Virginia
In 1778, Thomas Jefferson wrote a revised law for the commonwealth of Virginia, hoping to remove the death penalty from capital offenses. As the head of a committee tasked with revising all of Virginia's laws, the group proposed that "whosoever shall be guilty of Rape, Polygamy, or Sodomy with man or woman shall be punished, if a man, by castration, if a woman, by cutting thro' the cartilage of her nose a hole of one half inch diameter at the least." Historians debate whether Jefferson meant this law to be lex talionis, where the perpetrator of a crime is punished by injury to the part of his anatomy most comparable to where the victim of the crime was harmed. Photo: Unknown / WikiMedia Commons / Public Domain
The Normans Castrated Enemies To Assert Their Dominance
When the Normans arrived in southern Italy and Sicily during the 11th and 12th centuries, they used castration as discipline for the most heinous crimes. Castration and blinding were set as punishments for treason by William the Conqueror when he invaded England in 1066, a tradition continued by Anglo-Norman and Southern Norman leaders alike. Castration was practiced elsewhere in medieval Europe, usually for sexual offenses. The Normans, however, used it as a way to deprive men of their masculinity, social identity, and power. Photo: Unknown / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Early Christians Castrated Themselves To Prove Their Devotion
During the first three centuries of Christian expansion, devotees castrated themselves to prove their dedication to the faith, mostly due to one mention of the practice in the New Testament.