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Transcript of Mutilation
Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism: the Transmission, Practice, and Meaning of Castration and Blinding in Medieval Wales
Lizabeth JohnsonUniversity of Washington, Seattle
In 1130, Maredudd ap Bleddyn of Powys had his great nephew Llywelyn’s
testicles removed and his eyes gouged out.1 It is unclear what offense Llywelyn had
committed against Maredudd to merit this treatment, but events leading up to Llywelyn’s
mutilation suggest that Maredudd feared that Llywelyn would become a threat to his own
political power. Removing Llywelyn’s eyes and testicles was an acceptable means, by
Maredudd’s standards, of dealing with this threat. Whether Llywelyn survived the
double mutilation is also unclear, as he is never again mentioned in the sources.
However, it is not a stretch to reason that, if he did survive, he was no longer a threat to
his great uncle’s control of Powys. Indeed, from 1130 onward, it was Maredudd ap
Bleddyn and his direct descendants who would control the political destiny of Powys.
For those familiar with medieval British history, Maredudd’s mutilation of his
great-nephew Llywelyn may not come as a surprise. Medieval chronicles of Norman or
English origin often describe the propensity of the Welsh to use violence against their
kin. In fact, the amount of violence within Welsh families was one of the things that led
medieval chroniclers to label the Welsh as uncivilized and barbarous.2 However, it
1 Brut y Tywysogion or The Chronicle of the Princes, Peniarth Ms. 20 Version, trans. by Thomas Jones, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1952), 50. Brut y Tywysogion or The Chronicle of the Princes, Red Book of Hergest Version, ed. by Thomas Jones, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1955), 113. Brenhinedd y Saesson or The Kings of the Saxons, trans. by Thomas Jones, (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1971), 143. Annales Cambriae, ed. by Rev. John Williams ab Ithel, (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860), 38-9. 2 Gerald of Wales and William of Malmesbury were among the critics of the Welsh in the twelfth century. See John Gillingham, “The Context and Purposes of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain,” Anglo-Norman Studies XIII (1990): 99-118 and “Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain,” The Haskins Society Journal 4 (1992): 67-84.
should be noted that the form Maredudd’s violence took was unprecedented. Never
before had the Welsh chronicles reported the castration and blinding of one Welsh prince
by another. To be sure, mutilation had been used in Wales before 1130, but it had most
commonly been limited to blinding. Castration was not a type of mutilation that the
Welsh had practiced.
Outside of Wales, though, neither blinding nor castration was unusual. Both
types of mutilation had been used in the Byzantine Empire and in Western Europe as
early as the seventh-century. In both Byzantium and the West, castration and blinding
were recognized punishments for various crimes, including treachery, adultery, and
bestiality. However, this was not the only use of castration and blinding in these two
areas, as it was not uncommon for politically powerful men to inflict one or both types of
mutilation upon their political rivals in an attempt to eliminate the threat posed by those
rivals. The practical implication of politically motivated blinding is relatively obvious,
given that a blind man was not likely to be a threat militarily, particularly in a time and
place when political power was largely dependent on military capability. The practical
implication of politically motivated castration also seems obvious, in that a castrated man
would not be able to sire heirs who might themselves represent political rivals. Beyond
such concerns, however, these two types of mutilation had particular, culturally specific
meanings in medieval Byzantium and Europe, and it was the cultural meaning of
castration and blinding which did far greater damage to the status of the victim than did
the simple loss of a body part.
The purpose of the present paper is to compare the use and meaning of castration
and blinding in Byzantium and Europe with that in Wales, with a particular focus on the
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
use of mutilation in cases of treachery and political rivalry. Additionally, the paper will
examine the transmission of the practice of castration and blinding to Welsh society, a
transmission that appears to be intimately connected with the growing presence of
Norman nobles in Wales from the late eleventh-century onward. The appearance of the
practice of castration in Welsh politics, I argue, reinforced the emerging twelfth-century
stereotype ironically created by Anglo-Norman authors, which depicted the Welsh as a
barbarous and uncivilized people. The fact that both castration and blinding had long
been used by the rulers of early medieval Europe and the Byzantine Empire indicates that
the division between civility and barbarism in high medieval Europe was not nearly so
clear cut as these Anglo-Norman authors asserted.
Long before Maredudd ap Bleddyn had his nephew Llywelyn castrated and
blinded, Byzantine emperors had been using both types of mutilation against traitors and
rivals alike. While some credit the early seventh-century emperor Phocas as the first to
institute blinding as a means of dealing with political rivals, Alexander Kazhdan argues
that the earliest case of “punitive blinding” in Byzantine society was in 705 and that only
thereafter did blinding become a primary means of punishing political rivals and a
recognized penalty for treachery.3 The practical implication of blinding, as mentioned
above, was that men who were incapable of leading military forces against the emperor
had very little chance of seizing the imperial throne for themselves. But beyond this,
Genevieve Bührer-Thierry describes a particularly ritualistic meaning of blinding in
medieval Byzantium, specifically that those who had committed treachery against the
emperor were not worthy of viewing that which they had tried to destroy. Thus, blinding
3 John Julius Norwich, A Short History of Byzantium, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 88. Alexander Kazhdan, “Blinding,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Volume I, ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan, (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991,), 297.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
served to deprive them of the vision of the emperor in his majesty.4 In addition, Bührer-
Thierry argues that blinding was, in fact, a sign of piety in the ruler who used it because
that ruler was legally justified in taking the life of the person who had betrayed him but
chose not to do so.5 Blinding, therefore, was a legitimate and justifiable punishment for
any who sought to overthrow the emperor, and the loss of the sight of the emperor in his
divine glory was a mercy compared to the loss of one’s life. This perception of blinding
as merciful was, presumably, at the heart of the actions of Constantine VIII, who,
according to the Byzantine chronicler Michael Psellus, was particularly fond of punishing
subjects suspected of rebellious plots or party factions by “blinding of the eyes by a red-
hot iron.”6
Castration, like blinding, was also not a common feature of Byzantine political
struggles before the eighth-century. In fact, Kazhdan argues that castration was only
established as a legal punishment in the early eighth-century legal text Ecloga, and then
only in cases of bestiality.7 However, Psellus’ chronicle makes it clear that, by the tenth
and eleventh centuries, castration had become a recognized method of preventing
potential political rivals from becoming active threats.8 As with blinding, the practical
implication of castration was that political enemies would not be able to seize the
imperial throne and establish their own dynasties. But, like blinding, castration had a
very particular meaning in Byzantine society, a meaning that was very appropriate for
removing political rivals in a largely masculine political world. On this point, Kathryn
4 Genevieve Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger” or “Vengeful Anger”? The Punishment of Blinding in the Early Medieval West,” in Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. by Barbara H. Rosenwein, (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1998), 79.5 Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger”,” 79.6 Michael Psellus, The Chronographia of Michael Psellus, trans. by E.R.A. Sewter, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1953), 31-2.7 Alexander Kazhdan, “Mutilation,” in The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, Volume II, 1428.8 Psellus, The Chronographia, 12, 105
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
M. Ringrose argues that castrated men were perceived with a great deal of ambivalence
in early medieval Byzantium. According to Ringrose, the concept of masculinity in
Byzantine society, based in large part on the writings of Aristotle and Galen, revolved
around the man’s ability to procreate. When a man was castrated and lost this ability, he
was no longer fully a man.9 Thus castrated men, or eunuchs, were something of a third
gender, neither ranking with physically whole men nor with women. In fact, Ringrose
states that eunuchs were most commonly assumed to be like women, and that the same
adjectives were used to describe both: unkind, ungenerous, immoderate, and
fainthearted.10 While court eunuchs in particular had come to be regarded in a more
positive light by the tenth-century, Ringrose argues that, because of their unique gender
status, they could never hope to take the throne for themselves, no matter how much
power they held.11 One example of such a powerful court eunuch can be seen in the reign
of Basil II, whose uncle, though he was a eunuch, rose to power as parakoimomenus, or
Lord Chamberlain.12 Psellus describes how Basil II’s uncle had, at an early age,
“suffered castration—a natural precaution against a concubine’s son, for under those
circumstances he could never hope to usurp the throne from a legitimate heir,” a clear
statement regarding the connection between physical and political castration in Byzantine
society.13
9 Kathryn M. Ringrose, “Living in the Shadows: Eunuchs and Gender in Byzantium,” in Third Sex, Third Gender: Beyond Sexual Dimorphism in Culture and History, ed. by Gilbert Herdt, (New York: Zone Books, 1994), 89-90.10 Ringrose, “Living in the Shadows,” 91-93.11 Kathryn M. Ringrose, “Reconfiguring the Prophet Daniel: Gender, Sanctity, and Castration in Byzantium,” in Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, ed. by Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack, (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 83. Ringrose, “Living in the Shadows,” 96-7.12 Psellus, The Chronographia, 12.13 Psellus, The Chronographia, 12.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
While blinding and castration were used in early medieval Byzantine court
politics as methods of punishing traitors and eliminating rivals, both types of mutilation
were also used in the early medieval West. Bührer-Thierry argues that the use of
blinding as a means of punishing treachery emerged in Western Europe as early as the
seventh-century and became common under Charlemagne, who adopted blinding as a
customary punishment for those who committed any sort of rebellion.14 Indeed,
Charlemagne’s biographer Einhard relates the outcome of a revolt in German territory,
where “all the plotters were exiled, some having their eyes put out first.”15 In such cases,
Bührer-Thierry stresses that blinding was not “medieval cruelty,” but was a punishment
based on a serious consideration of the law and Byzantine practices, which as we have
seen emphasized the blinding of traitors as evidence of the ruler’s mercy.16 By the latter
ninth-century, blinding was recognized as just punishment in situations in which the
sovereign was perceived to be legitimate.17 According to Bührer-Thierry, those who
committed crimes against their lord were denied of the sight of that lord, “clothed in the
splendor of the divine,” as was the case in Byzantine society.18
In a similar fashion, castration appears as a punishment in cases of treachery in
eleventh- and twelfth-century Normandy and France. According to Klaus Van Eickels, in
the Norman world, masculinity was a prerequisite of political power, and to rule and have
the respect of one’s peers, a Norman nobleman had to have “a fully functional male
body.”19 Consequently, for a Norman nobleman, physical castration was also political
14 Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger”,” 78-80.15 Einhard, “The Life of Charlemagne,” in Two Lives of Charlemagne, trans. by Lewis Thorpe, (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 75-6.16 Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger”,” 87.17 Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger”,” 88-9.18 Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger”,” 91.19 Klaus van Eickels, “Gendered Violence: Castration and Blinding as Punishment for Treason in Normandy and Anglo-Norman England,” Gender & History 16 (2004): 593.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
castration. Similarly, Martin Irvine has suggested that in the medieval European mind,
“the lack of genitals [was] a sign of a deeper lack, a deficiency or erasure of virtus, which
alone allow[ed] the true performance of masculinity.”20 In particular, Irvine’s argument
is based on the castration of Peter Abelard, a man whose castration was punishment both
for his sexual relationship with Heloise and for his betrayal of the trust of Heloise’s
uncle, who had hired Abelard as a tutor for the girl. In his Historia Calamitatum,
Abelard states that, even before Fulbert took action against him, he approached Fulbert
and admitted to "the deceit love had made [him] commit as if it were the basest
treachery,” a statement which reinforces the connection in European society between
treachery and castration.21 Following Abelard’s castration, Irvine notes that several of
Abelard’s contemporaries referred to him as a man who was no longer masculine.22
Thus, the cultural meaning of castration in France and Normandy—namely that the man
who had been castrated had lost his masculine identity—was very similar to that in
Byzantine society.
However, as it was the Normans who had the most cultural contact with the
Welsh from the eleventh-century onward, less than a century before the first use of
double mutilation by Welsh princes, it is necessary to examine evidence of mutilation in
Normandy more closely. One of the more well-known examples of castration and
blinding in Norman territory involved a minor Norman lord by the name of William
FitzGiroie. FitzGiroie owed fealty to another Norman lord, William Talvas, and at some
point during their relationship, FitzGiroie was perceived to have betrayed Talvas. Talvas
20 Martin Irvine, “Abelard and (Re)writing the Male Body: Castration, Identity, and Remasculinization,” in Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), 94.21 The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. by Betty Radice, (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1974), 69.22 Irvine, “Abelard,” 92.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
did not hesitate to take his revenge. According to Orderic Vitalis, Talvas invited
FitzGiroie to a wedding, and once at the wedding FitzGiroie was seized and then blinded,
castrated, and his ears cropped.23 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum differs slightly in its
account of the mutilation of FitzGiroie, recording that he was blinded and had his ears
and nose cut off.24 Although the discrepancy between these two accounts, one stating
that FitzGiroie’s genitals were removed and the other that his nose was cut off, might
seem problematic in this instance, there is actually a commonality here, specifically that
cutting off the nose of a traitor was symbolic of castration. Van Eickels argues that in
cases of political rivalry where women were mutilated, the body parts those women
commonly lost were the nose and ears because it disfigured them, making them less
attractive to marriage partners, and thus inhibited them from procreating, just as a man
was prevented from procreating after castration. In addition, Van Eickels states that
cutting off a man’s nose was actually more demeaning than castration because it was a
type of mutilation normally associated with women.25 But despite the different accounts
of FitzGiroie’s mutilation, both Vitalis and the Gesta affirm the idea that this punishment
was for FitzGiroie’s treachery against Talvas. In particular, the Gesta states that Talvas
had FitzGiroie seized “without cause as if [he] were guilty of vile treachery.”26
Unfortunately, neither the Gesta nor Vitalis’ Ecclesiastical History gives the reader any
idea what FitzGiroie’s act of betrayal was. However, Michael Bennett states that
William FitzGiroie was a vassal of both Geoffrey of Mayenne and William Talvas, and in
23 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, volume II, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 14-5: “oculis priuauit, amputatisque genitalibus ariumque summitatibus crudeliter deturpauit.”24 The Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, volume II, ed. and trans. by Elisabeth M.C. Van Houts, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 110-1: “oculis priuarunt, nariumque summitatibus et aurium abscisis deturparunt.”25 Van Eickels, “Gendered Violence,” 598 n. 5.26 Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 110: “sine reatu quasi nequam proditorem mox comprehendit.”
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
serving Geoffrey against Talvas on one particular occasion in 1044, FitzGiroie may have
appeared to Talvas as a “contumacious vassal” and was punished as such.27 Thus, what
becomes clear from this case of castration (literal or symbolic) and blinding is that the
men recording the event perceived FitzGiroie’s mutilation as a punishment for treachery
and expected that their audience would understand that as well. Furthermore, because a
man needed, in Van Eickels’ words, “a fully functional male body” to have political and
social status within Norman society, that same audience would also be aware that
FitzGiroie was no longer fully masculine.
Roughly a century later, Suger, the author of The Deeds of Louis the Fat, recorded
a similar incident, one in which the act of treachery was quite clear. According to Suger,
Henry I, king of England and duke of Normandy, was betrayed by a member of his own
household, a man whom Henry himself had elevated from low rank. When the plot was
discovered, Suger tells us that this man “was mercifully condemned to losing his eyes
and genitals when he deserved to be choked to death by a noose.”28 While Suger does not
indicate whether this betrayal took place in Henry’s English or Continental lands, Suger’s
comment on the event, that the double mutilation was merciful compared with hanging,
harks back to the understanding of mutilation as a punishment for treachery as expressed
in early medieval Byzantine and European society, where loss of body parts served as a
sign of the ruler’s clemency when execution was otherwise in order. In this case, the
guilty man was not only punished by being deprived of seeing Henry I in all his majesty,
he also lost his masculine status in Norman society.
27 Michael Bennett, “Violence in eleventh-century Normandy: feud, warfare and politics,” in Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. by Guy Halsall, (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 132.28 Suger, The Deeds of Louis the Fat, trans. by Richard C. Cusimano and John Moorhead, (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 114.
8
Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
A third example of blinding and castration as a punishment for treachery
committed against a Norman ruler comes from 1165, when Henry II castrated and
blinded a number of Welsh hostages after a disastrous campaign in Welsh territory.29 The
hostages were handed over to Henry by the leading rulers of Wales as a guarantee of
good behavior. But when the various Welsh princes held out against Henry, despite the
perilous situation of the hostages, Henry inflicted this double mutilation on the hostages
as representatives of those he perceived to have committed treachery against him. In this
case, it was not just men who were doubly mutilated. Female hostages were mutilated as
well, their eyes gouged out and their noses cut off.30 As noted previously, cutting off the
nose of a hostage served much the same purpose as castration, particularly if the hostage
was a woman. One might argue that mutilating the hostages defeated the purpose of the
mutilation, specifically that the hostages were not the ones who had betrayed Henry II
and thus were not the ones who should be stripped of the vision of Henry II in his royal
splendor or stripped of their status in society. However, from that time forward, both the
male and female hostages, if they survived the mutilation, would have served as visible
reminders within Welsh society of the punishment that awaited those who betrayed
Henry II and, at the same time, Henry’s mercy toward those who opposed him.
Bearing in mind this evidence of the practice of mutilation in Norman lands and
by Norman rulers, we can return to the question of the practice and perception of
castration and blinding in medieval Wales. First, however, it needs to be reiterated that it
was not uncommon for Welsh princes to blind their political rivals. This type of
mutilation appears in the Welsh chronicles as early as 974 and continues to appear until
29 Annales Cambriae, 50.30 Chronicle of Roger de Hoveden, ed. W. Stubbs, (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1868-71), volume I, 240.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
the end of the twelfth-century. In some cases, blinding appears to have been a political
tool, while in others it appears to have been considered a just punishment for crimes
committed by the man who was mutilated. An example of the latter took place in 1113,
when Owain ap Cadwgan gouged out the eyes of his cousin Madog ap Rhiryd following
Madog’s murder of Owain’s father, who had at the time been the ruler of Powys.31
Although the chroniclers do not state that blinding was the legal punishment for Madog’s
act, or even that Madog had committed treachery, there is no suggestion that Owain’s act
was perceived as cruel or illegitimate. In fact, although the chroniclers do not refer to the
blinding as an act of mercy on Owain’s part, it might have been understood as such,
given that in Welsh society feuds often arose from homicide, whether the killer and
victim were related or not, and the usual outcome was a second, and socially acceptable,
homicide, or a hefty financial reparation.
Despite this previous use of blinding, however, the Welsh princes never used
castration as a means of eliminating political rivals or punishing treacherous underlings
until 1130, when Maredudd ap Bleddyn castrated his great-nephew Llywelyn. As
discussed above, the Welsh chronicles give very little clue as to why Maredudd mutilated
Llywelyn in this fashion. However, a hint as to Maredudd’s reasoning may lie in the fact
that Llywelyn was the grandson of Maredudd’s older brother Cadwgan. In fact,
Cadwgan had been recognized as ruler of Powys by Henry I in the year 1111, and
Cadwgan’s son, Owain, had been similarly recognized by Henry I upon Cadwgan’s
death.32 Only with Owain’s death in 1116 had Maredudd been able to rise to the top of
the dynasty of Powys and take control of political matters in that region. In 1128,
31 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 36-7. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 76-7. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 118-21.32 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 35. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 73-6. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 116-9. Annales Cambriae, 34-5.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
however, Llywelyn ap Owain ap Cadwgan made his first appearance in the chronicles,
and whatever his actions may have been, they were significant enough that his great
uncle seized and imprisoned him.33 But within a year, Llywelyn was free and once again
involved in the politics of Powys, as he appears to have been active in a kin feud in the
territory of Arwystli, which was adjacent and subject to the authority of Powys.34 Only
after this did Maredudd resort to castration and blinding to remove his great nephew from
the political scene, a nephew who had not, as far as we know, committed treachery
against his uncle. Llywelyn’s fate after his mutilation is unknown. He may have
survived the process and lived on in relative obscurity, but the chronicles are silent on the
matter.
This was not the only case of castration and blinding in Wales in the twelfth-
century, however. In 1131, Meurig ap Meurig, a member of the dynasty of Arwystli, was
castrated and his eyes were gouged out by an unrecorded assailant. This particular
incident may have been related to the feud that had been going on since 1129 and in
which Llywelyn ab Owain of Powys had become involved.35 But due to the lack of
information provided by the chroniclers regarding this feud, it is difficult to advance any
interpretation of the incident. No statement is made as to why Meurig was mutilated in
this fashion, what his ultimate fate was, or even what Meurig’s political status was within
the dynasty of Arwystli, information which might provide some hint as to whether he was
already a politically powerful member of the dynasty or a member who was seeking
power.
33 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 50. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 110-1. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 143. Annales Cambriae, 38.34 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 50. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 110-3. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 142-3. Annales Cambriae, 38-9.35 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 50. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 112-3. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 142-3. Annales Cambriae, 39.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
The next double mutilation, and one which is much better documented than that
of Meurig ap Meurig, took place in 1152, when Owain ap Gruffudd ap Cynan, better
known as Owain Gwynedd, had his nephew Cunedda castrated and blinded.36 This case,
like that involving Llywelyn, appears to have been related to a power struggle.
Cunedda’s father, Cadwallon, was the eldest son of Gruffudd ap Cynan, and although
Cadwallon predeceased his brother Owain, Cunedda remained to represent the senior
branch of the dynasty.37 As such, Owain Gwynedd may have feared that Cunedda would
seek to supplant him, and to prevent that Owain had his nephew blinded and castrated.
As with Llywelyn ab Owain, the chroniclers give no hint as to whether Cunedda survived
the mutilation, but without his sight, he certainly could not have represented a threat to
his uncle Owain.
The last incident of castration and blinding in Wales occurred in 1175. In that
year, Hywel ap Iorwerth, heir apparent to the lordship of Caerleon, castrated and gouged
out the eyes of his uncle Owain Pen-carn.38 Interestingly, the chroniclers record that
Hywel did this without his father’s knowledge, which suggests that his motives may not
have been solely for his own protection but for the protection of his father as well.
Regardless, Hywel viewed his uncle Owain as a political threat. That Owain Pen-carn
was removed from the political scene in Caerleon is certain, as it was Iorwerth’s heirs
who continued to control Caerleon. As with the earlier cases, however, whether Owain’s
political exclusion was a result of his death or simply the mutilation is a question for
which the surviving evidence cannot provide an answer.
36 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 58. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 130-1. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 154-5.37 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 50. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 112-3. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 142-5. Annales Cambriae, 39.38 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 70. Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 162-3. Brenhinedd y Saesson, 178-81.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
Before moving on to a discussion of what blinding and castration meant in
twelfth-century Wales, it is first necessary to draw out the similarities between the use of
these two types of mutilation in Welsh, Byzantine, and European politics. One striking
fact is that in Wales castration and blinding were always used together. There were no
cases of castration in which the victim did not also lose his eyes or his eyesight. This was
quite often the case in Norman territory as well, where men who were perceived to be
guilty of treachery lost both their genitals and their vision. The difference between these
Welsh cases of mutilation and those in Norman territory, however, is that in none of the
Welsh cases of castration and blinding were the mutilated men actually said to have
committed treachery against those who ordered the mutilation. Instead, we must assume
that the Welsh chroniclers chose, for whatever reason, to be silent on the issue of
treachery. But it also possible that the various Welsh princes feared that the men who
were mutilated might one day attempt to seize power and that castration and blinding was
a means of preventing such treachery from ever taking place. If the latter is the more
accurate of the two interpretations, then the Welsh princes’ use of castration and blinding
was similar to the actions of those Byzantine emperors who castrated their political rivals
and blinded those who were active political threats. However, it must be reiterated that
the Byzantine emperors did not both castrate and blind their rivals.
With regard to the meaning of blinding and castration in Welsh society, we must
begin by looking even more closely at the sources that record these acts of mutilation. In
cases in which blinding was used alone, as well as the four cases in which it was used
with castration, there is no suggestion in the language of the chronicles that the Welsh
understood the cultural meaning of blinding as the Byzantines and Europeans did and as
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discussed by Bührer-Thierry. The idea that blinding was a punishment in which a man
lost sight of the divine glory of the ruler he had tried to overthrow or kill is not expressed
anywhere in the Welsh chronicles. Instead, the chroniclers simply state that the men in
question were blinded or had their eyes gouged out, the difference presumably regarding
whether sight alone was lost or whether the eyes were completely removed from the
body, the symbolism of the specific mutilation perhaps speaking to the severity of the
victim’s alleged crime. In fact, in most cases the chroniclers do not even venture to
criticize these mutilations, with the exception of two cases in the late twelfth-century. In
one, dating from 1187, the victim was said to have been “unjustly seized” by his brothers
who then gouged his eyes out.39 In the other case, which took place in 1193, the man
responsible for gouging out the eyes of two of his brothers was said to have done so “in
his greed for worldly power.”40 On the one hand, this may correspond with Bührer-
Thierry’s comment that ninth-century Carolingian rulers who were not perceived to be
legitimate authorities were often criticized for their use of blinding as a judicial
punishment.41 On the other hand, this criticism in the Welsh sources may simply be
evidence of a growing distaste for mutilation in the twelfth-century, regardless of who
was inflicting it, a distaste which was likewise being voiced in Byzantine and Western
European society. Above all, however, the use of blinding in Wales does not appear to
have been linked with the idea that the man who lost his vision or his eyes altogether was
being deprived of the sight of his king or prince in his royal majesty. Instead, the Welsh
may have understood blinding in a very practical sense, namely that the man who had
39 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 73.40 Brut y Tywysogion Pen. 20, 75.41 Bührer-Thierry, ““Just Anger”,” 89-90.
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been blinded would not be able to lead men in war, a very necessary function for any
aspiring Welsh prince.
With regard to castration, the cultural understanding of this type of mutilation in
Wales was likewise different. As discussed above, in Byzantine and European society, a
castrated man was no man. He was, at best, no longer masculine and, at worst, had all
the negative traits associated with women. In the four cases of castration in Wales,
however, there is no suggestion that this gendered perception of castration was
understood. Instead, when the chronicles describe two of these cases of castration and
blinding, there is no indication of what the castration meant at all, as was the case with
blinding. Only in the two final cases do the chronicles give any indication why the
mutilations took place and how they were to be understood. In 1152, when Owain
Gwynedd castrated his nephew Cunedda and had his eyes gouged out, the chronicler who
composed the entry in Brenhinedd y Saesson recorded that Owain did this “lest
[Cunedda] should have offspring.”42 Similarly, when Hywel ab Iorwerth of Caerleon
castrated his uncle Owain Pen-carn, the composers of the Brut y Tywysogion and
Brenhinedd y Saesson both wrote that he did so “lest [Owain] should beget issue who
might hold authority over Caerleon.”43 Thus, the cultural meaning of castration in Wales
was not that the man who was castrated became effeminate, but that such a man could not
reproduce and thereby threaten his rival’s hold on the territory in question. While this
biological understanding of castration is similar to the meaning of castration in Byzantine
and European society, in that a castrated man had lost the ability to procreate (as did
women who were disfigured by the loss of their noses), the Welsh chronicles are devoid
42 Brenhinedd y Saesson, 154: “rac bot etived ydunt [sic].”43 Brut y Tywysogion RBH, 162: “rac meithrin etiued ohonaw a wledychei Caer Llion wedy hynny.” Brenhinedd y Saesson, 178: “rac kaffel etived ohonaw.”
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of the gendered language that is associated with castrated men in Byzantine and
European sources. Therefore, the cultural understanding of castration that was current in
the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe does not appear to have been present in
Wales. In a sense, the Welsh adoption of castration as a tool for eliminating political
rivals was incomplete in that castration in Welsh society did not carry with it the stigma
of effeminacy.
Returning to the issue of how the Welsh came into contact with the concept of
castration, as it is not something that the Welsh had practiced before the twelfth-century,
the most immediate answer to this question is that the Welsh must have adopted the
practice of castration from their Norman neighbors. The Normans had, after all, been
practicing castration for over a hundred years by the time the Welsh began to practice it.
Indeed, Van Eickels argues that the tenth-century Scandinavian settlers of Normandy
brought the practice with them from their homeland.44 Such a cultural exchange could
easily have taken place during the reign of Henry I, who, as mentioned above, was very
much involved in the politics of Powys in the early twelfth-century. It was Henry I who
acknowledged both Cadwgan ap Bleddyn and his son Owain as rulers of Powys in the
second decade of the twelfth--century. Similarly, it was Henry I whom Maredudd ap
Bleddyn petitioned to gain control of Powys after his brother Cadwgan’s death, only to
be rejected in favor of his nephew, Cadwgan’s son Owain. It should not come as a
surprise, then, that Maredudd might learn that Henry had used castration against those
guilty or suspected of treachery and that Maredudd might then choose to use castration
against his own nephew, who appears to have been making a name for himself in the
political sphere of Powys the year before he was mutilated. Furthermore, once Maredudd
44 Van Eickels, 594.
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had used castration against a political rival, the practice was adopted by other Welsh
princes who found themselves in similarly tense dynastic situations. After all, given that
Wales had a very unsettled political scene, any prominent kinsman might be perceived as
a political rival. Most importantly, however, the practice of castration, once it appeared
in Wales, did not have to reach this westernmost corner of Britain directly from
Byzantium. Instead, the cultural transmission of castration to Welsh society began in
Norman society, and it was from the Norman kings of England that the Welsh learned of
this handy political tool for eliminating rivals.
Ironically, by the time the Welsh began to use castration along with blinding, the
practice had become less fashionable in other parts of medieval Europe. With regard to
Byzantine society, both types of mutilation were falling out of use in the imperial court
by the end of the eleventh-century. In their historical works, both Psellus and Anna
Comnena comment on the reluctance of various emperors to use mutilation, in particular
blinding, against those who rebelled against them. In several cases, rebels who were
blinded in the last quarter of the eleventh-century were said to have been punished
without the knowledge of the emperors themselves.45 Whether these statements are true
is unimportant. What is important is that Psellus and Anna both expressed a growing
societal distaste for blinding as a judicial punishment. A similar change was taking place
in Western European society. John Gillingham has argued that it was in the twelfth-
century that Norman nobles began to treat those they perceived as their social and
cultural equals in a more chivalrous fashion, by abstaining from blinding and castration.46
Emily Zack Tabuteau has likewise argued that the Normans were actually forgiving 45 Psellus, The Chronographia, 254, 277, 281-2. Anna Comnena, The Alexiad of Anna Comnena, trans. by E.R.A Sewter, (London and New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 286, 261, 289.46 John Gillingham, “Conquering the barbarians: war and chivalry in twelfth-century Britain,” Haskins Society Journal 4 (1993): 76-9.
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
lords, at least with regard to their important vassals, many of whom escaped punishment
even in cases of betrayal.47 There were some exceptions to this general sense of
forgiveness, however. For example, when Henry I castrated and blinded his treacherous
servant, it is clear that Norman clemency did not necessarily apply to those lower down
on the social scale, particularly in cases of treachery. A second group excluded from
Norman chivalry included political rivals who were considered to be less civilized than
the Normans themselves. According to Gillingham, the Welsh were in this category;48
and this attitude toward the Welsh was reflected in the actions of Henry II, when he
castrated and blinded his Welsh hostages in 1165.
By the end of the twelfth-century, however, the Welsh too had begun to move
away from homicide and mutilation as methods of dealing with political threats. The last
use of castration and blinding was in 1175, and the last incident of blinding took place in
1193. From that point onward, most Welsh princes took to imprisoning or exiling their
rivals, a practice that was far more acceptable by the standards of other European
societies. One explanation for this abandonment of mutilation has been offered by
Gillingham, who argues that the Welsh began to adopt chivalric behavior through their
contact with the Normans. In particular, he states that the Welsh discontinued their use
of homicide and mutilation against rivals and kinsmen due to the civilizing influence of
the Normans.49 However, as has been demonstrated here, the Welsh had not used
47 Emily Zack Tabuteau, “Punishments in Eleventh-Century Normandy,” in Conflict in Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture, ed. by Warren C. Brown and Piotr Górecki, (Burlington: Ashgate, 2003), 148.48 Gillingham, “Conquering the barbarians,” 83.49 John Gillingham, “1066 and the introduction of chivalry into England,” in Law and Government in Medieval England and Normandy: Essays in honour of Sir James Holt, ed. by George Garnett and John Hudson, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) and “Killing and mutilating political enemies in the British Isles from the late twelfth to the early fourteenth century: a comparative study,” in Britain and Ireland 900-1300: Insular Responses to Medieval European Change, ed. by Brendan Smith, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
castration at all before the arrival of the Normans in Welsh territory in the late eleventh-
century. Therefore, long before the Welsh adopted civility from the Normans they had
already adopted a far less "civilized" aspect of Norman culture in the form of castration,
which they implemented in much the same fashion as the Norman lords and kings.
Consequently, it is misleading to suggest that the Normans’ contribution to Welsh society
was a sense of chivalry, when the Normans’ prior contribution to Welsh society was the
use of castration as a means of dealing with rivals and traitors. Nonetheless, from the
beginning of the twelfth-century, the Welsh princes consciously attempted to move with
the times, and by 1200 this included discontinuing the use of blinding and castration, as
had the Byzantines and Normans before them.
Despite the efforts of Welsh princes to adapt to the changing times by
discontinuing the use of mutilation to deal with political threats, the occurrence of
mutilation in Welsh territory up to the late twelfth-century contributed to the growing
perception of the Welsh as an uncivilized and barbarous people. In fact, Gillingham
argues that the dichotomy of the barbarous Welsh and the civilized Anglo-Normans
began to develop as early as the 1130s, at roughly the same time that the Welsh first used
castration against their political rivals.50 Early twelfth-century Anglo-Norman historians
such as William of Malmesbury began to portray the Welsh, who were known to practice
homicide and mutilation against one another, as uncivilized compared to their Norman
and English neighbors.51 That William of Malmesbury could draw such a distinction
suggests, on the one hand, that chivalric attitudes had taken root in Anglo-Norman
society and were being expressed at the highest levels of that society. On the other hand,
50 Gillingham, “Conquering the barbarians,” 72. 51 Gillingham, “Conquering the barbarians,” 69.
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this same distinction demonstrates William of Malmesbury’s shortsightedness and
ethnocentricity as a historian, as he completely disregards the fact that the Normans
themselves had practiced mutilation against their social, cultural, and political equals as
recently as the eleventh-century. However, it was that one century of political and
cultural progress that made all the difference, and it was the Welsh who suffered in
William of Malmesbury’s estimation because they had continued to mutilate and kill one
another after the Normans had already adopted less violent means of dealing with
political threats. At the risk of redundancy, it must be reiterated that the Welsh had not
practiced castration before the twelfth-century, before the Normans applied increasing
political pressure to the Welsh, and even then they adopted the practice from their
Norman neighbors. Furthermore, the Welsh did not understand castration to be as
culturally debilitating as the Normans and Byzantines did, as those Welsh noblemen who
were castrated were never referred to by the chroniclers as men who were no longer
masculine. But it was the Welsh who were labeled as barbarous by twelfth-century
authors, despite this long history of castration and blinding in Byzantine and European
politics, and it is this labeling itself that is truly ironic.
When Maredudd ap Bleddyn castrated and blinded his great-nephew Llywelyn, it
was not just an example of the barbarous nature of the Welsh. Maredudd was using
mutilation as a political tool to remove a rival, just as the Byzantine emperors and
Norman lords had done before him. There is, however, no indication that Maredudd
understood this act of castration and blinding as his Byzantine and European counterparts
had. There is no suggestion in the Welsh chronicles that castration made a man
effeminate, nor is there any suggestion that blinding, or gouging out of a man’s eyes,
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deprived that man of the sight of his sovereign in all his divine glory. Thus Maredudd
had adopted the practice of castration from his Norman neighbors, but the adoption was
incomplete because neither the Welsh princes nor the chroniclers appear to have
understood the act of castration as it was understood in Europe and Byzantium. This lack
of understanding did not, however, change the fact that Llywelyn, Maredudd’s great-
nephew, was thereafter unable to lead a war band or to challenge his great-uncle’s power
in any way, if he even survived the mutilation. Thus castration and blinding in Wales
was still a successful means of eliminating political rivals, even in the absence of gender-
specific or ritualistic language.
The idea that the Welsh adopted castration from their Norman neighbors is,
perhaps, surprising, given that most scholarship on Anglo-Norman involvement in Wales
has argued that the Welsh were fully capable of mutilation and brutality without learning
any new techniques from other cultures. In fact, as noted above, Gillingham has argued
that the Welsh adopted chivalric ideas from their Norman neighbors, ideas that helped to
civilize the Welsh, and so it is perhaps difficult to accept that the Welsh might first have
adopted castration as a means of dealing with political rivals from their more civilized
Norman neighbors before they adopted chivalry from those same neighbors. However,
the appearance of castration in Wales in the era in which Henry I was most involved with
Welsh politics, and in the region of Wales with which Henry had the most contact,
suggests very strongly that castration did indeed precede chivalry in the cultural
commerce that existed between the Normans and the Welsh. However, the adoption of
castration had come too late. By the time the Welsh began to use castration along with
blinding, both Byzantine and European society were beginning to use other types of
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Mutilation as Cultural Commerce and Criticism
punishment in cases of treachery. There was an exception to this among the Normans, of
course, who still used blinding and castration against treacherous servants and those
people perceived to be more barbarous in nature, such as the Welsh. But the fact that the
Welsh used blinding and castration on other Welshmen, and in particular on those of
noble birth, only confirmed the growing perception of the Welsh as uncivilized,
especially in the eyes of twelfth-century Anglo-Norman chroniclers.
In opposition to these chroniclers, however, we should realize that the Welsh were
no more or less civilized than the Normans regarding the use of mutilation. As
demonstrated here, castration and blinding had a long history in the Byzantine Empire
and in Europe. Nor were the Welsh the only ones to have inflicted such mutilation upon
their kinsmen, as the early castration of the uncle of Basil II demonstrates. Instead,
building on that aspect of Gillingham’s argument which speaks to the existence of
cultural contact between the Welsh and the Normans, we should see the use of mutilation,
and in particular castration, in Wales not as evidence of an uncivilized society, but as
evidence of cultural commerce between the Welsh and the Normans that predates and
complicates the transmission of Norman chivalry to Welsh society. Furthermore, we
should understand the practice of castration in Wales as an attempt by Welsh lords to
adopt a political tool that had been used by the most powerful and “civilized” realms of
the age. In a sense, then, the Welsh were attempting to “keep up with the Joneses.”
Unfortunately for these twelfth-century Welsh princes, the Joneses, as always, were
already one step ahead.
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