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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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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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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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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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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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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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.

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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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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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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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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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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.”

15


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.

17


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).

18


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.

19


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,

20


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

21


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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Mutilation

Documents

klaus van eickels

meurig ap meurig

maredudd ap bleddyn

van eickels argues

early medieval west

llywelyn ab owain

eliminating political rivals

western european society