Soo Judaism isn't terribly fond of virginity on a lifelong basis. Procreating is a big commandment, and marrying and having children is a big part of Jewish social obligations, and has been for a long time. The Talmud says that the only activity that can acceptably be prioritized over marriage is study, and it's pretty ambivalent about that (it only works in certain contexts).

In fact, there's a passage that talks about the importance of marrying young, to avoid being celibate. It includes some nice folksy Jewish Babylonian Aramaic idioms. After a discussion of a senior Rabbi not talking to a younger Rabbi because the younger was well within marriageable age but unmarried, the Talmud says:

Raba said, and the School of R. Ishmael taught likewise: Until the age of twenty, the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and waits. When will he take a wife? As soon as one attains twenty and has not married, He exclaims, ‘Blasted be his bones!’

R. Hisda said: The reason that I am superior to my colleagues is that I married at sixteen. And had I married at fourteen, I would have said to Satan, "An arrow in your eye."

The logic is that men beyond a certain age will start behaving lewdly (probably visiting brothels), or at least their minds will be occupied thinking about sex. By marrying early, prime sexual years are spent married, and thus used productively in a religious sense.

So marry before 20--say "an arrow in your eye" to Satan, and avoid your bones being blasted!

So my calculus teacher told us that Isaac Newton wrote that he died a proud virgin, and a cursory google search seems to back that up. However, I've seen other things that suggest he was gay -- and was just proud to have never slept with a woman. Anyone know the story on this? It seems like a tawdry subject but I admit to being fascinated by it.

Here are some musings about Albofledis, a sister of Clovis (oh, and by the way, this is kinda original research. Unless someone points out that there is actually an indispensable German article of the 50s that I have overlooked), whom I think might help us dating the baptism of her brother.

For a start, let's say that dating of Clovis' baptism is not obvious at all, and an inordinate quantity of articles have written been on it. The only account we have is provided by Gregory of Tours, who writes that Clovis, who was at the brink of defeat in a crucial battle against the Alamans, finally prevailed thanks to divine assistance and routed the Alamans after having killed their king. If we assume that Gregory’s narrative is ordered chronologically, we have to assume that the baptism took place after 496 (because he makes clear that the battle occurred in the fifteenth year of Clovis’ reign) and before 500. Even if we did not have any other sources, it would sound dubious, for two reasons: (i) Gregory writes in the 580s, one hundred years after the events occurred—many things can have happened to the tradition, if it is orally transmitted and (ii) the narrative is obviously modelled on the conversion of Constantine.

For various reasons (namely, (i) a letter written in the 550s which clearly comes from a different strand of transmission and corroborates the chronology and (ii) the possible existence of a more contemporary written source for this passage) I would tend to buy the outline of Gregory’s chronology. There are, that being said, serious problems with this chronology that I don’t deny, one of which was discovered thanks to the Variae of Cassiodorus, a compendium of letters from the early Visigothic kingdom. This source shows that the battle described by Gregory, which caused the death of the Alamanic king, occurred in 506. For this reason, some scholars have ascribed the baptism to the years 506 – 11 (before Clovis’ death), and quite a few scholars have accepted this idea (which is, by the way, logically nonsensical: if you dismiss Gregory’s testimony as unreliable, then it is incoherent to accept one of the most dubious elements of his text, i.e. the link between battle and conversion).

We also have a famous contemporary letter about the baptism, by a Burgundian bishop (Avitus of Vienna), but attempts to use it dating purposes have been pretty inconclusive. So basically, we end up with three possible conclusions: (i) the baptism took place shortly after 496 (accepting Gregory’s chronology); (ii) the baptism took place shortly after 506 (rejecting his chronology but accepting his battle-baptism link); (iii) we cannot reach definitive conclusions on the basis of present evidence. Where am I heading at? Well, I think that ‘Albofledis’ may actually be the solution of our problem.

Our evidence about her, as I have said, is pretty thin: we know from Gregory’s Ten books of histories that she was baptised at the same time as Clovis; and a contemporary letter from Remigius of Reims, the most influential bishop of the late 5th-early 6th century Frankish kingdom, mentions her death shortly after her baptism, as a virgin (by the way, it is interesting to see that in both the Burgundian and Frankish kingdoms, bishops needed to send Germanic kings letter to encourage them to restrain their grief. It was apparently not considered unmanly at all to grieve publically for a relative, even a relatively “unimportant” sister). If she died a virgin, we are sure she never married. Therefore (or, well, this is my hypothesis), she must have been quite young. Then you just have to do the math: Childeric, father of Clovis and Albofledis, died in 481. Even if she were born in 481, she would have been 25 years old in 506—probably a bit too old not to have married, whereas 496/8 would fit nicely.

The fact that she was baptised shortly before her death rules out the idea of a prior religious vow (though it could have been within the Arian faith—but while Gregory mentions that Lantechildis, another sister, was indeed Arian, he does not say anything about Albofledis, so I would tend to think she was indeed a pagan). The only possible problem for my line of argument is the idea that she could, even without taking religious vows, remain unmarried.* Unfortunately, it is very hard to test my hypothesis, because later monarchs all were Christians, a religion change that completely altered the social value of virginity.

*And unfortunately, the (admittedly much later) case of Charlemagne gives us a possible parallel, even if the context was very different. Another possibility is that there was no proper husband for Albofledis at the time, and that Clovis henceforth delayed her marriage.

Nothing says celibacy and virginity like a good ‘ol hagiography. And boy does no one do it better than the Irish. If you’re ever curious about Irish sexual purity, just check out one of the many penitentials that circulated throughout the continent during the eighth and ninth centuries. Downright interesting stuff that I won’t get into here because I want to focus on the superstar of Irish chastity: St. Brigit of Kildare.

Dated to the second half of the 7th century, the Life of Saint Brigit, the hagiography written by the monk Cogitosus (also from Kildare), recounts the interesting of a multifaceted individual. St. Brigit has enjoyed a rich tradition of veneration in Irish history and is the alleged founder of the double monastery at Kildare. Scholars have noted the strong influence of pre-Christian belief in the stories surrounding Brigit, and have suggested that her character mimics qualities found in various deities of fire, poetry, and healing (some also named Brigit). As hagiography, Cogitosus explores the virtues and qualities of a virgin-saint with crazy powers over nature and fertility, bolstering not only her image, but the monastery she founded as well.

Now for the good stuff. The virginity of Brigit is a constant theme throughout the Life. Cogitosus is insistent that his readers never forget that crucial point. The “chief abbess of all virgins” is not a title that is thrown around willy-nilly. Brigit, for her part, when she heard that her parents wanted to marry her off, was inspired to offer up her “virginal crown” to Almighty God. In another telling of her life, Brigit puts out her own eye so as to make herself unmarriable, so dedicated she is to chastity (don’t worry, it heals). Once she takes her vows before the altar, however, things really start to get interesting:

to commemorate her unsullied virtue, this wood [of the altar] flourishes fresh and green to the present say as if it had no been cut down and stripped of its bark but was attached to its roots.

Evergreen altarpieces aren’t the only chastity powers that Brigit wields. When she asks a young girl if she would choose marriage or chastity, upon learning the girl is mute, Brigit opens her lips, just to hear the girl’s response, which is of course, “I do not want to do anything except what you want.” Brigit quickly becomes the protector of female chastity and virginity in Cogitosus’ account. When a high-born layman hopes to take advantage of a young woman after having framed her for the loss of a silver-broach, Brigit miraculously produces the broach from a fish's mouth, satisfying the debt. But if that were not enough:

With strength of faith most powerful and ineffable, she [Brigit] blessed a woman who, after a vow of virginity, had lapsed through weakness into youthful concupiscence, as a result of which her womb had begun to swell with pregnancy. In consequence, what had been conceived in the womb disappeared and she restored her to health and to penitence without childbirth or pain.

Pledges of chastity were so incredibly important, the author has Brigit restoring the virginity of pregnant women who had broken their vows. At least that seems to be the implication. A paper by Maeve Callan on the meanings of fetus vanishing and restored maidenhood might be worth looking into for anyone interested in further reading. At any rate, when it comes to virginity story-topping, don’t mess with Cogitosus.

Since eunuchs have come up already, it may amuse you to know that the only famous Italian castrato that I feel comfortable saying was most likely not sexually or romantically active was Francesco Bernardi, aka Senesino. While there are lots of sexual or at least romantic tales about various castrati, such as Siface getting murdered by hired thugs by an angry cuckolded husband, or Caffarelli getting stuck all night in an urn while hiding from an angry husband, or the rather sexual epistolary tenderness between Farinelli and Metastasio, there's just NONE of that for Senesino. I suppose he had better things to do than get in duels over women.

In fact, there's a rather nice article called "Senesino Disobliges Caroline, Princess of Wales, and Princess Violante of Florence" which tells a tale wherein rich and powerful women try to entice Senesino to do favors for them and he just ignores them. A far cry from spending the night in an urn!

But he had a pretty lively life anyway. He loved collecting beautiful art and objects, adored English culture after his years in England and was one of the few men in Italy who loved a cup of tea, and his later years were marked by some pretty vigorous legal/financial struggles with his family.

The Wikipedia article on the early Christian scholar Origen reports that he was thought to have castrated himself in a literal interpretation of scripture, but also that there is some question as to whether this is true. Did Origen castrate himself and was this a common occurrence in early Christianity?

How would the virgin birth story have been treated in the 100BC to 100AD time? Were they common, or rare?

Was it a "Oh, incredible?!" with genuine awe, or "Oh, incredible!?" while laughing about it behind closed doors at the expense of the impregnated? How solidly did people understand that pregnancy really just isn't spontaneous?

Interestingly enough, the establishment of the Qajars as the ruling dynasty in Iran was due to Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, who, as a child, had been castrated during the internecine conflicts over power at the end of the 18th century. In spite of the Islamic laws which require the “physical integrity” of the ruler, Agha Mohammad Khan was officially crowed shah in 1796.

Eunuchs were also commonly guardians of the harems. The most desired position was chief of the royal harem as it was the most important channel of communication between the andarun and the outside world. All that wished to enter the harem first required permission from the chief, so it is easy to imagine the level of influence that the chief could reach in the harems of Fath Ali Shah and Naser al-Din Shah. Especially under Naser al-Din Shah, the royal eunuchs enjoyed power and wealth with some obtaining villages and lands held by the royal domain.

I have been reading about the Mongols recently. My question is related to the Mongol invasion of Europe and sacking of cities. The nuns in these cities, if they were raped by the invading army, would they still be considered "pure" and would they be treated the same in their afterlife?