Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index



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  • Title: Origen Castrating Himself before a Nun
  • Creator:
  • Description: This miniature from a fourteenth-century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose depicts a startling scene in which the early Christian theologian Origen castrates himself before a nun who kneels in front of him. Origen was a renowned scholar and writer in late second/early third-century Alexandria whose Platonist teachings, though they bordered on heresy and thus denied him sainthood, remained influential throughout the Middle Ages. The early church historian Eusebius of Caesarea tells that Origen castrated himself according to the gospel of Matthew, which describes men who “make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12). Historians have debated the veracity of Eusebius’s claim, but autocastration in general conformed to early Christian ascetic rejection of traditional marriage and sexual union. Eusebius explains further that Origen castrated himself in order to teach women and avoid any accusations of inappropriate behavior In the Roman de la Rose, the personification of Nature names Origen among a list of men who thought they could act against the destinies she had wrought for them. Origen’s removal of his masculine attributes violated Nature’s construction of maleness just as his counterpart, Empedocles, defied Nature’s control over his death by throwing himself into the fires of Mount Etna. The two scenes appear together in other manuscripts of the Roman de la Rose now in the Bodleian Library and the J. Paul Getty Museum. Nuns appear in the Bodleian castration scene, yet the women sit within a cloister and seem unaware of Origen taking extreme action outside the walls. The most unusual aspect of this representation of Origen’s castration, therefore, is the inclusion of a nun as witness. Origen and the nun appear to stare at one another intently. The nun’s ambivalent gesture, which could be either prayer or alarm, may underline the simultaneous nobility and foolhardiness of Origen’s act against Nature for the sake of religion. Furthermore, the choice to restrict the scene to Origen and a nun against an abstract diaper pattern recalls the famous contemporary illumination of Peter Abelard and his lover Heloise from a Roman de la Rose in the Musée Condé. Abelard compared his own castration on the orders of Heloise’s uncle to that of Origen, and the Roman de la Rose categorized Abelard and Heloise as similarly foolish.
  • Source: British Library
  • Rights: Public Domain
  • Subject (See Also): Castration Celibacy Eunuchs Masculinity Nuns Origen (Theologian)
  • Geographic Area: France
  • Century: 14
  • Date: c. 1380
  • Related Work: Selection of other illuminations within the manuscript: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6648&CollID=28&NStart=881
  • Current Location: London, British Library MS. Egerton 881 f. 132r
  • Original Location:
  • Artistic Type (Category): Digital Images; Paintings
  • Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Vellum (Parchment); Paint
  • Donor:
  • Height/Width/Length(cm): 20.5/14/
  • Inscription:
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