Agents of Empire. Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy

Abstract

Recensioni it was either the result of punishment, medical intervention, or accident.Only when church choirs sought to prolong the vocal purity of prepubescent boys was voluntary castration for social and economic reasons again practiced in western Europe.The physiological signs of the castrato reinforced their external and self perceptions as "putti" or diminished men, regardless of age.Yet, many castrati had mistresses or married and belied the popular notion that without testicles they were feminized and their humours colder and wetter and like those of a woman.So distressing was the notion of a virile eunuch that Pope Sixtus V forbade them to marry.Yet, as Finucci clearly argues, castrati were not emasculated in terms of sexual ability, so much as unable to procreate.Thus it was generation more than genitals that was at the heart of premodern castration; it was not until Freud that the focus of castration shifted from the organ of generation to the organ of penetration.Valeria Finucci, then, has published a volume that is of great interest to all scholars of sexuality and gender in the premodern period.She expertly deploys sources from a variety of disciplines and views them through a heavily but care- fully theorized lens.This is a noteworthy achievement and well worth the read.