File:Origen Castrating Himself before a Nun.jpg

From Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Original file (999 × 1,500 pixels, file size: 470 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg)

Captions

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Summary

[edit]
Description

Origen Castrating Himself before a Nun // London, British Library MS. Egerton 881 f. 132r

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.
Date circa 1380
date QS:P,+1380-00-00T00:00:00Z/9,P1480,Q5727902
Source

http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/record.asp?MSID=6648&CollID=28&NStart=881

https://inpress.lib.uiowa.edu/feminae/DetailsPage.aspx?Feminae_ID=32094
Author AnonymousUnknown author

Licensing

[edit]
Public domain

This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or fewer.

You must also include a United States public domain tag to indicate why this work is in the public domain in the United States.
 Note that a few countries have copyright terms longer than 70 years: Mexico has 100 years, Jamaica has 95 years, Colombia has 80 years, and Guatemala and Samoa have 75 years. This image may not be in the public domain in these countries, which moreover do not implement the rule of the shorter term. Honduras has a general copyright term of 75 years, but it does implement the rule of the shorter term. Copyright may extend on works created by French who died for France in World War II (more information), Russians who served in the Eastern Front of World War II (known as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) and posthumously rehabilitated victims of Soviet repressions (more information).
This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current17:42, 24 October 2017Thumbnail for version as of 17:42, 24 October 2017999 × 1,500 (470 KB)Shakko (talk | contribs){{Information |Description= Origen Castrating Himself before a Nun // London, British Library MS. Egerton 881 f. 132r This miniature from a fourteenth-century manuscript of the Roman de la Rose depicts a startling scene in which the early Christian th...

You cannot overwrite this file.

There are no pages that use this file.

Metadata

This file contains additional information such as Exif metadata which may have been added by the digital camera, scanner, or software program used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details such as the timestamp may not fully reflect those of the original file. The timestamp is only as accurate as the clock in the camera, and it may be completely wrong.

Retrieved from "https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Origen_Castrating_Himself_before_a_Nun.jpg&oldid=264524202"