-Caveat Lector-
Pope Urged To Apologise
For Vatican Castrations
By Susan Page
USAToday.com
8-15-1
Revelations that the Vatican encouraged the castration of choir
boys in the name of art for hundreds of years have prompted calls
for a papal apology.
Human rights groups, historians and Italian commentators said the
Pope, a singer himself, should ask forgiveness for his
predecessors'
role in the mutilation of castrati singers.
New research suggests that the employment of castrati was
tolerated by the Vatican as late as 1959, long after other
states had
banned it as barbaric.
From the 16th century onwards generations of Italian boys were
castrated in the hope that their voices, prevented from breaking,
would combine a child's high register with the vocal power of a
man.
Their ability to sing beyond normal human limits enraptured
opera-goers, emperors and popes, who commissioned a choir of
castrati to perform in the Sistine chapel. An edict by St Paul
prevented women singing in church.
Successful castrati such as Farinelli - the subject of Gérard
Corbiau's 1994 film - became Europe-wide superstars, feted by
composers such as Handel, but most failed to make the grade and
were cast aside, devastated and useless even as circus freaks.
According to Angels Against their Will, a new book by the German
historian Hubert Ortkemper, the castrato Alessandro Moreschi
performed in the Sistine chapel until 1913. Other historians
suspect
that Domenico Mancini, another private pontifical singer who
performed from 1939 to 1959, was a castrato, too.
Officially the Vatican always condemned the practice, which is
thought to have started around 1500, and punished castrators with
excommunication. In 1902 it issued a decree banning castrati from
the Sistine chapel.
But such was the beauty and power of their singing that
successive
popes sponsored the phenomenon by employing them on the
pretext that they were accidentally castrated, for example by
falling
from a horse or by an animal bite.
Italy's leading newspaper, Corriere della Sera, said the Pope,
whose CD recordings have sold millions, should follow up his
admission of church wrongs against Jews, Muslims and scientists
by expressing sorrow for the castrati.
"Despite the willingness to address just about any issue, the
current
pope has yet to confront an unresolved problem of musical
history.
Why doesn't he suggest prayers and remorse for the church's past
connivance with the practice of castrating males?"
Human rights activists and academics endorsed the call. Amnesty
International said the value of recognising past wrongs in an
apology should not be underestimated.
"Many of those afflicted by ongoing human rights abuses -
including
genital mutilations of women and rape as torture - desperately
desire official recognition of the terrible wrongs done to them.
An
apology from those involved may be the hardest thing of all to
achieve, and the most valued."
Nicholas Davidson, an Oxford University expert on papal history,
said: "If the Pope was going to be consistent, and if there was
evidence that church officials operated in an improper way, then
an
apology should be made."
The promise of a lucrative career persuaded many poor Italian
parents to castrate sons with musical talent, despite the fact
that the
operation often produced gigantism and obese bottoms and legs.
No records were kept, but historians believe many operations to
remove testicles - achieved by slitting the groin and severing
the
spermatic chord - were botched, leaving boys in agony and in
danger of infection. The lucky ones survived and were good enough
for years of intensive training and cossetting at musical
academies.
Pope Sisto V, aware that the public craved the "voice of angels",
sanctioned their presence in the Vatican by a papal bull in 1589.
Audiences fainted and wept during performances and groupies
wore
medallions of their favourites, but in the 18th century the
practice
was gradually acknowledged to be grotesque.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,536420,00.html
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