Castrati: The Italian Boys Who Were Castrated In Order To Maintain Their High-Pitched Singing Voices
Though castration has a long history, the castrati first emerged around the 16th century. Then, The New York Times reports that the Vatican banned women from church choirs, creating a need for singers with high voices.
Before long, castrated singers, called castrati, became a popular substitution. The practice was even given implicit approval by the Vatican in 1589 when Pope Sixtus V decreed in a papal bull that castrati should replace boys and falsetto in the St. Peter’s choir.
By the dawn of the 18th century, some 4,000 Italian boys were being castrated per year in order to become singers. But since castration was technically illegal, their families had to take their sons to backstreet barbers or surgeons to have the procedure done. There, the boys were subjected to a painful operation without anesthesia, and an estimated 20 percent died.
![[Image: Choir.jpg]](https://i.ibb.co/GxZdtwv/Choir.jpg)
But by the 19th century, castrati were no longer in high demand.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in 1779, condemned the practice, calling parents who sent their sons to be castrated “inhuman fathers [who]…give up their children…for the amusement of voluptuous and cruel persons.”
The castrati started to become an embarrassment in Italy, and Pope Pius X forbid their use in the Sistine Chapel in 1903.
But the last of the Sistine Chapel castrati singers, Alessandro Moreschi, didn’t fully retire until 1913. Known as the “Angel of Rome,” Moreschi died in 1921 — but not before a recording was made of his voice singing Ave Maria.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/castrati
Though castration has a long history, the castrati first emerged around the 16th century. Then, The New York Times reports that the Vatican banned women from church choirs, creating a need for singers with high voices.
Before long, castrated singers, called castrati, became a popular substitution. The practice was even given implicit approval by the Vatican in 1589 when Pope Sixtus V decreed in a papal bull that castrati should replace boys and falsetto in the St. Peter’s choir.
By the dawn of the 18th century, some 4,000 Italian boys were being castrated per year in order to become singers. But since castration was technically illegal, their families had to take their sons to backstreet barbers or surgeons to have the procedure done. There, the boys were subjected to a painful operation without anesthesia, and an estimated 20 percent died.
But by the 19th century, castrati were no longer in high demand.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in 1779, condemned the practice, calling parents who sent their sons to be castrated “inhuman fathers [who]…give up their children…for the amusement of voluptuous and cruel persons.”
The castrati started to become an embarrassment in Italy, and Pope Pius X forbid their use in the Sistine Chapel in 1903.
But the last of the Sistine Chapel castrati singers, Alessandro Moreschi, didn’t fully retire until 1913. Known as the “Angel of Rome,” Moreschi died in 1921 — but not before a recording was made of his voice singing Ave Maria.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/castrati
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
