A eunuch is a man who has been castrated, meaning his testicles have been removed or destroyed. Throughout history, eunuchs served in royal courts, religious institutions, and musical traditions across dozens of cultures. The practice dates back thousands of years, and while it was most common in China, the Ottoman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and parts of Europe, it appeared on nearly every continent. The term also carries religious and metaphorical meanings that extend beyond the literal definition.
Types of Castration
The most common form of castration involved surgical removal of both testicles, called an orchiectomy. Some cultures went further: in imperial China, both the penis and testicles were typically removed in a single procedure, a practice sometimes called “nullification.” Other methods included crushing the spermatic cords with clamps or injecting substances to destroy testicular tissue. The age at which castration occurred mattered enormously for its physical effects.
Boys castrated before puberty never developed most male secondary sexual characteristics. Their voices remained high-pitched, they grew little or no facial hair, and their body fat distributed differently than in intact men. They often grew unusually tall because the lack of testosterone delayed the closure of growth plates in their bones. Men castrated after puberty retained many of their existing masculine traits but experienced a gradual reduction in muscle mass, body hair, and sex drive over time.
Eunuchs in Imperial China
China maintained the largest and longest-running eunuch system in history. The practice reached its height during the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644), when the eunuch population peaked at roughly 100,000 across the empire. Thousands served in the military, and several hundred worked directly inside the imperial palace. Their original purpose was straightforward: castrated men could serve around the emperor’s wives and concubines without any risk of sexual contact. But their roles expanded far beyond guarding women.
Over time, eunuchs became educated administrators, secretaries to high-ranking officials, and political power brokers. Their proximity to the emperor gave them extraordinary influence. During the Ming period, some eunuch officials effectively ran the government, controlling access to the emperor and manipulating court decisions. The most famous, Zheng He, commanded massive naval expeditions across the Indian Ocean in the early 1400s.
The Qing dynasty (1644 to 1912) scaled the system back. At its peak under the Kangxi emperor in the late 1600s, the Qing court employed about 3,300 eunuchs. Numbers declined steadily after that: around 2,866 under the Qianlong emperor, dropping to 1,989 under the Guangxu emperor, and finally just 800 to 900 serving the last emperor, Puyi. The Imperial Household Department gradually took over functions that eunuchs had once performed, and the practice ended with the fall of the dynasty in 1912.
The Ottoman and Byzantine Empires
The Ottoman Empire divided its eunuch system along racial lines. White eunuchs, often from the Balkans or the Caucasus, dominated court service in the earlier centuries of the empire. They guarded the inner palace, oversaw the training of young pages, and maintained strong family ties and regional connections that let them influence local governance. Black eunuchs, primarily from East Africa, were assigned to guard the imperial harem, the private quarters where the sultan’s mother, wives, and concubines lived.
A major institutional shift in the late 1500s elevated the Chief Black Eunuch to one of the most powerful positions in the empire. This figure controlled access to the harem, managed enormous charitable endowments (including properties in Mecca and Medina), and played a central role in court politics. The title “Servant of the Sultan, Servant of the Prophet” reflected the dual religious and political authority the position carried. The Byzantine Empire before it had similarly relied on eunuchs as trusted administrators, generals, and church officials, precisely because their inability to produce heirs made them politically “safe.”
European Castrati Singers
In 17th and 18th century Italy, a very different tradition emerged. Boys were castrated between the ages of 7 and 9, not for court service, but to preserve their high-pitched singing voices into adulthood. These performers, called castrati, combined a child’s vocal range with an adult’s lung capacity and fully developed resonating chambers in the chest and throat. The result was a voice of unusual power and range that no natural soprano or countertenor could replicate.
Castrati dominated Italian opera for nearly two centuries. The most famous, Farinelli, performed across Europe to enormous acclaim. The practice was driven partly by a Catholic Church ban on women singing in church choirs, creating demand for male singers who could hit high notes. Thousands of boys were castrated during this period, though only a small fraction achieved musical success. A 1993 study of Italian castrati found nothing unusual about their lifespans, unlike eunuchs in other contexts.
Effects on Health and Lifespan
Castration before puberty had dramatic physical consequences: tall stature, a high voice, sparse body hair, reduced muscle development, and a tendency toward wider hips and increased body fat. Bone density often declined over time without testosterone, raising the risk of fractures later in life. Sex drive was significantly reduced or eliminated entirely, though the degree varied depending on the age at castration.
The most striking health finding involves longevity. A study of Korean court eunuchs, whose meticulous genealogical records allowed researchers to track lifespans, found that eunuchs outlived their uncastrated contemporaries by 14 to 19 years. Among just 81 eunuchs with verified lifespans, three lived past 100, an extraordinary rate compared to the general population, where centenarians occur at a rate of roughly 1 in 3,500 to 4,400. A separate 1969 study of castrated men in a Kansas institution found a similar pattern: they lived an average of 14 years longer than intact men in the same facility. The leading theory is that testosterone, while essential for reproduction and muscle development, accelerates aging and increases vulnerability to cardiovascular disease.
Eunuchs in Religious Texts
The Bible references eunuchs in several places, most notably in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus describes three categories. The first is men “born eunuchs from their mother’s womb,” meaning those with congenital conditions that prevent sexual function or desire. The second is men “made eunuchs by men,” referring to the literal castration practiced in ancient courts, where servants attending royal women were castrated to prevent sexual contact. Advisors close to kings were also castrated so they would not be distracted by family ambitions.
The third category is figurative: those who “have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” Jesus was not describing literal castration here but rather voluntary celibacy, choosing to forgo marriage and sexual relationships to devote oneself fully to religious service. This passage became one of the theological foundations for celibacy in Christian monastic traditions and the Catholic priesthood.
The Legal History of Castration
Not all societies accepted the practice. The Roman Emperor Domitian banned castration in the late first century CE, a law that his successors repeatedly reinforced. Historians have debated whether this was intended to protect slaves from abusive masters or to regulate the behavior of the Roman elite. Recent scholarship suggests it was primarily a tool of political control: Domitian used the ban as a censorial decree that let him position himself as a defender of traditional Republican values while simultaneously interfering in the private lives of senators and wealthy citizens. The law’s repeated re-enforcement across the empire suggests it was actually effective, reaching even remote provinces.
Castration was also used as punishment in Roman society. There is evidence that slaves who had sexual relationships with their masters’ wives or daughters could be castrated as retribution, a practice the ban sought to curtail.
Modern Use of the Term
Today, “eunuch” has taken on a new meaning in some clinical and identity contexts. Some individuals assigned male at birth identify as eunuchs and seek castration as a form of gender-affirming care, without pursuing feminization. This is sometimes described as male-to-eunuch gender identity, distinct from both traditional transgender identities and from the historical institution of eunuchism. These individuals may experience their genitalia as fundamentally mismatched with their sense of self and seek surgical alignment. Because they are working to bring their bodies into accord with their gender identity, they are now recognized within the broader spectrum of gender-diverse persons in clinical literature.