THE POPE'S EUNUCHS

A few years ago I had occasion to refer in one of my books to the male soprani of the papal chapel at Rome. These castrated males, sexually mutilated, as every priest and every Italian knew, for soprani in the choir of the Sistine Chapel, were the amusement of Rome when it developed a large degree of skepticism but a grave scandal to the American and British Catholics who began to arrive about the middle of the last century. One of the vices which the Spaniards had brought to Italy in the 16th century along with the Borgia family and the Spanish Roman Emperors was the falsetto singer. There were artists who could sing falsetto with distinction, but as the opera gained in popularity in Italy the practice began of emasculating boys with good voices and retaining them as male soprani or, as the Italians, with their usual lack of Christian reticence about sex called them, the castrati. They were in every opera in the 18th century, but foreign visitors were never reconciled to them. The famous English weekly,. The Spectator, wrote about "the shrill celestial whine of eunuchs," and by the end of the 18th century they began to fade out of the opera-house.
But, as the word "celestial" indicates, they were found also in the choir of all churches that were proud of their music, particularly in the chapel of the Vatican Palace. the Sistine Chapel, one of the greatest shrines of art as well as of virtue and piety in Rome. And the church, clung to their eunuchs when public opinion almost drove them out of opera. The plea seems to have been that there was some indelicacy, or risk of it, in having females in the church choir, so the priests chose to ignore the rather indelicate nature of the operation of emasculation. The fact was as well known as the celibacy of the clergy. Grovels standard "Dictionary of Music and Musicians" (1927) says in a section titled "Castrati":

"Eunuchs were in vogue as singers until comparatively recent times; they were employed in the choirs of Rome."

So Macmillan's and all other leading dictionaries of music, and English and American visitors to Rome before 1870 who wrote books rarely failed to mention, with smirks of humor or frowns of piety, how the beautiful music of the papal choir was due in large part to manufactured soprani. In the later years of the last century I talked with elderly men who had, out of curiosity, dined or lunched with these quaint servants of God.

An American reader wrote me that a Catholic friend, who had doubtless, as is usual, consulted his pastor, indignantly denied the statement. It was one of the usual "lies of Freethinkers." For an easily accessible authority, reliable on such a point, I referred him to the Encyclopedia Britannica. In all editions to 1928 the article "Eunuchs," after discussing the barbaric African custom of making eunuchs for the harem, said:

"Even more vile, as being practiced by a civilized European nation, was the Italian practice of castrating boys to prevent the natural development of the voice, in order to train them as adult soprano singers, such as might formerly be found in the Sistine Chapel. Though such mutilation is a crime punishable with severity, the supply of soprani never failed as long as these musical powers were in demand in high quarters. Driven long ago from the Italian stage by public opinion they remained the musical glory and the moral shame of the papal choir till the accession of Pope Leo XII, one of whose first acts was to get rid of them."

My correspondent replied, to my astonishment, that there was no such passage in the Britannica, and I began the investigation of which I give the results in the present little book. I found at once that in the 14th edition, which was published in 1929, the passage had been scandalously mutilated, the facts about church choirs suppressed, and the reader given an entirely false impression of the work of Leo XII. In this new edition the whole of the above passage is cut out and this replaces it:

"The Italian practice of castrating boys in order to train them as adult soprano singers ended with the accession of Pope Leo XIII."

The reader is thus given to understand that the zealous Pope found the shameless practice lingering in the opera-houses and forbade it. The fact, in particular, that the Church of Rome had until the year 1878 not only permitted this gross mutilation but required it for the purpose of its most sacred chapel -- that Pope Pius IX, the first Pope to be declared infallible by the Church, the only modern Pope for whom the first official stage of canonization was demanded, sat solemnly on his throne in the Sistine Chapel for 20 years listening to "the shrill celestial whine of eunuchs" -- were deliberately suppressed. Those facts are so glaringly inconsistent with the claims of Catholic writers in America that the suppression was clearly due to clerical influence, and I looked for the method in which it had been applied.

The Encyclopedia is, as its name implies, an ancient British institution inspired by the great French Encyclopedia of the 18th century. As the American reading public increased it served both countries, and by 1920 the special needs of American readers and the great development of science and technics made it necessary to prepare an entirely recast edition. It now had an American as well as a British staff and publishing house. and it was dedicated to King George and President Hoover. The last trace of the idealism of its earlier publishers disappeared. What bargains were secretly made to secure a large circulation we do not know but when the work was completed in 1928 the Westminster Catholic Federation which corresponds to the Catholic Welfare organization in America, made this boast in its annual report:

"The revision of the Encyclopedia Britannica was undertaken with a view to eliminate matter which was objectionable from a Catholic point of view and to insert what was accurate and unbiased. The whole of the 28 volumes were examined, objectionable parts noted, and the reasons for their deletion or amendment given. There is every reason to hope that the new edition of the Britannica will he found very much more accurate and impartial than its predecessors."

This blazing Indiscretion seems to have struck sparks in the publishing offices in London and New York -- later reprints of this emasculated edition have the imprint of "The University of Chicago," which seems to have taken over the responsibility -- for on August 9, 1929, a singular public notice appeared in what is called the Agony Column of the London Times. I should explain to American readers that the first page of this famous paper is given up to advertisements and public and private notices and the two central columns are so much used by separated and broken-hearted lovers ("Ethel. Where are you? I suffer agony for you. Your adoring George," etc.) and ladies who have lost their pets or are in need of money etc., that many frivolous folk take the paper for the humor of those two columns. One of the longest notices that ever appeared in it was that of August 9., It rung:

"Westminster Catholic Federation (in large type). On behalf of the Westminster Catholic Federation we desire to state that it has been brought to our attention that the wording of the second paragraph of the report of the Vigilance Sub-Committee of the Federation, (page 18 of the Federation's 21st Annual Report) concerning the forthcoming edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica has apparently given rise to a misunderstanding. We therefore wish to make it clear that it was far from our intention in the above- mentioned report to suggest that the Federation has exercised any influence whatever upon the editing of the Encyclopedia. Such a suggestion would be devoid of any vestige of foundation. The facts are that the Federation offered to the Editor of the Encyclopedia its assistance in checking statements of fact appearing in articles in the previous edition dealing with the Catholic Church in its historical, doctrinal, or theological aspects. This offer was accepted, and the Federation was thus enabled to draw attention to certain errors of date and other facts regarding the teaching and discipline of the Catholic Church. Beyond this the Federation has had no hand whatever in the preparation or editing of articles for the new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica on whatever subject, and any suggestions to the contrary is, as we have said, without the slightest foundation.

A.J., London, W.C.2."

I have stressed the essential part of this singular message so that the reader will bear in mind that Catholic authorities gave the public their solemn assurance that they had requested -- demanded might be a better word -- only alterations of wrong dates and statements about the teaching and discipline of the Church.

Penitence is a familiar and beautiful practice in the Catholic world but we common folk like to have truth even in penitence. The example I have already given of the suppression of material facts and a natural comment on them in regard to eunuch singers and the entirely false impression conveyed by the sentences which Catholics supplied gives the lie at once to this apology. Undisputed facts which are strictly relevant to an examination of Catholic claims have been suppressed. They have nothing to do with dates or the teaching and discipline of the Church. It is an axiom of Catholic moral theology that suppression of the truth is a suggestion of untruth," and the substituted passage goes beyond this. I propose to show that this introduction of a, painfully familiar Catholic policy has been carried right through the Encyclopedia. Naturally the immense majority of its articles do not in any way relate to the church, and I do not claim that I have compared every short notice or every sentence in longer articles, in the 11th and 14th editions of the Britannica. Even these short unsigned notices, referring to such matters as popes and saints, have often been falsified, and I give a few examples. But I am mainly concerned with important alterations. There are still passages in the Encyclopedia which the Catholic clergy do not like. Writers who are still alive may have objected to the adulteration of their work, or the facts may be too notorious for the editors to permit interference. But I give here a mass of evidence of the corrupt use of the great power which the Catholic Church now has: a warning of what the public may expect now that that Church has, through its wealth and numbers, secured this pernicious influence on publications, the press, the radio, and to an increasing extent on education and even the cinema.