Introduction

This chapter presents individual case studies on bishops or eunuchs in the Middle East, Europe, India, China and Byzantium. It also presents the Shared Focus on eunuchs and bishops. The Shared Focus is carried out in few phases. In the stage, two or more historical phenomena are connected in a preliminary comparison through one or more common features. In practice, eunuchs were admitted as priests and bishops in the Eastern church, whereas in the Latin West, a priest had to be physically intact. It was only in the sixteenth century, when the popes employed castrati as singers in the cappella palatina, that people see something comparable to eunuchs in the Latin church. By the fifth century, bishops often came either from the municipal elite or the senatorial aristocracy, which provided these groups with a close ally who held a wealthy and powerful position.