Holy Prepuce

thumb|upright=1.25|[[Circumcision of Christ (detail), by Friedrich Herlin]]

The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin or ), is one of several relics attributed to Jesus, consisting of the foreskin removed during the circumcision of Jesus. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess the Prepuce, sometimes at the same time. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed to it, such as claims the relic has the power of duplication according to David Farley.

History and rival claims

Background

All Jewish boys are required by Jewish religious law to be circumcised on the eighth day following their birth; the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ, still celebrated by many churches around the world, accordingly falls on January 1. Luke 2:21 (King James Version), reads: "And when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the child, his name was called JESUS, which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the womb." The first reference to the survival of Christ's severed foreskin comes in the second chapter of the apocryphal Arabic Infancy Gospel which contains the following story:

Early relics

thumb|Circumcision of Christ, fresco from the [[Preobrazhenski Monastery, Bulgaria]]

Foreskin relics began appearing in Europe during the Middle Ages. The earliest recorded sighting came on December 25, 800, when Charlemagne gave it to Pope Leo III when being crowned Emperor. Charlemagne claimed that it had been brought to him by an angel while he prayed at the Holy Sepulchre, although a more prosaic report says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene. Its authenticity was later considered to be confirmed by a vision of Saint Bridget of Sweden, who confirmed that it was somewhere in Rome.

However, in 1905 Pope Pius X authorized an inventory compiled by Professor Hartmann Grisar, of the University of Innsbruck. Grisar's report corresponds to the earlier Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae. The gold cross was dated to between the sixth and eighth centuries. Grisar's study stated that, like Pope Paschal's enameled silver reliquary cross, the gold jeweled cross was clearly initially designed to hold a relic of the True Cross. This is further supported by the statement in the Descriptio relating it to a procession on the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Vita of Pope Sergius I (687-701) mentions both the Feast of the Exaltation, the jeweled cross, and veneration of the relic contained therein. Grisar attributed the reference to the foreskin and umbilicus as derived from later Medieval traditions. The gold cross was lost in 1945.

According to Farley, "Depending on what you read, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages." Conques, Langres, Fécamp, and two in Auvergne.

One of the most famous prepuces arrived in Antwerp in Brabant in 1100 as a gift from King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who purchased it in the Holy Land during the First Crusade. This prepuce became famous when the bishop of Cambrai, during the celebration of the Mass, saw three drops of blood blotting the linens of the altar. A special chapel was constructed and processions organised in honour of the miraculous relic, which became the goal of pilgrimages. In 1426, a brotherhood was founded in the cathedral ("of the Holy Circumcision of our beloved Lord Jesus Christ in our Beloved Lady's Church in Antwerp"). Its 24 members were all abbots and prominent laymen. The relic disappeared in 1566, but the chapel still exists, decorated by two stained glass windows donated by king Henry VII of England and his wife Elizabeth of York in 1503.

The abbey of Charroux claimed the Holy Foreskin was presented to the monks by Charlemagne. In the early 12th century, it was taken in procession to Rome where it was presented before Pope Innocent III, who was asked to rule on its authenticity. The Pope declined the opportunity. At some point, however, the relic went missing, and remained lost until 1856 when a workman repairing the abbey claimed to have found a reliquary hidden inside a wall, containing the missing foreskin. This was not the only test of the relic's legitimacy. Anthropologist Eric Silverman controversially writes: "a common test for foreskinned authenticity was taste. A physician, supervised by a priest, sampled the skin for the flavour of genuine holiness. The taster was called a croque-prepuce, or 'foreskin cruncher, though his source may be rooted in 19th century anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Status in the Catholic calendar

According to Farley, the Second Vatican Council later removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the Latin church calendar, although Eastern Catholics and Traditional Roman Catholics still celebrate the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord on 1 January. In reality, it was more than two years before 11 October 1962, the date when the Second Vatican Council began, that a 25 July 1960 decree of Pope John XXIII enacted a wide-ranging revision of the General Roman Calendar, which included changing the name of the 1 January feast from "Circumcision of the Lord and Octave of the Nativity" to "Octave of the Nativity", with no change of the Gospel reading about the circumcision of the child Jesus.

Modern practices

Most of the Holy Prepuces were lost or destroyed during the Reformation and the French Revolution. The German soldier who stole it was captured in the village of Calcata, north of Rome, later the same year. Housed in Calcata, it was venerated from that time onwards, with the Church vouching for its authenticity by offering a ten-year indulgence to pilgrims. Pilgrims, nuns and monks flocked to the church, and "Calcata [became] a must-see destination on the pilgrimage map." A local priest reported the foreskin as stolen in 1983. On December 22, 2013, National Geographic Channel broadcast a documentary starring Farley called "The Quest for the Holy Foreskin".

Literary allusions

Thomas of Chobham, in his 1210 treatise on preaching, uses the holy foreskin within a eucharist analogy. Discussing how Christ's foreskin can be present on earth, but also at the same time exist in a resurrected form.

Agnes Blannbekin, a medieval Christian mystic, reported mystical visionary experiences with the foreskin, claiming it smelt like a sweet odour and had the taste of honey.

In the 14th-century, Catherine of Siena mentioned the foreskin-as-wedding ring motif in one of her letters (#221), equating the wedding ring of a virgin with a foreskin.

John Calvin in his Treatise on Relics in 1543, mocked the monks of Charroux who claimed that the relic was genuine because it "yields drops of blood".

Voltaire, in A Treatise of Toleration (1763), referred to veneration of the Holy Foreskin as being one of a number of "superstitions" that were "much more reasonable... than to detest and persecute your brother".

Umberto Eco, in his book Baudolino, has the young Baudolino invent a story about seeing the holy foreskin and navel in Rome to the company of Frederick Barbarossa.

James Joyce's Ulysses has Stephen Dedalus pondering the Holy Prepuce while he urinates with Leopold Bloom, in the section titled "Ithaca".

In The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, José Saramago writes that anyone "wishing to venerate that foreskin today need only visit the parish church of Calcata near Viterbo in Italy, where it is preserved in a reliquary for the spiritual benefit of the faithful and the amusement of prying atheists."

References

External links

Relics article from the Catholic Encyclopedia
Peter Charles Remondino. History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present. Philadelphia and London; F. A. Davis; 1891.
"Searching for Christianity's Most Sensitive Remnant" in Toronto Star, December 2007