The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin præputium or prepucium) is one of several relics attributed to
Jesus, a product of the circumcision of Jesus.
At
various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to
possess Jesus' foreskin, sometimes at the same time. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed
to it.
History and rival claims
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
Gospelwhich contains the following story:
1.
And when the time of his circumcision was
come, namely, the eighth day, on which the law commanded the child to be
circumcised, they circumcised him in a cave.
2.
And the old Hebrew woman took the foreskin
(others say she took the navel-string), and preserved it in an alabaster-box of
old oil of spikenard.
3.
And she had a son who was a druggist, to whom
she said, "Take heed thou sell not this alabaster box of
spikenard-ointment, although thou shouldst be offered three hundred pence for
it."
4.
Now this is that alabaster-box which Mary the
sinner procured, and poured forth the ointment out of it upon the head and feet
of our Lord Jesus Christ, and wiped it off with the hairs of her head.
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
the latter crowned the former Emperor. Charlemagne claimed that it had been
brought to him by an angel while he prayed at theHoly Sepulchre, although a more prosaic report
says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene. The Pope placed it
into the Sanctum sanctorum in the Lateran basilica in Rome with other relics. Its
authenticity was later considered to be confirmed by a vision of Saint Bridget
of Sweden.The foreskin was then looted during
the Sack of Rome in 1527. The German soldier who stole
it was captured in the village of Calcata,
47 km north of Rome, later the same year. Thrown into prison, he hid the
jeweled reliquary in his cell, where it remained until
its rediscovery in 1557. Many miracles (freak storms and perfumed fog
overwhelming the village) are claimed to have followed.[5] Housed
in Calcata, it was venerated from that time onwards, with the Church approving
the authenticity by offering a ten-year indulgence to pilgrims. Pilgrims,
nuns and monks flocked to the church. "Calcata was a must-see destination
on the pilgrimage map." The foreskin was reported stolen by a local priest
in 1983.
According to the author David 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."[6] In
addition to the Holy Foreskin of Rome (later Calcata), other claimants included
the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de
Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of
Chartres, France as well as Chartres itself, and churches inBesançon, Newport, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Fécamp, Stoke-on-Trent , Calcata,
and two inAuvergne.[6]
One of the most famous prepuces arrived in Antwerp in the Brabant in
1100 as a gift from king Baldwin I of
Jerusalem, who purchased it in Palestine in the course of the first crusade.
This prepuce became famous when the bishop of
Cambray, 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 "van der
heiliger Besnidenissen ons liefs Heeren Jhesu Cristi in onser liever Vrouwen
Kercke t' Antwerpen"; its 24 members were all abbots and prominent
laymen. The relic disappeared in 1566, but the chapel still exists, decorated
by two stained glasswindows 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. The rediscovery, however, led to a theological clash with the
established Holy Prepuce of Calcata, which had been officially venerated by the
Church for hundreds of years; in 1900, the Roman Catholic
Church resolved the
dilemma by ruling that anyone thenceforward writing or speaking of the Holy Prepuce
would be excommunicated.[5] In
1954, after much debate, the punishment was changed to the harsher degree of
excommunication, vitandi (shunned) and
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
January 1.
[edit]Modern
practices
Most of the Holy Prepuces were
lost or destroyed during the Reformation and the French Revolution.[5]
The Holy Prepuce of Calcata is worthy of special mention, as the
reliquary containing the Holy Foreskin was paraded through the streets of this
Italian village as recently as 1983 on the Feast of the
Circumcision, which was formerly marked by the Roman Catholic
Church around the
world on January 1 each year. The practice ended, however, when thieves stole
the jewel-encrusted case, contents and all.[5] Following
this theft, it is unclear whether any of the purported Holy Prepuces still
exist. In a 1997 television documentary for Channel 4, British journalist Miles Kington travelled to Italy in search of the
Holy Foreskin, but was unable to find any remaining example.
[edit]Historical allusions and references to the Holy
Prepuce
Voltaire,
in A Treatise of Toleration (1763), ironically 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".[8]
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.
In July 2009, Penguin/Gotham
Books published An Irreverent
Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town,
American writer David Farley's account of trying to locate the
Holy Foreskin of Calcata.
In Chuck Palahniuk's book Choke, the main character is told that he
was cloned from Jesus' foreskin.
