Fore shame! Did the Varican Steal Jesus' Foreskin?
Jun 15, 2013 22:26:55 GMT -5
Post by PrisonerOfHope on Jun 15, 2013 22:26:55 GMT -5
You can't make this stuff up....
Fore Shame
Did the Vatican steal Jesus' foreskin so people would shut up about the savior's penis?
By David Farley|Posted Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006, at 12:32 PM
In 1983, as the residents of Calcata, a small town 30 miles north of Rome, prepared for their annual procession honoring a holy relic, a shocking announcement from the parish priest put a damper on festivities. "This year, the holy relic will not be exposed to the devotion of the faithful. It has vanished. Sacrilegious thieves have taken it from my home." Not since the Middle Ages, when lopped-off body parts of divine do-gooders were bought, sold, and traded, has relic theft been big news. But the mysterious disappearance of Calcata's beloved curio is different.
This wasn't just the residuum of any holy human—nor was it just any body part. It was the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the snipped-off tip of the savior's penis, the only piece of his body he supposedly left on earth.
Advertisement
Just what the holy foreskin was doing in the priest's house—in a shoebox at the back of his wardrobe, no less—and why and how it disappeared has been debated ever since the relic vanished. Some suspect the village priest sold it for a heavenly sum; others say it was stolen by thieves and ended up on the relics black market; some even suggest Satanists or neo-Nazis are responsible. But the most likely culprit is an unlikely one: the Vatican.
And why not? Protestant doubt ("They couldn't let Christ's body go without keeping a piece," John Calvin quipped) and the scientific revolution, which changed our thinking from superstitious to skeptical, have taken their toll on a relic that once rested high atop the pious pecking order of blessed body parts. It's understandable that the 20th-century church began feeling a bit bashful about the idea of its flock fawning over the 2,000-year-old tip of the redeemer's manhood. Still, when I arrived in Calcata six months ago, the idea of a Vatican theft of Jesus' foreskin sounded more like a ganja-induced brainstorming session with Dan Brown and Danielle Steele. But some transplanted bohemians, a deathbed confession, and a little historical context have convinced me otherwise.
Even before its disappearance, the relic had a strange history. It was discovered in Calcata in 1557, and a series of miracles soon followed (freak storms, perfumed mists engulfing the village). The church gave the finding a seal of approval by offering a 10-year indulgence to those who came to venerate. Lines of pilgrims stretched from the church doors to beyond the walls of the fortress town. Nuns and monks from nearby villages and monasteries made candlelit processions. Calcata was a must-see destination on the pilgrimage map.
That is, until 1900. Facing increasing criticism after the "rediscovery" of a holy foreskin in France, the Vatican decreed that anyone who wrote about or spoke the name of the holy foreskin would face excommunication. And 54 years later, when a monk wanted to include Calcata in a pilgrimage tour guide, Vatican officials didn't just reject the proposal (after much debate). They upped the punishment: Now, anyone uttering its name would face the harshest form of excommunication—"infamous and to be avoided"—even as they concluded that Calcata's holy foreskin was more legit than other claimants'.
But that wasn't the end of the holy foreskin. In the late 1960s, government officials, worried that crumbling cliffs and threatening earthquakes might doom the village, decided to build a new town. Hippies discovered the newly abandoned town, which was awaiting a government wrecking crew, and squatted in, then legally purchased, the vacated buildings. Some of the bohemian transplants were intrigued by Calcata's relic, which was now only shown to the public during the village's annual New Year's Day procession (even though the Vatican II reforms removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the church calendar). The new residents began writing about the quirky event and relic for newspapers in and around Rome, and Calcata's scandalous prepuce was isolated no more. And the church took notice.
Was this the reason Dario Magnoni, the local priest, brought the relic from the church to his home? Who knows. Magnoni refuses to speak about the relic, citing the 1954 threat of excommunication. Magnoni's predecessor, Mario Mastrocola, didn't want to talk about the relic, either, but when asked if he was surprised to hear it had been stolen, he shook his head. When pressed, he said, "The relic would not have been taken away from Calcata if I were still the priest there."
Mastrocola's ambiguous words—while not directly incriminating anyone—hinted at underhanded church dealings (interview requests with the Vatican went unanswered). And later, I found myself sitting in a wine cellar halfway up the hill between the old and new villages of Calcata. Capellone, the cellar's owner and a lifelong Calcatese, told me about his close relationship with a former local bishop, Roberto Massimiliani. Ailing in bed, the bishop told Capellone that when he was gone, so too would be the relic. Bishop Massimiliani passed away soon after, in 1975. Eight years after that, the relic disappeared. "To me, it almost felt like a confession," said Capellone. "Like he needed to tell someone before he died."
Could the "sacrilegious thieves" Magnoni mentioned in his 1983 announcement about the relic's disappearance actually have been Vatican emissaries? The thought of masked, black-clad Vatican agents on a mission to steal Jesus' foreskin does sound alluring. But for residents like Capellone, who swear the Vatican now has the relic, the thief could be Magnoni himself. Some locals claim they saw him go to Rome the day before he made the announcement, generating speculation that the Vatican asked for it and Magnoni not only failed to stand up to them, he delivered the relic himself.
Sold, stolen, or delivered to the Vatican—or even all three—the holy foreskin of Calcata is probably gone for good, even as some residents persist in the hope that it will return. And the church is certainly breathing a sigh of relief. While most of the other copies of the relic were destroyed during the Reformation and the French Revolution, Calcata's holy foreskin lived long past its expiration date, like a dinosaur surviving the meteoric blast of the scientific revolution.
But if it had survived, it would have been only a matter of time before someone wanted to clone it.
www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2006/12/fore_shame.single.html
'
Holy Foreskin!
Holy Foreskin!Alexander Basek talks with the author of a recently released book about Italy and one of the strangest holy relics you could ever dream up.
“This year, the holy relic will not be exposed to the devotion of the faithful. It has vanished. Sacrilegious thieves have taken it from my home.” Thus begins Faster Times contributor David Farley’s travel memoir/narrative history, An Irreverent Curiosity, centered around a dramatic — some would say kooky, others sacrilege — case of relic theft. Why all the fuss? It was no beatified bone, but rather the foreskin of the baby Jesus. Preserved in the bohemian Italian hill town of Calcata for centuries, it vanished under mysterious circumstances in 1983. Villagers posited many conflicting theories on the relic’s disappearance, from a pilfering priest to the Vatican itself. (It’s Italy-so, of course the conspiracy theories lead back to the Vatican) Published by Penguin/Gotham Books, the book has received a lot of attention since its release earlier this summer. Alexander Basek sat down with David Farley to talk about one of Italy’s most unusual towns and its curious relic.
AB: Calcata seems like an odd choice when it comes to picking up stakes and moving to an Italian village. How did you choose it?
DF: I was living in Rome in 2002 and heard about this bewitching medieval hill town inhabited by aging hippies and artists. So, as one does in Rome, I took a day trip there and was fascinated by the place.
AB: How did it transition from rustic retreat to hippie mecca?
DF: The government decided in the 1930s that the village was in danger of slipping off the rock, so the plan was to build a new town nearby. But it wasn’t until the late ’60s when Calcata Nuova-New Calcata-was finished. Hippies and artists, perhaps taking refuge from the global calamity that was 1968, took notice of this incredible place and moved in. Today there are about 100 full-time residents and some of them pretty successful artists. All of them talk about a particular energy that oozes from the rock Calcata sits on.
Holy Foreskin!AB: I take it that the energy attracts some interesting characters…
DF: One of my favorites is Athon, an Egyptologist and sculptor who lives in a cave with a dozen crows. Then there’s Paul Steffen, an 88-year-old American who was once a famous choreographer in Italy and managed to befriend some of the 20th century’s greatest artists and thinkers-from Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau to Henry Miller and Federico Fellini. And then there’s Pancho Garrison, an American mosaic artist who runs a great restaurant called Grotta dei Germogli.
AB: What was the genesis of the title?
DF: In the Middle Ages there were at least a dozen towns-most of which were in France for some reason-that claimed to posses the foreskin of Jesus. Rome, of course, had one too. All the foreskins disappeared during the anti-Catholic fury of the Reformation and, later, the French Revolution. Except for the one in Rome, which would later wind up in Calcata. The Church’s theological dilemma was over. Or at least they thought so. In the 19th century, a few of those French towns suddenly “rediscovered” their Holy Foreskins and the Church, once again, had a problem on its hands. So, in the year 1900 Pope Leo XIII made a decree, banning the speaking or writing about Holy Foreskin. The penalty: excommunication. When asked about the matter, a spokesperson for the Church said the Holy Foreskin could inspire “an irreverent curiosity.”
Holy Foreskin!AB: Have you been excommunicated yet? In the book, the town’s priest dodges your questions, citing that same decree.
DF: Not that I know of. Maybe I’ll find out when I die and end up in the fiery pits of hell.
AB: So you didn’t write this book to get into heaven. What moved you to write it?
DF: The first time I heard the words “holy” and “foreskin” in succession to each other I was hooked. And then I started doing research on the relic and found that it loomed about the periphery of so many historical epochs and movements-from the Carolingian legends to the Reformation to 19th-century Romanticism. I thought-and this will reveal the history geek that I am-how it would be intriguing to put the relic and the cult of relics into a historical context so that readers would understand why relic veneration has been such a strong facet of people’s lives.
AB: And where does one begin to research Jesus’ foreskin?
DF: I started at New York University where I teach. But once in Italy, I did a lot of research at the Vatican Library, which was very cool. I still can’t believe they let me in. I’m sure they’re regretting it now.
AB: Have people been skeptical of the “truth” of the relic at readings?
DF: There are always expressions of bewilderment, people aghast and rhetorically shouting out: who would keep a foreskin?! My answer to that is the Virgin Mary, realizing there was something innately special about a child from a virgin birth. In actuality, though, the relic in question was probably a medieval fake, some ordinary and unfortunate soul’s foreskin.
AB: It’s a strange claim to fame, for sure.
DF: But what fascinated me was that people believed it was the real flesh of Christ–the only piece of flesh he could have theologically left on earth-and they treated it as such.
AB: The reviews have been good, but one critic called it “raunchy.” Do you think that’s true? Though “irreverent” is in the title, I didn’t find it anti-religious.
DF: I would agree with you on that. Despite the obvious opportunities for humor, there are no cheap shots against Christianity or Catholicism in the book. This is real history. A buried history that, until know, few people knew about.
AB: So What’s next for David Farley, foreskin hunter?
DF: Hopefully it won’t have anything to do with foreskins. Actually, I’m just writing for magazines and newspapers until the next book project comes about, which may never happen: the Holy Foreskin is a hard act to follow.
www.thefastertimes.com/travel/2009/12/03/holy-foreskin/
Holy Prepuce
The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin pr�putium) is one the various relics purported to be associated with Jesus Christ. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to own it, sometimes concurrently. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed to it.
Orthodox Christian belief has it that Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven at the end of his earthly life. This would mean that his foreskin (removed at his circumcision, as with all other Jewish boys) would be one of the few physical remainders of Jesus left behind on Earth. Indeed, there seems to have been some short-lived theological arguments as to whether Jesus can really be said to have ascended wholly into Heaven if this part of his body was actually missing; consensus was that his foreskin was no more an obstacle to this than the hair and fingernails that he had cut throughout his life.
The abbey of Charroux claimed to own the Holy Foreskin during the Middle Ages. It was said to have been presented to the monks by none other than Charlemagne, who in turn claimed (as the legend has it) that it had been brought to him by an angel (although another version of the story says it was a wedding gift from Empress Irene of the Byzantine Empire). 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. Later, however, Pope Clement VII declared it to be a true relic, and granted an indulgence to pilgrims who went to visit it. 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 abbey church of Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, France was another medieval claimant. One story says that when Catherine of Valois was pregnant in 1421, her husband, King Henry V of England, sent for the Holy Prepuce. It was believed that the sweet scent that the relic was supposed to give off would ensure an easy and safe childbirth. According to this legend, it did its job so well that Henry was reluctant to return it after the birth of the child (the future King Henry VI of England).
The authenticity of the Holy Foreskin claimed by St. John Lateran in Rome is said to have been proven in 1527 when the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Rome. The relic fell into their hands for a time, and was allegedly put to the test by bringing a virgin girl before it, whereupon the foreskin expanded!
Other claimants at various points in time have included (at least) the Cathedral of Puy en Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, and churches in Besancon, Metz, Hildesheim, and Calcata.
The last of these 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 (marked by the Catholic church around the world on January 1 each year). The practice ended, however, when thieves stole the jewel-encrusted case, contents and all.
Over the last century or so, the emphasis placed on relics by the Catholic church has declined markedly, with many relics with long traditions being relegated to "pious legend" by the Vatican. Interest in the Holy Foreskins has been specifically downplayed, with the observation in 1900 that these particular relics encouraged irreverent curiosity.
Apart from its physical importance as a relic, the Holy Foreskin appears in a famous vision of Saint Catherine of Siena. In the vision, Christ mystically marries her, and his amputated foreskin is given to her as a wedding ring. During the late 17th century, Catholic scholar and theologian Leo Allatius in De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba ("Discussion concerning the Prepuce of our Lord Jesus Christ") speculated that the Holy Foreskin may have ascended into Heaven at the same time as Jesus himself and might have become the rings of Saturn then-recently observed.
Assuming that it is possible that one of these foreskins is in fact Jesus Christ's, its preservation raises the possibility of cloning when that technology is perfected for humans.
www.fact-index.com/h/ho/holy_prepuce.html
The Holy Foreskin
While a thousand years ago holy men would go to great lengths to acquire relics, one of the oddest heists did not occur until 1983.
Being Jewish, Christ would have been circumcised. That small ring of flesh would become a surprisingly important part of Christianity. The ceremony of circumcision, the brit milah or bris, was a favorite subject for painters and church walls often featured frescos of the act. The Emperor Charlemagne is supposed to have given Jesus’s foreskin to Pope Leo III as a reward for crowning him Holy Roman Emperor. Technically Charlemagne was re-gifting it, since legend says he received it as a wedding present from his wife.
Since relics were holy, and no one in the Christian religion was holier than Jesus, churches clamored to claim possession of the one true foreskin. At one point at least 18 towns promised pilgrims that their foreskin was the real deal. Over time most of these prepuces were lost or destroyed.
But the town of Calcata in Italy managed to hold on to theirs until just 30 years ago. On the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord, January 1, the foreskin in its jeweled case would be paraded through the streets. But then in 1983, the case, and the “dense and fuzzy” piece of skin resembling a “red chickpea” that it contained, disappeared.
It is not just what was stolen that makes this particular theft so odd, though. The weirdest aspect of the story is that there is strong evidence it was stolen by the Vatican. And the cardinals did not steal it because they thought it was important; if they took it, it was so people would shut up about the thing.
Protestant leaders had been making fun of Catholicism’s claim to have that particularly intimate bit of Jesus since John Calvin in the 16th century. As far back as 1900 the Vatican had expressed concerns about the emphasis placed on the holy prepuce, suggesting that it encouraged “irreverent curiosity.” During the 1950s the Pope threatened the highest level of excommunication for anyone who even talked about the relic. Finally, during the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, the cardinals removed the Feast of the Circumcision from the church calendar.
Despite this, the yearly processions in Calcata continued, and the fact that this Italian town was wheeling it around on New Year’s Day like a parade float made sure that this foreskin remained front and center, so to speak. In the 1980s, when locals started writing about the relic for various Italian newspapers, the Vatican may have had enough. In 1983 it was announced that the relic had been stolen, and almost immediately the rumor started that the Vatican had taken it, perhaps in league with the local priest.
Read the full text here: mentalfloss.com/article/30178/holy-foreskin-brief-history-stolen-catholic-relics#ixzz2WLV5q0FE--brought to you by mental_floss!
Fore Shame
Did the Vatican steal Jesus' foreskin so people would shut up about the savior's penis?
By David Farley|Posted Tuesday, Dec. 19, 2006, at 12:32 PM
In 1983, as the residents of Calcata, a small town 30 miles north of Rome, prepared for their annual procession honoring a holy relic, a shocking announcement from the parish priest put a damper on festivities. "This year, the holy relic will not be exposed to the devotion of the faithful. It has vanished. Sacrilegious thieves have taken it from my home." Not since the Middle Ages, when lopped-off body parts of divine do-gooders were bought, sold, and traded, has relic theft been big news. But the mysterious disappearance of Calcata's beloved curio is different.
This wasn't just the residuum of any holy human—nor was it just any body part. It was the foreskin of Jesus Christ, the snipped-off tip of the savior's penis, the only piece of his body he supposedly left on earth.
Advertisement
Just what the holy foreskin was doing in the priest's house—in a shoebox at the back of his wardrobe, no less—and why and how it disappeared has been debated ever since the relic vanished. Some suspect the village priest sold it for a heavenly sum; others say it was stolen by thieves and ended up on the relics black market; some even suggest Satanists or neo-Nazis are responsible. But the most likely culprit is an unlikely one: the Vatican.
And why not? Protestant doubt ("They couldn't let Christ's body go without keeping a piece," John Calvin quipped) and the scientific revolution, which changed our thinking from superstitious to skeptical, have taken their toll on a relic that once rested high atop the pious pecking order of blessed body parts. It's understandable that the 20th-century church began feeling a bit bashful about the idea of its flock fawning over the 2,000-year-old tip of the redeemer's manhood. Still, when I arrived in Calcata six months ago, the idea of a Vatican theft of Jesus' foreskin sounded more like a ganja-induced brainstorming session with Dan Brown and Danielle Steele. But some transplanted bohemians, a deathbed confession, and a little historical context have convinced me otherwise.
Even before its disappearance, the relic had a strange history. It was discovered in Calcata in 1557, and a series of miracles soon followed (freak storms, perfumed mists engulfing the village). The church gave the finding a seal of approval by offering a 10-year indulgence to those who came to venerate. Lines of pilgrims stretched from the church doors to beyond the walls of the fortress town. Nuns and monks from nearby villages and monasteries made candlelit processions. Calcata was a must-see destination on the pilgrimage map.
That is, until 1900. Facing increasing criticism after the "rediscovery" of a holy foreskin in France, the Vatican decreed that anyone who wrote about or spoke the name of the holy foreskin would face excommunication. And 54 years later, when a monk wanted to include Calcata in a pilgrimage tour guide, Vatican officials didn't just reject the proposal (after much debate). They upped the punishment: Now, anyone uttering its name would face the harshest form of excommunication—"infamous and to be avoided"—even as they concluded that Calcata's holy foreskin was more legit than other claimants'.
But that wasn't the end of the holy foreskin. In the late 1960s, government officials, worried that crumbling cliffs and threatening earthquakes might doom the village, decided to build a new town. Hippies discovered the newly abandoned town, which was awaiting a government wrecking crew, and squatted in, then legally purchased, the vacated buildings. Some of the bohemian transplants were intrigued by Calcata's relic, which was now only shown to the public during the village's annual New Year's Day procession (even though the Vatican II reforms removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the church calendar). The new residents began writing about the quirky event and relic for newspapers in and around Rome, and Calcata's scandalous prepuce was isolated no more. And the church took notice.
Was this the reason Dario Magnoni, the local priest, brought the relic from the church to his home? Who knows. Magnoni refuses to speak about the relic, citing the 1954 threat of excommunication. Magnoni's predecessor, Mario Mastrocola, didn't want to talk about the relic, either, but when asked if he was surprised to hear it had been stolen, he shook his head. When pressed, he said, "The relic would not have been taken away from Calcata if I were still the priest there."
Mastrocola's ambiguous words—while not directly incriminating anyone—hinted at underhanded church dealings (interview requests with the Vatican went unanswered). And later, I found myself sitting in a wine cellar halfway up the hill between the old and new villages of Calcata. Capellone, the cellar's owner and a lifelong Calcatese, told me about his close relationship with a former local bishop, Roberto Massimiliani. Ailing in bed, the bishop told Capellone that when he was gone, so too would be the relic. Bishop Massimiliani passed away soon after, in 1975. Eight years after that, the relic disappeared. "To me, it almost felt like a confession," said Capellone. "Like he needed to tell someone before he died."
Could the "sacrilegious thieves" Magnoni mentioned in his 1983 announcement about the relic's disappearance actually have been Vatican emissaries? The thought of masked, black-clad Vatican agents on a mission to steal Jesus' foreskin does sound alluring. But for residents like Capellone, who swear the Vatican now has the relic, the thief could be Magnoni himself. Some locals claim they saw him go to Rome the day before he made the announcement, generating speculation that the Vatican asked for it and Magnoni not only failed to stand up to them, he delivered the relic himself.
Sold, stolen, or delivered to the Vatican—or even all three—the holy foreskin of Calcata is probably gone for good, even as some residents persist in the hope that it will return. And the church is certainly breathing a sigh of relief. While most of the other copies of the relic were destroyed during the Reformation and the French Revolution, Calcata's holy foreskin lived long past its expiration date, like a dinosaur surviving the meteoric blast of the scientific revolution.
But if it had survived, it would have been only a matter of time before someone wanted to clone it.
www.slate.com/articles/life/faithbased/2006/12/fore_shame.single.html
'
Holy Foreskin!
Holy Foreskin!Alexander Basek talks with the author of a recently released book about Italy and one of the strangest holy relics you could ever dream up.
“This year, the holy relic will not be exposed to the devotion of the faithful. It has vanished. Sacrilegious thieves have taken it from my home.” Thus begins Faster Times contributor David Farley’s travel memoir/narrative history, An Irreverent Curiosity, centered around a dramatic — some would say kooky, others sacrilege — case of relic theft. Why all the fuss? It was no beatified bone, but rather the foreskin of the baby Jesus. Preserved in the bohemian Italian hill town of Calcata for centuries, it vanished under mysterious circumstances in 1983. Villagers posited many conflicting theories on the relic’s disappearance, from a pilfering priest to the Vatican itself. (It’s Italy-so, of course the conspiracy theories lead back to the Vatican) Published by Penguin/Gotham Books, the book has received a lot of attention since its release earlier this summer. Alexander Basek sat down with David Farley to talk about one of Italy’s most unusual towns and its curious relic.
AB: Calcata seems like an odd choice when it comes to picking up stakes and moving to an Italian village. How did you choose it?
DF: I was living in Rome in 2002 and heard about this bewitching medieval hill town inhabited by aging hippies and artists. So, as one does in Rome, I took a day trip there and was fascinated by the place.
AB: How did it transition from rustic retreat to hippie mecca?
DF: The government decided in the 1930s that the village was in danger of slipping off the rock, so the plan was to build a new town nearby. But it wasn’t until the late ’60s when Calcata Nuova-New Calcata-was finished. Hippies and artists, perhaps taking refuge from the global calamity that was 1968, took notice of this incredible place and moved in. Today there are about 100 full-time residents and some of them pretty successful artists. All of them talk about a particular energy that oozes from the rock Calcata sits on.
Holy Foreskin!AB: I take it that the energy attracts some interesting characters…
DF: One of my favorites is Athon, an Egyptologist and sculptor who lives in a cave with a dozen crows. Then there’s Paul Steffen, an 88-year-old American who was once a famous choreographer in Italy and managed to befriend some of the 20th century’s greatest artists and thinkers-from Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean Cocteau to Henry Miller and Federico Fellini. And then there’s Pancho Garrison, an American mosaic artist who runs a great restaurant called Grotta dei Germogli.
AB: What was the genesis of the title?
DF: In the Middle Ages there were at least a dozen towns-most of which were in France for some reason-that claimed to posses the foreskin of Jesus. Rome, of course, had one too. All the foreskins disappeared during the anti-Catholic fury of the Reformation and, later, the French Revolution. Except for the one in Rome, which would later wind up in Calcata. The Church’s theological dilemma was over. Or at least they thought so. In the 19th century, a few of those French towns suddenly “rediscovered” their Holy Foreskins and the Church, once again, had a problem on its hands. So, in the year 1900 Pope Leo XIII made a decree, banning the speaking or writing about Holy Foreskin. The penalty: excommunication. When asked about the matter, a spokesperson for the Church said the Holy Foreskin could inspire “an irreverent curiosity.”
Holy Foreskin!AB: Have you been excommunicated yet? In the book, the town’s priest dodges your questions, citing that same decree.
DF: Not that I know of. Maybe I’ll find out when I die and end up in the fiery pits of hell.
AB: So you didn’t write this book to get into heaven. What moved you to write it?
DF: The first time I heard the words “holy” and “foreskin” in succession to each other I was hooked. And then I started doing research on the relic and found that it loomed about the periphery of so many historical epochs and movements-from the Carolingian legends to the Reformation to 19th-century Romanticism. I thought-and this will reveal the history geek that I am-how it would be intriguing to put the relic and the cult of relics into a historical context so that readers would understand why relic veneration has been such a strong facet of people’s lives.
AB: And where does one begin to research Jesus’ foreskin?
DF: I started at New York University where I teach. But once in Italy, I did a lot of research at the Vatican Library, which was very cool. I still can’t believe they let me in. I’m sure they’re regretting it now.
AB: Have people been skeptical of the “truth” of the relic at readings?
DF: There are always expressions of bewilderment, people aghast and rhetorically shouting out: who would keep a foreskin?! My answer to that is the Virgin Mary, realizing there was something innately special about a child from a virgin birth. In actuality, though, the relic in question was probably a medieval fake, some ordinary and unfortunate soul’s foreskin.
AB: It’s a strange claim to fame, for sure.
DF: But what fascinated me was that people believed it was the real flesh of Christ–the only piece of flesh he could have theologically left on earth-and they treated it as such.
AB: The reviews have been good, but one critic called it “raunchy.” Do you think that’s true? Though “irreverent” is in the title, I didn’t find it anti-religious.
DF: I would agree with you on that. Despite the obvious opportunities for humor, there are no cheap shots against Christianity or Catholicism in the book. This is real history. A buried history that, until know, few people knew about.
AB: So What’s next for David Farley, foreskin hunter?
DF: Hopefully it won’t have anything to do with foreskins. Actually, I’m just writing for magazines and newspapers until the next book project comes about, which may never happen: the Holy Foreskin is a hard act to follow.
www.thefastertimes.com/travel/2009/12/03/holy-foreskin/
Holy Prepuce
The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin pr�putium) is one the various relics purported to be associated with Jesus Christ. At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to own it, sometimes concurrently. Various miraculous powers have been ascribed to it.
Orthodox Christian belief has it that Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven at the end of his earthly life. This would mean that his foreskin (removed at his circumcision, as with all other Jewish boys) would be one of the few physical remainders of Jesus left behind on Earth. Indeed, there seems to have been some short-lived theological arguments as to whether Jesus can really be said to have ascended wholly into Heaven if this part of his body was actually missing; consensus was that his foreskin was no more an obstacle to this than the hair and fingernails that he had cut throughout his life.
The abbey of Charroux claimed to own the Holy Foreskin during the Middle Ages. It was said to have been presented to the monks by none other than Charlemagne, who in turn claimed (as the legend has it) that it had been brought to him by an angel (although another version of the story says it was a wedding gift from Empress Irene of the Byzantine Empire). 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. Later, however, Pope Clement VII declared it to be a true relic, and granted an indulgence to pilgrims who went to visit it. 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 abbey church of Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, France was another medieval claimant. One story says that when Catherine of Valois was pregnant in 1421, her husband, King Henry V of England, sent for the Holy Prepuce. It was believed that the sweet scent that the relic was supposed to give off would ensure an easy and safe childbirth. According to this legend, it did its job so well that Henry was reluctant to return it after the birth of the child (the future King Henry VI of England).
The authenticity of the Holy Foreskin claimed by St. John Lateran in Rome is said to have been proven in 1527 when the troops of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sacked Rome. The relic fell into their hands for a time, and was allegedly put to the test by bringing a virgin girl before it, whereupon the foreskin expanded!
Other claimants at various points in time have included (at least) the Cathedral of Puy en Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, and churches in Besancon, Metz, Hildesheim, and Calcata.
The last of these 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 (marked by the Catholic church around the world on January 1 each year). The practice ended, however, when thieves stole the jewel-encrusted case, contents and all.
Over the last century or so, the emphasis placed on relics by the Catholic church has declined markedly, with many relics with long traditions being relegated to "pious legend" by the Vatican. Interest in the Holy Foreskins has been specifically downplayed, with the observation in 1900 that these particular relics encouraged irreverent curiosity.
Apart from its physical importance as a relic, the Holy Foreskin appears in a famous vision of Saint Catherine of Siena. In the vision, Christ mystically marries her, and his amputated foreskin is given to her as a wedding ring. During the late 17th century, Catholic scholar and theologian Leo Allatius in De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba ("Discussion concerning the Prepuce of our Lord Jesus Christ") speculated that the Holy Foreskin may have ascended into Heaven at the same time as Jesus himself and might have become the rings of Saturn then-recently observed.
Assuming that it is possible that one of these foreskins is in fact Jesus Christ's, its preservation raises the possibility of cloning when that technology is perfected for humans.
www.fact-index.com/h/ho/holy_prepuce.html
The Holy Foreskin
While a thousand years ago holy men would go to great lengths to acquire relics, one of the oddest heists did not occur until 1983.
Being Jewish, Christ would have been circumcised. That small ring of flesh would become a surprisingly important part of Christianity. The ceremony of circumcision, the brit milah or bris, was a favorite subject for painters and church walls often featured frescos of the act. The Emperor Charlemagne is supposed to have given Jesus’s foreskin to Pope Leo III as a reward for crowning him Holy Roman Emperor. Technically Charlemagne was re-gifting it, since legend says he received it as a wedding present from his wife.
Since relics were holy, and no one in the Christian religion was holier than Jesus, churches clamored to claim possession of the one true foreskin. At one point at least 18 towns promised pilgrims that their foreskin was the real deal. Over time most of these prepuces were lost or destroyed.
But the town of Calcata in Italy managed to hold on to theirs until just 30 years ago. On the Feast of the Circumcision of Our Lord, January 1, the foreskin in its jeweled case would be paraded through the streets. But then in 1983, the case, and the “dense and fuzzy” piece of skin resembling a “red chickpea” that it contained, disappeared.
It is not just what was stolen that makes this particular theft so odd, though. The weirdest aspect of the story is that there is strong evidence it was stolen by the Vatican. And the cardinals did not steal it because they thought it was important; if they took it, it was so people would shut up about the thing.
Protestant leaders had been making fun of Catholicism’s claim to have that particularly intimate bit of Jesus since John Calvin in the 16th century. As far back as 1900 the Vatican had expressed concerns about the emphasis placed on the holy prepuce, suggesting that it encouraged “irreverent curiosity.” During the 1950s the Pope threatened the highest level of excommunication for anyone who even talked about the relic. Finally, during the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, the cardinals removed the Feast of the Circumcision from the church calendar.
Despite this, the yearly processions in Calcata continued, and the fact that this Italian town was wheeling it around on New Year’s Day like a parade float made sure that this foreskin remained front and center, so to speak. In the 1980s, when locals started writing about the relic for various Italian newspapers, the Vatican may have had enough. In 1983 it was announced that the relic had been stolen, and almost immediately the rumor started that the Vatican had taken it, perhaps in league with the local priest.
Read the full text here: mentalfloss.com/article/30178/holy-foreskin-brief-history-stolen-catholic-relics#ixzz2WLV5q0FE--brought to you by mental_floss!
