Holy Prepuce

History and rival claims

Jewish law requires circumcision on the eighth day after birth, and the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ is celebrated on January 1. The first reference to the survival of the foreskin appears in the apocryphal Arabic Infancy Gospel. Foreskin relics began appearing in Europe during the Middle Ages, with the earliest recorded sighting on December 25, 800, when Charlemagne gave it to Pope Leo III during his coronation. Charlemagne claimed an angel brought it to him while he prayed at the Holy Sepulchre, though another report says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene.

Saint Bridget of Sweden later confirmed its authenticity in a vision, stating it was in Rome. A document from before 1100 indicated that a cypress chest under an altar in the Chapel of St. Lawrence held a gold jeweled cross containing the foreskin and umbilicus of Jesus. In 1905, an inventory by Professor Hartmann Grisar dated the gold cross to between the sixth and eighth centuries and concluded it was originally designed to hold a relic of the True Cross, with the reference to the foreskin and umbilicus deriving from later Medieval traditions. The gold cross was lost in 1945.

Medieval traffic in relics

Mary Dzon notes that devotion to the Holy Prepuce during the Medieval period reflected a focus on the humanity of Jesus. According to David Farley, depending on the source, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even eighteen different holy foreskins in various European towns. Besides the one in Rome (later Calcata), claimants included the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, Antwerp, Coulombs, Chartres, Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Fécamp, and two in Auvergne.

One famous prepuce arrived in Antwerp in 1100 as a gift from King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who purchased it during the First Crusade. It became famous when the bishop of Cambrai saw three drops of blood blotting the altar linens during Mass. A chapel was built and processions organized, and in 1426 a brotherhood was founded in the cathedral. The relic disappeared in 1566, but the chapel remains.

The abbey of Charroux claimed Charlemagne presented its foreskin. In the early 13th century it was taken to Pope Innocent III, who declined to rule on its authenticity. The relic went missing until 1856, when a workman claimed to have found a reliquary inside a wall. Anthropologist Eric Silverman writes that a common test for authenticity involved a physician tasting the skin, a practice called a croque-prepuce, though this may stem from 19th-century anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Modern practices

For centuries, a jeweled reliquary said to hold the Holy Foreskin was carried through the streets of Calcata, Italy, each January 1 for the Feast of the Circumcision, a tradition that continued until 1983, when thieves made off with the case and its contents. The relic had reportedly arrived in Calcata after a German soldier looted it from Rome during the 1527 sack of the city; he was captured in the village later that year. The Church endorsed the relic by granting a ten-year indulgence to pilgrims, turning Calcata into a major pilgrimage site.

After the 1983 theft, reported by a local priest, the fate of any remaining Holy Prepuces became uncertain. In 1997, journalist Miles Kington searched Italy for one but found nothing. David Farley later wrote a 2009 book about the Calcata relic, and a 2013 National Geographic documentary followed his search.

Literary allusions

Thomas of Chobham, in his 1210 treatise on preaching, used the holy foreskin within a eucharist analogy, discussing how it could be present on earth while also existing in resurrected form. The medieval mystic Agnes Blannbekin reported visionary experiences with the foreskin, claiming it smelled sweet and tasted like honey. In the 14th century, Catherine of Siena mentioned a foreskin-as-wedding ring motif in one of her letters. John Calvin, in his 1543 Treatise on Relics, mocked the monks of Charroux who claimed the relic was genuine because it yields drops of blood.

In the late 17th century, Vatican librarian Leo Allatius wrote an unpublished treatise whose thesis, according to an unconfirmed 19th-century source, was that the Holy Prepuce ascended and transformed into the rings of Saturn. Voltaire, in A Treatise of Toleration (1763), referred to veneration of the Holy Foreskin as one of a number of superstitions. Umberto Eco's book Baudolino has the young Baudolino invent a story about seeing the holy foreskin and navel in Rome.

James Joyce's Ulysses has Stephen Dedalus pondering the Holy Prepuce while urinating with Leopold Bloom. José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ writes that anyone wishing to venerate that foreskin today need only visit the parish church of Calcata.