The Holy Prepuce has long been my favorite medieval relic. Given that, according to Church teachings, the Christian prophet Joshua ben Joseph was taken bodily up to heaven after his death and resurrection, there were, unlike his more earthly disciples and saints, who seem to have left countless legs, arms, fingers, toes and cadaver parts of all sorts to be the relics in the churches bearing their names, no corporeal remains of the Messiah in the terrestrial realm. Except for the bit that was removed eight days after his birth. (The Feast of the Holy Circumcision was celebrated on 1 January during medieval times to mark the occasion of Joshua's bris - once it had been established that his birth occurred around the time of the Winter Solstice and the Saturnalia, two established pagan festivities.) So it is unsurprising that so many churches claimed to have the (one and only) foreskin of Jesus. The fact that most medieval people rarely travelled outside their own demesnes meant that most were unaware of the existence of rival claims to having the object. In addition to the Holy Foreskin said to be in Rome, other claimants included the Cathedrals of Le Puy-en-Velay and Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, as well as Chartres itself, and churches in Besançon, Newport, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, Stoke on Trent, Calcata, and two in Auvergne
In addition to any powers that the relic might have as being the only earthly remains of the earthly body of the only son of the Christian God in granting prayers, it was said that the circle of flesh itself was infinitely elastic, able to be expanded to a size large enough to encompass the earth, and then return to its original size.
The earliest reference to the Holy Prepuce came when Charlemagne was said to have given the relic to Pope Leo III on 25 December 800. According to some reports, Charlemagne claimed that an angel presented it to him while he prayed at the Holy Sepulchre. An alternative version says it was a wedding gift to him from the Byzantine Empress Irene. All the yarns agree that Leo put this foreskin into the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Lateran basilica in Rome.
Another Holy Prepuce arrived in Antwerp in 1100 as a gift from King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who purchased it in the Holy Land during the First Crusade. After the Bishop of Cambray saw three drops of blood fall from the relic, the Antwerp foreskin became the goal of pilgrimages. It disappeared from history in 1566.
The abbey of Charroux claimed it had the Charlemagne Holy Prepuce, presented to the monks by the Emperor himself. It too went missing in early modern times, but turned up again in 1856 when a workman repairing the abbey claimed to have found a reliquary hidden inside a wall. This alleged rediscovery was contested by Calcata, whose Holy Prepuce had been officially venerated by the Church for hundreds of years. This is allegedly the foreskin given to Leo by Charlemagne, looted during the Sack of Rome in 1527. The German soldier who stole it was captured in the Italian village of Calcata later the same year. Thrown into prison, he hid the jewelled reliquary in his cell, where it remained until its discovery in 1557. Housed in Calcata, this Holy Prepuce was venerated from that time onwards, with the Church offering a ten-year indulgence to pilgrims who visited its shrine.
Given the late nineteenth century debate between Charroux and Calcata, the Church ruled, in 1900, that anyone thereafter writing about, or speaking of, the Holy Prepuce would be excommunicated. Subsequently Vatican Two (in the early 1960s) removed the Feast of the Holy Circumcision from the Roman church calendar. Nonetheless, the reliquary containing the Holy Prepuce continued to be paraded through Calcata annually on 1 January until 1983. The practice ended, however, when "thieves" stole the reliquary, contents and all. There have been allegations (see the Slate allegations below) that this was an inside job, masterminded by the Church, which had become embarrassed by the continued reverence for a disputed relic on a holy day that had been officially removed from the calendar. The Calcata Prepuce seems to have been the last surviving one, although there may be one or more still extant in the Vatican catacombs.
There are equally improbable and outrageous stories about many of the other Holy Prepuce claimants. Localities in Italy, France, Spain, the Lowlands, Germany and Britain all claimed to possess the one true Holy Prepuce. Most of the Holy Prepuces in the north were lost or destroyed during the Reformation. The French entries disappeared during the French Revolution and the subsequent Republican period. Spanish claimants like Santiago de Compostela found they had enough other attractions for pilgrims, especially after Rome introduced special dispensations during years in which James the Greater's Holy Day fell on a Sunday.
The Slate research
David Farley, a New York-based writer, is currently writing a book about Calcata and the Holy Prepuce. In Slate magazine on 19 December 2006, he posted an article, "Fore Shame: Did the Vatican steal Jesus' foreskin so people would shut up about the savior's penis?" Farley is the progenitor of the theory that the Vatican was responsible for the disappearance, blaming the recently appointed village priest for the theft of the relic and reliquary. A few extracts give the flavor of his expose.
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. ...
Could the "sacrilegious thieves" ... 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 [the priest] 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 [the priest] 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. And that could have given the Second Coming an entirely new meaning.
First written: August 2008
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