Holy Prepuce - Wikipedia
The Holy Prepuce, or Holy Foreskin (Latin præputium or prepucium ), 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.
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."[ 1] 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:
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,[ 3] who confirmed that it was somewhere in Rome.[ 4] The Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae, written shortly before 1100, indicated that a cypress chest commissioned by Leo III and placed under the altar in the Chapel of St. Lawrence held three caskets. One of the caskets contained a gold jeweled cross. The document stated that in this cross was the foreskin and umbilicus of Jesus.[ 5] 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.[ 6] In a letter to encourage a nun who was undergoing a prolonged period of spiritual trial and torment, she wrote: "Bathe in the blood of Christ crucified. See that you don't look for or want anything but the crucified, as a true bride ransomed by the blood of Christ crucified – for that is my wish. You see very well that you are a bride and that he has espoused you – you and everyone else – and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who on the eighth day, when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!"[ 7]
