Saint Foreskin

The Saint foreskin is the name given to the Prépuce of Jesus de Nazareth. At certain times when the worship of the most astonishing relics flowered, of the churches claimed to hold this memory of the Child Jesus, without much success.

Theological and historical context

As a Jewish, Jesus was circoncis the eighth day after its birth (Gospel of Luc, II, 21). But the idea that the foreskin of Jesus was preserved, and that moreover it was transmitted through the ages does not have any character of historical probability. It is a thing which does not have escaped even with the naive piety of the Middle Ages, and which explain the little of success of the various attempts which were made here and to make there believe that it was had.

Thus for example, the abbey of Conches, which was in this case, succeeded in becoming a center of pilgrimage only after having recovered in Agen the relics of the young martyrdom Foy saint. The Prépuce saint did not interest anybody. However, in the doubt where one was on the authenticity of this kind of relics, it was out of the question to destroy them, and it is what explains their multiplicity.

Supposed virtues

It seems that in the village of Coulombs, a local belief lent to the Saint Foreskin the capacity to bring fruitfulness to the sterile women.

Places of conservation

The Middle Ages

With the Middle Ages, there was up to fourteen " saints prépuces" preserved in various European cities, and generally mingled with collections with relics with the same kind.

The first trace of a relic of the Saint Foreskin is that which would have been given to the pope Leon III by Charlemagne during its crowning, the December 25th 800. It is also told that it is an angel which had brought it to him while he requested in front of the the Holy Sepulchre (whereas he forever left Europe). Another tradition makes of it a wedding gift offered by the Empress of Byzance, Irene Athenian the. The pope would have placed it in the Sancta santorum of the Basilica of Lateran at Rome with other relics. They are in all the cases late legends of which none is pressed on a document of Carolingian time.

In addition to Rome, other places claimed to hold the Saint-Foreskin: cathedrals of the Puy-en-Velay, Holy Jacques de Compostelle, Coulombs in the Diocese of Chartres, Chartres itself, and of the churches of Besancon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, where one also made go up the donation of this relic with Charlemagne, Conques, Langres, Antwerp (brotherhood always in activity), Fécamp, Calcata, and two in Auvergne.

Current location

The majority of the objects known as of the relics of the Saint Foreskin were destroyed during the Réforme and the French revolution.

The Italian village of Calcata deserves a special mention. In 1557, one had discovered the stolen Saint-Foreskin there thirty years before by a German soldier at the time of the bag of Rome of 1527. Until 1983, a procession where this Saint Foreskin was venerated traversed the streets of the village on January 1st, day of the circumcision. But the robbers seized the reliquary and its contents, which put a term at this ceremony. There does not seem to be other Saint-Foreskin in Italy any more.

Echoes caused by the Saint Foreskin

Case of mocking remarks

Periodically the topic of this relic was agitated to turn in derision certain aspects of the Catholicisme, in particular among the Protestants or the free-thinkers.

In its Treated on the tolerance (1763), Voltaire made fun of the veneration to the Saint Foreskin, regarding it however as a superstition less dangerous than to hate and persecute its next.

Baudolino, in the novel éponyme of Umberto Eco, claims to have seen in Rome the Saint Foreskin and the Saint Umbilical point in company of Frederic Barberousse.

In 2007, a series of hoaxes obscenes about the Saint-Foreskin was propagated on the Fabric, and in particular on Wikipédia, from where it infected the press (The Guardian, international Courrier).

Iconography of the circumcision of Jesus

Rubens, retable of the high altar, church del Gesù E dei Santi Ambrogio E Andrea , Main center of Genoa
of the scenes of the life of the Virgin, Venetian of 15th with the Museum of Louvre of Paris
It Garofalo (16th century)
It Guercino (1646) with the Museum of the Art schools of Lyon
Federico Barocci (16th century)
Andrea Boscoli with the Duomo di Fermo