Holy Prepuce

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.

[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.

[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.

"[7] David Farley recounts how a relic brought to Rome by Saint Brigida and said to be the holy foreskin was looted during the sack of the city in 1527.

[5] Mary Dzon says that for many people during the Medieval period, devotion to the Holy Prepuce reflected a focus on the humanity of Jesus.

One of the most famous prepuces arrived in Antwerp in Brabant in 1100 as a gift from King Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who purchased it in the Holy Land during the First Crusade.

The relic disappeared in 1566, but the chapel still exists, decorated by two stained glass windows donated by king Henry VII of England and his wife Elizabeth of York in 1503.

[9][13] In reality, it was more than two years before 11 October 1962, the date when the Second Vatican Council began, that a 25 July 1960 decree of Pope John XXIII[14] enacted a wide-ranging revision of the General Roman Calendar, which included changing the name of the 1 January feast from "Circumcision of the Lord and Octave of the Nativity" to "Octave of the Nativity", with no change of the Gospel reading about the circumcision of the child Jesus.

In a 1997 television documentary for Channel 4, British journalist Miles Kington travelled to Italy in search of the Holy Foreskin, but was unable to find any remaining example.

Voltaire, in A Treatise of Toleration (1763), referred to veneration of the Holy Foreskin as being one of a number of superstitions that were "much more reasonable... than to detest and persecute your brother".

[21] James Joyce's Ulysses has Stephen Dedalus pondering the Holy Prepuce while he urinates with Leopold Bloom, in the section titled "Ithaca".

In The Gospel According To Jesus Christ, José Saramago writes that anyone "wishing to venerate that foreskin today need only visit the parish church of Calcata near Viterbo in Italy, where it is preserved in a reliquary for the spiritual benefit of the faithful and the amusement of prying atheists.