Category:Holy Prepuce (subject)

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Church of Calcata


According to Christian traditions, the Holy Prepuce is one of the Relics of Jesus.

Overview

As a Jew, Jesus was circumcised--an event recorded in the Gospel of Luke.

At same point in the Middle ages, there were as many as 18 churches who claimed to possess the relict of the Holy Prepuce. By the 16th century the competition was reduced to three major contenders.

(a) The Antwerp Prepuce

The relict arrived in Antwerp around the year 1100 as a gift from king Baldwin I of Jerusalem, who purchased it in Palestine in the course of the First Crusade. A special chapel was built to host the relict, which attracted crowds of pilgrims. The relic however disappeared in 1566.

(b) The Charroux Prepuce

The monks of the Abbey of Charroux claimed that the Holy Foreskin was presented to them by Charlemagne. For some time however the relict went missing, until in 1856 a workman repairing the abbey claimed to have found the reliquary hidden inside a wall. The discovery created such a heated controversy with the Calcata Prepuce (see below) that the Vatican intervened in 1900, forbidden any further discussion on the subject under the treat of excommunication.

(c) The Calcata Prepuce

The origins of the Calcata Prepuce were also traced back to Charlemagne, who was believed to have received it either by an angel or as a gift from Empress Irene. Charlemagne donated it to Pope Leo III when he was crowned as Emperor. It was then preserved in the Lateran Basilica in Rome until it was looted during the Sack of Rome in 1527. The relic resurfaced a few decades later in 1557, when it was rediscovered in the village of Calcata (near Viterbo, Latium). The Calcata Relic established for himself a solid reputation as the official relic of the Holy Prepuce, in spite of the challenges that came in 1856 by the rediscovery of Charroux Prepuce (see above) and the heated controversy that followed. The relic continued to be regularly paraded on the streets of Calcata, until 1983 when allegedly thieves stole the jewel-encrusted case, contents and all.

In Depth

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