Holy foreskin

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Guido Reni : Circumcision of Jesus

The holy foreskin (Latin: sanctum praeputium ) was considered a Christian relic , which should be the foreskin of Jesus of Nazareth . From Jesus' body, after her Assumption only those components have remained on earth, he at that time no longer had . In the Middle Ages, several churches claimed to have this relic.

clipping

Friedrich Herlin : Circumcision of Jesus

Since the early Middle Ages , to commemorate the circumcision of Jesus eight days after his birth, which is reported in Lk 2.21  EU (“And when eight days were up and the child had to be circumcised, he was given the name Jesus, like him was called by the angel before he was conceived in the womb ”), on January 1st the feast of the circumcision of the Lord ( Circumcisio Domini ) was celebrated. However, the festival faded into the background in the course of the Latin liturgical reform . Today the Roman Catholic Church celebrates the solemn feast of Mary, the Mother of God, on the octave day of Christmas . Through Pope Benedict XVI. However, as of September 14, 2007, the older calendar (for the extraordinary form of the Roman rite) was put back into legally binding validity with regard to the celebration of the Latin liturgy according to the books valid during the last council and valid again today.

history

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.
Church of Santissimo Nome di Gesù (Holy Name of Jesus) in Calcata

The relic of the holy foreskin is said to be Pope Leo III. given by Charlemagne on the occasion of his coronation as emperor on December 25, 800 in Rome. Karl, in turn, is said to have received it from an angel or from the Empress Irene of Byzantium. The sacred foreskin, along with other relics, was kept in the Chapel of the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran .

According to legend, the relic is said to have been stolen from the Sacco di Roma in 1527 by a German mercenary involved, who in turn was arrested by Count Anguillara while retreating north of Rome and imprisoned in the castle of Calcata . The soldier is said to have hidden the reliquary in his cell, where it was only found 30 years later and has since been kept in the local parish church. In 1584 Pope Sixtus V granted an indulgence for pilgrims to Calcata. The sacred foreskin was regularly shown in public in processions until 1983 ; In 1983 she disappeared under unknown circumstances. British television journalist Miles Kington tried unsuccessfully in 1997 to find the sacred foreskin.

The Abbey Charroux led the possession of the relic back Karl the Great. Pope Innocent III refused to recognize their authenticity.

A relic of the sacred foreskin appeared in Antwerp in 1112 . After a solemn entry into the Church of Our Lady , where a special chapel was built, the Bishop of Cambrai said that three drops of blood had fallen from her. This relic was lost in the iconoclasm of 1566.

In 1421, Catherine of Valois asked her husband, King Henry V of England, to get her this relic, as its sweet scent would guarantee a good birth. The relic was kept in the Abbey Church of Coulombs and disappeared there during the French Revolution .

In the Middle Ages, the Andechs monastery also claimed to be in possession of the sacred foreskin.

meaning

According to GW Foote and JM Wheeler, Crimes of Christianity (1887), the Greek scholar and curator of the Vatican Library , Leo Allatius († 1669), in a text De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (“Lecture on the foreskin of our Lord Jesus Christ ”) have speculated that the Holy Foreskin rose to heaven with Jesus and turned into one of the rings of Saturn. These rings were not discovered until 1610 using one of the first telescopes .

The day of circumcision, i.e. January 1st, gave rise to one of the seven possible beginnings of the year according to the Christian calendar (circumcision style).

cult

This part of the body of Jesus also became the object of transcendent veneration. In the 13th century, a peasant girl from Plambach , the mystic Agnes Blannbekin , reported that she had felt the sensation of Christ's foreskin in her mouth while tasting the Eucharist . The related notes of her pastor ( Vita et Revelationes ), published in 1731 by the Benedictine Bernhard Pez , were confiscated at the instigation of the Jesuits .

literature

  • Otto Clemen: A strange relic of Christ. In: Archives for cultural history. Volume 7, 1909, pp. 137–144, again in: Otto Clemen, Kleine Schriften zur Reformationsgeschichte (1897–1944) , ed. by Ernst Koch, Böhlau, Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-412-08289-9 , p. 193ff.
  • Philippe Cordez: treasure, memory, wonder. The objects of the churches in the Middle Ages. Regensburg 2015, pp. 90–96.
  • Ralf Lützelschwab: Between mediation of salvation and nuisance - The preputium Domini in the Middle Ages. In: Pecia 8/11 (2005) 601-628.
  • Alphons Victor Müller : The most holy foreskin of Christ in the cult and theology of the papal church . Schwetschke, Berlin 1907, OCLC 604235079 .
  • Marc Shell: The Holy Foreskin; or, Money, Relics, and Judeo-Christianity. In: Jonathan Boyarin, Daniel Boyarin (eds.): Jews and Other Differences: The New Jewish Cultural Studies. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1997, again in Marc Shell, Art & Money , University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1995, pp. 30ff.
  • Johan J. Mattelaer, Robert A. Schipper, Sakti Das: The Circumcision of Jesus Christ . In: The Journal of Urology . tape 178 , 2007, p. 31–34 , doi : 10.1016 / y.juro.2007.03.016 .

Web links

Commons : Circumcision of Jesus  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Helmar Auel (ed.): Undiscovered holidays: the church year as a festival of faith. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 978-3-525-59353-0 , p. 27. In Google books
  2. ↑ Matthias Drobinski: Arte documentary "Search for the Holy Foreskin". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung. August 22, 2014, accessed October 20, 2015 .
  3. ^ GW Foote, JM Wheeler: Crimes of Christianity ( Memento of April 22, 2005 in the Internet Archive ); 1887: "It should be added that at least one Catholic writer has devoted a treatise to the Savior's foreskin, asserting that it ascended, like Jesus himself, and expanded into one of the rings of Saturn."
  4. ^ Entry on Agnes Blannbekin in the database Gedächtnis des Landes for the history of Lower Austria ( Museum Niederösterreich ), accessed on September 4, 2016.