Daily Archives: September 14, 2004

Wikipedia is my friend

Every time you visit Wikipedia.org, there is a “featured article” concerning some random subject.  Today’s was about the “Holy Prepuce” (or Holy Foreskin).  An amusing paragraph from the article:

Allegorical importance

Apart from its physical importance as a relic, the Holy Foreskin appeared in a famous vision of Saint Catherine of Siena. In the vision, Jesus mystically marries her, and his amputated foreskin is given to her as a wedding ring.

During the late 17th century, Catholic scholar and theologian Leo Allatius in De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (“Discussion concerning the Prepuce of our Lord Jesus Christ”) speculated that the Holy Foreskin may have ascended into Heaven at the same time as Jesus himself and might have become the rings of Saturn, then only recently observed by telescope.

Voltaire, in A Treatise of Toleration (1763), ironically 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”. [1]