I didn’t believe this when I read it. But in the seventeenth century, a leading Roman Catholic theologian argued that the rings of Saturn were in fact the foreskin of Jesus Christ. Somehow, this piece of flesh ascended into the heavens to become the rings of Saturn. This curious hypothesis was advanced by Leo Allatius (c.1586-1669), keeper of the Vatican library, who was also a strong believer in the existence of vampires.
In a book, written in Latin, titled De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (Discourse on the Foreskin of Our Lord Jesus Christ), Allatius made his extraordinary claim. This was just as the scientist Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had pointed his telescope at Saturn and discovered its rings, which he initially described as “ears”. He mistook the rings for two other other planets situated close by. Using his new-fangled telescope, Galileo was endeavouring to make sense of the stars and planets, much to the consternation of the church. The Vatican made Galileo’s life hell and Allatius waded in to the debate about Saturn with his bizarre theory.
The church didn’t like the way Galileo was divorcing the heavens from the bible – and turning the celestial realm into something wholly scientific. Far better to have the common people gazing upwards and thinking it was all God’s own creation. So, along came Allatius to try and bring Jesus back into the picture. He thought that as Jesus ascended into heaven, he left his foreskin in the sky, becoming the rings of Saturn.
That was the church’s considered response to Galileo.
A proliferation of holy foreskins
Another reason that Allatius may have come up with this theory was to tackle the vexed problem of a large number of alleged foreskins of Jesus that existed in Europe at that time. Think about it. You’re a bishop or an abbot running a church or an abbey. You want more pilgrims to come and spend money at your place of worship. In the Middle Ages, and for centuries afterwards, announcing that you had some holy relics was a sure fire way to increase footfall. Even better, if you could prove that you had a bit of Jesus – as opposed to the bones of some or other saint.
Problem was – Jesus ascended bodily into heaven during the resurrection – leaving nothing behind. But hang on! Surely he got his fingernails cut every so often – or popped down to the barbers for a haircut. So, nails and hair were in circulation (plus the breast milk of his mother, Mary). And so was the holy foreskin. After all, Jesus had grown up in the Jewish faith and undergone circumcision. So, there must have been a foreskin left behind, long before the resurrection. Hallelujah – the church had a relic!
Trouble was – everybody wanted one.
Eventually, there were over a dozen claimed foreskins in different churches all vying for the title: The Holy Prepuce. That being a rather archaic word for the foreskin. When Charlemagne was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in the year 800CE, the grateful ruler presented the pontiff with the foreskin of Jesus. Or at least one of them. It was then placed in the Sancta Sanctorum – a chapel in Rome I visited this year, next to the Lateran Palace, where medieval popes lived up until the 14th century. The Sancta Sanctorum was a private papal chapel that still contains part of the table from the Last Supper. So the pope got the foreskin all for himself and not for sharing.
However, in 1527 the city of Rome was sacked by invading German troops who made off with many church treasures including the Holy Prepuce. Thirty years later, it turned up in the northern Italian town of Calcata and was kept for centuries at the Chiesa del SS. Nome di Gesù. Now you may not know this but during the traditional Twelve Days of Christmas – what we now call New Year’s Day – January the First – was originally the feast of the holy circumcision. Because Jesus was believed to have been circumcised eight days after his birth. So, the people of Calcata paraded this shrivelled piece of skin around town ever year on that date.
Until in 1983, it vanished. Not up to the rings of Saturn – but into thin air. In other words, it was stolen, never to be seen again. One assumes that there’s a hedge fund manager in a multi-million dollar penthouse who keeps it in a bullet-proof display case.
But there is, of course, a conspiracy theory. It goes that the Vatican took the foreskin deep into its secret archives to stop scientists attempting to clone Jesus from this piece of skin. The movie Jurassic Park was ten years in the future but I guess the technology was already being discussed in 1983.
Vatican gets embarrassed
The medieval saint, Catherine of Siena, had some very odd visions. She imagined herself licking the wounds of Christ at the crucifixion. She also pictured herself getting married to Jesus with his foreskin as the wedding ring! The crazy saint wrote:
“Bathe in the blood of Christ crucified. See that you don’t look for or want anything but the crucified, as a true bride ransomed by the blood of Christ crucified – for that is my wish. You see very well that you are a bride and that he has espoused you – you and everyone else – and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who on the eighth day, when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!”
The Holy Prepuce was an accepted topic of discussion right through to the 17th century when it was conjectured that Jesus had discarded it next to the planet Saturn, on his way to heavenly bliss.
But by the 19th century, the Vatican was getting a bit squeamish. Talk of relics was toned down because the church feared that with the rise of science and rationalism, it was time to forget about these strange items. Otherwise, Catholics might come to be regarded as superstitious oafs. In the year 1900, Pope Leo XIII wrote that anybody even discussing the foreskin of Jesus would face excommunication and in the 1960s, all reference to the circumcision in relation to January the First was removed. No more foreskin!
However, you can’t keep a good thing down. Many popes had written about it. Allatius had located it floating around Saturn. And several novelists including a mention of the Holy Prepuce in their works including James Joyce, Umberto Eco (inevitably), and José Saramago. Thanks to NASA though, we can pretty much confirm that the rings of Saturn are not, as Allatius argued, related in any way to Jesus Christ – or a discarded part of his anatomy.
great report top marks i learned a lot!
There is no evidence that Lei Allatius (1586 – 1669) thought any such thing. There is mention of an unpublished essay by him discussing the foreskin of Jesus (he was a doctor as well as a Greek classical scholar) found in a later library list. Nobody knows what its contents were. It was a 19th century Englishman in an 1886 book called “Crimes Of Christianity” (obviously an unbiased and objective study!!) who speculated that he had espoused this absurd opinion. Anti-Catholic prejudice has often reported it as historical ‘fact’ ever since.