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To: George W. Bush
Baldrick: Moving on to relics, we've got shrouds, from Turin; er, wine from the wedding at Cana; splinters from the cross [gets a sliver in his finger from one of the splinters]; er, and, of course, there's stuff made by Jesus in his days in the carpentry shoppe: got pipe racks, coffee tables, coatstands, bookends, crucifixes, a nice cheeseboard, fruit bowls, waterpoof sandals... (picks up a piece of wood that's partly carved) Oh, I haven't finished that one yet.

Percy: But this is disgraceful, My Lord! All of these are obviously fake!

Edmund: Hah, yes!

Percy: But, but how will people be able to tell the difference between these and the real relics?

Edmund: Well, they won't! That's the point!

Percy: Well, you won't be able to fool everyone. Look (he takes a red cloth from his sleeve): I have here a true relic.

Edmund: What is it?

Percy: (unwraps the cloth) It is a bone from the finger of Our Lord. It cost me 31 pieces of silver.

Edmund: Good lord. Is it real?

Percy: It is, My Lord. Baldrick, you stand amazed.

Baldrick: I am -- I thought they only came in boxes of ten. [he opens a box of finger bones]

Percy: What?!

Baldrick: Yeah, yeah -- fingers are really big at the moment. Mind you, for a really quick sale, you can't beat a nose. For instance, the Sacred Appedage Compendium Party Pack: you get Jesus' nose, St. Peter's nose, St. Francis' nose, and [picks up a pair of false breasts] er, no -- they're Joan of Arc's.

Percy: [getting increasingly agitated as Baldrick shows all these "relics"] That little bastard verger! I'll show him! [exits into hallway] I'll show him!


258 posted on 02/26/2007 10:33:28 AM PST by steve-b (It's hard to be religious when certain people don't get struck by lightning.)
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To: steve-b
Baldrick: Moving on to relics, we've got shrouds, from Turin; er, wine from the wedding at Cana; splinters from the cross [gets a sliver in his finger from one of the splinters]; er, and, of course, there's stuff made by Jesus in his days in the carpentry shoppe: got pipe racks, coffee tables, coatstands, bookends, crucifixes, a nice cheeseboard, fruit bowls, waterpoof sandals... (picks up a piece of wood that's partly carved) Oh, I haven't finished that one yet.

Ah, but the enterprising Baldrick missed out on the Holy Diapers, a lucrative little item of infinite supply. But the real treasure was the Holy Prepuce.
According to the apocryphal Infancy Gospels, after Jesus' circumcision in a cave, Mary's midwife placed the foreskin in an alabaster jar filled with spikenard, a preservative, which she gave to her son, admonishing him "Guard well this jar of aromatic nard and do not sell it, even when they offer you 300 denarii". [1]...

"Depending on what you read, there were eight, twelve, fourteen, or even 18 different holy foreskins in various European towns during the Middle Ages". [3] The relic was originally said to have been given to Pope Leo III on December 25, 800 by Charlemagne on the occasion of his coronation; he in turn is said to have claimed that it had been brought to him by an angel while he prayed at the Holy Sepulcher (although another version of the story says it was a wedding gift from the Byzantine Empress Irene). The Pope placed it into the Sancta Sanctorum in the Lateran basilica in Rome with other relics. [4]

In addition to the Holy Foreskin claimed by Rome, other claimants in history have included the Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay, Santiago de Compostela, the city of Antwerp, Coulombs in the diocese of Chartres, France as well as Chartres itself, and churches in Besançon, Metz, Hildesheim, Charroux, Conques, Langres, Anvers, Fécamp, Puy-en-Velay, Calcata, Santiago de Compostela, and two in Auvergne. [3]...

The abbey of Charroux claimed the Holy Foreskin was presented to the monks by Charlemagne. In the early 12th century, it was taken in procession to Rome where it was presented before Pope Innocent III, who was asked to rule on its authenticity. The Pope declined the opportunity. At some point, however, the relic went missing, and remained lost until 1856 when a workman repairing the abbey claimed to have found a reliquary hidden inside a wall, containing the missing foreskin. The rediscovery, however, led to a theological clash with the established Holy Prepuce of Calcata, which had been officially venerated by the Church for hundreds of years; in 1900, the Church solved the dilemma by ruling that anyone thenceforward writing or speaking of the Holy Prepuce would be excommunicated. In 1954, after much debate, the punishment was changed to the harsher degree of excommunication, vitandi (shunned); and the Second Vatican Council later removed the Day of the Holy Circumcision from the church calendar.[5]...

Apart from its physical importance as a relic, the Holy Foreskin is sometimes claimed to have 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...

Saint Bridget was said to have received the Holy Prepuce from an angel, and would experience "orgasm-like sensations" when she would place bits of it on her tongue.
Personally, I favor the claims for the Prepuce Of Calcata.

At any rate, we can see that Rome had officially promulgated the Prepuce for hundreds of years, insisting people believe in it. Then they repudiated it in 1900 and told people they couldn't believe in it, then became even more firm about it in the Fifties and then removed the feast altogether. And yet, the Calcatans were still parading it around and worshipping it in the Eighties. But then it was "stolen" by "thieves". And so now all these different Holy Prepuces can no longer be found. Mysterious indeed. Good thing the pope has threatened to excommunicate anyone writing or speaking about it.
261 posted on 02/26/2007 10:59:13 AM PST by George W. Bush
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