<p>A new offering from Professor Dorcabelli has now been translated:</p>
<p>Sanctum Praeputium</p>
<p>The first modern calendar containing 365.25 days is usually ascribed to Julius Caesar. Following his conquest of Egypt in 48 BC, he consulted the Alexandrian astronomer Sosigenes about reforming the Roman calendar to meet the needs of the emerging empire. Sosigenes proposed adoption of the calendar of Aristarchus, constructed almost 200 years earlier in 239 BC, which may, however, have had earlier Babylonian roots. Caesar adopted this calendar in 46 BC, which required the insertion of an extra 67 days to align the calendar with the equinoxes, and required the use of an extra day every fourth year. Macrobius indicates that Roman calendarists seem to have misunderstood Caesar’s instructions, and inserted an extra day every third year, rather than the required fourth. The evidence suggests that the use of extra days was suspended by Augustus in 10 BC, and reinstituted in AD 4. </p>
<p>Caesar favored the use of the vernal equinox to mark the inauguration of a new year. However, historians generally agree that beginning in 153 BC, January 1 marked the day on which the two consuls of Rome commenced their terms of office, and this was the day used in the civil administration. While it was rare for Roman historians to number the years ab urbe condita (AUC – years since the founding of the City of Rome in 753 BC, using the date ascribed to Varro, though the Fasti Capitolini, an inscription containing a list of consuls published by Caesar Augustus, provides a date of 752 BC), more often the list of consuls was used as a method of computing the number of years between events. However, the Varronian year formally began on April 21 in commemoration of the Founders of Rome, rather than upon the date of consular ascension. </p>
<p>Almost 600 years would pass before years began to be numbered anno Domini (AD), as introduced by the dwarfish Dionysius Exiguus in AD 525. However, years were now numbered from the date of the incarnation or annunciation of Jesus on March 25. The first day of the numbered year varied by country, with March 25, the Incarnation of Jesus, (also claimed by the theologian Tertullian to be the day of our Lord’s crucifixion), Easter (around April 3, which was used in France), and, soon, the Nativity of Jesus, precisely nine months after the incarnation, on December 25. Countries following the Eastern Orthodox Rite by AD 988 adopted September 1 as the beginning of their numbered years. </p>
<p>The idea that Jesus was born on December 25 is ascribed to Sextus Julius Africanus in his Chronographiai (AD 221), though an earlier and probably spurious ascription is made to Theophilus of Antioch. However, it is unclear to what degree the day was celebrated. In AD 245, the theologian Origen denounced the idea of celebrating the birthday of Jesus, as ‘only sinners, not saints, celebrate their birthdays.’ This suggests, however, and contrary to some scholars and against Professor Bernardelli, that the birth of Jesus was already being observed in Christian communities known to the theologian, it making little logical sense to denounce a practice that did not already in fact exist.</p>
<p>The choice of December 25 for the birthday of our Lord was not universal among the church fathers. Clement of Alexandria argued for May 20; Hippolytus championed January 2. Other dates suggested include April 18, April 19, May 28, November 17, November 20, and March 25 (which would, it would seem, have other difficulties attached to it.)</p>
<p>The final choice may have been politically determined. In AD 274, the Emperor Aurelian designated December 25th as the festival of Sol Invictus, the unconquered sun, perhaps in celebration of the birth of Mithras, a mythical god of Persian origin, although Sol is usually associated with sun worship in Syria. Later Mithraic beliefs included the idea that Mithras’ birth was attended to by shepherds. Mithraic worship was common among the Roman legions until condemned by the Emperor Constantine in AD 312. Christian celebrations of the birth of Jesus on December 25 became widespread in Rome as early as AD 336, and was added to the calendar of feast days by Pope Julian I in AD 350.</p>
<p>The alteration in the start of the new year from December 25 (or March 25, or April 3) to January 1 was a product of the Renaissance. Scholars now being more familiar with the Roman practice, the shift may also have been promoted by business and banking interests in need of a common calendar for, among other purposes, interest calculation. The Venetians were first to adopt the new date, in 1522 AD, soon to be followed by parts of Catholic Germany (1544 AD), and Spain, Portugal, and Catholic Netherlands in AD 1556. It should be noted, however, that adoption was not universal. Iconoclastic Tuscany stood by its old date until 1721, and calendarly conservative England (the last holdout for March 25) until 1752, when they also adopted the calendar proposed by the Calabrian physician Aloysius Lillius, and supported by the Jesuit astronomer Christophorus Clavius (in his Romani Calendarii a Gregorio XIII P.M. restuti explicatio, which notes that the Julian calendar had an error rate of one day every 128 years, and that the equinox had retrograded to March 10th by the middle of the 16th Century), and finally promulgated by edict of Pope Gregory XIII (b. Ugo Buoncomagni) in 1582. Fierce parliamentary debate and riots ensued in England at the adoption of what was seen as a specifically Catholic innovation, designed to bring the celebration of Easter in line with the date specified by the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. Tuscany under Duke Francesco I de Medici resisted the papal edict despite its adoption by her neighbors, and was only to adopt the Gregorian reforms in 1750.</p>
<p>All of this is by way of indicating that while the birthday of Jesus was settled in earlier history, the celebration of January 1 as the beginning of the new year is a rather recent innovation. However, January 1 had other, prior historical significance to the Church. For, counting eight days from His birth, according to Jewish practice both in the Holy Land of the First Century AD and even today, January 1 would mark the circumcision of our Lord. This is attested to do by the Gospel of Luke (2:21), when Jesus was brought to the great Temple in accordance with the Law of Moses, to have His Blood shed for the first time in Redemption of the world. </p>
<p>At the time of His being presented to the Lord as prescribed, the Holy Spirit descended upon an upright and devout man within the inner courts of the Temple, one Simeon, who was long waiting upon the restoration of Israel. Guided by the Spiritu Sanctu, Simeon took the child in his arms, and chanted what has come to be known as the Nunc Dimitti (now sung traditionally as part of Compline Service):</p>
<p>Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace:
Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum
Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum:
Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel.</p>
<p>Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word.
For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people
To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.</p>
<pre><code> Luke 2:29-32
</code></pre>
<p>It came to pass that this scene was witnessed by the first prophet of the New Testament, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. Long a widow, and now at the unusually advanced age of at least 104 (married at 13 or later, widowed after seven years, and living 84 years after the death of her husband), she was often seen within the Ezrat Nashim, the women’s court of the Temple, fasting and praying, and now she heard the proclamation of Simeon, and realized that the child was to be the salvation of Jerusalem. (Luke 2:36-38).</p>
<p>It was custom of the Jews to bury the prepuce of the circumcised on a mound in the lower reaches of Mount Scopus. For this duty, a Levite, Benjamin ben Zacchus Halevi, was employed. The prepuce was wrapped in a ritual cloth, and, like the thousands of others, would have been taken to its resting place. But before Benjamin ben Zacchus could leave, he was stopped by the prophet by Anna, who begged that the packet containing the foreskin be given to her. Knowing her as a devout and holy woman, ben Zacchus refused the few copper coins she offered him, and, not thinking the further of it, gave her the packet, which she wore next to her bosom until her death.</p>
<p>The packet was bequeathed to the prophetess’ children and then to her grandchildren and great grandchildren, along with the tradition as to how it was known to her and came into her possession, and was spirited out of Jerusalem in AD 70 following the destruction of the Temple. It found its way to one of the early Christian communities in Byzantium, where it became an object of great veneration, especially among barren women.</p>
<p>Much theological commentary was written as to what should have happened to the sanctum praeputium once our Lord ascended into heaven 40 days after His death upon the Cross. Some of the eastern communities, having knowledge of the Anna tradition and packet, believed, as did Athenagoras of Athens (writing in his Treatise on the Resurrection of the Body, c. 177 AD), that Jesus ascended bodily, implying that the Holy foreskin would be one of the few physical remnants that He left behind on earth. Others, having no such knowledge, suggested that the prepuce would have been restored to Him during the Resurrection, and this came to be the orthodox view. Still others, such as Origen, accepting the notion that the qualities of heaven are not bound by the world below, argued still further that He may have made Himself whole without reference to the object removed in the earthly abode, for man’s body at the Resurrection is not the same as it is in life. (Methodius of Olympus, 310 AD, provides us with the first reference to the work of Athenagoras in his own arguments against Origen.) </p>
<p>The tradition of the ascension of the sanctum praeputium into the heavenly sphere appears to have persisted well into the Renaissance, and was taken up by the Greek scholar, theologian, and physician Leo Allatius, custodian of the Vatican Library until his death in 1661. He was well-known in his time for his methodical discussion of vampires (included in his De Graecorum hodie quirundum opinationibus), but was also the author of De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (Discussion concerning the Prepuce of our Lord Jesus Christ). Unable to restrain his secret infatuation regarding the discoveries of Galileo Galilei, Allatius speculated that the Holy Prepuce ascended at the same moment as our Lord Himself, but was not joined to Him, becoming instead the newly observed rings of Saturn.</p>
<p>However, in the more mundane realms, it appears that the Holy Prepuce was given as a gift by the Byzantine Empress Irene to Charlemagne at the marriage of her son to Rotrude, Charlemagne’s daughter by his third wife Hildegarde of Savoy. Irene took a strong stance against the Iconoclasts, and, convening the Second Council of Nicaea in AD 787, restored the veneration of icons and relics that had been condemned by her now-deceased husband Leo IV, and later by her son Constantine VI, whose eyes she had gouged out following a series of intrigues between them. It is thought by some that the gift of the sanctum praeputium was the prelude to negotiations for marriage between the Empress and the Carolingian monarch. However, Irene was finally banished to the isle of Lesbos following another intrigue, where she was forced to support herself by spinning. </p>
<p>The prepuce thought to be a gift from Irene was taken in great procession in AD 1198 to Rome by the monks of the Abbey of Charroux (found by Roger of Limoges in the 8th Century under the care of Charlegmagne, and where the brain of Richard I the Lionhearted is also buried). There, they asked Pope Innocent III to rule on its authenticity. Already more concerned with the heresies of the Albigensians, Innocent declined, and, apparently, the Holy Foreskin was lost, until recovered only very recently by a workman in AD 1856, who claimed to have found the reliquary hidden inside the abbey walls which were undergoing repair. </p>
<p>The iconoclastic emperors of Byzantium preceding Irene seemed to have spawned an exodus of relics of unknown provenance from the Eastern Empire, and soon no fewer than six sancta praeputia were claimed in various parts of Europe. The Abbey Church of Coulombs asserted one in its possession, the sweet scent of which was believed to ensure safe and easy childbirthing. Henry V of England sent for it upon the pregnancy of his wife Catherine of Valois in AD 1421, and, the birth of a male heir having been accomplished without complications, Henry was adverse to returning it. It too seems to have become quickly lost.</p>
<p>One of the alleged holy prepuces, perhaps looted by Charles V following his invasion of Rome, may have found its way to the mountain hilltop village of Calcata located in the Lazzio region among the hills of Maremma. This is a fortress owned from medieval times by the aristocratic Massimo family. The qualities of this particular sanctum praeputium appear to have differed from those of the others, for rather than as a cure for barrenness or as an aid to easy childbirth, it was believed to assist in overcoming male impotence. To this day, the reliquary containing the holy foreskin is removed from the local church and paraded through the streets during the Feast of the Holy Circumcision, with the majority of its parading followers being men. The church, however, is visited year round by male pilgrims hoping to restore lost virility.</p>
<p>Editor’s Note: The practice of parading the holy foreskin on January 1st in Calcata appears to have continued up until 1983 when its jewel-encrusted case was apparently stolen, and has yet to be restored. It is speculated by some that it was removed to the Vatican, which was said-to-be embarrassed by the unruly and unseemly celebration. In 1997, a British television journalist traveled through Italy searching for signs of any of the sancta praeputia, without any positive sightings. The income of Calcata has suffered as a result, but the site within the medieval walled town can still be visited by those seeking relief from the summer heat of Rome. </p>
<p>Editor’s Note: The last European country to adopt the Gregorian calendrical reforms was Greece in 1920, and by the Russian, Greek, Serbian, and Romanian Orthodox Churches in 1923. At that point, the Orthodox Churches agreed to conform their date for the celebration of Easter with western practice, not permanently it must be noted, but at least until AD 2800. Based on a formula more accurate than that used by the Gregorian calendar makers in which century years are leap years if divisible by 400, the Greek Orthodox Church adopted a calendar in which century years are leap years only if they leave a remainder of 200 or 600 when divided by 900, or 218 leap days per every 900 years. Hence, the year AD 2800 will not be a leap year in these countries, but will be in the rest of the world, subject to further changes by church religious authorities. </p>
<p>The reference to the tribe of Asher is a great conundrum, as Asher, said to be the northernmost of the ten tribes of Israel, occupying the coastal lands as far north as Sidon, was lost after the defeat of the ten tribes by the Assyrians some seven centuries earlier, in 722 BC. Because of its close proximity and association with the Phoenicians, Asher early became dissociated from the rest of Israel. It is possible, though, that Luke is emphasizing Anna’s Gentile Phoenician origins, as the Israelite tribe of Asher would likely have long since disappeared.</p>