Everybody collects something; but for the Imperial Tradition Christian churches, that collection has some really weird stuff. Not just the bones of saints and a handful of miraculous statues, but enough "holy prepuce" to fill your cereal bowl, and the miraculous rehydrating blood of the saints of Naples can help wash all that down. This isn't your regular daily mass - join us to see what other strange relics the Catholic Church has been collecting.
Learn more about John the Baptist, Hiram McDaniels (from Welcome to Night Vale), St. Bernard of Clairvaux, the rose petals of St. Catherine, the shroud of Turin, Mary's milk, the True Cross, the Bones of the Magi, the official classification of holy relics, and the veneration (WORSHIP!) of saints.
All this and more....
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[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: It feels like it's been a long time since we've been here, but it really hasn't. We recorded last week.
[00:00:17] Preston Meyer: We did record last week, but you know where it is a while since we've been in this place talking about weird things in Christianity.
[00:00:28] Katie Dooley: Yes. If you liked our Saints episode, you're gonna love this episode of
[00:00:34] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.
[00:00:38] Katie Dooley: So what are we talking about today? That's...
[00:00:40] Preston Meyer: Well, we're looking at holy relics. There's a lot of relics of a lot of different religious traditions. Today, we've decided to focus on just Christian relics. I think it's interesting, most people really hate comparing churches to Ripley's Believe It or Not! Exhibits.
[00:00:58] Katie Dooley: What? No!
[00:00:58] Preston Meyer: This whole... Because we all know Ripley's Believe It or Not! Is mostly nonsense and weird things pushed together to make cool things to look at. And sometimes religion is a little bit that way. But the parallels go deeper than the inclination to doubt the veracity of outrageous claims. We also do have jars filled with human body parts.
[00:01:21] Katie Dooley: So many jars, so many body parts, so many body parts from the same person?
[00:01:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:01:26] Katie Dooley: When you should only have one.
[00:01:28] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. It's it's really crazy. We've got saints that according to the evidence of if you can call it that, of the claims of various churches around the world, the saint had two full bodies and extra legs and arms.
[00:01:49] Katie Dooley: Yep. So man... And Saint Bernard is gonna appear again just briefly but...
[00:01:56] Preston Meyer: Good times.
[00:01:57] Katie Dooley: If you're a fan of Saint Bernard, our our Discord family sure likes Saint Bernard. So, yeah, there's a relic just for him.
[00:02:08] Preston Meyer: Yep. Uh, relics of religious importance come in all shapes and sizes and a variety of classifications. As I was looking into this, I thought it was kind of cool that the imperial tradition Christians, mainly talking about Catholics and Orthodox Christians, and that tradition that survives a little bit in Lutheranism and a handful of other Protestant groups, the old Protestant groups like the Church of England, um, there's three classes, more or less strictly this three classifications is the Catholic, Roman Catholic tradition, but it's observed a little bit by others as well.
[00:02:46] Katie Dooley: It's also just a nice classification system.
[00:02:48] Preston Meyer: It's handy.
[00:02:49] Katie Dooley: I saw it come up in some of my research.
[00:02:52] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So the first class is literally anything directly connected to Jesus, or in addition to that, the earthly remains of a saint. Their body parts, pretty much.
[00:03:06] Katie Dooley: Their body parts.
[00:03:07] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, the second class is any object associated directly with a saint. Uh, like something they touch, something they owned, something that was theirs. Um, and these first two classes are officially "the sacred things". And then the third class is just devotional. It's pretty much anything that has touched anything in the first two categories.
[00:03:30] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:03:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. If you put Saint John's head's plate on your table, bam! Your table is now a third-class relic.
[00:03:41] Katie Dooley: I'm like, can we get this done?
[00:03:44] Preston Meyer: In theory, yes. In practice, complicated. These things are well-guarded. Well. Kind of. You'd think they're a lot better guarded than they are. We're going to talk about a lot of things that have gone missing.
[00:03:57] Katie Dooley: So what we need to do this actually is probably not as hard as we think. It's just going to take time. So you need to finish your doctorate.
[00:04:04] Preston Meyer: Yep.
[00:04:05] Katie Dooley: And then you got to get a research position studying something in one of these areas. And then I will bring you like my laptop. And you'll just be like "bink" and no one needs to know. No one needs to know. Except I do want people to know I have a third-class relic in my house, so.
[00:04:21] Preston Meyer: Right.
[00:04:23] Katie Dooley: I'm terrible.
[00:04:27] Preston Meyer: Well, what's really clever, there are opportunities where you could take a handkerchief and you have in locker room, you whip people with a wet handkerchief. You know what I'm talking about?
[00:04:38] Katie Dooley: I do, but it's such a man thing.
[00:04:40] Preston Meyer: Not exclusively, but maybe more than women, I don't know, I don't spend a lot of time in the ladies locker room.
[00:04:45] Katie Dooley: Good. Good, from the sounds of it.
[00:04:48] Preston Meyer: So you take your handkerchief and you do exactly that at a relic in a church. Bam! You've got yourself a holy relic of the third class.
[00:04:56] Katie Dooley: Oh, yeah. Okay, let's go to Italy. Let's go to Italy.
[00:05:00] Preston Meyer: I should not advocate this behavior that would cause over time. Probably not a lot of time. The destruction of these relics. Yes.
[00:05:10] Katie Dooley: And if you get caught, you'd get in a lot of trouble.
[00:05:13] Preston Meyer: Oh, for sure I would because it definitely sounds like some serious disrespect. Just whipping John the Baptist's head.
[00:05:24] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say, once we get to John the Baptist's head, you have at least a five in six chance of not being disrespectful. Anyway. Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. We're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's start with the bones of the Magi.
[00:05:41] Preston Meyer: The first on my list is. Honestly, really? I don't know how they ever thought that these were the three Magi.
[00:05:49] Katie Dooley: We don't even know there were three!
[00:05:51] Preston Meyer: Right? So in Germany, there is a shrine in Cologne to the three wise men that we hear talked about in Matthew's gospel. Now, if you go back to Josh and the Wise Guys, our Christmas episode from last year, talk a little bit about more how there might these people might not even have existed.
[00:06:11] Katie Dooley: And again, there's no way that we didn't know if it was 1 or 3 or 7 or 45.
[00:06:16] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The scriptural account doesn't give us a number of people, just a number of gifts. And so we've leaned really hard into this tradition of three wise men. So the bones that are currently enshrined in Cologne, in this shrine to the three wise men, their bones have been moved around a lot. It's said that they were exhumed in Constantinople in 1164. So midway between here and the time they would have lived, why they would have been buried in Constantinople is a mystery. It's just...
[00:06:51] Katie Dooley: Because they were from the East. I'm trying to like, picture my geography, so that doesn't make any sense.
[00:06:57] Preston Meyer: It doesn't make any sense at all. It's really weird because.
[00:07:01] Katie Dooley: I'm like, Turkey's northwest of Israel, am I right?
[00:07:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:07:07] Katie Dooley: So yeah, they're from the east.
[00:07:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's like they couldn't return home when they fled Herod, which they had no reason to do in real life. It's just it seems really weird. And it's, uh, it's called the shrine of the Three Kings. Usually when we talk about it, which helps build up the English tradition of calling them kings when we don't know the story we have in Matthew gives us no reason to call them kings. No, they were mages, Magi,
[00:07:40] Katie Dooley: Priests.
[00:07:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, it's. The whole thing is super weird. But we have bones of.
[00:07:48] Katie Dooley: Some guys.
[00:07:49] Preston Meyer: Three. We believe they're three guys, but because of how poorly we have been taking care of bones throughout history, it could be composites of more people. It's it's a little bit weird, but people go there all the time. They report healings. It's it's kind of cool as far as a tradition goes. But it... I don't believe that we really have any grounds to call it legitimate, but it has decent pilgrimages from year to year.
[00:08:25] Katie Dooley: We'll say that a lot.
[00:08:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's only going to get worse.
[00:08:28] Katie Dooley: Yeah. All right. So are we gonna jump into this big one next?
[00:08:33] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Let's do it.
[00:08:34] Katie Dooley: All right, so pieces of the True Cross is another holy relic. So the true Cross being the cross on which Jesus was crucified. And you can find pieces of it all over the place. So the hunt, the hunt for the cross began with Emperor Constantine, which we know from our two previous episodes where we were talking about the death of religion is that he was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. So one... The story around this claims that Constantine's mother, Saint Helena, traveled to Jerusalem to find the true cross, and she found a pagan temple, a destroyed pagan temple. Or no, she destroyed the pagan temple. Excuse me. She found three crosses. So reflecting the story that Jesus was crucified with two thieves.
[00:09:24] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[00:09:26] Katie Dooley: And so she got all excited that there were these three crosses that she had found. And so they found a dying woman, brought her out to this site.
[00:09:34] Preston Meyer: I mean, in the story, I don't think it would have been that hard to find somebody who was dying. They had just destroyed a temple. They that included a fight, for sure.
[00:09:44] Katie Dooley: Fair. And I mean, you can find a dying person in any city. You just gotta ask around.
[00:09:50] Preston Meyer: Right? I think that in this particular situation, there was one a lot more convenient than one would hope.
[00:09:55] Katie Dooley: Oh, no. So they found this dying woman, and they asked her to touch these three crosses, and she touched one and was healed. So this is the true cross. Um, then Helena chopped it up into pieces. Which feels really blasphemous to me, even though, I mean, so whatever. I'm the atheist. I don't think she found the true cross at all. But like, if you thought it was the true cross, you're like, you know what? The thing to do is chop it up.
[00:10:26] Preston Meyer: See, that doesn't seem so blasphemous to me.
[00:10:28] Katie Dooley: I mean I guess it's hard to transport, but, like.
[00:10:30] Preston Meyer: Well, yeah, a full crucifix and actually not that huge of a burden to transport. You pull it out of the ground, it's just a giant beam of wood but to say that such an artifact should be preserved because it killed our God feels really weird.
[00:10:50] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm also. This is why I like the Latter Day Saints church and where the cross isn't prominent because it was a torture device. Yeah. And I mean, there's also that great meme on our discord. Why are they worshiping crosses? Why would they think I would like a cross?
[00:11:06] Preston Meyer: What about my story? Makes you think I'm into this?
[00:11:11] Katie Dooley: Okay, fair. No, that's a good take on it. So I in in my research, I read one thing. And then when I was in religious studies, I had heard another thing. So my religious studies professor had said that there's so many pieces of the cross out there that you could actually make more than one cross. Like there's like three. Like you can make 3 or 4 full crosses with the amount of pieces of the cross relics around there. I also read one that said there's actually not enough pieces of the cross to make a full cross, which to me a little more believable, especially if it was chopped up and sent all over the place.
[00:11:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, john Calvin famously said that there was enough pieces of the cross to build a ship.
[00:11:54] Katie Dooley: John Calvin hated relics, and we've actually quoted him a lot. Um, we'll do a whole episode on Calvinism, but, uh, yeah, he's got some good zingers.
[00:12:06] Preston Meyer: Right? The problem with, uh, with this great sounding statement is that only about 40 years ago, they actually the Church of Rome took an account of all of the chunks of the cross that were officially documented, and they found that it adds up to a little less than 4 pounds of wood. So like you had said, not enough to build a whole cross.
[00:12:30] Katie Dooley: But again, that I mean, that's like there's pieces of the Berlin Wall. It's not enough to make a wall anymore because. Anyway, uh, there is much debate about what type of wood the cross was made out of. And there's a whole bunch of scientists have studied and carbon dated and tested, so dogwood comes up frequently. Dogwood has religious connotations. The other two that I found in our research is that is pine and olive wood. However, some historians argue that it wouldn't be made of olive wood because olive trees were an important. Olive trees were an important food crop. So you wouldn't waste it on crucifying people.
[00:13:10] Preston Meyer: Unless, of course, your olive tree was no longer fruitful. Like there's an argument that says that it's possible but...
[00:13:16] Katie Dooley: Had too many criminals.
[00:13:19] Preston Meyer: Sometimes you had to crucify an awful lot of people. You would just take the wood that was available to you. Yeah, sure. Why not?
[00:13:26] Katie Dooley: Yeah. What else did you find, Preston? Because at some point, I had to tap out of this one.
[00:13:30] Preston Meyer: So in addition to these chunks of wood, we also got a lot of chunks of iron. The Catholic Church acknowledges that there are at least 30 nails that claim to be the tools of the crucifixion. But since there weren't more than four, that we've got a little bit of a math problem here.
[00:13:50] Katie Dooley: What?
[00:13:51] Preston Meyer: But the Catholic Church has an explanation for this as well. In their encyclopedia, they say officially probably the majority began by professing to be facsimiles which had touched or contained filings from some other nail whose claim was more ancient, without conscious fraud on the part of anyone. It is very easy for imitations in this way to come in a very brief space of time, to be reputed originals. Basically, it's them saying we don't know.
[00:14:22] Katie Dooley: And I mean, the thing is, it's like we obviously have artifacts far older than 2000 years. So absolutely, you could have a nail in carbon dating and have it be 2000 years old. It doesn't mean it's used on Jesus. So especially when we know how much crucifixion was happening at that time.
[00:14:38] Preston Meyer: The Romans loved crucifying people.
[00:14:41] Katie Dooley: Loved it. Um, so it could just be. Yeah, absolutely. You can find a nail from 30 BCE and. Yeah, sure. Probably was.
[00:14:54] Preston Meyer: But like you mentioned before, the veneration of an implement of torture seems a little psychotic.
[00:15:01] Katie Dooley: I mean, I mean, I don't know if we want to dive into this one, but, I mean, lots of Christians wear cross necklaces and have cross tattoos. And so.
[00:15:08] Preston Meyer: And generally speaking...
[00:15:09] Katie Dooley: It's obviously broader, a broader topic than relics. But.
[00:15:12] Preston Meyer: Yeah, recognizing the cross as the symbol that unifies Christianity as the worshipers of Christ is a thing I can get my head around. A symbol that unifies us. Fine.
[00:15:26] Katie Dooley: To actually own a own a piece, to.
[00:15:29] Preston Meyer: To own it and celebrate its ownership and venerate the item and invite people to come and bring their worship to this item.
[00:15:37] Katie Dooley: I guess it's like owning a gun that killed your mother.
[00:15:42] Preston Meyer: A little bit, but like, not just owning it, but like putting it on display in your home.
[00:15:46] Katie Dooley: Guys, look at this thing.
[00:15:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah, that's.
[00:15:49] Katie Dooley: I see it.
[00:15:49] Preston Meyer: That feels a little psychotic.
[00:15:50] Katie Dooley: I can see the. Yeah. Okay.
[00:15:53] Preston Meyer: That's my feelings on it anyway.
[00:15:56] Katie Dooley: Oh, our first of many heads.
[00:16:01] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Katie Dooley: So we have the head of Saint Catherine. So Catherine was born. Cathy. Thanks, Preston. Cathy was born in 1347, in Siena, Italy. She was one of the great mystical and spiritual writers of the church at the time, and is honored with the title of church doctor since 1970.
[00:16:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it took a long time for the popes to give her that honor, but that's okay, because they did eventually.
[00:16:28] Katie Dooley: Oh, I like this next fact about her. She famously referred to the Pope as is Babbo, the Italian equivalent for daddy instead of Your Highness. I like that level of sass and confidence that she's got.
[00:16:44] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but her story gets a little bit weird. At age 21, she married Jesus. She claims Jesus came to visit her and engage in a spiritual marriage. Because, of course, Jesus had been dead and gone for a thousand years. No big deal. She had been a nun, but Jesus told her to go out into the world, which, okay, that seems like decent advice, go out into the world if you want to spread the message. That's how you do that.
[00:17:12] Katie Dooley: Is this where consecrated virgins come from?
[00:17:15] Preston Meyer: No, no, that's an old,
[00:17:16] Katie Dooley: Even older than...
[00:17:17] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Rome was interested in consecrated virgins long before...
[00:17:20] Katie Dooley: Catherine. Okay, interesting.
[00:17:22] Preston Meyer: That's like Vesta.
[00:17:25] Katie Dooley: Oh, okay.
[00:17:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. So the weird thing about this new relationship that Catherine had with Jesus is that when he gave her a wedding ring, it was his foreskin. Uh, we're going to talk a lot more about Jesus' foreskin later, but this is...
[00:17:43] Katie Dooley: Buckle up.
[00:17:44] Preston Meyer: Her story.
[00:17:45] Katie Dooley: Buckle up, guys. We're going to talk about Jesus's foreskin. Oh, boy. Uh, yeah. Because, um, I mean, yeah, with Vesta. But like, consecrated virgins are recognized in the Catholic Church.
[00:17:59] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Just because Rome has a hard time actually changing their traditions.
[00:18:04] Katie Dooley: Okay. Fair. Um, I want to do a whole episode on consecrated virgins and nuns. I keep on saying versions. Virgins and nuns.
[00:18:14] Preston Meyer: Gotta go in there with a hard j g. Sure, but it's making a J sound.
[00:18:20] Katie Dooley: Wow. All right, Pres-gon. Get going.
[00:18:28] Preston Meyer: Another interesting thing about Saint Catherine and these we've talked about weird saints. This doesn't... It's not even that crazy. She's not one of our bad saints that we like to talk about. But she also received the stigmata when she was 28, which, of course, was something that was invented by Francis of Assisi.
[00:18:48] Katie Dooley: I like that you put invented. And just if you haven't heard the term, the stigmata are the holes in your hands.
[00:18:53] Preston Meyer: Or head or feet.
[00:18:54] Katie Dooley: Oh, interesting.
[00:18:55] Preston Meyer: Anything that any hole in your body that would bleed in a place where Jesus would have been bleeding when he was hanging from the cross, counts as a stigmata.
[00:19:04] Katie Dooley: Pope Pius, the one before John Paul, had stigmata too. Which he was never let a doctor test.
[00:19:10] Preston Meyer: I wonder why. Uh, yeah. So good old Catherine. She wasn't from Rome, but that's where she died. And the Pope insisted on keeping her body there. It just made him happy.
[00:19:26] Katie Dooley: Daddy!
[00:19:27] Preston Meyer: Right. This. I'm suspicious, but I don't want to make accusations, you know?
[00:19:33] Katie Dooley: I don't know what you're talking about, Preston.
[00:19:38] Preston Meyer: Uh, anyway, her community back in Siena thought it would be really great to bring her body back home. And they were having a hard time convincing anyone to let them do that. So they prayed to Katherine. Because Catholics do pray to saints, and they needed the help to get it done. They got this idea that since we can't smuggle her whole body out, that's too hard. Let's cut off her head, drop it in somebody's lunch bag and carry that past the guards. Then it almost didn't work. The guards are like, hey, what you got in the bag? They opened it up. No head, just a pile of rose petals.
[00:20:20] Katie Dooley: You know what? I couldn't get into Canadian Tire with a bag today. They made me take it back to my car.
[00:20:25] Preston Meyer: Rude.
[00:20:26] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We should have turned into rose petals then.
[00:20:34] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's so having this head turn into rose petals. Scientifically. Nonsense. Theologically. Why?
[00:20:46] Katie Dooley: It's a miracle, Preston.
[00:20:47] Preston Meyer: I guess so. Just, you gotta have faith building miracles, I guess.
[00:20:52] Katie Dooley: Absolutely.
[00:20:52] Preston Meyer: Most of her body is still in Rome, but since her head was carried off, a few other body parts have also wandered off around the world.
[00:21:01] Katie Dooley: Like on their own accord. Or more smugglers?
[00:21:03] Preston Meyer: Have been taken...
[00:21:05] Katie Dooley: Okay.
[00:21:06] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:21:09] Katie Dooley: Nice.
[00:21:09] Preston Meyer: Not wandering off on their own. That would be alarming.
[00:21:12] Katie Dooley: I mean, is any of this not alarming?
[00:21:16] Preston Meyer: Well, okay, so let's imagine this: her... She's got a leg off somewhere. I can't remember where off the top of my head right now. And I didn't write it in the notes. But to know for sure that it's Catherine's leg, someone has to testify that this thing hopping off on its own is legitimate. If you have just a leg, show up somewhere, that's a lot harder to confirm a source.
[00:21:41] Katie Dooley: Fair. I stole it.
[00:21:45] Preston Meyer: And we're gonna see some cases of where stolen things complicate claims of authenticity.
[00:21:54] Katie Dooley: We're talking about John the Baptist already. Or more.
[00:21:57] Preston Meyer: More. But, I mean, that's it's not one relic that has this as part of its story. That's a lot of relics are stolen goods.
[00:22:06] Katie Dooley: I mean, museums are filled with stolen goods, so...
[00:22:09] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:22:11] Katie Dooley: Now on to I'm so sorry. This this episode is literally me gagging.
[00:22:17] Preston Meyer: We are talking about a lot of gross body parts.
[00:22:19] Katie Dooley: I feel like we should have put a trigger warning in the beginning. Maybe we'll record a trigger warning at the end to put on the beginning.
[00:22:25] Preston Meyer: That's not a bad idea.
[00:22:26] Katie Dooley: Because even though I'm, like, crawling out of my skin, I don't like gory things. So for our listeners, I don't like gory things. All right, so with that being said, let's talk about the blood of Saint Januarius.
[00:22:38] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Good old Gennaro, as he's known in Italy. There's a fancy bottle shaped kind of like a baby's rattle. All of the containers that hold these relics are, well, not all of them, the vast majority of the containers that hold these relics are weird shapes and really often have a handle underneath them in, like, a baby's rattle kind of situation.
[00:23:03] Katie Dooley: Like a maraca
[00:23:04] Preston Meyer: So you can hold them up so people can see them. Yeah, yeah. So this is why there's a fancy word for it. And I didn't use it because I wanted to keep the language simple. But I should say the word. It's a reliquary.
[00:23:19] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow. Yeah.
[00:23:20] Preston Meyer: And reliquaries come in a lot of fancy shapes.
[00:23:23] Katie Dooley: Oh, I think that's a good word. I'm surprised words guy over here didn't put it in the notes, reliquary.
[00:23:28] Preston Meyer: It just thing holds relic - reliquary. So this fancy bottle that holds a couple of vials is said to hold a bunch of the dried up blood of Saint Gennaro, who died in the 14th century CE. The blood is said to have been taken by a slave named Eusebia right after Gennaro died, and he kept it until he could take it to Naples with the remains of the martyr, and it was kept in Naples in Italy for a good long time, until today. It liquefies a couple of times every year. This is weird.
[00:24:10] Katie Dooley: Like is there, is there, like video or photo evidence?
[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: There's thousands of witnesses. Okay. Like it's a thing that happens so consistently but not perfectly consistently. There's there's a big ritual celebration, and they present the blood so everyone can see it. And so one of them is on San Gennaro's feast day, September 19th, September 19th, and then again on December 16th, which is the day of the Archdiocese of Naples, with Saint Gennaro as their patron saint. And it almost always liquefies on both of these dates. Sometimes it will liquefy on other days as well. Sometimes it fails to liquefy on these dates. And those are notable exceptions. Like somebody has got a list of dates where it has failed to liquefy.
[00:25:03] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:25:04] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's it's really weird because if it was blood, scientifically, all the experiments that we've ever run say, once you liquefy dried blood, it will never dry up again. So we've got ourselves a some miracle or it's not blood.
[00:25:23] Katie Dooley: Well, you have more notes on this than I'm intrigued.
[00:25:26] Preston Meyer: So there are times where it takes longer to liquefy than other times there's no set sure amount of time, and it doesn't correlate with the temperature of the room or anything like that. It's really weird. What's really interesting is that the times when it fails to liquefy it coincides with occasions that might preoccupy the local priests, which is really easy to say, oh, somebody's being sneaky and getting in there and, and doing something so that it will liquefy beforehand. But it is strictly forbidden and strictly guarded that you don't get to open the container that the two tiny vials are in. Nobody has access to these things. It's really weird. And weirder that sometimes they'll liquefy off schedule. I mean, all all of it is really weird.
[00:26:22] Katie Dooley: See, I think it's more weirder that it liquefies on a schedule, right? Because if it's an unstable substance, then to be to not have a schedule makes sense. But to.
[00:26:31] Preston Meyer: All of it's weird.
[00:26:32] Katie Dooley: I assume they pick the days based off of the blood liquefaction, not the blood, knowing it's the saint's day while.
[00:26:38] Preston Meyer: Well, blood doesn't know things.
[00:26:40] Katie Dooley: That's what I mean.
[00:26:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's. It's really weird.
[00:26:47] Katie Dooley: Blood doesn't know things. Thank you. Preston.
[00:26:50] Preston Meyer: So they they've run a special kind of test. Spectroscopy is a thing that they can do where they just shine light through it and measure how the light reflects, refracts through it. It's a thing we did when I was in high school. So I've got an idea of how it's kind of a thing that can be reliable in some things. It's how we know what elements are in the sun and things like that. And it matches hemoglobin according to the people who are doing the tests, but it doesn't behave like hemoglobin. Honestly, the scientific method is really frustrating for this whole thing because it doesn't behave perfectly predictably. Really annoying.
[00:27:34] Katie Dooley: And they can't test it in a way that they would want to test it.
[00:27:37] Preston Meyer: Right, you can't open it up and say, oh yeah, it's blood, because you would be destroying the relic to do that. Which, when a thing has religious significance, means you're going to have a bad day in that argument. So some scientists have suggested that the vials contain hydrated iron oxide, which is a component in blood, more or less. Um, it would have been available centuries ago. It looks like blood. It rusts in the right color.
[00:28:05] Katie Dooley: Iron... Iron oxide will come up later for the Shroud of Turin as well.
[00:28:08] Preston Meyer: Right? Sure. So again, if it was just iron oxide, hydrated, it would usually behave in a reliable, predictable way. Weird that this blood doesn't. The problem I have with it is that theologically, why would this be a thing that God would bother messing with? I don't get it. That's that doesn't jive with my usefulness for God in the universe, I guess.
[00:28:39] Katie Dooley: I mean, yeah, there's a lot of other things he could be doing, right?
[00:28:43] Preston Meyer: Another weird thing is that this phenomenon is fully unique to the area surrounding Naples. There are about 20 other saints whose preserved blood occasionally liquefies. And even though John the Baptist is on this list, it's at a shrine in the Naples area. This thing of liquefying blood is specific to one little part of Italy.
[00:29:11] Katie Dooley: Interesting.
[00:29:12] Preston Meyer: Nowhere else in the world does this is happening. Yeah, it's very weird.
[00:29:18] Katie Dooley: I kind of like this one because it's like there's no answer to it.
[00:29:21] Preston Meyer: I mean, there's there is. We just don't have.
[00:29:23] Katie Dooley: We don't have access to fair. Whereas like, we know. Right? There's enough records that we know Catherine's head was probably actually stolen and taken somewhere. John the Baptist, a little more complicated. Don't know that one. And then a piece of the cross. You know, it's...
[00:29:37] Preston Meyer: Probably fraud.
[00:29:38] Katie Dooley: Probably frauds for the most part.
[00:29:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah.
[00:29:41] Katie Dooley: For as many pieces of the cross. And we'll get to same with John the Baptist for as many pieces of the cross are sure. Maybe one is real, but we'll never know, right? And, uh, what was the other one? Oh, the magi we know is not true. Even a little bit.
[00:29:53] Preston Meyer: Well, I mean, we we can't say with 100% certainty that there's no truth to it, but with an awful lot of heavy confidence. Yes. So my suspicion with this thing about the liquefying blood being specifically focused in Naples, out of the whole world, and all the cool relics that we find, I'm very confident that there's one weird little priestly magic tradition.
[00:30:19] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say some sort of roadside attraction from.
[00:30:24] Preston Meyer: Some dude.
[00:30:25] Katie Dooley: Figured it out.
[00:30:26] Preston Meyer: Started it... Probably taught it to a couple other dudes and said, hey, this is a thing that we're going to do because this is going to get people's attention forever. And it worked. That's my suspicion. That's the way it feels to me.
[00:30:41] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Another, I guess, first degree.
[00:30:48] Preston Meyer: This one's directly connected.
[00:30:50] Katie Dooley: To JC.
[00:30:50] Preston Meyer: A big deal.
[00:30:51] Katie Dooley: So this is the Shroud of Turin, which is believed to be Jesus's burial shroud. It is 14ft. It is 14 foot length of linen, depicting the image of a man in negative. And the man has crucifixion and scourging wounds, which we'll get to. But what? Say it.
[00:31:16] Preston Meyer: Before we even talk. About what the Shroud of Turin like, what the artifact is, the story of how it would have come to be the way it is feels a little bit weird.
[00:31:27] Katie Dooley: Well, you should dive into that. The theological Christian.
[00:31:31] Preston Meyer: So for the Shroud of Turin to be real and look the way it does. Spoiler warning, I don't think it's legit.
[00:31:41] Katie Dooley: No, we'll talk about that. Yeah.
[00:31:43] Preston Meyer: For it to be real and have the appearance it has, it would have to be like the body of Jesus When his spirit came to reoccupy the dead body again, that he would have been almost on fire.
[00:32:01] Katie Dooley: Mhm. I see what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:32:04] Preston Meyer: Which feels a little weird.
[00:32:05] Katie Dooley: Definitely. If you're listening to this and you're probably on your phone, pull this one up. It's really interesting. Um, so the first appearance of the Shroud of Turin was in 1354, and no one from, like, religious higher ups have taken an official position on it. Pope Francis says it is an icon of a man scourged and crucified. That's all he'll say on it.
[00:32:30] Preston Meyer: No responsibility statement.
[00:32:33] Katie Dooley: Yes, it has been carbon dated, which puts it squarely in the Middle Ages. And any attempts to challenge that have been disproved using the scientific method. Of course, even though it is, it is a forgery. Um, many people dispute that and we still don't know how the person made it. Um, and there's been tons of research on the on how this image got onto this fabric with no definitive answers. It is actually one of the most heavily studied artifacts of all time.
[00:33:10] Preston Meyer: The great thing about that is the idea that, yeah, everyone. Well, not everyone. An awful lot of people think it's important, but not so important that we can't run tests on it.
[00:33:20] Katie Dooley: Right? So they have tested this browning color that is supposed to be blood, and there's no definitive proof that it's blood. And so these blood patterns, air quotes have actually been tested. They actually had human volunteers and mannequins. And so what they did was they put in essentially blood drips that the mannequin had the scourging blood drips. And then these people had crucifixion blood drips, and they laid them out and see how your blood would flow had you these injuries. And it's not this pattern at all. It's like, honestly, the shroud is like very neat for someone who has just lost all their blood.
[00:33:57] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:33:59] Katie Dooley: It's like, I feel like it looks like a little paper cuts. It's like. Mhm. It would be soaked in blood.
[00:34:04] Preston Meyer: Um. Uh. I love that they did this experiment right.
[00:34:09] Katie Dooley: I'm like, I don't know if I'd volunteer for that. But we also know that my stomach is queasy just talking about it.
[00:34:14] Preston Meyer: And even just what we see from the filming of The Passion of the Christ, faithful people are willing to go to great lengths to know stuff.
[00:34:22] Katie Dooley: Oh, when that movie came out. And even around Easter. Well, we don't have cable now, so it's not so bad. But like, I would turn the TV off when the trailer came on, so I've never even seen the trailer for it. I imagine the trailer is not bad because it's very like public viewing, but even then I would turn it off and then I would like avoid television around Easter.
[00:34:41] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:34:42] Katie Dooley: Because it's just like I've put this on the Discord. This is like this makes my skin crawl.
[00:34:48] Preston Meyer: I mean, watching somebody be tortured isn't a thing that should bring you comfort.
[00:34:51] Katie Dooley: No, that's true. But, like, you know, I've watched some gory movies. Anyway, I digress. Only the Pope can declare a public viewing of the shroud. And it doesn't happen very often, even if it is only 700 years old, it is still very delicate. The next showing everyone is in 2025 and this was declared by Pope John Paul. So this is declared a long time ago because Francis and we had Francis and Benedict too. Um, it happens in Turin, Italy, the Shroud of Turin. The shroud has its own website, the shroud.com, where you can, like, keep tabs on this. So if you have any moderate interest.
[00:35:36] Preston Meyer: Um, sign up now.
[00:35:37] Katie Dooley: In seeing this puppy, stay on it because it will be jam-packed with pilgrims to, um, to go see it. So if you want to see it for a religious reason, stay on it. If you want to see it for interest sake, there'll be tons of pilgrims. I'm not saying don't see it. Just prepare yourself.
[00:35:58] Preston Meyer: And go in knowing that it's definitely a fraud.
[00:36:05] Katie Dooley: Oh, boy. Yeah. There's like, yeah, there's literally nothing that makes sense. But it is cool that we don't know how it was made.
[00:36:17] Preston Meyer: I was just seeing what's next. All right. Next on our list we have the heads of Saint John the Baptist.
[00:36:25] Katie Dooley: That's right.
[00:36:26] Preston Meyer: We got, like, a Zaphod Beeblebrox situation. There's more than one head.
[00:36:31] Katie Dooley: I know, I was telling Bryant. He's like, was was Saint John a hydra?
[00:36:36] Preston Meyer: Cut one off. Two more take its place. Well, there's... If you trust the church, there's some evidence that he was. Even though the biblical account says, nah, this bro was dead when they cut off his head the first time.
[00:36:52] Katie Dooley: I was like, the church says he's a hydra. What did I miss?
[00:36:55] Preston Meyer: The church says he's got three heads. We got that.
[00:36:58] Katie Dooley: And we got... I found records of at least six, so.
[00:37:01] Preston Meyer: Oh dang, that's past what I found, so that's great. I mean.
[00:37:06] Katie Dooley: Unless some of these have been moved from one to another. But I found one, two, three, four, five, at least five.
[00:37:13] Preston Meyer: That's fantastic.
[00:37:14] Katie Dooley: Yeah, he's got a ton of heads. So Saint John the Baptist was beheaded by Herod Antipas sometime before the crucifixion of Jesus. And he was supposedly buried somewhere in Palestine. Today, his tomb is in Nabi Yahya mosque, Nabi Yahya mosque and Mosque of the Prophet John is what that translates to, in Northwest Palestine. The problem is, Preston, is that several places claim to have his head simultaneously.
[00:37:47] Preston Meyer: So I'm on board with the idea that somebody was happy to have his head. The story says that that's the case that we have in the New Testament. But at what point was this head collected from somebody who had no faith in Jesus or John the Baptist, and started being trafficked by faithful Christians? That's a mystery still.
[00:38:12] Katie Dooley: I am also upset for whoever the other 4 to 5 heads are.
[00:38:17] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:38:18] Katie Dooley: So this is a great one because we know at least five of them are lying. Maybe all six. So yeah. So there is a head at Amiens Cathedral in France. The Knights Templar had possession of the head in France during the Inquisition. At least that's what it said.
[00:38:36] Preston Meyer: So that head was there anyway? Yes.
[00:38:39] Katie Dooley: Someone's head was there. And they're saying it's John the Baptist. The eastern. Okay. Okay, so I guess this technically isn't the head.. Eastern? The Eastern Orthodox Church in Jerusalem is supposed to have a piece of his skull.
[00:38:52] Preston Meyer: Okay.
[00:38:52] Katie Dooley: Which is weird when there's full heads on display
[00:38:57] Preston Meyer: Right? Some of them even have their skin on without evidence of part of a skull being taken.
[00:39:01] Katie Dooley: Right, that's what I mean. So technically not a full head. Don't at me. But a piece of a head. The Basilica of San Silvestro in Rome, or this is Saint Sylvester. It was brought to Rome by Greek monks in this version. And some researchers suggest that it's the head of a local martyr who happens to be named John.
[00:39:27] Preston Meyer: But the head is fully visible, which I thought was worth noting. That a lot of them aren't. They're wrapped up. This one, we can see the head. We can see the face. And obviously, because it's hella old, it's hella gross.
[00:39:43] Katie Dooley: Hella gross. And like, it doesn't look like John anymore, for sure. Not as we used to know.
[00:39:48] Preston Meyer: Not in his prime, anyway.
[00:39:50] Katie Dooley: We're terrible people. Uh, there's one in the Residenz Museum in Munich. This one is wrapped in cloth and heavily bedazzled.
[00:39:59] Preston Meyer: Mhmm It's fancy.
[00:40:02] Katie Dooley: And then the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus has the head of John the Baptist. This one is also wrapped in cloth. And not that this verifies anything, but Pope John Paul did visit the mosque on a trip to Syria in 2001. So not, again, that doesn't give it any validity there's also one in Rome where the Pope lives, but worthwhile enough for the Pope to make the trip. So there is also a rumor that the head might be held at a Romanian monastic community called Skete Prodromos at the Great Lavra monastery. So that's one, two, three, four, five and a skull chunk, five heads in a skull chunk.
[00:40:52] Preston Meyer: That can't all be legit, because I feel like somebody would have told us if John was a hydra.
[00:40:59] Katie Dooley: I really feel like that would have been heavily featured in the Bible, if only because people didn't have last names, So just to clarify who someone is, John of the Five Heads, then you'd know exactly who.
[00:41:14] Preston Meyer: Right? You're describing somebody by their profession, handy in a lot of situations.
[00:41:18] Katie Dooley: Son of. Son of. Son of, wordy. But.
[00:41:20] Preston Meyer: Right? But if a dude has a major defining personal feature that gets called out.
[00:41:27] Katie Dooley: Right? Oh, dear. Like five heads. Oh, boy, oh, boy.
[00:41:35] Preston Meyer: Oh, what was his name? Hiram McDaniels.
[00:41:38] Katie Dooley: Hiram the dragon with the five heads.
[00:41:40] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah. Hiram McDaniels. Not a biblical figure. Unless you want to.
[00:41:45] Katie Dooley: Hiram is a biblical name, though.
[00:41:47] Preston Meyer: It is. It sure is. McDaniels, not a very biblical surname, though.
[00:41:51] Katie Dooley: No. Hiram, son of John the Baptist.
[00:41:59] Preston Meyer: For those of you who know Nightvale, you know Hiram McDaniels.
[00:42:02] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Welcome to Night Vale is a fabulous podcast. Um, yeah.
[00:42:07] Preston Meyer: They don't need our support.
[00:42:08] Katie Dooley: They don't need our support, but we need their support.
[00:42:11] Preston Meyer: That'd be great. Next on our list, and Saint Bernard's a happy guy. Every time we bring it up, mother Mary's milk.
[00:42:22] Katie Dooley: Yum.
[00:42:24] Preston Meyer: That's a very popular relic during the Middle Ages and still has a little popularity today. Kind of weird. There is a milk grotto in Bethlehem where Mary is said to have breastfed Jesus. So far, makes sense story wise. Somehow her milk made it onto the walls? Now the story got weird. What's going on?
[00:42:45] Katie Dooley: I mean, neither of us are breastfeeding mothers, so I don't know how far breast milk can shoot.
[00:42:52] Preston Meyer: I mean, if you're committed, you can fire it. That's a thing that can happen.
[00:42:56] Katie Dooley: Also. I just don't know why you would waste it either.
[00:42:58] Preston Meyer: Right? But especially when we have every reason to believe they were poor.
[00:43:02] Katie Dooley: If you're a mom and want to let us know why you would squirt or waste your breast milk, please let me know in our Discord.
[00:43:10] Preston Meyer: Well, anyway, the story goes, some made it onto the wall, which is where they scraped it from to put it into vials. When? Who? What?
[00:43:21] Katie Dooley: Creepy. And again, Jesus isn't any. Well, I guess they were the Magi coming, but like he Jesus isn't anyone yet. Really,
[00:43:30] Preston Meyer: Right,
[00:43:31] Katie Dooley: You know? So it is extra weird.
[00:43:32] Preston Meyer: Well, and most interpretations of the story have the Magi coming a long time after the birth. Yeah, like when they weren't living in Bethlehem anymore. Of course there's some versions of this, some interpretations of the story have them staying in Bethlehem instead of being in Nazareth to avoid the killing of children. But also the story says that they went down to Egypt for this escape. We got weird bits of story that make this particular relic really unlikely to be authentic.
[00:44:07] Katie Dooley: Keep going, Preston.
[00:44:08] Preston Meyer: So anyway, they scraped the dried residue of milk into vials. Um, her milk had turned the rocks of the grotto white, which makes it seem like that was an awful lot of milk.
[00:44:23] Katie Dooley: Or the entire one little squirty squirt turned the entire grotto into milk rocks.
[00:44:30] Preston Meyer: Now, are we saying.
[00:44:31] Katie Dooley: It's just chalk...
[00:44:33] Preston Meyer: So either this is a massive sexual event or, t's absolute nonsense..
[00:44:45] Katie Dooley: Or it's a massive miracle that was not covered in any of the books of the Bible.
[00:44:49] Preston Meyer: Right. That's the alternative.
[00:44:52] Katie Dooley: Here's the atheist being like, have some suspended disbelief here. And you're like, um, ew no.
[00:44:59] Preston Meyer: As somebody who believes this is a thing that I'm just I'm not on this wagon. Uh, anyway, the the residue that was collected from the walls that were turned white with the mass quantities of milk or magic or whatever. Uh, this residue is said to have healing powers, which is a thing that a lot of people testify to over the centuries.
[00:45:29] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So new mothers or women who are trying to conceive will visit the milk grotto, and they'll mix the milk walls (chalk) with their food, which is supposed to increase chances of pregnancy if you are in those categories and are curious, you can't actually order this residue online. You have to go to the grotto itself. But you can you can go today and get...
[00:45:58] Preston Meyer: Scrape a little bit off for yourself.
[00:45:58] Katie Dooley: A little bit and put it in your milkshake and get pregnant.
[00:46:02] Preston Meyer: Uh, if only pregnancy worked that way. So 90 churches claim to have or have claimed to have vials of Mary's milk, either a liquid or powdered form. That's right. Not just powder from the walls, but liquid. You know, mixing chalk with water will give you something that looks a lot like skim milk.
[00:46:22] Katie Dooley: Powdered milk is a thing. Preston.
[00:46:24] Preston Meyer: It is.
[00:46:25] Katie Dooley: You can rehydrate milk.
[00:46:26] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it's not as good, but. I mean, you're. One would say you shouldn't drink it, but that is the goal for these people.
[00:46:33] Katie Dooley: For this 2000 year old milk. Yeah. Oh, I didn't think this one would make me gag. Uh, no. Um.
[00:46:42] Preston Meyer: Here we are.
[00:46:42] Katie Dooley: I licked the pop filter doing that to you. Oh, Yeah. You shouldn't drink it. But who am I?
[00:46:50] Preston Meyer: So John Calvin again really didn't like these relics.
[00:46:55] Katie Dooley: He's so sassy. I love this one so much.
[00:46:58] Preston Meyer: He says even if she had been a cow her whole life, she could not have produced such a quantity of milk. Now 90 bottles. Does that seems actually pretty achievable, doesn't it?
[00:47:11] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm not a mother and have no intention to be, but if you pumped a couple bottles a day, 180 days is only half a year. Yeah, that seems reasonable, right? Some people breastfeed for far too long.
[00:47:27] Preston Meyer: Right? And we're not talking full bottles. We're. What we're looking at here is little vials in these churches.
[00:47:33] Katie Dooley: And just to be clear, I mean, like when you're breastfeeding to like, ten years old, that's too long.
[00:47:39] Preston Meyer: 100%. Agreed.
[00:47:41] Katie Dooley: I'm not here to be, like, you breastfed for, like, a year and a half. Ew. I mean, like when they can talk back to you and just, like, walk up to you and latch on. That's too long.
[00:47:51] Preston Meyer: I was definitely having what counts as sexual thoughts about boobs long before I was ten years old. So yeah, that bar needs to not be at ten.
[00:48:00] Katie Dooley: Yeah. If your kid can say, hey, mom, can I have a drink? That's too old. Anyway. Uh, here you go, Preston. The one you've been waiting for.
[00:48:13] Preston Meyer: Uh, we warned you we were going to talk about foreskins again. And, man, have we got a lot to say about Jesus' turtleneck. Oh, I don't know why anyone would have this. It's it... I don't get it.
[00:48:30] Katie Dooley: Then I commented in the notes. I don't know why anyone would have any of these, but I see your point, Preston.
[00:48:36] Preston Meyer: Of all of the things like having the milk doesn't actually make sense. Claiming that this is the grotto that she breastfed in and turned the walls white with her milk. That feels crazy, but this is a whole 'nother level of crazy. The Holy Prepuce is the fancy name.
[00:49:00] Katie Dooley: For a foreskin.
[00:49:01] Preston Meyer: For Jesus.
[00:49:03] Katie Dooley: Calamari ring.
[00:49:06] Preston Meyer: And there's... I can't get behind any explanation on why this is a thing that anyone would possess, much less with certainty that it belonged to Jesus. But there is an old...
[00:49:21] Katie Dooley: Someone just owns a random foreskin! How many foreskins are out there in the world?
[00:49:25] Preston Meyer: Huh? About as many as there are humans.
[00:49:28] Katie Dooley: No, I mean of Jesus's foreskin.
[00:49:30] Preston Meyer: Uh, I don't know the number.
[00:49:32] Katie Dooley: I'm gonna Google that while you talk.
[00:49:34] Preston Meyer: It's terrible.
[00:49:36] Katie Dooley: I actually, actually, I was like, I was gonna Google it. And then I realized, I don't want to type How many Jesus foreskins are there in my phone?
[00:49:45] Preston Meyer: Uh, France has at least 11, so we've there's a lot.
[00:49:51] Katie Dooley: Okay. I don't need to Google that. I just need to know if there's more than one.
[00:49:54] Preston Meyer: So going back to the Saint John Hydra thing. Jesus, apparently, based on the existing evidence of the Catholic tradition, uh, Jesus just really didn't want to be circumcised, even though the story is that he's the one who started all of this way back in the days of Abraham. Because if it keeps growing back and he's got he has the power.
[00:50:21] Katie Dooley: I'm clenching and I don't even have a penis.
[00:50:24] Preston Meyer: Anyway, so as much as I can't think of any reason why anyone would both possess it and genuinely believe that it's the genuine relic, there is an old Arabic infancy gospel that says when the time of his circumcision came on the eighth day, when the law commanded the child should be circumcised, they circumcised him in a cave. That's a weird choice of location, but fine, let's move on.
[00:50:50] Katie Dooley: Unhygienic.
[00:50:50] Preston Meyer: Okay. And the old Hebrew woman took the foreskin and kept it in an alabaster box with old spikenard oil. Okay. Weird thing to do, but the biblical story does say that people recognize Jesus as being special from birth, so...
[00:51:07] Katie Dooley: Okay, we'll keep suspending disbelief.
[00:51:09] Preston Meyer: That's that's the story, okay. Uh, so this lady, the text goes on to say she had a son who was a druggist. That's that's the word I found in the version of the text I was using.
[00:51:23] Katie Dooley: That seems very modern.
[00:51:25] Preston Meyer: It does. Pharmacists feels a little too modern, though, so I let it stick with the word druggist. It's a dude who makes drugs.
[00:51:35] Katie Dooley: I know, but I feel like herbalist or something would have been historically accurate.
[00:51:39] Preston Meyer: Herbalist is fair. So she had a son who was a herbalist. She told him, do not sell this alabaster box of spikenard ointment even when you are offered 300 denarii for it. Now, this is the same alabaster box that the sinner Mary obtained and poured its ointment on the head and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, and wiped it with her hair.
[00:52:01] Katie Dooley: Like Mary Magdalene?
[00:52:03] Preston Meyer: A lot of people say that that was Mary Magdalene. The Bible does not say that it's Mary Magdalene. Okay. It's Mary the sinner. Okay. There's Miriam was a very common name in Israel at the time. And we've we've talked about this before. There was one pope who said, there's too many people in the Bible. If they have the same name, they're the same person now, which is obviously a problem.
[00:52:27] Katie Dooley: Considering Mary's mom and Mary Magdalene are two very different people.
[00:52:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. He took the list of several Marys down to 2 or 3, something like that. It was ridiculous because obviously Mary Magdalene is not Mary, Jesus's mother, but we got what we got. So this story tells us how the foreskin was preserved. Now that last verse, though, this is the same alabaster box that the Sister Mary obtained. I feel really weird about this. Like the coincidence feels unnecessary for this, for that to be part of the story. But also, if I end up buying a box that's got some spikenard oil in it, because that's what I'm after and I see some dude's foreskin that's probably going to hit the trash. At least the foreskin. Maybe the whole box, depending how I'm feeling that day.
[00:53:31] Katie Dooley: Did... And would Jesus have known it was his foreskin?
[00:53:34] Preston Meyer: Because there's.
[00:53:35] Katie Dooley: This is a this is the context that we have. 'Cause if I was like, "hey, Preston, I'm gonna pour this oil on your hands and feet. Don't mind that there's a foreskin in it."
[00:53:45] Preston Meyer: Right?
[00:53:46] Katie Dooley: Would you be like, "ooh, can we get another? Can we get another container?" Or. But. And then. Okay. And then what if I was like, hey.
[00:53:52] Preston Meyer: Mary would be like, oh. And it's don't worry about it's yours.
[00:53:55] Katie Dooley: I was gonna say and then... Don't worry. Even if it was, if it was yours, would you be like, okay, go ahead. Or would you be like, ew no, that's like 30 years old, right?
[00:54:05] Preston Meyer: Okay, this thing's got to be gangrenous. Maybe not gangrenous. That I think that's more complicated. It would. Well, it would be preserved in the oil.
[00:54:13] Katie Dooley: I mean, I'm not Google. I'm not googling it.
[00:54:16] Preston Meyer: A loose foreskin in the oil, to me makes the oil not usable in a human application.
[00:54:22] Katie Dooley: Okay. And then it says she wiped her hair with it or wiped it with her hair, wiped the foreskin,
[00:54:27] Preston Meyer: Wiped His feet.
[00:54:29] Katie Dooley: With her hair.
[00:54:29] Preston Meyer: With her hair. Okay. Yeah.
[00:54:31] Katie Dooley: Okay. Yeah. Still gross. Because there was a foreskin in it. If it was just oily hair on feet, if it was just oily hair on feet. Still not my thing, but not so bad. But foreskin oil makes it worse.
[00:54:47] Preston Meyer: So what we what we get from this story in the Arabic infancy gospel is somebody decided to preserve the foreskin, told son, don't sell it, not even for 300 denarii. And then he sold it anyway. Meaning that we've got a problem with the record of the foreskin.
[00:55:10] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Or maybe this Hebrew woman. This was like her thing. Kind of like a serial killer.
[00:55:20] Preston Meyer: Sure.
[00:55:20] Katie Dooley: And maybe all they...
[00:55:22] Preston Meyer: Put it on a necklace though?
[00:55:23] Katie Dooley: I don't know, maybe all her son sold was foreskin oil.
[00:55:26] Preston Meyer: I don't know. But you remember Saint Catherine also received the gift of the foreskin wedding ring from the special personal revelation of Jesus' appearance.
[00:55:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah, but Jesus gave that to her. That's different. That's mystical.
[00:55:43] Preston Meyer: Right? But I forgot to add that to the list of all the foreskins that we're going to cover now.
[00:55:48] Katie Dooley: I'm dying.
[00:55:51] Preston Meyer: So in addition to that, several groups have simultaneously claimed to have the Savior's turtleneck.
[00:55:59] Calamari ring. I like calamari ring.
[00:56:01] Katie Dooley: Sure, the cheese toque.
[00:56:08] Katie Dooley: I did like cheese toque. Oh, boy.
[00:56:12] Preston Meyer: So anyway, one of them, the one that's considered most highly, most valued among all of them, was a gift from Charlemagne to Pope Leo the Third, after he was made emperor in 800 CE. On Christmas, old Charles said that it was given to him by an angel. So basically it's I don't have to explain where I got this foreskin. I got it from an angel. The angel gave it to him when he was visiting the place where Jesus is thought to have been buried, not the cave where he was thought to have been circumcised, according to the old Arabic tradition. It's just a weird place to receive this gift, but whatever. That's the... That's the story. This was allegedly confirmed when Bridget of Sweden received a vision confirming that the foreskin was in Rome, which, of course, this miracle got her sainted.
[00:57:08] Katie Dooley: Wow.
[00:57:10] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Uh, weirdly enough, the the foreskin was stolen when Rome was sacked in 1527. The German who stole it was allegedly caught a little bit north of Rome, in the village of Calcata. Not Kolkata, not Calcutta, but Calcata, in Rome or in Italy, where the foreskin remained until 1983, when it was again reported stolen.
[00:57:39] Katie Dooley: 1983. That's very recent. Yeah. You think you'd look after your foreskins better.
[00:57:45] Preston Meyer: Right? So for a little over 400 years after being in Rome for a long time, it just chilled out in this smaller village for all kinds of pilgrimages. So went missing in 1983. That's a problem. That's... Here's where it gets a little bit twisty, though. Is the container, the reliquary that was supposed to house this foreskin was also counted among Vatican assets in 1905. So did somebody just. Well, not somebod, everybody, just failed to notice for 80 years that it wasn't in Calcata anymore? I don't know.
[00:58:30] Katie Dooley: Calcata was just like taking in the money from the pilgrims and just, like, not saying anything.
[00:58:34] Preston Meyer: I don't know. Uh, or maybe the Calcata skin ring was a fraud from the start.
[00:58:41] Katie Dooley: No! None of these are frauds, Preston. How dare you?
[00:58:47] Preston Meyer: Right. But the weird thing is that it's been reported stolen and everything, and nobody's gone back to this list and said, oh, and gone through all the boxes of things and actually grabbed the purported foreskin reliquary from 120 years ago. Uh, decisions in Rome, outside my power. I think I'd be more helpful if I was over there.
[00:59:19] Katie Dooley: Well, we can do that. But first you have to convert.
[00:59:22] Preston Meyer: Which I just have no interest in doing.
[00:59:24] Katie Dooley: And then you gotta go to seminary.
[00:59:25] Preston Meyer: I mean, I've done that, but not a Catholic seminary. So that's that.
[00:59:29] Katie Dooley: You gotta divorce your wife.
[00:59:31] Preston Meyer: Yeah. The Catholic tradition just isn't for me.
[00:59:35] Katie Dooley: Because Amanda's so cute.
[00:59:37] Preston Meyer: She's pretty cute.
[00:59:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah.
[00:59:39] Preston Meyer: All right. Well, anyway, uh, there are several other claimants. There's one in Spain. There's one in Belgium, in Antwerp, there's one in Germany. Antwerp's holy cheese toque was a gift from King Baldwin of Jerusalem in 1100 CE. And they built a cathedral specifically to house this relic. But it was also stolen in 1566. So, like reasonably shortly after, the one was stolen from Rome and then found in Calcata.
[01:00:10] Katie Dooley: So there was definitely, like a foreskin thief. Yeah.
[01:00:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah, for sure.
[01:00:16] Katie Dooley: For sure. Foreskin.
[01:00:21] Preston Meyer: Uh. It's a weird place and time anyway, but like I mentioned before, France has at least 11 distinct claimants to the title of the Divine Turtleneck. There's an abbey in Charroux that claims Charlemagne gave them the foreskin that he got from the angel. So this directly conflicts with the details we have about the one from Rome and Calcata. They offered to let Pope Innocent the Third inspect its authenticity, but he didn't really want to admit to being an expert on the subject, so he just said, no. You guys say what you want. I'm not going to inspect it. Uh, it went missing at some point. Yeah, because, like we said, somebody going around stealing these things.
[01:01:08] Katie Dooley: That's so weird. I want to know who this person is.
[01:01:12] Preston Meyer: Uh, but it was found again, or maybe replaced, in 1856 when a worker allegedly found it hidden inside a wall. Why? Why are you putting chunks of someone's finger in the wall?
[01:01:27] Katie Dooley: When you put it that way.. When you put it that way.
[01:01:32] Preston Meyer: Um. Most of France's huge collection of dickskin was lost by the time of the French Revolution, though.
[01:01:38] Katie Dooley: So good. I don't I don't know how I feel about this. I feel like it's probably for the best to get rid of. We do not need this many foreskins, um, at all.
[01:01:48] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but. Interesting. So we've we've got like 15, at least separate ones that I've been able to research on. But since the theft of the most popular foreskin in 1983, the one from Calcata, claims of possessing the foreskin have been awfully quiet. There have been a few documentary quests to find the holy foreskin, which to me feels about as ridiculous as looking for the Holy Grail.
[01:02:15] Katie Dooley: I'm gonna. I'm gonna say it's actually more ridiculous than looking for the Holy Grail.
[01:02:20] Preston Meyer: That's fair.
[01:02:22] Katie Dooley: At least it's a cup.
[01:02:26] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:02:26] Katie Dooley: And not a chunk of skin!
[01:02:30] Preston Meyer: Well, see, looking for a part of the body of Christ, legitimate or not, feels roughly on par to a generic cup. That was definitely one of many at what just happens to be a dinner that Jesus participated in. Jesus drank from a lot of cups over the course of his lifetime. The one that was the first official Jesus, the host of the Passover that we recognize in biblical tradition, doesn't make the cup any more special. To me anyway, I know that thousands of people disagree, and that's okay. But yeah, we've got a serious issue with the foreskin and all of these claims, nobody's stepping up to say, oh, yeah, I got the foreskin because nobody wants to be in trouble and on the hook for the crime of the theft of the foreskin 40 years ago.
[01:03:30] Katie Dooley: Interesting. Yeah. So there's just some foreskin pervert out there.
[01:03:34] Preston Meyer: There. I mean, that's always been the case.
[01:03:36] Katie Dooley: Could you... Okay. Right. Could you imagine, like, hypothetically, of course, but, like, cleaning up your grandpa's stuff and just finding a foreskin? Like, what would you do? Like, clearly they stole it.
[01:03:51] Preston Meyer: Mhm.
[01:03:52] Katie Dooley: So do you admit to me like I found this in my grandpa's things? Or do you just be like. That's gross grandpa. You're a weird dude. And just chuck it.
[01:04:00] Preston Meyer: So the great thing about this is that realistically, realistically, if you're going to find the foreskin, you would find it in a reliquary. Nobody's just letting...
[01:04:13] Katie Dooley: I like I picture like an Altoids tin with a foreskin in it. Like, that's actually what I yeaah, that's what I'm actually picturing. Like, literally nothing. Even the oil, I'm like, oh, it's like an Altoids tin filled with oil.
[01:04:28] Preston Meyer: Well, I mean, the alabaster box story leads to that really nicely.
[01:04:33] Katie Dooley: It's entirely what I've been thinking the entire time.
[01:04:35] Preston Meyer: The reliquary that the the big, important, most popular foreskin was in was shaped pretty much like a cross. So you had a handle you could wave it around with, of course. And it was really conspicuous with jewels and gold or silver. And you would notice this in somebody's junk drawer or attic. This is a thing that would become really conspicuous. And you, you would take it to the church and go, hey, I got a thing. I think you take it to somebody to get it evaluated if you didn't know what it was.
[01:05:12] Katie Dooley: Oh, I looked up pictures, but I regret that I definitely did holy prepuce to like.
[01:05:20] Preston Meyer: So you didn't get any foreskin?
[01:05:22] Katie Dooley: Um, but I still regret googling that. So yeah, that was fun.
[01:05:29] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So generally, there's no good reason to believe that somebody saved Jesus foreskin, in my opinion, from the number of claimants. There's plenty of reasons to be suspicious of any.
[01:05:44] Katie Dooley: Just like the head of Saint John the Baptist. Just a different kind of head, right?
[01:05:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, thanks for that.
[01:05:52] Katie Dooley: You're welcome. If you can't laugh. If I can't laugh at this, I'll just cry.
[01:05:57] Preston Meyer: That's fair. Uh, anyway, there's there's loads of more relics in in all of the religious traditions of the world, we've only picked on a few that we thought would be interesting for you and have you participate in this conversation. In the Imperial Christian tradition, there's a tendency to use the Bible to defend the veneration of relics, which is really weird considering the practice doesn't have a strong biblical basis. We have the story of Jesus healing a woman who would only touch his clothes in a crowded street. We have a story of a dead body being thrown into the tomb of the prophet Elisha, and being revived as soon as he touched Elisha's bones. And there are a handful of more healing stories of things kind of in that calibre. And these stories are used to validate the trafficking of relics. But theologically speaking, there's no real good reason that God would withhold blessings from somebody for not visiting the mortal remains of a non-God. That's not the covenant any of us have made. It's just I get the appeal of being connected to history. But some of these are really freaking weird.
[01:07:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I mean, there's the history piece, and then, I mean, I hate to sort of dumb it down, but like this idea of celebrity or being close to greatness that all humans get sucked into, whether that's your love of a celebrity or a singer or Jesus. This idea of whatever, something bigger than ourselves or see our worship episode. Right?
[01:07:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's all complicated. The Bible very clearly lays out laws against worshiping sculptures and figurines, as well as anything that isn't the God of the covenant. But as we said before, even though veneration and worship are linguistically, intellectually, and morally indistinguishable, the Church of Rome still insists, hey, they're different. You can pray to the saints, you can go visit the relics and you can pray to them. And it's not worship because you don't recognize them as gods, but you treat them as gods and that makes it worship. Anyway, in 787 CE, the Second Council of Nicaea decided that veneration of relics is different than idolatry, because bones and bags of loose wood don't fit either don't fit their religiously motivated definition of inanimate. So we end up with a culture of prayer that looks an awful lot like hey saint, such and such. I spent a lot of time and money traveling to your severed arm and skull. Would you mind putting in a good word for me at the Heavenly Help desk? Which sounds like worship to me. But as long as people have been collecting relics, there have always been counterfeits. Always. Because there's money to be made. Hey, you're after this thing, I got it.
[01:09:04] Katie Dooley: Preston just opened up this trench coat. So weird. Guys.
[01:09:09] Preston Meyer: Uh, and it should be super obvious that counterfeits are a real problem just from the cases that we've cited already. It's it's a real problem. And John Calvin really pointed out how ridiculous it was, even though his exact wording really exaggerated how many counterfeits there are. It does point out that it is a real problem. Yeah.
[01:09:35] Katie Dooley: Oh, John Calvin, what a sassy man. Yeah. I mean, this was a fun, fun dive into relics. And, uh, in our research, we found some from other religions. Obviously, Judaism is not a relic religion. But there are some in Islam and Buddhism. So we'll probably do another one. Or if there's more Christian relics you want us to talk about, because there are tons. We can do that as well. You can message us on our social media, on our Discord. You can send us an email.
[01:10:12] Preston Meyer: Or you could buy a Holy Watermelon relic on our Spreadshop.
[01:10:16] Katie Dooley: Yeah, they're much cheaper and much more accessible than seeing the Shroud of Turin. It's like 20 bucks and it gets shipped straight to your door.
[01:10:27] Preston Meyer: It's great.
[01:10:28] Katie Dooley: Great.
[01:10:28] Preston Meyer: Super convenient. It's like Amazon, but not evil.
[01:10:33] Katie Dooley: Holy, even.
[01:10:35] Preston Meyer: Right?
[01:10:37] Katie Dooley: And if you are interesting, interested in providing ongoing support for the podcast, we have our Patreon. We do early releases of all our episodes. If you can't wait for the next one, and we are doing more bonus episodes this year, so be sure to check that out as well.
[01:10:54] Both Speakers: Peace be with you!
