'An Irreverent Curiosity' Book Review

"An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town" is about author David Farley's quest to find the Holy Foreskin, a relic once housed and venerated in the tiny medieval village of Calcata but that went missing in 1983. During the year that Farley lives in the all-but-forgotten hamlet north of Rome, he unravels the story behind the Holy Foreskin ("Santissimo Prepuzio" or "Carne Vera Sacra", in Italian) and how it came to be one of Christendom's most holy – and, later, most obscure - relics.

For hundreds of years, Calcata was associated with the Holy Foreskin until, on February 3, 1900, the church decreed that anyone who spoke, wrote, or commented on the relic would face ex-communication. This about-face by the Church regarding this most precious of relics was most likely due to the moral climate during the Victorian period of the 19th century. While the Holy Foreskin was originally venerated for being the only possible piece of flesh that Jesus Christ could have left behind, its association with sexuality led pilgrims to seek it out. Subsequently, the Church deemed it "an irreverent curiosity" and sought to suppress any mention of it.

Relics have long played an important role in the history of Christianity. Shortly after Emperor Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, the search for and veneration of items related to the Virgin Mary, Jesus Christ, and his disciples has been an obsession among the devout. Constantine's mother Helena (later St. Helena) was among the first relic hunters and is credited with bringing back in 320 A.D. from the Holy Land parts of the True Cross and other items from the Passion. By 787, the date of the Second Council of Nicaea, Christianity had spread throughout Europe, and relic veneration was required for those seeking Christian salvation.

Of course, some relics were more holy than others. Farley explains that by the Middle Ages, when thousands of relics were being "found" or mass-produced, a classification system was put into place:

"A first-class relic was a body part of a saint; a second-class relic was a saint's possession; a third-class relic was an object that had touched a first-class relic; a fourth-class relic – the least valuable but the easiest to produce – was an object that had touched a second-class relic: This could be as simple as a piece of cloth that had been rubbed up against a saint's tomb."

The Holy Foreskin was a first-class object. As a tangible relic, however, the Holy Foreskin didn't appear on the scene until December 25, 800, when Charlemagne gave the relic to Pope Leo III. The prepuce was boxed with a sliver of the True Cross – thereby representing the Alpha and the Omega. Then, this most holy of relics was placed in the Sancta Sanctorum in Rome, where it remained until a German soldier stole it in 1527 after participating in the Sack of Rome. On his way back north, the soldier stumbled upon the village of Calcata, where he was imprisoned for a short time. During his incarceration, the German hid the reliquary in his cell under a mound of hay. Later, in Rome, the soldier confessed to his theft but it took another 30 years for anyone in Calcata to find the holy relic. When it was re-discovered by members of the Anguillara family, who at the time owned Calcata and neighboring territories, it immediately put the small hilltop village on the Catholic pilgrimage map.

"An Irreverent Curiosity" could have easily been a dry account of the history of holy relics in the Catholic Church, but the search for this improbable sacred object is juxtaposed with scenes from Calcata, seemingly one of the most bizarre towns in Italy.

Once considered a "dangerous urban center" along with dozens of other towns because of their potential to crumble in an earthquake, Calcata was slated for demolition in 1938. By 1969, a newer, safer town (Calcata Nuova) was erected up the hill from the old one (Calcata Vecchia) and its original residents moved out. In their place came hippies, artists, and other characters from all over Italy and Europe and, after petitioning the state, they managed to spare Calcata from the wrecking ball.

Calcata today is a bohemian enclave populated with a strange mix that includes painters, a former dancer, beatniks, a world-famous architect, historians, expats, a priest, a bird lady, and dozens of others who make for an amusing supporting cast. Farley, who serves as the book's likable, omniscient, and occasionally self-deprecating, narrator, meets most all of Calcata's 100 residents and also gains access to the hallowed halls of the Vatican Library in his quest to find out what happened to the Holy Foreskin. The result is a page-turner full of irreverent insights into church lore, relic veneration, Italian pop culture, and the lengths the author will go to in order to relocate an incredible object that had become all but a footnote of history.