I think I'd had too much coffee when I wrote this...

[tree_and_leaf]

It's odd, going back over notes you've made a while ago, especially when they were evidently made in a snarky mood. The context is Peter Dinzelbacher, who is a bit... inclined to get touchy about people casting aspersions on the authenticity of visionary texts, though he's a good textual scholar, discussing Agnes Blannbekin and the visions about Christ's foreskin (which, as regular readers of this journal may remember, she held was in heaven rather than in a church somewhere being venerated, as was confirmed by a vision in which she repeatedly felt it in her mouth and swallowed it, experiencing great 'sweetness', and that for this reason the first edition of her revelations, published in the early eighteenth century, were condemned by the Jesuits).

"Begins by discussing the circumstances of the first publication of the revelations by Pez in 1731 The foreskin controversy:
Mary told Brigitta of Sweden [no ref to location in text] that she gave S John the foreskin of Christ to look after [an interesting conversation that must have been!] and that he then buried it [sensible man] only for it to be dug up by certain persons after an angel led them to it [and I can’t imagine what the angel thought of that particular errand, other than ‘humans are weird and God’s ways are pretty damn mysterious’]. Brigitta's vision confirm validity of cult, whereas AB's visions attack it - this is the source of the problem for SJ subsequently, not the reasons moderns think it's icky.
232 in a footnote PD (4) says it can’t be erotic because the same description is given to her feelings on communicating – and the foreskin is part of the body of Christ, therefore not sexual but rather Eucharistic. [I’m not a friend of Freudian interpretations, but I’m still not sure that logic holds up] [Sometimes a foreskin is just a cigar?]"

I hasten to add that the notes get more sensible subsequently

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

The thing that really worries me is that I found myself trying to work out how that alleged conversation between John and Mary might have gone, and really couldn't, apart from the obvious point that it would involve John freaking out.

I concluded from this that it was clearly not true.

[penguinity.livejournal.com]

Do we know at all what normally happened to foreskins?

[tree_and_leaf]

Good question, but no (or at least, I don't).