Customer Reviews

AN Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's OddestTown

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There must have been a good deal of early Christianity that the Romans found weird, but Christian fondness for the body parts of deceased heroes and heroines seemed particularly perplexing. Christians actually dug up bodies of martyrs and kissed the bones. When St. Cyprian was beheaded, his followers rushed to sop up his blood with their clothes and then ran off with their sanguine mementos. Of course, some Romans didn't mind being bribed to give up a body for its parts rather than doing away with it in some normal Roman fashion, but reverencing cadaver pieces still seemed peculiar. It is still practiced, and it might still seem peculiar, and if so, the most peculiar of such veneration is the subject of _An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church's Strangest Relic in Italy's Oddest Town_ (Gotham Books) by David Farley. Farley, raised Catholic and perhaps not as devout as he used to be, visited Calcata, Italy, an ancient town that sits on a 450-foot cliff, thirty miles from Rome, and accessible only by foot, or by mule. It was there he learned that for centuries the town had been a place of pilgrimage because it was the home of an especially sacred piece of a body. But in 1983, the piece was stolen. Farley's curiosity was up: the sacred item was nothing less than Jesus's foreskin.

As befits a travel writer, Farley spends many pages of this agreeable and amusing book on Calcata, how he got there, and his side trips to do research in Rome or Turin. There are plenty of freaks in Calcata, most of them quite agreeable, and since Farley and his wife spent a year in the village, he got to know them and he writes about them with affection. There is a famous architect, a 97-year-old American choreographer, an artist who might be a witch and lives with crows in a cave, an Italian B-movie actor who has art books featuring nude studies of his tumescent self, and many more. The cast of villagers includes, to get to the point of the book, the bibulous priest Don Dario, who was on duty when the Foreskin of Jesus disappeared. It was last seen in a shoebox in the bottom of Don Dario's closet. This was in 1983, or maybe 1986, and maybe it was stolen, or maybe it was sold. Maybe the Nazis got it, or the Satanists. Or maybe it was reclaimed by the Vatican, which is not so interested in corpse parts as it used to be, and wanted to hush everything up. Or maybe they took it so that a clone could be made, and this would be the Second Coming. After all, Don Dario had been put under orders not to show the relic to anyone and only bring it out for a procession on the Feast Day of the Holy Circumcision. In fact, he claims he can't even talk about it, and doing so might lead to excommunication. The fate of the holy prepuce is as murky as its history, which Farley reviews at length. The severed foreskin would be something special, because if Jesus was assimilated bodily into heaven, it would be the one part of his flesh left behind. Or would it? There was an ancient debate on the issue, with some saying he was made whole (his foreskin was returned to him) before his ascension. Farley does his best to untangle the provenance of the snip of tissue, which involves, among other things, being wound up in the legends about Charlemagne. Sometime after that, St. Catherine, who fancied herself the spiritual bride of Christ, wore the circular tissue as her ring. The prepuce in Calcata wasn't the only one; there were a dozen or so others in other churches, but the one in Calcata might have the best claim of authenticity. According to the story here, it was stolen by a German soldier at the Sack of Rome in 1527, and after it was found it filled all the air with the sweetest of perfumes and it spread glistening stars all around. This particular foreskin also was vouched for by St. Bridget, who had a vision of the Virgin approving the veneration of the tissue.

In 1954 there was a conference at the Vatican to discuss the Holy Foreskin, and although there was a vote in favor of promoting Calcata and its relic, the petition was rejected. Instead, there was reference to a 1900 decree that discussing holy foreskin would be a crime worthy of excommunication. Perhaps the church didn't like irreverent curiosity, and perhaps the church was taking an enlightened view that it was a mere "medieval fantasy," but perhaps the church was protecting it because they knew it was the real one. There are a thousand "perhapses" in this delightful book, and anyone who picks it up wanting to know for certain what _really_ happened to the _real_ foreskin is going to be disappointed. Farley's rollicking search for the truth, complete with picturesque setting, mysterious Vatican library chambers, a relic collection in Turin, secretive priests, and a town full of weird ones, is more substantial than any legend might be. We might, in all this lore, discount for sure at least one version of the foreskin's fate. The Greek theologian and physician Leo Allatius piously argued in the seventeenth century that the foreskin had arisen with Jesus, but that it became the rings of Saturn.

I thoroughly enjoyed this funny book. Part history, part travelogue, part commentary on Italian eccentricities, and a lot more, David Farley paints a wonderfully multi-dimensional picture of one of the strangest places in Italy and its "holy relic". He has clearly done his homework, as his detailed telling of the history of the "holy foreskin" attests. His style is light and breezy and his book is filled with so many interesting characters, that even if you are not as interested in Catholic relics as he is (I am not) it is still a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Just meeting all the unusual characters who live in the town of Calcata is worth the price of admission. Will this book help you understand Italians better if you are planning to go there? Maybe, but who cares! Read this book just for the sheer enjoyment of a story well told. Well done, David Farley. Can't wait for your next book.

This is a funny, charming travel memoir about the search for Jesus's foreskin, the "missing relic," in a remote Italian village that's full of eccentric characters--proof that that life is stranger than fiction. One of my favorite chapters reaches back to the author's youth where his unusual style of learning was misunderstood by his teachers, only see him bloom into an honors student in college. This memoir is full of eloquent and insightful history about Italy, the Catholic Church, and relic worship. It ends in a transcendent moment that has stayed with me.

A friendly treatment of a topic that could have tempted a contemporary intellectual like Farey into a sneering portrayal of the church at its most ridiculous. Instead of snickering, Farley educates his readers on the history of the church's fascination with relics of all kinds, from the point of view of an interested fan, not a believer or a critic. I learned lots from this book, both about the Calcata of today and historical Italy. A great read while traveling through the Italian countryside -- this book will richly inform our time in Rome!

First of all, I have to confess that, like the author, I am fascinated by the idea and history of relics - so that may bias me a little.

Basically this book recounts the author's search for the "lost" relic of the Holy Foreskin - the little piece of flesh cut of Christ's penis during his circumcision and venerated in many places in Europe up until the 20th century. Thus, one can see why the book was called "An Irreverent Curiosity".

However, I did not find the book irreverent at all. In all honestly, the author treated the topic with more maturity than I would have been able to do. However, while the main focus of the book was on the Holy Foreskin, this book was much more. It was also an account of everyday life in a small town of Italy filled with a variety of interesting characters who the author described in a way which made the reader feel like he was getting to know them (in person) as well. I think I found that aspect of the book - the study of the people and their relationships in this small town - very enjoyable.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this to individuals with an interest in relics (unless you are a "fundamentalist" when it comes to that topic) and to individuals who enjoy character studies of real people.

I think this author would be a fun guy to sit down and talk with in person over a cup of coffee or glass of wine ... which is essentially how you have to approach this book - as a conversation with an interesting fellow who is telling a great story about his experiences in a small town in Italy.

How do you solve a mystery in a town you don't know the language, where everyone knows each other, and the most knowledgeable people would never talk to outsiders? David Farley makes a commendable effort to crack the 20-year-old case of the missing Holy Foreskin, and while doing so imparts a good feel of Italy, knowledge of the town of Calcata, a load of history, an insight into the bewildering New Age culture, and a whole lot of entertainment. This book was worth every penny. I would undoubtedly recommend it to everyone.

The only problem is that (spoilers! ---------) he leaves us facing a much deeper mystery than we had before, and only barely and accidentally cracks the surface of rumors and cover-ups surrounding this event. The asides made this book extremely enjoyable, but I can't help but think that another researcher, most likely a native Italian, needs to get to the bottom of this before all the chief figures involved with the theft/reclaiming/disappearance/whatever it was pass away.

"When Halloween evening arrived, I put (the costume) all together, (including) my homemade cape, on which I had written SANTO PREPUZIO with a large Superman-style 'SP' underneath. Finally, I put on the brown ski cap, the color of which perfectly matched my brown turtleneck, rolled up the edges of the cap, and affixed a gold circle with the wire over my head." - the author goes to an Italian Halloween party dressed as the Holy Foreskin

Growing up Catholic, I was peripherally aware of the existence of holy relics though I never got too worked up about it. And certainly not to the obsessive degree admitted to by the author of AN IRREVERENT CURIOSITY, David Farley.

To make a long story short, Farley's narrative is an account of his extended stay in the medieval hill town of Calcata, 29 miles north of Rome, in which the Holy Foreskin, ostensibly circumcised from the infant Christ, made its appearance in 1527 and was subsequently venerated as a precious relic until its disappearance in 1983. David's self-imposed mission was to track the lost artifact down. A hobby is a good thing.

Most fascinating to me was Farley's history and description of the type of relics available for veneration by the pious in the Middle Ages subsequent to the death of Charlemagne in 814. Countless slivers of and nails from the True Cross, the breast milk, hair, comb, handkerchief and wedding ring of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph's hammer and one of his carpentered carts that Jesus helped build, the Redeemer's tears, barbs from the Crown of Thorns, a preserved fish and stale bread from the miraculously enlarged picnic lunch used by Jesus to feed thousands, the very finger that Doubting Thomas stuck in the risen Christ's side, shards of marble from the pillar on which God's son was flogged, the sponge used to quench his thirst on the Cross, a chunk of the Last Supper's table, and JC's own sandals. And, of course, the Holy Foreskin. Several, in fact. The list is endless when one includes the alleged bits and pieces of the saints and martyrs left behind. One can only imagine the hand-rubbing glee felt by the Levantine flimflammers as they watched the suckers debarking from the long ships arrived from the ports of Western Europe.

The subtitle of AN IRREVERENT CURIOSITY is IN SEARCH OF THE CHURCH'S STRANGEST RELIC IN ITALY'S ODDEST TOWN. The town is, obviously, Calcata, and its history and inhabitants absorb much of the author's narrative; so much so that the main thread of the book - the hunt for the sacred relic - is sometimes obscured by all the textual padding. Of course, it's to be expected that the recorded experiences of a resident in foreign climes become focused on the eccentricities of the locals. One only need read the books of such expats as Peter Mayle (A Year in Provence), Annie Hawes (Extra Virgin: A Young Woman Discovers the Italian Riviera, Where Every Month Is Enchanted), and Victoria Twead (Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools: Tuck into a slice of Andalucían Life); that's part of the fun.

And what degree of success did Farley have in his quest for the Holy Foreskin? Well, that would be telling, wouldn't it? Let it suffice to say that AN IRREVERENT CURIOSITY reminds me more than a little of Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World, in which author Brian Biegel recounts his search for the missing home run ball - a contemporary holy relic to some - socked into the bleachers by New York Giant Bobby Thomson to beat the Dodgers in the 1951 National League playoffs. Indeed, I'm tempted to award a similar number of stars - three. However, the interesting history lesson that David provides and his congeniality is such that I'll gladly ratchet the award up to four.

I'm left bemused, however, why Farley would sneak his 10-pound miniature pinscher/Chihuahua mix of a dog, Abraham Lincoln, into the Vatican's Sancta Sanctorum hidden in a shoulder bag. Is that ridiculous or what? Remind me to smuggle my favorite cat, Amanda, into Westminster Abbey next time I visit to examine tomb inscriptions.

I just finished this on my Kindle en route to Italy and it was a perfect way to prepare me for my visit. Mr. Farley's narrative always kept my interest while effortlessly sprinkling in genuinely educational vignettes about the history of Italy, Rome, religion, the Vatican and even New Age beliefs. He does a delightful job of bringing the citizens of Calcata to life in a way the allows you to feel as if you're walking down the twisty, cobbled streets of this ancient hill town. The best description I have is that "Irreverent Curiosity" captures the best qualities of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" with an even broader tapestry of characters and historical background. A great read!

The topic of this book may be enough to get someone to pick it up out of a vague curiosity, but the book is so good that you'll forget any untoward reasons you might have had for buying it in the first place. It's the perfect combination of history (both cultural and church-related) and mystery, and the historical parts are woven so effortlessly into the author's modern-day quest, that the book is as much of a page-turner as any good detective novel should be. As an added bonus, there are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments. Highly recommended for anyone who's interested in Italy or Vatican history - and anyone who likes a real-life detective story as well.

I loved this book, part mystery, part travel book, and all fun, entertaining, and fascinating, I want to visit a small hippy village north of Rome after finishing,