To a man of the Enlightenment, circumcision is a “bizarre custom” ; yet the Church found itself in the position of having to justify that of Jesus... and to wonder what had happened to the holy Foreskin. An Austrian mystic, whose visions were published in 1731, believed she had felt it and swallowed it ; a surgeon was asked to examine a relic purporting to be part of it, tasted it, declared it to be dust ; the object was destroyed – entertaining anecdotes, laden with religious and philosophical meaning.