Thompson sez: Didn't St Catherine of Siena have a supposed relic of the circumcision of Jesus, a ring that she wore, saying that she had been married to God "not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his holy flesh…"

Yuck! Better to leave the foreskins to David. He had a thing about them. And by the way, is Michaelangelo's David circumcised?

But yes, Catherine of Siena had some strangeness to her writings, and much of what we know about her is mostly folklore. The most important thing about Catherine is that she was a woman who dared to confront the Pope. And yes, she and a number of other female mystics had some sort of "mystical marriage" to Jesus. I can't get too concerned about that, until they start having mystical children...

Never heard the foreskin story before. Maybe it's an absurd conversion of a metaphor into literalism. Apparently, Catherine claimed the ring indicating her marriage to Christ, was invisible.

Odd, but interesting story, nonetheless. And Siena, by the way, is a strange and interesting city to visit.

-Joe-