The Pagan origins of Halloween are well documented. And largely wrong. Mouse investigates the history of spooky parties and the night of 30 October.

At every major Christian festival stories are told about how it was really a pagan holiday which Christians took over and re-sprayed as the faith grew across the Roman empire. Halloween has one of the most pervasive and pursuasive stories. Authoritative sources across the web tell us the simple tale of how the Celtic pagan festival of Samhaim was appropriated and ammended slightly to become All Hallows. According to Britannica:

Samhain, in ancient Celtic religion, one of the most important and sinister calendar festivals of the year. At Samhain, held on November 1, the world of the gods was believed to be made visible to humankind, and the gods played many tricks on their mortal worshippers; it was a time fraught with danger, charged with fear, and full of supernatural episodes.

Sacrifices and propitiations of every kind were thought to be vital, for without them the Celts believed they could not prevail over the perils of the season or counteract the activities of the deities. Samhain was an important precursor to Halloween.

The long history of linking Christian festivals to pagan ones has a mix of motives. Early stories were told by Victorian romantics who felt it was a positive to show the deeper historical roots of Christian traditions and that it lent them additional gravitas. Some reformers sought to discredit unbiblical festivities by tracing them back to paganism, with the added bonus of making their pre-reformation Catholic brethren appear superstitious and quasi-pagan. This combination has left poorly evidenced historical claims hanging in the air, which have been picked up with vigour by modern secular atheists happy to discredit Christianity entirely, suggesting it is all just a fiction invented to paper over pagan traditions.

So Mouse is glad to see historians investigating these claims and finding that almost none of them hold water. It is almost irresistible to link the ghosts and ghouls of a modern Halloween party to something pagan - it is just what we think a pagan festival might have involved. But the links are surprisingly hard to find.

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Let's start by looking at what we know about Samhaim.

Almost all pre-Christian North European cultures appear to have had some sort of festival around the start of November. It was a time when the harvest had been gathered and secured in the food stores for the winter. Men returned from hunting or fighting and organised their homes and affairs. Animals were slaughtered, salted and stored to be eaten through the winter. It was also an important time for tribal assemblies and gatherings, for leaders and rulers to resolve conflicts, assert their authority and offer their benevolence in feasting and gatherings. Pagan cultures would have a range of religious connotations to these events.

The Celts were peoples across much of Northern Europe. They are most well known in Ireland and Scotland, but at its height Celtic culture spread widely across northern, central and southern Europe. That said, it was not an entirely homogenous culture and there was no central authority. As a result, religious practices varied widely. While it is true to say that the festival of Samhaim was Celtic, therefore, it is more accurate to describe it as an Irish Celtic festival.

Professor Ronald Hutton has studied the beliefs of this period extensively and concluded:

Thus, there seems to be no doubt that the opening of November was the time of a major pagan festival which was celebrated, at the very least, in all those parts of the British Isles with a pastoral economy. At most, it may have been general among the ‘Celtic’ peoples. There is no evidence that it was connected with the dead, and no proof that it opened the year, but it was certainly a time when supernatural forces were especially to be guarded or propitiated; actives which took different forms in different regions.

In other words, we don't know very much about Samhaim at all. The word 'Samhaim' simply means November (or summer end literally). Since the Celts were not a literate society, our knowledge of their customs, beliefs and practices is fragmentary and should be treated with caution. When we hear claims of specific beliefs around Samhaim we should treat them with scepticism. Most are derived from writings in the 17th century and not on anything approaching contemporary evidence, so claims that 'the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead was believed to be thin at this time', of dressing up and wearing masks are, I'm afraid to say, speculation at best.

It does seem likely that feasting was taking place, conscious that the coming winter was a dark and frightening period, indeed one which often ushered in death, so festivities appear to have confronted this. Ronald Hutton again explains:

People reacted to this forbidding prospect [the coming of winter] in two different ways. One was to make it the festival of divination par excellence, in which humans most frequently tried to predict the future: and in pre-modern times the prediction most often sought was who would live through the winter. The other reaction was to mock darkness and fear, by singing songs about the spirits which personified it (in Wales, for example, the tail-less black sow and the White Lady), or dressing up as them: in other words, to confront boldly the terrors of the season now arriving.

However, it was unlikely to have been a festival of the dead, which where we find them appear to have happened in the Spring as people emerged from the winter and grieved for those who died during the winter months. Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University and author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, “there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship, despite claims to the contrary by some American folklorists.”

When we look at how, when and why the Christian churches celebrated All Hallows on 1 November, we have a much clearer paper trail to follow, since this began to be standardised in the 9th century, very much in the historical period.

It appears that since the very earliest recorded history of Christianity there were feasts and festivals dedicated to martyrs and the faithfully departed. The dates for these varied before Constantine. Following the conversion of the Roman empire more consistent dates began to be established. The story of how the date of 1 November became settled is long and complex, but it is clear that it had nothing to do with an Irish Celtic festival. In the 8th century, on 1st November, Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel to all the saints in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Gregory IV then made the festival universal throughout the Church, and 1st November has subsequently become All Saints' Day for the western Church. This was standardised in the 12th and 13th centuries where other dates for the festival were more actively surpressed.

The crucial detail here is that this festival had previously been celebrated in April and was moved in the 8th century under the encouragement of Alcuin and Charlemagne based on the practice of the Frankish churches. Whatever the customs were of pagan Celts in Ireland, they were not a consideration for setting the date of 1 November for a Christian celebration of the martyrs and the faithfully departed.

Some have argued that the November date originates from Irish influences, but more recent scholarship appears to have won this argument. The November date is coincidental with Samhaim, which was not a festival of the dead anyhow.

We are left with the question of how and why the modern halloween has emerged, with dressing up as ghosts and ghouls, trick-or-treating, carving pumpkins and the like. These appear to have been Irish traditions imported to America during the 18th and 19th centuries where the practices caught people's imaginations and became attached to All Hallows Eve.

Mouse draws no conclusion on how Christians should respond to Halloween celebrations today. But we shouldn't be afraid that our kids are accidentally taking part in pagan festivities by putting a pumpkin outside their front door.

The new Government is proposing a Bill to remove all hereditary peers from the House of Lords. Conservative MP and Anglican Gavin Williamson has announced that he will introduce an amendment to remove the entitlement of Church of England bishops to sit in the House of Lords. Mouse takes a look at the history, purpose and performance of the Lords Spiritual.

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The Bishop's formal role in the House of Lords traces its origins to the 14th century when two distinct parliamentary bodies emerged. The representatives of the shires and boroughs became known as the Commons, and the meetings of magnates and church leaders became the Lords.

Until the 16th century, the Lords Spiritual were Bishops as well as Abbots and Priors from the monasteries and priories. Following the suppression of the monasteries in 1539, only bishops remained.

Bishops have been removed from Parliament for a short period before. In 1642 they were removed during the civil war, following which the House of Lords itself was abolished before it resumed sitting in 1660. The bishops returned following the Clergy Act of 1661. During this period, the Commons established its primacy over both the King and the Lords, culminating in the 1689 Bill of Rights.

While the Lords Spiritual only come from the Church of England, this has not always been the case. Welsh bishops were historically represented since the Welsh and English Church was united until the 20th century. Following the 1800 Act of Union with Ireland, four senior Irish clergy were sent to the Lords. However, following the disestablishment of the Irish and Welsh churches in 1869 and 1914 respectively, the Welsh and Irish bishops lost their rights to sit in the Lords. 

The Scottish church went in quite a different direction. Historically, Bishops, Abbots, and Priors had sat in the Scottish Parliament, as their equivalents had done in England. The nature of the reformation, however, took the church in a different direction in Scotland and it became a presbyterian church, removing the role of bishop altogether. Scotland has never sent clerics to the UK Parliament.

The current composition of the Lords Spiritual, with 26 bishops entitled to sit, was finalised in 1847 following the establishment of the Bishopric of Manchester. This results in 21 senior Diocesan Bishops (out of 44 dioceses) sitting in the Lords alongside the two Archbishops and bishops of London, Durham and Winchester, which are permanent roles.

The nature of the House of Lords itself has similarly evolved. From an initial entitlement to sit in Parliament on a hereditary basis on equal footing with the Commons, the Lords today has a hollowed-out Parliamentary role and a reformed membership. Life Peerages were created in 1958 (largely) in the gift of the sitting Prime Minister. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 finally established the total supremacy of the Commons, removing the right of the Lords to block legislation that has been approved by the Commons and reducing the Lords' ability to delay the enactment of Bills passed by the Commons. Tony Blair's reforms removed all but a rump of hereditary peers and made the Upper House a wholly appointed body, with the role of debating and revising legislation, but ultimately one which cannot compel the Commons to act or prevent the Commons from acting, if it is determined not to.

Historically the Lords also had a judicial role as the ultimate court of appeal for civil and criminal cases (with the exception of criminal cases in Scotland which were dealt with in the Scottish judicial system). Appeals were heard by specially appointed Law Lords. However, this role was also removed in 2009 with the establishment of the UK Supreme Court.

Despite all this change, Lords reform has the sense of an incomplete process. The Coalition Government of 2010 initiated Lords reform with the intention of creating a significantly smaller House which would be 'largely or wholly' elected. However, disputes between coalition partners led to that legislation being dropped. Interestingly, the proposals included the retention of the Lords Spiritual, albeit in slightly reduced numbers.

Mouse observes, however, that the question on most reformers' lips is 'what should the Upper Chamber look like' rather than 'what should the Upper Chamber do'. The discussion is dominated by the methods of appointing or selecting peers, rather than on their powers and prerogatives, making it a lopsided discussion, struggling to explain why the chamber should be elected or appointed without an adequate explanation of what the purpose of the chamber is in the first place.

Today, a range of criticisms are levelled at the makeup of the Lords. The rump of hereditary peers feels like a historical relic, for example. And, of course, there have been calls to remove the automatic right of bishops to sit in the Lords. It is, however, the appointments process which has attracted the most criticism. Successive Prime Ministers have appointed new peers at impressive rates in an attempt to level up the numbers on party lines, leading to an ever-growing group of Peers, now totaling over 800 with no mandatory retirement age in place. Each PM has favoured appointees based on political persuasion, which regularly attracts scrutiny. And some individual appointments have attracted particular controversy. Boris Johnson's decision to appoint the son of a Soviet KGB agent was a notable case, although there are plenty of historical examples, such as Harold Wilson's infamous 1976 resignation honours, known as the 'Lavender List'.

Source: House of Lords Library

In this context, some have argued that the Bishops are a model of consistency, probity and integrity, being free from a duty of obligation to the politician or party who nominated them. Democratic arguments are futile in a body which is clearly undemocratic to its fingertips, and a group with a form of 'ex officio' presence makes some sense.

The English Bishops sit as independents. They have not formed a 'party' and do not agree on lines to take or which way to vote. They are, however, organised to some extent. A 'convenor', currently the Bishop of St Albans, Alan Smith, ensures through a rota system that there is some presence in the upper house, not least to formally open business for the day by reading prayers. Different bishops also agree to take the lead on particular issues where they have a strong interest, specialism or experience. Nevertheless, bishops can essentially turn up whenever they want, speak or vote whenever they want and however they want.

As a result, they tend to have sporadic attendance, speaking and voting records. Their attendance has averaged around 15% in recent parliaments. Mouse observes that their voting record tends to skew towards issues they are voting against rather than issues they are voting for. This has particularly been the case in recent Parliaments, with less than 5% of their votes supporting the government since 2019 as their participation in Parliamentary votes jumped significantly then too.

The bishops hold fewer than 3% of all votes and Mouse cannot identify a single vote where they can be said to have clinched the outcome. However, it is often said that their contributions carry considerable moral weight, so their influence is likely greater than their votes alone.

The excellent Church in Parliament website keeps a record of all the bishops' interventions and votes and a scroll through that shows that they tend to speak and vote on moral and social issues, or bring out the moral and social issues in wider topics, which is to be expected.

It is unlikely that Gavin Williamson's amendment will succeed. But pressure for wider reform of the House of Lords is building and a wider package of measures is more likely to include reform of the Bishops' bench.

Support for the current position is thin on the ground. A recent survey of clergy by The Times revealed that only a third of clergy thought the current position should remain. Most argued either for an expansion of the presence of religious leaders from a range of traditions (45%) or other reforms to reduce the number or remove the bishops from the Lords altogether (15%).

A recent YouGov poll showed that 52% of the public supported the removal of the bishops' entitlement to sit in the Lords, and 55% agreed that the Lords should be wholly elected. Only 16% supported retaining the current model.

The best argument the bishops have for keeping their place seems to be that they are a positive presence in the Lords and a proposal to remove them should take a wider review to ensure it doesn't simply make the Lords a worse place.

Mouse's take is that it is impossible to argue that the current setup is anything other than a historical anachronism. However, there are some benefits. The bishops undoubtedly add a positive moral voice in the Lords. Whatever reforms come next, Mouse would advocate for a positive voice from religious communities, including the Church of England, and it would be unwise to remove that from the current Lords without an alternative in place. His advice to the Bishops is to get to work on engaging with the issue and proposing options for the future, as it is unlikely the status quo will remain forever.

The Church of England appears to be in full scale retreat from the job of marrying people. And this is happening as the new government has indicated it intends to reform marriage law, which could have significant implications for the Church of England.

One of the historic articles of faith in the good old CofE has been that no matter how empty the pews are on a Sunday, somehow people will find their way back to Church for its role in the holy trinity of life events, to hatch, match and dispatch - to christen babies, marry couples and bury the dead.

Mouse is hear to beak the news that the evidence appears to show that this belief is build upon sand. Perhaps partly in response to this context, major reforms of marriage laws is planned and the new government has committed to take this forward.

In 2022 the Law Commission published a review of 'outdated wedding laws'. This review made a series of recommendations, including:

• equalising the marriage law across different religions and beliefs, removing the privileged position the Church of England holds in marriage law and allowing ministers of other religions and non-religious groups (notably humanists) to conduct legal marriages
• liberalise the law which restricts weddings to licenced venues - typically places of worship or licenced secular venues - and move to a model where the officiant is authorised, rather than the venue
• removing the distinction between religious and civil weddings and moving to a legal construct for a licenced officiant to undertake weddings on an equal basis, retaining freedom for religious weddings to hold to their formularies and traditions
• modernising the legal process around weddings, such as allowing couples to give notice of a wedding online

These proposals are only hypothetical, however, and we wait to hear more detail of the new government's intentions in this area. Their manifesto contained only a pledge to reform the law in relation to cohabiting couples, but they have made noises about legalising humanist weddings, and given a nod to the Law Commissions proposals. In response to a Parliamentary question on this issue in July, for example, Justice Minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said:

We are aware that weddings are an important issue for humanists and that the Law Commission has made recommendations for wholesale change of weddings law in July 2022. We will take the time as a new Government to properly consider this issue. We will set out our next steps on our manifesto commitment to strengthen rights and protections for women in cohabitating couples in the near future.

Within this context, one would expect the Church of England to be a significant voice. Many believe that it is the Church of England which marries many, if not most, couples in England. But this is not so.

Statistics on weddings have been dropped from the Church's annual statistical summary, Statistics for Mission, perhaps an indication of their status, but they are still available from the Office of National Statistics (where they combine the numbers for England and Wales). Mouse has run the numbers.

You don't need to be a stats wizard to see that the gap between the blue line (all marriages between opposite-sex couples) and the yellow line (marriages in the Church of England and Church in Wales) is getting bigger. In fact, the proportion of CofE / CiW marriages has dropped from around half in the early 1960s to 13% in 2022.

Church-watchers with long memories will remember the launch of a major initiative back in 2010 called the Weddings Project. It was designed to catch de-churched or un-churched couples on the look-out for a special place and way to tie the knot. A national team was assembled, resourced developed to support parishes and dioceses were engaged. There were even suggestions that it was making a difference. The decline was, to some extent stemmed. The proportion of CofE / CiW weddings stabilised at around 24% for a while.

But it was canned. 

It didn't help the project that following the legalisation of gay marriage in 2013, the CofE project was constantly followed by the caveat that church weddings are only available to opposite-sex couples, in an age when an increasing number of marriages were between same-sex couples, and opposition to gay marriage is often simply considered homophobia. 

But the reason for killing the initiative was that the strategy in vogue for church growth was swinging away from centralised teams pushing for growth and swinging towards centralised bodies dishing out cash to big churches to help them plant new churches or revive flagging churches under a new 'Vision and Strategy'. A number of central teams were abolished and the Life Events team was one of them. Since that time the decline in the proportion of weddings held in the Church of England or Church in Wales has accelerated.

Whether this new vision and strategy for church growth will work or not remains to be seen, but at least by the measure of wedding numbers the strategy is yet to show any fruits. Mouse is always very conscious that individual's decisions around where and how to marry depend on many things outside the control of the Church. But it is hard to believe that the church can have no impact.

Mouse's take on all this is that we are failing in this area. Whatever your views on same sex weddings, a full scale retreat from marriage cannot be good news for the Church.

Latest tracking survey reveals an increase in belief in God in the UK. But it isn't all good news.

Mouse's friend Justin Brierley has written a fascinating book called The Surprising Rebirth in Belief in God. His thesis is that the new atheist revolutionaries, including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens have rather gone out of fashion and newer generations are beginning to show greater interest in Christianity than previous generations.

If Church attendance in the UK is anything to go by, however, there has not yet been a reversal in the long term trend of decline. While there are growing churches in the UK, Mouse is yet to see any evidence that there is statistically significant levels of growth and many growing churches face accusations that their growth comes at the expense of other churches in their local area.

Similarly, the landmark British Social Attitudes survey has asked about religious affiliation for decades and the trend line has not budged in years - those who report they are a Christian fall year-on-year and those who claim no religion rises.

So this Mouse is always pretty sceptical when he hears preachers claiming that revival is just around the corner.

However, attendance and affiliation tell us little about belief. To that end, YouGov have been tracking a couple of very basic questions about belief in God for the past five years, which gives us a couple of tasty statistical morsels to get our teeth into.

There are a few striking headlines. The first is that there appears to have been a small but notable trend over the five year period of increase in belief in god (from 26% to 30%) and decrease in disbelief in god (41% to 38%). Revival it is not, but the trend appears steady and consistent.

Digging into the data tables it is striking that the increase seems to have been greatest among the 18-24 demographic, jumping from 22% who reported a belief in god to 39% over the five year period. Mouse suggests some caution due to the small sample size, but by Mouse's slightly sketchy understanding of statistics this appears to be statistically significant to a reasonable degree of confidence.

It is also notable that the increase is entirely accounted for by men. The numbers for women have not budged, although in absolute terms men remain far more likely to say they do not believe in god (43% Vs 32%).

So should we rejoice at this positive trend in belief? Unfortunately, the data has a sting in the tail. YouGov also asked about views on religion. When asked that question, only 20% of Brits said that 'Religion on the whole has a positive influence on the world' and a whopping 57% said that it had a negative influence.

To put that poll rating in perspective, religion is less liked than Rishi Sunak.

It is fair to say that the religion question is significantly broader than the belief question, in that respondents are likely to think of the effect of religion globally, which may draw them to conflict zones and issues of extremism. It is certainly not a question directing people to say whether they think the Church of England is a positive influence on the world.

Nevertheless, it is a hard sell to convince people to join a religion when they think religion is a negative force in the world.

Overall, however, Mouse is heartened by this data. Since around 1% if the population currently attend church, there does appear to be an opportunity to have a chat with the other 29% of the population who hold some form of belief in god.

Congratulations to top historians and podcasters Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on their recent podcast on the history of beards. Their podcast, The Rest is History, has taken the podcast world by storm, featuring in the top handful of podcasts in numerous rankings. In June, the Telegraph reported that it has had 200m downloads, and it has spawned a monthly subscription club for additional content and a chat community, two books and a live tour.

Ancient historian Tom Holland, well known in Christian circles for his book Dominion, and modern historian Dominic Dandbrook discuss an immensely varied range of historical topics from the profound to the frivolous. And so, it was natural that they undertook a two-part mini-series on the history of the beard.

Mouse can report that it was overall well-researched and entertainingly presented. Key aspects of beard history were suitably covered. They began, as Mouse's Beard Theology does in the cradle of civilisation in Mesopotamia, where kings would wear long beards to show their status as manly warriors, but priests would shave to present themselves as pure before the gods. They cover Roman and Greek beards, with a strong showing from top ancient historian Holland on point.

The series moved swiftly into the modern period. Had there been more time available they might have dwelled longer on the split between the Latin and Orthodox Church in 1054 in which the beard featured strongly. For Mouse, that story is emblematic of the role of beards through history - as markers of identity. 

The story Holland and Sandbrook told about the modern era was focused more into fashion than theology, which is understandable. However, there remains a theological underpinning which could have been explored further with more time. With the space Mouse had in his book to expand on the topic he was able to tell more of the story through the medieval period, where the first beard theology was written by Abbot Burchard who theorised that priests should shave their outer beard as a sign of humility but develop their 'inner beard'.

The modern church had an uneasy relationship with the beard through the 1960s and 70s when it was emblematic of rebellious sub-cultures, before making its peace with the beard eventually leading to Archbishop Rowan Williams winning the coveted Beard of The Year trophy.

Mouse highly recommends The Rest is History in general and these episodes in particular. And if you enjoy it why not expand on it with Mouse's Beard Theology where you can also read about Henry VIII's beard-growing competition with Francis I of France, why the Devil has a beard and many other entertaining tales.

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Sometimes, Mouse finds something that sounds totally bizarre, and yet, for centuries was considered totally normal. For example, he has written at length on the theological importance of beards. With the resurrection of The Church Mouse Blog, I'll be sharing a few more of these stories in the weeks and months ahead. Today, we have the fable of the foreskin - Jesus’s foreskin, to be precise. But before we get there, we need to back up a little.

The history of relics is worthy of a full post in its own right. It is often wrongly assumed that the veneration of relics was a medieval invention concocted by rapacious religious authorities to dupe and exploit the unsuspecting faithful. In fact, the veneration of relics goes back to the earliest days of Christianity. Drawing on stories from the Bible of the miraculous effect of touching the bones of the prophet Elisha in 2 Kings 13 or the healing of the bleeding woman by touching Jesus’s cloak, relics have always been a focus for veneration. This was taken for granted by writers like Augustine, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom.

The Church’s position of relics was first formalised at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. They agreed that only God performs miracles and only God is worthy of worship, so icons and relics are not worshipped and contain no inherent magical qualities. However, they could act as a focus of worship of God, and the saints could intercede on our behalf with God. The council concluded (my emphasis):

The divine apostle Paul said: The sins of some people are manifest, those of others appear later. Some sins take the front rank but others follow in their footsteps. Thus in the train of the impious heresy of the defamers of Christians, many other impieties appeared. Just as those heretics removed the sight of venerable icons from the church, they also abandoned other customs, which should now be renewed and which should be in vigour in virtue of both written and unwritten legislation. Therefore we decree that in venerable churches consecrated without relics of the holy martyrs, the installation of relics should take place along with the usual prayers. And if in future any bishop is found out consecrating a church without relics, let him be deposed as someone who has flouted the ecclesiastical traditions.

Thus, the Church formally established the requirement for all Churches to have a relic, and the hunt and trade in relics boomed, alongside the practice of pilgrimage to venerate a particularly holy saint or martyr’s relics - particularly those with a proven track record of miraculous results.

By the 13th century, the sale of fake relics and the exploitation surrounding them had become sufficiently embarrassing for the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III in 1215 to decree:

The Christian religion is frequently disparaged because certain people put saints’ relics up for sale and display them indiscriminately. In order that it may not be disparaged in the future, we ordain by this present decree that henceforth ancient relics shall not be displayed outside a reliquary or be put up for sale. As for newly discovered relics, let no one presume to venerate them publicly unless they have previously been approved by the authority of the Roman pontiff. Prelates, moreover, should not in future allow those who come to their churches, in order to venerate, to be deceived by lying stories or false documents, as has commonly happened in many places on account of the desire for profit. We also forbid the recognition of alms-collectors, some of whom deceive other people by proposing various errors in their preaching, unless they show authentic letters from the apostolic see or from the diocesan bishop. Even then they shall not be permitted to put before the people anything beyond what is contained in the letters.

Alongside this belief in relics was a particular belief in the physical resurrection. The resurrection of the dead is a central Christian belief from the earliest times, but ideas about exactly how this will happen have evolved. 

The physical resurrection expected by the average early medieval or medieval Christian involved the reconstitution of the former earthly body. They would literally rise from the grave. This caused a great deal of theological gymnastics around what constituted the essential matter of the person which would form their resurrected body and which was incidental material which would not. Not every toenail clipping was believed to be glued back to those resurrected, but surely they needed arms and legs.

This even included another strange obsession with what would theoretically happen to the body of a Christian baby which had died after existing exclusively on a cannibalistic diet - since all of their body was made up of other people’s bodies, would all of that matter reform into their original owner’s resurrected bodies and if so, would there be anything left of the cannibal baby at the resurrection? The matter was never conclusively decided.

This belief in physical resurrection led to a particular reverence for saints' bones as it was believed they continued to hold some essence of the saint after their death, and the bone would be reunited with the original owner's body when the Lord returns and there is a physical resurrection of the dead. 

Once again, it was at the Fourth Lateran Council that the nature of the physical resurrection was first formalised in Church teaching, which concluded (my emphasis):

He [Christ] will come at the end of time to judge the living and the dead, to render to every person according to his works, both to the reprobate and to the elect. All of them will rise with their own bodies, which they now wear, so as to receive according to their deserts, whether these be good or bad; for the latter perpetual punishment with the devil, for the former eternal glory with Christ.

It is within this belief system that one particular relic emerged - that of Jesus’s foreskin.

Jesus’s circumcision is attested in Luke chapter 2, with the presentation of Jesus at the temple for the traditional rites. Theologians began to speculate about what happened to Jesus’s circumcised foreskin, however. Surely, Jesus’s body was incorruptible, so any part of it which was separated from His body would not decay and would presumably be reunited with the rest of His body when He returns and ushers in the resurrection of the faithful.

Our first evidence of stories about the Holy Prepuce (foreskin) appear around the fifth or sixth centuries with the apocryphal Syriac Infancy Gospel. Two 12th-century copies remain, containing the story that the Holy Prepuce was preserved in an alabaster box.

The relic shot to fame at the start of the 9th century. Charlemagne established an empire of a size not seen since the fall of the Western Roman Empire across continental Europe and reclaimed the legacy of those Roman Emperors by establishing the Holy Roman Empire. He did this with the backing of the papacy and was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Leo III in AD800. Christmas Day of that year, Charlemagne made a gift to Pope Leo III of the relic of the Holy Prepuce. 

Provenance for the relic was clearly an issue, so Charlemagne made the irrefutable and unprovable claim that it had been given to him by an angel while he was praying at the Holy Sepulchre. Leo III placed the relic under the altar of the Chapel of St Lawrence in Rome, originally the private chapel of the papacy.

Sadly for Charlemagne, numerous rival claims to hold the relic proliferated. Researcher David Farley identified dozens of medieval churches which claim to have the relic.

Discussion of Jesus’s foreskin was clearly not considered peculiar through the Middle Ages, although one of the stranger references came from the 14th-century saint Catherine of Sienna. She wrote about a vision she had in which she received Jesus’s foreskin as a wedding ring to symbolise her marriage to Christ. She wrote:

You see very well that you are a bride and that he has espoused you - you and everyone else - and not with a ring of silver but with a ring of his own flesh. Look at the tender little child who on the eighth day, when he was circumcised, gave up just so much flesh as to make a tiny circlet of a ring!”

When disaster struck and Rome was sacked in 1527, the relics from St Lawrence were stolen, although the German soldier who stole it was captured in Calcata, around 50km north of Rome, and the relics were housed there.

It is the Calcata relic which stood the test of time.

In the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the obvious excesses of the trade and exploitation of relics were clamped down on by the Catholic Church. In the centuries that followed, talk of the Holy Prepuce became more controversial. Eventually, this led to a papal decree in 1900 threatening excommunication on anyone who even discusses the Holy Prepuce (Mouse’s source for this claim is David Farley, although Mouse hasn’t been able to track down the actual papal decree, so please drop a link in the comments if you can find it).

In 1610, Galileo Galilee pointed his telescope up at the stars and noticed something odd about the planet Jupiter. When magnified, there appeared to be what Galileo first described as ‘ears’ on either side of the planet. At first, he believed them to be two other smaller planets nearby, but as observations improved, these were found to be mysterious rings circling the planet.

This discovery coincided with the efforts of the church following the Reformation to deal with some of the excesses which had led to so much trouble. The keeper of the Vatican library at the time was Leo Allatius, who took a keen interest in the new field of astronomy, and as the tide began to turn on attempts to divorce the church from the field of scientific discovery, creative attempts were deployed to reconcile the two. And so Allatius wrote De Praeputio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Diatriba (Discourse on the Foreskin of our Lord Jesus Christ), in which he advocated the theory that Christ’s foreskin had ascended into the heavens and had been left visible in the sky and had become the rings of Saturn.

Gradually, the church withdrew support for many claimed relics, including those with a claim to be the Holy Prepuce, although Calcata clung onto belief in their prized relic, parading it through the town each year. Until 1983. The priest in charge of it had taken to hiding it under his bed for safekeeping and discovered that it had been stolen before it could be paraded that year.

And so the last remaining claim on Christ’s foreskin was lost … for now at least.

If you would like to read more about the fable of the foreskin, Mouse recommends David Farley’s book An Irreverent Curiosity: In search of the Church’s strangest relic in Italy’s oddest town.

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Mouse previously commented on the failure of the Church Nominations Commission to conclude on two successive vacancies for senior bishops. This has left two dioceses without permanent leadership for extended periods and raised the prospect that the process is ‘broken’. Many (including Mouse) speculated that this could be due to a stalemate in the Commission with positions hardened following the proposals for prayers of blessing for gay couples, although the activities of the Commission itself are conducted under strict secrecy.

Following the second failure, for the Diocese of Ely, Justin Welby commented that this is a serious issue and would be looked at. Mouse can only report that the efficiency with which proposals have been brought forward has shocked this observer. Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London, has reviewed the position and is bringing proposals for reform to the House of Bishops at their meeting on 18 September, a hastily arranged meeting called specifically to discuss this issue. Should agreement be found there, proposals will be presented to Synod for adoption.

Bishop Sarah’s paper sets out only at a very high level the problems and presents a series of proposals for change. There are some changes proposed in the short term, obviously designed to reduce the likelihood of further deadlocks, alongside the recommendation to follow those with a longer-term review. The key elements are:

1. Remove the secret ballot and make voting within the CNC open to other CNC members
2. Reduce the threshold required for an appointment by one vote - notionally reducing the majority required from 71.4% to 64.4% for diocesan appointments
3. Give the presiding Archbishop an extra casting vote where a conclusion has not been reached after three rounds of voting
4. Introduce a code of conduct for CNC members
5. Change the rules for Vacancy in See Committees (the group from the diocese which sets out its requirements to the CNC) to prevent more than one clergy or lay person from sitting on the ViSC and in the reps they elect to the CNC from the same parish or church community and to ensure there is at least one female clergy and lay representative on the ViSC

At this point these are just proposals to be discussed in the House of Bishops, so we will wait to see what emerges from that and the final proposals that are put to Synod, most likely in February 2025. For those who studied Mouse’s piece on this topic, this is all very much in line with his suggestions. Making more fundamental changes may well be desirable, but given the need to ensure we can function and make appointments now and to prepare for the expected retirement of Justin Welby when he turns 70 in around 18 months, it is sensible to make some immediate short-term changes.

Sarah Mullally, Bishop of London

Of the list that Bishop Sarah has put together, Mouse would broadly endorse them, although I expect there will be further tweaks to these proposals before they come to Synod. The one which caused Mouse’s eyebrows to rise was the proposal to prevent multiple representatives from a single parish on a ViSC. I understand that this has happened in previous ViSCs, so there may be some specific history there. 

It is also quite pertinent. The CNC is currently deciding on nominations for the next Bishop of Coventry. The six CNC members selected from the Diocese’s ViSC include Rev Jonathan Jee, vicar of St Paul’s, Leamington Spa, and Chair of Coventry Diocese Evangelical Fellowship, alongside Alicia Sampson, PCC member at St Paul’s Leamington Spa. The Coventry Diocese Evangelical Fellowship which Jee chairs holds to the CEEC basis of faith and recently issued a statement condemning the decision of Synod to move forward with the blessing of gay couples. In his maiden speech in Synod, Jee said that the LLF debate reminded him of a youth group asking what sexual acts they could ‘get away with’ and that the Synod debate was asking “how far can we go with flirting with blessing sexual immorality?” 

So next time round the votes of 14% of the CNC will come from a single evangelical parish and Mouse wouldn’t be betting against another failure to make an appointment.

This aspect of the proposals is also somewhat more complex to put into practice. It is clearly an attempt to fix an underlying problem of activist parishes dominating local elections within dioceses and deaneries by rigging the outcome of a supposedly democratic process. I expect this will need some working through in practice.

The only additional proposal Mouse would encourage the Bishops to consider is the idea of a fall-back mechanism should the CNC fail to conclude entirely. Other provinces in the Anglican Communion have such mechanisms, such as the reversion of the appointment to the House of Bishops with ratification by Synod. This acts as both a means to make an appointment in a more timely manner and an incentive for the CNC to conclude and avoid the issue being taken out of their hands.

Mouse will, of course, be on hand to update you as this develops.