ATTEMPTS TO ABOLISH CIRCUMCISION.
Probably no rite or practice of a custom has been such a long-standing
bone of contention as circumcision; nor does the Sphynx surpass this
relic of bygone ages in mystery. From time immemorial its practice has
been the subject of disputes, and its literature finds oftentimes its
friends and foes ranged side by side. At one time a noted Israelite and
Voltaire, the scoffer of Judaism, may be consulted on the question as to
whether Israelite or Egyptian is entitled to priority as to its original
practice with a like answer; and, again, Christians are found who, after
a careful investigation, will accord this to the Israelites. In Rome,
the persecuted Hebrew was stopped on the street and compelled to show
the mark of circumcision, that he might be taxed, and in Turkish parts
the Christian was subjected to the same indignity to enable the
tax-gatherer to harvest the impost which he paid for his liberty of
conscience and not being circumcised. When the monkish missionaries of
the Catholic faith first entered Abyssinia, they were shocked to find
their converts insisting on their time-honored practice of circumcision;
and later, when the Propaganda sent its own missionaries, they were
scandalized to see Christians practicing what they looked upon as an
infidel rite; and nothing but the most earnest confession of faith, with
the assurance that the rite of circumcision was only a physical remedy,
and that in their conscience it in no wise possessed any religious
significance, and that neither did they, in any sense, hold it in any
connection with the sacrament of baptism, permitted these Abyssinians to
save themselves from excommunication. Later still, when an Abyssinian
bishop was present in Lisbon, the clergy of the city refused him the
right of celebrating the sacrifice of the holy mass in the Cathedral of
Lisbon, on the ground that he, having been circumcised, was no better
than a heretic. The Abyssinian Christians still practice the rite at the
present day.
The Turks, although very fanatical and greater proselyters than the
Christians of Rome, seem now and then to relax in favor of general
utility, as we find Bajazet II writing to the Pope, Alexander VI,
supplicating his Holiness to confer a cardinal's hat on the Archbishop
of Arles as a special favor to the Turkish emperor, as he knew that the
archbishop _had a secret leaning toward Mohammedanism_. As the clergy of
those days, from the Holy Father down, were more politicians than
followers of the humble Nazarene, the heaven of Mohammed had probably
more attractions for their taste than the ideal Christian paradise, and
it is possible that the good archbishop would have submitted to a
cardinal's hat and circumcision at the same time to secure the good
things of this world and of those in the world to come. History also
relates that his most Christian majesty, Henry III, of France, as a
relaxation to the interminable squabble between two Christian religious
factions which were rending France, and which in the end cost him his
life, actually wrote a letter to the Sultan, asking the favor to be
allowed to stand as godfather at the circumcision of his son. When it is
remembered that the godfather at a Turkish circumcision has to make a
strong profession of Moslem faith and the answers as sponsor for the
child, and must promise that the child will be faithful to the Koran and
Mohammed, it will be seen that, however much the lower levels of
humanity may quarrel over trifles, the heads of the people easily
accommodated themselves to any existing circumstances. Friar Clemens
might as well have let such a liberal-minded monarch live, as any of the
existing churches could easily have got along with him.
On the other hand, we have the remarkable tenacity to custom and habit
in this regard, as exhibited by the Moslems, who, although having
neither ordinance nor authority for its performance, either in their
law, creed, or in any order from their prophet, still no more zealous
circumciser exists than the son of Islam, who exacts from all proselytes
the excision of the prepuce. Mohammed was circumcised in his boyhood,
and, although he did not order its performance to his followers, he did
not see fit to proscribe a custom so general to the Arabians, where the
greater development of the prepuce probably renders circumcision a
necessity. From the same reason it is easy to perceive why the rite has
found such general observance among the Africans, who are as noted for
long and leathery prepuces as for their slim shanks. One author, writing
in 1772, in a work entitled "Philosophical Researches on the Americans,"
treats the subject in a very intelligent manner. His arguments are both
ingenious and plausible. This author looks upon circumcision as of
purely climatic origin in its inceptive causes. From a careful survey of
the natural history of man in his general distribution over the globe,
he finds that circumcision may be said to be restricted to within
certain boundaries of latitude, equidistant on both sides of the line.
No circumcised people have ever inhabited northern regions, and the bulk
of the circumcised races are found within certain climates. From this
reasoning it is easy to see why the rite should lose its standing under
certain climatic conditions, unless bolstered up by some religious
significance, as it is equally easy to foresee why it should flourish
elsewhere, even without any religious backing or ordinance. It is well
known that in Ethiopia and the neighboring countries, excrescences and
elongation of either the prepuce or nymphae are as probable as the
existence of an enlarged thyroid gland or goitre among the inhabitants
of some of the valleys of Switzerland or of those of the Tyrol.
According to the author of the treatise just quoted, circumcision would
be nothing more than a remedy to repair the evils that a faulty
construction of the human body developed in certain climatic conditions.
With the Israelites it is observed as a religious rite, although they
are not strangers to the physical benefits that circumcision confers
upon them; the fact that even where no prepuce exists, as sometimes
happens, the circumciser nevertheless goes on with the rite, being
satisfied with drawing a few drops of blood from the skin near the
glans, stamps the operation essentially as being a religious rite.
Persecutions have signally failed to suppress its performance by those
of the Hebrew faith. Beginning with the decree of Antiochus, 167 B.C.,
which consigned every Hebrew mother to death who dared to circumcise her
offspring, they have not ceased to suffer in defense of their rite.
Adrian, among other repressive measures, forbade circumcision; under
Antonine this edict was still enforced, but he afterward recalled it and
gave to the Hebrews the right of observing their religious rites. Marcus
Aurelius, however, revived the edict of Adrian. Heliogabalus, who
ascended the Roman throne in the year 218 A.D., was himself circumcised.
During the reign of Constantine all the laws that interfered with
Hebraic rites were renewed, with the addition that any Hebrew who should
circumcise a slave should suffer death. Under the sway of Justinian, in
the sixth century, the persecutions against these people were so
oppressive that a Hebrew was not allowed to raise or educate his own
child in the faith of his fathers. In the seventh century, the augurs
having prophesied the ruin of the Roman Empire by a circumcised race to
the emperor Heraclius, the persecutions were renewed against these
unfortunate people. In this century, Hebrews refusing baptism suffered
banishment and confiscation of all their property; they were obliged to
renounce the Sabbath, circumcision, and all Hebraic rites if they wished
to remain. About this period the success of the Saracens induced
persecutions of the Hebrews in Spain, where their children were taken
away from them that they might be raised in the Christian religion. In
the fifteenth century they suffered the greatest persecution and
martyrdom at the hands of the Spanish Inquisition. The persecutions
above cited were national and governmental persecutions levelled
directly at the Jewish nation and creed; the persecutions that they
momentarily suffered at other times had no signification beyond the
exhibition of popular spite and fury, but those above cited were moves
calculated to extirpate the creed, if not the people, from off the face
of the globe. If repressive measures are of any avail, circumcision as
an Hebraic rite should now have no existence. Its present existence and
observance show a vitality that is simply phenomenal; its resistance and
apparent indestructibility would seem to stamp it as of divine origin.
No custom, habit, or rite has survived so many ages and so many
persecutions; other customs have died a natural death with time or want
of persecution, but circumcision, either in peace or in war, has held
its own, from the misty epochs of the stone age to the present.
There is something pathetic and soul-appealing in contemplating the
early Christians forced to worship in the catacombs of Rome, hunted like
wild animals in their subterranean burrows, and then given the choice of
making offerings to the heathen gods or being thrown into the arena as
prey to wild beasts; so are we stirred when we think of the Spanish Jew,
who had made Spain his home for centuries, being driven into exile in
such droves that no country could receive them; we see them perishing of
hunger by the thousands on the African coast, and dying of starvation on
the quays of the ports of civilized Italy. That many, through all these
trials, were forced to embrace other religions is not astonishing. In
Spain apostacy was to no purpose, as the Inquisition could not be
expected to split hairs in regard to an apostate Jew, when it sent the
best of Gothic blood, raised in the Catholic faith, to the _auto da fe_
or the scaffold,--the rack respecting neither faith nor profession that
fell into its clutches. In milder persecutions, however, he escaped by
outwardly conforming to the demands of his oppressors and history tells
us of the circumcisions secretly performed on the dead Jew, that the
spirit of the law of their fathers might be carried out.
In other cases, threatened exile, confiscation, or exorbitant taxation
drove them to adopt every possible expedient to eradicate the sign of
their Israelitism and make attempts to reform a prepuce. The first
attempts in this line were made during the reign of Antiochus, when a
number of Hebrews wished to become as the people about them who were not
persecuted--_fecerunt cibi praeputia_. This is no easy operation, and in
later times by the aid of appliances, both in Rome and in Spain, they
undertook to cause the skin to recover the glans. Martial, in speaking
of the instrument used in Rome, a sort of a long funnel-shaped copper
tube in which the Hebrew carried his virile organ, terms it _Judaem
Pondum_, the weight of which, by drawing down the skin, was supposed in
time to draw it down far enough to answer the purpose. The apostle Paul,
in his epistle to the Corinthians, refers to these practices when he
says, "Was any one called being circumcised, let him not be
uncircumcised." The operation of reforming a prepuce, or of obliterating
the marks of circumcision, does not appear to have been a success.
The writer had one experience that was interesting. On one occasion he
advised circumcision for the relief of a reflex nervous disease, in a
tall, athletic Austrian sailor from the Adriatic; although the nature of
the operation was explained to the man, he evidently did not appreciate
its full nature and importance until a sweeping cut with a scalpel left
the excised prepuce in the operator's hand. Most Adriatic sailors have
sailed up the Bosphorus and are more or less familiar with both the
Greek and Turkish nations; the latter they despise with gusto, "_porchi
di Turci_" being the affectionate appellation they bestow on their
national neighbors. No sooner did he perceive the real condition of
affairs than he began to beat his head, saying that he was disgraced
forever, as he never would dare to associate with his countrymen again,
as he would be liable to be taken for a _porcho di Turco_; his frenzy
increased to such a pitch that to spare any unpleasantness it was deemed
advisable to replace the prepuce, which was done accordingly, the man
making a tolerable good recovery, as far as the grafted prepuce was
concerned. It required a secondary operation to overcome some
cicatricial contraction, and, on the whole, he had a very serviceable
prepuce; but, what was more to the point, it prevented his ever being
mistaken for a Turk.