Incorruptibility of Saints’ Flesh
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
The Saints of the various churches of the Christian faith are highly revered people – miracle workers during life, declared holier than normal people once they die. But their corpses have been poked, inspected and desecrated in a manner which would never do if the person was not ‘holy’.
Relics
During the Middle Age the body parts of saints were major tourist attractions in a world where religious pilgrimage was like tourism is today. There was even a traveller’s guide – an early Lonely Planet or H2G2 – which told pilgrims which inns served ‘off’ food, how to avoid having a Navaresse skin your horse and where all the major attractions were. The major pilgrimage routes were to Rome, Jerusalem and St. James at Compostela in Spain. Pilgrims could travel about 25 miles per day and thus large stopovers appeared on the pilgrimage routes every 25 miles or so. And competing routes and stopovers needed relics if they wanted pilgrims to come stay.
It was a joke even in the Middle Age that there were enough splinters from the Cross Jesus was crucified upon to build a ship and enough thorns from His crown to hedge a field. But body parts of recently departed saints - or even body parts of suspicious origins, which were big tourist attractions – were seen as rare commodities worthy of theft.
The top of the skull of a small girl martyred for her faith which was a huge pilgrim attraction was stolen by a Monk who had spent ten years at the Monastery it was held building trust and lowering everyone’s guard before making his move! The view was that as saints had great power and were in God’s company they would not allow their body parts to be stolen unless they wished them to be moved to a new site.
At Fécamps, France the arm of Mary Magdalene was the big crowd puller. So famous was the arm, that Bishop Hugh of Lincoln tried to pull the index finger off the arm. That wouldn’t work so he clamped his teeth down on it and succeeded in ripping two pieces off.
Saponification
One of the major attractions of viewing dead saints’ bodies was that many were incorruptible: that is, they did not stiffen and decay like normal flesh did. Incorruptibility of flesh has been linked to the process of saponification. Saponification is the “alteration of the appearance and consistency of the fatty tissues of the body consequent upon the transformation of the neutral fat into new compounds, mostly fatty acids.” These new fatty acids are adipocere. When fat turns into adipocere flesh and muscle can appear pink-to-red at a depth and when cut will appear as if death occurred recently, even if the death occurred up to 100 years before.
Some of the most famous examples of saints who did not decay were:
Bishop Hugh of Lincoln (the biter from above) who died in 1200 but was still totally intact when he was moved from Lincoln Cathedral in 1280.
Edward the Confessor died in January 1066 but when he was examined in 1102 his limbs were still flexible and his cerements clean. When he was moved to his new tomb (pictured) in 1161 he was still incorrupted.- Saint Antoninus, the Archbishop of Firenze, died in May 1459 but was still intact in 1589.
- Saint Edmund at Bury was examined by an abbot when King Edward I asked that his standard be touched by Edmund before Edward went into battle. The abbot “found the foot standing upright as though they had been the feet of a man lately dead.”
- Saint Maria Madalena de’Pazzi (pictured) died in May 1607 and was buried at the Carmelite Convent of the Piazza Savonarola. Her body was flexible in 1608, and officially certified as intact in 1639 and 1663.
The Orthodox Chruches also maintained the bodies of deceased saints and high ranking clergy for public viewing. In Kiev, 73 wholly intact, though darkened and mummified, bodies reside at a sanctuary. At Cetienje, Montenegro Saint Peter I, the Vladika, was examined in 1830 and was intact. However Montague Summer in The Vampire points out that Orthodox saints may be intact but are, “parched, sere and withered and in no way retaining the freshness, natural colour and complexion of life which so often distinguishes the incorrupt bodies of Saints of the Catholic Church.”
