• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

World News Center

Everything you want to know about anything that's meaningful

  • News
  • Reviews
  • About
  • Contact Us
You are here: Home / What’s In Your Attic?

What’s In Your Attic?

December 18, 2010 by

King Henry IV on a better day.
King Henry IV on a better day.

We all have a lot of fun things in our domiciles. Maybe you’ve got your great grandpa’s marbles, or your sweet aunt Mirabella’s collection of parasols. You might even be one of those fun people who collects doilies. I’m not, but you might be. But whatever it is we all know that it’s not uncommon for people to have a wide variety of mementos which mean something to them even if they don’t resonate with strangers. Items that bring back fond memories of a person or event in their lives. Catholic churches keep bits and pieces of saints and martyrs in a reliquary in each and every church in the world to sanctify them. The churches that is, not the saint’s body parts.

But how many of us keep a severed head in our living room?

Believe it or not there was, at least, one guy. As Reuters reports, someone finally turned over the head of King Henry IV to researchers in England.

A team of scientists say they have positively identified an embalmed head, presumed lost in the chaos of the French Revolution, as that of King Henri IV of France who was assassinated in 1610.

The head was apparently lost after revolutionaries desecrated the graves of French kings in the royal basilica of Saint-Denis near Paris in 1793.

Few remains of those bodies have ever been found and positively identified since.

But a team of experts using advanced scientific techniques say they have conclusively identified the head, passed down over the centuries by private collectors, as that of the monarch.

The multi-disciplinary team, led by forensic pathologist Philippe Charlier, announced the discovery in the British Medical Journal.

Charlier said features consistent with those of the king’s face were found including “a dark mushroom-like lesion” near the right nostril, a healed facial stab wound and a pierced right earlobe.

The king is known to have sported an earring, along with others from the Valois court.

Head hairs and remnants of a mustache and beard, colored red and white, on the mummified head fit with the known characteristics of the king’s hair at the time of his death. Many features matched those in portraits of the king, the team said.

Charlier said three “cutting wounds” were also visible, corresponding to the separation of the head from the body by a revolutionary in 1793.

Radiocarbon dating also gave a date of between 1450 and 1650, “nicely bracketing the year of his death,” the report said.

In addition, a digital facial reconstruction of the skull was fully consistent with all known representations of the king and the plaster mold of his face made just after his death.

Henri IV was one of the most popular French kings, known as “the good King Henry” and as “the green gallant,” because of his attractiveness to women.

In 1598, nine years after ascending the throne, he enacted the Edict of Nantes which guaranteed religious liberties to Protestants and brought to a close over 30 years of fighting between French Protestants and Catholics.

He was assassinated in Paris at the age of 57 by Catholic fanatic Francois Ravaillac.

Jacques Perot, director of the Societe Henri IV in France, said the head will be buried next year in the Basilica of Saint-Denis.

“It will be a beautiful ceremony,” he told Reuters.

I’m sure it will Jacques.

As evidenced by many acts, not just those few touched upon in the story, King Henry IV was one of the good guys. A forward thinker and the first ruler to truly say that there should be a chicken in every pot throughout the land.

I will gleefully grant all that.

What has me puzzled is why people would keep his head in a box and hand it down from generation to generation. I mean, seriously, is that something you pop out at parties and show your friends? Do you get to make jokes like “Hey! Who wants a little head?”

Whatever the motivation, as long as it eludes me I’ll feel better about myself.

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Primary Sidebar

Archives

  • October 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • December 2021
  • October 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • November 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010

Copyright © 2023 · Metro Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in